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Arriving at the mess hall for dinner, I find Franny standing at the head of the room, already halfway through her welcome speech. She appears more robust than before. It’s clear she’s in her element, dressed for the great outdoors before a packed room of girls while extolling the virtues of camp life. She sweeps her gaze across the room as she speaks, making momentary eye contact with each and every girl, silently welcoming them. When she spots me by the door, her eyes crinkle ever so slightly. An almost-wink.
The speech sounds just like the one I heard fifteen years ago. For all I know, it could be exactly the same, summoned from Franny’s memory after all these years. She’s already recited the part about how the lake was formed by her grandfather on that long-ago New Year’s Eve and is now delving into the history of the camp itself.
“For years, this land served as a private retreat for my family. As a child, I spent every summer—and quite a few winters, springs, and falls—exploring the thousands of acres my family was fortunate enough to own. When my parents passed away, it was left to me. So, in 1973, I decided to turn the Harris family retreat into a camp for girls. Camp Nightingale opened a year later, where it welcomed generations of young women.”
She pauses. Just long enough for her to take a breath. But contained in that brief silence are years of omitted history. About my friends, the camp’s shame, its subsequent closure.
“Today, the camp welcomes all of you,” Franny says. “Camp Nightingale isn’t about cliques or popularity contests or feeling superior. It’s about you. All of you. Giving each and every one of you an experience to cherish long after the summer is over. So if you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask Lottie, my sons, or Mindy, the newest member of our family.”
She gestures to her left, where Chet stands against the wall, pretending not to notice the adoring gazes of half the girls in the room. Next to him, Mindy smiles and gives a beauty-pageant wave. I scan the room, looking for Theo. There’s no sign of him, which is both a disappointment and a relief.
Franny clasps her hands together and bows her head, signaling that the speech is over. But I know it’s not. There’s still one part left, completely scripted but performed with the polish of a career politician.
“Oh, one last thing,” Franny says, pretending to think of it just now. “I don’t want to hear a single one of you call me Mrs. Harris-White. Call me Franny. I insist upon it. Here in the great outdoors, we’re all equals.”
From her spot along the wall, Mindy starts clapping. Chet does, too, albeit with more reluctance. Soon the whole room is applauding as Franny, their benefactor, takes another quick bow. Then she’s off, skirting out of the mess hall via a side door opened by Lottie.
I make my way to the food stations, where a small crew of white-uniformed cooks dish out greasy hamburgers, fries, and coleslaw so runny that milky liquid sloshes around the bottom of the plate.
Rather than join Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda, who are surrounded on all sides by other campers, I head to a table near the door where eight women are seated. Five of them are young, definitely college age. The camp counselors. The other three range in age from midthirties to pushing sixty. My fellow instructors. Minus Rebecca Schoenfeld.
I recognize only one—Casey Anderson. Little about her has changed between then and now. She’s still got that pear-shapedframe and red hair that grazes her shoulder when she tilts her head in sympathy upon seeing me again. She even gives me a hug and says, “It’s good to see you back here, Emma.”
The other instructors nod hello. The counselors merely stare. All of them, I realize, know not only who I am but also what happened while I was here.
Casey introduces me to the other instructors. Teaching creative writing is Roberta Wright-Smith, who attended Camp Nightingale for three summers, beginning with its inaugural season. She’s plump and jolly and peers at me through a pair of glasses perched on her nose. Paige McAdams, who went here in the late eighties, is gray-haired and willowy, with bony fingers that clasp my hand too hard when she shakes it. She’s here to teach pottery, which explains her grip.
Casey informs me she’s been assigned to that catchall camp staple of arts and crafts. She’s an eighth-grade English teacher during the school year, available to help out here because her two kids are away at their own camp and it’s her first summer alone since she divorced her husband.
Divorce, it turns out, is a dominant theme among the other instructors. Casey wanted to escape six weeks alone in an empty house. Paige needed a place to go until her soon-to-be ex-husband moves out of their Brooklyn apartment. And Roberta, a creative-writing professor at Syracuse, wanted to go somewhere quiet after recently parting ways with her poet girlfriend. I’m the only one, it seems, who doesn’t have a former spouse or partner to blame for being here. I’m not sure if that’s liberating or merely pathetic.
I suppose I have more in common with the counselors, those college juniors who’ve yet to be touched by life’s disappointments. They’re all pretty and bland and basically interchangeable. Hair pulled into ponytails. Pink lip gloss. Their exfoliated faces glisten. They are, I realize, exactly the kind of girls who would have attended Camp Nightingale had it been open during their adolescence.
“Who else is psyched about the summer?” one of them says. I think her name is Kim. Or maybe it’s Danica. Each of their names left my memory five seconds after I was introduced to them. “I definitely am.”
“But don’t you think it’s weird?” Casey says. “I mean, I’m happy to help out for the summer, but I don’t understand Franny’s decision to open the camp again after all these years.”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily weird,” I say. “Surprising, maybe.”
“I vote for weird,” Paige says. “I mean, why now?”
“Why not now?”
This comes from Mindy, who’s swooped up to the table without notice. I find her standing behind me, arms crossed. Although it’s unclear how much she’s heard, it was enough to make the edges of her plastered-on smile twitch.
“Does Franny need a reason for doing a good deed?” she says, directing the comment to Roberta, Paige, Casey, and me. “I didn’t know it was wrong to try to give a new generation of girls the same experiences the four of you had.”
If this is an attempt to sound like Franny, she’s failing miserably. Franny’s speeches might be scripted, but the emotion behind them is real. You believe every word she says. Mindy’s tone is different. It comes off so sweetly sanctimonious that I can’t help but say, “I wouldn’t wish my experience here on anyone.”
Mindy gives a sad shake of her head. Clearly, I’ve let her down. Holding her hand to her heart, she says, “I expected more from you, Emma. Franny showed a great deal of courage inviting you back here.”
“And Emma showed courage by agreeing to come,” Casey says, leaping to my defense.
“She did,” Mindy replies. “Which is why I thought she’d show a little bit more Camp Nightingale spirit.”
I roll my eyes so hard the sockets hurt. “Really?”
“Fine.” Mindy plops into an empty chair and lets out a sigh thatreminds me of air hissing from a punctured tire. “I’ve been told by Lottie that we need to make a cabin check schedule for the summer.”