Accessory To A Summer Camp Crime

At Camp Rainbow, it's all fun and games until it comes to friendship bracelets, then it’s war. I didn’t plan to be her accomplice; I was just a summer camp counselor! But Sophia, a master criminal, connected the threads, tying me into her plan and there was nothing I could do to escape the knot.

I spent my summers at Camp Rainbow as a kid, the runt in the corner, dirty, and ignored. You know her, every cabin has one. But I loved that camp, adored every minute of the silly songs, the campfires, and of course the boys, acne-faced and stinking of sweat and hormones. I just wanted to belong, be a color in the ‘rainbow’.

But each summer, it was the same, dim and dingy, and never even noticed by the popular girls. That’s why I came back to be a counselor, to be the cool girl, finally. Once a sad Gloria, I renamed myself ‘Butterfly’ and broke out of my cocoon to spread my wings as a new, brighter creature.

Numbered by the age of its residents, Cabin 10 looked much like the rest of the cabins at Camp Rainbow in the forest next to Lake Tahoe, a squat and fat one-room building, up on risers to protect against the winter snow. Painted a bright pink, with olive green trim, in the summer it looked like a little girl pulling her dress up to wade through a puddle.

Sophia, somehow at a Camp entirely filled with bugs and dirt, was always immaculate in luminous whites and pastels. She had long brown hair, tied up tight into two pigtails. Her small round face exploded into a smile, dimples deep into her brown cheeks each time I handed out the yarn. She, and all the campers at Camp Rainbow loved yarn, by design of course.

The Camp banned technology of all kinds, laptops, phones, iPads, even radios. For these digital natives, the detox hit hard, they became irritable and twitchy, as sick as any junkie. We kept the kids on the go, running them in activities to keep their attention. It took a week for them to even recognize where they were. Used to constant Tik Tok or the Gram, how interesting is a tree, or a squirrel? But once their heads cleared from the exhaust of their harried lives, we offered them salvation; the bright reds and blues, greens and yellows of yarn.

At Camp Rainbow the coin of the realm was friendship bracelets. Creating friendship bracelets supported the addicts in their recovery, and built social connections. The whole camp worked yarn like Rumpelstiltskin spinning gold, creating elaborate key chains, earrings, bookmarks and of course bracelets. The boys, not to be left out, crafted thick rope necklaces.

I’m proud to say the best of the camp, the self named ‘Designers’, had collected together in my own cabin 10. These six girls skipped any outdoor activity they could to sit inside, or under their favorite tree to create ever more intricate designs, deep in philosophical discussions on the complexities and hidden meanings of the color combinations, knots, and the words stitched in. Their tiny, delicate hands flew, blurs of motion as they magically weaved multiple strands of yarn into fabulous patterns. No elves worked as artistically, no dwarves as diligently, producing a bracelet each every two days.

Their extravagant designs of chevrons, arrowheads, and candy stripes adorned the wrists of many throughout the camp. I had several of course myself. Tightly knotted bracelets of yellow, orange and reds, I couldn’t help sing the Taylor Swift lyrics, ‘So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it..’

As with all efficient manufacturing facilities, to provide premiere output, they needed premiere input. By the third week, the girls had become connoisseurs of the yarn. I swear they could smell the good colors.

“Here are new yarn skeins from the office!” I said, squeaking in a bright and cheery voice as I entered the dark cabin, dreading their reaction.

The six girls turned, carnivorous wolves smelling prey. They leapt at the colorful skeins stacked in my hand. Small fingers flashed, and my palms were empty.

Holding the yarn close to their faces like jewel merchants, they frowned at the few colors and dull tones, their bare teeth turning to me as if I might have more hidden behind my back, or in my shirt.

I shuffled back toward the door.

“Butterfly this is it?” Menace glittered behind Sophia’s eyes. “These are all just the same.”

I shrunk down like I was back in the corner again, being bullied by the popular girls. “It's what I was given.” I stammered.

The skeins of yarn had been picked through, then discarded on the back of the bed the girls were sitting on. The new delivery, only the standard colors of black, blues and greens, were tossed like discarded bones next to half used skeins of the same colors.

I knew bright colors were preferred for the bracelets, the yellows, reds and oranges, those colors made the bracelets pop, and were the most popular. The rare yarn colors of violet and aquamarine were snatched up whenever new shipments came in. The favored multicolored yarn had to be doled out to each cabin in small sections, ‘shorties’ in an elaborate ritual to maintain fair distribution.

