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remembered my whole rotten day.
    My flying fall.
    My stinging hands
    and knees
    and chin.
    This stupid, lumpy bed,
    which I couldn’t even make.
    The swim test.
    The mosquitoes.
    The no-candy rule.
    The rat.
    The spiders spinning in the bathrooms
    every time I went to pee.
    Changing my clothes
    in front of girls I barely knew
    before swimming
    and after swimming
    and again before bed.
    I don’t want to be here,
    I thought.
    I hate camp.
    I just
hate
it.
    I made an important decision then.
    I fumbled in the dark for my flashlight
    hanging on the wooden frame of my bed.
    Then,
    very quietly,
    I climbed down my bunk ladder.
    Gwen was breathing
    a slow, whistly kind of breathing
    in the bunk below mine.
    I tiptoed past her
    and got stationery and a pen from my cubby,
    then climbed back up the ladder
    and started writing a letter.
    I wrote:
    Dear Mom and Dad,
    I have met Esmeralda.
    Remember, Mom
?
    I have met Esmeralda.
    I can’t wait to see you both
.
    This is how much I miss you
:

    You are still the best parents in the world.
    And there’s no better grandma than Grandma Sadie,
    who was trying to give me a present.
    I still love you from the tips of my toes
    to the top of my head
    and out into the sky.
    Even though you sent me here
    with no warning at all
    about the candy
    or the bug juice
    or the spiders
    or the life jackets.
    All my love,
    Eleanor

    I sealed that letter in an envelope
    and addressed it.
    As I was pressing on the stamp,
    I heard a noise behind me.
    I turned quickly,
    scared.
    But it was just Hope.
    She stood at the foot of my bed and
    rubbed her eyes.
    “Everything okay?” she asked me.
    “Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
    Then I handed her my letter.
    “Would you mail this for me?
    In the morning?”
    I asked.
    “Of course,” she said. “First thing.”
    My whole body felt lighter then.
    I knew I’d be going home soon.
    I switched off my flashlight
    and fell right back to sleep.

We chose our own activities the next morning.
    Joplin chose tetherball.
    So I chose tetherball, too.
    Even though I’d never heard of it.
    And I decided to try to have fun.
    Since this would be one of my last days at camp.
    We walked together to a field
    with poles scattered around it.
    Each pole had a ball attached,
    hanging from a rope.
    When activity time started,
    a counselor explained the game.
    “Each pole will have two of you,”
    she said.
    “You are opponents.
    If your opponent hits the ball one way,
    you hit it back, in the opposite direction.
    Don’t let her hit the ball so many times that
    the rope wraps all the way around the pole.
    Whoever wraps the rope all the way around
    wins.
    Got it?”
    She waited, to see if there were questions.
    There weren’t.
    It didn’t seem too hard.
    “Let’s give it a shot,” the counselor said.
    So Joplin and I walked to a pole,
    to give it a shot.
    “You start,” I said,
    being very nice.
    She took the ball
    and raised it high
    and
hurled
it.
    It flew in a circle
    far, far above my head.
    Then sailed back her way,
    and she hit it,
    hard.
    This happened again and again.
    So high and so fast,
    I never even touched the ball.
    It took about five seconds
    for her to wrap the rope all the way around the pole.
    After she did, she grinned at me.
    “Isn’t tetherball
great
?” she said.
    “No, it is
not
,” I said.
    But I couldn’t help laughing a little.
    Because that game had been ridiculous.
    Then I turned and shouted,
    “I need a shorter opponent!”

     
    I ended up playing a short Honeybee.
    I even won two games
    and lost two more.

    Joplin won six straight
    against a tall,
    but not tall enough,
    Cicada.

I wanted to spend time with the baby goat.
    So I chose farm as my next activity.
    I asked Joplin if she wanted to come, too.
    But she shook her head.
    “The barn’s too stinky,” she said.
    I knew what she meant.
    We’d visited the barn on the camp tour,
    and it
was
a little stinky.
    But just with animal smell.
    Like at the zoo.
    “Your nose gets used to