Little Girl Thieves

The camp for girls went from one Sunday to the next. By Monday the first item had gone missing: a plastic watch with five differently colored rings that snapped around its face. After that was a puffy diary with a gold-colored lock followed by a waxy envelope holding Bicentennial stamps. Other objects taken were less coveted and half-eaten: a granola bar, cinnamon gum, licorice rope, a canister of lemonade mix.

I was six—I was too young for camp—but my sister was twelve and had attended five summers already. My mother had asked the director if I could come a summer early. My sister could look after me. I fantasized about her mothering me at camp. She’d come to my tent and comfort me if I couldn’t fall to sleep. Her sailing unit included the oldest girls, and they fussed over my little-girl unit. But my sister continued to ignore me even when her friends treated me like a pet and gave me nicknames. Her swim lessons were out on the lake, beyond the dock, and she wore a blue bathing cap for swimmer. I wore a red one for paddler and waded from the beach. Three ropes separated us. Yellow, white, and blue caps bobbed and glided up and down their own sections. I kept putting my hand up to feel my dry hair slipping around under the red cap.

My sister and her friends stayed in teepees along the far shore while the other little girls and I slept in platform tents in the middle of the forest. Our units had names like Drifters, Windy Pines, Hilltop. We hiked around the island to activities, singing camp songs. The length of the path smelled of wet pine and the earth, hinting at a deeper place in it, a quality inaccessible along the paved streets of our homes.

Every activity flowed into the next. Our first activity of the day was flag, our last campfire. Mornings were devoted to swimming—afternoons, waterskiing and sailing. Mail call happened right after lunch. Crafts, right after dinner. During free time, we religiously wrote letters.

My mother sent me halves of letters: Find your sister if you want to read the other half. She sent me a ten-dollar bill: Give your sister half of it. I saw my sister in the dining hall, sitting at a table with other big girls. She wore a blue kerchief over her long brown hair. When I showed her the envelopes with our mother’s handwriting, she gave them a slight eye roll. So I kept the ten-dollar bill in the pocket of my terrycloth shorts. I was only free of my outfit during watersports when I hung it on a wooden hook in the bathhouse. I even slept in my clothes, tucked into my sleeping bag.

At least once during the beginning of the week while hiking around the island, my unit stopped at the huge boulder where Chief Eagle and his wife lay. Hundreds of years ago the couple had been running to their canoe when the boulder came rolling down the hill, crushed, and buried them, the counselors told us. Later, on my cot, where I had mosquito netting and a flashlight, the story consumed me. The space beneath the rock wasn’t wide enough for two bodies.

Each morning I dragged myself to the dining hall, passing the boulder. Pine needles poked my bare toes through my sandals. I carried my bathing suit wet in my hand—we would swim right after breakfast—it seemed we were always in the lake, washing away any stickiness.

One day I was late to swim lessons. There was another girl in the bathhouse, my sister’s friend who called me Skipper. Her arms crossed in front of her as she stood watching me undress. I quickly pulled my clammy suit up my front and its moist straps around my shoulders and checked for the ten dollars, feeling the pocket of my shorts, which were on the hook. I went down to the beach and pushed myself out into the water toward the floating dock. The water was warmer than the air, indigo when I opened my eyes inside of it—I stayed under until someone pulled me to the ladder. It was my sister’s friend, her willowy arm bending like a branch around my shoulders. We sat on the metal, our legs folded, our bottom lips gracing our knees.

The ten-dollar bill was gone. The air left my belly and stuck in my throat. In the dining hall before dinner, my sister’s friend stood close and talked to me in a mildly caring voice—I saw you turtle your sunfish. Even though I knew she’d taken the money, I listened to her completely like a sponge mopping up a patch of water.

The week wore on, and belongings were being stolen more rapidly and becoming more and more insignificant such as ponytail holders. No one ever mentioned money—we weren’t supposed to have any. At drop-off, our parents had deposited cash in our trading post accounts.

