Don't Ever Change (22 page)

“Ahh,” she sighs. “So the mental’s become the mentor.”

“Don’t be jealous,” I say, squeezing her face, kissing her on the cheek. “I still have so much to learn from you.”

“
Bedankt
,” Courtney says.
“Dank u.”
She hands me a book, thick as the Lonely Planet, of English to Dutch translations.

“Dunk
you
!” I say, smacking her on the butt with the book.

But at camp that morning the girls are foggy with quinoa from the gluten-free muffins Jessica’s mom baked. They move so leadenly I literally have to lead them by the hand to the Craft Shack for arts and crafts, where they numbly twist pipe cleaners into key chains, glassy-eyed, like they’ve been watching TV for weeks straight. They’ve got glaring farmer’s tans and burnt red noses like little drunks and streaks of white on their shoulders where the sunscreen didn’t get fully rubbed in. My girls didn’t land on camp; camp landed on them. To stir them out of their funk, I tear up our printed-out schedule for the day and dramatically fling the confetti into the trash. No one notices.

Later in the afternoon we stumble through a very sluggish session of Red Rover, followed by a game of handball that dissolves into formlessness about four minutes in. Alexis waddles off by herself, pulling at the jean shorts that keep sliding up her crotch.

“Curl Powder,” I say, still trying to rally everybody.

“Can we go to the pool?” Zoe asks.

“It’s not our swim time yet.”

“Can’t we just go anyway?” Jenna whines.

“Girls, come on,” I say.

“Can we sing a song?” Rebecca asks. “And not like a camp song, a
radio
song?”

“Who listens to the
radio
?” Alyssa says.

“I mean a song from a video.”

“What video?” Billie asks.

“Yeah,” Maggie says, “we should sing a song.”

“But I have your writing here,” I interject, a bit exasperated, shaking a manila folder I took from my father’s desk.

The group shuts up.

“I read everything you wrote and even took some notes to help guide your second drafts,” I say, opening the folder, showing them pages.

“What does ‘drafts’ mean?” Jessica says.

“It means when we write them again,” Billie tells her.

“Why do we have to write them again?” Jenna asks.

“Because she doesn’t like them,” Lila says, and then Renee says, “Because they aren’t any good.”

“Of course they’re
good
,” I say. “It’s just that every writer revises.”

“What’s ‘revises’?’” Alexis says.

“Same thing as drafts, dummy,” Billie says.

“So every writer writes their stories over and over?” Maggie asks.

“All of them,” I say. “Zoe!” I point and snap in Zoe’s direction. “Quick, what’s your favorite book in the world?”

“
The Secret Garden
,” Zoe says. “Tied with
The Golden Compass
.”

“Well, those stories were edited and revised a hundred times before they became the books you love.”

The girls look at each other, confused. They’re baffled by the news.

“You can’t get it right the first time,” I tell them.

“Yes, you can,” Alyssa says.

“No,” I say. “Nobody does.”

“Eva,” Alyssa says calmly, jerking her head subtly in the direction of nine very crushed spirits, “you can
too
get it right the first time.”

The girls look at me nervously. A distant group of boys chatter on the baseball diamond (“We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher! We want a catcher, not a belly scratcher!”). My girls are tense, anticipating, nine potential failures looming on the horizon.

We want a leader, not a book reader! We want a counselor, not a dream trouncelor!

“You’re completely right, Alyssa,” I say. “I was just talking about for
regular
novels. What you guys’ve done is totally different. You guys are like stream of consciousness, which is what the Beats did, very hip. It’s kind of like the jazz of writing: improvised, raw, super unpredictable.”

I smile to show them everything’s okay. I close the folder with their inked-up pages, clip it to my clipboard, and hold it against my chest. They don’t need to see the notes scrawled in the margins, the purple question marks and green delete lines, thick with finality.

WHY?

I can’t believe I wrote that! The very phrase that was tossed at me like some hot potato, badly burning my self-esteem. And now here I am flinging it to my girls?

Why?
I ponder the word and the instinct to ask it in every way possible; I ponder my itchy eyes, my
scrutin’ eyes
, my consistent inability to see.

Why ask
why
?

They wouldn’t have any more of an answer than I did.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

AFTER CLOSING CEREMONIES,
I wander around the outfield of the empty baseball field, pretending to look for stray balls, taking a moment for myself. All the rubber balls are dirty and deflated and it’s like,
I get what you’re trying to say, World
.

Don’t deflate, Eva.

Then I notice some campers by the pickup area, singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” together and I’m like,
Good one
.

I cross the field slowly toward my car, hoping to miss all the buses and other counselors leaving, and when I reach the parking lot, everyone’s gone pretty much except Foster, who’s in the process of leaving. He rolls his window down as he pulls up next to me.

“Left a note on your car,” he says.

“What’s it say?”

“Omit needless words,” Foster says with a squint and a
sorry
smile. “Shouldn’t have called you flippant the other day.” He reaches a tanned arm toward me and tugs softly on the sleeve of my camp shirt.

“It was very, very mean,” I tell him, putting a hand on his. “What’s the meanest thing I’ve ever said to you?”

Foster only takes a second to answer: “That I could use some
definition
.”

