Louise was 16, going on 17, the summer her parents let her have a job.
A real job, not the one she'd been working since she was 9 in the family restaurant. A job with an hourly wage not determined by the head chef's mood that day, or the constant threat of being grounded by the management. Something with a paycheck she could take to the bank. Getting paid under the table – literally – had been an amusement for a few years, but when that salary was dependent on whether or not she'd brought home good grades, the novelty of her family's maybe-shady business practices had worn off.
"Okay, but this– Bob's Burgers– is not something you're allowed to put on your résumé," her dad had informed her when she mentioned that she would like to give working somewhere else a shot. "Because, you know. Child labor laws, and it'll make me look– I mean the restaurant. It'll make the restaurant look bad."
Her jaw dropped, then she scrunched up her face. "They'll think I have no experience!"
"So... You don't," said Bob faintly.
"But I do! Seven years of it!" She swelled up, staring right through him. There had to be a way she could convince her father of the inherent goodness of this idea. She would have to appeal to his sentimentality. Louise considered herself to be an unsentimental person overall, so it would be tough, but she was sure she could find the bloated marshmallow center of her father and convince him to allow her this one thing. "I have been your most loyal employee–"
Bob stared at her. "Loyalty means that you don't try to leave, like... you're doing now."
"–YOUR MOST LOYAL EMPLOYEE," she continued loudly, causing the man seated at the counter to turn and stare at the two of them, "and I have always shown up to work on time–"
"You live here." Bob put a hand to the side of his head, right over one of the patches where his hair was worn thinnest, and turned to the diner, offering him a look that may have been apologetic, or a cry for help– Louise couldn't decide, and right then, she didn't care.
She curled her hands into fists. "You let Gene have a job when he was sixteen. He was getting up at five in the morning every day all summer just to run coffee for a bunch of opinionated old white dudes at the radio station. Five in the morning! Gene! Our Gene!"
"The problem isn't you having a job," said Bob. "The problem is that you can't use Bob's Burgers as a reference."
"Then how," began Louise, "am I supposed to get a job when they think I've never had one? I'm sixteen. Everyone's had a real job by now."
"You look for other options," said Bob, and he stood up and handed her the newspaper that had been folded up on the stool beneath him.
"Your butt was just on this," she groaned.
"Other options," he repeated.
Louise used only the tips of her fingers to open the newspaper to the classifieds. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a colorful storm cloud cartoon squashed into the corner of the page. Written on top of it were the words, SEEKING CAMP COUNSELORS, FEMALE, AGES 16-18. Below that: $500/week, three weeks.
Sold.
•
That was how Louise found herself scratching her name in as a counselor for the newly inaugurated Thundergirls Summer Camp. Two days later, she was called for an interview. It took place in the Thundergirls headquarters, located in a section of the town that Louise would normally never have visited for anything under twenty dollars.
She reached the building, surprised to find that it was just a rental space above a record shop. Then again, that kind of fit perfectly from what she remembered about the Thundergirls.
When she entered the office, Louise was immediately delighted to find Ginny sitting there. There was no mistaking her peculiar air of paranoia; she was unmistakably recognizable. The past few years had given her an even more matronly, troop leader-y essence, like she had evolved into a bigger, stronger, cookie sales-ier being.
Louise assured herself that she had this in the bag.
"Ginny!" she shouted in her best approximation of enthusiasm. She knew Ginny, and Ginny knew her. Tina was a legendary Thundergirl whose accomplishments surely had gone down in club history. Nepotism would win this battle.
She received a stare in reply. "I'm sorry?"
Apparently she was not as memorable as she thought. Oh, shit, she thought, lowering her hands from their triumphant pose. She took a seat, contorting her face into a friendly expression. "It's Louise! Uh, you know... Tina's sister? The mole-remover? Alanis?"
"Oh," said Ginny. "You." There was a not-very-promising knitting of her brows, and the enthusiasm began to ooze out of Louise entirely. She slumped in her chair.
"Me," she said weakly, reminding herself that she must continue baring her teeth, but in a happy way. A smile! That was it. A smile. She smiled at Ginny. She smiled at the dog sleeping over by one of the cabinets. She smiled down at the placard on Ginny's desk. CAMP DIRECTOR, it said.
