Abby didn’t expect to ever go back to Camp Golden Hills. Her father had promised her theater camp, and Abby still dreamed of going. But, later that fall, her parents’ divorce became final, and Abby’s dad told her that there wasn’t money for theater camp or for any camp—“not with Marni in college and Simon going next year.” That spring, after her mother got engaged to Gary the Businessman, and started planning their autumn wedding, it turned out that there was enough money for camp. But not for theater camp. Just for Camp Golden Hills. “Don’t you want to look good in the wedding pictures?” Eileen pleaded.
Abby told her, tersely, that she cared about how she looked in Eileen’s wedding photos even less than she’d cared about how she’d looked in her bat mitzvah album. Once again, her begging and complaints got her nowhere.
In truth, Abby didn’t resist that much. She didn’t care about losing weight—if the second summer worked like the first, she’d only gain it back again. She wasn’t thrilled about spending another six weeks starving, but she did want to see her friends again. And Mark.
That year, when she arrived, Mark was waiting for her on the steps of her cabin, with a bouquet of wildflowers in his hands, and a snack-size bag of Cheetos in the pouch of the hoodie he’d started wearing again.
“My goodness, will you look at that,” Abby heard her mother murmur. Either Eileen didn’t remember Mark from Abby’s bat mitzvah, or she didn’t recognize him, now that he’d gained back the weight. “How could that boy’s parents let him get that big?”
Abby barely heard her mother. All she saw were Mark’s eyes, his smile, the way he was looking at her, like she was his fondest dream come true. She got out of the car and ran to him. Mark got to his feet and opened his arms. When he hugged her, lifting her off her feet and swinging her around, it was like being embraced by a protective mountain, or like having an entire continent between her and her mother’s disapproval and judgment. She pressed her face into his fabric-softener-scented sweatshirt, feeling small and protected. Whatever hurtful things her mother had to say would bounce right off Mark, and never make their way near her. “Hi,” she whispered, and Mark had squeezed her even more tightly.
Abby and her sweetheart had a total of three summers at Camp Golden Hills. They ate their meals together: fresh fruit and a single serving of whole-grain cereal with skim milk for breakfast; salads with four ounces of salmon or chicken breast and low-calorie dressing for lunch; baked fish and sweet potatoes for dinner, with ice-milk sandwiches for dessert on Friday nights. In the afternoons, they walked laps around the track or they’d take advantage of the camp’s hiking trails and of the counselors who preferred sitting by the lakeside, listening to music on their iPods, to keeping close watch over the campers. During Free Swim, Abby tried to coax Mark into the water. She’d tell him that nobody was looking, that no one cared, but most days he stayed on the shore, and, even when he joined her in the water, he never took off his tee shirt, and he always waited until at least some of the campers were distracted by a game of water volleyball or Marco Polo or keep-away before shucking his shoes and his sweatshirt and making a quick, jouncing dash into the shallows.
Mark taught Abby how to play Sudoku and Yahtzee and Chinese checkers. His generous allowance gave him access to a steady supply of contraband chips and Cheez-Its and candy bars. On Abby’s birthday, he managed to get her a bucket of KFC, still mostly warm, and a chocolate malted milkshake, still mostly cold. He gave her his favorite Yankees sweatshirt, and Abby wore it everywhere, enjoying the feeling of being swallowed up by a garment that smelled like Mark, with sleeves that hung over her fingertips and a hem that draped past her knees.
Then there were the weekly movie nights, when Abby and Mark would cuddle on top of and, eventually, underneath a blanket, as the hour got later and the counselors less attentive. They’d kiss until their lips were chapped, until Abby’s cheeks and chin were abraded by the stubble Mark had started to grow by their last summer. By July of that final year, when they’d both been sixteen, Abby let Mark work his hands up her shirt. By August, Mark let Abby touch his erection, but only outside of his satiny basketball shorts.
Finally, on the last movie night, while Grease played on the big screen, Abby slipped her fingers beneath the taut waistband of Mark’s boxer shorts and, finally, felt her fingertips make contact with the silky skin of his unclothed penis.
In the humid August air, with the smell of the lake water clinging to their skin and their hair, she brushed his skin with her fingertips. Mark groaned, shuddering, pressing his body against hers, trapping her arm between their chests.