Summer music camp. Thousands of miles from home. On the opposite coast of America. I was nervous and excited because I didn’t know what to expect. All I could think about was finding a teacher who could help me play guitar like my favorite musicians: Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, and Martin Simpson. I had listened to their music at my uncle’s house since I was five, but I was a long way off from playing like them. I needed a teacher.

For the whole plane ride I tapped my fingers on my knees, listened to bad pop music through the airline’s damaged headphones, and chewed bubble gum until my jaw was sore. Lunch was funky—the chicken sandwich was almost frozen in the middle, and the chocolate chip cookies and corn chips made me queasy. And I couldn’t even look out the window because the guy next to me in the window seat had pulled down the shade and leaned against it to sleep. For the whole trip! I missed seeing the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

But I made it. And I found the camp van waiting for me near the taxis. “Quickfinger Guitar Camp” was painted on both sides of the van, and guitars and hands were painted all around. I waved at the driver, and he hopped out of the van to greet me and to take my backpack and heave it into the back. I picked up my guitar case and gingerly placed it next to my backpack. I didn’t want the driver to mess with my instrument.

I was the only kid in the van, and the driver didn’t say much beyond, “Have a good flight?”
“Sort of,” I answered.

The driver shrugged and turned up his radio. “Good music!” he said as we drove off, and that was about it from him. I wondered if he was one of the instructors.

I calmed down on the ride in from the airport. Groves of trees caught my attention and became my markers for safety. Something about the straight and scrappy palm trees to the right of the road and the tall and ragged cedars to the left bolstered my spirits. I must have inherited this tree-marker thing from my Grandpa John, who lives deep in a forest in Vermont. He refuses to go anyplace if it doesn’t have trees.

“Too much cement,” he says of cities. My mom is the same way.

When I got out of the van at Fort Mason—where my camp was located—and wandered around, watching all the other kids, all I wanted to do was stand by myself at the edge of the highlands behind the camp hostel and stare out at San Francisco Bay. That’s the Pacific Ocean out there, I thought as I sniffed sea air. I wished that Grandpa John could have been standing there with me.

A low, cottony fog blanketed the bay water and hid all but the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Alcatraz and Angel Islands were out there somewhere, I thought, but I couldn’t see them. The fog felt like my insides—dense, gray, and undefined. Standing there, stiff from the long flight, I was wishing my friend Lashley Moran would hurry up. I needed to see a familiar face. Sighing, I turned back toward the camp hostel. Forcing myself to walk away from the still cliff top, I imagined Lashley smiling and bouncing onstage with her guitar.

Like the other campers, I put my backpack and sleeping bag in my dormitory room and my guitar in my assigned instrument locker before joining the picnic line on the front lawn. Watching all the other camp kids greet each other by name and throw Frisbees and foam footballs, I wanted to join in. But I wasn’t quite ready to introduce myself. I was still adjusting to the newness of everything. Instead, I sat down on an empty patch of grass to eat my second lunch, and I kept my eyes on the entrance to the grounds. I wondered if Lashley had changed since I had last seen her. Would she remember what I looked like?

Finally, I saw an old, blue Saab rumble through the camp gates. The Morans had driven all the way from their home in New Orleans to San Francisco.

Lashley and I had first met each other when I was in New Orleans the previous winter. That was my first trip out of New England, and I had gone to compete in the Quickfinger Guitar Contest. I had stayed with a boy named Ben Woo, and he had introduced me to his best friend—Lashley—who lives in a mansion. And I mean a mansion. I’d never before been inside such a place. At first I didn’t want to get to know Lashley because she was competing in the same contest, and she had a much better guitar than I did. On top of that, her dad owns a recording studio, so she already makes her own CDs and knows all sorts of famous musicians.

But slowly I got over all that. She was rich. I wasn’t. So what? She had a cool guitar, and I didn’t. Too bad. We ended up as great friends anyway. I wouldn’t have wanted to go to camp in California if Lashley hadn’t agreed to go too. She was used to traveling all over the world with her parents, and I knew she’d know what to do if we both hated camp.

“It’s about time, Lash,” I shouted as she got out of the car. I sprang up from the grass, wiped my mouth, and sprinted over to her.

Lashley looked up and gave me one of her great smiles. Her reddish-gold hair hung loosely over her face, half covering her rounded blue eyes and freckled cheeks.

“Hey, Eric, you didn’t have to drive across Texas to get here!” Lashley said before giving me a hug. “So what are you whining about?”

She let go of me and looked all around at the camp buildings. “Cool place. How are the other kids?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, embarrassed that I hadn’t talked to anyone. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

“Not coming?” Lashley grabbed my arm and shook it. “I just called you three days ago. You knew I was coming. We drove as fast as this blue heap will go. Some of it was amazing—like the Painted Desert—but crossing Texas took forever.”

Mr. Moran cleared his throat loudly, interrupting Lashley. “Lash, the chair, please. Mom
wants to get out. Hi, Eric. Nice to see you.”

“Oh, sorry, Dad. Can you help me with the chair, Eric?”

Lashley opened the trunk, and I helped her pull out a folded wheelchair.

“Nice to see you too,” I said to Lashley’s dad as we opened up the wheelchair.

“Hi, Eric!” Mrs. Moran’s singsong voice came from the front seat. “How’s it going?”

Lashley and I pushed the wheelchair to the front passenger door of the car. Mrs. Moran’s soft, smooth face broke into a huge grin when she saw me.

“Eric, come here and give me a hug. We’ve missed you!” Mrs. Moran hollered.

I leaned into the car and hugged her around the shoulders.

“This is so exciting—that you and Lash will be here together,” she said.

Lashley held the wheelchair steady as her mother pulled on my shoulders to yank herself up. The lower half of her body is paralyzed, but her arms are thick and strong from physical therapy.

“One, two, three,” she said, lifting herself. And she planted her bottom perfectly into the wheelchair.

“You okay there?” asked Mr. Moran, as he pulled a huge backpack from the trunk.
“We got it, sweets,” Mrs. Moran said to her husband. “Nice to have a young man around again.”

Mr. Moran brought the backpack to where Lashley and I were standing and shook my hand. “Hey. Are you calling me old?” he loudly asked his wife, trying to sound indignant. His face was contorted with disbelief.

From her wheelchair, Mrs. Moran shrieked with laughter. “Don’t worry. You’ve still got a few more years!”

Mr. Moran rolled his eyes and exhaled. “Sheesh!” he said to me. “D’ya hear that, Eric? They want to put me out to pasture.”

Lashley gave her dad a quick glance, squinting, and then she pushed her mother out and away from the car toward the camp lawn.

Mr. Moran watched as Lashley walked away.

“Good thing Mrs. Moran and I are going on this retreat in the mountains,” he said to me, slumping his shoulders and bending forward at the waist. “We could use some fresh air and rejuvenation!”