You hated camp, but you went three years straight. You were twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Your last summer, you stayed all nine weeks.  Your camp was nine miles from the nearest regional airport, two-hundred and fifty three from the closest international one. The nearest town was wannabe artsy; lots of coffee shops and art galleries, locals playing instruments on the sidewalks with open guitar cases waiting for your spare change. You were forty minutes from the Outback Steakhouse where you ate if your bunk won cabin of the week. You were thirty minutes from the only mall in town where you once met the cast of Real World Las Vegas who were signing autographs in the food court. You weren’t far from a string of cheap hotels on a winding street called Tunnel Road. This, you heard, was where the counselors stayed on their days off. You hated being a camper so it was hard to imagine one day becoming a counselor. But still, you thought about what it must be like to rent a room all on your own, to slide a key into the door and open up a whole new world.

At camp, there was a different evening program every night. Wednesday was movie night. There was a big barn-like structure at the bottom of the hill that everyone called the Great Hall. That’s where they played the movies. It was always old stuff, whatever tapes they had laying around. It was an excuse for younger kids to watch things they maybe weren’t supposed to, and for us older kids to learn how to flirt. Some kids made out right there in the dark on the Great Hall floor, plot lines flashing over their faces as they sucked each other’s mouths. You never kissed a boy that year. You had one boyfriend the year before but everyone made fun of you for liking a guy with long hair. This was the year you sort of cut it out. You focused on the birdhouse you were making in woodworking. You wanted to be able to run a whole mile without losing your breath. 

There was a boy’s counselor named Aimes. He was nineteen. He looked like Freddie Prinze Jr. but with more muscles. Even our own counselors called him a dirty hound dog. There were rumors about how he’d drink on days off, how the counselors would all share hotel rooms and smoke weed and go skinny-dipping. We all had our ideas about what went on, but the rumors must have come from some kind of truth. He was wild.

The counselors all had a kind of famed glory about them. They had names like Ginger and Texas and Bo Peep and Big Timmy. They called your head counselor Peaches. Their real names were forgotten to these titles. It was like we were all graced with their presence even though they were only a few years older than us. On paper it didn’t make any sense, but in our heads, in our small minds that felt endless, they might as well have been gods. 

Aimes was always hanging around girls in our cabin. He had his favorites. Usually it was Chelsea. She was blonde and wore her hair in pig tail braids. She looked like an Abercrombie model. Her denim shorts basically slid off her hip bones. Aimes would choose her during the Wednesday night movie and she’d disappear for a while. Later she’d tell us that they kissed, that his tongue tasted like spearmint and his lips felt like gummy worms. Chelsea had kissed tons of guys but she said Aimes really knew what he was doing. We listened to her talk like it was a sermon, like another girl’s stories could teach us all life’s lessons. You sat there mouth agape and tried to picture it, to feel it, as if it happened to you. But Chelsea was the disciple who had witnessed the miracle. You were just a little lamb.

Sometimes Aimes would pick Anna. She was a snob with stick-straight black hair and a Tiffany’s choker she never took off. Aimes would joke that she should get his name engraved on it so she could be his little pet.  We didn’t see it as a bad thing. We all wanted to be his pet. We wanted to be the one who disappeared from the Great Hall and was taken to this other world. Anna acted like she didn’t care and maybe that’s what gave her appeal. She almost acted annoyed. Sometimes she came back to the cabin sad. It was hard to understand how she could be either. You imagined that if you were plucked from the herd, Aimes would cloak you in the glow of his love, that he would cherish you, so that you were special. But the truth was, you’d never know unless it was you out there. You could hear about it; you could be told a story. But only Aimes could show you. 

One week you came down with a cold but you were still allowed to go to Wednesday’s evening program. You sat in your Crazy Creek, a thing meant for outdoors with fabric held together by adjustable straps. Sometimes boys would unclip the straps and you’d fall backwards so they could get a laugh. It never got old for some guys, making the same jokes like that for the rest of their stupid lives. But that night, David, one of the boys from our brother cabin, kept asking you to share your Blow Pop with him. You knew he wanted to kiss you, so you pretended you didn’t hear him. Lord of the Rings was playing and you’d never seen it before. You just knew it was long and so you’d have to fend off David for quite some time. You sort of hoped they’d cut the viewing in half so you wouldn’t have to suffer.

