Wikiwanna is Iroquois for Bear City according to the peer counselors at Camp Wikiwanna, but Trudy has determined that is bullshit. First off, this is Tahoe, two thousand miles west of Iroquois territory. Second: wikiwanna. Just from the sound of it you can tell it’s a made-up word. Third: their stupid faces when they say, faux-ominously, Bear City, look the same as when they tell ghost stories. Besides, neither Trudy nor anyone she’s talked to has seen so much as a doe, let alone a bear.
Though they can barely hit the targets themselves, the peer counselors teach the campers to shoot bows and arrows. The horseback riding, her father said, was cancelled a few years back because the liability premiums were too high. What else to do, swim? Or use the one kayak, which someone else always checked out before you did? Horseshoes? A game that was obsolete even in the Midwest. “Do some activities!” the peer counselors cheer, no specifics.
“Do some activities yourself,” Trudy rebuts.
The campers are fourteen and the counselors sixteen, a two-year age gap that management accounts as a significant difference in maturity. As girls mature three years faster, and Trudy factors herself a good three years ahead of the curve, she counts herself as four years older, mentally, than the boy counselors and one year older than the girl ones. They’re morons, mostly, doing cannonballs off boulders into shallow water, begging for a brain injury.
There is Cael Quistgard, though, in whom Trudy has seen, yes, the same impulsive, only-this-moment energy as the rest, but also moments of saturnine reflection where he gazes out across the lake and, sigh, jots entries in a leather journal. Nor does it hurt that he’s the hottest of the boys, except in that all the girls want his kiss, not just the Trudys, but the gold-haired, gold-skinned, white-smiled girls, both camper and counselor. Everyone talks about Cael, though Trudy limits her own confessions to her bunkmate, Elaine, especially the sillier, more personal one about Cael’s abs looking like they’d been cooked in a waffle iron, about wanting to spread butter and syrup on them.
Trudy can begin to count (though she’s not sure she can finish) the ways she is out of the running for Cael Quistgard. Her skin is either white as a flour biscuit or flamingo pink, and displays dimples in the wrong places. She is too tall, her hips big like a pear, her trunk thick like a boy’s. Her hair is a lusterless brown and only looks good in a braid. And her nerd glasses, despite how much she loves them, are not exactly an ab attractor. She wears dark tank tops and jeans, the other girls in skirts or shorts or just bikinis.
She talks to Cael in line for dinner and he’s friendly, tells her he used to be a camper himself, asks if she’ll come back to be a counselor. “Me?” she says, too sardonically. “I’d rather summer in Yemen.” Does he know where Yemen is? Trudy can’t tell. He laughs politely and sits at a table with girls who have names like Leigh and Jenna.
Wandering around that night trying to compose a poem, she sees a light on in Cael’s cabin. She peers through the window and there he is, on top of a blond, tongue-kissing, her shirt pulled up around her shoulders. Trudy doesn’t linger—no need to watch. Only a confirmation of something she already knew.
That night she dreams that Cael is kissing her. But she is not herself. She is the girl from his bed. She feels the mountain air across her breasts, his belt buckle on her navel. He takes her hair in his hand and smells it. She sees how blond it is and smells it herself: just like an orange peel. She can’t get over how exhilarating it feels being someone else, someone Cael Quistgard might want.
She hops down from the top bunk in the morning, eager to start the day before the bloom of fantasy wears off. “Ummm,” Elaine says, looking befuddled. “Where’s Trudy?”
“What?” Trudy says.
“Where’s Trudy?” she says again.
“Don’t be stupid,” Trudy says, and shy little Elaine withdraws.
Not until she gets to the showers does Trudy understand Elaine’s confusion. She looks in the mirror and there she isn’t—somebody else: the girl from the dream. The brush of her hand against her face is real, the not-her in the mirror doing the same. She has transformed. She feels it in her body, too, lighter, springier, healthier. The mirror is too strange, so she hops in the shower, her mind racing. Elaine’s bewildered face pops into her memory and, right before her eyes, her feet, her knees, her body, morph into Elaine’s. The hair is Elaine’s frizz. The body feels flimsy, bird-boned, like the water from the showerhead is a pressurized jet. Wanting her own body back, she closes her eyes, pictures her own face, and feels the change sweep over her, the familiar height, the weight of her legs, a worn-in baseball mitt of a body.
