“Adapters,” Paul says. “Extension cords.”
“We don’t let our kids have those,” Walt says, and I’m assuming he means the games and not the extension cords, but since the Coburg children seemed pretty shocked last weekend by how a tire swing works, I wouldn’t be surprised by either.
Still, Lorraine and Paul had always been strict about electronics at camp, even before everything had reached the kind of peak plugged-in state the world’s in now. No TVs, only emergency weather radios. No phones in our cabins. Nohandheld games.
“Anyways, they’d wait until their counselor came and did the final lights-out check, and then they’d set up all these things on that single outlet in their cabin,” she says, then purses her lips and shakesher head again.
“We had a small electrical fire,” says Paul, patting her arm. “Everyone was fine. Those boys lost all the equipment they had, though.”
“And then there were the kids with the—” She shudders a little before she continues, “Themarijuana.” Rachel lets out a dramatic gasp, like Lorraine’s just revealed a sex trafficking ring. Obviously I’ve got complicated feelings about drugs, but there’d been more than one counselor who’d managed to get a joint into camp back during my days here. I’d never thought twice about it until now, seeing Lorraine looking likeshe might cry.
Sheree clucks her tongue in sympathy. “Oh, Lorraine,” she says, putting an arm around her and giving her a brief, sideways hug. “I know how you feel. I worry about my kids at my school night and day. The world is changing so fast.”
“I think we’ve realized that we’re not as able to keep up anymore. We hired two assistant camp managers last summer, but when you run a camp,you’vegot to be the one willing to get up at all hours of the night. You’ve got to be the one convincing those kids you’re always watching,” Lorraine says. I feel a pulse of tension go up my neck, settle across my shoulders. Even if I can get Lorraine and Paul to see this camp not as a place mostly for kids—even if I can get them to picture a bunch of addicts out here, good people who need another shot—I know the weakest link in my plan is Lorraine’syou. I’d own this campground, so of course I’d have a stake. But it’d be counseling professionals running the thing, not me. I wouldn’t be living and breathing it, not like Lorraine and Paul. I don’t think Icould. The worrying I did over Aaron—I couldn’t relive even a diluted version of that, spread out over however many people might be treated here. From the beginning of this plan, I’d known I’d want to keep my distance. The guy you report to, not the guy in the trenches.
“Been tough getting used to that,” says Paul, his expression more melancholy than anything I’ve ever seen. “Don’t have the energy we used to, and the kids—they see us as…well…old.”
“They’ve probably never seen you do a cannonball,” Zoe says from beside me, forking her eggs, and then she immediately claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide as saucers. There’s a beat of silence while Paul looks over at her, a second of confusion before he bursts out in his booming laugh, always a surprise when you get used to his quiet way of speaking.
“Oh, Zoe. I am sorry about that. I wondered if that was you,” he says. “Didn’t havemy glasses on!”
Lorraine covers her face with her hands, shakes her head. “Paul, I told you to skipthe fall swim.”
“Well, sweetheart, it’s a tradition, you know, and the guys would’ve beendisappointed—”
“You traumatized poor Zoe,”says Lorraine.
Zoe waves a hand, swallows the bite of eggs she’d nervously shoved in her mouth while Paul laughed. “I’ve seen worse,” she says, and then she makes this squeak noise in her throat, maybe the beginnings of thatmeep!she described on Friday. “I don’t mean worse. I mean, it was fine, everyone’s—everybody looked fine? It’s not like I was doing an assessment. Basically I didn’t evensee anything—”
“Woo, honey,” Sheree says, laughing. “You ought to quit now.”
Zoe’s shoulders slump, and I put an arm around her, pulling her toward me and shaking her playfully, while everyone except Walt and Rachel—who look like their milk’s turned—laughs. There’s a shock of something familiar that runs through my body, and I almost jolt with it, this need to chase down what I recognize. It’s like when you catch the smell of something delicious cooking in the air, something you haven’t had in forever. That half second where your memory syncs up with your senses and you realize,Oh, right,cinnamon rolls.
I drop my arm from around Zoe’s shoulders when I’ve realized it.
It’sfamily. That’s what it feels like. I’d almost forgotten.
* * * *
“You’re awful quiet,” Zoe says, when we’ve pulled out of the campground. We’d packed up in silence, Zoe moving slower than usual, and I’d wondered if she’d been thinking the same thing as me—should we, one more time, before we go back to real life? But in the end, I was stuck back at that breakfast table, too in my head about everything Lorraine and Paul had said, and when I’d zipped up my bag and set it by the door, she’d seemed to take the hint—moving more quickly, making a joke about how she thought her boots finally fit her, or maybe they’d just beaten her toes into submission. I’d wanted to kiss her for that, for pressing on—but I didn’t know how. Didn’t know how to initiate affection with her that wasn’t a prelude tosomething else.
“Just tired.” I reach forward to turn the heater vents her way, like she likes. I can feel her watching me, working me out. It’s the best and worst thing about her, the way she watches.
“They won’t like that you don’t plan to run the camp,” she says.
It’s the worst. It’s the worstfucking thing.
“I know that,” I grind out, my voice sounding harsher than I intend it to. I know before she even starts talking that she won’t quit, either. We’re past that—we were past that before the sex. The more time she’s spent with me, the lessshe holds back.
“The business plan for the other Wilderness/Wellness locations has a position for a camp manager. No special credentials for that, really. It’s separate from the counseling functions. You don’t want to do that?”
I rub a palm over my head, let out a gusty sigh. “Not really.”
“Because you want to stay working as a paramedic?”
“Zo, come on.”Let me off the hook,I’m saying.
“You can’t give that answer to Lorraine and Paul. And they’re going to ask the question. It’s going to be their most important question. You want to buy this campground and hand it over to someone they’ve never even seen.”
