Day 46—Tuesday

“I’m doing a good deed so you’ll let me skip tomorrow’s social,” I announced, bursting my way through the half-open door of the archery shack.

Chieko wasn’t expecting me, or the box of archery supplies I was carrying, so she jumped when I came in. Something fell from her hands and clattered against the cement floor.

“Jeez, Vic, you scared the poop out of me!”

“Sorry.” I peered around her and said, “But no, I didn’t. There’s no poop.”

“Gross.” Chieko sneered at me.

“You’re the one who brought it up,” I defended myself. “What were you doing in here anyway?”

And then I saw it. I saw what had flown out of her hands and hit the floor when I surprised her.

It was a cell phone.

Chieko saw me see it.

“Well, now I’ll have to kill you,” she said.

“But I brought you a package. Not flat.” I held the box out to her and gave her my best angel face.

She took the box, set it on the one table in the cramped hut, and read the return address to herself. “I ordered these weeks ago. Great service, Arrowback Incorporated.”

“So this is how you’ve been getting your technology fix all summer,” I said, picking up her phone and looking for any damage. “No cracks.”

“Hardly,” she downplayed it. “There’s no Wi-Fi here, just an outlet for charging. I use the phone and camera, and I can watch stuff I’d already downloaded. That’s it.”

“Pretty slick, counselor,” I said, opening her Photo Gallery. “I won’t tell.”

The most recent photos on the scroll were of the archery range: pictures of the supply hut looking eerie in shadow, a close-up of a blade of grass glistening with morning dew, a purple finch resting on top of a target, which I could identify because it was New Hampshire’s state bird and we learned all about them in the nature hut back in junior camp. Before that were photos of a bus depot and an airport, signs that said things like Pickup Lane Only and Do Not Leave Bags Unattended.

I kept scrolling backward in time through her picture collection while Chieko worked at unpeeling the packing tape on the box I’d given her.

I got to a picture of Chieko holding an orange-and-white cat in her arms, her face half-buried in the soft fluff of its fur. “You have a cat?” I asked, turning the phone so she could see the picture.

“No, that’s Ramone. He lives in this bookstore I always go to.”

“He’s cute.”

“He’s fierce. He only lets, like, three people in the whole world touch him.”

“And you’re one of them, of course,” I finished for her.

“Of course,” she repeated.

I scrolled backward more.

“And who’s this?” I asked, showing another photo. It was of Chieko and a girl with long brown hair, their arms around each other, smiling broadly in front of a wall of hay bales. They wore matching red team jerseys and had medals hanging from ribbons around their necks.

Chieko looked at the picture and quickly looked away. “That’s Randy.”

“Oh.” I looked back at the photo. They were at an archery competition and they both had placed, their medals reflecting glints of sun.

Chieko and her girlfriend. The girlfriend who broke her heart.

“She’s pretty.”

“I know,” Chieko said. “And it’s not especially helpful to point that out, thank you very much.”

“And she’s good at archery, like you?”

“Yeah, she’s good.” Chieko stopped working on the box to say, “But not as good as me.”

I smiled at that. “Good. I like knowing you’re the best.”

“And I like knowing what’s going on with my campers. You’re different.”

“I am?”

“You were all mopey at the beginning of camp, and now you’re all . . . not-mopey,” Chieko said.

“‘Not-mopey’ is the best you can do? Your vocabulary has failed you! This is insane.”

“Inane,” Chieko admitted.

“Well, I can be mopey again, if you want,” I offered.

“No, you can’t. You’re not a performer. Only Jordana can pull that off.”

“You’re right.” I handed her phone back to her. “I just had a lot of home stuff to deal with.”

“So you dealt with it? It’s done?” Chieko asked.

“No, it’s not done,” I admitted. “I’m just not afraid of it anymore.”

“Nice. It’s good to hear you’re okay.”

“I’m better than okay.”

“Well, that’s just braggy.” Chieko plugged her phone back into the wall outlet and returned to her package.

“But I’m sorry for being mopey, you know, before,” I added.

“No apology necessary. At least not to me. I’m the queen of mope.” Chieko ripped the rest of the tape off the delivery box with the ferocity of a wild animal and opened the flaps. She dove both arms into the box, shuffled them around, and finally whipped out a long, narrow black case. She held it over her head in the air and declared, “Victory!”

She lowered the case, unclasped the end, and looked inside. “Are you kidding me?”

“What?” I asked.

“After all that? There aren’t even a dozen arrows in here! Did I order from the most incompetent company in existence?” She pulled a few arrows out of the case.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

“Good God, they don’t even look new!” Chieko added, completely horrified.

I laughed harder.

“Ucchh,” she groaned, and threw the case of defective arrows back into the box. “What. Ever.”

Chieko collapsed into the wobbly plastic lawn chair that made up the only other piece of furniture in the hut. It squeaked under her weight, even though she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. I noticed three paperback books stacked on the floor under the chair, two of them with Eleanor Roosevelt in the title.

“You know, you’re the best counselor I’ve ever had,” I confided.

“You know, that almost makes up for my defective arrows,” she said back, a sweet grin blooming across her face.