“Decoupage?”

“It’s like a clear glue.”

Parker licks her lower lip as she clips pictures: roses, dogs, kittens, lips, a softball glove. She cuts out words: him, me, run, fly, you, touch, kiss.

When she’s done I show her how to layer the words and pictures on top of each other, and then use patches of cloth and velvet to give the box some texture. I test out kiss next to him and me. Kiss him seems more interesting.

“I had no idea you were so artistic,” she says, watching me arrange her words.

I use my fancy scissors that cut shapes to make a red felt heart. “Thanks.” I still haven’t gotten over what she said on Friday. But I’m going to try. “I’m sorry I upset you the other night,” I say quietly. “Um, what I wanted to say came out wrong. I worry about people.”

“You worried that we’d all have sex and get pregnant?”

I touch my throat. “One thing generally leads to another.”

She cocks her head, thinking. “Yeah, sometimes…”

“I’m not sorry I said what I said, but I could’ve explained what I meant better. And I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you before, you know, um, when your mom left.”

Parker’s eyes meet mine. She plays with a long strand of her messy hair.

That’s when Megan appears in the art pavilion and lightly toots her whistle. “What are you doing, Kate?”

“Showing Parker how to do decoupage.” I wipe my hands on a dishtowel.

“Shouldn’t you be working with the campers, not another counselor?”

“I’m available if anyone needs help—”

“Shouldn’t you be working with the campers?” she repeats, making my face flush. A few campers notice me getting reprimanded and look from me to Megan and back to me again. Nothing like your boss embarrassing you in front of everybody, eh?

“Yes,” I say quietly, and move to observe Claire and Sophie decorating vases, but I feel like I’m in their way. That’s the thing about art. You can’t force it. You can’t tell someone else how to do it. You can let them watch you, you can show them examples—like I just did for Parker—but you can’t do it for them, or it’s not their art.

Art can’t be shared in that way.

I spend the rest of the art session moving around and watching the campers, feeling like a nagging cough that won’t go away. Parker finishes her little jewelry box, and looking pleased, she sets it to dry on the picnic table in the sun.

“Thanks for helping me,” she says.

I nod slowly and start collecting paint brushes so I can wash them in the rusty sink.

“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” she adds.

I lift a hand. “It’s okay. I should’ve been working with the campers.”

Parker scrunches her eyebrows. “Megan’s not very understanding sometimes if you ask me.”

I don’t respond.

“It’s like, everything has to go exactly her way. She’s like a crazy OCD perfectionist or something.”

“Isn’t that redundant?” I ask.

“In her case it fits,” Parker says with a laugh. “She lectured Will ’cause she didn’t like the consistency of the homemade ice cream the other night. And she yelled at me after I refused to participate in the Critter Crawl.”

It makes me glad she’s not specifically targeting me.

Parker goes on, “Everything has to be perfect or Megan loses it. Carlie’s right. Megan is doing everything she can to make sure she gets that job. Either that or she wants to impress Eric baaaaad.” She makes a kissy face and kissy noises.

I start to smile along but then I wonder if I would be just as bad as Megan if I was in her position. Would I go out of my way to make sure that everyone does their job exactly right and follows all rules no matter what?

Following Parker’s lead, I decide to take an afternoon break while most of the campers are doing field events with Brad and Andrea.

I hope someone knocks Andrea down during the three-legged race or hits her in the head with a whiffle ball or something. I clench my eyes shut, mad at myself for being so mean.

I carry my sketchbook up and down the trails, wishing I could calm down enough to draw, but it’s not working.

Breathing in and out, I storm up the path into the clearing where the basketball court is and find Matt squatting on the asphalt beside a pile of wood planks.

“Kate,” he calls out, waving a drill.

I ignore him and decide to go back to Cardinal for my break. There, at least, I can sit beside the box fan and cool down a bit. I secure my sketchpad under my arm and stride off.

“Kate!” I hear him yelling.

Ignore, ignore, ignore, like the times Paul Markwald would taunt me at school, calling me the Jesus Freakazoid. You’d think the one place I’d fit in is a Christian camp. It’s like, the older people get, the more they change.

I feel a tug at my elbow and stop walking. Matt turns me to face him.

“Want to help with my Bonzo Ball court?”

“Bonzo what?”

“A game I invented.” He points over his shoulder with his drill. “Wanna check it out?”

I gaze at the planks of wood. I catch his eye for a sec, then shake my head. “No, thanks.”

His forehead crinkles. “You okay?”

My eyes start to burn again. “This job is harder than I thought it would be.”

He nods quickly. “It is, but you’re getting the hang of it pretty fast. You’re smart.”

Is he lying? I narrow my eyes at him.

