by Beth Vrabel
I pushed past Jer, past Sheldon staring at Amanda, past April giggling at Ash, past Mr. Bosserman whistling, and headed toward Camp eMagine.
I had to get out of there before my matchmaking powers mutated again and more of the wrong people fell in love.
Chapter Nine
What a disaster! The pack was doomed.
Sheldon’s feelings for Amanda had to fade fast. She was too tough to be all lovey-dovey. I figured we’d lose one of them from the pack due to the massive awkwardness. And April, falling for stupid jerkface Ash! (Okay, I’ll admit, Ash isn’t really a jerk. He’s actually pretty nice. But he’s a twin with Queen Jerkface of Kingdom Snob.) If she started spending all of her time with Ash and Kira, I’d never get my old reliable April back again.
Add to this, my only new recruit, Megan, hated me because Jer got the stupid idea I liked him. Seriously! Does he have a ping-pong ball for a brain? What could possibly make him think I liked him?
Of course, I did smile at him a lot today. But only to encourage Megan! Megan! And, okay, so he was watching while Megan and I whispered about him. But Megan whispered; I listened!
“Ugh. This is such a disaster!” I slumped on the stoop outside the eMagine kitchen, where I’d run to spill all my problems out to Grandma.
“Earthquakes are disasters. Tornados and wildfires, too.” Grandma chomped on her nicotine gum. Camp eMagine wouldn’t let anyone, even cranky old lunch ladies, smoke, so Mom had sent her a care package of gum that’s supposed to make her stop wanting to smoke.
Guess what was in my care package? Nothing, that’s what. Because I never even got a care package. Why does Grandma get a care package but not me? I don’t know.
“I don’t know anything.” I muttered.
Grandma sighed. “You know nothing about love, that’s for sure.”
“Thanks,” I snapped.
“Well, you can’t just decide who should partner up and expect it work.”
“Yes, I can. I’m good at pulling people together,” I said, pushing out my bottom lip in a small pout.
Grandma shrugged and blew a giant bubble. She must’ve had six pieces of gum in her mouth to make such a huge bubble. “Maybe,” she said. “But when you brought your so-called pack together, you weren’t really trying. You were just being you. You were being kind.”
I glared at her. “I am kind!”
She snorted, then glanced at her watch. I guess I had to get back to camp, but I wasn’t ready to face anyone. In the distance, I heard a quick three claps, followed up with a high-pitched, “Lucy! Lucy, you get back here right now!” Clap-clap-clap.
Crap sandwich. Jessica was on to me.
“Grandma,” I asked, “if you had to run away, how would you do it?”
Grandma spit her gum into a napkin and crossed her arms. “My guess would be that you’d need to get a lot of cash, change your appearance, and, most of all, not contact anyone you know. I’d give it a lot of thought before I attempted it. And be sure to pick someplace warm. A beach or island.”
I stared at her.
“What?” she asked, unwrapping another piece of gum.
“That was just unexpectedly specific.” Jessica’s claps got closer. “I didn’t think you’d actually give me steps to follow.”
“Well, maybe I had to think about it once.”
Clap! Clap! Clap! “Lucy!” Jessica was almost there.
I stood on the stoop. “Can I at least have a cookie before I go?”
“What do I look like?” Grandma snapped. I let my eyes deliberately run up and down her aproned, hair-netted, plastic-gloved body.
She stomped inside and thrust a chocolate chip cookie out of the door. “Don’t run away,” she snapped.
“Now, we’ve been over these rules, Lucy,” Jessica said as we walked back to the Camp Paleo dig. “And, wouldn’t you agree, there aren’t that many rules? Just three teeny, tiny rules. That’s all.”
I nodded, but she prattled on anyway.
“One: Brush your teeth every day. Two: Help prepare meals when it’s your day. Three: Don’t wander off.” Jessica said the last one extra loud.
“Got it,” I said. “Sorry.”
In her high-pitched, sing-songy voice, Jessica said, “I’m afraid sorry doesn’t cut it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, the thing is, number three is our biggest rule of all.” She smiled brightly. “The one with consequences.” She mimed a super sad face. “Someone’s going to miss tonight’s activity!”
I struggled not to smile and to keep my fist pump mental. “Guess no hike for me! You know, I was so bad, you should force me not to go on the fossil dig tomorrow, too.”
Jessica giggled and patted my head. For real. Like I was a dog. “We’re not hiking, tonight, sweetie. Tonight we’re swimming!”
“What?”
“Yes, we’re swimming in Lake Matilda tonight. Everyone is changing into their swimsuits now, but I guess you’re fine the way you are.”
