Free Pregnant Pause by Han Nolan

stinks."
    "Look," Leo says. "They don't need you to know how to do stuff. They just need your attention. You think you can do that? Think you can pay a little attention to someone besides yourself?" His scrubbed little face turns pink with anger.
    "Yeah, sure, Dad. Whatever you say, Dad," I say, and even though I'm annoyed with Leo, I've got nothing better to do, so I stay. All week long I stay and watch Leo and talk to the kids out on the porch. I don't get any better at the crafts, but as nasty as Leo was to me, I discover that I kinda like him, and this totally surprises me. He's much more patient with me than I deserve, and he's funny with the campers, and I can tell they all love him. He doesn't take things too seriously, and he's good at what he does—the crafts stuff. I notice he's got really nice hands—nice work hands, or maybe artist's hands. He's going to be a ceramics major in college, of all things. Who knew you could major in clay? Best of all, Leo's open to suggestions, like when I said, "Did you know you eat with your mouth open? It's disgusting. Why don't you try keeping it closed?"
    "Ay-uh, okay," he says, just like that, and he does it!
    Or once I said, "No offense, Leo, but you dress like a dork. Can't you see how different you look from everybody else? You're an artist; you should notice stuff like that. I mean, come on, you look like the all-American tourist."
    Leo didn't get all bent out of shape about what I said. He just laughed. "Ay-uh, that's the idea," he said. "We're all only tourists in this world."
    "Is that supposed to be deep?" I asked. "Because if it is, it went right over my head."
    "I'm merely stating a truth," he said. "We're all tourists, no need taking ourselves too seriously. Some of these campers act as if their world is coming to an end if they don't lose weight fast enough or if they've got a zit on their face or their craft doesn't come out perfectly. I'm just keepin' it light; that's all."
    The only thing Leo really needs me as an assistant for, be sides talking to the kids, is to keep track of the time so he can send the campers off to their next class on time, or so he doesn't miss lunch or dinner. They do ring the bell for meals, but he never hears it, because he's so involved with the kids. If any one of them does something great, some good deed, or a great job on their craft or something, they get to sign the back of his camp shirt. The first time I saw this, I couldn't believe how excited the kid got. He picked a colored sharpie out of Leo's back pocket and wrote his name with a flourish, and then paraded himself around announcing that he was the very first one to get to sign Leo's shirt. Big whoop! I didn't get it, but all the kids love it. It's what happens at Camp WeightAway. It's the camp tradition.
    Leo always wears one of his Hawaiian shirts over the camp shirt, and kids love to try to sneak up on Leo and lift the shirt to see how many names he has back there. Leo pretends they've pulled a fast one on him.
    Another thing that surprises me, besides liking Leo, is that I kinda like the kids.
    Ashley Wilson, the girl who's so mean to Banner, is a real pill, and so are a few other girls, and there are some boys I'd like to bind and gag and abandon in a ditch somewhere, but most of the kids I enjoy ... and they seem to enjoy me.
    I spend most of my time on the porch outside the crafts hut talking with the kids who are knitting outside. They tell me about how they feel about coming to a weight-loss camp. Generally they love the camp, but they feel embarrassed that they have to be here. "I'd die if my friends found out where I am," one girl says, and another says, "There's kids a lot fatter than me in school, but you don't see them here."
    Several of the kids, I find out, have been coming to Camp WeightAway for years, and they lose the weight in the summer and gain it all back in the winter. "Food is my best friend when I'm at home," a boy named Alfie says. "If I didn't