Marshmallows & Lightning

Grunting with effort, I tossed the last of the girls’ backpacks onto the ground. In the late July heat, each felt like it weighed twice as much as it should.

I surveyed the campsite, noticing a few more pine cones than I’d like scattered about. The kids were busy unpacking and generally running amok, seemingly no less energetic for having just hauled a canoe overland for half an hour. I smiled. It hadn’t been that long ago that I had been in their shoes - first overnight trip at camp, just ecstatic to be out on my own like a real adventurer.

“Okay, everyone!” I shouted. “We need to get our tents set up. Who remembers from our dry run and wants to get us started?”

A few excited hands shot in the air. I chose Maya, a dark-haired quiet girl who had been the fastest in her group to get the tents set up when we had practiced back at camp. She’d get the other girls in line and setting up tents in no time.

Maya ran off, rattling off polite instructions to the other girls for how they could help by getting out stakes and unfurling the tent rods. I smiled as they ran off, dragging the tent bags behind them. I heard pine needles crunching behind me.

Emily appeared at my side, throwing down her own backpack and lifejacket beside the ones I had just dropped off.

“Got them setting up the tents?”

I bristled.

“What else?”

She scoffed and walked past me. I’m not the kind of person to hold a grudge, except when it comes to Emily. We had been best friends until the tenth grade, when she’d gone off to a fancy private school. A few months after she got there, she dropped me like a hot potato for a new group of friends, a cooler group of friends. Since then it had been radio silence, except for when she appeared in my life again to make it worse. First, she had started hooking up with the guy she knew I liked. Then, her school’s soccer team, with her as star forward, destroyed my own, of which I was captain. Most recently, she had been picked as Head Counselor over me, even though she had only started working at Camp Canto last summer, and I’ve been coming here since I was seven. What was even worse, I just knew she only wanted it to pad her college applications. She didn’t even like camping.

I watched as she sat on one of the logs near the empty fire pit. It was half-past four, so it was already time to start thinking about getting dinner together. It wouldn’t be anything fancy, just some reheated canned chilli and cornbread, but getting enough firewood to last the night was the first step. Emily sighed and scrubbed a hand over her sweaty face. I had to give her credit, as much as I hated it, she had pulled her weight and then some on the portage sections of this trip.

“Drink some water. I’ll go find firewood,” I instructed. She nodded.

I walked past her to where I could hear the girls giggling as they tried to get the tent together. As I rounded a corner of the trail, I could see them, having laid out the tents in a flat clearing. They hadn’t made much progress. Maya was gesticulating excitedly, trying to rally the girls into organized action, as they carried on pretending to sword fight with the tent rods.

“Stop that! You’ll poke an eye out,” I shouted. They started, and sheepishly lowered their weapons, turning back to Maya.

I smiled and walked on. The trail led deeper into the woods, eventually leading to the next campsite, but I wouldn’t go that far. Scanning the side of the trail, I picked out some pieces of kindling as well as some thicker branches and logs, making sure not to take anything too damp or too recently dead. I flinched as a spider crawled out from a piece of wood I was holding, and flicked my hand to knock it back down to the ground.

On my return to the fire pit, I noticed the tents were actually half-pitched. There were two tents for the girls and one for the pair of counsellors. When this overnight had first been scheduled, and I had seen my name posted alongside Emily’s, I had shuddered. Spending a whole two days with Emily, not to mention sharing a tent with her, was not how I wanted to spend any part of my summer. But it had been assigned, and I was a good counsellor, and I could grin and bear it for one night. Well, maybe not grin, but bear it.

I rounded the last turn and saw Emily still sitting by the firepit. Walking up behind her, I dropped my armful of firewood with a crash, startling her.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

She sighed, settling back down. I kneeled by the fire pit.

“No worries,” she replied, folding her head into her hands.

I wondered what her deal was. The portage hadn’t been that hard. As if she had read my mind, she looked up. I noticed the dark circles under her eyes for the first time.

