Camp Rewind Page 2

  Maybe I should go.

  “If you hate it, you can always leave.” Dawn reassured her with a smile. “The cool part about being a grown-up at camp is that you’ll have your own car. You can drive yourself right the hell home, whenever you want.”

  “That’s true.” Alice flicked her gaze again to the brochure in Dawn’s hands. She sighed. “I’m sorry. As much as I want to try, I honestly can’t see myself going through with this.”

  “Well, then that’s the problem.” Dawn handed the brochure back to her, and Alice took it without thinking. “Close your eyes with me.”

  Having learned to trust Dawn’s methods—especially when they didn’t involve communal sleeping arrangements or cavorting with groups of attractive strangers—Alice did as instructed. “Now what?”

  “Imagine yourself arriving at camp. Parking. Getting out of your car, pulling your suitcase from the trunk, finding the main office where you’ll give your name to check in.”

  Eyes tightly shut, Alice was already struggling not to vomit. “I feel sick.”

  “Breathe. In, out.” Dawn inhaled and exhaled audibly. Alice matched her rhythm, and after a few breaths, as her stomach began to settle, Dawn went on. “Now picture yourself meeting someone—a friend or something more—and having the time of your life. What that might feel like, how much confidence you would gain. How happy you would be.”

  Alice let the fantasy carry her away, but not for long. She’d yearned for true companionship as far back as she could remember, but thinking about the subject stirred up vague, confusing, unsettling desires that she didn’t know how to address. Forcing back those thoughts before they could take hold and prey on her emotions, she opened her eyes and pinned Dawn with a hard look. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore today.”

  Dawn’s expression faded, ever so slightly, into disappointment. “Like I said, Alice, I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

  More than almost anything, Alice hated to disappoint. She blamed her mother for that. Guts twisted, she mumbled, “Sorry.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. But will you do me a favor?”

  Alice sniffled. “Maybe.”

  That earned her a chuckle. “Take the brochure home. Go online and do a search for more information. Think about it, sincerely. Optimistically.”

  Full of dread, Alice stared again at the brochure that had made its way back to her hands. “All right.”

  “Nobody will force you to go.”

  Good. She nodded. “I understand.”

  “You’ll have to make the choice yourself.” Dawn caught her gaze, forcing eye contact. “All I can do, Alice, as your therapist and someone who genuinely cares about you, is strongly advise that you consider enrolling in the upcoming session. You can’t overcome your fears until you confront them. After all the good work you’ve done during the past year, it’s time to take the next step. I have no doubt that you’re ready for this. You’re ready to be happy.”

  She was ready. Except when she wasn’t. Alice cursed under her breath, fighting the urge to rip the Camp Rewind brochure to shreds. It would be better than succumbing to the full-body sobs threatening to take over. If only the happiness she so desperately wanted would simply…happen to her. Unfortunately, as Dawn never hesitated to point out, life didn’t work that way. If she wanted to be happy, she had to do her part. She had to try.

  “Fine,” Alice muttered. When she saw the degree to which Dawn’s eyes lit up, she clarified her point. “I’ll go online. Check it out. Think about it.”

  Dawn beamed at her as though she’d already signed up. “I’m proud of you.”

  “I didn’t say I was going.” Alice frowned. Why did it feel like she had?

  Dawn’s expression of deep satisfaction never wavered. “You can let me know what you’ve decided next week. We’ll talk about coping mechanisms and the cognitive behavioral tools for dealing with your anxiety in a camp-like setting. We can also role-play introducing ourselves to one another and making small talk.”

  As much as she hated the way Dawn always managed to push her exactly where she didn’t want to go, she was also grateful. A little. Maybe. Stomach aching, Alice heaved a sigh and buried her face in her hands.

  “Want to spend our last couple minutes together telling me how much you hate my suggestions? That usually seems to make you feel better.” Dawn sounded amused. Good for her.

  Alice shook her head. “Not this time.”

