Brian dropped his head to hide a blush as Doris elbowed past him to take CeCe’s hands again. Her eyes were soft and proud.
“On the outside, we don’t have much in common, you and me,” Doris said. “You know what’s the same about us?”
CeCe shook her head.
“We’re good-hearted people patiently waiting our turn for a little good luck, right?” CeCe turned it over in her head and conceded a nod and sideways smile. Doris tugged at their hands and pulled CeCe closer. Her expression turned serious.
“The other thing we have in common is that we never learned how to dream. I was never allowed to and you never had the luxury. Nothing like magic or good luck had ever blown our way before.”
Doris clasped their hands together and pressed the knot of their fingers to her chest. CeCe was pulled off balance, startled by Doris’ strength. She looked at her friend with confused anticipation, ready for another gut buster. The women stood eye to eye at five-foot-one, and Doris’ eyes shone with tears and affection.
“I want you to have this house, CeCe,” Doris said. “Have it. No money and no strings. Just some lucky magic to help you see that you are greater than your circumstances. You are stronger than the things in life that have made you afraid.”
CeCe snatched her hands from Doris’ grasp to try and catch the squeal rocketing from her throat. She couldn’t believe the sounds her ears were taking in. Did Doris say she was giving her a house? A whole house?
“You could put the universe in your handbag, if you wanted to,” Doris said, her eyes electric now, “but, kiddo, you gotta learn how to dream. You deserve to learn.”
CeCe looked from Doris to Brian in disbelief and then around at the empty walls of the house. Her house. She couldn’t intercept the wailing, not this time.
NINE
SPIDERS
CECE CLENCHED HER FISTS UNTIL the crunch of gravel beneath the school bus’ tires gave way to smooth, paved road. CeCe braced for a forgotten shoe or dental retainer, flat tire, anything that might turn them back. She exhaled after three highway exits, certain they all were finally free. CeCe leaned back, closed her eyes, and promised herself never to look forward to anything so desperately again.
Eight weeks earlier, CeCe and four dozen kids had ridden on another yellow bus along this stretch of highway from Prescott and onto the gravel road leading to Camp Onondaga. At that first sound of stones popping and spraying from beneath bus tires, CeCe had trembled with excitement. The bus rocked and bumped, all the kids’ heads and shoulders moving in a wobbly choreography. This was the first day of summer camp for them all, and CeCe’s first time away from her mother.
With her small, nervous hands gripping the seat beneath her knees, CeCe looked through the front windshield, taking in the approaching view. Brilliant bars of liquid sun reached through the canopy of forest, and the trees seemed to salute their passing bus in curved formation. Pushing deeper into the forest along the narrowing gravel road, the bus reached an open glen, where four handsome young people in matching blue T-shirts stood around a flagpole. They were the staff of camp counselors who, CeCe would learn, were mostly college students earning money for the summer. That they weren’t driven to create lifelong memories for each camper—like the brochures said—would be the least of CeCe’s disappointments.
CeCe had been skeptical about the idea of camp at first, mirroring her assessments of her newest social worker. She especially didn’t like the way this one, Ms. Petrie, tried to scrape about by asking the same questions in six different ways. After one of their meetings in the second room of the guidance office, CeCe went directly to Mrs. Anderson with the Camp Onondaga brochure.
CeCe wanted to feel excited, but she was suspicious of Ms. Petrie. Or maybe she felt uneasy with the tendrils of guilt snaking around her ankles. Ms. Petrie said her mother would be in a special hospital and arrangements had been made for CeCe to have an extended registration at summer camp. Mrs. Anderson helped her decide what to do with the thoughts and feelings she couldn’t name.
“I know it will be hard to think about having fun,” Mrs. Anderson had said, leaning closer to CeCe, “but your mother will be getting the help she needs while you’re gone. Having fun will be perfectly acceptable.”
CeCe had come to rely a lot on Mrs. Anderson over the years. Books about puberty, recordings of Motown artists, decoding the condescension of some of her white teachers, and advice on how to keep the curl in her bangs. If it hadn’t been for her reassurance, CeCe might not have made the bus. CeCe absorbed every one of those earliest impressions, because she wanted to tell Mrs. Anderson everything about her summer. CeCe filed away mental pictures of huge wooden stumps, big enough to sit on, and clusters of wood cabins situated on top of slats and stilts beneath voluptuous oak trees.
She’d tell her mother, too.
CeCe would remember the sound of creaking springs and slamming screen doors, as well as cheerful, young white people in matching polo shirts and whistles. CeCe’s young white person was named Hoot. Or, that’s what CeCe and the other five girls she’d been clustered with were instructed to call her. Other groups were led by Trout, Blaze, S’more, Bambi, Foxy, Rainbow, Mudslide, Whiskers, Thunder, and Moss.
Once Hoot had shown them to their cabin and around the grounds, the small troop made their way to the mess hall for the camp’s official opening session. There were a hundred kids, all grouped by age. Most of them would board for a week or two. CeCe’s extended registration would have her at camp for eight. By her third welcome session, however, the experience felt less like a sweet treat and more like repeated loops.
Back at the cabin, CeCe studied the other girls while Hoot chirped on about buddy systems, lights out, water safety, poison ivy, and keeping the latrine clean. All six of them were nine or ten years old, but the similarities ended there. They were African-American, Samoan, and white. Suburban, rural, and hood. They were broken. Naive. Jaded. Faithful. Each on her separate way to becoming debutante, valedictorian, underachiever, bully, innovator, and lost.
She listened to their banter while building the courage to join in and take initiative, like Mrs. Anderson had made her promise to do. Mrs. Castellanos had given her a winding lecture about using this summer as her time to bloom. Though CeCe liked the notion of being compared to a flower, she felt more like a radish or, maybe cabbage, nothing overtly beautiful, but still something that emerges from the earth completely intact and completely without interference.
“I have those same pajamas at home!” the Samoan girl said excitedly, spying the Smurfette PJs in the redheaded girl’s open duffel bag.
“They’re my favorites,” Redhead said.
“I don’t like the Smurfs anymore,” said Portia, one of the other black girls. “I like the Care Bears. I got a Care Bear lunchbox at home.”
From there, the conversation swirled around which of Strawberry Shortcake’s friends was the best, which Super Friend was smarter, and whether Ghostbusters were real. They were unpacking their toiletries and sheeting their cots, while CeCe followed the bounce of their chatter from Ninja Turtles to New Edition to ET.
“You’re awfully quiet, Crimson,” Hoot said as she walked into their small cabin. “I think I could hear everyone talking about their favorite things except you. I’d like to hear about your favorite shows.”
“CeCe.”
“I’m sorry?” Hoot replied.
“I go by ‘CeCe,’” she said.
“Oh,” Hoot said, a relieved smile lighting her face. “CeCe, it is! What’s one of your favorite things, CeCe?”
The other girls perched onto the ends of their cots, waiting for her to speak.
“Um . . . ,” CeCe began,