The Child Who Needed One

I am Priscilla, and on my first day as a camp counsellor, I was more frightened than any of the children.

I used to come to this camp every summer as a girl. I knew the lake, the old wooden huts, the smell of the pine trees. Coming back as an adult felt strange, like wearing my childhood as a coat that no longer fit.

My group was eight children, all about nine years old. One of them, a small boy called Owen, would not speak. While the others ran to the water, he sat alone on a rock and stared at his shoes. I remembered that feeling. I used to be exactly like him: too shy to join, too proud to ask.

On the second night, we went camping near the lake. The children were excited and behaved badly, shouting and laughing in the dark. But Owen was quiet and would not come out of his tent. He was scared of the woods.

“I'm not brave,” he told me. “I want to go home.”

I sat down next to him. “When I was your age,” I said, “I cried on my first night here. Every summer after that was the best adventure of my life. You don't have to be brave tonight. You just have to stay.”

He didn't answer. But in the morning, he was sitting by the fire with the others, and he was laughing.

I had been so worried about being a good counsellor. I forgot that, once, I had been the child who needed one.