“Sorry, I’m really tired. It’s dumb, but I’ve been doing a grade twelve online course to get ahead for next year, but I think I bit off a bit more than I can chew.”

“Is the Wi-Fi even good enough back at camp to do that?”

She laughed. “Not really. I can’t load the recorded lectures so I’m basically just reading the textbook front-to-back and hoping for the best. I’m staying up until, like, one every morning to get through all the assignments.”

I paused, halfway through assembling the fire.

“Still trying to perfect your college applications, huh?”

She looked up at me, studying my face.

“Look, I’m sorry about Head Counsellor. I know you wanted it.”

I sniffed as I continued stacking twigs and branches into a neat pyramid.

“It’s fine.”

We sat quietly for a bit as I finished preparing the fire. I stood to grab the matches from my backpack and Emily rose with me, stretching.

“I’ll go check on the girls,” she said, and I nodded. She walked off.

An hour later, I had the fire crackling and the tents were (finally) fully pitched. The girls were sitting around the fire as I spooned ladleful's of chili into the plastic bowls we had brought when Maya spoke up.

“How old are you guys?” she asked, round brown eyes staring up at Emily and me.

Emily smiled. “How old do you think we are?”

The girls shouted out guesses ranging from twenty to forty. Emily and I laughed.

“We’re both seventeen,” I answered.

Another girl spoke next. “Are you in university?”

I shook my head. “We’re both starting grade twelve at the end of this summer.”

The girls made impressed sounds. A beat later, one of the other girls piped up again.

“Are you guys friends at home?”

I stiffened momentarily. Emily spoke first.

“Of course we are! Camp Canto friends are friends everywhere.”

I nodded, forcing a smile. The memory of Emily telling me to my face that she didn’t want to be my friend anymore, only two years prior, made me flush. I had made new friends, maybe even better friends, since we had stopped talking, but her lie (the fact that it was a lie) still stung.

The girls accepted this answer and kept eating, quickly moving on to the topic of who was the fastest swimmer. Once they had finished a reasonable portion of chili, we instructed them to collect sticks for roasting marshmallows, which sent them sprinting off with glee into the woods. I started collecting the used plastic bowls, preparing to wash them in the lake.

“Sorry about that,” Emily offered. “I didn’t think it was very counsellor-y to say we weren’t friends back home.”

I winced. There was a time when I considered her my sister.

“No, you did the right thing. Hopefully they can do better than we did.”

She frowned, seeming sincerely sad, and a strange thought occurred to me. If neither of us were happy not being friends, why weren’t we friends?

A slight rushing sound started overhead, snapping me out of my thoughts. Although the sky had been pure blue in the afternoon, it had greyed over during dinnertime, and now a slight rain came down. Nothing to worry about. Even in the case of a thunderstorm - God forbid - our official instructions were to stay put on the island and have the girls sit on their lifejackets. I turned to where the girls had run off into the woods.

“Girls!” I shouted, cupping my hands over my mouth, “Grab your rain jackets before you come back!”

I heard a few cheerful ‘okays!’ from the woods. Satisfied, I turned back to Emily. She had already pulled out the marshmallows, and was dutifully putting a plastic plate on each ‘seat’ of the logs around the campfire.

“I’m going to grab my rain jacket,” she said, after placing the last plate down.

“Sounds good,” I replied, as she walked back towards the tents.

I was leaning over the fire, tossing a few more branches in, when she turned back.

“Do you want me to get yours, too?”

I looked up. She was smiling softly.

“Yeah, thanks,” I replied, cautiously.

She nodded and walked off. I watched the fire grow taller, wrapping around the new fuel I had added, throwing off a greater warmth.

Fifteen or so minutes later, we were huddled around the campfire as the rain drizzled down. Despite the wetness, the fire was going strong, and the girls were contentedly roasting marshmallows over the flames. I sat on the end of one of the logs and stuck my own marshmallow, at the end of a long stick, low over the hot coals. Emily sat on the end of the other log, across the fire from me. One of the girls cleared her throat.

“Do you guys want to play cards after we clean up?”

“We’ll have to do it inside the tent,” another girl replied, gesturing to the sky.

