Family + Camp (working title)

Chapter 19 Part 1: The Haunted Lake

After lunch in the dining hall the day before, Nell had returned to her bedroom and continued unpacking, settling into the new space. She was pretty happy with the way her room was turning out. Her posters were tacked up, and so were pictures of her and her friends. The room was larger than her old one, but it would take time to get used to. For one, it didn't smell like it belonged to her. Not yet. The scents of fresh paint still permeated it. The last camp director did not have children. He had a wife and they had nieces and nephews, but no kids of their own. Nell wondered how they had used the space—probably a sewing room or something.

Realizing she was slowing down, Nell wandered down the hall to the dining room. A sliding glass door opened onto a deck, which overlooked a backyard demarcated by a fence, which seemed silly given they lived in a forest. A redwood tree stood inside the fencing. Nell guessed it was about 100 years old. Would someone move the fence some day when the tree needed more space? Move this house? It must have been a sapling when the camp was built.

Camp Morgan was celebrating its fifty-fifth year of existence as a recreational camp. One thing Morrie had been talking about was swag. But was fifty-five really all that impressive? Nell didn't think so. Not as she gazed at the young tree providing shade.

After her break, Nell helped her mom with other rooms in the house. The kitchen with its dishes, glasses, utensils. The living room—trying to figure out where to hang their art, which were mostly family photos as well as some framed drawings Nell and Jamie had made when they were kids. Their maternal grandmother would get so excited about it all. Whenever she visited them, she'd take whatever Crayola, watercolor, or marker creations they had made and get it framed at a local frame shop, like their childhood scrawls were so amazing, so precious. So worthy of such treatment.

It was nice to be loved.

Since Jamie was in college, his room would be the study/guest room. He had long ago packed up most of his things and taken them to Cornell. All of his stuff was in boxes, except for his furniture—twin bed, bookcase, bureau, desk, etc. Would he even bother to unpack? Nell knew her mom would want to make up the bed before he came home for a brief visit. He needed to be back on campus in late August, so they'd get some time with him., but not much.

***

The next day, the summer staff started to arrive. For now, it was only the program staffers—camp counselors would check in a few days later. That's when staff training would begin in earnest. But the program staff needed to meet each other. To bond and connect and get to know the lay of the land, their responsibilities.

After a breakfast of cornflakes with sliced banana, Nell headed over to the pool with her father. It was your standard L shape, with lane lines laid out along the stem and a nine-foot deep end in the leg of the pool where there was a diving board and a not too exciting (but still cool because it existed) slide. The pool wasn't far from the dining hall, and Nell wondered how popular it would be compared to the lake. At her old camp, the pool was heavily, heavily used. No one got to swim in the Fields pond, unless they accidentally tipped over their canoe. That was basically all it was used for—canoeing. That and scaring campers with the story of a swamp monster who had abducted a counselor—a girl, of course (sexism sucked and lived on, even in the nineties)—and now all that was left of her was the sound of her weeping at night and the red glow of her eyes. How her eyes had went from normal (blue, probably) to diabolic red, that was for the vivid imaginations of every single man, woman, and child who heard this story to decide.