"What are your qualifications?" asked Ginny, peering down at Louise's cover letter. It had been stapled to her résumé, which Ginny had only examined for a few seconds.
"Don't really have any," she said brightly, deciding for perhaps the first time in her life that honesty was the best policy.
"Babysitting? First aid? CPR?"
"Maybe, no, and no." Tina and Gene needed a lot of taking care of, but they probably didn't qualify as babysitting experience.
"Can you swim?"
"That one time," said Louise.
Ginny groaned audibly. "There is a preference for long-time Thundergirls for this position. A familiarity with the organization... troop loyalty... It's important to us. Your tenure with the Thundergirls was... Well," she said. Louise waited for her to continue. She didn't. "How is Tina?" she asked, instead of providing a summary of Louise's betrayal of troop 119.
"She's in college studying the vagina prologues and the vulva epilogues," said Louise distractedly. "Please hire me."
There was a long stretch of silence. Louise decided that the humidity in the room had to be about 80% sweat, and most of it was coming from the dog curled up in the corner.
"The term is about three weeks," said Ginny. "That's three weeks away from home– and you'll always be on duty. You need to be with your campers constantly. Are you sure that this is how you want to spend your summer?" As these last words left her mouth, she leaned forward slightly, head inclined, staring down her nose at Louise. The papers clutched in her hands were lowered, as if to allow her eyes to better travel from the top of Louise's ratty pink bunny hat, to the sweater hanging off of her narrow shoulders, to the knee-length black skirt, to her unshaven legs, and then to the bottom of her scuffed-up, dirt-stained boots.
Am I sure that this is how I want to spend my summer, Louise thought to herself, before thinking a resounding No. What Ginny was really asking was if Louise would be the right kind of person for the Thundergirls brand. By asking her, she was offering Louise an easy way out of this whole thing. She knew it, Ginny knew it, and even the dog over there probably knew it.
There was no way in hell Louise fit what they were looking for, and fake-it-til-you-make-it could only take her so far. She did not fit the Thundergirls ideal– not in image, and certainly not in personality, and she definitely didn't want to spend three weeks of her precious summer treating bug bites and taking little girls out canoeing. But she needed this job.
Louise reached up to make sure that her septum ring stayed snugly tucked up her nose, and then she pressed her hands to the desk, stood, and leaned forward. "Yes," she said in her firmest, most adult, most treat-me-seriously voice. "I am sure that this is how I want to spend my summer, and I feel like I would be a great fit as–"
"Did you just pick your nose in front of me?"
"No," said Louise maturely, although now she wished she had.
Ginny sighed. She set down Louise's cover letter. "Very well. I'll call you next week when decisions have been made."
•
It didn't take nearly that long. When Louise hung up the phone three days later, a smug look on her face, everyone knew.
Gene laughed. "I guess they were desperate," he said, before he clapped her on the back triumphantly and sent her knees buckling beneath her.
•
June 7th, 2015
RE: Seeking Camp Counselors
Camp Director
Thundergirls Summer Camp
P.O. Box #4301
Gold Ridge Lake
To whom it may concern,
My name is Louise Belcher. I am 16 years old, and I am writing to you in response to the help wanted advertisement that was placed in Monday's edition of the newspaper. I believe myself to be the best possible candidate for a camp counselor position this summer, because I care deeply about the future of young girls. They are the women that will one day be women that populate the hell out of our world, breathing and breeding and keeping our glorious nation alive. Our very own world– the very same one we are currently living in! They are the women of tomorrow and I would like to help beat them into shape the way a blacksmith beats things into shape in his forge.
My résumé is enclosed for your perusal, but I've also taken the time to lay out the facts for you.
YOUR REQUIREMENTS:
- Ages 16-18
- First Aid Certification
- Criminal Record Check
- Outdoor camping and leadership experience
- Certifications in swimming, canoeing, kayaking, ropes courses, and/or wilderness first aid are an asset
- A love of working with children, nurturing and guiding young women into the leaders of tomorrow
MY QUALIFICATIONS:
- I'm 16.
- I keep it real.
- I would die for anything.
- I'm not allergic to anything that I know of yet.
- My brother helped me master the Rainbow Loom. Little girls are absolutely bonkers for that right now. You need me. I need you. Think about it. Thank you for the time you have taken reviewing my credentials and experience. I look forward to meeting you for an interview.