  She did hate the suggestion, of course. A summer camp for grown-ups sounded like the perfect social hell. Unfortunately, it also kind of, sort of, sounded like fun.

  And it was probably, as much as she hated to admit it, exactly what she needed.

  Chapter Two

  Rosa Salazar parked her brand-new-to-her-but-used car in an empty spot in the corner of Camp Rewind’s gravel parking lot, as far from the main office as she could get. Then, hands shaking, she slipped on her sunglasses and checked her appearance in the mirror. She was still struggling to get used to her recently bobbed haircut, a dramatic change from the long, dark locks she’d treasured since adolescence. She hoped the sacrifice had been worth it and that nobody would recognize her during this first tentative step back into the land of the living after a year and a half in Internet-induced hell.

  As was her habit, Rosa glanced at her phone despite the fact that she’d vowed to stop doing so for the next four days, minimum, at least fifty miles ago. An on-screen notification alerted her to the fact that she’d received three emails during her hours-long drive through the redwoods. One from her mother, full of concern, a short, encouraging note from her best friend Trayvon—one of the few people who’d stuck around after the firestorm she’d unleashed with a single, freelance essay picked up by a popular gaming website—and finally, an anonymous, colorfully detailed rape and death threat bearing the subject line, Die you cunt social justice warrior slut whore.

  “Just another day online.” Wearily, Rosa deleted the threatening email and powered down her phone. She was almost numb to such correspondence at this point. Almost. “What a perfect time to unplug.”

  She studied her reflection again, trying to judge the likelihood that someone would recognize her. The woman in the mirror looked nothing like the small photo posted alongside her lengthy critique of the previous year’s massively bestselling video game for both its sexist and racist sensibilities, as well as its overreliance on sexually violent imagery to tell a lurid, immature story. She also appeared far older, and less optimistic, than the various snapshots of her younger, carefree, sometimes provocatively posed, college-aged self that her detractors had scraped from every social media account she’d ever created during the ugly, rage-filled aftermath of her essay’s publication, when the Internet reacted to her opinions by creating cruel memes and sometimes downright pornographic images mockingly depicting her face and body. Best of all, she bore very little resemblance to the woman whose solo masturbation video—filmed for and texted to an ex-boyfriend years ago, long before she’d realized how easily cloud storage could be hacked by those determined to ruin someone’s life—had been disseminated online without her consent, swiftly going viral and doing exactly that.

  Some days it felt like everyone in the world had seen her naked. Touching herself. Moaning, saying stupid, insipid things. Things she’d never intended for anyone except her ex-boyfriend Marcus to hear. Logically, she knew not everyone followed Internet and social media scandals of the month, but living in the Bay Area, it rarely felt that way.

  Even her father had seen the stupid video, the first few seconds at least, after some asshole emailed him the file. And it didn’t happen only once. Both her parents’ inboxes had been so flooded in the beginning that eventually her mother had to change addresses. Her father stopped going online altogether.

  Rosa flipped the mirror up, no longer able to stomach the sight of her own face. After the past year and a half, she had a keen understanding of why public shaming persisted
as one of the most universal, enduring, devastating forms of punishment known to civilization. It worked. Between her public humiliation and the unrelenting flow of threats promising physical and / or sexual violence, suffering, and even death, she spent most days feeling lower than nothing. Subhuman. A source of endless pain for all the people who cared about her. Those few she had left, at least.

  She exhaled. “Enough self-pity.” This whole summer-camp experience was supposed to help her escape her life and return to a simpler time when she wasn’t an object of ridicule and / or someone who incited violent rage the world over. A time when she wasn’t afraid to make a new friend or look a man in the eyes. Camp was about reinventing herself, even if only for a few days.

