Fiona and Rachel thought it was weird that some girls were new to sleepaway camp at this age, as if they had been afraid to be away from home before now. One of the new girls cried quietly at night as if no one could hear her. Another was a tomboy who just played sports all day. Their counselor was from Poland, and Rachel and Fiona made fun of her accent when she left for the staff lodge after lights-out.
Fiona was the one who had convinced Rachel to take horseback riding, and then Rachel had convinced her dad to pay the extra money for it. Her dad wasn’t around much anymore, but she knew she could still ask him for things. She knew at that age, though she didn’t have the words for it, that she was using him and that she was allowed to. That, because he was the one who wasn’t always there, she could ask for the things she wanted, and he would give them to her.
Riding was the first activity of the day, and Fiona and Rachel went down to the stables together after breakfast, walking arm in arm. Rachel got to ride only a few times throughout the year, when she was able to get her dad to take her out of the city, which wasn’t often, so while Fiona was going on about boys—“Matthew Dawson was staring at you today at flag raising, Rachel. Didn’t you see him?”—Rachel was thinking about Micah.
Most everyone else hated riding Micah. “His stubbornness is inconceivably annoying,” their riding teacher used to say, making it obvious that she wanted to trade him in for a younger, more obedient horse. It was all the better for Rachel. He and Rachel had a sort of understanding that she’d never thought she could have with an animal, and when she got back each summer, she swore he had missed her.
He was a dark brown dun with a gleaming coat. When she saw him again, she hugged his neck and trailed her fingers down his mane. He let out a neigh by blowing out his lips, and Rachel laughed.
She and Fiona saddled and mounted their horses. Rachel and Micah remembered each other’s rhythm as they cantered. She lifted off the saddle for one beat, stayed down for two. The air smelled like dry dirt and dandelions. She looked over at Fiona, whose face was clenched. She seemed nervous about what would happen next, her hands in tiny fists on the reins as if she would lose control of her horse if she let them slack even slightly.
Fiona rode a lot throughout the year; she lived just a short drive from a fancy stable. Rachel’s mom had taken Rachel on Metro-North the previous fall to sleep over at Fiona’s house in Larchmont, even though Rachel had insisted she could go alone. Fiona had a younger sister and an older brother, and they each had their own bedroom in their big house that looked the same as all the other big houses on the street. Inside there were freshly vacuumed carpets and a yellow Lab and parents who kissed each other on the cheek. There were brownies sitting warm and fresh on the counter like on those shows on Nick at Nite, and Fiona’s mom was wearing an apron and cutting up vegetables and boiling water in the open kitchen. She asked Denise if she wanted to stay for a cup of tea, but Denise said no, she really had to be going. With her eyeliner and her cigarette breath, she didn’t belong in that kitchen.
Then, when Fiona came to Rachel’s apartment around Christmastime, Fiona’s mom had stood in the doorway and looked inside with her mouth puckered like she’d just tasted something sour.
“You’ll be here the whole time?” she’d asked Denise. Denise lied and said she would be. Later, after drinking a glass of white wine in the bathroom while she got ready for a date, she winked at Fiona, saying, “This is our little secret.” And Rachel could tell how much Fiona loved being able to have a secret from her mother. When the girls were alone, Rachel showed Fiona her room; then they ordered Chinese food with the twenty dollars her mom had left for them and watched The Real World. At the commercial, Fiona asked where Rachel’s mom slept.
“Here,” Rachel said, patting the couch they were sitting on.
“You mean there’s only the one bedroom?”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
“Wow,” Fiona said. “She must really love you.”
Rachel’s dad paid for the apartment; her mom was a secretary. Fiona clearly had no idea how expensive a two bedroom in Manhattan was.
When The Real World was at commercial, Rachel asked Fiona, “Want to watch something crazy?”
She clicked through the channel guide and found Showtime, which she sometimes put on late at night when she was by herself. She clicked on the title of the movie that was playing, Animal Instinct. Immediately an image popped up of two people leaning against the bars of a cage in a zoo. The guy had no shirt on and was wearing army green shorts. The girl had on much shorter shorts and a matching army green, button-down shirt, which was open, showing a black lacy bra, and her legs were wrapped around his waist. He was holding her up around him with his strong arms.
“Ew!” Fiona said. “What is this, Rachel?”
Rachel giggled. “Look at her huge boobs,” she said, and at that moment, the guy opened the front of the girl’s bra with his finger and thumb, and out they popped, these two giant things with two giant brown disks for nipples. Rachel’s nipples were small and pink, like little bull’s-eyes.
Fiona put a hand over her eyes.
“What are you so afraid of?” Rachel asked.
“This is so weird, Rachel,” she said, her eyes still covered. “Please, just change the channel.”
“Whatever,” Rachel said. She turned back to The Real World, and they watched the rest of the episode in silence.
—
On the first Friday night of camp, they had a coed dance. Rachel wore a sequined, royal blue halter dress and silver heels with skinny straps. Fiona was in something flowered and paisley and flat, bone white sandals, because her mom wouldn’t let her wear heels yet.
The dance was on the tennis courts in the boys’ section of camp, with the girls standing on one side and the boys on the other until one of the boys made the first move. The previous summer, Rachel had been the first girl to be asked to dance. She knew that that sort of thing polarized people: There were girls who clung closer to her because of it and others who recoiled from her. She did wonder, in her limited, thirteen-year-old way, if Fiona only stayed friends with her because of what was, to Fiona, social capital.
That night it was Matthew Dawson, the tallest Hemlock boy, who breached the divide and tapped Rachel on the shoulder.