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.
“Ooh, he’s got it bad,” said Marissa. When Kelsey came bouncing into the cabin, Abby shoved the Fritos under her pillow. After lights-out, she ripped the bag open, as quietly as she could, and handed it around the bunk. Each girl got maybe three Fritos total. Abby tried to make hers last, setting them on her tongue to dissolve. She felt the burn of the salt and tasted the grit of the dissolving corn—or lab-made corn-like substance—and she smiled, remembering the feeling of Mark’s hand in hers, how he looked at her like she was a goddess, or Paris Hilton, thin and pretty and perfect.
Mark lost a startling fifty pounds during his first summer at Golden Hills. By the last night of camp, he’d become something of a hunk, and the girls who’d once scorned him, including Marissa, were trying to flirt with him right in front of Abby. To no avail. Mark ignored them completely. He only had eyes for her.
“You’ll come to my bat mitzvah,” Abby said, at the end of the dance on the last night of camp. She and Mark had swayed together under the pavilion lights, leaning into each other with her hands on his shoulders and his hands on her waist.
“And I’ll call you every Friday night,” Mark promised. They kissed—that was as far as things had gotten that summer—and they’d both cried as they’d said their goodbyes. It was as satisfying and as sweet a first love as Abby could have hoped for.