CAMP MANITOUWABING IS ONE OF those summer camps that looks like it has been around forever. ’Wabing used to be a Kiwanis camp, and before that it was an RAF training camp, and before that it was a retreat for the king of Norway. Or something. But whatever it used to be, what remains are twenty campers’ cabins with peeling brown clapboard sides and sloping green roofs, six slightly better maintained staff cabins, a wide green field painted with football lines, an aging dock, and a sprawling dining hall.
“Hi!” says the girl I can only assume is the St. Ignatius captain when I open the door to the cabin. I’ve probably seen her before, but while my brain is good at colours, faces start to blur after a while. She extends one hand, the nails painted purple and orange. “I’m Amy.”
I introduce myself as the rest of the girls trickle in behind me. Her hands full, Mallory can’t catch the screen door as it swings back. All of us who have been here before brace ourselves for the loud crash as it closes, but Amy catches it before it does. She shuts the door silently and smiles as she does it.
I look around and see that they’ve chosen to occupy one side of the cabin. I couldn’t care less what side of this cabin we get. I know this one’s roof doesn’t leak unlike the one we stayed in my first year. Polly and I ended up sleeping together in the bottom bunk. “Good catch,” I say, smiling at the memory—and at Amy’s quick work with the screen door.
Mallory and I pair up, and without a word she gives me captain’s choice of the bottom bunk. We all start unpacking, which is mostly limited to putting suitcases under beds and unrolling sleeping bags, but the bell rings long before we’re done.
“Don’t worry too much,” Mallory, who has nearly as many camps under her belt as I do, tells Astrid, who is perched on her bunk trying to straighten her sleeping bag as if her life depended on it. “We’ll have some spare time to unpack later.”
“Yeah,” I say loudly, kicking my own still-rolled bag to the foot of the bunk. “And you really don’t want to be late, trust me.”
Amy nods knowingly from across the cabin, and marshals her teammates. She’s got her own newbies to deal with, it seems. We head out together, mixing with one another cautiously, trading names and testing the waters. Everyone gathers on the field, and we sit through the intro with the late August sun beating down on us.
I’ve heard this intro several times, so my mind wanders while the staff is introduced. I remember the first time Polly and I were here, before we started grade nine. We’d worked hard to make the team. I was terrified of Caledon, even though I had been to her development camps since the summer I was first eligible for them. She’d been tough then, but it was even worse now. Polly and I both did as much as we could, but the pressure was intense and the odds were against us. It was very unusual for grade nines to make it through tryouts. Most of the rookies were going into grade ten. But Caledon is always scrupulously fair. She would tour the elementary schools at the end of June and invite people she thought had a shot to a special tryout with the existing team. They nearly always get cut, but Polly and I both scraped through.
I remember those moments of terror as the list was posted. Lindsay, the captain at the time, was standing beside the paper to congratulate or console, as required. I’m sure she meant to be reassuring, but instead it felt like we should expect the worst. What if I made it and Polly didn’t? What if Polly made it and I didn’t? I wanted to be on the team because I loved it. Polly was a little different. Palermo Heights is small, so our few sports teams aren’t great—if you’re being charitable. So as long as anyone can remember, if you wanted to be noticed and to win at something in Palermo Heights, you had to be a cheerleader, and Polly wanted to win more than any person I’d ever met. When I saw the list with both our names on it, I almost didn’t believe it. It wasn’t entirely real until we were both sitting on this field, with the sun on our French-braided hair, and our gold ribbons scratching against the skin on the backs of our necks.
Two months ago, it had been my duty to be the grade-twelve cheerleader waiting to console the disappointed would-be rookies and to balance that with welcoming the successful ones. Fortunately, I am very good at balance.
I tune back in just as the camp director talks about the swim test we all have to pass that afternoon if we want to go swimming at all during camp. I know from experience that the lake will be absolutely freezing but also that swimming is much faster than waiting for the shower after practice.
Leo catches my eye across the field and winks at me, and I get the feeling he’s been watching me the whole time I was remembering. He does that a lot—stare at me, I mean. I guess that’s a normal thing for a boyfriend to do, but I never seem to find myself staring back. Usually I just get the end of it, and feel like I’ve missed something. Leo seems to have the answers, and I’m not sure I know the question.
“And tonight, after the swimming and dinner,” the director wraps up as she always does, “there will be a campfire down by the lake. Each captain will tell a story about their squad that is something the team is not proud of. This will be the story of a failure or shortcoming that your team has had to deal with. Your goal for the next two weeks will be to come together and solve those problems, both as a team, and as campers in general. Once again, welcome to Camp Manitouwabing. I hope you all have a great time, and I’ll see you at the lake!”
