Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Down and out in malariaville

Camp Bridgehutter in Wooten, Pennsylvania, turned out to have a pretty nifty art program. Campers were encouraged to roll themselves in paint, make clay molds of their fellow campers' bodies, and weave clothing for each other. All of the art was hands-on, meaning paintbrushes, pencil sharpeners, scissors, and potter's wheels were strictly forbidden. Campers were supposed to "use their raw materials" to make their art, meaning they had to use their own bodies or things they found in the woods to smear on the paint, mold the clay, or cut the wool.

Let's hope they allowed toilet paper.

Jenny liked paintbrushes and scissors and pencil sharpeners. She didn't want to use a rock to cut a goddamned piece of paper or an ant-infested stick to mix her paint. She'd been at camp for nearly two weeks and she could safely say she hated it. The entire campus reeked of rancid organic crunchy peanut butter. Her cabin was damp. The shower had spiders. Her mattress smelled like pee and squeaked like crazy. Some of her art teachers were okay, but it was hard to get excited about chiseling wood with a rock. And her boobs refused to stop growing. Her father had sent her a care package full of marshmallows and Cadbury chocolate and Hostess cupcakes on the second day of camp because he already missed her so much, but she'd thrown it out, for fear that all that fat and sugar would only make her boobs grow even bigger. And for fear that the mean girls in her cabin would be even meaner.

"She looks like she drank the stuff they put in breast implants," Rachel Werner told her best friend and cabinmate, Jill Dube, in a loud whisper. Rachel and Jill were from Delaware and this was their second year at Camp Bridgehutter. They'd requested tiny cabin 5, nicknamed Malariaville because of all the mosquitoes, for themselves. But the camp had run out of room and had been forced to stick Jenny in there with them. Rachel had curly blond hair down to her waist that she liked to show off by dangling it off the side of the top bunk, blocking Jenny's reading light. Jill wore her straight brown hair in a ponytail every day and gave herself a pedicure every single night. She'd brought seven bottles of nail polish to camp along with a very comprehensive Bliss Spa pedicure kit.

It is crucial to keep one's toenails trimmed and buffed when one is scouring the woods for useful rocks and twigs.

"You mean silicone?" Jill offered helpfully.

Rachel snickered. "Yeah. She looks like she drank it and her boobs just totally inflated."

Today it was raining, so Jenny and her bunkmates were stuck in their cabin for the rest of the two-hour lunch period until weaving class began. Jenny had been weaving a set of four green-and-yellow hemp napkins. She couldn't wait to send them to her dad—he'd be so proud. Jenny lay on the bottom bunk pretending to ignore the nasty whispering above her head while she read The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, one of the books on the Constance Billard eighth-grade summer reading list. Poor Countess Olenska was totally ostracized by everybody in New York simply because she was beautiful and wanted to have a little fun after leaving her mean old husband back in Europe. Well, good for her, Jenny thought, wondering briefly what size bra Countess Olenska would wear if she lived in modern times.

She slapped at herself while she read, killing three mosquitoes as they gang-raped her calf. The mosquitoes at Camp Bridgehutter were rabid and ravenous. They went up your nose and feasted on the flesh between your fingers. She scratched miserably at an old bite on her knee, smearing blood all over the place. It was safe to say Serena van der Woodsen never went to Camp Bridgehutter. Jenny would have noticed the scars. Right now Serena was probably stretched out in the sand on some pristine white beach in southern France wearing only a pair of Gucci bikini bottoms and her Chanel sunglasses.

Rain fell in torrents outside the cabin. Every time Jenny glanced out the window at her wet, densely forested surroundings she yearned for the noisy brick, limestone, and asphalt surroundings of home. She could hardly fall sleep to the persistent cheep-cheep of crickets. Give her a police siren any day. The cabin's screen door banged open and a lanky, soaking wet, redheaded, freckle-faced boy Jenny had seen around the camp poked his head in.

"Hey." The boy greeted her like she was the only one there, even though Rachel was lying in the bunk above Jenny, and Jill was in the other top bunk. Jenny could feel them peering curiously down from above. "I'm Matt. You're Jennifer Humphrey, right?" He was wearing fatigue-print swim trunks and nothing else. His body was skinny, sunburnt, and mosquito-bitten.

Jenny nodded, blushing at the sight of his bare, rain-spattered ribs. How did he know her name? She was afraid to say anything that Rachel and Jill might make fun of later, and afraid to move in case her boobs did something embarrassing all on their own. At the beginning of June she'd upped her bra size to a 32D, but she'd stuck with the Polish bras because they provided the most coverage.

It sounds like she needs it.

"I just wanted to say hi," Matt told her. His nose was small and pointy like a doll's and he was absolutely covered with freckles. His eyes were light blue, and his teeth were small and straight. He was kind of gangly and goofy-looking, but what boy her age wasn't?

"Hi," Jenny squeaked. She waited for him to say something else, but he just raised his hand in salute and the screen door slammed shut behind him as he dashed out into the rainy Pennsylvania woods once more.

"Hail, Camp Big Hooters, hail!" Rachel and Jill sang from above, cackling hilariously as they had done so many times before.

If Serena were there, she would have thought of something clever to say, but Jenny just held her book open in front of her face, her cheeks aflame and her mind racing. Matt was cute and seemed super nice. Maybe she was turning into the type of girl who would have more guy friends than girl friends. She and Dan had always gotten along, so that would make sense. Girls seemed to hate her now before she even opened her mouth. Guys were more understanding.

Hmm. Wonder why?