Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet (9781940192567) by Ruden Jenny

Author:Ruden, Jenny
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940192314
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc
Published: 2014-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

38

SEASICK

AFTER AN HOUR or so, it was clear Cambridge was so altered she couldn’t swim out of a teardrop. I probably should have followed her earlier, but I didn’t want to be a buzzkill.

After about thirty people asked me why I insisted on staying clothed, varying my answers—scurvy, venereal disease, I really am naked, you are just high—I tried to convince myself Cambridge would be OK. Five leftover cups of beer helped. In no time at all, we could leave this party and make our escape.

Obviously we’d missed the Greyhound I was hoping to take, but I’m sure there were hostels or shelters in San Francisco where we could stay until the next bus. Certainly there were other eastbound vehicles. Trains! I’d completely forgotten about trains. Maybe Glo even had a car, and he could take us to a station.

All I needed to do now was gather Cambridge and head back to Olive’s room. Sober her up a bit. The pizza would help with that. I sure hoped it’d still be there. I missed it. All those toppings crowded together, wondering what happened to us. Discs of pepperoni touching Canadian bacon, mushrooms, green peppers …

I was thinking about our forsaken thin crust pizza when I looked up and confronted Miss Marcia’s eyes, blinking slowly at me, as if I were a hallucination. Miss Marcia, our Utopia counselor, wearing nothing but her freckles and Pacifica up to her knobby knees. Our eyes locked, and for a second, the moon, the party, even the pizza—everything disappeared. I was back in Utopia with her plastic clipboard, her penned notes on our files. Her breathy rasp on the power walk: “Faster girls, faster.’’

She didn’t say anything because she, in addition to the guy next to her, looked rather, well, completely blotto. They swayed in the water, pulled by more than a current—that much was clear. She had the vacant look of someone either coming out of or going under anesthesia. Just to be sure, though, I uttered two words that took them both by surprise.

“Say cheese!”

Hollywood’s violet cell phone flashed, and Miss Marcia’s chemical romance was captured forever. My counselor tilted her head and muttered something to her companion. I don’t even think she registered what’d just happened. Either way, she could go find Hank or Belinda, tell them she happened to be at a party, eating psychedelic brownies when she saw me, but in her condition I doubted she was up for it.

Right after her photo op, our counselor turned away, her penny-colored hair falling behind her. She waded out further into the lake with her boy. Miss Marcia was gifting me with a little time.

Lots of people who were not Cambridge floated bareassed in the water with their fun noodles. I walked down the beach, tiny waves uncurling over my flip-flops, searching for her. In the distance, tucked inside the woods, I saw a cabin. I walked faster and faster, knowing instinctively Cambridge was inside of it.

It turned out to be more

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