Four Weeks, Five People. Jennifer Yu
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the rules, it’s no wonder he wound up at Ugunduzi.
“Yeah, it is, so stop yelling about it. Look, are you in or not?”
“Like, now?”
“Yes, right now. Right now, right here, in front of Jessie and Josh standing across the room, both of whom will promptly see us and expel us from this lovely camp that our parents have pinned all their hopes and dreams on. Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”
Andrew looks taken aback.
“No, not now. Later, after lights-out.”
I pause. Is this really something I want to do? I was planning on waiting until the end of the first week of camp to break out the alcohol, when everyone is especially miserable with the realization that they still have three more weeks of camp. But right now we all have four whole weeks of camp left, and isn’t that even more miserable?
“Yeah, let’s do later tonight,” I say. “Look, you guys just have to sneak into our room. It’s really easy. We literally never got caught last year.”
“I don’t really—” Andrew starts.
“All you have to do,” I continue, cutting him off, “is wait until right after they finish the first bed check and then walk across the right wall of the common room to our side of the hall. Then as long as you’re back before two hours, it’s all fine.”
“That’s not what I was saying. What I was saying was—”
“Look,” I say, exasperated. “All you have to do is come over. It’ll be fun. And could you please stop looking like someone murdered your family pet? It’s making me uncomfortable.”
“All right,” Andrew says. “What’s the plan?”
Once I explain the camera blind spot and how foolproof the entire process is, Andrew is actually pretty down with the plan. He gets super into explaining all of the times he and his band mates snuck into various parks, or museums, or stores, which is impressive, I guess, considering it took three solid minutes to convince him to come over and drink. No, Andrew is all right. It’s Clarisa who ends up being the bigger problem.
“So,” I say to her when we’re alone in our room after dinner. “You ready for the initiation?”
Clarisa looks up at me, alarmed. “Initiation?” she echoes.
I take the last pile of clothes out of my suitcase and open up the compartment at the top. There, I’ve hidden eight water bottles full of vodka, obtained from one of my older brother’s friends through a potent combination of charm and cleavage (that is to say, ten percent charm, ninety percent cleavage), and six shot glasses.
“Stella,” Clarisa says, “tell me that’s water.”
I grin. “It’s a lot more fun than water, I promise.”
Clarisa closes her eyes and takes seven deep breaths.
“Stella,” she says. She puts down the poster she was in the process of taping to the wall and clasps her hands together. “Stella. Stellastellastellastellastella. That’s...that’s definitely not allowed.”
“Astute,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. Her words come tumbling out, one after another. “I don’t want to be, like, the lame friend, even though I’ve been the lame friend for the past fifteen years of my life. But—”
She takes another breath.
“—whatifwegetcaught?”
“We won’t get caught,” I say. “We never got caught last year, and no one last year knew anyone who got caught the year before. Getting caught is not a thing that happens. They never do room checks more than once every two hours, and they always do one at midnight. So between that one and 2:00 a.m., we should be fine. Oh, and I invited the guys over.”
“What?” she says. Clarisa is one of those people who deals with heated discussions on illicit topics by lowering her voice to a furious whisper, which would be great and all, except there’s no one who can hear us, anyway. “Stella, you can’t just do this!”
“What is your problem? This is a nice thing!”
“I don’t like nice things!” she whisper-shouts. “Not when they come out of nowhere and give me panic attacks!”
“Oh. Right.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, I’m sorry. I just—I already told Andrew to come over. I guess they could come and then we could ask them to leave, but—I don’t know. Don’t you feel like it’s camp, and you want to do camp things, and not let ‘your illness control your life,’ or whatever? Does your psychologist say that?”
“Every psychologist says that,” Clarisa says, and, well, she certainly has me there.
“Good point,” I say.
“Look,” she says. “It’s fine. Yes. You’re right. I’m supposed to be confronting my anxiety and moving out of my comfort zone, so I will try to do this, but I would just really appreciate some kind of warning next time you decide to carry out an entire illegal operation in our room, and also if then you didn’t try to pass it off as some messed-up therapeutic exercise.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. Look, it’s quarter of twelve. We should pretend to be sleeping for when they come to check on us.”
Clarisa shoots me one last dirty look and then starts taking breaths in groups of seven again. I shut off the lights and climb into bed and pretend to sleep, feeling an awful mix of guilt and resentment and annoyance. I hate it when I’m sorry.
The boys arrive fifteen minutes after the bed check. Andrew comes in first, having switched from a black V-neck and black jeans to a black T-shirt and gray shorts, which I suppose is a step up. He still looks emaciated, but there’s only so much progress you can make over the course of one evening. After him comes Ben, who is actually fairly attractive, in a perpetually mussed-brown-hair and dazed-looking way. Then comes Mason, who, of course, has decided to grace our room with his presence shirtless and in boxers.
“Mason,” I say. “Where the fuck are your clothes?”
“Thought I’d do everyone a favor and lose them,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. “You know you’re not actually James Dean, right? I know it must be hard sometimes, to remember, but I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out by now given how much time you must spend thinking about yourself.”
“Feisty,” he says.
“And correct,” I say.
“So, what is this heralded ‘camp tradition’?” Ben says. “And also, is this the kind of thing that’s going to get us sent into the woods and fed only rice and beans for a week? Because I saw a documentary about wilderness boot camp once, and—”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what happens,” I say. Ben’s eyebrows shoot up in horror. “And then they make you walk fifty miles naked.” Ben’s mouth drops open. “And after that, they waterboard you until you swear to never even think about breaking a camp rule ever again.” Ben’s expression reaches cosmic levels of dismay. “And then, when you’ve been reduced to a quivering, semiconscious puddle of obedience, they make you do lines.”
“Lines?” Ben whispers.
I muster up the most solemn face I can possibly arrange under the circumstances. “Yes. You have to write ‘I am a pathetic excuse for a sixteen-year-old boy who will believe anything anyone tells me’ one million times, until you’re not so gullible.”
For a second, Ben just looks confused. But then Mason and Andrew burst out laughing, and I guess he finally gets it, because: “Hey!” he shouts. “That was fucking mean!”
Mason holds up his hand for me to fist bump, which I calmly