This Summer
twirling flags--

Prologue

I come back from camp this summer with my eyes red from crying and duct tape bracelets on my wrists. Clutching a notebook full of memories, my dad’s John Deere hat, and a roll of film, I spend the three hour car ride home going back and forth between sobbing and telling rousing tales of the last two weeks. Right now, I honestly believe that I am never going back again.

For the next few days, everything reminds me of camp. The word ‘Anarchy’ in Talladega Nights sends me spinning back to the camp social, where my counselor’s dressed up in all black and ran around screaming it. A James Taylor song brings tears to my eyes, the same tears I cried at the Final Campfire when we sang ‘You’ve Got a Friend’. I find myself staring morosely out of the window and wondering how I’ll survive next summer. Nothing, I tell myself, will ever be the same.

And then my dad tells me I have a fighting chance of going back next year. And suddenly my world speeds up again, and I’m smiling like I haven’t in days. I can go back.

I can go back.