The Breakaway(35)

Marissa and Leah had explained to the other camp newbies the importance of staking a claim on a boy to go out with (what “going out with” as tweens at a summer camp meant, Abby would eventually learn, was treading water together during afternoon Free Swim and, eventually, attending the end-of-camp dance as a couple).

“What’s Friday night?” asked Abby as Marissa towed her up a hill that overlooked the track and the athletic fields.

“Movie night,” said Leah, with a doleful sigh. “They give us popcorn. Unsalted popcorn,” she added.

Marissa tossed her hair and turned to Abby. “You just go to the nurse on Thursday and tell her you’ve got a sore throat. They’ll give you salt for salt water to gargle with, and you save the salt for the popcorn.” She rolled her eyes at her bunkmate. “Have I taught you nothing?” Turning back to Abby, she said, “I know all the tricks. Movie night is makeout night. They hand out blankets to sit on…” Another eyeroll, this one for the counselors’ stupidity. “But kids just get under the blankets. And the counselors are supposed to, like, patrol, and break things up.” She lowered her voice. “Only they’re usually too busy sucking face with each other.”

Leah said something in reply, but Abby didn’t hear. She’d stopped listening, because that was the moment she saw Mark Medoff.

On an eighty-five-degree day, where the air was thick and hazy with humidity, Mark was wearing a Yankees sweatshirt, made of heavyweight cotton (to disguise his man-boobs, he’d later confess). His Air Jordans came up high on his shins, his board shorts hung almost to his knees, and his baseball cap was creased to keep as much of his face as possible in its shade. But he had the sweetest smile as he looked at her from beneath the brim of his cap. The sweetest smile and the kindest eyes.

“Ugh. No,” Marissa hissed, when she saw where Abby’s gaze had gone. It was cruel, and ironic, but at Camp Golden Hills, as in the outside world, the heavier you were, the less status you had… and Mark was one of the heaviest boys at camp.

But by then Abby had seen Mark’s smile. She’d also noted the goofy, slightly dumbstruck look on his face, a look suggesting that he’d seen her and had fallen instantly in love, just the way Eileen’s Harlequins and the spicier novels her mother kept in a drawer in her bedside table had taught Abby that, someday, a man would.

She had also realized that, beside him, or in his arms, she would feel as dainty as Princess Buttercup when André the Giant carried her. Abby couldn’t remember ever feeling dainty in her life. This boy could be her chance.

Boldly, she walked up to Mark, hearing admiring comments and even a wolf whistle, which was new. Back at home, nobody ever whistled at her, and the only comments she’d ever gotten from men on the streets were either “nice tits,” “you should smile,” or “you’d be pretty if you lost some weight.”

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Abby.”

The boy ducked his head and said, “I’m Mark.”

She asked where he was from (Long Island), how old he was (thirteen, same as she was), if this was his first summer at Camp Golden Hills (yes), and if he’d come because he wanted to, or because he’d been forced.

At that question, Mark finally stopped looking at his shoes and looked at Abby. “Little bit of both,” he said. “Sometimes, I want to lose weight, and sometimes, I think I’d like to be four hundred pounds by the time I’m forty years old.”

Abby blinked. “Really? Why?”

“Because,” Mark said, “who’d be able to tell a four-hundred-pound man no?” He gave her a big goofy smile. “I’d be unstoppable. I’d do anything I wanted.”

Abby laughed. Mark turned his smile toward her. His face was round, his cheeks full, his chins wobbly… but his smile was adorable. And he was funny. That counted for a lot.

“Do you want to sit with me at movie night?” she asked.

“Really?” he asked, once more managing to meet her eyes. Almost immediately he looked down again, his gaze sliding toward Marissa and Leah. “It’s a joke, right?”

“No. No, it’s not a joke.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“Yes,” Abby said. “I promise.”

That night, when she came back to the bunk after the counselors led a sing-along around the bonfire (combined with lots of vigorous arm motions and marching in place, the better to burn calories), Abby found a note under her pillow, with the drawing of a heart, and her initials, and a small bag of M&Ms. See you at movie night, he’d written. From your four-hundred-pound friend Mark.

“Oh,” she said, so enraptured that she forgot, for a few minutes, how hungry she was. She tucked the note away, after folding it carefully. She didn’t see Mark the next day, but the next night brought even more treasures.

“OMG,” Marissa breathed, as Abby reached under her pillow. There was another note—I think you’re beautiful, it read—but, better than that, there was a snack-size bag of Fritos, the kind that kids (not Abby, but some of her classmates) got in their school lunches.

“Do you know how much he must’ve paid for these?” Marissa asked, cradling the Fritos as reverently as the Virgin Mary had ever held the baby Jesus.

Abby shook her head. She then heard about the vibrant black market at Golden Hills. A few of the counselors could be induced to look the other way when parents sent care packages or when older kids raided the hotel vending machines on field trips to Gettysburg and Washington. There were maintenance workers who could be bribed to bring candy bars or even fast food into camp. And Kara’s sister, a Golden Hills survivor who was currently in college, would mail Kara sanitary supplies with Rolos and Twix bars and Laffy Taffy tucked into the maxipads.