In summer, Amanda and I spent less time together. That was when Amanda played on a travel team while I went to YMCA camp, where they trapped us inside and made us play dodgeball against teams that included my brother, under banners that said Best Summer Ever. But the summer I was nine was the year I started going to sleep-away camp. That year, my mom was having a hysterectomy (“getting her plumbing removed,” my dad said), so I went away to Camp Evergreen, in North Carolina. Their motto was, “Fourteen days without a mosquito-related fatality.” No, really, it was “At one with nature,” which involved paddling canoes, hiking up mountains, and trying to catch sight of a senior girl’s boob on pajama day. The best thing about it was that Matt was going to a different camp, a computer camp in a whole different state (not that he’d see it), so no one would be there to tell the “funny” story about how I always had to poop when we went to the library (“It’s just something with Chris and books”). The worst thing was that all the hiking and kayaking weren’t helping with my plan to bulk up for football season. Dad had even said maybe I could lose some of that baby fat, and by the end of the first week, I knew he was right. My arms took on the lean look of string beans, an athletic vegetable to be sure, but to be a Junior PeeWee in the fall, with Alex and Brendan, I had to weigh at least sixty-five pounds, preferably seventy to make up for my height. Five-hour hikes and “creative” food by the chef, Zetta, who fancied herself a gourmet, weren’t helping.
But then I discovered the peanut butter. The camp had a “picky eater” table for kids who didn’t like the food. Fortunately, no one had told them about allergies, because it was peanut butter, bread, and this great, gloppy jelly that tasted like the stuff they put in Dunkin Donuts jelly donuts, so every meal, I went through the line, took a serving of yesterday’s Hamburger-Marshmallow Surprise, or We-Figured-Out-How-to-Use-Every-Part-of-a-Cow Goulash, choked that down, then ate two peanut butter sandwiches. I also bugged Amanda and both sets of grandparents for care packages. Amanda’s was the best. She managed to shove eighteen Hershey bars into a small flat-rate box. I signed up for lanyard making because it involved no exercise, and when I got poison ivy, I spent three days in the infirmary with no hikes. It worked. By the third week, I had to ask Dad to send uniform shorts in a larger size. I told him it was because they’d all gotten ripped or dirty, and he was so happy I was roughing it (he didn’t know my original size) that I felt guilty for sitting in the air-conditioning. For the first time, some kid called me fat, but I didn’t really care. I figured I’d eventually get taller. That was, after all, a big part of Mom’s ugly duckling story, that I was just a late bloomer and wouldn’t always be a short little turd. And then I’d be the right weight for my height. For now, I just wanted not to be on the little kids’ teams.
When I got home, the first thing I did was weigh myself. Seventy-two pounds. That, along with my athletic ability, should make me a Junior PeeWee. The second thing I did was call Amanda. I hadn’t heard from her since the care package. I figured that was because she was too busy setting home run records, getting her fastball up to fifty miles per hour, or making friendship bracelets with ponies on them—whatever girls did on travel teams.
I wasn’t ready for what she actually said.
“Can I come over? Please? Like, can your mom pick me up?”
“Um, sure.” I didn’t think Mom would be too happy to pick her up, considering she’d just driven thirteen hours each way to pick me up from camp. “Can’t I ride my bike over? Or can your mom bring you?”
Amanda sniffed. “No, she can’t. She’s not here anymore. She’s gone.”
“What? Where’d she go?”
“I can’t talk. That’s why I want to come over there.”
“Okay. Sure.”
As predicted, Mom didn’t want to pick Amanda up. As predicted, she wanted to know why Amanda’s mom couldn’t bring her. But, finally, when I mentioned it hadn’t exactly been my idea to go away for the whole summer, she agreed.
Amanda was waiting outside when we got there. She was taller since I last saw her, maybe slimmer, and her red hair hung in messy curls around her shoulders.
“Hey,” she said when she got into the car. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“You’re always welcome,” my mother said.
Mom pulled away, and no one said anything.
After a few minutes, I said, “Um, how’s softball?”
“Fine,” Amanda said.
More silence.
“How are your parents?” my mother asked as we passed the school.
“Fine,” Amanda said.
More silence.
When we got to the house, Amanda jumped out of the car the second it stopped. Mom yelled something I didn’t hear. I was running after Amanda, across our front yard, through the hammock to our old clubhouse. It had been months since we’d been there, and the plants had grown. There were even vines attaching themselves to the table with little clawlike tentacles. Amanda pulled them off and sat down. The table itself was wet and faded and a little small now, even for me but especially for Amanda, who was taller. Soon, we wouldn’t be able to sit at it at all. Still, I squeezed into the opposite bench. “So?”
“I’m sure your mother already knows. Everyone knows.”
“I don’t think my mom knows anything about your mom.”
Amanda looked down, playing with a little puddle of water with her finger. “She was arrested.”
“Arrested for what? Drugs?” I was picturing Jackie in her cute tops and bright makeup, being taken away by the cops. “I thought she didn’t do that anymore.”
“We thought so too. I saw her taking pills sometimes, and she’d show me the bottle. It was a prescription from a doctor. But I guess she took too many of them. Like she went to more than one doctor.”
“And that’s illegal?”