Authors: Dan Carr
“Talking circle.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Something required to progress in your levels.”
“Sure, because that’s something I really care about.”
“Maybe you will some day.”
There was nothing fun about talking and there was nothing fun about circles. But Guy pointed to my doom. In the distance, up by the gate at the top of the cliff, was Sharon, waving at me, beckoning me back to my group.
11:
HALF NAKED
Before my granny died from being 75-years-old, she told me that there was no one happier than someone who whistled.
It was an allusion of a peaceful mind, someone lost in a place that wasn’t in front of them, and no matter how bad things got, someone who could whistle was always going to be okay.
I whistled.
“Could you stop that whistling.”
I looked up.
Karen was just ahead of me. Her tight braids pulled at the roots of her hair, and made her eyes look like they were being tugged to the sides of her head. There had to be a better hairstyle than those braids, and they had to be hurting her. But she wore them like she had no other choice. Maybe it was all she knew how to do with the kind of hair she had.
“I could stop, sure.” I whistled non-sense from then on. No particular tune, just awful sounds that made whistling the worst. And then I whistled that camp song from the other night,
Black Socks
.
Karen was cranky. That was something all of us hormonal teenagers were probably used to—attitude switching on a dime. I had heard all about it from my folks. She turned around and pretended to ignore me. There was no such thing as actually ignoring annoying people, you could only pretend to.
“I love to whistle,” Sharon said. She began to whistle
Black Socks
too. I stopped because suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore.
Rick’s group of boys were waiting for us. They were spread around in a circle, lost in the chitchat of manliness and muscles and pubes for moustaches. Karen made a beeline for the spot next to Murray. I knew where I was sitting as soon as she did that.
“Excuse me.” I tried to get around her.
“Move it, Valerie,” Karen said.
“You move it.” I shoved her.
She shoved me back. I flew across the pit and landed on the ground.
“Did you trip?” Sharon gasped. She held out her hand for me to take. I stared at her old hand, and it was so close to my face that I could almost smell her skin.
“Nope, just a really big wind blew me over. Like a huge one.” I stood up and grabbed the spot next to Murray. “That and there’s a lot of sticks and stones around here. Maybe even some bones.”
“Well be careful,” Sharon said.
Karen was still standing in the circle.
“There's a spot over there next to Brooke," I told her.
Sharon started things off fast. We had our jugs of water in our hands and I leaned forward, took a sip of 49, and tried not to make eye contact with anyone.
"This is the talking stick." Sharon held up a colourful stick. "When you have it, you can talk. When you don't have it, you can't talk. You can voice whatever is on your mind, and you don't have to have a point. Before we begin, are there any questions?"
"What's the point?" Freckled Landon asked.
"The point is to open up. The point is to trust the people around you. The point is to listen. But mostly, the point is to be free." Sharon had her arms outstretched like some sort of bird. "I will start off the talking stick session today. My topic will be 'first time'. If you can, try and stay within my topic."
There were so many awkward and embarrassing scenarios headed my way. But all I cared about was Murray getting the stick. I wanted to hear what he had to say. I wanted to know what was going on in that criminal head of his.
"My first time stealing," Sharon said lowly. "Yes, I stole a piece of gum from a corner store when I was 6-years-old."
"No miss! You criminal!" Jack yelled.
"Excuse me, I have the talking stick," Sharon said.
The circle went quiet.
"I felt so guilty that I couldn't even eat it. So I hid it in my top drawer. But my mom liked to pry. She found it and asked me where I had gotten it. I was so nervous and scared that I couldn't force myself to lie. I burst out in tears and told her the truth."
I kept my head looking at the ground and thought about candy. My favourite thing was sour candy. And ice cream. That was what my parents used to bribe me with. If I was good, I could have ice cream. If you cleared your plate, you could have ice cream. But that didn’t work forever. Why was I not willing to do things for ice cream anymore? When had the reward become not enough? Staying up late was better. Or going out on school nights. Or staying in and hiding.
"She made me go back to that same corner store I took it from and tell the owner what I had done. Up until that point in my life, I had never been so embarrassed. The owner was stern with me, and I cried."
I looked up when she stopped talking.
"Now I have a point to my story, not that you have to. I learnt that it is better to tell the truth and feel awful for a bit. It will help fix your mistakes. Then you can go on and feel better."
I tapped my knee against Murray’s. He pulled it away.
Freckled Landon’s hand shot up.
She threw him the talking stick.
"That's not true. If you had kept the gum, you could have felt the satisfaction of being above the law, and getting something for free. Going back to the owner only made you even more upset, and that got you into even more trouble." He threw the talking stick back at her.
"I'm sorry you feel that way, Landon. But maybe during your stay here you'll learn to think differently," she said. "Anyway, who's next? Don't make me choose."
I relaxed when I saw her feet pass me.
"Tracy. I choose you then."
I looked up. Tracy had eyebrows that were on the top of her head. Tracy had knees that were shaking as she sat. And apparently, Tracy had a fear of public speaking—didn’t we all?
“Me?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
I felt nervous for her. I wanted her to do well, but I didn't even know her. She looked like she was in shock and maybe going to puke. And for some stupid reason, I didn’t want her to to do something she clearly was uncomfortable doing. Because I had already been a jerk to her before—
I jumped up.
“Valerie?” Sharon looked nervous.
"I'll do it.”
I seemed to have shocked everyone. Especially Tracy.
