Page 138 of Until Next Summer

As always, the last day of summer camp is chaos, but it’s the best kind: loading kids and duffels onto buses, calls of “See ya next summer” echoing as they head down the dusty road.

Once they’re cleared out, it’s time for the counselors and staff to do the same. And then it’s over, and I’m standing alone in the middle of the big lawn, that familiar wistfulness crawling over me as I realize I won’t see these kids for ten months.

But I’m nottoosad.

Because adult camp starts next week.

The past year has been a wild ride. There were times I thought we’d made a mistake in believing we could turn the co-op into a successful business venture. Luckily, I have a wonderful team. The Camp Chickawah Cooperative includes hundreds of former campers, with a twelve-person board of directors elected by the members. The board hired me as chief camp director and Hillary as chief operations officer. Her clear financial vision and business acumen have been guiding lights through our most challenging decisions. Running this camp with her is the fulfillment of mychildhood dream—though I never imagined doing it with my best friend, my platonic soulmate, whose strengths complement mine perfectly.

“Welp, we made it through another summer,” Dot says from behind me.

I turn to smile at her; I was thrilled when she agreed to come back as assistant director. Dot isn’t a year-round employee anymore—she’s spending the off-season in Austin with Yvonne—and I couldn’t be happier for her.

“It was Chick-amazing, wasn’t it?” I say.

“Damn right, boss.”

I throw my arm over her shoulder as we head back toward the office. Hillary is heading toward us, and I’m struck by how different she looks compared to last summer when she arrived for training week. Her hair is wild and curly, her hiking boots are scuffed, and she has a huge smile on her face.

“Hey, Jessie, hey, Dot,” she calls. “Congrats on finishing an incredible summer!”

“Thanks!” I throw my arms around her, squeezing extra tight. “How was Chicago?”

She spent most of the summer here, working with me on plans for the camp (and hanging out with Chef Cooper, because they’re obsessed with each other), but she spent the past week in Chicago, meeting with a consortium of women small business owners and visiting her dad.

She’ll be running the Arts and Crafts cabin during adult camp this fall, for old times’ sake.

“The trip was great—I’ll tell you more later,” she says. “I’ve got to find Cooper, but we’re still planning on dinner at the lake, right? Seven o’clock?”

I nod. “That should give me and Dot time to wrap things up this afternoon.”

“I’ll meet you in the office in thirty minutes, boss,” Dot says.

“Sure thing,” I say.

Dot heads to the office, and Hillary to the dining hall. Cooper bursts out the doors and races toward her, nearly tackling her in a full-body hug, as if they’ve been apart for months rather than a week. Their laughter floats on the breeze as I head down the path toward the lake, where Zac and Zoey are wrapping up at the waterfront.

His blond hair has grown out to his shoulders, and Zoey has a cute baby bump. They’ll stay here through the fall to help with adult camp, then head to Australia for a second summer, scoping out locations near Zac’s hometown for a future kids’ camp. Zoey is due in February, and they plan to return to Camp Chickawah next summer, baby in tow. I figure if we can make it feasible to raise a child here, someday in the future, if I’m lucky, I can, too.

I walk past the Lodge, which was our second construction project, after winterizing the cabins. Thanks to a big grant from a former camper, it’s been renovated and refurbished with big picture windows and a wide porch facing the lake. The garden around it is in full bloom—the campers helped tend the flowers and herbs. Next summer, Cooper wants to add a raised vegetable garden.

Down the shore from the Lodge is a new construction site—Mary Valentine’s lake house. She’s the largest shareholder in the co-op and retained a half-acre lot for herself, where she’ll build a small vacation home that’ll be deeded to the co-op when she passes away.

I take the path toward the boys’ cabins, climb the stairs of the smallest one, and knock before letting myself in. The air is cooler in here, slightly musty. The beds are gone, but the table remains where it was last year, pushed against the largest window, covered with papers and notebooks. Luke sits there with his laptop. His hair is messy and he’s glaring at the screen with that blue-fire stare that lets me know it’s been a rough writing day.

He needs a moment to transition back into the real world, so I sit in a chair and wait.Camp Shadowscame out in July, and it’s done well—no bestseller lists, but steady sales, and readers are loving it—so he’s working on another novel as part of a new three-book deal. It’s not a half-million-dollar deal like last time, but he’s happy to be a mid-list author as long as he can keep doing what he loves. He’s taken the lead on planning writing and artist retreats here, too, during the off-season.

Last September, I spent a couple weeks in Chicago with Hillary, then headed to Luke’s family cabin in Michigan. We spent our days paddleboarding on the lake, playing Settlers of Catan (I finally beat him after two weeks of trying), belting show tunes in the kitchen while cooking dinner (he can do an impressive Phantom), and talking under the stars. Every day I fell more in love with him, but I couldn’t shake the nagging question in the back of my mind: did he really feel the same? Or did he get caught up in the emotions when we were back at camp?

Then, one day during our last week there, I accidentally overheard him talking to his mom on FaceTime.

She asked him if things were serious between us, and Luke said, “Let me put it this way, Mom: this relationship canonly go one of two ways. Either we’ll spend the rest of our lives together, or this will be the most painful breakup I can imagine.” “Worse than the divorce?” she asked. And he replied, “So much worse.”

That night, I told him that I wanted to figure out how to stay together, and he closed his eyes and said, “Thank god.”

Over the winter, we made time for traveling. He took me to New York in January, and we spent an entire week seeing Broadway shows—HadestownandMoulin Rouge!andChicagoandSweeney Todd. We met up with Hillary and Cooper in New Zealand for two weeks in February, after which they took a monthlong culinary tour through Europe and Asia, and we visited my mom and stepdad in San Diego.

But as much as I enjoyed all this traveling, I was itching to get back to camp.

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