Four Weeks, Five People

“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 where we came from, lest this safe space become not so safe.” //

We all stare at Stella, who looks at Jessie with a completely straight face. The problem, I think, is that no one can ever tell if she’s joking or not. Jessie sighs. “No one is going to kill him-or herself. Or anyone else, for that matter. Because all of your time working on the project will be supervised, and, more importantly, because I know you all have a great deal of respect for this camp, each other, and yourselves. Despite what you try your best to convince us of, Stella,” she adds. //

“I dunno, man,” Mason says. “I’m pretty convinced. So convinced that you might have to remove her from the premises for this to be a safe space for me.” “I’m going to remove your balls from the premises, Mason, I swear to—” “Stella!” Jessie says. “There is no swearing at Camp Ugunduzi. You of all people should try to set a better example for our new campers.” //

Stella scowls at Jessie, but I think that just motivates her to lecture us in an even sterner tone of voice. “There’s clearly no better time than the present to start building camaraderie. Remember, it’s important to work together to try to integrate everyone’s ideas. And I expect everyone to keep an appropriate, positive attitude as you work. By this Thursday, you guys should have a list of the things you need the camp to order to decorate the cabin. There are paper and pencils in the next room. Why don’t you all get started?” //

So begins the first brainstorming session for Project Safe Space, or, as Stella takes to calling it half an hour in, Project Doesn’t This Violate Some Sort of Labor Law? I’m not sure how to quantify the amount of progress we make over the next two hours. We decide, for example, that the color scheme will not include orange or yellow or violet, because Mason will “literally do everyone a favor and vomit on the walls,” or black or gray, because, as Ben notes, “Is there any better way to encourage someone to hang themselves from the ceiling fan?” We also decide that the cabin cannot have any mirrors, as that would be insensitive to people with eating disorders (“and people with faces like Mason’s,” Stella adds), and duly note that “posters of some made-up inspirational Marilyn Monroe quote about loving yourself printed over a picture of the sun setting over the Appalachians” are unacceptable on account of being “bullshit, and also way too girlie.” Things we do not manage to decide: what we actually want the color scheme to be, what wouldn’t be horribly offensive to put on the walls, literally anything else. It’s almost incredible, how much a group of five people can disagree on. I’d be impressed, if it weren’t so discouraging. //

“We should get one of those four-seasons painting collections,” Ben suggests. “That’s literary and calming.” “No,” I say immediately. It is the second time I’ve spoken in here. Everyone turns around to look at me and I feel myself flush. “It’s just—There would be four,” I say. //

“No kidding,” Stella says. “A four-seasons painting collection would have four paintings?” She’s sprawled out on the floor of the cabin, doodling on a sheet of paper. Her nonchalance is suddenly infuriating. “Shut up, Stella,” I say. The panic is rising up in my chest and I can feel my breath slipping away even as I say the words and I squeeze my eyes shut to try to get it to stop, but I can’t; it won’t—that’s never worked before and it doesn’t work now. The images come on too fast, too vivid—four paintings in a row, incomplete, not enough, not okay, not good, not safe, dangerous; four, and I can feel my brain short-circuiting; four, and I am watching the cabin get destroyed in front of my eyes; four, and disaster after disaster plays out in my mind, an uninterrupted sequence of catastrophes, each more real than the last. //

The roof, caving in after a snowstorm. The walls, blown over by torrential wind. The entire cabin, burning down after a candle falls or some idiot tries to smoke a cigarette indoors. Someone trapped inside, someone crushed by logs, someone burning alive, someone—“Clarisa!” Stella shouts. I open my eyes and realize that I’m shaking. 1, I think automatically, counting breaths, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. //

“Are you okay?” Ben asks. He moves over next to me and tries to put his arm around me, but I shake him off. I can’t take the contact right now, and I don’t deserve the comfort, anyway. “If we’re going to have paintings, there have to be seven. It’s the only way the cabin can be safe,” I say, avoiding eye contact with everyone. There’s no response. It’s the only thing that’s been suggested that no one argues against. //

ANDREW (#u85ce315e-2639-5880-bef7-3e6507af0eb5)

DINNER IS WHEN everything gets fucked up.

Breakfast is okay. A bagel is 450 calories—around there, anyway—and I know I need to eat around there on most days, just to stay alive. Eating less than that is how The Incident ended up happening, and—well, I’d obviously like to avoid a repeat of that in the near future.

