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here they didn’t have that much plumbing.”
    â€œThink of how disgusting it must be in there,” I said.
    â€œYeah, it is pretty bad,” he admitted. “Especially the toe jam in the showers.”
    â€œWhat’s a toe jam?”
    Philip grinned as we stood in the doorway. “You’re such a girl.”
    I left the Foxes’ bunk, walked over to the shower house and up to the door. It smelled like a cesspool, which was not surprising since that was the camp’s plumbing system. I shouted hello. Someone called back. I ran.
    I thought about running through the light drizzle all the way back down the dirt road, along the highway, then down the Girls’ Side road and back to my bunk. After only twenty feet, I ran into my counselor.
    â€œUhhh... what are you doing here?” I asked.

    Maddy looked at me and squinted. “What are
you
doing here?” she countered.
    â€œUm... I asked you first.”
    Incredibly, she accepted that. “I go to bed early every night,” she said, “so I can get up early and jog.”
    Maddy would run to Boys’ Side then meet up with the food truck and get a ride back. She seemed very devoted to keeping off that weight.
    â€œBut Mindy, you’re not really supposed to be out of the bunk at this hour,” my counselor explained.
    â€œOh, well,” I said. “I’m new here. I don’t know the rules.”
    Maddy nodded.
    She figured she might as well stop by the Boys’ Headquarters and wake Head Counselor Jacques Weiss. Classically tall, dark and handsome, Jacques was one of many foreigners on staff. Saul had long ago discovered he could get deals on airfare and import European counselors who’d then work for free. Most of them were Christian and most would visit the United States just this once; therefore, eight weeks in the backwoods of Maine with a bunch of American Jews formed the basis of their entire impression of our country.
    Jacques was unique among the foreigners, and not just because he was actually Jewish. At thirty-one years old he was still in school, in Paris, working on an elusive PhD. “A professional student,” my uncle the high school guidance counselor would call him, Jacques kept his summers free to keep coming back to Kin-A-Hurra.
    â€œWanna wait for me and ride back on the truck?” Maddy asked.
    â€œI would, but...” I was growing uncomfortable, so I took a deep breath. “Did you know there’s just this one disgusting bathroom for all of Boys’ Side?”
    Maddy got the hint.
    As it turned out, Boys’ Headquarters had its own private stall and she led me in. She was still inside, in the back room withJacques, when I came out again so I took a seat on the porch and waited. He must have been a heavy sleeper. I waited for at least twenty minutes.
    â€œGood morning,” I said to Jacques, when the two finally appeared.
    â€œMais oui,” he replied, with a sly grin.
    Jacques let me ring the bell to wake up Boys’ Side. A few minutes later, Autumn Evening strolled over from the Foxes’ bunk and Dana emerged, alone, from the Giant Teepee at the far end of the softball field, over by the flagpole.
    On the ride back, amidst a truckload of waffles, we learned that Dana had met up in the night with Aaron Klafter.
    â€œWe went into the teepee to look at the stars,” she told us.
    â€œReally? You can see through the top?” I asked. “It looks all closed up.”
    Dana paused. “Nothing happened, okay?” she insisted.
    It didn’t matter to me. All that mattered to me was that she wasn’t interested in Kenny and that I had one less obstacle to deal with in this, the summer I was going to get a boyfriend. And not just
a
boyfriend,
the
boyfriend. The one I wanted. The one I had to have.
    It was Kenny Uber or bust.

    â€œThere were five, five constipated men
In the Bible, in the Bible
There were five, five constipated