Free Not a Happy Camper by Mindy Schneider Page A

if it had come to pass.
    After spending the entire day resting and drinking tea with lemon (which Kenny was only too happy to fetch), Dana got her voice back an hour before the show. It was time to get into our costumes. Once out of her nun’s habit, Dana would get to wear a fabulous blue dress which tied in the back and showed off the fact that, unlike mine, her body went in at the waist and out at the chest. I got to wear a size eighteen maid’s uniform which someone on the Boys’ Side kitchen staff had borrowed from a relative who worked in a retirement home. Maddy did my hair for me, pulling it back in a bun to look more maid-like, but it only made me look the way I did at the Springfield Pool in my bathing capped all-nose days.
    Philip, in charge of opening and closing the curtain, told me I looked cute so I stuck my tongue out at him. The play was well received and no one seemed to mind that the seven von Trapp children were all approximately the same age as each other and their parents and everyone else in the show. Dana, of course, got a standing ovation.
    At my former camp, there was a counselor, Lorelei Cohen, who was studying to be a professional choir conductor and after plays she would lead us in the Camp Cicada anthem, the words to which were shown on an overhead projector. The song contained many phrases I found repugnant and I was relieved to be only mouthing the words “Happiness has found us/Pure love surrounds us/Cicada, I pledge to thee.” After that, we’d crowd out the door, pushing and shoving for no good reason other than that was what we did. I expected pretty much the same thing here, but Camp Kin-A-Hurra had no official theme song. Instead, we sang
Taps
:

    â€œDay is done/Gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well/Safely rest
God is nigh”
    Because there was no overhead projector, a lot of people sang it wrong and the last line came out “God is nice.” A pleasant thought, but I was a stickler for accuracy and let this error bother me all summer.
    We were the second group to put on a play this season and I wondered if the same thing would happen after
Taps
that had happened the week before, following the nine-year-olds’ production of
The Me Nobody Knows
. Sure enough, everyone in the audience ran up onstage and congratulated everyone in the play. Even me. People I barely knew were hugging me and telling me I was great and they sounded like they meant it. This went on for about ten minutes, and when the crowd onstage finally cleared, Philip headed toward me, arms outstretched, so I waved, jumped down and looked around for Kenny.
    I found him. He was watching something in the shadows at the back of the stage and he had a sad, hurt look on his face. Kenny was watching Dana and Aaron, partially hidden behind the stage curtain, locked in an embrace and a long, lingering kiss. Their secret was out. Now everyone would know they were a couple. Even Kenny. Dana was no longer available for the role of girlfriend.
    And I was the understudy, waiting in the wings.

    â€œSecond verse, same as the first
A little bit louder and a little bit worse...”

5
    â€œJ UST FIVE MORE MINUTES . P LEEEASE !” E XHAUSTED FROM HER WORK on the stage, Dana wanted to sleep through breakfast and Maddy, who lived to avoid confrontation, gave in. The rest of us trudged down to The Point for reheated eggs while Dana went back to sleep. Or so we thought.
    About twenty minutes later, with her stomach growling, Dana heard the Food & Garbage Truck rumble by and figured she’d hitch a ride halfway down to the dining room. Another one of Saul’s bargain purchases, this small blue roofless vehicle, a poor cousin of the Green Truck, was used to transport meals from the boys’ kitchen to the girls’ dining room. Maddy rode it back after her morning jogs around the lake. The driver, a wild-eyed toothless local man named George, would deliver the