Four Weeks, Five People. Jennifer Yu
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and I can’t—Oh, jeez, are you okay?” //
Ben looks exhausted. Half-dead. Like a different person from last night, when he seemed, well, just as energetic and happy as you’d expect someone who had taken, like, four shots of vodka in quick succession to be. “I’m fine,” Ben says. He gets really into his scrambled eggs. “Did something...happen?” I ask. “I mean, last night, you seemed really happy, and now...” //
“I’m just an idiot,” Ben says. “Unfortunately for me, I don’t think there’s really anything anyone can do about that. So, I’m fine.” There’s a part of me that wants to push further, if only because now everyone at the table is staring at us. But then I remember how I felt yesterday in the car when Mom wouldn’t stop asking me how I was doing. And look how that turned out. So instead I say, “Okay,” and turn my gaze to the camp ground around us. //
As a permanent resident of New York City, where your line of sight extends approximately fifty feet without hitting a skyscraper or a wall of smog, I’m not used to how beautiful it is here—how clean the air, how far we can see. There are mountains rising and falling in the distance, gray and jagged against the light blue of the sky. We’re sitting at a cluster of picnic tables between the cabins and the volleyball court. On the other side, I can see all the way to the other side of the lake. The lake, the cabins, and the rec area are all situated in a field of grass that’s almost entirely enclosed by trees. Before I can stop myself, I’ve forgotten all about my cereal and started counting them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. //
My mind goes into autopilot: start, count, stop, repeat. 7, 7, 7, 7. A part of me thinks that I can somehow count all the trees that form our perimeter—if it’s not a safe number, will they let me cut a few down? I wonder. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6—//
“Clarisa?” a voice says. “Did you get that?” I realize with a start that I’ve completely zoned out, and that Jessie and Josh have joined us at our table. Jessie is clearly midlecture. “The expression of sheer panic on her face would indicate that she had retreated to the warm and welcoming—often too welcoming, I might add—recesses of her innermost thoughts,” Josh says warmly, as if that’s a perfectly normal way to describe someone who isn’t paying attention. “No need to worry, Clarisa. Why don’t we just repeat the last part again, Jessie?” //
“I was going over our weekend policy,” Jessie says, sounding significantly more annoyed than Josh does. And who can blame her? She’s right—I should have been paying attention, instead of getting lost in my head like I always do. “As I was saying,” Jessie repeats, “our weekends kick off every Friday night with Art by the Fire Fridays.” I don’t know what Art by the Fire Fridays is, but it must not be great, because Stella takes Jessie’s pause as an opportunity to groan loudly. “What were you expecting?” Mason drawls. “That in the last year they’d eliminated all the therapeutic camp activities at a therapeutic camp?” //
“Stella, you clearly have a lot of opinions about Art by the Fire,” Jessie says. “Would you like to explain to everyone what the principles and procedures are?” Stella scowls at Jessie but remains silent. “Thank you. And, Mason,” Jessie continues. “While I appreciate your willingness to, ah, help us counselors out, I assure you that Josh and I can handle it. Now, on to the important part. //
“Every Friday night, all of the campers at Ugunduzi come together. We light a bonfire, we make s’mores, and everyone across all the different groups has the opportunity to share something that he or she has written. It’s a great exercise. I know you’ll all be amazed at the things you share with each other. It can be a poem, or a journal entry, or stray thoughts about the week—anything you feel like sharing with the group. You guys should start thinking about that and maybe even writing, if you want to perform a poem or anything like that. Any questions before we move on? //
“Great,” Jessie says when no one speaks up. “After Friday night, weekends at Ugunduzi are fairly relaxed. It’s always been important for Dr. Palmer and the rest of the team here for campers to have time to explore and enjoy this beautiful area on your own terms, and we want you to know that we trust you enough to let you do that. Accordingly, we’ve left this time relatively unrestricted—with the provision that you stay on the main grounds and remain supervised at all times, of course. Ordinarily, at this time after breakfast, you’d be able to do an approved activity of your own choice. But because it’s our first full day together, we thought it would be a good idea to introduce you to your camp-long project and give you some time to start thinking about it. And so, if you’ll follow me...” //
“Isn’t it cute how they consider ‘boxed in’ and ‘supervised at all times’ to be ‘relatively unrestricted’?” Stella mutters to me while we stand up and file into a line behind Jessie. I choke back a laugh. Not because she isn’t kind of totally right, but because getting in trouble twice before it’s even eleven in the morning doesn’t seem like a great way to start camp. The five of us follow Jessie and Josh away from the picnic tables, in the opposite direction of The Hull, up to a small, unlabeled cabin by the water. Josh takes out a key and unlocks the door. “It’s...empty,” Mason says as we all step inside. “Totally empty,” Andrew echoes. //
Mason’s right. Not only is the cabin completely devoid of tables, couches, and decorations, but the walls are also unpainted, the windows bare and curtainless. “Exactly,” Jessie says. Solitary confinement, I think immediately. I picture being locked in here for a full day with nothing to do or look at or sit on, with no one to talk with and nothing to listen to, free of hiking, Stella’s sarcastic comments, trees, spontaneous episodes of youthful rebellions, shot glasses left lying on the floor all night... It would be like a dream come true. I resolve to get myself as committed as soon as possible. //
“It’s your Camp Project,” she says. “Oh, no,” Stella groans. “Not again. Wasn’t last year bad enough?” “The Camp Project,” Jessie presses on, over Stella’s groan, “is a Camp Ugunduzi tradition. Each team of campers every year is assigned a project that facilitates creativity, resourcefulness, and, most important, teamwork. Stella’s group last year, for example, took photographs and wrote articles for a camp guidebook for their friends and their parents.” //
“It was propaganda,” Stella says. “Forget friends and parents—Hitler could have learned a thing or two from that guidebook.” Mason snickers. “This year,” Jessie continues, her voice rising a few decibels, “we’ve decided to do something a little different. We’ve had this cabin built with the intention of turning it into a safe space for campers—a place where they could come to find peace, where they could clear their heads, to be surrounded by quiet, to reflect or write or play music. As you can see, we’ve left it completely undecorated. And that’s where you guys come in.” //
“You want us to decorate the cabin,” Andrew says. He sounds extraordinarily skeptical. “You want us to make it a...‘safe...space.’” “Exactly,” Jessie says. “You’ll probably spend most of the first week just working together on painting it, but after that, everything is pretty much up to you. Things like what you want to put on the walls, what function you want each of the rooms to have, if any, what color scheme you want for the cabin... Just design it, and make it happen.” //
“What does ‘safe space’ even mean?” Andrew says. “Like, toddler-safe? Like what Aidan’s parents did after his baby brother was born?” “Who’s Aidan?” I ask. “What if everyone else is incompetent?” Mason asks. Ben stays silent, looking like he’s about to collapse from nervousness. It’s a feeling that I’m all too familiar with. //
“This is a terrible idea,” Stella says, cutting him off without mercy. “What if I decide that I want to kill myself by drinking a bucket of paint or stabbing myself with the nail we’ve just used to hang up a painting? What if we get in a fight and I kill Mason with a hammer? We are, ahem, ‘depressed and troubled teenagers,’” she continues. She enunciates each of the last four words carefully, as if a psychiatrist reading from a clinical report. “We can’t be trusted with chemicals or sharp objects or hammers or...or anything else, for that matter. You should probably send us back