He was almost a foot taller than her, so anytime he tried to talk as they danced—Who was in her tent this summer? Did she like this song?—he had to bend his head down, and she had to tilt hers up in a way that quickly became too tiresome to maintain. Soon they were dancing in relieved silence. Rachel could see Fiona and the other girls standing over in their circle looking at them. Matthew was in all the plays, and he was always the lead. That summer he was going to be Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He had all these big features: big eyes, big nose, big lips, big ears. During afternoon open, the free period on the flag lawn after lunch, he’d pretend to be a monster with the little Maple kids, picking them up and running around with them above his head.
A slow song came on, and Rachel was happy to see Geoff Mendelson ask Fiona to dance. Matthew moved in closer and put his arms around Rachel’s waist. She clasped her arms tighter around his neck, and he crouched down, swaying with his knees in a sort of half bend. The positioning was awkward but made Rachel feel like she was being taken care of.
He cleared his throat. “Are you having a good time?” he asked, his eyes going wide with the question.
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s always a fun night.”
She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and then put her arm back on his shoulder.
“You look really pretty,” he said, swallowing.
Now everyone was dancing in a clump, coupled up and swaying to the song. Matthew moved his arms tighter around her waist and crouched more.
“Funny how so many of us are camp regulars now,” he said. “When did we get so old?”
“Thirteen is not very old.”
“Summer of 2000,” he said. “The world was supposed to blow up by now.”
“The real millennium isn’t until 2001.”
“Well, good,” he said. “We have another six months.”
—
By mid-July, the days were very hot, and the flies were worse than ever, but this didn’t deter Rachel from riding. She took good care of Micah, and she was often the more thirsty and tired of the two. She made sure they stopped a lot to give him water on trail rides and took it easy, just trotting and cantering, no galloping. They were stuck together, so they had to move together. She was controlling him to move forward, but he was equally controlling her. There was a strength there that was almost scary but comforting at the same time. Some days the riding counselor let Rachel stay through lunch, when she would help straighten up the barn and feed the horses, and she would linger too long at Micah’s stall, feeding him extra hay and carrots when the counselor wasn’t watching.
Matthew started hanging around Rachel more: in the morning when the campers walked from the flag to breakfast, on the lawn during free period, in front of the dining hall after lunch. “How’s your day going?” he’d ask, and Rachel would tell him about riding and tennis and swimming or whatever else had happened that day. He talked about the play a lot.
“It’s getting really good, I think,” he’d say. “I hope you’re excited for it.”
Rachel was excited to see him in it. People started talking about them like they were a pair.
“What base have you gotten to with him?” Fiona whispered one night after lights-out.
“No base,” Rachel said.
“Don’t lie to me, Rachel! I’m your best camp friend.”
“I’m not lying. No base.”
She sighed. “Well, tell me as soon as you do get to one, okay?”
Fiona seemed ready to tell Rachel all her secrets at any moment.
“How far have you gone?” Fiona whispered in the bunk. “Like, ever?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Not far.”
She sighed again. “You’re so private sometimes.”
In the city, kids saw things early; they learned the names of sex positions and underground drugs, and for many, it was not long before they tried them. And though Rachel knew things, she was something of a late bloomer in the Manhattan middle school social scene.
“You mean you don’t get horny?” Karla once asked. Karla was Rachel’s best friend at school; Karla had met her boyfriend, Joe, who was in high school, late at night when they were both smoking weed in Riverside Park.
“I don’t think you can be horny if you’ve never even done it,” Rachel had said.
In the spring, Karla and Rachel had gone to Joe’s apartment for a party, because his parents were never home. There were bottles and smoke everywhere, and there was loud rap music playing. Rachel sat on the couch between Karla and Kevin, Joe’s younger brother. Kevin passed her a bottle of Bacardi, and she took a huge sip of it and swallowed. Kevin said, “Daaaaaamn, girl,” and Rachel pretended it tasted like water even though inside, her lungs felt like they were tearing apart from each other. But the rush to her head was good, and it made her care less about where she was and about Kevin’s arm clamped tight around her shoulder. She didn’t remember how or when he started to kiss her, but she knew they were doing so right there in front of everyone.
The next day, Karla called her. “Kevin told Joe he had a great time with you last night.”
“That’s weird,” Rachel said. “We hardly did anything.”
“Yeah. He knows you’re playing hard to get.”
“I’m not meaning to.”
“Well, meaning to or not,” she said, “keep it up. It’s working.”
—
On Visitors’ Day, Denise drove up in a rental car again and brought Rachel a bagel from their favorite neighborhood deli. Fiona’s family showed up to see her—her parents and her younger sister and their yellow Lab; her older brother was away at lacrosse camp. They had a picnic lunch together, Rachel’s and Fiona’s families; Mrs. Larkin had made chocolate-and-vanilla sandwich cookies, which weren’t as good as regular Oreos.
After lunch, Rachel’s mom took her to CVS to buy some toiletries; Fiona’s thirteenth birthday was coming up the following week, so the Larkins went out for a “birthday surprise.” Rachel filled up the shopping cart with necessities like toothpaste and bug spray, but also cans of Pringles, boxes of sugary cereal, and Pixy Stix, which she’d heard were fun to snort, while Denise wasn’t looking. At the register, Rachel expected her mom to tell her to put all the junk food items back—partly because they weren’t necessities and partly because Rachel wasn’t supposed to eat that stuff anymore—but Denise was in a good mood. She smiled and didn’t say a word, except to order a pack of Newport Lights from the guy behind the counter.
They drove back to camp with the windows open. Their relationship felt different in the country, all the stresses of city life left behind. There was no smog, no subways or sirens. Here it was just Denise and Rachel pared down, mother and daughter driving along a country road.
The unspoken element, of course, was that Rachel’s dad made all this country ease possible. But he was the one with another family. He was the one who had left. This was, as they understood it, their due.
They parked next to the horse stables, and when they got out of the car, Rachel saw Fiona brushing a sandy-haired mare that wasn’t one of the Camp Marigold horses. The rest of the Larkins surrounded them; Mrs. Larkin was taking pictures.
Rachel approached the fence of the arena, and Denise followed behind her with the CVS bags in her hands. When Fiona saw Rachel, she stopped brushing the horse and ran toward her friend.
She leaned against the fence, breathless. “They got me a horse, Rachel! Can you believe it? Her name is Josie. And you can ride her whenever you want.”