When I was in eighth grade, my score on a state-mandated aptitude test won me a trip to the summer session of the Minnesota Junior Science Scholars’ Camp. The ten-day camp would convene at the environmental station of the Auswego National Forest, on the banks of Lake Hawkfeather, in the middle of July.

So a week after Independence Day, my mother and I left our house in Stillwater at daybreak and drove toward Saint Paul, where an orange sunrise reflected on the glass towers of the skyline. After skirting the Cities, we veered north. For three hours we traveled through farm country: soybean fields, mostly, interrupted now and then by a creek or small lake bordered by skeletal, half-submerged trees. We stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch and Mom told me to savor my last taste of civilization. I nodded. She took a sip of Coke and then closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She and I have always resembled each other: we both have long, thin noses and round, flat faces, though she was and is a big, broad-shouldered woman, and I was and am small-boned and pale, with hair a deeper shade of brown than hers. “I have a headache,” she said, and then opened her eyes wide. I had the feeling she was disappointed to see I hadn’t transformed back into the smiling, eager-to-please, ten-year-old-boy version of myself.

Over the course of middle school, I’d gradually stopped speaking to my parents unless I considered it unavoidable. Since my silence hadn’t been precipitated by any particular fight or trauma, it took a while for them to realize that I’d become so withdrawn; in fact, it only turned into a matter of acute concern a few weeks before I left for camp, on the June day my best friend Meg and I went to Steph Hartman’s birthday party, at her house near the university.

Steph was the vivacious, socially ambitious editor of the junior high yearbook, for which I’d written captions. Steph and I were friendly but not close, yet Meg had confessed—and her confession could be confused with an accusation—that she resented my relationship with Steph. Meg was slightly overweight, and with her curly red hair, green eyes, and freckles, looked different from the Nordic population of Stillwater. She had a disarming smile and a gentle presence that could be ingratiating, but she considered herself ugly. At the party she was sulky even though I stuck by her side all afternoon. When everyone else decided to have a water fight in the yard, she said, “I don’t want to get wet. Stay on the porch.” I got us lemonades to drink while we watched the action. Super Soakers in hand, Adam Decker and Brian Peterson chased girls across Steph’s lawn as if running down deer in a meadow. They whipped water balloons at each other and swore loudly when they got hit. Their shorts sagged as they got wet, exposing more and more of their white briefs. As the briefs got wet, they stuck to the skin underneath and became pink where flesh started to show through the cotton. I didn’t hear Meg when she asked me to refill her lemonade. I’d barely taken a sip of mine.

When Mom picked me up, she asked how the party was. I grunted and stared out the window. At home, I went up to my room, closed the door, turned off the lights, got into bed, touched myself through my shorts and tried not to think about Adam Decker and Brian Peterson. After a while Mom knocked on the door, then came in and sat on the chair by my desk. “Are you sick?” she asked. I rolled to the wall. “Talk to me, please.” I buried my face in my pillow, and when I heard my mother start to cry, softly, I pulled the comforter over my head. A few days later, I overheard a conversation between her and my father. She said I might be depressed. I might need drugs. I might be on drugs. Dad told her it was just a phase and that camp would be good for me, just what I needed.

After we left McDonald’s, the cultivated fields gave way to pine forest, and the bodies of water we crossed grew larger. Traffic thinned out and the highway narrowed from four lanes to two. We passed a gigantic fiberglass loon with red eyes that glared in the afternoon sun. Finally we turned onto a winding county road and passed a tag-board sign that said, “Welcome Science Campers, turn left 100 yds!” We made the turn onto a rutted dirt road shrouded by foliage. “Here we are,” Mom said,  “the wilderness.” ...

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