I can still smell the shampoo and pancakes.
    The girls always woke up before us, to hurry and shower before the sun baked the sweat and dirt into their skin; the boys rose with the previous day’s filth still settled on their skin, startled into consciousness by the conch from the mess hall.
    Everyone stopped at the bathroom before breakfast; they would smell our hands for soap when we came in for food. Late-wakers would rush to the line of kids and wipe hands together with someone properly washed, so that even if the layer of grit was present, the rosy soap fumes would slip inside counselors’ noses.
    The boys were always first in; we stopped in the bathhouse for a splash of cleanly wet, then raced to head the line that formed by the door of the hall. Sitting in the same seats every day, we watched the girls filter in and sit down, and every morning, their wet hair was stuck to their faces and necks, improperly dried in the haste of hunger.
    I wanted to eat their hair. The smell was intoxicating. I wanted to bury my face in the damp, cool strands and let it fill my mouth and lungs.
    I sucked in extra air when I ate. I always saved a place for at least one girl next to me, and I as I ate, I tried to trap the shampoo in my taste buds and nostrils.
    Don’t get me wrong; I love dirt and mud and all the squalors of life. But there’s something about the fragrance of clean, wet hair in the morning, mingling with the smell of breakfast and juice. It overpowers the roar of kids and the clinking of spoons and forks. It’s stronger than the sun shining on your back through the big screen windows.
    I used to think of secrets to whisper in her ear, just to get another whiff.