  Here, Rosa Salazar didn’t exist. During her stay at Camp Rewind, she would be Lila Sanchez: high school teacher, technology-phobic thus unfamiliar with Internet culture, interested in socializing only with other women. She didn’t normally close herself off to any possibility for friendship or romance, having dated across the gender spectrum over the years, but between her almost exclusively male online cult of hate and the ex-boyfriend who’d dumped her right before the vicious comments on her article hit critical mass, she was ready to take a break from guys for a while. Besides, women seemed more unlikely to be familiar with the saga of her gaming-induced infamy. A sexist thought, she knew, but likely also the truth.

  With a deep, steadying breath, Rosa got out of her car and trudged to the back of it. She hoisted her duffel bag from the trunk, then stopped and glanced around the lot as wave after wave of doubt rolled over her. Two guys who looked to be in their mid-thirties emerged from the front and passenger seats of a souped-up muscle car parked next to the entrance. They both spared her semi-interested glances as she stood rooted in place behind them, and then one slapped the other on the back of the head and took off running. His buddy whooped and sprinted after his friend, both of them acting like twelve-year-old boys instead of grown men pushing forty.

  Maybe this was a mistake. She should have gone to a women-only camp, at least, even if the closest one she’d been able to locate was five states away. After being threatened with sexual assault in all its horrific permutations for more than seventeen months, she had a hard time not feeling skittish about the idea of wild, enthusiastic, alcohol-fueled masculinity.

  Even as the worries flew through her head, Rosa rejected them. “No.” She slammed the trunk shut and turned to face the office where the men had disappeared. “Fuck everyone. I’m not a victim.”

  As far as mantras went, it wasn’t the most elegant or convincing. But it was hers.

  As she took her first, tentative steps away from the security of her car, Rosa noticed that she wasn’t the only one experiencing second thoughts. At the other end of the row where she’d parked, a lovely but absolutely petrified-looking woman with dark, shoulder-length hair was white-knuckling her steering wheel while she watched Rosa’s slow march toward the main office. What a relief to see someone who appeared even more anxious than she felt. Rosa smiled at the woman but immediately regretted it when she saw the obvious alarm her attempt at encouragement had caused. The woman’s arm twitched as though she was going to turn the key she’d no doubt left in the ignition, but instead she stared down at her lap, hard.

  Rosa glanced away quickly, happy to afford the woman some privacy to battle her nerves. She, more than anyone, appreciated the exquisite agony of being scrutinized in public. Still, she hoped the woman would manage to gather her courage. Now that they’d shared a few seconds of panic in the parking lot of Camp Rewind, Rosa couldn’t help but feel that a kind of bond had been created. Or, at the very least, that she’d identified a promising candidate for a camp friendship. It was impossible to imagine someone so obviously timid passing judgment or making critical, mean-spirited comments to a stranger, though Rosa had certainly been taken by surprise in the past.

  Once she reached the camp office, Rosa paused, still tempted to turn around and leave. And go where? When home was no longer a sanctuary and death threats were delivered to her purse, did it really matter where she spent the next three nights? She sighed. In the end, only the thought of the shy woman in the parking lot—and how badly she would need a friend if she ever made it out of her car—imbued Rosa with the strength to go check in.

  *

  “Stupid,” Alice muttered to her thighs, still too afraid to raise her head and check if the woman was gone. She tightened her hands into fists, digging her short fingernails into her palms until it hurt. “Can’t even smile back and I’m supposed to spend the next three nights here? Yeah, that’ll be great. Just perfect.”

  Frustrated when a fat tear dropped onto one of her balled fists, Alice consciously relaxed her fingers and used the collar of her T-shirt to dab at her face. The only way she could possibly make this situation worse was by giving herself red, crybaby eyes. That’s what her mother had called them, on the few occasions when Alice had failed to keep her emotions in check and wept in her presence. Red, crybaby eyes would embarrass everyone, not least of all Alice. They would draw judgment, criticism, perhaps even mockery. Tears were unacceptable. Inappropriate.

  Wrong.

