Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

Sincerely, Fin

June 17

Dear Future Husband,

The Beaver says my letters to you are a dereliction so now I am writing in my notebook, which is not a diary. I hide this small notebook in my trunk, at the bottom of a box of sanitary napkins. I don’t see what’s so derelict about what I wrote. I did exactly what the Beaver told us to. Today I wrote you a fake letter to get her off my back. The Beaver is what the campers call Captain Bev. Get it? Caroline, my cabinmate, is playing her flute despite the fact that this is supposed to be quiet hour. She isn’t bad but she plays the same dumb Christmas song over and over again. That’s why it’s called practicing, she said to me, as if I were a literal idiot. She said, Bet you didn’t know this song is about a hooker. I said, I know. I didn’t know, but it was a necessary lie.

Everything here is a competition. Tampons versus sanitary napkins. Bras versus undershirts. On the first night, the Beav divided everyone into two teams: the Cubs versus the Colts. (I am, fortunately, a Colt.) Also, older girls versus younger girls, even though everyone at this camp achieved menarche in the past year. No one talks about the menstruation requirement. I only know because I found the brochure on Mother’s desk. The older girls are called Evening Primroses. The younger girls are called Morning Glories. (The camp is called Camp Moonflower. I am a Morning Glory.) The camp motto is Dignae et provisae iucundae, which we are made to chant three times at the beginning of each meal.

Through our daily tasks we earn points for our team, and at the end of the week, one team will be named Queens of the Moonflower. The Beav says in a menacing voice that anyone who leaves the cabin at night unattended will get a zero for her team. This is meant to be a threat, but a zero is nothing. If you add zero to a number, the number doesn’t change. I seem to be the only one to have figured this out.

Fin

June 18

Dear Future Husband,

This morning I met the horses. Jo, the white western mare, is my soulmate. We have basically the same name. The elitists are in love with Lady Diamond, who is sensitive and dark and English. I know about the elitists because my father said that summer camps were full of them. I put my hand on Jo’s side and felt her muscles twitching hot under velvet. She smelled of maple syrup and pencil shavings. For a moment the trees and dirt and wooden fence of the pen and the horse noises and girl noises went blank and I was my breath and the horse breathing with me. The horse possibility. The horse my friend. The horse my wings. We did not get to ride the horses today.

Pita’s not an elitist. She’s a big-mouth pain in the ass. That’s what her name literally means. Pain In The Ass. Caroline told me it’s her nickname at school and even the teachers call her that. Pita says she is in love with Andrew the horse counselor, who looks like a Ken doll in a baseball cap, with a deep tan. Andrew is from the same town as Pita, so Pita won’t stop talking about him, even though he’s a senior in high school and they’ve never once seen each other before today. When Pita talks about Andrew, she squinches her eyes and stretches her lips tight across her teeth, because she is making a conscious effort to form apples with her cheeks. The Beaver taught us to do this yesterday in our Anatomy and Etiquette class.

The sun pressed down on me as we stood in the pen, Andrew lecturing us about horse safety and horse responsibilities. We’d run far this morning. I almost reached the woods on the other side of the field before the Beaver called us back. Then we’d spent an hour mixing mud for the earth oven before breakfast (shriveled sausages and dry scrambled eggs). Sweat popped out on my cheeks and shoulders and Caroline announced in front of all the elitists that I was going to faint. Andrew dug in his bag and offered me a bottle of warm water, which I drank. It did make me feel better. But Pita wouldn’t leave me alone about it for literally hours. What if Andrew had put his lips on that bottle? What if I had put my lips where his lips had been? Did it smell like his cologne? What about his backwash? It’s quiet hour and she was supposed to be up on the top bunk writing a letter to her Future Husband, but instead she knelt in the middle of the cabin floor, thrusting her canteen into her mouth, drooling and moaning, Oh Andrew. Everyone else laughed, confused. Then our counselor came in to announce that Caroline had been selected for the Sisterhood and Pita finally, finally, finally shut up.

Fin

June 18, again

Dear Future Husband,

Another competition, this time at the lake. I do not refer to the canoe race (the Cubs won). I refer instead to the battle of the bathing suits. Pita laughs at my one-piece Speedo, which I selected for its bright yellow straps and its ability to somewhat restrain my disproportionately large and unwieldy breasts. I am convinced that my breasts are the reason I am an incompetent swimmer, but I will not, for obvious reasons, articulate this to the swim counselor, who repeatedly explains the forward crawl to me as though I am both stupid and hard of hearing. Pita is built like a stick bug, and this afternoon she strutted across the dock in a flimsy bikini, swatting the sunbathing campers and counselors with a wooden oar. Andrew finally snatched the oar from her and threw it into the lake. The Beaver was mad, but Caroline (also wearing a one-piece) and I applauded. The way Pita tells it, of course, Andrew was declaring his love to her by throwing the oar into the lake.

We just had our first mail call. I received a letter from my mother. She hopes I’m learning what it means to be a woman. Today I learned how to arrange flowers in a crescent shape while forming apples with my cheeks. Pita asked me who my letter was from, and I told her it was from my best friend. She looked disappointed.

If I were home right now, I would be sitting in the living room with my grandmother, watching game shows and waiting for the summer to end. This basic swimming stroke was pioneered in Australia during a rescue approach. I used to learn things from the game shows but they’ve run out of answers. My grandmother paid for me to come to this camp after convincing my parents that I needed to be around girls my own age. She’d caught me playing with Barbies. (Last year when I gave up my diary I also relinquished most of my Barbies, but I secretly retain a few for emergencies.) On this particular day, Ken and Skipper were naked, and Ken had tied Skipper up with a broken necklace that my grandmother had given me from her junk drawer. I read a book once about a girl who was raped and then she became best friends with a horse. The horse was the only creature she could trust. I don’t understand rape, but I do understand loneliness.

Yesterday before supper, Caroline went to her first Sisterhood meeting. She had to wear her camp whites. To require an all-white uniform at a camp that caters to menstruating girls is, I am sure, a form of sadism. The Beav says that one of the members of the Sisterhood will be chosen at the end of camp to represent Woman, and her steadfastness will be tested in front of everyone. My cabinmates and I have spent the afternoon wondering what this test of steadfastness could possibly be. Pita suggested that it will constitute a public examination of the chosen Woman’s laundry for the purity of her camp whites. I told her she was confusing steadfastness with colorfastness. After the Sisterhood meeting Caroline sat down with us in the mess hall looking swollen, like she’d been crying, but she wouldn’t tell us anything. She said it was a secret. The secret of the Sisterhood, Pita stage-whispered to me, is that there is no secret. Then we all clapped our hands and began our evening chant.