GOLD STAR SANDERLING

1.

I fed the hard, glossy cassette into the tape deck. It was sucked from my hand and digested with mechanized intention. I held rewind until it hummed to a stop at the start.

All That She Wants

I got to choose the soundtrack that morning. It was a trick, I knew this. A ploy to distract me into a temporary perception of happiness. A negotiation to allow me one final moment of faux autonomy. But I allowed it. It was my favorite tape.

I felt the freshness of my summertime haircut as the warm wind whipped through the open window. I crawled my fingertips out to tap on the periwinkle shimmer of the passenger side door, retaining that end of June heat.The street looked different on a summer morning. A little too bright, even though it hadn’t yet reached its full potential. And relieved from the hustle and the panic of school bus Mondays.

I slid my hand back inside and rubbed my clammy palms on the cobalt, nylon and polyester blend bathing suit. I scratched at its soft, thin, rubbery sheen and squirmed in the mesh netting underneath. He said the boys would have instructional swim first thing and I wanted to postpone the discomfort of underwear-and-all changing for as long as possible. 

Even with the window open, the front seat of mom’s not new car was suffocating. I stretched the fabric further down my knees. They were too short. Boys wore long bathing suits now.

My knuckles slid back and forth along translucent skin, greasy from sunscreen. Sunscreen on my legs. On my arms. Between my fingers. Up my nose. In my ears. When I rubbed my lips together I could taste its bitter, lemony cream. An ever congealing plaster stiffening me to immobility. And making me feel sweaty before I’d done anything worth sweating for.

Don’t Turn Around

“Watch your fingers.”

Mom didn’t like the windows open on the highway. So, I took one last breath, one last listen to the buzz of the tires on the tar and the pulsing breeze and I gripped the lip of the dull, but apparently lethal window as it rose, waiting for that final moment of safety before slicing my hand away.

I’ve always hated air conditioning. A synthetic cool. A false sense of security. Like I don’t know the balmy truth of what’s waiting for me out there.

“I wish I got to go to camp when I was a kid.”

She’s always been good at offering comfort without making promises she can’t keep. She didn’t say, “You’re gonna love it!” Or “It’ll be fun!” She knew me too well. And I respected her effort, so I nodded, almost convincingly. Almost belying the tilt-a-whirl of my guts.

Young and Proud

The poppy, ominous, synth artifice of the music was taunting and validating. I tickled the loop at the top of my backpack. Corrugated, crunchy fabric. Every ascending exit compounded the dread.

I tried to script what I would do and what I would say. Introductions. Avoidances. How to explain my too short bathing suit. Whether or not I’d actually wear a shirt to swim, like Mom said I had to. Thinking about the squelching of the drenched cotton suctioning off my belly after I yank myself out of the water and onto the dock meant for lither, tanner, outdoor bodies. The way it’s somehow more unflattering to see my pudgy, anti-athletic form through a wet white tee than it is to unleash my bare, marshmallowy torso unto the world.

I shivered. From the manufactured air and from the prospect of being publicly perceived in such a privately naked way. A humiliation one is benevolently spared from at school. Able to hide underneath boxy oxfords from Abercrombie and oversized hoodies from the Gap. So much of my skin will be shared with these summertime strangers.

The Sign

The pit of my stomach swelled as we neared the inevitable off ramp and my favorite song tried, but failed, to soothe me.

When we toured the camp, I could recognize its idyllic achievement. The canned echo of chirping birds and rustling tree branches. The swampy blue serenity of the man made lake. The impossible swath of endless grass, scattered with activity centers, but also wildly unfettered. And the wooded hill punctuated with little russet brown, white-shuttered cabins.

The camp director called himself Uncle Chuck. And he seemed preserved in a perpetual state of woodsy authority. In a mossy green polo tucked into braid-belted, pleated khaki shorts. Knee-high white tube socks rose from a pair of weather worn topsiders. And his silvery hair peeked out under a maroon ball cap, stitched with the camp logo in white. He wore a whistle around his neck and wedged a clip-board under his arm, even though it was just me and my mom and camp was not in session.

The inside of the bunk was all raw cedar or pine or some other kind of perfectly American wood. The essence of its original aroma almost lingered, but was overpowered by a decade of absorbing the musty dampness of adolescent boys and their wet towels and burgeoning egos. Uncle Chuck kept looking at Mom, expecting her to be impressed. Mom kept looking at me, knowing I wasn’t.

I felt the memory of my feet walking those grounds. I could see the Bunk 5B cabin towering at the very top of the hill. I could see the cubby where I would put my bag. I could see the picnic table where I would eat my lunch. And the lake I would swim in. And the field I would lose my breath on. And the basketball hoops I would sink nothing into. But I knew from school, the reality of a world depended on the life living within it. The social schematic truth was in the squealing lockers, the stage whispered rumor mongering, and the red-rovered clique formations. I wouldn’t know this camp until I knew the campers. They would decide what it all meant. And who I would become there.

Living in Danger

I internalized the heart racing horror of the tick tock turn signal as Mom’s Camry hatchback slowed at the all but camouflaged welcome gate and sign.

Madison County Day Camp.

My body and my nerves vibrated with the rumble of the rocks as we travelled down the shaded, winding, gravel path that would eventually spit me out into my uncertain future. I gripped the strap of my backpack like the safety bar on a roller coaster. My eyes squinted in canine alert to prepare myself for any possibility. Any peripheral danger. I swallowed a good, guttural gulp. And as I saw the gold, glistening sparkle of the morning sun reflecting off the lake and heard the distant, cackling echoes of summertime fun, I looked at my mom like a traitor.

“Teddy.” is all she said.

And then I really started to sweat.