Sincerely,
Louise Belcher
Bob's Burgers on Ocean Avenue
•
"Three weeks is a long time, Louise," Bob said. He stood in the doorway of the walk-in closet that had remained Louise's bedroom since childhood, his silhouette nearly blocking all the light from the hallway. She sat on the side of her bed, a clipboard on her lap. She had borrowed it from the restaurant. Extracting a promise from her to return it had been the first thing her dad had brought up when she'd opened the door.
"I know," she said. She stared down at her list. Two toothbrushes, she'd written on it. Two? Why had she written two? For what reason would she need two? Louise tried to remember what she'd been thinking when she'd compiled the packing list.
"You've never been away from home for that long," he said cautiously.
Louise knew exactly what he was getting at, but she chose to ignore it. "Kind of the point, Dad," she said airily, looking up at him for a moment, then back down at the list. "What would you need two toothbrushes for?"
"Huh?" He looked like she'd lost him before his expression became thoughtful. "Uh... I guess.. One for brushing teeth, and one for scrubbing tough little spots in the grill... I guess... Maybe." He sounded uncertain. He always sounded uncertain about everything he said.
"I'm not going to be standing over a grill at the camp, Dad." She stuck her jaw out and reached down to scratch her leg. "Again, that's kind of the point."
"Well, I don't know. Are you expecting prison-style toilet cleaning duty?" He sounded tired.
She gave it serious consideration, before deciding that it was a plausible theory. "Maybe," she said with trepidation. Two toothbrushes it was.
Bob moved further into the room, ducking his head below the veil of the beaded curtain strung from wall to wall. Gene had helped her put it up two summers ago. He'd helped her bead it, too. When all the strands fell together, they created a psychedelic mosaic. Gene had given it an artistic name; the placard (The Innate Hysteria of Consciousness – Gene and Louise Belcher, 2013, pony beads and string) was in her closet somewhere. She had yet to nail it to the wall.
Her father sat down on the bed next to her. Louise lifted the clipboard to her chest so he couldn't see the remaining items; there was no reason her dad should ever know the number of pairs of underwear she planned to bring, or the fact that a switchblade and a lighter were on the list.
But Bob wasn't sitting next to her to read the list. He wasn't even looking at her. He sat in the most dadlike way possible, knees apart, one hand on each knee. "You could get homesick," he said, his voice dragging. "You remember what it was like for Tina just doing that one semester abroad. How she called all the time, and that whole thing with almost getting arrested by the Swiss police... She was homesick."
She wasn't homesick, Louise wanted to say. There was no way she was, because I got every single detail, every day, about how much she wanted to do her homestay partner. But she stayed quiet.
"And," her father continued, looking resolutely out at the wall opposite the bed. The women of Sleater-Kinney stared back at him from a huge, signed poster Louise had bought off of eBay. "It's just that your mother and I are wor–"
Louise choked. She held up a hand. "HAHA," she said loudly, effectively silencing him. "That's great, Dad, and I'm really sorry. I get it. I seriously do." She waited a moment, just to be extra sure that she had cut off any chance of him finishing that sentence. "It's that you're going to miss me and you think it's gonna be tough on me because I'm your youngest kid." She ignored the sudden dryness in her throat and squared her shoulders. "The real question is why you're in here, but not Mom."
"She sent me. She said she's too emotional about this," said Bob, and that was truly all the explanation Louise required. She set the clipboard face-down on the bed and rested her head on her father's shoulder, letting out a long sigh. She let the silence stretch on before speaking.
"Think of it like a vacation from me," she said.
"Nobody wants to take a vacation from you, Louise," said her father awkwardly. "We like having you here."
It was validation she never asked or, and never really needed, but she smiled nonetheless. "Thanks, Dad," she said warmly. Bob turned to look at her, smiling too. All at once she felt embarrassed and sat back up. "Now get outta here. I need to finish packing," she added hastily.
Bob sighed, but he stood, patting her on the shoulder. "Your mother keeps spare toothbrushes in our bathroom," he said, and left.
•
"It's essentially a three-week slumber party. You know that, right? You hate slumber parties. You hate 'em! I'd say I never got why, but I get it. Misanthropy."
