Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Swimsuit weather is just around the corner

"I'm looking for something more along the lines of a working farm. Somewhere she can learn to make cheese, harvest her own vegetables, skin a goat," Rufus told the director of the annual Ninety-second Street Y Summer Camp Fair. Rufus was concerned that Jenny was spending her entire spring break analyzing her rapidly developing figure in the mirror and perfecting her calligraphy. In order to avoid a repeat over the summer, he'd dragged her to the fair. What better place to hone life's necessary skills like cheese making and goat skinning than at summer camp?

What about a camp for champagne drinking and shopping? Burp!

Jenny clutched her father's arm as she took in her surroundings. The Y's gym was crowded with tables bearing summer camp leaflets and testimonials from previous campers. Camp directors aired films exhibiting their camp's offerings as parents and their charges wandered around the room, looking as dazed and overwhelmed as she felt.

The camp fair director flipped through her clipboard. She wore a khaki-colored safari dress, thick clear plastic glasses, flesh-colored knee-highs, and beige orthopedic shoes. Her hair was cut in a thick gray pageboy and her skin was doughy. She looked like she'd been doing her job a long time. "Lake Quinnipiac has goats, but the concentration there is on swimming."

"No!" Jenny practically shouted. The way her boobs were growing she'd be a double-F by summer. No way was she going swimming in public. "No swimming. What about an art camp?" Or perhaps there was a slimming camp for girls with giant breasts?

We must, we must, we must decrease our busts!

The director flipped through the pages in her clipboard again. "The Rhode Island School of Design has a wonderful camp." She peered at Jenny over her dorky thick plastic glasses. "You have to be fourteen," she added with a frown, obviously unable to determine the age of this tiny girl with a baby face and the chest of a stripper.

At least she'll never get carded.

Rufus was already distracted by a table covered with rocks. "Come on." He grabbed Jenny by the elbow and dragged her over. "What's this?" he demanded of the woman seated behind the table.

She wore a confusing brown-and-blue wool poncho "She wore a confusing brown-and-blue wool poncho that looked like it had been knit by left-handed two-year-olds. Her frizzy hair hung in two graying waist-length braids. On her feet were the type of woven leather sandals sold by street peddlers in Mexico.

"Rock people," she explained, even though the rocks were just plain rocks. "I'm Cindi Bridgehutter. And this is what we do at Camp Bridgehutter—make people out of rocks."

Jenny stared at the woman, who was obviously insane. She tugged on her father's too-tight Ben & Jerry's purple tie-dyed T-shirt. Maybe summer camp wasn't such a good idea after all. But Rufus stood his ground, already smitten with Camp Bridgehutter and its Rapunzel-haired founder.

"Dad," Jenny whined under her breath. Behind her two tall, skinny blond girls in skimpy white tennis dresses were registering for a tennis camp on Lake Placid. Jenny couldn't imagine her boobs bouncing around inside a tennis dress. Nope, tennis was out too.

"Of course that's just a metaphor. I'm an artist. It's an arts camp," Cindi Bridgehutter elaborated gaily. Her teeth were vaguely blue, and Jenny wondered if maybe she'd done too many weird drugs in her twenties or worn braces as an adult. Or maybe it was a rare gum disease.

Rock peoplitis?

"Aha! An arts camp!" Rufus crowed. "Sign her up!"

"Dad!" Jenny protested. Didn't he even want to know where the camp was? And what about goats? Five minutes ago he was adamant that she learn to skin a goat."

"We're based in my hometown of Wooten, Pennsylvania, near a lovely lake. Of course we have all the usual camp offerings like swimming, archery, and tennis, but they're optional. Our campers are encouraged to work on their craft. Our mission is to bring out the rock person within," Ms. Bridgehutter expounded, tugging on her braids for emphasis. "Every camper creates their own mounds. It's a wonderful thing each summer to watch the mounds grow."

Haven't a certain person's mounds grown quite enough?

"The rock person within!" Rufus sounded thrilled.
Actually, the camp didn't sound so bad. Jenny liked the idea that swimming was optional. She didn't know what was meant by "mounds," but she hoped it was another metaphor. "I do calligraphy," she ventured shyly. "And portraits. I entered the hymnal contest at school."

Ms. Bridgehutter flashed her blue teeth in a freaky Cat-in-the-Hat-like smile. She clearly had no idea what Jenny was talking about. Rufus was already filling in Jenny's name, address, and birthday on an admissions form. "I'll need a deposit check to secure her spot," the camp's director told him greedily.

Jenny glanced over at the next table, where a perky redheaded girl in a cheerleading outfit was showing off her latest cheer to the director of a cheerleading camp in Princeton, New Jersey.

"Give me an S-U-M-M-E-R! What's that spell? Summer! Go summer! Summertime!!"

There were long lines to sign up for both the cheerleading camp and the tennis camp. Across the gym a TV showed a girl riding a horse around an impressive course of jumps. The line for that camp was even longer. No one was signing up for Camp Bridgehutter. No one.

Um. Wonder why.

Jenny turned back to the table where her father was furiously filling out forms. Beneath one of the rock people was a photograph of a boy carving a face out of wood. He had wild, dark hair and fantastic arm muscles. "Oh, are there boys there?" she asked the blue-toothed camp director eagerly. She'd never even gone to school with boys, let alone sleepaway camp.

Boys, boys, boys!

"The ratio of boys to girls is three to one," Ms. Brigehutter explained. "Girls are all signing up for horseback riding and soccer camps these days." She handed Jenny an egg-size rock and flashed her blue teeth again. "I'm sure you'll have lots of inspiration."

Jenny turned the rock over and over in her hands as her father finished filling out the forms. Three boys to every girl. With those sorts of numbers, who wouldn't want to find the rock person within?Give me an S-U-M-M-E-R! What does that spell? Boys!