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stirred up thinking of how she would never know him very well. And then she and Ethan were crying together, which led to inevitable kissing, which wasn’t nearly as bad this time, because they both tasted identically of mucus, and it didn’t matter to Jules that she didn’t feel excited. Instead, she felt mostly desperate thinking about her father being dead. Ethan intuited that this was the exact kind of foreplay Jules Jacobson required.
    They went along like this, and she came to expect that they would sometimes go off together and have such moments. In this and other ways, Jules’s life was changing rapidly here, advancing like a flip-book. She’d been
no one
, and now she was right in the middle of this group of friends, admired for her previously unknown sly humor. Jules was a source of interest to all of them, and she was Ash’s great friend and Ethan’s object of worship. Also, since she’d been here, she’d instantly become an
actress,
trying out for plays and getting parts. She hadn’t even wanted to audition at first. “I’m not nearly as good as you,” she’d said to Ash, but Ash had advised, “You know the way you are when you’re with all of us? How great it is? Just be that way onstage. Come out of yourself. You have nothing to lose, Jules. I mean, if not now, when?”
    The theater department would be putting on Edward Albee’s
The Sandbox
, and Jules was given the part of Grandma. She played the role as an ancient but lively crone, talking in a voice that she didn’t know she had. Ethan had given her voice lessons, telling her how he came up with voices for
Figland
. “What you want to do,” he’d said, “is speak it exactly the way you hear it in your head.” She played a woman older than anyone she’d ever known; at the performance, two actors carried her onstage and set her down gently. Even before Jules started speaking, but just made vague cud-chewing facial movements, the audience began to laugh, and the laughter fed upon itself in the way it sometimes did, so that by the time she spoke her first line, a couple of people in the audience were snorting in laughter, and one excitable counselor almost seemed to be shrieking. Jules
killed,
everyone said when it was over. She absolutely killed.
    The laughter seduced her that time and every time afterward. It made her stronger, more serious, poker-faced, determined. Later, Jules would think that the rolling, appreciative laughter of the audience at Spirit-in-the-Woods had cured her of the sad year she’d just gotten through. But it wasn’t the only element that had cured her; the whole place had done that, as though it was one of those nineteenth-century European mineral spas.
    One night, the entire camp was instructed to gather on the lawn; no other information was given. “I bet the Wunderlichs are going to announce that there’s been an outbreak of syphilis,” someone said.
    “Or maybe it’s a tribute to Mama Cass,” someone else said. The singer Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas had died a few days earlier, supposedly having choked to death on a ham sandwich. The ham sandwich would turn out to be a rumor, but the death was real.
    “When is it going to start? The natives are restless,” said Jonah as they all waited.
    Ethan and Jules sat together on a blanket on the hill and waited. He leaned his head against her shoulder, wanting to see what she would do; at first, she did nothing. Then he moved his head down into her lap, settling himself in and looking up at the darkening sky and the jumpy Japanese lanterns strung on wires between trees. As if cued to do so, Jules began to stroke his head of curls, and each time she did, his eyes closed in happiness.
    Manny Wunderlich appeared before everyone and said, “Hello, hello! I know you’re all wondering what’s going on, and so without further ado I’d like to introduce our very special surprise guest.”
    “Look,” said Ash from down the row, and Jules craned between