Day 12—Wednesday

At the beginning of rest hour I told Chieko my stomach hurt and asked if I could go to clinic.

“Your stomach is rock solid and you’re totally fine, but please, go wherever it is you are really sneaking off to.” Chieko said all this without pulling her eyes away from her book. Maybe she was still a little mad at me from archery.

“You don’t know if my stomach hurts or not.” I was offended that she assumed I was lying.

Even though I was totally lying.

She lowered her book, which was another one about Eleanor Roosevelt, and stared straight at me. “You are holding stationery and a pen and a clipboard. A stomach-sick person would be holding tissues or a bucket, and their hair would already be back in a knot to keep it clear of any impending streams of barf.”

“Jeez, detective, you really figured me out.”

“It wasn’t hard.”

“I’m not going to barf. I just feel queasy.” I was sticking with my story. “Clinic has medicine for that. I’ve had it before.”

“Does clinic have medicine for bad lying?”

“If you let me go, I can find out,” I answered.

“Whatever. Go to ‘clinic.’” Chieko gave me an exaggerated wink. “I will not stand in your way, for, as my soul sister Eleanor Roosevelt once said”—and she read directly from her book—“‘Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.’ So go. Be free. Escape rest hour. Face your life and keep your curiosity alive.”

“You’re a little nuts, you know that, Chieko?” I said, realizing how happy I was that she was my counselor.

“Nuts are good for you. High in protein. And fats—the good kind.” Then she sighed loudly and announced, “Great—now I’m craving nuts. Thank you oh so very much.”

“They have almonds sometimes at canteen,” I told her.

Chieko clutched her stomach with one hand and draped the other across her brow. “Why must Thursday fall but once a week?”

She wasn’t mad at me anymore.

“I’ll be back soon,” I said with a smile, and slipped out the screen door.

I crossed the fields, walked past clinic and past the flagpole, pausing a moment to notice the four flags hanging, one above the other, like limp dish towels on a loose clothesline. It was probably the most pathetic flagpole display in the entire state.

I moved swiftly through junior camp, past Violet, Daisy, and Chicory, and was relieved to see the grounds around them deserted. I looked over my shoulder and then slunk into the woods, stepping carefully over roots and twigs until I reached my rock. I climbed on top, my back to camp, and looked at the tiny bits of lake I could see to the left through the tree trunks and branches around me.

I had stationery because I planned to write a letter.

To my mom.

I needed to tell her that she was the worst mom on the face of the planet.

That she’d ruined our family.

That I would never forgive her.

I needed to write out everything I was feeling so it would stop weighing me down like a bag of wet sand strapped to my back.

But I couldn’t even write Dear Mom.

Instead, my grip loosened and I watched the pen fall to the rock, then roll, slowly, off the side to the dirt below.

And that’s when I felt it seize my heart and squeeze: fear.

More than angry or betrayed or surprised beyond belief, I was scared. At the end of August, camp would be over and I would be going home.

But what was home now?

Before the email I was never supposed to see, home meant my mom and dad and Freddy and me in a yellow house on a dead-end street in central Pennsylvania.

Home meant the uneven stone path to our front door that we had to line with orange cones every year at Halloween so trick-or-treaters wouldn’t trip.

Home meant endless bags of pretzels in the kitchen snack drawer, and the fuzzy green carpet in the den that was thick enough to hide your toes in.

Home meant pancakes on weekends, and a street party every Labor Day, and raking leaves for our neighbor who was too old to do it herself.

But then my brain switched tracks, and other thoughts flooded in.

Home also meant dinners in front of the television, just the three of us, because Dad was working late again.

Home meant last-minute phone calls from my dad at some hotel, explaining he’d have to stay another day. Or two.

Home meant Mom watching soap operas like they were breaking news reports, and Mom shopping for things that she never even bothered to unpack out of the bags, and Mom staring out the window at nothing.

The more I thought about home, the more memories came flooding back to me, like scenes in a movie.

Scene: Mom’s and Dad’s muffled voices behind the bedroom door, growing louder and angrier until they sounded like two claps of thunder crashing into each other.

Scene: Freddy and me gnawing frozen waffles on the bus ride to school because Mom was stuck in bed with another migraine.

Scene: Mom and Dad showing up separately, and sitting separately, at the seventh-grade Welcome Back to School night.

It was suddenly so clear: They were in lousy shape. They had been in lousy shape for a long time, with or without Darrin.

And I had never noticed, not really, until the email.

We’ll be together, just wait.

Was Mom planning to leave but Dad beat her to it?

Would Dad come back?

Would we have to move?

Who would I live with?

In August, camp would end and Freddy and I would travel hours by bus to get back home, but what were we going back to?

For the first time, I felt thankful that I was at Meadow Wood and that Freddy was safe and happy at Forest Lake. I didn’t want to be anywhere near my mom or my dad.

I grabbed my clipboard, scrabbled off the rock, and picked up my pen from the weeds on the ground. I eased my way through the dim, shadowed woods and stepped into the bright junior camp area.

I had to make it back to Yarrow in time to sign up for canoe elective with Carly this week, and I had to pretend my stomach was better from my pretend visit to clinic. Ironically, my stomach actually hurt now. A lot. Like I was having one of my mom’s migraines but in my gut.

It was the pain of knowing there was no way I could undo what had already happened at home.

And I knew clinic didn’t have medicine for that kind of hurt.