The Reunion

Tegan Harris got off the stationary bike and waited until she caught enough of her breath before guzzling a cold glass of water. She eyed the speedometer on the bike and saw that she’d burned a few hundred calories in half an hour. Not bad for a forty-four-year-old, she thought to herself. Now if only I could get as good at making money as I am at keeping in shape. She took a shower and then did some laundry. She never failed to admire the beauty around her when she was outside hanging the clothes to dry. Good old-fashioned country living was definitely for her. The peace and quiet were so nice, and the rolling hills around her were breathtaking. Every now and then, a deer or two would pass by, grazing on grasses that had turned brown since the dry, hot summer had set in. Tegan wasn’t looking forward to winter. It wasn’t as cold as her home state of Massachusetts, but it was still colder than she’d like and quite wet. She didn’t mind the rain, but she didn’t like the cold. The afternoons were usually pleasant, but it sometimes froze at night during the winter. She turned and studied the trailer. The old, dumpy place was a stark contrast to the beauty around her, though it was also cute and cozy at the same time. And cheap for being in California, especially since her landlord lived just up the hill and paid for the electricity. The only extras she had to pay for were the phone and internet package she had, plus propane, and she didn’t need much of that in the summer. With the clothes hung to dry, Tegan went back inside to work on her computer. She did whatever surveys she qualified for. Every little bit of money she made helped, since her unemployment checks weren’t much. And of course, ever since she’d left Darlene for cheating on her one too many times, there wasn’t a second income to combine with her own. Tegan had no family other than aging parents in Florida and an estranged brother and sister. She only had a small circle of friends, something she preferred, since the world was full of so many losers, and most of them lived in other states. So she was glad for things like email and social sites that kept her connected with old friends, even if it meant occasional unwanted contact from family and people who could be just about anybody, from the president to an ex—or maybe even an ax murderer. She didn’t get lonely or bored very easily. She kept herself occupied with a variety of things and was able to entertain herself quite well. She missed the good times she’d had with Darlene, and she missed the sex, but she didn’t miss the lies, stress, and accusations that became more and more a part of their relationship as time went on. After she did some work online, she walked down the dirt drive to the main road, caught the bus, and did some grocery shopping. The rest of her day passed peacefully. She answered emails, did some more paid surveys, and then suddenly it was nighttime. She rose from her chair and yawned. After going through her usual nightly routine of preparing the coffeemaker for the next morning and brushing her teeth, she got into bed and gazed up at the darkness overhead. The minutes ticked by. A train off in the distance. A semi changing gears on the freeway. A coyote howling somewhere far away. The angel of Camp Nadina. There she was again. She’d just popped into mind as suddenly as if a switch were flicked on, blurry and vague, but there nonetheless. Who the hell were you? she wondered to herself for the zillionth time. So many years ago in a place far, far away. Hadn’t it been back in 1974? She thought she remembered her mother telling her that she’d been nine years old the first time she attended camp. If that were so, then yes, it would have been 1974. She couldn’t have known her for more than a few weeks—probably not even that. She was probably only at the camp for a matter of days before she’d gotten kicked out for being a little terror of sorts. It wasn’t that she’d harmed anyone. She was just a kid. She’d simply been too “free” by nature to be tied down by such strictness and structure, and all with a bunch of strangers. She was also never much of a people person. Sharing a bunk with twenty other girls wasn’t her idea of a fun-filled summer. And neither was playing tug-of-war, volleyball, swimming in a scummy lake, or weaving potholders. She missed having privacy and the freedom to do what she wanted in her spare time, when she wanted to do it. She longed to be home in her own room with her own things—all of them, not just the few things she’d taken to camp with her. And even though she’d had a rough childhood so far with a very controlling and sometimes negative mother. They’d tried again to send her off to camp when she was fourteen, but she’d gotten kicked out for being caught smoking. Perhaps deliberately? Yet despite her lack of enthusiasm for camping, young Tegan had taken home one very special memory in her brief time at Camp Nadina, located in a tiny town in the state of Maine. Memories of this mystery woman were very few and very brief. She couldn’t even remember her name or picture much detail of what she remembered her to look like. She was fairly certain the woman had dark hair that wasn’t short but wasn’t really long either, and she thought she might have had dark eyes. She’d been anywhere from slim to average, and maybe between five four and five six. Children saw adults differently from how adults saw other adults, and so she could only remember her through the eyes of a child. She had a one-second flash memory of the woman coaching a volleyball game they were playing. Another was of her sitting at a picnic table while she and some of the other kids were trying to convince the staffers that they were bionic. On Tegan’s last night there, they had trouble getting the kids to sleep for some reason. She tried, but she couldn’t remember if they were just on a sugar high from all the junk food they were pigging out on or if something else was going on. Whatever the case was, the woman was in the bunk that night, playfully threatening to tickle her to death if she didn’t go to sleep. Then, at one point, Tegan had ended up with her in a tiny cabin that had only two beds in it, a little kitchenette in front, plus a bathroom. The woman had a small dog that might’ve been a terrier and had given Tegan a Polaroid of the dog that she wished to hell she still had, not that she expected it would yield any clues as to the woman’s identity. The woman had fallen asleep that final night on the cot a few feet from Tegan’s, with Tegan trying to “read” her mind, as in trying to guess what color she was thinking of and silly stuff like that, which kids often do. The next morning, the woman had made them breakfast. After that, they were outside, and Tegan could remember asking what she was going to do until her dad arrived to pick her up. The woman playfully swung her, a rather undersized child, up in the air and happily announced that she was going to stay with her. And so off they had gone to play in the woods with the dog. The woman showed her how it would find her when she’d go and hide behind a tree, much to her delight. Then her father arrived. The woman exclaimed to her that he was very handsome. Tegan’s final memory was seeing the woman cry as she and her dad pulled away. As a nine-year-old, Tegan hadn’t thought much of the woman’s teary goodbye, but later on in life, she’d remember it with a smile. She was touched that this woman had come to care about her so fast that she would actually be in tears upon her leaving. She had never taken her kindness for granted, for she had shown Tegan a kind of love and acceptance she’d never felt from anyone else. The years passed by, and Tegan went on to have a horrible life that got much worse before it gradually got better. She’d pushed the woman to the back of her mind as she concentrated on finding some peace, stability, and security in life. Eventually, she ended up out west—first in Arizona, then Oregon, and then finally California. While she was in Arizona in 1995, when she was around thirty years old, the mystery woman had popped into mind like never before. It wasn’t that she’d remembered more about her and their brief time together. It was just that she was now more curious than ever as to who she could’ve been. She wanted very much to try and find the woman so she could thank her for caring about her the way she had. But her efforts proved to be of no avail. She simply learned a few things about the camp itself—that it became co-ed and was renamed in 1987. But now it was 2009. And the Internet had certainly come a long way in the last fourteen years. Tegan got out of bed and googled the appropriate keywords, then studied the results. There were two links to a couple of different reunion sites for both Camp Nadina and its brother camp. Definitely not something that was on the web fourteen years ago. An approved membership by the group’s owner was required at one site, so while she awaited approval, she studied the other site. There wasn’t much there, just some photos taken at the two camps. She browsed through some of them but didn’t recognize anyone. Next, she searched on Facebook to see if it had any groups of its own, and it did—a group that was spearheaded by a guy named Liam Forester. She posted a message on the site’s wall and also sent the guy a private message expressing her desire to find the person who had helped her, though she couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Tegan got back into bed and hoped for the best.