Summer at Willow Lake

“How do you know that?”

“Read it in a book. I read sixty books last year.”

“Geez,” he said. “Why?”

“ ‘Cause there wasn’t time to read more,” she said with a superior sniff. “Hard to believe people hunt deer, huh? I think they’re so beautiful.” She took a drink from her canteen. The whole scene before them was like an old-fashioned painting—the new grass tender and green, the bluestars and wild columbine nodding their heads in the breeze, the deer grazing.

“I can see clear down to the lake,” Connor said. “These are good binoculars.”

“My dad gave them to me. A guilt gift.”

He lowered the glasses. “What’s a guilt gift?”

“It’s when your dad can’t make it to your piano recital, and he feels guilty, so he buys you a really expensive gift.”

“Huh. There are worse things than your dad missing a piano recital.” Connor peered through the binoculars again. “Is that an island in the middle of the lake?”

“Yep. It’s called Spruce Island. That’s where they’ll have the fireworks on the Fourth of July. I tried swimming out to it last year but I didn’t make it.”

“What happened?”

“Halfway across, I had to call for help. When they dragged me to shore, I acted like I was almost drowned so they wouldn’t accuse me of doing it to get attention. They called my parents.” This, of course, was what Lolly had wanted all along. Now she wished she hadn’t mentioned the incident, but once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. “My parents got a divorce last year and I figured they’d both have to come and get me.” The admission hurt her throat.

“Did it work?” he asked.

“No way. The idea of doing anything as a family is finished, kaput, out of the question. They sent me to this therapist who said I have to ‘redefine my concept of family and my role.’ So now it’s my job to be well-adjusted. My parents act like a divorce is all fine and not such a big deal in this day and age.” She hugged her knees up to her chest and watched the deer until her eyes blurred. “But to me, it’s huge. It’s like being swept out to sea, but nobody will believe you’re drowning.”

At first, she thought he’d stopped listening, because he didn’t say anything. He stayed quiet, the way Dr. Schneider did during their therapy sessions. Then Connor said, “If you’re drowning for real, and nobody believes you, then you sure as hell better figure out how to swim.”

She snorted. “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.”

He didn’t look at her, as if somehow he knew she needed to get herself together. He kept peering through the binoculars and whistling between his teeth. Lolly thought she recognized the tune—”Stop Making Sense” by Talking Heads—and for some reason, she felt fragile and vulnerable, the way she had when they’d dragged her from the lake last year. And worse, she was crying now. She didn’t recall the precise moment she had started, and it took all her strength to force herself to quit.

“We should keep going,” she said, feeling like an idiot as she crushed her bandanna to her face. Why had she said all those things to this boy she didn’t even like?

“Okay.” He handed back the field glasses and hiked to the path. If things were awkward before with this kid, her breaking down and crying ensured that being his friend was impossible now.

Desperate to change the subject, she said, “Did you know that every single counselor on the staff is a former camper?”

“Nope.”

She was going to have to do a lot better in the gossip department if she wanted to impress this kid. “Counselors have secret lives,” she said. “Not everybody knows, but they have these wild parties at night. Lots of drinking and making out, stuff like that.”

“Big deal. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Well, how about the fact that the head cook, Gertie Romano, was going to compete in the Miss New York State pageant, but she got pregnant and had to drop out. And Gina Palumbo—she’s in my bunkhouse—told me her dad is an actual mafia boss.

And Terry Davis, the caretaker—he’s, like, this huge drunk.”

Connor whipped around to glare at her. His shirt fell to the ground with the abrupt movement. She picked it up. “Hey, you dropped this.” There was a smear of ketchup on the front of it, and a small label sewn in the back that read, Connor Davis.

“Davis,” she said, realization prickling over her like a rash. “Is that your last name?”

“Nosy, aren’t you?” he remarked, grabbing the shirt and yanking it on over his head. “Of course it’s my last name, genius, or I wouldn’t have a tag that says so on my shirt.”

