Camp Kumoni By Anistasia Allread Edited by Nick B “How does it feel?” Tricia enquired. Erika looked down at their hands embracing one another’s. “Soft.” Tricia giggled. “The pedicure, silly.”

---

Erika’s heart would not stop racing as she lay on her bed. It felt like butterflies the size of eagles, were flapping at warp speed in her stomach. Tomorrow was the big day; the dreaded day; Parent’s Day.

The other girls seemed to sleep so peacefully in their beds and most were looking forward to the morning when their parents would arrive in a long line of cars, over-filling the small parking lot.

They seemed eager to show off what fun they had been having and the friends they had made. The craft items created by the children’s hands and imaginations for their parents to take home as treasures, would be the topic of conversation for months to come.

The only other girl in the cabin who was even half as anxious about the coming morning was sleeping below her. Tomorrow would be the day when Samantha’s parents would decide whether or not to take the cheerleader home with them or let her stay the remaining days of camp with her friends.

Erika really didn’t think that Samantha’s parents would pull her out of camp unless she wanted to leave, so that didn’t present much of a worry. Her bone of contention was her parents showing up–or as she should think of it, Eric’s parent’s showing up.

She lay there agonizing over their reaction to her transformation in the few short weeks that she had been at camp.

Would they pull her out?

Erika would be an embarrassment to Eric’s mother. Her circle of friends would shame her and whisper behind her back about her mentally challenged son.

Eric’s dad on the other hand, would probably not only pull Eric out, but have him committed to an asylum. How dare his son turn into a ‘sissy-boy’?

Erika sighed heavily. All she could do was worry. She tried to change the direction of her thoughts.

She thought back to the Fourth of July–that magical evening under the night sky, watching explosions of light decorate dark velvet-like void above her. Each of her hands being held by a friend: one she’d known for a couple of years, the other she met just a few weeks ago.

Holding the hands of two people she loved, under those sky flowers was truly magical. Eric ‘The Plague’ would never have had that kind of memory of camp. He would have been too scared to talk to any of the girls let alone touch one.

The next morning at breakfast, Hobbs put her foot down about the pranks. Someone had gotten hurt. Apparently, Erika was the one. She hadn’t bothered with the details of Erika having had stitches in her head and had a head ache. She made it sound like a sack of flour hit her in the head, that Erika had lost consciousness.

Erika looked over at her cabin mates, embarrassed by the director’s elaboration. Krystal looked to Rachel, whose face looked to be strained with pain. Rachel seemed to be taking the whole prank thing awfully personal. It was Erika after all who got flour in her hair.

Later that day, Rachel, Samantha and Erika showed up at Hobbs’ office along with Oak cabin at the beginning of their free time. Hobbs handed them each a garbage bag and a couple of rakes. Their job for the afternoon was to pick up all of the remaining trash from the Fourth of July and rake the sandy beach clean of debris.

Over the next few days, Oak cabin helped Columbine cabin in cleaning the main paths, hauling trash, and clearing storm debris. One afternoon, Hobbs had even put them all to work scrubbing the dining hall floor. Erika couldn’t help but think of Cinderella while scrubbing away with a bristle brush, soap and water.

The kitchen duty wasn’t so bad. Sheila made sure that the Ladies in Lavender received the best of the food and even made little extras for them to take back to their cabin after they finished cleaning.

Erika stashed away some left-over bread and salad. On their morning jog around the lake, she and Samantha would stop and feed Liberty and his family, who gobbled up the proffered food with zeal. The little black duckling had lost most of his fluffy soft down, in its place dark feathers showed up. It looked like he gained more and more feathers every day, as they saw him paddling around with his siblings.

Two nights after the Fourth celebration, Erika woke Samantha up in the middle of the night. With a flashlight each, they slid silently out the cabin door and hugged the shadows cast by the trees and buildings in the overhead lights. As quietly as they could they approached Hobbs’ office. Gently, Samantha tried the door knob, but it remained locked. Erika pulled out a bobby pin and handed it over. Samantha straightened it and pushed in the small hole and wiggled it. Nothing happened.

“What are you doing?” Tricia called from a nearby shadow.

Samantha almost screamed and she and Erika both jumped at the interruption. Tricia lightly jogged over to crouch down beside her cabin mates.

“Hobbs was questioning me about information in my records.” Erika hissed. “I’ve got to change it so that she doesn’t figure it out.” She referred to her change of gender and name for the summer camp.

“Here, let me try.” Tricia put her hand out for the hair pin.