At the mirror again, her towel wrapped around her, she looks at her face. She hates it. It’s not the right face for her. Too frumpy. Too serious. Not beautiful enough. Can she still do it? Can she change again? She wants to be the dream blond again, but there can’t just be two of them walking around, so she thinks of her school, of the prettiest girl there. Trudy has often said the girl looks terminally dumb, but when she sees her in the mirror, she looks so deep into those almond eyes she forgets where she is.
None of Trudy’s clothes fit her new body, nor would they turn Cael Quistgard’s head, so she rummages furtively through a cabinmate’s luggage and picks out a skirt and a tube top. She hikes down to the lodge for breakfast and is alert enough to catch Cael’s double take. “You’re new here,” he says.
“My mom just brought me up,” Trudy says, and she giggles. Why did she giggle? she wonders. What was funny about what she’d just said?
“I’m Cael. I’m a peer counselor here. I can show you around after breakfast.”
“Amber,” Trudy says. Again she giggles.
After breakfast he shows her around the back of the lodge and leans into her body to kiss her. She feels the wall of splintery logs against her back, the controlled pressure of his body against her front. His tongue parts her lips. No boy has done this to her before. After a few minutes she pushes him back, overwhelmed by the new sensation, the new self. “Hold up, cowboy,” she says. Hold up, cowboy? she thinks. She bats her eyelashes, or tries, and rubs her fingers over the ripples of his abdomen.
“Wait,” he says as she walks away.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “That was just an appetizer.” She rounds the corner so he doesn’t see her roll her eyes at herself. These things popping out of her mouth are the thoughtless spray of a cheerleader. They are ushering from her mouth self-assured but not vetted by her brain. Anyone else she heard saying these things was asking for a serious mocking.
She goes to the mirror again, her favorite new toy. Imagine her, telling Cael Quistgard to wait. Trudy Beaufort calling the shots. She thinks about how far she’ll go when Cael wants her, when the camp lights are off tonight. All the way, she decides, if it feels right. She stares in the mirror and giggles. The features are nicely arranged—girl-next-door cheeks, white teeth, dimples—but the overall impression is vapidity. Good genes, bad brains, Trudy thinks. When it’s not smiling the mouth tends to gape. The irises are bright blue but so glazed they look like glass eyes. How could anyone love such a stupid face? she thinks. And yet, with all her heart, she does.
Though they can barely hit the targets themselves, the peer counselors teach the campers to shoot bows and arrows. The horseback riding, her father said, was cancelled a few years back because the liability premiums were too high. What else to do, swim? Or use the one kayak, which someone else always checked out before you did? Horseshoes? A game that was obsolete even in the Midwest. “Do some activities!” the peer counselors cheer, no specifics.
“Do some activities yourself,” Trudy rebuts.
The campers are fourteen and the counselors sixteen, a two-year age gap that management accounts as a significant difference in maturity. As girls mature three years faster, and Trudy factors herself a good three years ahead of the curve, she counts herself as four years older, mentally, than the boy counselors and one year older than the girl ones. They’re morons, mostly, doing cannonballs off boulders into shallow water, begging for a brain injury.
There is Cael Quistgard, though, in whom Trudy has seen, yes, the same impulsive, only-this-moment energy as the rest, but also moments of saturnine reflection where he gazes out across the lake and, sigh, jots entries in a leather journal. Nor does it hurt that he’s the hottest of the boys, except in that all the girls want his kiss, not just the Trudys, but the gold-haired, gold-skinned, white-smiled girls, both camper and counselor. Everyone talks about Cael, though Trudy limits her own confessions to her bunkmate, Elaine, especially the sillier, more personal one about Cael’s abs looking like they’d been cooked in a waffle iron, about wanting to spread butter and syrup on them.
Trudy can begin to count (though she’s not sure she can finish) the ways she is out of the running for Cael Quistgard. Her skin is either white as a flour biscuit or flamingo pink, and displays dimples in the wrong places. She is too tall, her hips big like a pear, her trunk thick like a boy’s. Her hair is a lusterless brown and only looks good in a braid. And her nerd glasses, despite how much she loves them, are not exactly an ab attractor. She wears dark tank tops and jeans, the other girls in skirts or shorts or just bikinis.
