Page 64 of Camp Bliss
“Are you sick?” I picture how she looked the day she got overheated. The day everything fell apart. And I literally have to force myself to keep still.
“Um… I started my period, and—”
“What can I do?”
The flimsy door does nothing to stifle her sigh. “You can go back to bed. I-I’ll figure it out.”
“Figurewhatout?” Like hell am I going back to bed. Now that I think about it, it’s been a month since our encounter in the lodge bathroom.
Shit. Is she bleeding like that again?
“Greta, what do you need?”
This time, her sigh sounds like defeat. “I forgot my pads and tampons in the cabinet in the lodge bathroom. So stupid. I—”
“I’ve got ‘em. I’ll be right back.” I switch on the light to hunt for my slides.
“Zach?” Greta’s voice sounds small in a way that claws inside my chest.
“Yeah?”
“Could you bring the Advil and the heating pad too?”
She’s embarrassed. She doesn’t need to be.
“Of course.”
I’m out of the camper and into the night that blares with crickets and cicadas. The air is thick and fetid with the perfume of all things wild. Something scuttles into the shrubbery to my left. Probably just an opossum, but maybe I should have grabbed a headlamp.
The last thing I need is to startle a skunk out here.
I make it to the lodge without encountering any other wildlife and open the bathroom cabinet. Four different boxes of feminine hygiene products stare back at me. Super tampons. Super Plus tampons. Maxi pads. Panty liners. Next to them is a rolled up heating pad, the power cord wrapped around it.
I find the Advil in the medicine cabinet and fill my arms with the lot of it. On the way back, I definitely regret not taking a headlamp.
The door clatters as I shut it behind me. “I got everything,” I tell Greta through the bathroom door.
“Thank you… Um… Could you just put it on the steps?”
“Sure.” As I do, the box of Super Plus tampons tips over, sending pink-wrapped torpedoes everywhere. “Crap—”
“And, um, then could you go back to your end and make sure the curtain is closed?” Greta’s plea is high-pitched and miserable.
“Of course—Sorry. Just a sec. Tampons spilled everywhere.” As I hurry to pick them up and stuff them back into the box, I try not to think about where they’ll go and how I’m touching every one of them.
Then I knock over the pads.
“Fuck.”
And then the last thing I expect to happen happens.
Greta laughs. Maybe it’s more like a giggle, but it’s a sound that’s pure honey right now.
“Did you spill them again?” she asks, sounding amused.
“Of course not.” My tone is full of mock offense. “Those were the maxi pads.”
This time, she laughs for real. And it’s followed by a groan. “Oh, God. Why does my uterus hate me?”