“What happened?” he asks quietly, sliding a hand onto my shoulder. It feels warm.

“Megan got upset with me for taking too long to feed the kids last night. ’Cause I had problems starting my fire…” His face doesn’t change from concerned to guilty, like I expected it to. He just looks concerned. “Why did you tell Andrea about it?” I whisper.

He lifts a shoulder. “Because I was impressed.”

“What?” I ask, surprised.

“You impressed me last night. You got your fire started and made dinner for twenty people. There’s a reason why new hires are paired up with the most experienced counselors, you know. This is hard work. And Brad’s been camping for forever.”

“So you told Andrea about it?”

The corner of his mouth lifts into a mischievous smile. “I might’ve been bragging about my Crisco Cult. You proved it works!” I playfully smack his forearm, and he keeps on smiling. Then it fades. “Did something happen with Andrea?”

“She turned me in to Megan for not doing a good job at dinner.”

He shuts his eyes and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I intended to happen…”

I touch my lips. What if I hadn’t asked Matt about what happened? What if I had just assumed the worst about him?

“Hey,” Matt says softly. He reaches out a hand, as if he’s going to touch my jaw, but then stops. He quickly drops his hand, and I see his Adam’s apple shift as he swallows. “You all right?”

“What’s up with this Bonzo Ball game you’re inventing?” I ask, changing the subject.

He gently slaps his drill against his palm. “I thought you weren’t interested.”

“Need some help?”

The biggest grin appears on his face. “C’mon.”

It takes us about five more minutes to finish building the Bonzo Ball court, which turns out to be a wooden pen of sorts. The pen has eight sides and comes up to the tops of my shins. The pen is about fifteen feet in diameter. Standing inside it makes me feel kind of cramped.

“So what I’m thinking is,” Matt says, picking up a rubber ball and tossing it in the air, “is that we play dodgeball inside this wooden enclosure, but you only go after people’s feet. Like, you hit the ball at their legs, and they can slap it away and try to hit someone else. If you get hit in the legs, you’re out, just like in regular dodgeball.”

I step inside the pen. “Okay, let’s try it.”

Matt drops the ball to the ground and squats like a football player right before the snap. Using his hand, he slams the ball toward my legs and I jump out of the way. The ball bangs against the wooden pen and ricochets toward the right.

“This game of yours involves a lot of geometry,” I say with a laugh.

“Right?” He laughs too, and moves to slap the ball toward me again. This time I block it with my palms and nudge it away from me a bit, then bomb it at him.

He leaps out of the way and the ball rolls to the other side of the Bonzo Ball court. “That one had some heat on it!” Matt says.

We keep playing for a few more minutes until Brad appears with a group of campers. Field games just ended, apparently.

“Taj!” Matt says, sounding like a little boy. “You gotta try out my new game. Y’all, get in the ring.”

Matt and I demonstrate for the boys and girls, and the game gets a whole lot more cramped but a whole lot more fun as we bat the ball around the pin. Kid after kid is disqualified until it’s down to just Matt and me again. I squat down low, moving from side to side, jumping to avoid the ball.

The boys are screaming, “Get her out, King!”

Then the girls start calling me the Queen. “Queen of the Ring!”

Before Matt slaps the ball toward me, he looks up and finds my eyes, grinning like a madman.

I’m grinning too.

making music

wednesday, june 6 ~ week 1 of 7

On Wednesday evening, the activities are night swim and s’mores.

Matt is up in his lifeguard stand, and I keep sneaking glances at him. I’m not the only one—Andrea’s doing that too. It’s quickly turning into a one-way staring contest. Luckily Matt doesn’t seem to notice either of us.

To distract myself, I grab a Nerf football and throw it to Brad, yelling, “Catch!”

We start tossing the football back and forth.

“What church do you go to again?” I ask Brad.

“Summitville. You?”

“Forrest Sanctuary.”

He chews on his lip before speaking. “You guys get to go on all the mission trips, right? Like to Mexico and the Caribbean?”

“Yeah, every year.”

“Our church doesn’t have money to finance stuff like that.”

I ask, “What kinds of stuff do you do in youth group, then?”

He throws the ball to me. “We have a pool table and some old arcade games. I used to go there every day after school. We just hang out.”

I love church, but even I don’t go every day.

I toss the ball back to him. “Are the people there nice?” I ask, thinking of Parker and how she thinks everyone at our church turned on her.

He smiles as he catches the football. “Yeah. Been going there since I was little. That’s how I got this job—Megan goes to my church and helped move my application along. My mom’s the one who got me hooked on God and church.” His expression suddenly changes, but I don’t get a chance to ask if he’s okay because Megan screeches her whistle at me.