Gene was laying back on the grass as he said this to Louise, staring into the sun. The last few days of classes were winding down– the close to another school year. It didn't feel like a huge event for Louise; she still had another year to suffer through, after all. But Gene had just graduated– the ceremony had been last week. He'd gone to prom in a gown, all theatrics and excitement, and he'd looked kind of amazing in it. His date had been some guy he'd met online who had traveled hours by bus just to be there. It was kind of sweet, in a way. Louise had a bunch of their selfies saved from Snapchat.
"I mean, if you're sure..." Gene continued, rolling over onto his stomach with some effort to look at her. "But that's what it is. A three-week slumber party in the forest with a bunch of little girls. And you gotta be as wholesome as possible. Wholesome!"
Louise tore up fistfuls of grass. In the distance, their classmates milled about the lawn, trying to make the most of their lunch period. She could smell cigarette smoke wafting from beyond the fence. Gene was right. 'Three-week slumber party' was probably an apt descriptor of what she'd signed herself up for. Voluntarily, at that. This was some sacrificial-young-adult-novel-heroine-in-a-dystopian-world shit.
She thought back to the one ill-fated slumber party her mother had forced upon her years ago. She remembered it as nothing but hours of torture, although in the end it honestly hadn't been that bad. Sure, most of her guests had bailed, and it had been her fault, but she'd had fun in the end with the girl who stayed. Her name had been Jessica. She was hard to conjure a mental image of– Louise could scarcely remember her face. They'd spent a bit of time together even after the sleepover (although the rest of her guests ignored her for months), but her family had moved away less than a year later, and she hadn't thought about her since then.
It had been an altogether unpleasant experience, even if it had been alright towards the end. Louise hated people invading her space, or bursting her bubble, or breathing too much of the same air.
"It pays well–" she began.
"Not enough, sister."
"–and it also pays in experience," Louise said, trying to sound like this was what she was doing it for instead of the five hundred dollars per week.
"Experience," Gene repeated, and then he laughed. She threw grass at him.
"You just graduated," she said, to change the topic. "What are you gonna do with your life, Gene? Can't spend all day getting up in my bidness."
Gene had an answer prepared for her. He sat up, grass in his hair, his dark eyes bright. "I told you– gap year." He spread his arms wide, then squared his fingers, framing the sky, and then Louise's face, between them. "Here's what I'm thinking– backpacking across Asia." He gave the last three words a dramatic flourish.
"Sounds like a really bad idea," she said. "Go for it."
"I will," he said with determined enthusiasm. "Well, I mean, I have to. I already bought my ticket to Thailand."
Somehow this information did not surprise her. "What about your boyfriend?" she asked.
"He's coming too."
"Gene," she groaned.
He grinned at her. "I'm kidding. I'm going it alone. We're already long-distance anyway. I figure more distance, no big deal. If we're meant to be, we'll hold strong! You feel me?"
"No." Louise considered herself to be functionally aromantic and asexual, and she liked it that way. Relationships and all that followed were a grey landscape she had never felt the desire to navigate.
Gene already knew this, which was why he didn't pry or insist on her agreement. Instead, he wound the conversation back to where it had begun. "Are you gonna write to us?"
"If you want," she said in a noncommittal manner, even though she'd already bought the stationery to do so.
"I'm kind of jealous," he sighed. "All my life I've wanted to be able to tell a spicy story about summer camp, and I've never gone. Now you're going, and you're definitely going to have all kinds of spicy adventures."
Louise pursed her lips together. "There aren't going to be any spicy adventures. It's me and a bunch of girls. It's not co-ed, Gene." All of the 'spicy' scenarios she could imagine came in two varieties: horror-movie style, where an axe murderer would surely attack the camp, or teen-movie style, with male campers going on panty raids. Neither was very appealing, unless she could play the part of the hero in the former. "I'm thinking of starting a little side business, though. Smuggling in candy and stuff? It's banned at the camp and I'm sure everyone'll go crazy for my little black market."
"That's my sister!" hollered Gene, landing her in a headlock. She learned a long time ago that it was best not to struggle. He smacked her on the back. "Extortion. Just like Mom when she went all Lady of Darkness."