She tilted her head then and looked at me with narrowed eyes. I glanced at my dirt-encrusted self. For a bitter second, I let myself think about what it would feel like to have cool water wash the grime from my hair, the mud from my knees, and the sticky bug spray from my skin.
Jessica must’ve had the same thought. “Of course, while they’re changing, you could take a shower.” Her nose wrinkled. “Maybe a nice, long one.”
My life stinks.
Jessica might not be my favorite person, but I could’ve hugged her after taking a shower. It felt so nice to see mini rivers of muddy water run down my legs and down the drain. The centipede and I seemed to have reached an agreement: I wouldn’t try to crush him with my feet and he’d keep his thousand legs away from me. At the end of my shower, I felt so much better that I decided to give him a nice refreshing splash. He had to be roasting on the cement floor! But that only made him float down the drain. Oops.
And this time, I even remembered the shampoo and clean underwear!
But after my shower, I felt like a dirtball all over again. Only this time, the feeling came from the inside.
Everyone in the A-frame quieted as I walked in. I thought at first they were in awe of my cleanliness. But then I realized—nope. They’d been talking about me. All it took was one glance at Kira, gloating on the top bunk in her purple ruffled bikini, to realize it. Megan, in a rainbow tank, wouldn’t look at me. And April? She feverishly applied sunscreen, even though it was five o’clock at night.
“What’s up?” I decided to just play it off like I didn’t care.
“They’re all talking about you,” Amanda said. She wore a camo swimsuit and an enormous smile.
“Amanda!” April gasped.
“Why are you happy about them talking about me?” I snapped to Amanda. “Shouldn’t that make you angry?”
“It does,” Amanda said, still smiling. “But I can’t stop being happy today. It’s weird.”
“What did you guys say about me?” I crossed my arms and glared at April and Kira.
Still smiling, Amanda answered instead. “Kira says you’re a drama queen, running off like that.”
In a small voice, April added, “I told her you just missed your grandma. That’s all.”
Kira snickered. In a baby voice, she added, “Poor little girl misses her mommy, too, I bet. And maybe her blankie-wankie.”
Amanda snickered. “That’s funny. It’s like she knows about Mr. Stinky.”
My eyes filled with water as Kira bellowed. Even Megan laughed a little. I squeezed my eyes shut so the water wouldn’t spill over. The thing is, I know Amanda wasn’t trying to poke fun at the stuffed bear I had since I was baby. She went right back to humming “ommm” and folding her beach towel. She was just being Amanda, a little clueless about feelings but generally a good friend. A good friend who was—what? Putting on lip gloss? I shook my head and looked away. Kira laughed again.
Kira just twisted everything. She was ruining my whole pack,
especially April, who simply sat down on her bunk and didn’t look at me.
And suddenly I felt grimy.
Later, sitting by the side of the lake, I thought of a million things I should’ve said to Kira. But really, she was sort of right. I do miss Mom. Dad, too. And Molly, even if she has become a werebaby. And, yeah, I miss Mr. Stinky.
I let my eyes wander over to where Kira stood knee-deep in the lake. She was talking to some girls from a different A-frame. Then they all bent over, laughing. They turned toward me. Kira flipped her hair off her shoulder, making the setting sun shimmer on her long locks, and turned her back to me. I looked down at my scabby knees, the bug bites clustered on my thighs, and the peeling skin on my shoulders from my healing sunburn.
When I looked back at her, she and the other girls were whispering and pointing toward a cluster of boys splashing a little deeper in the lake. They’d pop up like dolphins and pull down the guy closest to them. Someone said their older brother went to camp here a few years back and a fish chewed off his nipple. Now the boys were daring each other to go farther out.
After a while, the boys stopped worrying about nipple-eating fish and concentrated on sneaky splash attacks on the girls. It was just a game, but somehow more, too. Too much showing off and a lot of loud laughing.
I felt so small, suddenly. I mean, I know Kira is going into fifth grade, like me. But somehow, I still was a little girl and she looked and acted like my teenage babysitter.
On the shoreline, Amanda showed Sheldon yoga moves she had learned during meditation sessions that morning. They stretched out into warrior poses. Sheldon’s thin, pale arms looked like shadows of Amanda’s thick, muscly moves. In unison, they moved into a tree pose. Sheldon’s face shined, and I don’t think it had to do with the sun’s reflection.
Even Amanda and Sheldon were more mature than me.
I had to get better at this. I had got to stop being a little girl and start being an almost teen, too.