Lunch I just throw out, because there are so many people milling around the picnic area that it’s easy to slip to the trash cans unnoticed, and because I’ve already gotten my 450 calories for the day, so what’s the point? Stella gives me a sort of suspicious look as I sit back at the table, plate totally cleared, but what is she going to say? “Go get your lunch out of the trash and eat it”?

Then dinner comes around, and I discover quickly that I am totally, totally screwed. Jessie spends the entire meal sitting at our table, talking to us about how our day has gone and whether or not we’re enjoying our time at camp so far. I’m so agitated that I barely have the mental focus to listen while she and Stella get into their seventh fight of the day after Stella sarcastically describes Project Safe Space as “fucking delightful, thanks for asking, Jessie.” Will Jessie care if I leave dinner without eating anything? Will Jessie notice if I leave dinner without eating anything? The look she gives me when I try to edge off the table midway through her argument with Stella says pretty convincingly that yes, she would care, and yes, she would notice. So—and what choice do I really have here?—I force myself to eat.

It’s kind of sad how quickly I stop wanting to get better. At 500 calories, “better” seems like a pretty okay thing to be. But then I get halfway through my spaghetti—+100, +200, +300, +400—and I can practically feel the carbs becoming fat and I’m thinking about all the work I’ve put in to get to where I am now and “better” starts sounding a lot like “disgusting.” It’s hard to want to get better when I’m staring down the calories in my head, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

I want to go to bed the second Jessie tells us we’re done for the day. If I go to bed, then I can fall asleep, and when I wake up, it’ll be morning. Back to zero. Fresh start, new beginning. But I can’t. I’ve just eaten an entire meal, and if I take off my shirt to go to sleep, I’m going to look down and see my stomach protruding and I just—I can’t. I know what it looks like, and I can’t look at it right now, and I know it’s there, so I can’t not look at it if I do go to bed, so I sit in the lounge and watch Mason and Ben argue over whether or not movies have any value to society. I want to grab my guitar from my room and write music, but everything I write in moments like these is crap because I can’t think straight, and besides, my band fulfilled its quota of sad ballads about hating yourself, like, three EPs ago.

I know something’s up when Stella joins me on the couch. She’s pretty much refused to talk to anyone the entire day, and I don’t think I look particularly fun while drowning in my own self-hatred.

“So,” she says. “You’re in a band?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“What’s it called?” She doesn’t sound genuine exactly—more like she’s referencing an inside joke between the two of us that I’m too stupid to even know about, or have somehow forgotten. But she also doesn’t sound completely offended at my existence, either. I take this as a good sign.

“Um, The Eureka Moment,” I respond. “Because, like, we were all sitting around Aidan’s basement, trying to come up with a band name, and no matter how long we brainstormed, we just couldn’t think of the right one. Like, dude, we were throwing around options like Abyss Gazers and Between Bruises—it was bad. I called Aidan’s suggestion some ‘tween pop bullshit,’ which is pretty much the worst thing you could say to a serious musician. Anyway, before Aidan could punch me, Jake was just, like, ‘Guess we’re still waiting on that eureka moment, huh?’ and everyone realized that that was it, that that was—”

“That’s cute,” she says, cutting me off.

Anything else, I probably could have taken. She could have called it weird, or stupid, or even asked if we’re a “real band,” like every adult insisted on doing when we first started. She could have laughed out loud, for all I care. But cute is too much.

“It’s not cute,” I say. “It’s not cute at all—we spent, like, three hours coming up with it and would’ve spent three more hours coming up with something better if it was something cute. Cute doesn’t sell records unless you’re interested in the Disney Channel crowd, which we’re not—”

Suddenly, Stella grabs my hand. It takes a couple seconds for the realization to make its way to my brain. “We’re not trying to be the next Jonas Broth—Dude, what are you doing?”

She pulls her hand away as quickly as she’d grabbed mine.

“Is everything okay over there?” Jessie says.

Stella rolls her eyes and gets up off the couch. “Better than okay, Jess,” she says. “Andrew was just telling me about his band. They’re superlegit and hard-core and not at all cute.”

She’s already turned away from me by the time I realize that she’s slipped a piece of paper into my hand.

Our room, right after the midnight room check, it says.

Well, I think. At least that’ll be a few more hours to burn calories.