The thing he referred to was almost two years ago, when their mother had taken a part-time job as a dominatrix. There had been nothing sexual to it– at least nothing Linda had to do. Louise had been thrilled when she'd learned that some men actually liked being treated like shit for nothing in return and that they'd be content just to lick a woman's used shoes and then pay her for it. 'DREAM JOB,' she'd said, before her parents promptly banned her from ever doing any such thing. That had been a wild six months for their family– it had ended when Linda said her Amazon wishlist had been completed in full. They'd nearly refurbished the whole restaurant with it.
"It's not extortion. It's taking advantage of a situation," she said reasonably. Gene let her go.
"You're my hero," he sighed admirably, sagging against her. "I'm gonna miss you. I mean, I will while you're at camp, but also when I'm searching my soul deep in Cambodia."
That was too much mush for one sentence. Louise recoiled even as her face warmed. "You won't even be thinking about me," she teased him.
"Only when I'm drinking ayahuasca."
"Gene, you can only find that in, like, South America."
"DAMN."
•
Although Louise could drive– she'd gotten her license before Gene or Tina even had, a fact she was fond of pointing out often to the both of them– the trip out to Gold Ridge Lake was two hours, and their family had only one car to their name. Someone would have to drive the car back. It was a bright Sunday morning right at the beginning of July; the sun had just come up, and Louise and her mother were loading the car.
It was early enough that the birds had just begun to trill, and very few cars zipped down the street. Linda elbowed Louise's duffel bag into the trunk, huffing and, Louise thought, flexing a little.
"There!" Linda proclaimed, finally managing to wedge it between the spare tire and the old toaster oven everyone kept saying they'd drop off for donation but never did. "Alright, honey. Let's get on our way. It's almost seven and I wanna stop at that cute little donut place on the way. You know the one down by the highway? I almost never get to go there! It's too out of the way. Oh, but if I lived a life on the road I could eat there all the time."
"You should definitely do that, Mom," said Louise seriously as she accepted the keys and climbed into the driver's seat. "You should become a trucker." Her bunny ears folded over her eyes, squashed down by the ceiling. She reached up to push them back as she started up the car.
"You think?" asked her mother thoughtfully as she buckled her seatbelt. That was what Louise adored about her mother– that she took every ridiculous suggestion as a serious one, and always weighed the options fairly. There was a lot of their mother in Gene, she'd realized a long time ago. Both of them were too sincere for their own good. "Nah, I don't think I could do it. Not even for cute little donut places."
Louise backed out, swinging the wheel. "What if you do?" she pressed. "What if I come back in three weeks and everything's changed, huh? You're a truck driver, Dad's expanded his tramp stamp into a full-body artwork, Gene's joined a gang-"
"Your father has low pain tolerance. He would never get a full-body tattoo."
"Give him some credit," she said as they set off down the street.
"Three weeks," Linda sighed. "Oh, Louise." Her voice thickened as she raised a hand to her throat. "Feels like how it felt when Tina went to college!"
"Tina still lives at home, except for that one semester abroad."
"You're all growing up so fast!" said her mother as though she couldn't hear her, before setting off into a number of different childhood stories.
An hour later, they stopped at the donut place. It had taken a few detours, and Louise was growing restless and ready to get to the camp already, but she sensed that this was important to her mother for more than just the tiny powdered donut holes– which Linda sat eating by the handful inside the cafe.
This would probably be good for the whole family, she told herself. Her dad was right: she really had never been away from home for so long before, so this would be a good time to learn what it would be like to be on her own, and for the rest of her family to get a sense of what things might be like without her. Louise's goals were loftier than Tina's, even if they didn't stretch as far as Gene's; she was only half-sure she wanted to go to college, but she wanted to go somewhere else and experience something different. There would be no bizarre backpacking trip across Asia for her, but if she could at least move downstate for school, she'd be happy.
"Of courf we'll be seein' you again soon enouff," said her mother, her accent thicker than ever through her mouthful of donut.
Louise waited for her to finish eating. "Exactly," she said. "Three weeks isn't that long. Like, I can still remember what I was doing three weeks ago from now and it feels like yesterday."
Linda nodded, looking like she'd agree with just about anything reassuring at the moment. She smiled. "I won't touch your room or nothing while you're gone! Well, I might go in and sweep up a little."