Rare as a unicorn, glow-in-the-dark yarn, absolutely beautiful, became more valuable than any diamond jewelry. As the Cabin Counselor, I monitored my cabin’s yarn, making sure the cabin had enough, and the colors made it out to all of the girls in the cabin.

“I did what I could.” I stretched up to my full height. Not tall, I was still bigger than a 10 year old. “We have to be fair.” My stomach twinged but only for a moment. I couldn’t let them know I traded several bright oranges, yellows and a valuable aquamarine to get out of the night shift. But, really it’s just yarn.

Sitting behind the Dining hall that night, I knew it was worth every skein. Coyote, the counselor for the Boys Cabin 14 had his strong hands wrapped tight around my body. We were deep in a discussion of the color of wine in moonlight when a few young girls scampered up. Coyote pulled his hand back from my waist, and the cold air rushed in, just like their rude interruption.

“Butterfly! Butterfly we were looking for you!” Hands clenched together, their little 8 year old faces looked up, pleading in dirt smudged seriousness.

I gritted my teeth, and pushed the collection of friendship bracelets up my arm as I leaned over. I needed them to leave, Coyote was all mine. “It’s pretty late, can we discuss this tomorrow?”

They leaned in together, and then pushed one of the girls forward. “You tell them Amanda!” She kicked at the ground in dirty sneakers as she spoke, her hands clasped behind her.

“Butterfly, Coyote, we’re from Cabin 8, and- we think the Designers are stealing our yarn. All our yellows and oranges are missing!”

An elbow from her friend nudged her. “And our shorties of glow-in-the-dark are gone.”

“They stole it!” another girl shouted, friendship bracelets on both arms tightly wrapped down to tiny clenched fists. “You need to search their stuff!”

Coyote’s smirk matched my own. I wanted nothing to do with this yarn nonsense.

“Amanda, I’m sorry your yarn is missing, do you think you could have just lost it?” Coyote and I shared a glance, stifling laughter as their little faces turned to snarls.

Then I saw Sophia walking by heading to the bathroom. She wore a sparkling clean yellow top over bright white capris. I called out to her.

“One of our Camp mottos is ‘Live Truthfully’.” A spark of guilt leapt up as I said this, but I snuffed it out. "I’ll ask if your yarn has been, accidentally, picked up by the Cabin 10 girls.”

Sophia walked over, her eyes narrowing at the glare of the younger girls’ accusing faces. Clocking the atmosphere, she drew her shoulders back with a quick shake of her pig tails. She rounded the table to stand next to me, taller than the younger girls with her clothes glowing under the moonlight. She looked down with a bright beneficent smile on the dirt-streaked Cabin 8 girls.

Never a popular girl myself, I recognized the allure of wanting to be on Sophia's good side, to be in the inner circle of this girl who acted like she was 30.

“Sophia, Cabin 8 thinks the Designers might have, by accident of course, taken some of their yarn.”

Coyote chuckled next to me. I sounded like a kid myself, and that wasn’t even a question.

“Did you take any of their yarn?” I asked again in my best Camp Counselor voice.

In a snap Sophia’s eyes went wide, her mouth opened in shock. She fell back, hands to her chest as if she had been stabbed in the heart. That girl was built to be on stage.

“No! How terrible. But you should ask Cabin 13. They act like they’re so old-” Sophia leaned down with her hands on her knees, ribbons of color glowing in the dark half way to her elbow.

She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Their bracelets seem to have all the good colors.”

Coyote accompanied me over to Cabin 13, along with the phalanx of Cabin 8 girls, itching for battle. I appreciated my own Cabin full of 10 year-olds as I walked into the stench of teenagers, sweat and puberty dripping from the walls.

Amanda and her friends stayed outside as Coyote and I braved the Cabin.

We found a few girls lounging on a bed.

“Is Nightingale, your counselor here?”

At their shrugs, I launched into it.

“There’s been some questions about campers stealing yarn,” I said. Discarded clothes and towels covered the floor, bras hung from the rafters. “Do you know anything about-”

“Yarn?” a voice called out from a sleeping bag. We don’t do bracelets anymore. You gotta ask those little kids. They think they’re so cute. My sister’s in Cabin 7 and she’s a fuggin’’ monster. Go pester them.”

“But Coyote, if you want to strip search me…” Another girl called out, to a chorus of giggles.

I dragged Coyote out. What was going on?

Green envy, yellow fear and righteous red faces colored the camp. Fingers were pointed every which way, and the accusations became as tightly wound as the knots on a bracelet. Amanda and Cabin 8’s complaints were repeated by almost every cabin. The ‘best’ yarn was going missing, and no one was safe from the thieves.