One clear evening, my sister was assigned to help teach a group of younger girls how to make monkey’s fist necklaces. My tent mate and I were with her at the lodge on the huge wooden deck overlooking the lake, glassy and bordered by rocks and trees. My sister paid very close attention to her counselor, who wore her hair swept back in a kerchief too. The counselor had dyed a bunch of white string blue and was showing how to weave and knot the string around a marble, using a double fishermen’s bend to finish the project. My sister ended up making the necklaces for my friend and me because we couldn’t wrap the string tightly enough.

The camp director came in while we were crafting and said so many things had gone missing in the last few days, she was wondering if any of us was missing anything more because she was making a list. Do you have that money? my sister whispered. I wasn’t sure if she thought I was some kind of thief. For a second, I thought of telling the camp director about my sister’s friend in the bathhouse—I felt a lift in my chest. Then came the shallow breath again, and I gestured to my shorts and their miniature pocket even though it was empty.

After the crafting activity, my friend and I stumbled through the forest, heading to our platform tent. There was the scent of campfire, and I kept reaching up to hold my monkey’s fist. We came to the boulder and stopped, and I said I planned to come back in the middle of the night. My friend asked why. I wanted to see what was underneath.

There’ll be just bones.

But how many bones?

You’re creepy, my friend said. There’s nothing there. 

I searched the area where the grey rock met the dirt. Then why do they tell us that story?

Closer to the end of the week—maybe Thursday—another large item was stolen: a charm bracelet. The girl it belonged to had been wearing it, which meant the thief probably slept in the same teepee. No one believed any of us would wake in the night and wander the island—we were brave, but we weren’t dangerous. They searched the teepee, but none of the missing items was found.

Friday night I couldn't sleep. I reread letters from my mother. I kept thinking about the stealing. I wondered what it would be like if someone—my sister's friend—took my money while I slept. She'd have to undo the loud Velcro of my mosquito netting, unzip my sleeping bag to search around my body for the tiny pocket. I couldn’t understand how someone could take another person’s things. I kept thinking about it until I couldn’t stay in my bed anymore. The soft night waited for little girl thieves. 

If I were found in the woods, I could say I was going to find my sister, which would make sense considering my age. I put on my flip-flops and untied the canvas tent flaps and stepped down the wooden stairs. I started to walk along the path with my flashlight, passing the outhouse when I heard: I’m coming with you. It was my tent mate wearing a sweatshirt over her nightgown, watching the ground as she skipped over protruding rocks to join me. We started toward the boulder and teepees, headed to the far side of the island. There was the scent of dying campfires now.

When we arrived at the boulder, we pushed at it with our tiny arms, but it wouldn’t budge. We tried to climb on top of it, hoisting each other up, but eventually we fell near the path to rest. The ground smelled wet but felt dry enough to make a little bed. We could see stars through the trees, more than we’d ever seen in our towns. The wind in the pines was picking up. Waterfront docks whined in the distance. Suddenly, it occurred to me Chief Eagle and his wife had been buried right beneath us. We’re right on top of their burial ground.

I want to go home, my friend said, sniffling. I reached across my body to touch her, but her arm was covered in heavy fabric—I could barely feel her bone. 

Let’s go then, I said, and together we returned to Hilltop.

Saturday night, around tables decorated with wildflower bunches and origami boats representing each camper’s journey, a rumor traveled. Earlier in the day, a girl had been sent home. In the bottom of her sleeping bag, the camp director had found stolen items. But her tent mates claimed her innocence—the girl had been framed—they had been with her all week at every activity. The tale meandered through the units at the banquet so that it was silent on the single-file hike to the docks that night, where we filled our folded boats with sand and candles and sent them out into the dark and cried because the week was coming to an end.

Later that summer, in our dusky yard, I was collecting lightning bugs in a jar, and my sister was reading a book by battery-powered lantern. I said her friend was the thief who had taken our money. She sighed—she knew that. I told her I snuck out one night to look for the grave of Chief Eagle and his wife. She shook her head: That story is a myth. Her words caught on my skin like lake water and pulled me under. I closed my eyes and filled my belly with air, so I became more buoyant, and swam all the way back to camp. There, I saw the ghosts running from the cavalry—hundreds of people descending the hill. I opened my eyes and watched the insects crawl from the opened jar into the grass.

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Public domain illustration "Lower Saranac Lake from Shingle Bay Point, Adirondack Mountains" digitized by the Library of Congress.