Free Things I Can't Forget by Miranda Kenneally Page B

hanging from his neck.
    “Did you write that? I mean, the song you were just playing?”
    “Yeah.”
    I nod and set my hands on my hips. “I’ve always loved your music.”
    He smiles and scratches the side of his neck. “Why’d you stop by?”
    I mumble, “One of our campers got hurt and Brad went to get him first aid…I can’t get my fire started.”
    He raises his eyebrows, then turns and starts pawing through a milk crate toppling with supplies. He pulls out a starter log the size of a Kit Kat bar, a roll of paper towels, a book of matches, and a can of Crisco.
    “This oughta do it,” he says, dumping the items into my arms.
    “Matt! I found a toad,” a tiny girl says, and he rushes to squat down next to her. They peer into the bushes. It’s really cute.
    I turn around and trudge back to my campsite, where I tuck the starter log inside a bunch of kindling and hold a lit match up to it. I stuff a wad of paper towels next to the burning starter log. The paper towels quickly turn to hot ash, so I drip Crisco onto the wood and a fireball bursts up.
    “Whoa, cool!” a camper named David says, and the boys rush to surround me.
    “Grab more skinny sticks,” I tell them, and soon we have a blazing fire, and then we’re saying grace before eating cheeseburgers hot off the grill. When Brad returns, carrying a heavily-bandaged Marcus over his shoulder, he smiles at my work and says, “Nice job.”
    I decide I like being part of Matt’s Crisco cult.
    A couple minutes later Matt appears at our campsite and salutes Brad. “Yo, Bumblebee Brad. How’s it goin’?”
    Brad winces and looks up from trying to get the knot out of a sparkly pink sneaker.
    “Bumblebee Brad! Bumblebee Brad!” Rick and Sophie start yelling, laughing their butts off.
    I cover my grin with a fist. Matt grabs one of the burgers I just cooked and slips it inside a bun. “Ow,” he says, sticking his thumb in his mouth.
    “The burgers are hot, you know,” I say, laughing.
    “Thanks for the warning.”
    “You’ve gotta pay for that.”
    He bites into it and chews. “Mmmm.” He chews some more and swallows. “That’s a good burger.”
    “Thanks,” I say, proud. “But you still owe me for it.” I rub my fingers together, indicating I want cash, and he grins.
    “As payment, later, I’ll play you a song I wrote, okay?”
    “Okay,” I say with a smile, remembering the girl whose beauty he compared to a redbird. I wipe my hair away from my sweaty face. “I need to go get ready for the talent show.” I have to put out the microphones and speakers and make sure the popcorn is popped.
    By the time I finish frantically running around trying to find the mike (it was under a chair in Megan’s office) and then determining how to plug the mike into the amp, the sun has completely set. The campers take their seats on the grass in front of the Great Oak porch (the stage). Blazing tiki torches and laughter surround me as I step up to the mike and say, “Welcome to the thirty-second annual Cumberland Creek talent show!”
    Everyone cheers, and I’m smiling because I got the fire going. I managed to cook dinner by myself. I say a quick thanks to God.
    I introduce the first act: a girl named Taylor, who’s doing a mime performance. Another girl sings songs while doing interpretative dance, and a boy juggles three bowling pins he found in a closet in the art pavilion.
    I laugh so hard when Ian sings Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” along with two of his boy campers. They use brooms as microphones and when Ian hits the really high notes, he falls to his knees and clenches his eyes shut. Ian’s not a very good singer. At all. But he still gets a standing ovation.
    When he hops off the Great Oak porch, I say, “And you want to get a camp karaoke machine?”
    “Just wait until next week.” He winks. “Maybe I’ll do some Mariah Carey.”
    But the funniest thing—the sweetest thing, is that Matt plays guitar, accompanying six different