"Don't you dare," said Louise, nearly dropping her coffee.
"I'm joking!" said her mother.
"There's a padlock on the door."
"Jesus," said her mother.
"You'd have to get the bolt cutters," Louise went on. "And I hid them. First clue to their location's taped under the kitchen table."
"Oh," said Linda, reaching across the table for her, "I'm gonna miss you so much."
•
The camp was a lot smaller than the pictures had made it seem. It was nestled deep into a featureless forest, cupping one end of a reasonably-sized lake. Ginny had told her it was brand new, and it definitely looked it. The modestly-sized cabins were still gleaming with wood stain. She followed the director around, listening to her repeat things she had surely said a dozen times before.
"There's two days of training for staff," said Ginny with her typical nervousness, sliding her gaze back and forth across the campgrounds. They walked together past the mess hall and towards the staff building. Now and then they passed signs hammered into the ground; each one bore a different Thundergirls lesson. The one they passed now read BE YOUR OWN RAY OF SUNSHINE. What? Louise stifled a laugh. Ginny gave her a stern look over one plump shoulder before continuing. "...Two days, and then the campers arrive. You're assigned to a cabin, and you'll be with that cabin for the rest of this thing. You'll have one co-counselor who will be assigned to the same cabin."
A co-counselor. Good. Someone to shove the work off on. "How many cabins are there?" Louise asked, trying to sound engaged.
"Ten," said Ginny. "There's Star, Moon, Sun, Rainbow-"
Seriously? "I get it!" Louise said hastily.
"You're assigned to Twinkle Cabin."
She sputtered, then burst into laughter. She reached up and slung an arm around Ginny's shoulders. "You're joking, right? There's no such thing as a Twinkle Cabin?"
"Miss Belcher," said Ginny, gently extricating her arm. "If you had read the manual, you'd already know that. But you haven't, and I am already paying the price."
"I'll read the manual," said Louise halfheartedly.
Ginny turned to look at her. "Louise, I hired you because I think you have potential. Lots of it! Lots of potential to be a role model, despite..." She eyed her up and down with a look that seemed slightly despairing. "Despite your, er, tendency to... march to the beat of your own drum. I think that this experience could be as beneficial for you as it will be for all of our campers."
It was the same kind of drivel Louise was accustomed to hearing from authority figures who always insisted that she could be something incredible if she would just apply herself more. But she nodded.
"Now let's go," said Ginny. "I'll get you your uniform. We start training after lunch today– that's twelve-thirty. Until then, you are free to set your belongings up in Twinkle Cabin."
Twinkle Cabin. God.
•
By the time she made her way back to her assigned cabin, it was almost eleven-thirty. She had already mentally mapped a great deal of the campgrounds, sketching a small diagram into the front cover of her Official Thundergirls Camp Counselor Manual. There were probably additional places to explore, and she intended to find them later.
Twinkle Cabin wasn't hard to find. Each cabin had a wood carving of the symbol representing its name hung over the doorway. Twinkle Cabin's carving looked like a bunch of sparkles. They were little diamond shapes painted purple and pink. Louise paused beneath the door frame and jumped, trying to catch the sign in her hands. She was too short to do so, and gave up after a few tries, pushing open the door and heading inside.
The inside of the cabin was very sparse and dimly lit. She was immediately greeted by four bunk beds squashed into the front. Beyond that was a small space for shelves and cabinets, and then behind those was another bunk bed on its own. Okay, Louise thought to herself, I am going to be sleeping way over there no matter what any eight-year-old girl tries to tell me. She walked past the crowded area and to the back of the cabin.
She found someone already standing there. There was a tall girl with her back mostly turned, unpacking a suitcase. She was already wearing her uniform. That particular shade of light blue would never be flattering on anyone, Louise decided, least of all with this girl's reddish-blonde hair.
This had to be her co-counselor. "Hey," she said to announce her arrival.
The girl turned. They stared at each other, although Louise did most of the staring, and then a double-take, because recognition had hit her like a truck. She squinted, and then the creases in her expression smoothed into surprise.
"Jessica?"
The girl refocused her gaze. She made a face. Louise wasn't sure what kind of face, exactly. It wasn't surprise, but it wasn't happy or sad or angry or anything like that. It was just an expression of recognition.
