A thick chain holds the metal gates closed. In the far distance, I can see the camp rocks. I scan the area and notice the other thing that’s wrong about the scene. A wooden post has been hammered into the dirt ground a few feet past where I turned. From the post, a shingle hangs. Compared to the vast entrance, the sign is small, but its words are earth-shattering.
“Oh, my God,” I murmur. “Matt, look.” I point.
I scan the capital blue letters twice to make sure I’m not mistaken.
Two small words with massive implications.
For Sale, it reads.
Chapter eighteen
14 Years Ago
Iwas 17 years old the first time I left Matt Thompson.
Days off for counselors at Sound Hollow Sleepaway Camp only came once a week, beginning at noon and lasting 24 hours. As the only chance for staff to be without their campers for any length of time, activities were often planned in advance, sometimes down to the minute. Day trips to the nearby water park were customary, as were full days down at the beach. But an overnight excursion to a hotel was unheard of.
“It’s too expensive,” I told Matt. “I don’t want you blowing your whole paycheck.” I wasn’t concerned about what people would think. We were old news; nobody would talk.
It was really just the money. But he insisted that he didn’t care. “I want you to have arealnight off; a night that’s just us where there’s literally no stress at all.”
In truth, itdidsound nice. I could take a bubble bath.My God, when was the last time I even saw the inside of a bathtub?The shower stalls at Sound Hollow were like vertical coffins, making it very hard to shave my legs comfortably. My mother used to love soaking in ahot bubble bath. She always told me that it was one of life’s cheapest luxuries, provided the water bill had been paid.
We fought about it, but I didn’t know how to fight hard anymore. The past year had changed me—broken me and hardened me in ways I never could have imagined. So Matt won. He booked a room at The Lavender Inn and Suites, a boutique hotel in the center of town. It included a complimentary breakfast, he told me, and we could wear fluffy robes and order room service and watch movies on HBO. It was too decadent; I didn’t need all that. We could just go to the beach and sleep out under the stars, I’d argued.
“You need a break,” he insisted.
I sighed, relenting.
Junior year of high school is an emotionally fraught time to begin with, but between the SATs and finals week, my mom was hit by a car crossing Queens Boulevard on a rainy Sunday morning in May right outside my apartment building. My mother, my rock, had been reduced to another statistic marked by a huge, yellow metal sign that hung in the middle of the four-section, twelve-lane street at the corner of 73rdAvenue.A pedestrian was killed here,the sign read.Be alert. Cross with care.
The accident happened after a blowout between my parents. I’d spent that weekend at Matt’s house, so I hadn’t been there to witness it, a detail I knew Matt was grateful for. I wasn’t so sure, though. If I’d been there, the morning might have gone very differently, and guilt is a very real emotion.
I was far from over it, but Aunt Lucy insisted I return to camp for the summer. Now that I was a counselor, I earned a salary while also enjoying a two-month reprieve from home, which was now so overwrought with memories that I could barely stand to be there at all. Matt and his parents agreed I should return to camp as well. Butthe most important reason to disappear was the one nobody wanted to talk about: if I didn’t go, I’d be home alone to deal with my father’s grief. It didn’t make sense for me to spend the summer anywhere other than Sound Hollow. Also, getting out of the way was my specialty.
Since arriving at camp in late June, I filled my days teaching dance classes and conducting activities for my cabin of 8-year-old girls. Sometimes, thoughts of my mother would creep in and mess with my head, but between a high-octane Prozac prescription and the lack of downtime, I did a pretty good job of numbly holding it together. Only in sleep did I feel untethered. Lately, my dreams had become so disruptive that I’d wake in the middle of the night, shaking, covered in sweat, unable to go back to bed. The dreams were so vivid that I could remember them upon waking and had hours until sunrise to relive them in my haunted mind.
“I just want you to have a good night’s sleep,” Matt explained. “And I think it might be easier if you’re not alone.”
“I’m never alone,” I countered. “I have half a dozen little girls with me all night long.”
“You know what I mean. Just enjoy it. We’ll take a break from everything.”
The gesture was sweet, just like Matt. At noon, we signed out at the camp office, carried our backpacks to his car, and drove into town. We stopped for lunch at a café with outdoor bayfront seating on the boardwalk, followed by ice cream cones at the East End Creamery next door. Being by the water calmed me; I blankly watched the ducks, geese, and occasional swan float by and was able to settle into a meditation of numbness.
At three o’clock, we checked into the hotel. Matt unlocked the door to our room and watched me take in the king-size bed with multiple layers of fresh white linens covered by a soft lavender duvet.Ten pillows adorned the head of the bed. The room smelled like fabric softener, a memory that took me back to the inside of Soapy Suds, the coin-op laundromat where I used to spend Saturday mornings with my mom when I was young.
As promised, a chrome hook on the closet door held two terrycloth-lined bath robes on velvet hangers. Matching slippers were lined up neatly on the closet floor. The bathroom was three times the size of the one in my apartment, with a soaking tub and a separate shower. Elegant paper-wrapped soaps and tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion, all adorned with French words I couldn’t pronounce, sat in a small wicker basket by the sink begging to be opened.
I turned to face Matt. “This is too much.”
“No, it’s not,” he responded, pulling me in close for a hug. “And I got you a little something. Look in my backpack.” I opened the zipper of the large pocket of Matt’s JanSport, where I discovered a small bottle of bubble bath.
I willed a smile. The only thing more spectacular than the hotel was Matt’s thoughtfulness.
The evening went according to his plan. We changed into bathrobes, took a nap, and he watched television while I had a long soak in the bathtub. He ordered a pizza with extra mushrooms and had it delivered to our room for dinner. We ate until we were full, made love, and then ate some more. With my hair pulled up in a messy bun held by a claw clip, he kissed my temples while I nuzzled against him watching old movies on the oversized television until I finally drifted off.
The next morning, I awoke to bright rays of sunshine seeping in through a crack in the curtains. I rolled over and looked at Matt, still asleep, who stirred from the movement in the bed.