When I took the stick from Sharon, Tracy's doe eyes were huge. Murray watched me carefully. He had a smirk on the side of his face, and when he rubbed his jaw, I heard the sound of his stubble on his skin. He looked good. A little hair on his head, a little hair on the bottom. Short. I’m sure he wanted to know what I was going to say. I'm sure everyone wanted to know.
I walked slowly around the middle of the circle. I didn’t know where to begin. I didn't want to pick something that needed a lot of explaining, and I didn't want something that could be looked at as the reason I was there. There was no reason why I was there. No specific, single thing. I wasn’t going to talk about why my parents thought I needed help.
“My story is about my first time…at summer camp.” I looked at Brooke. She yawned. I knew I was going somewhere safer. “I was 8-years-old. And I didn’t want to go at all. But Mum wanted me out of the house and to meet new people. She dropped me off and I threw up in the parking lot where parents were dropping their kids off. I was so anxious, and I even cried. I just didn’t want Mum to leave me.”
Sharon nodded, trying to encourage me along. But that was scary seeing someone do that—wanting to hear more. There was so much I could say. That was a scary thing. That I could say anything in the world, the worst kinds of things, mad things, and people would listen, judge me, or maybe agree.
"But Mum left me at camp because that was the whole point of summer camps. No parents. And it felt like I was never going to see her again, and it was going to be the worst summer ever. The camp counsellors led me up to the mess hall, and a little girl came up beside me. She sat down right next to me, and she had tears in her eyes as well.”
Murray was watching me. I became aware of everything I was doing. How I was standing with my knees locked. How my hands were moving—were they shaking? I kept my voice low. Monotone. Because anyone who had something important to say said it in monotone. Monotone was clean and efficient and serious and dependable. Monotone didn’t give a damn about anything.
"And camp was so scary in that moment because everything I knew was away from me. My sister wasn’t there, and I missed her making fun of my hair or my teeth or my clothes. I missed my older sister and that was
nuts
. I didn’t have any friends there, and it was scary thinking about where I was going to sleep every night. It was scary thinking about the things outside, and the noises at night. But as I sat there and thought about all the scary things that camp could create, there was someone beside me who was new to the system too.”
I stopped talking and looked at everyone. I hadn’t really been paying attention to them. I wasn’t even there with the people I was telling the story to anymore. I was back at Camp Hedgewood, I was 8-years-old, and I was scared out of my mind. And that was okay.
"So what did you learn from your experience?" Sharron asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
“I was scared of camp. I was a kid.”
“And?”
“And?” I looked at her.
“Yes?”
“And…so was that girl.”
She looked at me. Waited. Maybe she was thinking.
“Sharon I don’t know what else to say.”
“That’s okay.” She took back the talking stick.
I sat back down. Karen was looking at the ground. Brooke was playing with her hair. Twin and Twinner both took a sip of their water jugs, 89 and 4.
“Maybe it’s nice to know that there are people just as scared as you are,” Sharon said. “That it’s normal to be afraid. And you’re not alone with that feeling, even if you think you are. No matter what age you are, it is okay to be terrified.”
“Yeah maybe. Who knows.”
“If anyone else has anything to contribute, please take this talking stick from me.“ She brought her hand up to her lips. “Otherwise, just be quiet.”
And it went on. Boys and girls stood up and talked about their first soccer games and first time driving a car, and everyone was so scared at the time. Brooke talked about the first time she had sex because she was proud of being inappropriate.
“Brooke, that sounded scary,” Sharon said.
“It was, I didn’t think he was going to put it in all the way, but he did. And he was the one who cried, not me.”
When it was all done, the one person I wanted to hear from hadn’t moved an inch. And when Sharon let us go, Murray was the first to disappear. His mysteriousness made me even more curious about him. Maybe he was doing it on purpose.
“Valerie?”
I looked at Sharon. She had her arms crossed. Her sprained wrist was glaring at me.
“Thank you for sharing today,” she said. “That was good what you said.”
“Yeah, I was just rambling.”
“That’s fine. I’m glad you participated.”
I had participated and I hadn’t died. Nothing was different. Nobody said anything about it. Nobody had made fun of me. And still, I felt absolutely the same. Indifferent, and far away.
My cabin mates and I were getting along. Each day seemed to be getting better. I wasn’t dreading the activities as much, and I wasn’t thinking of home either. I was getting used to where I was, and following directions because I had to. No one had tried to kill each other yet, and we didn’t have reasons to fight. Things were calm. There was nothing to worry over, and we looked forward to our own bunks at the end of each day.
It was bedtime. The best part of the day was the end of it.
"Valerie, that was nice what you did for Tracy.” Brooke looked up at me from her bottom bunk. She tried to avoid Karen's feet hanging in her face.
Karen shushed her.
“Don’t shush me.”
Karen pointed over to the corner bunk toward the twins. They were fast asleep. Typical twins, in their own world. I wondered if they were together in one dream.
“What?” Brooke asked. She couldn’t see what Karen was doing on top bunk. She could only see so much from her bottom bunk cave.
"You’re annoying,” Karen said.
“Yeah, Brooke’s the annoying one. Sure,” I said. “You’re all over the place with your personalities. Are you like a skitzo or something? I have no idea if I even like you or not.”
Tracy laughed.
That was the first time I had ever heard her laugh. And it was a million times better that she had laughed at something I had said. It made me feel amazing. I had cracked the miserable. My stomach felt light, and their was a hint of nostalgia, like I was back at Camp Hedgewood.