It had taken Louise a moment to recognize her. It was the specific shade of strawberry blonde hair that gave her away, because everything else about her was so plain as to be completely forgettable. It was no wonder that Louise had gradually become incapable of remembering what she looked like once a few years had passed. Jessica embodied the 'face in a crowd' metaphor. The only thing that stood out about her was her height– nearly a head taller than Louise. Her jaw-length hair framed a sharp but unmemorable face. She was club soda, just like Louise remembered her. She was flour. She was plain ramen noodles right out of the bag. She was white rice.
Louise cast her memories back, trying to recall the few times she had spent with Jessica before she had moved away. She'd come pretty close to being someone Louise could call a friend, once. She'd proven herself and shown real grit, and Louise had been forced to respect that. But she couldn't reconcile the cunning, fast-talking, lock-picking girl she'd nearly befriended with the tall, expressionless one before her that seemed to still be considering the merits of the brands of shampoo she held in her hands.
"Hi, Louise," Jessica said blandly, meeting, exceeding, and failing every single one of Louise's expectations all at the same time. "It's been a while." She set down the shampoo bottles on the shelf wedged precariously between the bunk bed and the wall.
"It sure has!" Louise responded before she could think through what she wanted to say, dosing it with triple her usual sarcasm. Something about Jessica's unaffected acknowledgment of the reappearance of a childhood maybe-friend in such a bizarre, random setting irritated her. "It's a small world after all. Where've ya been all this time?"
"Wellington," she said in response to Louise's rhetorical question. Her expression hadn't changed.
"I guess we're co-counselors," said Louise, blinking. God, this is weird, she thought, before repeating the thought out loud: "God, this is weird."
Jessica nodded. "Yeah. It really kind of is." She lifted a hand and swept her hair out of her eyes. "You've changed."
Louise looked down at herself, then back up at Jessica. Yeah, she thought. She couldn't blame Jessica for that assessment. It had been years, after all. Suddenly she felt self-conscious of her septum piercing, of her bitten-down nails, of the makeup she refused to wear, of the bunny ears she still wore to this day. But then again, Jessica seemed to have hardly changed at all. If she was going to pass judgment, she was the wrong person to do it to. "You're still the same," she said somewhat guardedly.
But Jessica had nothing else to add; if she was judging Louise, she kept it to herself. "Yeah," she said, simply agreeing. Then her tone lifted a little. "It's nice to see you again."
Louise huffed, unsure of what to say in return. She remembered the one thing about Jessica that had stunned her way back then: that it was impossible to know what she was thinking. Apparently, that part hadn't changed, either. "Yeah, yeah," she said, although her irritation was already seeping away.
Jessica was unaffected by Louise's tone. She hauled her suitcase into her arms and bumped a hip against the sink that jutted from the wall. "Which bunk do you want?" She jerked her chin up and then down at each one. "I was waiting for my co-counselor to show up. You know, to keep things fair. So which is it?"
Louise stared at the bunk bed. "That depends," she said. "Do you still wet the bed?" It came out of her mouth completely unbidden– not barbed cruelly, but matter-of-fact. Blunt, as she always had been. If Jessica couldn't handle that, Louise decided, she would be in for three weeks of hell. Louise wasn't going to let club soda dilute her experience here.
But Jessica didn't miss a beat. She didn't even blink. She simply stood there, not even breaking eye contact. She smiled, then spoke dryly. "I walked right into that one."
Something crumpled in Louise, and she cracked a smile, too. Relief washed over her. "Pretty much," she said, grinning. "You take the top one."
Jessica tossed her suitcase onto the top bunk, then grasped onto the ladder to climb up there after it. She leaned over the side to look at Louise conspiratorially. "Can you believe we got the cabin named Twinkle?"
"That has been pissing me off all morning!" Louise barked, laughing. "Please tell me you didn't read the manual either."
"Of course not," said Jessica. "I didn't even bring it with me."
This bit of solidarity was immensely reassuring, somehow. Louise was sure what the next three weeks would be a huge test of her patience no matter what– but here was someone she might just be able to get along with, and that could go a long way in the face of trying to wrangle a bunch of eight-year-old girls.
Brace for impact, Louise decided as they looked at one another.