don’t like the Smurfs anymore,” said Portia, one of the other black girls. “I like the Care Bears. I got a Care Bear lunchbox at home.”
From there, the conversation swirled around which of Strawberry Shortcake’s friends was the best, which Super Friend was smarter, and whether Ghostbusters were real. They were unpacking their toiletries and sheeting their cots, while CeCe followed the bounce of their chatter from Ninja Turtles to New Edition to ET.
“You’re awfully quiet, Crimson,” Hoot said as she walked into their small cabin. “I think I could hear everyone talking about their favorite things except you. I’d like to hear about your favorite shows.”
“CeCe.”
“I’m sorry?” Hoot replied.
“I go by ‘CeCe,’” she said.
“Oh,” Hoot said, a relieved smile lighting her face. “CeCe, it is! What’s one of your favorite things, CeCe?”
The other girls perched onto the ends of their cots, waiting for her to speak.
“Um . . . ,” CeCe began, uncomfortable with the twelve eyeballs pointed her direction. “I don’t watch much TV,” she mumbled. “I like to read, mostly.”
“Ain’t you got a TV?” one asked.
“Yeah,” CeCe said, lying. “I just don’t watch it much, is all. I like books better.”
“You like Judy Blume?” asked another from the next bunk.
CeCe hesitated, looking to Hoot. “I’ve read all of her books.”
“Me, too,” her bunk neighbor said.
CeCe felt optimistic. She hadn’t been around unfamiliar kids since starting kindergarten at Neil Armstrong Elementary. She was a fourth-grader now, with years of compiled lessons on which classmates might turn their smiles on and off from day to day, which ones would mock her mix-and-match thrift-store clothes, and which ones would always call out a goodbye to her as their class spilled from the cloakroom. She couldn’t yet know which labels to assign these new cabin mates and she felt anxious.
By the end of that following day, their first full day at camp, CeCe was convinced she’d boarded a big, yellow school bus to heaven. There was a brand new experience almost every hour; she engaged with kids from every walk of life. Hoot and the other counselors were unwavering in their excitement, and CeCe was stunned by the scenery around her. Her visits to the park were wholly unremarkable compared to this immersion in nature.
By the end of the second week, however, CeCe accepted that the other campers had not been eager to experience nature in the form of lilting wind songs, blinking jewels of sunlight, or sky-reaching trees. When the third arrival of cabin mates assumed the clique-ish and tittering obsessions of the departed first two groups, CeCe realized that other kids came to camp with an interest in the nature of boys.
“You should sit next to Brian at the campfire tonight,” one girl said to another on their group’s walk from the lake. “My brother is in his cabin and said Brian thinks you’re cute.”
CeCe considered herself average-looking and there were a fair number of boys her age, black, white, and a few Latino, for her to join her fawning peers. Instead, CeCe’s skin tightened whenever the topic of boys came up, which was constantly. None of their bodies were blooming behind their shorts and tank tops, yet these other girls who occupied bunks each week all around CeCe were already painting their fingernails, wearing curlers in their hair and boasting encyclopedic knowledge on all things boy.
With each cohort, CeCe was one of a handful of other social misfits who actually poured effort and attention into weaving their dream catchers, roasting s’mores, discovering leaves on a hike, learning to wrap an ankle bandage. CeCe learned to maneuver around their giggling huddles in the arts-and-crafts tent, by the canoe docks, before and after meals. She let the crunch of twigs and leaves drown away their chatter as she walked another clipboard to the main office for Hoot or escaped into the quiet of a wooded path.
Befriending the girls made CeCe equally anxious. She couldn’t tell when she was having a conversation or being sized up. CeCe was uncertain of Hoot, and the other counselors, as well. They didn’t ask questions of her, the way Mrs. Anderson did. When they hugged her, the insides of their arms weren’t warm, like Mrs. Castellanos’. They delivered spirited but unvaried welcomes at the camp kickoff week after week.
By CeCe’s sixth week, she was all brood and silence. She was lonely, unhappy, and stuck. Hoot had given up on trying to legislate CeCe’s good cheer and simply allowed her to wander the grounds, choose her own activities and exist along the periphery until their summer sentence could come to an end.
On a trek to retrieve oversized Band-Aids for Hoot, CeCe stopped along the trail to watch a rabbit. She stood in the middle of the pathway, quiet and still, when a boy’s voice made her spin around. She knew his name was Dwayne, one of the most-discussed boys in her cabin. Two other boys flanked him, but CeCe didn’t know their names.
“Chill out,” Dwayne said. “We’re not bears.”
CeCe wanted to run, but forced her legs to settle themselves. It was easy to see why his name had taken root in the mouths of so many of her fellow campers. Dwayne was dark-complexioned and lean, with the promise of broad shoulders one day. His teeth overlapped and his smile glinted with mischief. More boys like Dwayne had started to join her student body at Neil Armstrong Elementary, now that the district was experimenting with expanded enrollment requirements. Boys like Dwayne came to her school with crisp outfits and a fresh haircut every Monday morning. She acknowledged the appeal of a boy like Dwayne in her innermost workings, but simply had no idea what to do about it all.
CeCe intended to slip her hands into the pockets of her shorts but missed. Again, she willed her body not to panic. Instead, she heard herself mumble.
“You’d be some small bears.”
“Small bears?” repeated one of the boys, his eyebrows raised in surprised peaks. “Man, she said we’d be small bears.”
Her chest seized. CeCe had seen how easily one lightly tossed joke could detonate into playground wreckage. Dwayne looked to his friend and back at CeCe.
“We’d be cute bears, though,” Dwayne said, winking that smile at her. “Girls like cute bears, don’t you?”
She shrugged her shoulders, held her breath, and looked for an escape.
“Where you going?” Dwayne asked as CeCe resumed a more deliberate march toward the medical cabin.
“Med. We need Band-Aids.”
“Somebody got hurt?” Dwayne asked, his eyes light.
“Portia. A branch poked her in the arm.”
“She bleedin’ real bad?” one of the other boys asked, impish curiosity pushing aside his cool.
CeCe waved away their wide-eyed attention. “Just a flap of hanging skin. She’s bleeding, but not bad.”
The boys were visibly disappointed.
“Tonya is in your cabin, right?” Dwayne asked, taking steps toward the med cabin with her.
“Which
