Vanilla

Cabins

When I was little, my parents used to send my sister and I to a month-long girl's camp every summer. Of course, Krista was completely at ease there. She was pretty, funny, outgoing, and adventurous. She made fast friends that she met up with and spent time with there every year.

But me, on the other hand....I had more difficulty. I was always "that short fat kid" growing up. That's honestly what they all called me. "That short fat kid." They couldn't waste the slightest effort on remembering some unimportant ugly duckling's name.

And Krista didn't make an effort to tell them I was her sister, either, so I didn't have that leverage. She would give me a quick hug in the backseat of the car when our parents dropped us off, and then as soon as the doors opened, we were strangers.

So I took to finding places to hang out where social interaction wasn't an issue. The roof of the mess hall. The small abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods. The rickety dock by the lake...after swimming times.

And I read books. Stacks and stacks of them. I was fortunate that this camp was a fairly affluent one, with its own library, and so I checked out three new books every day. Then I read them in my various spaces.

The adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were my favorites. Maybe it was because the setting of the campground was a parallel to the setting of these books, so it wasn't as difficult to escape from this place and imagine myself a character in the stories.

One summer, when Krista and I returned home from camp--her with all of her art pieces and letters written by her numerous friends stuffed in her bag and me with a couple of books I had "borrowed"--my parents asked us their customary questions. And they pasted on their customary smiles; the ones that, when genuine, should convey love and care to a child. But theirs were never genuine.

Well, Krista always grabbed hold of the toothy lies. I still don't understand how I was the only one who saw through them.

"Krista, did you have fun?"

"Oh, yes, mom!" Krista's eyes lit up and she proceeded to describe, in vivid detail, everything she had done. 

Then my turn came. "So Jackie...did you make any friends this year?"

I swallowed hard. The past few years I had always silently shaken my head when posed with this question and then locked myself in my room. What was the point in feeding their fake-hungry hearts? But this time, I decided that maybe I could get something favorable out of replying: maybe I wouldn't have to deal with the pity stares if I said something.

"Um, yeah..." I replied. "One girl. Her name is Becca."

My dad patted me on the back. "That's good, pork chop." Emotionless.

I nodded, trying not to flinch at the degrading nickname. Then I made use of the silence by finally escaping to my room.

They would never have to know that Becca was actually the name I had given to a dragonfly that had frequented the dock.