Her daughter's being punished for her at-risk sister

Rina: You gave us so much trouble in the past. Why should we accept your daughter?

Miriam: Why does my daughter have to suffer because of her sister?

Rina

Summer starts in November when you run a sleepaway camp program.

First it’s the troubleshooting: What could we have done differently last year, how will we make this summer even better. Then it’s the initial planning: hiring head staff, developing a basic theme, and programming. Finally we open registration, and the real fun begins.

Baruch Hashem, we’re well established and have a great name, but thing is that you never make everyone happy, because it’s simply impossible.

There are always those last-minute desperate applications you have to turn down, which makes you look heartless for refusing to help someone in need. There’s always the one exception that you just have to make, even though registration is closed, which frustrates the administrative department. And don’t even get me started on the backlash when the rules are broken once, from all the dozens of applicants that we just couldn’t make an exception for.

Most people don’t take rejections personally. But it isn’t always so simple.

Like with the Friedman girl.

It’s a common enough last name that I might not have looked twice. I was scrolling through applications and checking off names for the office to send out acceptance letters and payment details when the mother’s name caught my eye. Miriam Friedman. That rang off about ten warning bells, but just to be sure, I pulled up an old file and checked the address of the Miriam Friedman that I remembered.

It matched.

I returned to the spreadsheet of this year’s applications and put a solid X by Chani Friedman’s name. It was a shame, really, she must be the younger sister, what happened wasn’t her fault. But we just couldn’t risk another story like the one we had that summer.

Still, I texted my assistant and steady sounding board, Goldie. I wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing. Kaila Friedman’s sister applied. She could be great girl but I’m not sure I want to get involved with the fam again.

My phone buzzed within a minute. Don’t.

Kaila Friedman was a spunky redhead with an Attitude. It was a bit of a surprise when she started flouting camp rules — back when we’d reference-checked her in the winter, her teachers hadn’t mentioned a word about any problems — but we’d dealt with such things before, we would handle it.

Her counselor spoke to her. I spoke to her. She responded flippantly and was even openly defiant to head staff members. That was pretty new. Camp was camp, we weren’t school, everyone was here to have a good time.

But Kaila’s idea of having a good time meant teaming up with the fringe elements of every bunk. She had a certain magnetism — maybe it was the attitude — that drew kids to her, and we felt the effects across the program. There were snide comments about the shiurim and deliberate boycotting of certain activities, late night excursions from the bunkhouse and some decidedly not-Jewish-sounding songs that too many girls were humming. For a while, we couldn’t trace the source of it, until someone struck gold in Kaila’s bunkhouse: an iPod. One that was most definitely against the camp rules.

We did some quiet investigations, and it turned out that the iPod was Kaila’s. If she’d simply been using it herself, we might have confiscated it for the duration of the summer and left it at that, but apparently, Kaila’s little club spent their nightly getaways hanging out and listening to less-than-savory music. This wasn’t just about one girl and her private struggles — it was a bad influence on the whole camp.

Somehow, the story got out, and I had parents calling and complaining about their daughters being exposed to things they’d never agreed to. I saw the camp’s good name disintegrating before my eyes. We needed to take drastic action.

I’ve never done this before, but I instructed my secretary to call the parents. We were sending Kaila home.