Getting Over Jack Wagner by Elise Juska Read Free Book Online Page A

felt the lip of the pool collide with my elbow, I opened my eyes and there it was: Dave’s tan, gorgeous face mere inches away from mine.
    â€œI’m counting to three,” Dave said, taking my hands in his. “Then I’m dunking you.”
    â€œOkay” was barely out of my mouth before I was choking down a mouthful of chlorine, and found myself heaved onto the side of the pool where I lay dramatically coughing and spluttering. It was no act this time, but my bunk couldn’t tell. They gave me a polite dribbling of applause.
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    After twenty-eight days, I was ambivalent about leaving camp. I was ambivalent about going home. The only thing I felt with any conviction was exhausted. Aside from the occasional Rest Hour or strategic trip to the infirmary during General Hospital, life in the woods had a relentless quality of motion: getting from sport to sport, meal to meal, one end of the sack race to the other. With all this activity, my parents rarely crossed my mind. Overnight camp was a small life, an island of a life, something like being away at college. The western hemisphere could have been on fire and we’d go on rotating the work wheel and eating marshmallows off sticks.
    I received a total of three notes from my mother (none of which I answered) written on “A Note from Linda” stationery. Each felt like a mini-scolding, a tidy list of thinly veiled reprimands like Are you eating? Are you sleeping? and Are you cleaning your ears?, punctuated with a P.S. Be good.
    From my father, I received just one. It was written on the back of a yellow sales receipt from Rydal Auto Service. The letter, for him, was oddly sentimental. He wrote about how hot it was getting, then segued artfully into how old I was getting, how “life is short” and I shouldn’t “mess around.” That’s all I remember. I read it twice, thought it was weird, threw it away and rushed off to claim my share of pizza bagels. Now, of course, I wish I’d kept it. Now, of course, it seems prophetic. I was holding the evidence of my father’s preparation to leave us: a receipt for a new muffler and parting advice to his daughter. The last of the loose ends.
    On our final morning, I waited with Hannah and my duffel on the grassy, buggy hill by the dance shack, listening for our names to be called through a bullhorn when our parents arrived. Most Hawkers were milling around, hushed and weepy, like graduating seniors. My sister was one of these. I watched her swapping phone numbers, addresses, and long shuddering group hugs with girls she barely knew. Camilla always had this innate girlishness about her, a keen ability to hug and chat and gossip for hours on the phone. Years later, it would translate into a talent for baking the perfect pineapple ring and fitting into a wedding dress with no alterations.
    Hannah’s name was called before mine. “Hannah Devine, come on down!” yelled the not-at-all-funny Flo.
    Hannah stood and shouldered her duffel, as our bunk gathered around to say good-bye. I watched her circle the crowd, returning the hugs people gave her. When she stopped in front of me, we didn’t hug. We didn’t have to.
    â€œCall me tonight.” She flashed me the peace sign, and came on down the hill.
    It was nearly three hours later that my mother arrived. By that time, all the other Hawkers were long gone. Flo had retired the bullhorn and sat on the porch of the camp office, fanning herself with a Cosmo, and glancing at us now and then with irritation. Camilla sat next to me, subdued. Gnats circled our heads. Mosquitoes sucked our ankles. Our proximity required that we fight, but we were too hot and too tired to manage more than a few handfuls of burnt grass tossed in the other’s direction.
    When Mom appeared at the bottom of the hill, she was alone. And I don’t just mean alone in the literal sense. She had a quality of aloneness about her, the look of a