I couldn’t sleep for a long time. I thought only of Michael Sherwood’s face, the one I’d cast sideways glances at through middle school, the one Scarlett and I had studied in yearbook after yearbook. And later, the one in the picture that was tucked in the mirror in her bedroom, of Scarlett and Michael at the lake just weeks earlier, water glittering behind them. The way her head rested on his shoulder, his hand on her knee. The way he looked at her, and not at the camera, when I pushed the red button, the flash lighting them up in front of me.

My mother didn’t look very happy when she pulled up at the front office the next afternoon. It was clear by this point that my experience at Sisterhood Camp had been a complete and utter disaster. Which was just what I’d predicted when I was dragged off against my will to spend the last two weeks of summer in the middle of the mountains with a bunch of other girls who had no say in the matter either. Sisterhood Camp, which was really called Camp Believe (my father coined the nickname), was something my mother had heard about at one of her seminars. She had come home with a brochure she tucked under my breakfast plate one morning, a yellow sticky note on it saying What do you think? My first reaction was Not much, thank you, as I stared down at the picture of two girls about my age running through a field together hand in hand. The basic gist was this: a camp with the usual swimming and horseback riding and lanyard making, but in the afternoons seminars and self-help groups on “Like Mother, Like Me” and “Peer Pressure: Where Do I Fit In?” There was a whole paragraph on self-esteem and values maintenance and other words I recognized only from the blurbs on the back of my mother’s own books. All I knew was that at fifteen, with my driver’s license less than three months away, I was too old for camp or values maintenance, not to mention lanyards.

“It will be such a valuable experience,” she said to me that evening over dinner. “Much more so than sitting around the pool at Scarlett’s getting a tan and talking about boys.”

“Mom, it’s summer,” I said. “And anyway it’s almost over. School starts in two weeks.”

“You’ll be back just in time for school,” she said, flipping through the brochure again.

“I have a job,” I told her, my last-ditch attempt at an excuse. Scarlett and I were both cashiers at Milton’s Market, the grocery store at the mall down the street from our neighborhood. “I can’t just take two weeks off.”

“Mr. Averby says it’s slow enough that he can get your shifts covered,” she said simply.

“You called Mr. Averby?” I put down my fork. My father, who up until this point had been eating quietly and staying out of it, shot her a look. Even he knew how uncool it was for your mother to call your boss. “God, Mom.”

“I just wanted to know if it was possible,” she said, more to my father than me, but he just shook his head mildly and kept eating. “I knew she’d think of every reason not to go.”

“Why should I go waste the last two weeks of summer with a bunch of people I don’t know?” I said. “Scarlett and I have plans, Mom. We’re working extra shifts to make money for the beach, and we—”

“Halley.” She was getting irritated now. “Scarlett will be here when you get back. And I don’t ask very much of you, right? This is something I really want you to do. For me, and also, I think you’ll find, for yourself. It’s only for two weeks.”

“I don’t want to go,” I said, looking at my father for some kind of support, but he just smiled at me apologetically and said nothing, helping himself to more bread. He never got involved anymore; his job was to placate, to smooth, once it was all over. My father was always the one who crept to my doorway after I’d been grounded, sneaking me one of his special Brain Freeze Chocolate Milkshakes, which he believed could solve any problem. After the yelling and slamming of doors, after my mother and I stalked to our separate corners, I could always count on hearing the whirring of the blender in the kitchen, and then him appearing at my doorway presenting me with the thickest, coldest milkshake as a peace offering. But all the milkshakes in the world weren’t going to get me out of this.

So, just like that, I lost the end of my summer. By that Sunday I was packed and riding three hours into the mountains with my mother, who spend the entire ride reminiscing about her own golden camp years and promising me I’d thank her when it was over. She dropped me at the registration desk, kissed me on the forehead and told me she loved me, then drove off waving into the sunset. I stood there with my duffel bag and glowered after her, surrounded by a bunch of other girls who clearly didn’t want to spend two weeks “bonding” either.

I was on what they called “scholarship” at Sisterhood Camp, which meant I had my way paid free, just like the four other girls I met whose parents just happened to be therapists. I made friends with my cabinmates, and we complained to each other, mocked all the seminar leaders, and worked on our tans, talking about boys.

But now I was leaving early, drawn home by the loss of a boy I’d hardly known. I put my stuff in the trunk of the car and climbed in beside my mother, who said hello and then not much else for the first fifteen minutes of the drive. As far as I was concerned, we’d come to a draw: I hadn’t wanted to come, and she didn’t want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn’t see it that way. Lately, we didn’t seem to see anything the same.