The Horse of the River. Sari Cooper
Her dad looked a little hurt as he lowered the bag, but her mom smiled.
“Have the most incredible time. Be safe,” her mom said. “And write us! No care packages until we get our first letter.”
Gillian smiled. She knew that was an empty threat. But she would write. There was a no cell phone policy for the campers and she knew she would want to stay connected. She nodded to her mom.
Gillian gave each of her parents a tight hug. Then she shouldered her backpack, hoisted the duffle bag and turned to join the other kids by the bus. She now remembered just how heavy her bag was and regretted calling off her dad, but she wasn’t about to give in. About halfway across the parking lot, she decided to switch hands. She dropped the duffle and it landed on her foot. “Ow,” she said.
The tall brown-haired girl broke off from her group and walked toward Gillian. “Hey, you okay? Need some help?”
“Um...” Gillian hesitated, not wanting to look weak.
“It’ll be easier if we each grab one end. I’m Jordan,” said the tall girl. She grabbed an end of Gillian’s bag. Gillian picked up the other end and the two girls stashed the duffle in the bus’s luggage compartment.
“Thanks. I’m Gillian.”
“First year? Fresh graduate from Sunny Acres?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah,” said Gillian, trying to look more excited and less scared.
“Don’t worry,” Jordan reassured her, catching her nervous tone. “You’re going to love it. Canyon Falls is awesome. This is my fifth year. One more until I’m a counsellor-in-training. C’mon. Let’s get seats.”
Gillian turned to look back at her parents, who were watching her with huge grins, both of them giving her double thumbs-up signs. She rolled her eyes but smiled and waved at them. She wished her parents would treat her more like a grown-up. She was twelve—almost a teenager. But the little voice piped up again with, You’re really going to miss them, and her chest ached a bit knowing that the voice was right.
She turned and followed Jordan onto the bus. Jordan insisted Gillian take the window seat, saying she needed the aisle for legroom. So Gillian watched through the window as her parents drove away. A lot of the other parents seemed to be waiting until the bus left. But Gillian knew it was a miracle her parents had even been able to bring her to the bus today. Her mom was a busy family physician and she was always in a rush. Her dad was due at the hospital for his shift in the emergency department. Her sister, Alexis, hadn’t even been able to come because, as always, she was at the pool.
Gillian’s earliest memories were of sitting in the hot viewing gallery playing with her little plastic horses while Alexis was at swim practice. She remembered running the figurines across the benches while imagining she was on the back of a beautiful grey mare galloping across golden fields. Then, when she was old enough, Gillian’s parents had signed her up for the swim team too. She remembered her last practice a few days before, how it felt moving smoothly and efficiently with powerful strokes, and the coolness of the water as it seemed to rush past her. To be honest, she liked it. She might have even loved it at one point. And she was good. Her technique was solid and she was fit and strong and fast. But every club had swimmers like her. Alexis was different. She almost became part of the water. Swimming butterfly, Alexis skimmed across the surface like a rock that had been skipped. She barely made a splash. In freestyle, her arms moved in graceful slow-motion arcs, eating up metres of the lane with each stroke. At age sixteen, Alexis now had more medals than she could display. The walls of her room were decorated with the awards she’d won at provincials and nationals. The other “less important” medals filled two shopping bags in the corner of her closet.
Gillian did not share Alexis’s success. At age ten, Gillian had qualified for British Columbia provincials. She finished in the bottom third of the pack. Considering that the meet was for the fastest kids in the province in each age group, she hadn’t done too badly. But Alexis always won medals at events like this. Alexis connected with the water in a way Gillian could never understand. By age twelve, Gillian had made the cut for provincials by the skin of her teeth, but she had also made a decision. She remembered how shaky she had felt when she told her mom she didn’t want to go to provincials only to finish in ninety-fourth place. She wasn’t her sister. She was never going to make nationals or win championship medals. She was sure her mom would be shocked and angry, or worse, disappointed. But instead her mom had shocked her by handing her the acceptance letter from Canyon Falls.
“Don’t you have any music?” Jordan’s words brought Gillian back to the present. “You can wear one of my earbuds if you want.” Gillian took the earbud and placed it in her ear, grateful for this friendly older girl and for the distraction of music. Jordan turned up the volume and lost herself in a game on her phone that looked like the circles were trying to kill the squares as the bus crawled through Vancouver traffic toward the highway.
The three-hour bus ride would eventually bring them to a beautiful valley on a river near Lytton, BC. But on the highway after passing about a million rocks and twice as many trees, it felt like they’d been driving forever. Gillian twisted her hair around her finger as she stared out the window. She tugged at knots in her ringlets as she found them. She glanced over at Jordan and envied the straight brown cascade that fell smoothly over the older girl’s shoulders. It wasn’t that Gillian didn’t like her own looks. She had mid-length light-brown curls, a few freckles and green eyes. She was comfortable with the way they came together when she bothered to give it any thought. But the curls were a nightmare. Her hair was dry and brittle from all the chlorine. Trying to get a brush through it was like jabbing hot pokers into her scalp. She yanked at another knot and shifted in her seat for the hundredth time. Her left butt cheek went numb. She bounced to wake it up and accidentally yanked the earbud from Jordan’s ear.
“Sorry.” Gillian half grinned.
Jordan looked at her, frowning. “What’s with you, Fidget? Have to pee?”
“No,” said Gillian, laughing. “My butt’s asleep. And maybe I’m a little nervous. But the excited kind. You know...” Gillian knew she was rambling.
Jordan just laughed. “Okay... Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
Gillian, a little embarrassed, smiled at her and said, “Okay. Thanks.”
Now she thinks we’re a little kid. Great first impression, the inner voice said. The voice had been around as long as Gillian could remember. But if she thought about it, it wasn’t so much a voice. It was more like a thought that would pop up in her head that she didn’t want to think. Her mom called them doubting thoughts. She said everyone had them because sometimes people were unsure of themselves. Gillian had a lot of these thoughts and didn’t like them, so she chose to imagine that they came from an independent voice in her head. She had even gone so far as to give the voice a name to help her keep the doubting thoughts separate from the ones she wanted to think. She called it Stella. Gillian had tried talking to Stella out loud a few times but Alexis had overheard and teased her non-stop. She was annoyed by the teasing but started to worry that maybe she was going crazy. Her mom told her that Alexis was just jealous of Gillian’s vivid imagination. Over the years, Gillian had grown used to Stella. She was just always there.
At the moment, Gillian was feeling nervous enough already, so Stella’s negativity was extra annoying. Sure, she had always dreamed about going to Canyon Falls. It was the sister camp to Sunny Acres, the day camp she’d loved, and it ran a similar program. But she hadn’t ever expected to go. It was always just a fantasy. She wasn’t sure she was ready. Alexis, on the other hand, was quite sure Gillian wasn’t ready. “She won’t survive a day out in the wilderness,” Alexis had managed between giggles. “She’s afraid of the dark. She won’t even stay home alone for an hour!”
Her mother had defended her younger child. “They sleep in cabins with other kids. They have counsellors to look after them. She’ll be fine.” But her mother’s words were barely comforting. The truth was, Gillian didn’t know if she would survive. Aside