It Began with Shampoo

So how did you two meet? (Prompt) (The latest prompt for Stunt Writing was to write, for 25 minutes, about your first meeting with someone. It could be anyone in your life. I chose Mimi)

When I first walked into Camp Firwood for homeschooled youth, I brought with me the same thoughts I brought every new place I visited. I had expectations of awkward meetings with new people, awkward silences, not knowing where to go, how to introduce myself, how to connect and bond. I brought all of that imbedded in the chip on my shoulder, even though my perpetual poker face rendered that chip invisible.

Things went wrong almost immediately.

A bottle of shampoo had burst inside my bag, covering all of my belongings in slimy goo. I spent an hour in the bathroom, trying to clean it out. That's when I met her for the first time. Looking back, I have no idea what we first said. I was in front of the mirror, my duffle bag in the sink on my right, all of my clothes on my left. I was rinsing it out and concealing my unhappiness at the same time. My face had been drawn into frustrated lines before her arrival, but now it was a careful blank. Of course, I was little more than 13 at the time. I might be remembering wrongly how perfected my mask was at that point in time. I only recall that the effort to keep it in place was there.

I won't call her by her real name here, so I'll just refer to her by her old nickname Mimi. Mimi and I became inseparable instantly, something that had only happened to me two others times. The camp lasted less than a week, but she and I were never more than four steps apart. We slept in the same cabin and discussed how great a prank it would be to block the entrance to another cabin with duct tape so they couldn't get out in the morning. She spoke of it as if she'd actually do it, whereas I was only joking and pointed out, all too logically, how impossible it would be to use duct tape without waking everyone up within a mile radius. (Yes, I would have used that word even at that age. I was known for my eloquence)

Mimi was two years younger than me and had a black cast on her leg, which went up past her knee. It never slowed her down. I was the more outdoorsy of the two of us, wearing a cowboy hat everywhere I went, but she had a wild child in her too. We went kayaking every day, though always in separate boats. We both liked to control our own speed and after all, races were impossible if you were both in the same craft. We spent whole afternoons kayaking around the island next to Firwood, getting so excited about the harsh waves and then thrilling at the gentle lull on the way back. It got to the point that when we guided the boats into the water, her cast making a scuffing noise in the sand, we could just glance at the waves and KNOW what they'd be like when we hit them.

There was a man, a counselor, whom we both followed after like puppies. His nickname was Coyote. He was an adult, married, had kids, but I didn't care. I was thirteen and a bit enamored. He called me Scout, gave me a spoon he'd carved and burnt into shape himself which smelled of scorched cedar and on my last day, he got me up to watch the sunrise over the water. Mimi had attended Firwood for years before me, had been his "Scout" before I had, though she hadn't owned the nickname. If there was any jealousy though, I never saw it. She also never showed any inclination towards the poker face I sported, so I doubted there was any jealousy at all.

Jealousy wouldn't come until years later, when we were late in our teens and love sliced us apart.

When Mimi and I weren't kayaking, we were going on Coon Walks with Coyote. This meant that a counselor would lead a single file line of campers out into the woods. There weren't any hiking trails out there, no paths at all. We could only stay together by listening to the person ahead and behind. If you listened to the commentary during one of our Coon Walks, this is what you'd hear:

"ROCK!" The leader, Coyote would call from the front.

"ROCK!" The next person in line would repeat, who then passed the message on down the row. In response, each person would step around the rock they couldn't see.

"STOP!" Coyote would eventually yell.

"STOP!" The second in line would intone. We would all then stop smoothly, like a squad of marines.

"SOUND OFF!" Coyote would command, causing us to each call out a number in turn, confirming that everyone was present, that the number we called out at the beginning was the same number we finished with.

Mimi and I thrilled in these nighttime adventures. Sometimes, we even got to lead. I remember a particular time when I was just behind Coyote and all of a sudden, he was gone. He was there, calling out "rocks" and "stops" and "sound off's" and then-nothing. I slapped the leaders cap on my head without hesitation and was unbelievably glad, although secretly, that Mimi was right behind me. I immediately did a sound off and realized we had everybody except the man who was supposed to be leading. We continued onwards, both because I didn't know the way back at that point and also because I didn't want the adventure to end. I liked the leaders cap. I'd like it more in the years to come.

It wasn't seconds after we were moving again, when I heard a coyote howl that was unmistakably the man named coyote rather than the creature. I stopped us, did a count again and realized that he'd now stolen somebody. He was testing me! No, he was testing us. With Mimi and me, almost up until the very end, we were always a "we."

Coyote stole half the group before he returned to the head of our line and led us back. Stumbling back into the light of camp, my untouched flashlight in my pocket, Mimi's totally dead one in her backpack, we grinned like fools, as if we'd actually gotten high on the dark air.

In the night, it was Coon Walks. In the afternoons, we hit the waves. In the mornings, Mimi and I would play four-square. We called her the Cherry Bomb Queen for her incredible moves, though I don't recall ever getting a nickname myself from the game.

I will always find it uncanny that while I cannot remember what she first said to me on that first day of camp, I can remember what we did on the last night. We were lying on our stomachs in the top bunks in our cabin. I had a journal in my hand that was sparkly green/blue. Everyone else was asleep. We passed this journal back and forth; she wrote about her relationship with her grandma, I wrote about slipping down the side of a hill and how Coyote pulled me back up.

I still have this journal in my room. I don't cry over it anymore. I still miss her, but its' just an ache now. If I close my eyes, I can still see her cast, her cherry bombs, her foolish grin mirroring mine. I can still feel her hand on my shoulder as we stumble through the dark to the tune of a coyote's howl.

It doesn't matter where we ended.

We began with a bag full of shampoo.