Another girl protested at this. “But then we can’t all play together!”

The first girl frowned, not having thought of this. She turned to me.

“Can we all be in one tent? Just to play cards, not to sleep, we can go back to our separate tents to sleep.”

I smiled. The camp had a weird rule that absolutely no more than the manufacturer-indicated number of campers could sleep in a tent on an overnight trip, but there wasn’t a rule about them hanging out in one tent.

“Of course,” I replied.

“Will you play with us?”

It was Maya who had spoken, looking at Emily and me. I glanced at Emily, seeing how tired she already looked. I didn’t think she had it in her to play two hours of card games with eight-year-olds.

“Honestly girls, I’m a bit tired, and I think I need to get to bed early. Is that okay?”

The girls nodded. If they were disappointed, they didn’t show it. Most of them were too happy munching on marshmallows to care much whether their old counsellors would hang out with them.

I turned my attention back to my own marshmallow. Slow and steady wins the marshmallow race, as I had learned over years of canoe trips. Close to the coals, rotating continually, until evenly brown on all sides. I was admiring my marshmallow, close to perfection, when I noticed Emily quickly withdrawing her own stick from the flames.

She had held it over the top of the fire, where most of the girls did, and where it inevitably would burn. She waved the stick back and forth, trying to put out the burning marshmallow, only making it worse, until it was an orange-blue flaming ball, a miniature sun. The girls screamed and giggled as she waved the stick around. I stood and crossed towards her. I pulled the stick from her hand and, with a deep breath, blew out the flames. The charred marshmallow was hopelessly burnt. Handing it back to her, I smiled.

“Rookie move,” I chided.

Emily frowned. “I like them burnt.”

She tugged the marshmallow, trying to pull it off the stick, and the blackened outer layer came off in a thick skin of coal. The naked, wet lump of marshmallow that remained shone in the firelight. She ate the burnt skin of the marshmallow, trying to smile- through what I knew to be a disappointingly acrid taste.

I pulled my own marshmallow off the coals and held it up.

“Not to brag, but I have perfect marshmallow technique. Bronzed on all sides.”

Emily smiled, staring at her skinless marshmallow blob.

“I guess that’s what you learn in ten years of camping.”

I locked eyes with her. She was being sincere. Emily pulled what remained of her marshmallow off of her stick and tossed it into the fire where it melted.

“Oh great marshmallow master, can you teach me your ways?” she asked. I snorted.

“Take this one,” I offered, tilting my stick towards her. She stood and pulled the perfectly-toasted marshmallow from it. Popping it into her mouth, she smiled.

“Better, right?” I asked.

“Much better,” she replied, her words garbled by the marshmallow in her mouth. The girls giggled and started clamoring, asking me to teach them how to do it.

A few ghost stories and way too many marshmallows later, the sky suddenly opened up. The rain fell in buckets, and the noise of the downpour drowned out everything else. The girls started crying out, trying to cover their faces with their hands.

“Everyone to the tents!” I shouted.

The girls scattered, running for their tents just up the trail. Emily and I scrambled to clean up the last dishes, not wanting to deal with a midnight raccoon buffet just a few steps from the tents. The canoes were already safely pulled onshore, thankfully, so once the food supplies were all safely put away Emily and I followed the girls up to the trail.

We were halfway to the tents when something sent a jolt of fear through me. Through the trees, a little ways off, a forked tongue of lightning flashed through the dark sky.

A few moments later, a shockingly loud CLAP of thunder followed. Emily and I shrieked and ran the rest of the way to the tents.

“I’ll take the far one, you get this one!” I shouted to Emily. She nodded and kept running.

The girls had set up the tents so that the counsellor tent was closest to the fire pit, followed shortly after by one of the girl’s tents, with the last tent being a little bit further away.

I ran to the farther tent and popped my head in through the zip-up door. It was chaos inside, with five girls’ stuff hurriedly unpacked, damp clothes everywhere. Shivering, I tried to smile at the five scared girls crouched inside despite my own terror.