Lolly forgot to breathe. Oh, cripes. Davis. As in Terry Davis. Oh, cripes on a crutch. “So, is he,” she fumbled, “is Mr. Davis, the caretaker, any relation?”

Connor strode away from her. His ears were a bright, furious red. “Yeah, that’s him. My father. The ‘huge drunk.’”

She bolted into action, following him. “Hey, wait,” she said. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t know … didn’t realize … oh, man. I never should have said that. It’s just some gossip I heard.”

“Yeah, you’re a real comedian.”

“I’m not. I’m horrible. I feel horrible.” She had to run to keep up. She was covered in guilt, like slimy sweat. Worse. You didn’t say stuff about people’s parents. She ought to know. Her parents were pretty awful, too, but she’d be offended if anyone other than her said so, and that was a fact.

But how could she have known? What were the chances? Everyone said Terry Davis didn’t have a family, that no one ever came to see him, so the last thing she was expecting was that he had a son. Still, she should have kept her big fat mouth shut.

Terry Davis had a son. Amazing. In all the years the quiet, melancholy man had worked at the camp, she had never known. All she knew about him was that his father and her granddad had been in the Korean War together. Granddad said they’d met while bombing something called the Han River, and that Mr. Davis had been a hero, and for that reason, he would always have a place at Camp Kioga, no matter what. Even if he was, as she’d so stupidly said, a huge drunk. He’d been a fixture around the place, living alone in one of the staff cottages at the edge of the property. Those cottages provided housing for the cooks, caretakers, groundskeepers, drivers and maintenance crews, all the invisible people who worked around the clock to keep the place looking like a pristine wilderness.

Mr. Davis was a loner. He drove an old work Jeep, and often looked tired, prone to having what she’d heard her grandfather call an “off” day.

“I’m really, really sorry,” she said to Connor.

“Don’t feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t. I’m sorry I said that about your dad. There’s a difference.”

Connor jerked his head, tossing a wave of dark hair out of his eyes. “Good to know.”

“He never said he had a kid.” The minute the words were out, she realized her mistake was getting bigger and bigger, every time she opened her mouth. Her jaw was a backhoe, digging deeper with each movement. “I mean, I never—”

“He didn’t want me coming here for the summer, but my mom got married again and her husband didn’t want a kid around,” Connor said. “Said three’s a crowd in a double-wide.”

Lolly thought about the bruise she’d seen. This time, she remembered to keep her mouth shut.

“A double-wide trailer doesn’t have much space for three people, but I guess you wouldn’t know about that,” he added. “You probably live in a mansion somewhere.”

Two mansions, she thought. One for each parent. Which just proved you could be miserable whether you lived in the 800 block of Fifth Avenue or in a Dumpster. “My parents have been sending me away every summer since I was eight,” she told Connor. “Maybe it was to get me out of the way so they could fight. I never heard them fight.” Perhaps if she had, Lolly reflected, the divorce might not have been such a shock.

“When my mom figured out I could come here for free on account of my dad working here,” Connor explained, “my fate was sealed.”

In her mind, Lolly put together the facts, like a detective. If he was coming here for free, that meant he was a scholarship camper. Each year, under a program her grandparents had founded, needy children were brought to the camp for free. They were kids who had rough family lives and were “at risk” although she wasn’t quite sure what “at risk” meant.

At camp, everybody dressed the same, lived and ate and slept the same. You weren’t supposed to know if the kid beside you was a crack baby or a Saudi prince. Sometimes it was kind of obvious, though. The scholarship kids talked differently and often looked different. Sometimes their bad teeth gave them away. Or their bad attitude. Or sometimes, like with Connor, a kid had this hard, dangerous look about him that warned people he didn’t need a handout. There was nothing needy about him at all, no hint that he was “at risk.” Except the hurt in his eyes when she had called his father a drunk.

“I feel completely cruddy,” she reiterated. “And horrible. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You’re right. You shouldn’t have. Crazy-ass girl, no wonder you go to a shrink.” He stabbed his stick into the ground and sped up. It looked as though he wasn’t going to say another word to her. Ever.