He sees me, sets his guitar against the picnic table bench, and hops to his feet. “What’s up?”

“You’re really good on guitar.”

“Thanks.” He loops his thumb around the leather cord hanging from his neck.

“Did you write that? I mean, the song you were just playing?”

“Yeah.”

I nod and set my hands on my hips. “I’ve always loved your music.”

He smiles and scratches the side of his neck. “Why’d you stop by?”

I mumble, “One of our campers got hurt and Brad went to get him first aid…I can’t get my fire started.”

He raises his eyebrows, then turns and starts pawing through a milk crate toppling with supplies. He pulls out a starter log the size of a Kit Kat bar, a roll of paper towels, a book of matches, and a can of Crisco.

“This oughta do it,” he says, dumping the items into my arms.

“Matt! I found a toad,” a tiny girl says, and he rushes to squat down next to her. They peer into the bushes. It’s really cute.

I turn around and trudge back to my campsite, where I tuck the starter log inside a bunch of kindling and hold a lit match up to it. I stuff a wad of paper towels next to the burning starter log. The paper towels quickly turn to hot ash, so I drip Crisco onto the wood and a fireball bursts up.

“Whoa, cool!” a camper named David says, and the boys rush to surround me.

“Grab more skinny sticks,” I tell them, and soon we have a blazing fire, and then we’re saying grace before eating cheeseburgers hot off the grill. When Brad returns, carrying a heavily-bandaged Marcus over his shoulder, he smiles at my work and says, “Nice job.”

I decide I like being part of Matt’s Crisco cult.

A couple minutes later Matt appears at our campsite and salutes Brad. “Yo, Bumblebee Brad. How’s it goin’?”

Brad winces and looks up from trying to get the knot out of a sparkly pink sneaker.

“Bumblebee Brad! Bumblebee Brad!” Rick and Sophie start yelling, laughing their butts off.

I cover my grin with a fist. Matt grabs one of the burgers I just cooked and slips it inside a bun. “Ow,” he says, sticking his thumb in his mouth.

“The burgers are hot, you know,” I say, laughing.

“Thanks for the warning.”

“You’ve gotta pay for that.”

He bites into it and chews. “Mmmm.” He chews some more and swallows. “That’s a good burger.”

“Thanks,” I say, proud. “But you still owe me for it.” I rub my fingers together, indicating I want cash, and he grins.

“As payment, later, I’ll play you a song I wrote, okay?”

“Okay,” I say with a smile, remembering the girl whose beauty he compared to a redbird. I wipe my hair away from my sweaty face. “I need to go get ready for the talent show.” I have to put out the microphones and speakers and make sure the popcorn is popped.

By the time I finish frantically running around trying to find the mike (it was under a chair in Megan’s office) and then determining how to plug the mike into the amp, the sun has completely set. The campers take their seats on the grass in front of the Great Oak porch (the stage). Blazing tiki torches and laughter surround me as I step up to the mike and say, “Welcome to the thirty-second annual Cumberland Creek talent show!”

Everyone cheers, and I’m smiling because I got the fire going. I managed to cook dinner by myself. I say a quick thanks to God.

I introduce the first act: a girl named Taylor, who’s doing a mime performance. Another girl sings songs while doing interpretative dance, and a boy juggles three bowling pins he found in a closet in the art pavilion.

I laugh so hard when Ian sings Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” along with two of his boy campers. They use brooms as microphones and when Ian hits the really high notes, he falls to his knees and clenches his eyes shut. Ian’s not a very good singer. At all. But he still gets a standing ovation.

When he hops off the Great Oak porch, I say, “And you want to get a camp karaoke machine?”

“Just wait until next week.” He winks. “Maybe I’ll do some Mariah Carey.”

But the funniest thing—the sweetest thing, is that Matt plays guitar, accompanying six different singers on six different songs. My favorite is when an eight-year-old girl named Lizzie sings “Jesus Loves Me” in the purest voice, and when she gets scared and I think she might run off the stage, Matt sings along with her as he strums his guitar.

Leaning against a tree, as bugs chirp around me, as warm wind rustles the branches, that’s when I know it for real.

I want him.

bonzo ball

wednesday, june 6 ~ week 1 of 7

Before my arts and crafts lesson, Megan calls me into Great Oak for a “counseling session.”

“I understand you had problems getting your fire started?” she says. “And the talent show nearly didn’t start on time because of it.” She taps her whistle on her desk, eyeing me.

How did she find out about my fire problems? Did Matt tell her what happened?

“That was the first time I’ve ever had to start a fire without help before.” I clear my throat into my fist. “But I got it going. All the kids enjoyed dinner.”

“That’s not what I heard. I heard they ate nearly forty-five minutes later than scheduled and were starving.”

