I worked at a summer camp in Maine in 2002. It was all kids from rich families - the sons and daughters of judges, lawyers and diplomats - with 3 exceptions.
Two were the camp’s nurse’s kids. Nice girls, if a little rowdy, but nowhere near as dangerous as their mother. She would constantly invite the male counsellors up to her cabin for drinks on their nights off, turn up at bars where we were all drinking, and tell everyone how lonely she was since her husband had left her, all the while staring hungrily at us 21-year olds.
She probably was quite lonely, come to think to of it.
The other exception was “a charity case - a young kid from from the inner-city”. A tax write-off, we assumed. Either that or something for the brochure.
He was 10 years old, in my cabin, and had arrived a little later than the others. A young black kid in borrowed camp-wear (blue shorts and a white t-shirt), he was naturally an object of curiosity. He got angry a lot in the beginning, mostly at all the questions, and would fight and taunt the other kids, but you could tell he was just afraid a lot of time - afraid of being laughed at and of being different (both of which he was).
In the worst of it - when he’d fought with the other kids or thought he’d been made fun of - he’d hide in this big, wooden chest he’d brought along. He was tall but scrawny, and could easily fit inside it. He’d climb in there, hold down the lid, and cry. Hence his eventual nickname: Box.
The other counsellors and I were terrified he’d get locked in somehow and suffocate.
On the second day after he’d arrived he was terribly sick. He’d been supervised on the first day, but on the second day he was left alone at dinner, and it dawned on him that he could eat as much as he wanted - that it was just a giant buffet.
He ate so much he was sick.
Then he carried food back to our cabin in the pocket of his borrowed hoodie. Fresh fruit. The kid loved fresh fruit.
And he tried to eat that too.
I remember sitting by his cot while he cried, vomited and clutched his stomach that night. This kid named Box. 10 years old.
Lying on the floor next to his cot were all the peaches he’d carried back. Fresh and sweet and now a little bruised.
We threw them away the next morning before the other kids woke up.
