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By the time I’m done cleaning up yesterday’s mess, I barely have time to finish my morning routine before we’re supposed to go outside for breakfast. “You do this every morning?” Stella asks as I’m in the process of checking my covers for the fifth time. They haven’t moved at all since the last time I checked them, and I know that they haven’t, but I can’t rip myself away before I’ve made sure. “Do you really have to?” Stella says. “Like, what’s the worst thing that can happen if you don’t?” “Okay, first,” I say, spinning so that I’m facing her. I’m wasting precious time, I know, and Stella’s offhand remarks aren’t worth getting riled up over, but something about her tone—smug, more bemused than anything—really gets me going. //
“Yeah, I do this every morning, thanks for asking. And second, you’re being pretty rude, you know that? Believe me, I don’t want to be doing this any more than you want to be watching me doing it. But I just...have to.” I stare at her, defiant. This, I think, is exactly why I didn’t want to come to this stupid camp. It’s bad enough when it’s just my mom thinking that I’m a total nutcase. //
But Stella surprises me. “You’re right,” she says slowly, like she’s just coming to the realization for the first time as she says the words. “Sorry, Clarisa. And sorry again about not checking with you before inviting the guys over last night. I guess I just didn’t anticipate these things—you know—being...problems.” “Well, that’s me for you,” I say. “A barrelful of unanticipated problems.” //
“That’s not what I meant,” Stella says. But it is. Trust me, I’ve been in this situation enough times to know. “Yeah,” I mutter, and grab our room keys and a jacket from my closet. The bed is fine. The room is safe. I’m ready to go to breakfast. //
* * *
I don’t end up making it through very much of breakfast because Jessie comes up to our table pretty much the moment I’ve set my oatmeal down on the picnic table between Ben and Andrew and asks if she can see me in her office. It takes me approximately three seconds—between the time I finish processing her words and actually get up to follow her—to conclude that we’ve been caught, and that I am totally, totally doomed. It doesn’t help that she doesn’t smile at me a single time while we walk from the picnic tables outside to the counselors’ offices by The Hull. By the time Jessie clears her throat to start talking, I’ve come up with six ways to apologize for getting roped into Stella’s awful plan, all of which sound ridiculous. This is it. I am definitely getting kicked out. My stomach sinks as I imagine how disappointed my mom is going to be when she finds out that her latest plan to convert me into a normal human being, just like all the other ones, has crashed and burned. //
After a few seconds of torturous, torturous silence, Jessie finally speaks. “You started sertraline three weeks ago, correct?” she says. I stare at her for a second, unsure of how to answer. Is this a prelude to the inevitable lecture? Is she trying to terrify me before kicking me out? “Um,” I say. “Yes?” //
“Are you experiencing any negative side effects? Any difficulty sleeping? Changes in appetite? Increased feelings of depression or suicidal ideation?” she asks. “No,” I say. Jessie writes for a few seconds on the clipboard. I start to think that maybe I’m not totally busted, after all. //
“What about positive effects of the drug?” Jessie continues. “Decreased anxiety, easier time focusing...?” This is when I sort of start to hate this conversation. When I start to almost wish that we had been caught, and that Jessie was giving me some stern lecture about “trustworthiness” and “camp values” as opposed to asking me about whether or not my meds are finally, finally working. Because no, they’re not. And now I feel like I’m letting her down. “Not really,” I admit. //
“Well, it’s quite normal for sertraline to take four to six weeks to fully take effect, so I’m not too concerned yet,” Jessie says. “I’ll check in with you again in a couple of days and see if anything changes. In the meantime, please let me know if you start experiencing any new side effects. Is that clear?” “Yes,” I say. I resist the urge to apologize even though I know she doesn’t know that I’ve done anything wrong. Then, before she can tell me that my skirt is too short or try to fix my posture, I bolt for the door. //
When I get back to the picnic tables, most of the other fifty or so campers have come out and started eating. I make my way over to our table and slide back into my seat, only to find that my oatmeal has gone lukewarm and my biscuit has been colonized by a family of ants. “Lovely,” I mutter. I push the plate away and turn to Ben. “Do you know when we’re having lunch?” I ask. “Because I’m actually kind of hungry, and I can’t—Oh, jeez, are you okay?” //
Ben looks exhausted. Half-dead. Like a different person from last night, when he seemed, well, just as energetic and happy as you’d expect someone who had taken, like, four shots of vodka in quick succession to be. “I’m fine,” Ben says. He gets really into his scrambled eggs. “Did something...happen?” I ask. “I mean, last night, you seemed really happy, and now...” //
“I’m just an idiot,” Ben says. “Unfortunately for me, I don’t think there’s really anything anyone can do about that. So, I’m fine.” There’s a part of me that wants to push further, if only because now everyone at the table is staring at us. But then I remember how I felt yesterday in the car when Mom wouldn’t stop asking me how I was doing. And look how that turned out. So instead I say, “Okay,” and turn my gaze to the camp ground around us. //