Samantha shrugged and gave it to her. Tricia studied the door knob for a few seconds, then re-bent the hairpin and slid it into the hole. She wiggled it around a few times then held her breath. She turned the knob and the door swung open.

“Where did you learn to do that?

“My sister,” Tricia said, giving Erika a smile and a wink.

The office was dark. Erika found the computer and booted it up. The three girls stood in the office, holding their breath waiting for the computer to ready itself.

Erika looked through the computer’s files for a few minutes and began searching for the files on the campers. She checked several directories to no avail.

Tricia begged a chance to look and couldn’t find anything either. They both looked to Samantha who shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know anything about computers.” She sighed. “That was my sister’s thing.”

Erika logged out of the system and shut it down.

“You want to change it in the hard copy?” Tricia inquired gesturing to a pile of folders.

“Too easy to see that they’ve been tampered with,” she replied and felt like crying.

The three girls snuck out of the office, making sure to lock the door behind them and scampered back to Columbine cabin.

They stopped a few feet from the cabin and looked at one another.

“What am I going to do?” Erika whined. “Hobbs is going to find out. My parents are going to find out. Everything will be ruined.”

“Not necessarily.” Samantha put a hand on Erika’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. After all, we are the Lavender Ladies of Columbine.”

---

The sun beat down on the girls as they rode their horses up the winding, well-beaten trail. The dry grass, long with its summer growth, made rasping noises as they seed stalks rubbed against one another. Most of the flowers had long ago gone to seed, only the hardier daisies, could stand the punishment dealt by the blazing sun.

Erika felt like she was wilting under the hot sun as well. Their guide took them past the waterfall and swimming hole that they had stopped off at before and kept them riding single file up along the steep switchbacks. Erika was starting to feel for the horse carrying her when they finally reached the summit of the mountain.

The air was heavy with smoke from the forest fire. The acrid smell seemed to permeate everything.

“And there you can see what happens with carelessness or an act of mother nature.” Their guide pointed across the vale to the side of the other mountain.

Erika followed her gesture to see the blackened stubble that scarred the side of the mountain.

“That’s from the lightning strikes?” Dani inquired.

“Yep. You can see that nothing escapes a forest fire. If we were to go over there, and wander around, we’d come across a few animal corpses that couldn’t out run the flames, or got confused and ran straight into them.”

“Can we go over there?” Victoria asked.

“Too dangerous.” The guide stated. “Our stirring up ash could accidentally stir up a live coal and start a new fire.”

The girls rested on the backs of the sweating horses and stared at the horrible destruction before them.

There before the grace of God and my parent’s go I, Erika thought, equating the upcoming Parent’s day with the destruction before her.

“Something is moving over there. Samantha pointed.

The other girls followed her gaze to some small movement on the other slope.

“Crows and buzzards picking apart a carcass,” their guide explained.

Tricia turned her head. “That’s sick.”

“It’s the circle of life in action,” Krystal commented.

“In ten years, if you were to come back here, You’d barely recognize the place,” their guide informed them. “Trees will be covering that slope.”

“Someone going to plant them?”

“I’m sure some of it will be planted by the Forest Service and the local Lumber companies, but a lot of it will come back on its own. The ash left now, makes the ground very fertile. Some of the trees that are burned up over there have seeds that have survived the fire and will be able to grow now that they aren’t being crowded out looking for sun.”

“Where are we going next?” Katie inquired.

“I figured that that waterfall looked pretty good on the way up. What do you all say about us going for a dip?”

Cries of enthusiasm and smiles lit up the girls of Columbine cabin.

Samantha edged her horse near Erika’s. “I’ve been going over it again and again, in my head,” Samantha grimaced. “I think the best way to handle this situation is to just come clean with your parents.”

Erika’s face went white. “You can’t be serious.”

“I know. It’s a big deal, but I’ll take the blame. I’m the one who switched the personal information and stuff.”

“I’m the one that they’ll be putting in a strait jacket,” Erika protested.

“They won’t get that extreme,” Tricia said as she joined the other two. “I’ll be there too. I can explain about my sister. It might help.”

“I don’t know how anything will be able to help, if I reveal myself as Erika.”

“If you do it right, it might ease things,” Tricia suggested.

Erika bit her lip. “How so?”

“If we, the cabin–” she said, gesturing. “Get together and show our support of you being Erika, it might help sway your parents.”

“You’ve got the support of the whole cabin now,” Samantha smiled.

“Not Phoenix’s,” Erika reminded. “She still doesn’t know.”

