“Hop on up and we’ll get your weight,” Kelsey said.
Abby held up her swimsuit. “Should I change first, or…”
“Nah, just take your shoes off.” Kelsey gave her a confiding wink. “For weekly weigh-ins, you’ll want to take off as much as you can, but not for this one.”
Abby toed off her sneakers and got on the scale. She closed her eyes as Kelsey slid the weights to the right, but she couldn’t close her ears when Kelsey said the number.
“Okay, now you can change.” Kelsey bounced out of the room. Abby shucked off her shorts and tee shirt and pulled on her plain one-piece navy-blue swimsuit. A different counselor （also skinny, with a dark-brown ponytail） ushered her into a room with a plain brown paper backdrop against the wall, and a Polaroid camera on a tripod in front of it. Abby was directed to stand in front of the backdrop while the counselor snapped pictures: front, back, left profile, right profile. After the camera spat out the images, the counselor used a thick black marker to write Abby’s name, and the word BEFORE, on the bottom of each shot. She handed Abby the Polaroids, along with a folder containing a sheaf of pages. One turned out to be her daily schedule. Another detailed the 1,200 calories a day she’d be eating for her stay. “Good luck!” the counselor chirped. Abby didn’t even try to smile back.
On its website and brochures, in the ads that it ran in the back pages of the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, Camp Golden Hills mentioned “health” and “wellness” dozens of times. The words weight or diet were used sparingly. That did not prevent anyone from knowing that Camp Golden Hills was fat camp. Abby had been exiled there in advance of her bat mitzvah in October.
“You want to look good in the pictures, don’t you?” Eileen had pleaded, after a morning spent dress shopping at the Cherry Hill Mall, where they’d discovered that Abby had already outgrown the juniors’ department and was wearing a women’s size twelve. This fact hadn’t troubled Abby too much. At least, it hadn’t surprised her. She saw her body every day and how the world reacted to it. But Eileen was almost in tears by the time she said, “Let’s take a break” and ushered Abby to the Nordstrom café.
At the counter, Eileen had a chicken Caesar salad, dressing on the side, and coffee, which she took black. She’d ordered the same salad for Abby before Abby could ask for her usual turkey club and fries.
“What I want,” Abby replied, “is to go to theater camp, like we talked about.” She’d looked at her mother, whose expression was stony. “Why is this such a big deal? Aren’t you supposed to be worried about my d’var Torah, or whether I know the prayers?”
“You don’t understand now,” Eileen said, her voice low. “But, I promise, when you’re my age, and you’re looking back at those pictures…”
“I’m not going to care!” Abby said, stabbing a crouton with the tines of her fork.
“You will,” Abby’s mother said, leaning forward, her eyes intent. “You will care. You’ll thank me for this.”
Abby shook her head. She speared a chunk of chicken breast and doused it in the little cup of dressing. She wouldn’t look at her mother or eat a single leaf of lettuce from her salad, and, when lunch was over, she refused to try on any more dresses, until Eileen threw up her hands and took her home. Abby had gone for a bike ride. Her mother, she guessed, had found Camp Golden Hills, and put her plot into motion.
When Abby emerged from the camp office with her Polaroids and her schedule, her parents were in the parking lot, arguing.
“You deal with her, I swear to God, I can’t take any more of her sulking,” Eileen said, drumming her manicured fingernails on the roof of the sedan.
Her dad had been the one to extract Abby’s monogrammed pink duffel bag from the trunk, to ask a counselor for directions and escort Abby up the gentle slope to Bunk Five.
Abby dragged her feet up the hill, giving one-word answers to her father’s questions. She opened the creaking cabin door and peered into the dimness. Six sets of bunk beds were lined up against the walls. Half of them had been claimed, and a few girls were unpacking, putting clothes away in one of the dressers, or using sticky blue Fun-Tak to affix photographs and posters to the walls. Her father picked a bottom bunk, seemingly at random, and put Abby’s bag on top of the skimpy, plastic-topped mattress. His expression was glum as he turned and faced her.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted.”