And this was the first.

It started with a spray bottle. Opaque silver-gray plastic with a bright yellow hand grip. Ira was supposed to use it to wet down his table before wiping it off with an oversized sponge, and eventually he would, but first he felt compelled to squirt another waiter at a nearby table. 

The waiter shouted, "Hey!" because nobody ever says anything articulate when they've been squirted in the eye. 

He then reached for a spray bottle of his own and returned fire. Then one of the waitresses joined in, followed by a second and then another waiter and from there the situation spiraled completely out of control. Soon everyone was blasting each other with streams of water. 

Shouts, laughs, squeals.

Emily and I were doing our assigned task, putting chairs upside down on tables so the floor could be swept unimpeded, but we stopped and watched the aquatic melee with amusement from what seemed like a safe distance. 

But then Yogi, seeing that my attention was elsewhere, tried to ambush me from my left flank. Luckily, I heard the squeak of his sneakers on the wood floor and turned just in time to see him running at me, a raised spray bottle pointing at my head. He took three shots from about six feet away, all of which missed me. Spray bottles are not very accurate, apparently manufactured without combat in mind. 

Then Kareem squirted Yogi in the back of the head and ran away. Yogi whirled around and gave chase, affording me a brief reprieve in which to arm myself. My eyes darted around the dining room, searching. And there it was, perched on the stainless steel top of Igor. A spray bottle! 

Yes!

But at the same time I saw it, an equally weaponless Emily saw it, too. We raced for it and she got there a split second before I did, hip-checking me out of the way. With an enormous mischievous grin, she opened fire. I backpedaled, shielding my face, as she chased me, giggling. It was for Emily a rare moment of pure unbridled fun.

What happened next is going to require some explanation.

Talk to pretty much anyone who went to summer camp and they will wax nostalgic about their favorite practical jokes. The ones they played on their friends, the ones their friends played on them. Water balloons, shaving cream, short-sheeting, buckets falling from propped-open doors, plastic wrap stretched across toilet seats, strategically placed ketchup packets, magic marker mustaches drawn on sleeping bunkmates. The list was endless.

But as with so many things that my peers enjoyed, I was not on board. These pranks didn't seem clever to me, just childish and mean. I never perpetrated them and I never tolerated them. So while my compatriots generally reacted to these practical jokes with good humor, laughing at themselves and complimenting the joker on his ingenuity, I always went nuclear, retaliating humorlessly and disproportionately, ruining the fun for everybody. 

It was intended as a deterrent and it generally worked. If they felt the need to, say, fill someone's pillowcase with rocks, they would look at my bunk, decide it wasn't worth the hassle and go off in search for a more amenable victim.

Now, I admit that when a delighted, playful Emily spritzed me in the face with water, it did not technically meet the criteria for a practical joke, but as far as my reflexes were concerned, it was close enough. So without thinking, I picked up a pitcher of water and threw it on her.

Except it wasn't water. The liquid had barely left the pitcher when I realized that it was actually bug juice. 

It arced through the air towards Emily, reaching for her with ruby-red tendrils. Her mischievous smile was gone. In its place, a look of incomprehension. And then at the last moment, when she grasped what was happening, she cringed and instinctively raised her hands to protect herself.

Moments later, she was soaked. The fruit punch had splashed her directly in the face and chest. It dripped from her hair, rivulets running down her cheeks like the prom scene from Carrie. I stood mutely, too ashamed to say anything as she dropped her head, looking down in disbelief at her drenched T-shirt and the archipelago of black spots on the front her navy blue shorts. She wiped the sugary liquid out of her eyes and made a decision.

Emily slowly raised her head. I expected her to look at me sadly or angrily or embarrassed, but she didn't look at me at all. Instead, she gazed past me coldly, almost imperiously, as she walked towards the screen door with measured steps. Her shoulders were back, her chin upraised. 

I had never seen Emily look so dignified as she did in that moment of indignity. 