“It’s just a little thunderstorm, girls! You know what to –”

I was cut off by a furious bout of thunder. It was so loud I winced before continuing.

“You know what to do! Put your sleeping pads down, and then your lifejackets on top. You’ve all got your lifejackets, right?”

Even as they answered in the affirmative, I did a quick scan to make sure. Five girls, five life jackets. Thank God. I tried to calm the hammering of my heart with an even breath.

“Lifejackets on top of your sleeping pads, then crouch on top. Don’t lie down, okay? Just crouch. The lightning is close to us now but it’ll pass. Until then, stay on top of your life jackets, you hear me?”

The girls nodded. They looked so scared, soaked from the rain, they reminded me of stray kittens.

“It’ll be okay. Shout if you need anything. I’ll come back once it’s safe to move, okay?”

They nodded again and I pulled out of the tent, zipping it back up behind me. Behind me, Emily was just leaving the closer tent, and I jogged up behind her. Another flash of lightning, this one a bit closer to our campsite. A moment later, the deafening sound of thunder followed.

“It’s close to us!” I shouted over the din. I could see Emily nodding as we ran.

We burst into our tent, and immediately started unpacking. My hands shook as I unrolled my sleeping pad. As Emily crouched over her still-damp lifejacket, a horrible realization dawned on me.

“What?” Emily asked, noticing the look on my face.

I looked at her, feeling cold.

“I left my lifejacket at the canoes.”

We locked eyes. Years of friendship provided her with the understanding of why this was a huge problem. I was catastrophically scared of storms.

“It’ll be okay,” she assured, “It’s only a short run down to the canoes and back.”

I nodded, feeling tears prickle at my eyes. “I know it’s silly, I just, I can’t!”

We paused for another moment. I tried to work up the nerve to leave the tent, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt like an idiot, acting like a scared kid. When I looked up again, Emily had a curious set to her jaw.

“I’ll go grab it for you,” she shouted.

I stammered, but before I could formulate a reply, she was unzipping the tent, and then she was gone, running off into the pouring void of the night.

I gulped as another peal of thunder came down, following a flash of lightning by only a heartbeat. The storm was right on top of us.

I sat alone in the tent, chewing my lip. Emily had been gone longer than she should have, or at least it felt that way. What if she was struck by lightning, trying to get my lifejacket back? What if she had been attacked by rogue raccoons? What if she had tripped and fallen headlong off a cliff in the dark? The worst part of me briefly mused that she deserved it for being such a bad friend, but that was quickly overridden by concern. The possibilities, silly or not, spun through my mind as I counted the seconds. Eventually, mercifully, I heard footsteps outside the tent, and a moment later Emily’s wet form slipped back inside, lifejacket in hand.

“Here you go,” she said cheerily, handing the lifejacket to me as she breathed hard.

“Thank you so much,” I replied, standing to put my lifejacket on top of my sleeping pad before I crouched back down on top of it.

“Don’t thank me too much, I think I knocked over our cooler. Plus, it was the least I could do,” she concluded, more seriously.

I looked up at her. Two years of sadness welled up, beyond my control.

“It hurt a lot when you friend-broke-up with me. That was a shitty thing to do,” I told her. The unvarnished truth, pathetic though it may be.

She nodded.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why? I don’t get it. We were friends for years. And then you just stopped talking to me.”

“It’s stupid. I don’t have a good explanation.”

“Try,” I insisted. “You owe it to me.”

She took a moment to collect her thoughts before speaking.

“Once I got to Birchwood, I had a hard time making new friends. My dad said it was because I was holding on to you too much, and that I should let go of our old group. So I tried to, and it kind of worked. And then, once I had made new friends, I knew you were so mad at me I was scared to try and talk to you again. I just felt so bad, I didn't know what to say, or if you could forgive me.”

I frowned.

“That is stupid.”

She laughed for a moment before slumping back into a frown.

“I am sorry. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have listened to him. I shouldn’t even have gone to Birchwood, really.”

“Why?”