As a permanent resident of New York City, where your line of sight extends approximately fifty feet without hitting a skyscraper or a wall of smog, I’m not used to how beautiful it is here—how clean the air, how far we can see. There are mountains rising and falling in the distance, gray and jagged against the light blue of the sky. We’re sitting at a cluster of picnic tables between the cabins and the volleyball court. On the other side, I can see all the way to the other side of the lake. The lake, the cabins, and the rec area are all situated in a field of grass that’s almost entirely enclosed by trees. Before I can stop myself, I’ve forgotten all about my cereal and started counting them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. //
My mind goes into autopilot: start, count, stop, repeat. 7, 7, 7, 7. A part of me thinks that I can somehow count all the trees that form our perimeter—if it’s not a safe number, will they let me cut a few down? I wonder. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6—//
“Clarisa?” a voice says. “Did you get that?” I realize with a start that I’ve completely zoned out, and that Jessie and Josh have joined us at our table. Jessie is clearly midlecture. “The expression of sheer panic on her face would indicate that she had retreated to the warm and welcoming—often too welcoming, I might add—recesses of her innermost thoughts,” Josh says warmly, as if that’s a perfectly normal way to describe someone who isn’t paying attention. “No need to worry, Clarisa. Why don’t we just repeat the last part again, Jessie?” //
“I was going over our weekend policy,” Jessie says, sounding significantly more annoyed than Josh does. And who can blame her? She’s right—I should have been paying attention, instead of getting lost in my head like I always do. “As I was saying,” Jessie repeats, “our weekends kick off every Friday night with Art by the Fire Fridays.” I don’t know what Art by the Fire Fridays is, but it must not be great, because Stella takes Jessie’s pause as an opportunity to groan loudly. “What were you expecting?” Mason drawls. “That in the last year they’d eliminated all the therapeutic camp activities at a therapeutic camp?” //
“Stella, you clearly have a lot of opinions about Art by the Fire,” Jessie says. “Would you like to explain to everyone what the principles and procedures are?” Stella scowls at Jessie but remains silent. “Thank you. And, Mason,” Jessie continues. “While I appreciate your willingness to, ah, help us counselors out, I assure you that Josh and I can handle it. Now, on to the important part. //
“Every Friday night, all of the campers at Ugunduzi come together. We light a bonfire, we make s’mores, and everyone across all the different groups has the opportunity to share something that he or she has written. It’s a great exercise. I know you’ll all be amazed at the things you share with each other. It can be a poem, or a journal entry, or stray thoughts about the week—anything you feel like sharing with the group. You guys should start thinking about that and maybe even writing, if you want to perform a poem or anything like that. Any questions before we move on? //
“Great,” Jessie says when no one speaks up. “After Friday night, weekends at Ugunduzi are fairly relaxed. It’s always been important for Dr. Palmer and the rest of the team here for campers to have time to explore and enjoy this beautiful area on your own terms, and we want you to know that we trust you enough to let you do that. Accordingly, we’ve left this time relatively unrestricted—with the provision that you stay on the main grounds and remain supervised at all times, of course. Ordinarily, at this time after breakfast, you’d be able to do an approved activity of your own choice. But because it’s our first full day together, we thought it would be a good idea to introduce you to your camp-long project and give you some time to start thinking about it. And so, if you’ll follow me...” //
“Isn’t it cute how they consider ‘boxed in’ and ‘supervised at all times’ to be ‘relatively unrestricted’?” Stella mutters to me while we stand up and file into a line behind Jessie. I choke back a laugh. Not because she isn’t kind of totally right, but because getting in trouble twice before it’s even eleven in the morning doesn’t seem like a great way to start camp. The five of us follow Jessie and Josh away from the picnic tables, in the opposite direction of The Hull, up to a small, unlabeled cabin by the water. Josh takes out a key and unlocks the door. “It’s...empty,” Mason says as we all step inside. “Totally empty,” Andrew echoes. //
Mason’s right. Not only is the cabin completely devoid of tables, couches, and decorations, but the walls are also unpainted, the windows bare and curtainless. “Exactly,” Jessie says. Solitary confinement, I think immediately. I picture being locked in here for a full day with nothing to do or look at or sit on, with no one to talk with and nothing to listen to, free of hiking, Stella’s sarcastic comments, trees, spontaneous episodes of youthful rebellions, shot glasses left lying on the floor all night... It would be like a dream come true. I resolve to get myself as committed as soon as possible. //
“It’s your Camp Project,” she says. “Oh, no,” Stella groans. “Not again. Wasn’t last year bad enough?” “The Camp Project,” Jessie presses on, over Stella’s groan, “is a Camp Ugunduzi tradition. Each team of campers every year is assigned a project that facilitates creativity, resourcefulness, and, most important, teamwork. Stella’s group last year, for example, took photographs and wrote articles for a camp guidebook for their friends and their parents.” //
“It was propaganda,” Stella says. “Forget friends and parents—Hitler could have learned a thing or two from that guidebook.” Mason snickers. “This year,” Jessie continues, her voice rising a few decibels, “we’ve decided to do something a little different. We’ve had this cabin built with the intention of turning it into a safe space for campers—a place where they could come to find peace, where they could clear their heads, to be surrounded by quiet, to reflect or write or play music. As you can see, we’ve left it completely undecorated. And that’s where you guys come in.” //
“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
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.