* * *

I went on a camping trip with my band last year for Memorial Day. This was before anyone knew who we were, when we were just a few friends bothering the neighbors at weird hours of the night with music no one really understood. I still have no idea how any of us managed to convince our parents to let us go—especially after Jake’s dad found the giant cooler full of forties—but somehow we did, and then there we were, just the four of us in the middle of the woods with nothing to do other than drink and fuck around on guitars and a bass you couldn’t really hear and a drum box.

I think that weekend was when all of us realized that this was actually something we could picture ourselves doing together for the rest of our lives. I mean, whatever, that’s really corny. But I just always figured it was one of those things that would be set to really dramatic, violin-heavy music in a documentary about our band, you know? This one night, we each had, like, three beers, and then started hiking, and then got so, so lost. It was crazy. We all thought we were going to die. We were passing around a notebook writing down goodbyes when Aidan found the map in his backpack and we realized we had walked in a giant circle and were actually five minutes away from the campsite. I blame the beer.

For some reason, tonight makes me think of that night. It’s weird, because they’re totally different—then, I was with my best friends in the world; tonight, I’m with four people I don’t know at all. But when we walk into Stella’s room and find her and Clarisa dressed in jackets and hiking boots and Stella tells us to “go back and put on real clothes—except you, Mason, you can get hypothermia if you want—because we’re going on a hike,” I’m kind of excited. Stella picks the lock keeping the back door shut from the outside with a hairpin, and then we walk outside and the freedom, the air, the forest—it feels familiar. It doesn’t really matter that Mason won’t shut up and it doesn’t really matter that Stella might be the worst person in the world to follow into the woods in the middle of the night and it doesn’t even matter that we might get caught. I mean, they can’t exactly kick all of us out of camp.

We follow Stella away from the cabins, toward the trees. By the time we step into the forest, I can hear Clarisa breathing hard. “You all right?” I say.

“So many trees,” she whispers back, as if there’s someone around to hear us. “I have to count, I can’t count, I have to count, I can’t count, I have to—”

“Count steps,” I say. “If it takes a safe number of steps to get to where we’re going, then it’s safe, right?”

“The trees,” she says again, her eyes squeezed shut. “There are too many. I can’t count them—”

“Look down, Clarisa, look at your feet,” Stella says. “Step forward. Okay, that’s good. That’s one. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. It’s going to be great, I promise.”

Five minutes later, Stella takes an abrupt turn off the path, straight into a cluster of trees. Another seven steps later and the trees disappear. We’re standing in a grassy clearing that drops off steeply about fifty feet in front of us. There are dead trees lying across the ground, barks peeling. Now that we’re not under the canopy anymore, it’s actually incredibly bright under the light of the moon. It kind of reminds me of a stage—the darkness of the forest behind us, the sudden brightness, the ledge in front. The feeling that the silence is just waiting for you to break it. I wish I had my guitar.

“Welcome,” Stella announces, “to The Ridge.” She takes a seat on one of the dead trees on the ground.

“Why are we here?” Mason asks. He walks along the grass suspiciously and looks around.

“Don’t you ever get tired of having all of our conversations and actions and everything else monitored all the time?” Stella says. “It’s just a place where we can hang out without feeling like we’re criminals. Jesus.”

“Wow,” Ben says. He takes a seat on another log on the ground. There’s a third right behind me, and the three form a rough triangle in the middle of the clearing. Between them is a makeshift fire pit with bunches of sticks and branches in it. I wonder how long campers have been doing this, and if they’ve ever gotten caught. God, Sam would get a kick out of this. He used to always try to get us to sneak out in the middle of the night to go downtown and do graffiti with him. “We can’t even design our own album art,” I remember Jake saying to him once. “And you want to deface a building?”

Maybe it’s that it’s the middle of the night, when I’m used to being surrounded by Sam and Jake and Aidan and pages and pages of sheet music and song lyrics, or maybe it’s just that the memory hits me out of nowhere, but all of a sudden I really miss them. My stomach clenches from the sadness, or maybe from hunger. I can never really tell when it’s hunger anymore.

I take a seat on the third log. Clarisa sits down next to Ben, but I don’t think he notices, because he’s staring at Stella. He’s actually gone from looking mildly impressed to looking like a groupie. I feel kind of embarrassed for him, to be honest.

“You okay there, Ben?” Stella asks, and Ben turns really, really red.