She cleared her throat, and I could see her eyes shining. “They’re so competitive. It’s crazy. It’s like, if you don’t get into Auden, they forget you exist.”

Auden was the most prestigious school in our area, a fancy private university with an insanely competitive acceptance rate. Practically all the kids from Birchwood ended up at Auden.

“Who forgets you exist?” I asked. Another flash of lightning illuminated the tent, followed by another ear-piercing bout of thunder. I shivered, trying to focus on Emily.

“My Birchwood friends….my dad…I don’t know. He was so proud when I got into Birchwood, he was happier than I’ve ever seen him. He just wanted me to make it work there.”

I could hear her voice thinning, threatening to break. The exhaustion was plain on her face, and my anger and betrayal dissolved into pity. She was running herself into the ground - Head Counsellor, summer classes - to keep her dad and her snotty new friends happy.

“Well, it was dumb of you to drop me, but I forgive you.”

Emily looked up.

“Really?”

I nodded, smiling.

“And not just because you saved my life by grabbing this for me,” I affirmed, pointing to my lifejacket.

She laughed, and the brightest flash of lightning so far seemed to fill the tent with daylight. Almost simultaneously, the loudest burst of thunder I’ve ever heard rang in my ears. Through the noise, I could hear the girls screaming in their tents.

Once the thunderclap cleared, I yelled out to them, trying to steady my own voice.

“You girls okay?”

I heard some shaky ‘yeahs!’ from the direction of the tents. I looked Emily in the eyes, and despite the fear gripping me, I smiled. It was good to be on the same side again.

The storm carried on for an hour or so, and the rain carried on the whole night through. When the thunder stopped, I left the tent to check on the girls. They were scared, but had indeed played cards, crouched on their lifejackets, throughout the whole storm.

“You okay, Maya?” I asked, noticing the quiet girl at the back of the tent.

She looked up and smiled.

“I was scared, but Jess calmed me down,” she explained, smiling at her friend.

“Thanks, Jess,” I said, nodding at the other girl, “You’re a good friend.”

Jess smiled at Maya and the two girls giggled. I extracted myself from the tent and headed back to my own, where Emily was already dozing. I joined her, stretching myself out in my sleeping bag. With the peaceful drumming of rain on the tent, sleep came quickly.

The next morning was cool and clear, with a slight mist rising off the lake. The girls woke us up, obviously excited to get out of their crowded tents for the day.

“Breakfast time?” Emily groaned, eyes barely open.

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied, “I can make it for them.”

She smiled and lay back down.

I stumbled down to the fire pit and surveyed the scene. Emily had indeed knocked over the cooler containing our breakfast supplies, which had been promptly scavenged by squirrels from the looks of it.

Sitting on top of one of the logs by the fire pit was the last bag of marshmallows, miraculously untouched. The bag was dotted with droplets of water, but picking it up, I could tell that the marshmallows inside were dry.

I heard crunching as the girls walked up behind me. I turned, holding the bag of marshmallows.

“Marshmallows for breakfast?”

The girls cheered and rushed to sit on the logs near the firepit, ready for me to dispense the sugary, squishy morsels.

“Now, we won’t be able to toast them, since all the wood would’ve gotten wet last night, but –”

“Look!” Maya shouted.

I turned to the firepit, where one skinny tendril of smoke was rising from the ruins of last night’s fire. Deep in the middle of the sodden branches, a few embers glowed hopefully. I tilted my head. After last night’s deluge, it shouldn’t have been possible. I heard Emily trundling down the trail towards us and turned to look at her. In her arms were a few dry-looking branches and sticks.

“I managed to find a few dry things underneath some of the bigger trees,” she explained, dropping the pile by the fire.

I smiled, nodding at Emily gratefully, and turned back to the girls.

“Then let’s get this party started!”

The girls cheered while Emily and I threw kindling onto the flame, coaxing the few quiet embers into a flickering, comfortable fire. I smiled at Emily, both of us tossing twigs into the pit with the excitement of little kids building their first campfires. After the cold, wet night, the heat warmed my face like the first ray of summer sun.