------------------------------------------------

It was a stroke of luck that everybody was so wrapped up in the water fight that nobody saw me douse Emily with bug juice. I wasn't sure, honestly, whether they would have thought the incident horrifying or hilarious, nor was I sure which reaction I would have found more upsetting. But I was gratified I didn't have to find out.

By the time that Drezner arrived to check up on us, I was almost finished mopping up what appeared to be a routine spill. He made some crack about how he never thought he'd live to see the day when one of us would voluntarily pick up a mop. I replied that now he'd have a story to tell his grandchildren, which made him mad for some reason, so he shot back that I wouldn't last for five minutes at a real restaurant and then he stomped off.

Despite the venom in Drezner's words, I couldn't bring myself to feel bad about my apparently dismal prospects in the culinary services. Which was just as well, because I was still feeling bad about Emily. I kept trying to twist the events in my mind to make it somehow Emily's fault, but no amount of mental contortion could pull that off. I knew I was in the wrong and there was no way to rationalize my way out of that.

Although.

There might, I realized, be a silver lining. After weeks of frustrating ambiguity, I had finally stopped sending mixed signals. Surely — surely! — she understood, after I literally threw cold water (mixed with flavored powder) on her affections, that nothing was ever going to happen between us. So really I had done Emily a huge favor, giving her a valuable gift. The gift of finality.

But a few hours later, back in Bunk Walnut, I discovered that had just been wishful thinking.

"Here." Mark handed me an envelope. "Emily wanted me to give this to you." As I took it from him, I felt my entire body deflating. "Now if you'll excuse me," he said brightly, "I've got to take a noisy shit."

Camp life.

I climbed up on my bunk and sat cross-legged on my scratchy woolen blanket. I turned the envelope over and over in my hands, not wanting to read it, fearful of what it was going to say. But how could I not?

I tore open the envelope and unfolded letter it contained. The stationery had a black-and-white photo of a wild-eyed crazy man with a thin mustache reaching up to his eyebrows. It was, I now know, a self-portrait of Salvador Dalí, but back then it seemed to be yet another example of Emily's random weirdness.

Her penscript was odd, too. At first blush, it looked like some ancient language. Sanskrit or Aramaic or Elvish. On closer inspection it was hand-printed English with oddly slanting lines and strange geometric shapes that formed confused and impassioned words.

Dearest Aaron,

It is no secret that I care for you...

I shut my eyes and squeezed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger, then opened my eyes and continued reading. She described in excruciating detail the first time she saw me.

Your eyes, the color of warm chocolate, with those beautiful long lashes... golden-brown curls... that impish little smile... those long, lithe legs... 

Oh, Jesus. Kill me now.

I looked around the bunk self-consciously. Everyone was involved in their own thing, writing letters or playing blackjack for canteen tickets or in Cheese's case flipping through a low rent porn magazinecalled Hot Blondes. Cheese glanced up at me grinned for some reason, then went back to porn, his hand unabashedly down the front of his shorts.

I continued reading. Emily had devoted two entire paragraphs to my alleged virtues. My sense of humor, my intelligence, my sensitivity. It went on and on. It embarrassed me then and it baffles me now. How much she thought of me.

Then the tone changed from paean to confusion. Emily didn't understand my behavior. Sometimes I was friendly, sometimes I was aloof, and she didn't get why.

I just want to know how you feel about me...

I should have talked to her, told her I only liked her as a friend. She certainly would have been upset — that explanation is always merciful in conception, but devastating in execution — but I believe she ultimately would have understood, perhaps even appreciated, that I had treated her with respect. If not, I could have at least taken solace in knowing that I had done the right thing.

It all seems so painfully obvious now. But life is lived forwards, not backwards, and at the time I thought the best course of action was to simply say nothing and hope that my silence would implicitly convey what a face full of icy liquid could not.

I returned the letter to its envelope. I couldn't quite bring myself to throw it out, so I stashed it in the back of my cubby, behind my tube socks and Fruit-of-the-Loom underpants.

Mark came out of the bathroom and let out a loud, contented groan. He patted himself on the stomach with both hands.

"That," he declared, "was one for the record books."