Sunlight

Leaving

Kelsey and I walk out of the lunchroom, both of us tacitly grateful to leave behind the smell of grease and sweaty little bodies that is as inherent to the room as the 70's linoleum and food encrusted kitchenette complete with a microwave that the kids naively and enthusiastically continue to nuke their food in. I know that I only have 20 minutes, so I don’t waste any time locating the half of the playground that the sun actually reaches-a place close enough to keep on eye on the kiddies but far enough away to discourage the little theater girls who like to come over and try to engage me in conversation. It’s not that their questions (what’s your favorite color?! Do you have a dog too?!) are especially bothersome, it’s just that I want to take full advantage of this momentary reprieve from the constant attention that is required to supervise a group of 35 kindergartens to third grader at acting camp.

Kelsey has the same idea, and lays down next to me, stretching in the sun like a cat and running her fingers through her cropped sandy colored hair, “boy hair” as the little girls on the screaming playground would say. I stay quiet, not because she scares me, but her spontaneous cutting albeit hilarious remarks keep me on edge. Fortunately, they are directed mostly at Naveh, the other councilor, who eats up the attention like the future theater major he is. 

“Hey, does it look like I was choked?” 

I look up in surprise. “Kinda.... Wait what? Are you okay Kelsey?”

Kelsey gives me her look of practiced disgust, a look usually only reserved for comments on her boyish haircut or for anything that comes out of Naveh’s mouth--a look obviously perfected though years of use. 

“Oh okay. Wait, what’s it from then?” 

“Yeah, Kelsey Jo, what’s it from then?” Naveh drawls, using his over the top imitation of Kelsey’s slight southern accent while walking over with his group of adoring 6 year old girls trailing behind. Being the only male at a theater camp can apparently transform even a skinny, 9 year old boy with a unibrow into a desirable prospect, at least in the minds of third grade girls. Unfortunately, Naveh is definitely letting this newfound attention go to his head. 

“I see Naveh has a fan club” Kelsey snidely remarks back

“Why don’t you tell everyone how"--

“Shut up. Hey girls, Naveh just told me he really wants to be chased again,” she yells, deftly manipulating the situation in her favor.

We watch the little girls play a very one-sided game of tag. “This week isn't really your week, is it?” I ask, half jokingly but also a little seriously because she has been acting a little off.

“What do you mean?”

“Well you seem really tired and stuff, I guess. And to be you’ve been a little harsher with Naveh than normal, to be honest”

“Nah, you know he enjoys the attention. And yeah, I guess I’m just really tired, of his inflated ego that is.”

“That’s true,” I add lamely, picking at the pieces of grass growing up through the concrete. 

“Also, my boyfriend is leaving for Afghanistan today,” she quietly adds, touching her neck. “So there’s that. All right, time to line the kiddies up again. You take the front this time, I don’t feel like it.”

Taboo

I’m walking back to her room when I see it"the unmistakable green and gold binding, the enticing and unabashed title stamped boldly over the writhing tattoo, the one piece of literature in my life that has been deemed “taboo” and “too mature” by my mama. The forbidden book calls to me, and before I am fully aware of my actions the book is awkwardly hidden under my pajamas and traveling clandestinely with me down the hall. 

So I steal “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” from my best friend’s parents' bookshelf.

Well, I guess “steal” is too harsh of a word, since I am planning of course to give Stieg Larsson’s masterpiece back, once it has been thoroughly read that is. It’s not my fault that I have been reduced to stealing, it’s my mother’s chronic feeling of parental inadequacy that has been acting up lately, which lead her to create this arbitrary limit of what I can and cannot read. But although I tell myself that my motives are pure, my heart still gallops as I try to casually walk down the rest of the hallway, a hallway that seems to have doubled in length since last I walked down it five minutes ago to get a glass of water. The early rays slant through the window, slithering like a snake up her still sleeping form, and the multitude of horse posters on the wall are my only witness as I stuff the book into the bottom of my backpack. 

Pretty Birds

I hear Sabina talking, her voice artfully intertwining with the endless music of the small birds singing in the background. Her words drift out of her open window--a window that she is obviously unaware of being open"as I amble back to my casa, the post-lunch lethargy setting in.

“How’d you do it? There are counselors, like, everywhere here.”

“I have my ways” she says, and then laughs like the bubbles in cola at her own cliché.

“Girl, you are sooo lucky. He’s like a god, I swear.”

Sabina has been going to El Lago del Bosque Spanish Immersion Camp for seven years. She has light brown hair, a pair of painted Toms, and the knowledge of all the secluded areas of camp that comes from returning to the same lake every summer. 

Sabina also has a boyfriend back in Los Vegas. 

I know this, because Emma told Dani that Sarita told her this. From the top bunk of the standard camp issued stacked twin beds, Emma and Dani, conscious of the enthralled casa hanging on to their every word, are shamelessly broadcasting the details of Sabina’s life as I walk in. 

"Sabina is a s**t" Emma whisper-speaks so our housemothers don’t hear. "She's been with this boyfriend for 5 years." 

"But" she adds, "OBVIOUSLY she's “Torta”, not Sabina, at least at camp anyways. And “Torta” doesn't have a boyfriend.”

The rumors and the jealously are both spreading like wildfire. Everyone's eyes watch as Sabina (or Torta, depending on who you ask) sits with her friends next to the fountain in the middle of the sunbaked plaza, seemingly unaware of the whispers and mutterings that are slowing condensing into dark rain clouds, a storm looming just above their bright laughter. 

The dry, brittle jealousy of the other girls has finally found its fuel, like gasoline, only in the form of a rumor. A combustion reaction occurs, scorching Sabina’s reputation faster than wildfire. 

Tired of all the drama that’s seems kind of untraditional for a “siesta,” I decide to walk down the shifting gravel path, past casa Santa Barbara and casa San Juan, down to the dock that the counselors have labeled "la playa" but that really is just a series of mildew covered boards arrogantly juxtaposing themselves against the glittering lake. 

And I see Brent, stretched out in the sun and flirting with the ever changing array of sunbathing girls in candy colored bikinis he has at his disposal--the same girls that whisper behind the back of Torta. I stand there and watch the girls laughing and chattering, like colorful, pretty, vapid little birds, and Brent, who seems to have forgotten about that girl in front of the fountain. 

Sun

His teeth flash as he smiles, mirroring the iridescent T.V. screen across the room--a T.V. that has unfairly gotten no attention for all its hard work tonight. The cursing of the South Park characters murmurs soothingly out of the speakers, like the white noise I fall asleep to at night. 

But sleep is the last thing on my mind right now, because he makes me feel like daylight, like sunlight sparkling on water--desirable, beautiful, idolized. My skin, the same skin that’s usually frigid from a climate my genes are not accustom to, feels alive, burning, but not in a painful way; in a way that tells you to drink in this moment, because your thirst might never be quenched again.

No, the only pain I'm feeling right now is the type you push back to the hidden recesses parts of your mind, the type you don’t want to admit to yourself. It’s the phantom ache of loss, loss you know that is inevitably coming, and when you arrive at that day this loss will hurt more than a thousand suns trapped underneath your skin, burning for eternity. 

But its worth it for this fleeting glow, this light that you know could be so easily extinguished by the realities that rise with the sun.