Pretty soon the other three cabins in our little team—I could tell by their T-shirt or sweatshirt colors—had made their way over, half of them boys. I’d only seen the boys in passing so far or at meals—their cabins were on the other side of the dirt path that I think led to the woods. I was a little surprised at how many kids in total were here—and how many different color Tshirts.
When enough of us had gathered, a counselor I’d seen only once before introduced herself. Instead of a sweatshirt, she wore a long, flowing, multicolored dress. “My name is Kya,” she said, her voice both quiet and powerful. “And I was born in Ghana. My name means ‘diamond in the sky.’ So I offer you welcome to both fire and sky tonight.” She bowed her head slightly. “I run the zip line here, so I’ll meet most of you over the next few days.”
We all looked at each other, not sure what was going to happen next. Kya knelt by the logs with this literally foot-long match and lit the twigs at the bottom. At first I saw only smoke, but then a flicker of orange licked skyward, and whoosh! With crackles and pops, suddenly that flicker became a flame, and the flame found fuel in the wood and sticks and charcoal around it. Orange and red and yellow began dancing around each other, changing, merging… just becoming.
Becoming… pretty. It was a little strange—the evening air was cool, but the flames were hot and bright, decorating the night.
Athena clapped happily. A boy across from us reached out to try and catch a stray spark. As if they were starving, those small flames gobbled those branches and grew and grew. More sparks rose into the sky, and as I looked up to watch them—whoa! I’d never seen so many stars!
At home, if I’m out late at night, I might see a few milky white dots in the sky—maybe the moon if it wasn’t hiding behind clouds. But here, each star popped proudly through the inky darkness. There had to be a million of them. If she were here, Mrs. V would have had me learn a million adjectives to describe what I was seeing. Blazing. Dazzling. Glistening. Luminous.
The bonfire. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t seen pictures of bonfires. But nobody I know even has a real fireplace in their house. Mrs. V has a little square heater that has a fake fire inside made out of lights that flicker and glimmer, and look almost real. She once told me if I closed my eyes and imagined, I would know what a real fire felt like. She was wrong about that one.
The dancing flames gobbled the logs in the pit, turning them red hot, then ashy white. I could have watched it forever.
I glanced around the circle of kids—they, like me, seemed entranced by the fire. It was awesome to see so many confident-looking kids in wheelchairs. Like we were all the insiders instead of the outsiders for a change. One girl had streamers woven through the spokes of her wheels—cool. How had I never thought of that? And one boy rolled back and forth, back and forth, with a fire-engine-red motorized chair—pretty sweet.
But even though everyone was chattering and giggling and pointing at the flames, I also bet that most of them were as unsure as I was about what might happen during our first full night at camp.
Cassie jogged over, baseball hat off. Her hair was short and spiky—the tips dyed blue and orange and green and purple. I guess she was aiming to claim all of us! Mom says I can’t do anything to my hair until I’m sixteen. We’ll see about that!
Small as Cassie was, as she stood in the firelight, she loomed large. “Welcome to Fire Time, campers,” she called out. She stopped and smirked. “Well, actually, every night around here is Fire Time—we do like our bonfires—and anything made with chocolate!”
As I sat there in my massive sweatshirt, a shiver ran through me. Not because I was cold, but because this was actually kinda awesome! And also, what was it with these folks and chocolate? I chuckled. There are other flavors, you know.
“Since we have lit up the night with fire, let’s fill up the night with some songs! But I hope a few of you can sing better than me.” That broke the ice—we all cracked up. She had set up a cool-looking speaker system. She fiddled with the back of it until something that sounded like WEE-WOW erupted from the speaker. That sure woke me up!
Athena shouted, “Volume control!”
“Sorry, people!” Cassie apologized. “I think I have it working now.”
When the music started, I recognized the guitar strum, strum, strum of the song. The Black-Eyed Peas started singing, “I gotta feeling…” I knew that one! And so, apparently, did everyone else. We started chanting, “Tonight’s gonna be a good, good night…” Well, I didn’t exactly chant, but hey, I was right there in it, humming along. And when I hum, I can actually stay in tune! And you know what, it really did feel like a good night.
Just as the last notes of that song were ending, Cassie shifted to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” We sang even louder, really feeling the words, “Oh girls, they wanna have fu-un/Girls just wanna have fun!”
By this time Athena had jumped up and started dancing to the music all by herself. Jocelyn rocked in place, singing softly. It turned out that Jocelyn had an amazing voice! She’d hardly spoken ten words all day, but whoa—she could really sing. Even Karyn sang, so maybe she was having fun too?
Then a boy’s voice shouted out, “Hey! So do we!” And every time the word girls came on, all the guys screamed, “BOYS!” And suddenly we were all in a screaming war! If Cassie wanted to fill up the night with sound, we’d sure made that happen.
After a few more songs—which nobody seemed to know all the words to, so we just made stuff up, which made us laugh even harder—the fire began to dwindle, and so did I. That’s when I saw it—flitting over Jocelyn’s head, as if it was attracted to the sound of her voice—a lightning bug. Then another. Then—wow—dozens! Where did they all come from? Had someone sent out an invitation to the Fire Time celebration? Had they traveled here from Mrs. V’s?