There’s some cheering at that—we are cheerleaders after all—and then everyone drifts back to their cabins to change. There’s going to be a huge lineup for the test regardless, so I don’t hurry too much. Yes, I should probably set an example, but mostly I am not looking forward to another two hours under the sun. At least if I’m swimming I can take the ribbons out of my hair. Polly brushes my shoulder in the crowd, and I smile at her as she heads off towards her cabin.
We haven’t told anyone this, not even Caledon, but this bonfire tonight is one of the reasons we wanted so badly to be co-captains this year. Every year, we’ve had to sit there and listen to the captain go on and on about how underprivileged our school is, and how hard we have to fight because we’re small. The captains from the bigger schools typically moan about not getting any respect, about not being treated like real athletes. It’s all ridiculously irrelevant. Palermo Heights graduates give the cheerleading program more money than we know what to do with (we are, for example, not paying anything out of pocket to attend this camp and we are the only team at the school with uniforms from this decade). We are the reason the Palermo newspaper has a sports section. If there was cellular service at camp, everybody back home would be following our Instagram accounts. Cheerleading at Palermo Heights is simply a different animal. So Polly and I have plans for this bonfire, plans that are bigger than the squad and the two weeks we’ll spend at camp. It’s entirely possible that our teammates won’t like it, but every time I get nervous about it, Polly makes sure my spine stays firmly in place.
“I was really glad to see that you and Polly were made co-captains this year,” Amy says, suddenly beside me. I can’t make a habit of zoning out like this.
“We’re excited too,” I say. And it’s the truth, but there’s more to it than excitement. I think Amy knows it too.
“Sometimes co-captains just lead to a mess,” Amy continues. I remember where I know her from now. St. Ignatius had co-captains last year, and it was a disaster. The two girls didn’t agree on anything, and the whole team imploded. Amy was one of their fliers, and they dropped her at their final competition last season because they were so out of sync. She’s going to be hungry this year, but at least her campfire story will be easy.
“Yeah,” I say. “But Polly and I have been friends for a really long time, and we’re ready to work together.”
The truth is that Polly and I are almost ideal complements of each other. She is the aesthetically perfect one. She never has a hair out of place, and if she’s done your hair, it will be perfect too. She’s never met a face she couldn’t do perfect makeup on, never met a tear she couldn’t stitch up so it becomes invisible, and she does it all with a perfect white smile. I’m the choreographer. I can tell exactly how hard to push a new girl. I can convince the boys to stop goofing off and pay attention. I can corral eighteen hormonal teenagers, however momentarily, into a cohesive group capable of getting ordinary humans to fly. Polly will make sure you look perfect when you land, and I’m the one that will make sure someone is in the right place to catch you. Amy’s not wrong: We’re a great team. We ought to be. We’re years in the making.
—
When Amy and I walk into the cabin, there are clothes everywhere as girls whose locker-room modesty faded long ago switch their tank tops and shorts for bathing suits. The newer girls try to look like they don’t want to change inside their sleeping bags. Carmen winks at me. We’ve been doing this so long that we barely remember those days. There’s an equal mix of overly sexy bikinis and practical one-pieces (though most of those are still in vibrant colours), and towels and sarongs in every shade imaginable.
“Mallory, are you set?” I shout out through the mass of people.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Great. Take anyone who is ready with you. I have to find my shoes, and then I’ll bring the rest.” I rummage through my bag for my flip-flops as the crowd thins out around me. They’re at the bottom, under my pajamas. As I throw my towel on my bed, I find a weird package in my luggage I know for sure I didn’t pack. It’s poorly wrapped and sealed with duct tape, so I know instantly that it’s from Leo. I have to get my manicure scissors to unwrap it, and by then the cabin is mostly empty. I remind myself not to get frustrated, that the line will be long no matter what I do, but I don’t like standing still when all my team members are gone ahead of me. Still, my curiosity is killing me. He must have put it in my bag when he and the other guys switched all the ribbons.
I cut the last of the tape, and the package all but falls apart in my hands. Immediately, I turn bright pink and shove the whole thing into my bag. Leo, in his esteemed wisdom, has given me a box of condoms.
Apparently I didn’t make my plans for camp quite crystal clear. I am going to kill him.
I grab my shoes and head for the door. Jenny is standing there, clearly having waited for me, and for a moment I’m concerned that she saw the stupid present Leo gave me. She doesn’t say anything, though, and her face is completely clear of suspicion or mockery.
“Ready?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Thanks for waiting.”
“Anytime,” she says brightly. And I do my best to forget about it.