Samantha scowled. “She’ll probably go to Hobbs,”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Erika thought aloud.

“Maybe not?” Samantha questioned. “Do you know something we don’t?”

“Umm.”

“Come on, Erika. Spit it out,” Tricia said grinning.

“Sorry, I can’t. Not yet.” Erika immediately wished that she hadn’t said anything.

“Come on. You can tell us.” Samantha was practically begging.

“Nope.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes.

“Anyway,” Tricia began again. “If Samantha and I were to ‘introduce’ Erika to your parents, it would be a bit weird for them at first, but they might get the hang of it and begin to understand.”

“Like Tricia said, if we get the cabin to show support for you being Erika, what could they do?” Samantha asked.

“Take me home and put me in a sanitarium.”

“Do they have sanitariums anymore?” Samantha asked.

“They might take you home and it might be a bit embarrassing, but think of all of the guys in camp who worship you from afar. Think how embarrassed they’ll be if they find out your genetic gender,” Tricia giggled.

“That is just plain mean,” Samantha said joining with Tricia’s giggling.

“I don’t know,” Erika said. “What if I just try to dress like a boy and try to pass myself off as Eric while they are here?”

“What about showing them that you are staying in a cabin with a bunch of girls?” Tricia queried. “And what about everyone referring to you as Erika? Not everyone will be able to remember not to call you by a feminine name or pronoun,” she pointed out.

Samantha spoke up. “I agree with Tricia. You should introduce them to Erika. We’ll all be there with you.”

“You’ll have your own parent’s do worry about,” Erika rebuffed.

“Mine are easy.” Samantha smiled. “They’ll let me stay if I show them that I’m happy.”

“The bigger question is, will mine?” Erika lamented.

---

Once the clothes had been separated and stuffed into the washing machines, the girls left Krystal in charge of the first washing shift.

“I’ll see you later,” Samantha called. “I need to run a few errands of my own, and since I have the next wash shift, I’ll have to leave you to it.”

The cheerleader glided down the sidewalk. Erika was jealous of how graceful Samantha was.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Erika asked of her new blonde friend.

Tricia smiled. “Yes. Stop complaining and get ready to enjoy.”

“But what if it tickles?” Erika protested.

“They’re trained not to tickle you,” Tricia said, suppressing a laugh

“But I’ve never had anyone ever touch my feet.”

Victoria shook her head. “Will you stop whining and try and enjoy a new experience.”

The two led her into the nail salon, where they were met by the masked faces of the nail techs.

“Two fills and three pedicures.” Tricia explained.

“You pick color,” one of the masked ladies said.

“I’ll pick for you,” Tricia said, smiling.

“Great.” Erika sighed, rolling her eyes. “Pink.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Tricia replied, pouting dramatically.

Three tubs at the foot of large comfy looking chairs began filling with water. Erika followed Victoria’s lead as she slipped off her sandals and slid her feet into the bubbling hot water.

“If you press this button here,” Victoria explained, showing her. “It starts a back massage.”

Erika followed Victoria’s directions and was soon suppressing moans as two rotating objects inside the chair began working knots out of her back.

She opened her eyes as a masked nail tech, tapped one of her legs. Erika put a wet foot up on a towel and pressed her lips together, waiting for the tickling to begin.

Tricia had taken a seat on one side of her while Victoria sat on the other side. Victoria’s eyes were already closed in a relaxed state.

“What color did you pick out for me?” Erika inquired of the blonde.

“You’ll have to wait to find out.”

Erika watched curiously as the tech had cut her toe nails and was now smoothing and shaping the coarse edges with a file. “I’m still unsure about this,” she said as her mind wandered a week ahead to Parent’s day.”

“It’s just a pedicure,” Tricia sighed.

“No, I mean about revealing the truth to my parent’s next week.”

“We’re all working on that,” Tricia said, trying to dismiss the subject. “Sit back and enjoy one of the best perks to being a girl.”

Erika laid her head back and closed her eyes. A few moments later, the nail tech tapped her other leg. Erika switched, putting one leg back in the water and pulling the other one out.

Would her parent’s pull her out of camp immediately?

Would they put her in counseling?

Well, duh, of course they would put her in counseling. Come on, she left for camp as Eric Martin ‘The Plague’. When they come to see her, she will be Erika Martinez, a cabin mate of some of the most popular girls in the camp.

Her dad was going to be pissed. She just hoped that he wouldn’t make too much of a scene at the camp. It was going to be embarrassing enough as it was.

His ‘Emo’ son had turned into a girl. He’d never understand. He never understood why Eric tended to lock himself in his room on the computer instead of going out Friday and Saturday nights.

