Chapter 24: The Mailbox

The Rim Fellowship began on the first Monday in July, and I started it in a ranger's green shirt that was two sizes too big.

Eli had given it to me at dawn, with a name tag.

SUNDQUIST, it said, in neat block capitals.

"You wrote this yourself," I said.

"I wrote it four times."

"Is that why it's crooked?"

"It's crooked because I couldn't stop looking at you."

I pinned it on, and I did not fix it.

The program met at the visitor center at nine.

Forty people came, mostly kids with sunburns and parents with water bottles.

I stood at the front, in front of the big window and the lake, with my essay pinned on the wall behind me.

It was a page and a half, in a plain font, and the panel had framed it.

The superintendent had hung it himself.

"I'm June Sundquist," I said. "I'm the fellowship ranger this summer. I wrote that when I was eighteen, and I'm four years late to give this talk."

A boy in the front row put his hand up.

"Why were you late?"

"Someone kept my mail."

"That's illegal," the boy said.

"It is," I said. "She's learning that."

His mother laughed.

I gave the talk.

I told them how the lake was made, and how it got so blue, and why it never freezes over in winter.

I told them to watch the red at twilight and not take out their phones.

When it ended, a girl came up and showed me her drawing of the lake, with a tiny stick figure at the edge of it.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"That's you," she said. "You're the lady who waited."

I kept that drawing.

I still have it, taped above the table in cabin four.

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