“You’ve got nice muscles,” I say, squeezing his bicep. “Super defined.”

“You meant my writing,” Foster says, pulling his hand inside the car. That’s it—less than a minute in and we’re done making up, done joking around.

“Foster,” I say, “that was a hundred million years ago.” I stoop down to meet his eyes. “Are you going to turn your car off?”

“No,” he says.

“We just have different
styles
.” I sigh, tired.

“So what’s my style, then?” Foster asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Camp’s over. I don’t have any more answers today.”

“Just because something isn’t
your
style—”

“Yeah, you don’t need to finish the sentence,” I interrupt.

“Feel free to admit you’ve never liked my writing.”

“Stop being so sensitive,” I say, surprising myself, because don’t I love sensitivity and rawness and realness and . . . Foster? “Stop picking a fight!”

“I’m not trying to pick a fight.”

“Then what are you
trying
to do?”

“Sorry, forgot to choose my words perfectly for you, Eva.”

And it’s back to this.

Foster’s engine begins to fume a bit in the heat, oily steam hissing from under his hood, getting in my eyes and making me tear up. I blink it away and look down at his lap, at his distressed jeans, and then I look down at my sandals, near my big toes where the soles have worn away, and it’s like,
Enough of the symbolism already, World
.

Enough.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“WHERE ARE
YOU
going?” my mother asks. I’m holding the keys and my backpack and standing by the front door.

“Um”—I look down at my Sunny Skies shirt and the pink-and-turquoise lanyard around my neck and wonder if it isn’t apparent—“to camp?”

“What day is today?”

“Friday,” I say, pretty sure it’s Friday.

“And what did we schedule for Friday?”

“Mom,” I say, “I think it’s obvious I don’t know, so just tell me.”

“Your appointments,” she says, drawing it out, giving me the opportunity to jump in. “Your
two
appointments . . . with . . . ?”

“I’ve never made an appointment in my life,” I say.

“
I
made the calls, Eva.”

“But I have work today.”

“This is more important,” she says. “You’re leaving soon.”

“I don’t want to go to the dentist.”

“And the doctor,” she says.

This time I’m not the one to call in sick—my mother does it. If there’s a lesson there, then I’m choosing not to see it, and if there’s a story, well, I don’t want to know about that either.

At the dentist’s office Dr. Richardson gives me hell. He tells me to swear off sugar-free gum and avoid soda after seven p.m. He also says I shouldn’t rip open bags of chips or candy with my teeth or chew on the insides of my cheeks when I’m nervous or grind my teeth while I sleep. And most of all, he doesn’t want me to fly off to Boston and forget that
he’s
my dentist, that he’s got a say in my hygiene. It feels like Dr. Richardson exists just to make me feel bad—he’s what Mr. Roush would call my
foil
, or my adversary—so I guess I should respect that.

I apologize for not flossing; I act sorry about not using enough Crest with tartar control; I promise I won’t miss any more checkups.

“I’m afraid of it hurting,” I say. He’s heard that one before.

“You don’t even want to
know
how many times I’ve missed my gynecologist appointment,” I say next, trying to lighten the mood. He’s never heard that one before.

I’m about to say, “Just kidding,” when he abruptly fills my mouth with bubblegum-flavored fluoride and, not smiling, leaves the room.

A half hour later the checkup ends, so I go back to the waiting area, where Courtney’s reading a
Vogue
alongside some other bored moms. My mouth’s a little swollen, but I still manage a frown.

“Dr. Richardson said you can’t eat or complain for an hour.”

“I want to have all my teeth removed,” I mumble, rubbing my gums. “I wish I had metal teeth, and I never had to go to the dentist again.”

“You know how many cavities I’ve had? Four,” Courtney says, opening her mouth to show me the silver fillings.

I’ve never noticed my sister’s fillings before. When I look inside her mouth to count them—three on the bottom left, one on the right—I feel a sense of loss, as if something that should’ve always been mine had suddenly been stolen from me.

“Is it because you didn’t floss?” I ask, sitting on her lap, leaning my head on her shoulder.

“No, it’s because of all the Blow Pops Mom let me eat when I was a kid. But now I’m an adult, Eva, and I don’t go to pediatric dentists.” Courtney scoots me off and starts heading down the hallway toward the elevators before I can even grab a complimentary toy from Dr. Richardson’s treasure box.

At Dr. Connell’s I get my knees tapped and my ears examined. He presses my tongue down and shines a mini flashlight down my throat. He places a stethoscope against my chest and listens.

“How ya feelin’?” the doctor asks.

“Great.”

“Great?” Dr. Connell asks. “That’s new.”

“Yeah, well, everyone lies to their doctor.”

“Not everyone,” he says, moving the stethoscope higher up my neck.

“I’m a little tired,” I tell him.

“How tired?”

“A little tired.”

“Would you characterize the tiredness as lethargy or just drowsiness from not getting enough sleep?”

“The first one,” I say.

“Do you ever feel dizzy?”

“Yes,” I admit, without admitting that I haven’t been wearing my glasses.

“Breathe deep for me,” Dr. Connell says, placing his stethoscope on my lungs.

I breathe, but not that deep. He sighs and then stands. “You may be anemic, Eva.”