“It’s so hot,” Rachel said, wiping at her warm face. “Anyone want to go swimming?”
Before they could respond, she lifted her shirt over her head, unbuttoned her shorts, and left them in a pile in the sand. She ran toward the water in her bra and underwear. She knew what she was provoking when she undressed fast and publicly like this, but she didn’t, that night, have any end goal. Knowing that there were glances on her—that was enough. She kept going once her ankles hit the water—it felt warmer at night—and she swam out into the lake until she could float on her back and see only stars.
For a while, they left her there alone. The sounds of their conversation traveled clearly across the water. The boys were talking about soccer and the upcoming World Cup.
She thought of childhood summers on this lake. Night swimming when she would sneak out of her tent and meet boys there; they would kiss in the water and then roll around on the beach, the sand sticking to their wet bodies. She’d lost her virginity on this beach at fifteen years old to a seventeen-year-old junior counselor named Andy. After that summer ended, they never spoke again.
The clarity of the sky out here never ceased to amaze her.
She dipped under the surface of the water and then swam toward the dock. She pushed the upper half of her body against it and looked toward the group sitting around the fire, the orange embers of it crackling and slowly dying.
“Fiona!” she yelled. “Come in!”
Fiona waved from the circle. This summer, there was less room for spontaneity with her friend than there used to be. Rachel knew it had to do with Fiona’s very minor, slightly noticeable weight gain. Everyone gained a little weight at college, but Fiona brought it up so often, making continual self-deprecating comments about her body that Rachel was tired of having to quell. Fiona called herself fat all the time, which was far from true; Rachel had little patience for that sort of self-pity.
“You guys are no fun,” Rachel said, but she wasn’t sure if they heard her.
—
Rachel wrapped her arms around herself as she walked from the lake to the fire. The sand felt cold on her bare feet. She tried to hide her shivers as she stood for a moment air-drying her body at the dying fire in her bra and underwear, noticing the clandestine glances from all three of them. Then she put her clothes back on and walked up to girls’ camp with Fiona.
“What do you think of Yonatan?” Fiona asked.
“I think he’s sweet,” said Rachel. She also thought that he was handsome, but she could tell that he was the kind of smart, modest guy who didn’t believe a girl like her would be interested in him. He probably thought that for her to date or even hook up with him would be playing against type. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Fiona said. “Well, he asked if I would save a dance for him on Friday.”
“That’s cute, Fee!” Rachel feigned her best impression of enthusiasm. “What did you say?”
“I said yes,” Fiona said. “I think. I was sort of embarrassed.”
“You’re adorable.” Rachel put her arm around her friend. “You should hook up with him. That would be so exotic.”
“I don’t know if I can handle anyone seeing me naked right now.”
Sometimes she hated this about Fiona, couldn’t indulge her constant insecurities. Rachel wanted Fiona to understand how great she was: smart and insightful and loyal and kind. But explaining this over and over to her never seemed to work.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Rachel said without a hint of sympathy, and Fiona did not argue with this.
—
It was a Monday morning, and the girls in Rachel’s tent woke up excited. It was a new week of activities, many of which they had signed up for because they were coed. According to Rachel’s rule, Wednesday was the last possible day the boys could ask them to the dance. It was go time.
At flag raising, Rachel watched the boys and girls making eyes at each other. Helen was far flirtier than Fiona ever was, but still so young. Prepubescent. She was interested in boys for the attention, not for the actual physical component of a relationship. Sheera seemed to be uninterested altogether. Sarah, with her newly D-cup breasts, had attention lavished on her by the more confident boys without much of a choice on her part.
Jack, the camp director, stood next to the American flag. He was probably in his early forties and had a certain masculine confidence. He was one of those men who seemed so traditional about gender roles, so insistent on the boys standing on one side during flag raising and the girls on the other, insistent that all the female counselors wear one-piece bathing suits, as if the infiltration of a woman’s sexuality would cause mayhem and upset the order of everything. But he was handsome: tall, with tan, muscular legs and graying chest hair peeking out from the neck of his T-shirt. She’d never been with an older man; it was a bucket-list kind of thing. That spring she’d developed a crush on her married English professor, who taught pre-nineteenth-century American literature, an otherwise insufferably boring course. She hadn’t acted on it, though. Married was one boundary she wouldn’t cross. Jack, she knew, was divorced.
After they said the Pledge of Allegiance, the campers and counselors walked to the dining hall for breakfast. Rachel noticed Helen, who had been standing near her at flag raising, dart ahead to catch up with the boys.
“Mikey!” Helen called after him. “Wait up!” Rachel almost laughed at Helen’s overt enthusiasm.
Mikey stopped for a moment, standing among the moving hordes of hungry kids until Helen caught up to him, smiling. Her smile, with its twinge of girlish flirtation, redeemed her overexcitement.
Helen walked next to Mikey with her arm purposely grazing his. But Mikey looked distracted, and Rachel followed his glance over to Sheera, who was walking near Sarah and the other girls in their tent, albeit slightly apart from them. Sheera was from the city, like Rachel, which gave one immediate bonus points at a mostly suburbanite-attended camp. She seemed to be straddling the line between wanting to fit in with the girls and wanting nothing to do with them, and they seemed to be trying to figure out the same with her.
So Mikey liked Sheera, Rachel realized. He was looking at her for just a beat too long for it to be otherwise.
After breakfast, Rachel’s thoughts wandered back to her father. When she woke up, she’d felt okay, but as the new day settled, she let the gravity of the news sink into her bones, and it felt so heavy, so oppressive, that she found herself unable to say much at all.