An atmosphere of fear flowed through the Camp, each cabin guarding their own supply of yarn, and fighting over even mediocre colors. Two girls got into a slap fight over a dark blue shorty. By the fifth day the camp felt like we were under siege.

The night of the All-Camp Campfire Coyote and I snuck back into Cabin 10 for some alone time with a bottle of Strawberry Hill wine he had stolen. He was the first boy I had ever kissed, and all I wanted was to be with him. I felt his hands but wished I could see them when suddenly his warm strawberry wine flavored lips pulled away from me.

“What’s that?” Coyote said.

“Hmm? I blinked my eyes open. I listened for someone outside, but heard only chirping crickets. A stream of yellow moon light flowed through a window, lighting up one of the beds.

“I don’t hear anything?” My head felt funny and my eyes blurred.

“Not a noise,” Coyote pointed. “that-” An other-worldly pale light emanated from a bag on the bed.

“I don’t care what that is, you need to pay attention to me.” I pulled his face toward me, leaning back in, but the glowing bag niggled at me, could it be?

Moments later loud singing erupted from the Campfire and we knew our time was up.

As I put my shirt back on I eased over to the bag, hesitant to look. I pushed it open. In the darkness the light of the truth spilled out. Several friendship bracelets, filled with glow-in-the-dark yarn glimmered a ghostly green in the moonlight. They sat on top of a pile of yarn, the eerie light turning the crimson and orange yarn into blood red. I had found the thieves.

My options swirled in my head with the wine, spinning the room and my future.

I could turn her in, and then get blamed for the actions of the cabin. But if I didn't, the trust of the camp would never heal. I reached out a tentative hand toward the glimmering beautiful bracelets. I could take them myself, be the girl who takes things, not the runt who goes without.

No! I would be as bad as those girls. “I’m going to have to confront her.” I said to the empty cabin, before I went outside to puke in the bushes.

“Sophia.” I held her back from breakfast the next morning. “There are several glow-in-the-dark bracelets in the bag on your bed, can you tell me where that yarn came from?”

Sophia’s expression, curious, looked back at me. “No way!” She said without hesitation.

“I don’t have any glow-in-the-dark bracelets in my bag.” Her light brown innocent eyes held my own.

And I believed her. I questioned myself, did I really see them? She’s such a great kid, how could I question her, maybe I just drank too much? I so wanted her to like me, to be in her good graces.

“Can I just see your bag?

“Isn’t that an invasion of my privacy?” Sophia asked.

That’s when I knew. I picked up the bag and dumped it on the bed. Along with rolled up shirts, sunscreen, and a bullet journal, six gorgeous multicolored bracelets rolled out, each with thick stripes of glow-in-the dark yarn running through them.

“Sophia! Can you take the yarn apart, give it back to the Cabins you took them from?” I pleaded.

She looked down at her shoes. “I don’t know, our knots are really tight-“ She took in a breath, then turned her face up to mine. “If you didn’t trade away all the good colors to be with Coyote, we wouldn’t have to get our own yarn!” She shouted.

I gaped, opening my mouth before closing it again, a hooked fish.

I fought back with the only weapon I had left. “Do you want me to call your Mother?”

Sophia looked up, a sharp edge in her face. “Oh she won’t care. She only cares about her boyfriend. That’s why I had to spend my whole summer here, in this dirt.”

Sophia flushed with a hurt that I understood. Of being ignored, and disregarded.

"My bracelets have to be perfect! With the best designs, and best colors, don't you understand? I have to be perfect." She wiped her wrist across her damp eyes.

I put a hand on her shoulder, Sophia flinched before leaning in.

“I’ll figure something out. But, no more stealing, OK?”

Sophia tilted her head. “You won’t tell?”

“I have an idea, but you have to help.”

I made some calls and got Coyote to make a special run to the craft store for me.

Sophia and the Designers had to deliver new ‘just found’ yarn, of valuable multicolored skeins and give each of the younger Cabins training on the more elaborate designs. They were natural teachers, and the little ones absolutely loved it. The Mystery of the Missing Yarn faded as the summer came to a close. No resolution, but with the new yarn, the loss wasn't so bad.

Sophia came through and covered for me on the last night of the summer.

Coyote and I went out to a clearing in the forest. The moon hung in the sky like a beautiful radiant spotlight just for us. This time I got to watch his hands, tracing circles around my body. Each of his wrists were lit up by glow-in-the dark aquamarine bracelets, colors and feelings swirling in beautiful combinations.

It’s going to be a good night.