She talks to Cael in line for dinner and he’s friendly, tells her he used to be a camper himself, asks if she’ll come back to be a counselor. “Me?” she says, too sardonically. “I’d rather summer in Yemen.” Does he know where Yemen is? Trudy can’t tell. He laughs politely and sits at a table with girls who have names like Leigh and Jenna.
Wandering around that night trying to compose a poem, she sees a light on in Cael’s cabin. She peers through the window and there he is, on top of a blond, tongue-kissing, her shirt pulled up around her shoulders. Trudy doesn’t linger—no need to watch. Only a confirmation of something she already knew.
That night she dreams that Cael is kissing her. But she is not herself. She is the girl from his bed. She feels the mountain air across her breasts, his belt buckle on her navel. He takes her hair in his hand and smells it. She sees how blond it is and smells it herself: just like an orange peel. She can’t get over how exhilarating it feels being someone else, someone Cael Quistgard might want.
She hops down from the top bunk in the morning, eager to start the day before the bloom of fantasy wears off. “Ummm,” Elaine says, looking befuddled. “Where’s Trudy?”
“What?” Trudy says.
“Where’s Trudy?” she says again.
“Don’t be stupid,” Trudy says, and shy little Elaine withdraws.
Not until she gets to the showers does Trudy understand Elaine’s confusion. She looks in the mirror and there she isn’t—somebody else: the girl from the dream. The brush of her hand against her face is real, the not-her in the mirror doing the same. She has transformed. She feels it in her body, too, lighter, springier, healthier. The mirror is too strange, so she hops in the shower, her mind racing. Elaine’s bewildered face pops into her memory and, right before her eyes, her feet, her knees, her body, morph into Elaine’s. The hair is Elaine’s frizz. The body feels flimsy, bird-boned, like the water from the showerhead is a pressurized jet. Wanting her own body back, she closes her eyes, pictures her own face, and feels the change sweep over her, the familiar height, the weight of her legs, a worn-in baseball mitt of a body.
At the mirror again, her towel wrapped around her, she looks at her face. She hates it. It’s not the right face for her. Too frumpy. Too serious. Not beautiful enough. Can she still do it? Can she change again? She wants to be the dream blond again, but there can’t just be two of them walking around, so she thinks of her school, of the prettiest girl there. Trudy has often said the girl looks terminally dumb, but when she sees her in the mirror, she looks so deep into those almond eyes she forgets where she is.
None of Trudy’s clothes fit her new body, nor would they turn Cael Quistgard’s head, so she rummages furtively through a cabinmate’s luggage and picks out a skirt and a tube top. She hikes down to the lodge for breakfast and is alert enough to catch Cael’s double take. “You’re new here,” he says.
“My mom just brought me up,” Trudy says, and she giggles. Why did she giggle? she wonders. What was funny about what she’d just said?
“I’m Cael. I’m a peer counselor here. I can show you around after breakfast.”
“Amber,” Trudy says. Again she giggles.
After breakfast he shows her around the back of the lodge and leans into her body to kiss her. She feels the wall of splintery logs against her back, the controlled pressure of his body against her front. His tongue parts her lips. No boy has done this to her before. After a few minutes she pushes him back, overwhelmed by the new sensation, the new self. “Hold up, cowboy,” she says. Hold up, cowboy? she thinks. She bats her eyelashes, or tries, and rubs her fingers over the ripples of his abdomen.
“Wait,” he says as she walks away.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “That was just an appetizer.” She rounds the corner so he doesn’t see her roll her eyes at herself. These things popping out of her mouth are the thoughtless spray of a cheerleader. They are ushering from her mouth self-assured but not vetted by her brain. Anyone else she heard saying these things was asking for a serious mocking.
She goes to the mirror again, her favorite new toy. Imagine her, telling Cael Quistgard to wait. Trudy Beaufort calling the shots. She thinks about how far she’ll go when Cael wants her, when the camp lights are off tonight. All the way, she decides, if it feels right. She stares in the mirror and giggles. The features are nicely arranged—girl-next-door cheeks, white teeth, dimples—but the overall impression is vapidity. Good genes, bad brains, Trudy thinks. When it’s not smiling the mouth tends to gape. The irises are bright blue but so glazed they look like glass eyes. How could anyone love such a stupid face? she thinks. And yet, with all her heart, she does.
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