IIFOURFIVESIX

II

To be once in doubt

Is once to be resolv’d.

—Shakespeare, Othello

Summer camp is a place that hums with crickets and is so green it sometimes hurts my eyes to look.

I’m afraid to be here, because it is outside, and because outside there are bees. Bees make my stomach feel like a fist, even seeing one makes me want to run and hide. In my nightmares I picture them sucking my blood like it is honey.

My mother tells the camp counselors I’m afraid of bees. They say that in all the years of camp, not a single child has been stung.

I think, Someone has to be first.

One morning, my counselor—a girl with a macramé necklace that she wears even during swim time—takes us into the woods on a hike. It’s time for a circle, she says. She moves one log, to make a bench. She moves a second log, and there are all the yellow jackets.

I freeze. The bees cover the counselor’s face and arms and belly. She tries to bat them away while she’s screaming. I throw myself at her. I slap my hands on her skin. I save her, even while I am being stung and stung.

At the end of camp that summer, the counselors give out awards. They are blue ribbons, each one, printed with fat black letters. Mine says Bravest Boy.

I still have it.