But then you got tapped on the shoulder and it was Aimes. It felt like a phantom calling, like no one else could see what was happening except you. You kept the sucker between your lips as he held your hand and guided you out the back door.

You always wondered where Aimes went with the girls. You wondered if he brought them up the hill to his cabin or further down the path to the lake where during the day people bounced each other off the Blob. But you stood right there on the Great Hall’s wraparound porch in the dark, the only light coming from the moon. He sat on the railing and you looked up at him. He was wearing the same shirt he always wore, a tank top that he’d cut so the armholes went down to his waist. You could see his whole body this way. It was beautiful. 

You don’t know why but the first thing you said was that you had a cold. You guess you were being cordial but as soon as you said it you knew it was a mistake. “I wish you weren’t so sick,” Aimes told you. “You’re so damn cute.” You had only just started to develop a chest. You were a B cup, barely, but Chelsea was for sure a C. Probably Anna too. You had mousy brown hair that you wore straight. You tried your best to fit in with Hollister tank tops edged with lace, jeans from American Eagle, Birkenstocks—the same pair every other girl at camp had. 

“I won’t get sick if I touch you, will I?” Aimes asked but you didn’t have a chance to answer before he pulled you toward him and started rubbing your shoulders. He turned you so you faced away.  The massage felt unnatural. You were afraid to move or make him mad. He was breathing hard as he rubbed your bare arms, burned from hours in the sun without proper sunscreen. He put his fingers underneath the straps of your tank top, your bra. He moved one hand to the front and inched down between where more cleavage should have been. “Does it feel good?” He asked and you nodded but then remembered you were in the dark. 

So much saliva had gathered in your mouth so you took the Blow Pop out and held it, swallowed.  Inside, you could hear something loud happening in the movie. Part of you was sad to miss it, but the other part knew you should be grateful to have been chosen. You didn’t know it would be your last year of camp, but it was. When everyone talked about becoming a counselor in training, you nodded along, agreed that it would be so cool and that you couldn’t wait for next summer. But something about this place always felt wrong to you. From the first time you stepped off the bus and onto the gravel road, it felt like a world you didn’t belong in. Most places felt this way, yes, but this camp in particular seemed like a mystery, a place where only few could shine. You wanted to shine. 

“I want you to know what you do to me,” Aimes said and the back door of the Great Hall opened. Your counselor Peaches walked out with one of the other male counselors. “What the heck are you doing with her?” Peaches asked and Aimes just laughed. Peaches grabbed your wrist and the Blow Pop fell between two slats of wood on the porch. You stayed quiet. You were afraid of being sent home, of getting in trouble for having gone outside, for having been with Aimes. Even though nothing happened, it still felt wrong. You knew better, didn’t you?

There are a million things Peaches could have told you that night—about men; about being alone with a man like that, about being young, feeling things, wanting things, how it wasn’t your fault. But all she told you was to go back inside and not say anything to the other girls, that if they asked, to tell them you went to the infirmary to get some medicine from the nurse. Peaches looked more annoyed than anything. Before you could make your way back inside, the movie stopped. It turned out they were cutting it in half like you’d hoped. But you’d missed the parts that mattered and you’d be lost when they picked it up again next week. 

One of the other girls scooped up your Crazy Creek and you all walked back to the cabin in the dark. People were buzzing about who kissed who and who had a new crush and who didn’t like who anymore. You felt like you’d eclipsed an eternity. No one even asked where you’d been.

You couldn’t help but think you missed your chance. You spent weeks replaying the night over and over again, the many different ways it could have gone. How badly you’d wanted him to kiss you, how badly you’d mucked it up by saying you had a stupid cold. You wondered if it was enough to know you’d been his favorite that night, if it was enough to have been picked from the pack, singled out and pointed to.  

No one tells you about desire, how it feels like wandering in the desert. No one teaches you how to ask, how to receive. How were you supposed to know that while we are all made different, we share these things among us?? We all sit in the Great Hall, heads facing toward a screen, miles from civilization, so far from where each one of us calls home.  

We all wait in the dark until someone shines a light on us.

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Image: “Otsego Nights” by Daniel Nester