  Alice finished dabbing her eyes and peered at her face in the mirror. She looked…mediocre. Her mother had raised her to present herself as perfect as possible in front of others. That meant not only her appearance, which ought to be impeccable, but also her mood, attitude, and intellectual abilities. Alice sighed. No wonder she was so intimidated when she interacted with her peers, why she expected everyone she met to critically assess her and then find her lacking. As a child, she’d been told that’s what would happen, every time, without fail. Dawn kept assuring her that, by and large, most people didn’t care enough to scrutinize strangers for faults, and furthermore, the world was full of kind, open-minded, nonjudgmental people. Rejecting the lessons of her upbringing in favor of a less harsh outlook was a constant struggle, but Alice knew she needed to trust Dawn’s wisdom if she ever wanted to grow.

  Girding herself, Alice scanned the parking lot but couldn’t find the woman who’d smiled at her. Evening was fast approaching, and the lot had filled up since Alice had first arrived two hours ago. She assumed most everyone had already checked in. They were likely in their cabins choosing beds right now, which would leave her no option except whatever was left over. With her luck, probably a terrifyingly tall top bunk in the middle of a crowded room. Tonight the camp was hosting an opening ceremony, some kind of group trivia challenge designed to help introductions, then a bonfire scheduled for after sunset, and every last bit of it sounded almost as fun as being waterboarded. Could she really go through with this? She didn’t want to disappoint Dawn by leaving, but this was even more terrifying than she’d anticipated.

  Alice steadied her breathing and closed her eyes, then visualized herself getting out of the car and walking into the main office. Pictured the woman who’d smiled at her standing in there, also checking in. Maybe if the whole interaction wasn’t so unexpected, Alice could manage to smile back. With her eyes still closed, she practiced. Imagined the woman—pretty, seemingly friendly—greeting her with an amiable nod, a flash of her teeth. Fantasy-Alice grinned back while real-life Alice ghosted a smile, in case someone was watching. After a moment, she opened her eyes. As the real world flooded back, so did her doubts.

  Exhaling, Alice murmured, “Plan B, then.” She opened her glove box and withdrew three hand-rolled cannabis cigarettes she’d brought along in case of emergency. After a lot of research and a little experimentation, she’d discovered that certain strains of the plant helped to calm her anxiety, even enabling her to become more social at times. A toke or two usually had a positive effect, and although she’d had reservations about actually bringing her alternative medication to camp, now it seemed like quite possibly the only thing that would make her brave enough—or at least mellow enough—to walk through that front gate.

  She crawled into the backseat
and rolled the window halfway down, grateful for the now-deserted parking lot. Lighting up, she took three long drags in slow succession, exhaling each time into a personal air filter so as not to stink up her car or her clothes. When she was done, she carefully extinguished the remainder of the joint and sealed it in a smell-proof container she’d brought along for just that purpose. Once she’d tucked all of her supplies back into her suitcase, she returned to the driver’s seat, leaned back, and let out a sigh of relief as both her body and mind began to relax.

  “That’s better.” Alice closed her eyes again, once more picturing the woman who’d smiled at her. She really had been attractive, which was a big part of the reason the friendly gesture had been so frightening. Though Alice had never seriously considered dating women, she couldn’t deny that they figured prominently in her deepest, darkest sexual fantasies. Warm and euphoric from the cannabis, Alice allowed herself to slip into a brief daydream.

  She imagined walking into camp, only to be grabbed by the smiling woman and pushed against a tree for a passionate make-out session. She fantasized gaining the sexual confidence to both give and receive pleasure like she never had before and finally behaving like a normal person, capable of doing and feeling the things normal people did and felt.

  Alice opened her eyes, glad when the fear didn’t come roaring back. Rather than feel afraid, she felt peaceful yet resolved, albeit frustrated and even a little horny. If she didn’t go inside, she would end up spending the next three nights alone, as always, wishing for more, stupidly, while refusing to go out and grab the opportunities that presented themselves.