When all eleven of her fellow campers had arrived, it hadn’t taken Abby long to realize, with a feeling of shameful pleasure, that she was actually one of the smaller girls in the bunk. After a lifetime of always being the biggest, in her class or on her team, in a play or at the pool, this was a refreshing change. Not only was she relatively small compared to her bunkmates, but she also had the most desirable of the three silhouettes described on one of the handouts she found in her folder.
“Lucky you,” murmured Leah, who’d taken the bunk above Abby’s. “You’re an Hourglass.” Abby could hear the capital H when Leah pronounced the word.
“What are you?” Abby asked.
“Oh, she’s an Apple,” said Marissa Schuyler, who had the lower bunk opposite Abby’s. “I am, too.” Marissa’s hands were pale and graceful. Her nails, Abby saw, were manicured and polished pale pink. She wore delicate gold rings, a pair of patent leather slides, and a rose gold bangle that fit tightly on her wrist.
“What are the other options?” Abby asked.
“Pyramids,” said Leah, reading from her handout. “Apples are round all over. Pyramids are smaller on the top, bigger on the bottom.”
“Hourglass, Apple, and Pyramid,” Abby repeated. “What about the boys?”
Marissa and Leah looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Leah finally said. “I think they’re just boys.”
Kelsey from the parking lot, with her shiny ponytail and permanent smile, was their counselor. She bounded in, made them do a round of introductions—“Tell us where you’re from, and give us an adjective that starts with the first letter of your name that describes you!” Abby had picked Amazing, even though Angry would have been more true. As soon as Kelsey had bounded out again, Marissa reached into her pillowcase and produced a bag of sour gummy bears.
“Enjoy them,” said Marissa, when Abby hesitated. “It’s probably going to be the last sugar you have for a while.” Marissa and Leah were both Camp Golden Hills veterans. Marissa had started the previous summer, and Leah’s first summer had been the year before that. As Abby watched, Marissa walked around the cabin, going from girl to girl, laying a single gummy bear on each of their tongues like a Communion wafer. Then she’d linked her left arm through Leah’s and her right arm through Abby’s. “Come on,” she’d said. “Let’s go look at the boys!”
Abby had planned on hating everything about Camp Golden Hills, but in spite of herself, she’d ended up having a surprisingly good time. She’d made friends. She’d had her first boyfriend, her first real kiss. And, of course, she’d also gotten her first taste of the dieting life, not to mention previews of how the world would treat girls like her.
The last weigh-in of the summer was the day before everyone’s parents came to take them home. Abby listened as her bunkmates emerged from the cabin with the scale to either exult or mourn over the news. Marissa had been celebrating because her parents had promised her a Tiffany heart necklace if she lost twenty pounds, which she had. Kara was fretting because she’d lost only nine and a half pounds—“But I’m going to round up and say it’s ten. Ten is good, right? Ten pounds isn’t nothing!” And Vicki had lost thirty-eight pounds, which Abby thought was tragic, because the truth was, you couldn’t really tell.
On pickup day, her parents arrived late, so she’d gotten to see everyone else’s parents and how they had reacted to their daughters. She saw how Kara’s mother scowled and snapped, “If they hadn’t told me you’d lost weight, I wouldn’t have guessed.”
Abby had watched how Kara had flinched. She’d listened, shocked and saddened, as her brash, funny, outspoken friend said, “I tried my hardest,” in a tiny voice. She’d cringed as Kara’s mom had muttered, “It doesn’t look like your hardest was very hard.”
Marissa’s mother, meanwhile, made a show of walking right past her daughter, then turning around in pretend shock, saying, “Who is this gorgeous supermodel, and what has she done with our child?” Marissa glowed, her smile enormous, her eyes bright, happier than Abby had ever seen her as she picked up her bags and practically skipped out of the cabin.
Abby remembered how, one night, Kara had cried as she’d talked about her mother, how she’d said, “It’s like it hurts her to even have to look at me.” Other girls had told their own stories. Everyone had an anecdote about a parent’s shame, a sibling they’d overheard claiming they weren’t related, or a grandmother who, instead of pinching a granddaughter’s cheeks, would grab her love handles, and give them a painful twist, and say something about how you couldn’t get a man without a cute figure.