It was bad enough that Eric wasn’t on any of the sports teams. It was embarrassing for them that he wasn’t a 4.0 student; shameful that he wasn’t dating, and doing ‘normal’ teenage things. Now he was going to show up at camp and see his son dressed as a girl. Well, in some ways, Erika was doing ‘normal’ teen age things. Pedicures with girlfriends were ‘normal’.

The masked lady was scrubbing something over the hard calluses of Erika’s feet. It felt like sand mixed in with lotion. So far, her feet didn’t tickle. That was a relief. The rolling knobs in the chair dug into her lower back, pressing on pressure points and along with the foot rub, this was turning into quite the experience.

Erika almost jumped when she felt someone touch her hand. She opened her eyes to see Tricia’s hand lightly resting on hers. Tricia’s hand gave hers a light squeeze. Erika looked over to the ‘pretty in pink’ blonde and caught her smiling at her. Erika slowly turned her hand over to accept Tricia’s hand and lightly squeezed back.

“How does it feel?” Tricia enquired.

Erika looked down at their hands embracing one another’s. “Soft.”

Tricia giggled. “The pedicure, silly.”

“Oh, that,” Erika smirked. “Heavenly. Not ticklish.”

Tricia gave her hand another squeeze as she laid her blonde head back and closed her eyes.

Something was happening here. It felt almost like an electric charge had woken every nerve ending in Erika’s body and she too laid back, eyes closed as she tried to work out what it was that was happening to her.

As if in answer to their cries, Tricia’s fingers began caressing Erika’s, tracing small circular patterns on the palm of her hand that seemed to send pulses up her arms, across her shoulders and down the other side.

Meanwhile, Erika had to suppress a moan as the tech began massaging, not only her feet, but her calves and shins as well. It felt so good as Tricia and the tech continued their ministrations, the tech on her legs and feet, Tricia with her hand.

After what seemed like an eternity, yet not nearly long enough, the tech wrapped her legs and feet in hot steamy towels and let her relax, her legs swathed in a warm Eden as further up, a beautiful friend who seemed to accept her for who she was, continued to traced infinitesimally small, swirling shapes on her palm and fingers.

Erika’s heart soared to cloud nine.

After the towels had cooled, the tech came back and unwrapped her now tingling feet. She dried her toes, and pulled out a small tray with an array of nail polish.

Once the polish was applied as well as the top coat, Erika and Tricia were led over to the nail stations. The masked tech removed the chipped and faded blue polish and began on cleaning up her nail beds preparing them for the fill.

“How do your feet feel?” Tricia asked with a secretive smile.

“Tingly.” Erika looked down at her feet and wiggled her toes. “I like that color too. What color is it?”

“It’s called ‘Cajun Shrimp’,” Tricia said and grinned. “I don’t think you’d be able to pull off pink as well as I can.”

“What color are these going to be?” Erika wiggled her free hand.

“The same.”

“So, a red with a touch of orange.” Erika bit her lip in thought.

“You like it?” Tricia asked with expectation.

“It’s Interesting.”

---

Erika turned over in her bed. She just couldn’t get comfortable. She looked over at the clock across the room. It had only been five minutes since the last time she had looked. This morning was taking forever to get through, and at the same time, day break was too close for comfort. Parents would start arriving in about four hours.

God help me, she mouthed skyward.

“Will you at least try and fake sleeping?” Tricia hissed from her bed.

“Sorry,” Erika whispered back. “I’m too scared and nervous to sleep.”

Would you like to join me?” Tricia offered.

A series of mixed emotions surged through Erika’s mind. A girl–a pretty girl, wanted Erika to crawl into bed with her.

“Oh God.” Erika felt her maleness react to the thought.

“Come on, or go to sleep.” Tricia whispered.

Erika quickly got her body parts under control and slid out of bed. Tricia moved over to one side of her cot and lifted the blankets, inviting Erika to join her warm bed.

She slid into the embrace of the blankets, enjoying the sweet scent of Tricia mingled in with the smells of the cabin.

Samantha smelled like lavender, and sage, where Tricia had the scent of orange blossoms and Jasmine. Erika liked both aroma’s but currently the perfume of Tricia was comforting.

Tricia wrapped her arm around Erika and snuggled into her back, spooning with her. The thrills of electrical charges and tingles again shot through her body.

The alarm wasn’t set to go off for another hour or so. Erika closed her eyes and breathed in the intoxicating perfume of Tricia and drifted off to sleep.