Wilderness Tips Read Free

This makes him feel sad. Sad, and too young. He would like to get out of his own body for a while; he’d like to be somebody else.
    The waitresses are doing the dishes. Two to scrape, one to wash, one to rinse in the scalding-hot rinsing sink, three to dry. The other two sweep the floors and wipe off the tables. Later, the number of dryers will vary because of days off – they’ll choose to take their days off in twos, so they can double-date with the counsellors – but today all are here. It’s early in the season, things are still fluid, the territories are not yet staked out.
    While they work they sing. They’re missing the ocean of music in which they float during the winter. Pat and Liz have both brought their portables, though you can’t pick up much radio out here, it’s too far from shore. There’s a record player in the counsellors’ rec hall, but the records are out of date. Patti Page, The Singing Rage. “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window.” “The Tennessee Waltz.” Who waltzes any more?
    “ ‘Wake up, little Susie,’ ” trills Sandy. The Everly Brothers are popular this summer; or they were, on the mainland, when they left.
    “ ‘What’re we gonna tell your mama, what’re we gonna tell your pa,’ ” sing the others. Joanne can improvise the alto harmony, which makes everything sound less screechy.
    Hilary, Stephanie, and Alex don’t sing this one. They go to a private school, all girls, and are better at rounds, like “Fire’s Burning” and “White Coral Bells.” They are good at tennis though, and sailing, skills that have passed the others by.
    It’s odd that Hilary and the other two are here at all, waitressing at Camp Adanaqui; it’s not as if they need the money. (Not like me, thinks Joanne, who haunts the mail desk every noon to see if she got her scholarship.) But it’s the doing of their mothers. According to Alex, the three mothers banded together and jumped Mrs. B. at a charity function, and twisted her arm. Naturally Mrs. B. would attend the same functions as the mothers: they’ve seen her, sunglasses pushed up on her forehead, a tall drink in her hand, entertaining on the veranda of Mr. B.’s white hilltop house, which is well away from the camp proper. They’ve seen the guests, in their spotless, well-pressed sailing clothes. They’ve heard the laughter, the voices, husky and casual.
Oh
God
don’t tell me
. Like Hilary.
    “We were kidnapped,” says Alex. “They thought it was time we met some boys.”
    Joanne can see it for Alex, who is chubby and awkward, and for Stephanie, who is built like a boy and walks like one; but Hilary? Hilary is classic. Hilary is like a shampoo ad. Hilary is perfect. She ought to be sought after. Oddly, here she is not.
    Ronette is scraping, and drops a plate. “Shoot,” she says. “What a stunned broad.” Nobody bawls her out or even teases her as they would anyone else. She is a favourite with them, though it’s hard to put your finger on why. It isn’t just that she’s easygoing: so is Liz, so is Pat. She has some mysterious, extra status. For instance, everyoneelse has a nickname: Hilary is Hil, Stephanie is Steph, Alex is Al; Joanne is Jo, Tricia is Trish, Sandy is San. Pat and Liz, who cannot be contracted any farther, have become Pet and Lizard. Only Ronette has been accorded the dignity of her full, improbable name.
    In some ways she is more grown-up than the rest of them. But it isn’t because she knows more things. She knows fewer things; she often has trouble making her way through the vocabularies of the others, especially the offhand slang of the private-school trio. “I don’t get that,” is what she says, and the others take a delight in explaining, as if she’s a foreigner, a cherished visitor from some other country. She goes to movies and watches television like the rest of them but she has few opinions about what she has seen. The most she will say is “Crap” or “He’s not bad.” Though