Maybe I ought to tell her most of the kids were either:

 1. reading in the cabins;

 2. having a water fight;

 3. talking about members of the opposite sex;

 4. flirting with members of the opposite sex; or

 5. searching for critters for the Critter Crawl, which Parker is still trying to get banned.

Only a couple of the boys complained and, well, boys are always hungry.

“I will try my hardest not to let it happen again.”

“Eric has offered to coach you, so next week you’ll be co-counselors with him. Parents pay a lot of money for their children to come here, and we have to give them an excellent week, or the regional conference will blame me, understand?”

She wants that Bible education job bad.

“I understand.”

She taps her whistle on the desk some more. “You can go.”

I swivel around to face her again. “How did you hear about what happened?” I ask softly.

“I heard from Andrea. I believe Matt told her.”

I nod and leave the cabin, holding my nose so it doesn’t start running, because I want to cry.

Matt told Andrea about my cooking issue? The backs of my eyes burn as I head toward the art pavilion.

How humiliating. I get where Megan’s coming from, but she said it herself: the conference hired me for my artistic skills, not for my camping abilities. How could she expect me to be Camp Counselor Extraordinaire after three days?

I got the fire started! The kids scarfed their burgers and lemonade down like warriors after an epic battle. They loved it!

I can’t believe Matt blabbed to Andrea.

My eyes are still burning as I step into the pavilion, where thirty campers are waiting for me. Using the most cheerful voice I can muster, I explain that we’ll be doing decoupage today. Decoupage is where you use clear paste to glue bits of paper to any ole piece of junk, to decorate it. You can use crepe paper or construction paper. Newspaper and magazines work great too. I have piles and piles of junk and magazines.

“Decoupage is a chance to show who you are as a person,” I explain to the campers. I hold up an old glass Coke bottle covered with pictures of footballs from sports clippings. “What do you think the person who made this likes?”

“Sports!” a boy calls.

“Coke!”

“Football!”

“The Titans!”

When the kids have stopped yelling their thoughts, I muse, “They might be very patriotic.” I turn the bottle from side to side so everyone can see it. “Coke and football are totally American, right?”

“Right!” a bunch of laughing kids yell.

I hold up the music box I made and lift the lid. The campers go silent. It took me a while to repair the speakers, but now it plays “Moonlight Sonata” and the little ballerina slowly spins in wobbly circles. I covered the wood in pictures of white flowers cut from various newspapers and magazines.

When the music stops, I say, “What do you think the owner of this music box likes?”

“Gardens,” Claire says.

“The outdoors?” replies a boy.

“Music!”

“Art!”

“Life,” says Sophie. “Being alive.”

I give her a small smile. “Moonlight Sonata” is one of Emily’s favorite pieces. And the ballerina reminds me of being little. Some white flowers symbolize innocence, but white lilies mean death. To me, the music box is a symbol of the day I went against my beliefs and helped a friend, going against God.

“Is it about beauty?” Claire asks. “The person who made the box loves beautiful things?”

“That’s what’s great about decoupage,” I say. “You can make something that says something on the outside, but maybe only you understand what it really means inside. To you, you know?”

I look up from the music box I decorated to find Parker standing in the doorway.

I set the box down and clap my hands a few times. “Okay, everybody, start looking for an object that most defines you!”

The kids scramble away from the picnic tables to dig through my boxes and crates of junk I hauled here in my trunk.

With a smile on her face, Parker navigates past the kids, seeing what they pick out. Holding my nose again, so I don’t cry, I watch her make her way across the pavilion.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I’m on my break.” She picks up the music box I made using decoupage. “This is incredible,” she says, turning it over in her hands.

“I can get you started on making something,” I tell her, slipping my paint brush behind my ear. I lead her over to my milk crates full of junk just begging for a makeover. I love going to yard sales and finding piggy banks and cracked bottles and dusty vases and even scratched records. I love painting new life into them. Part of me wants to tell her this, but it also feels too personal.

This week had started out great, and now I’m back to where I was. Can I trust anybody here? Yes, this is a job, and yes, it’s important, but did Matt have to sell me down the river?

I shut my eyes for a sec, praying to God, and then focus on Parker, remembering how she called me judgmental and nasty on Friday night. Then I remember how I thought about college and how I need to figure out my life so I don’t stay lonely. But if I open myself up to new people, like I have with Matt, and then they go and betray me, is it worth knowing people at all?

Will told me that everyone left Parker, and now she’s standing right here in front of me.

“Pick something out,” I tell Parker, and she sorts through the junk until she finds a tiny wooden box.

“I could put earrings in here,” she says.

“Sure.” I hand her a pair of scissors and sit her down near the toppling stack of magazines with the kids. “Cut out anything that you think looks cool and then we’ll decoupage them to the box.”