I let my thoughts scatter as Megan plopped down beside me. “I heard you aren’t allowed to swim,” she said quietly.
“I wouldn’t have taken my chances with the nerple-eating fish anyway.”
“Nerple?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I have trouble saying the other word.”
“Nipple?”
I shuddered.
“You can’t just change the word because you don’t like it,” Megan said.
“I just did.”
Megan stood.
“Hold on!” I pulled her back down. “I’m sorry. I’m just really grouchy. And I’m sorry, too, about the whole Jer thing. I know you like him.”
Megan twisted her body around and I followed her gaze to where Jer skipped rocks across Lake Matilda. He rocked up on his heels every time the rock hit the surface of the water and went back for another arc.
Megan leaned back on her elbows. “Thanks, but if he doesn’t like me, what can I do about it?” Megan smiled, revealing small, straight, super white teeth. “He’s just really bouncy, you know? If you like him, you should tell him. I won’t be upset or anything.”
I shook my head. “I don’t like him.”
“So who do you like?” Megan asked.
For some stupid reason, Sam’s face popped in my head. The way he looked on the screen when he said “us.”
“No one,” I said. “I mean, I don’t like anyone here.”
I scanned the lake again. Sheldon and Amanda were twisted in a strange yoga pose I’m pretty sure one of them had just made up. Each had a leg straight up in the air, one arm twisted behind and the other arm locked behind. They were like straight-legged pretzels.
Two kids snuck up behind them and pushed them at the same time in the middle of the back, making both fall over. April was between them and the lake, talking to Ash, and she just let the jerks run right by her. I know from watching her spar in tae kwon do that she could’ve taken them down with one well-placed flying sidekick. But she didn’t even look up. It’s like the three of them didn’t even know each other! I guess April was too caught up in Ash to notice.
Sheldon popped up before Amanda and tore off after the kids, Amanda just behind him, urging him to calm down. Amanda! Telling someone to calm down!
The pack was completely falling apart! I had to do something a-sap!
Maybe the first mission in Operation Dorks in Love had failed, but phase two was going to rectify this damage. I had to get April back to her senses, away from Kira and Ash, and back to the pack. Then I’d deal with Sheldon and Amanda, if needed. (They actually were kind of cute together.)
“It’s too bad you don’t like Jer,” Megan said. I had to concentrate to remember what we were talking about. “Because he’s on his way over here, and I’m pretty sure it’s to talk to you, not me.” I looked over and, sure enough, there he was, bouncing toward us. Something about that, the way he punctuated every move with a little bounce, reminded me of April. The real April. The way she used to be.
I smiled.
“Why are you doing that twisty thing with your fingers again?” Megan asked.
“Phase two, about to commence.”
“Ooo-kay,” Megan said slowly. “I’m going to swim. Good luck.”
“Hey, Megan,” I called to her. “What do you think of Ash?”
“Kira’s brother?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think he likes you.”
Chapter Ten
Jer plopped down beside me in the spot Megan had just left. He leaned back on one elbow and smiled. “You afraid to swim? I’ll keep you safe from the fish.” Another wink.
“Do you have an eye twitch?” I asked.
He squirmed. You know how sometimes you get a flash of insight into a person? Like you see someone smiling, but you know it’s a total fake and that he’s really sad? Or you see someone trying to look cool but you know she’s really bursting with happiness inside? Well, I got a little flash from Jer’s squirm. Jer was as awkward and freaked out about this whole romance thing as me. I had a feeling all he really liked was playing sports. He flirted because everyone else was doing it. Suddenly I liked him a lot more. Not like like him. You know what I mean.
“Never mind. Look, I have a boyfriend.” I lie so easily sometimes. “You don’t know him.”
“What’s his name?”
Not Sam. Not Sam. “Huh?”
“His name?”
Not Sam. Not Sam. “Ham.”
“Your boyfriend’s name is Ham?” Jer cocked his head at me.
“It’s a nickname. And no one knows about him, so don’t go running your mouth. Look, that’s not important. The thing that’s important is that I’m not interested.”
“Whatever.” Jer rolled a pebble around in his hand and started tossing it back and forth. “Not like I care.”
“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes until I remembered Kira always does that. I stopped mid-roll. “Anyway, I’m not interested, but I know someone who does like you. A lot.”
This got Jer’s attention. He dropped the pebble. “Who?”
“April.”
Jer sat up and squinted across the shore toward where April and Ash were talking. April laughed at whatever Ash was saying. “Seems like she’s pretty into Ash,” Captain Obvious said.
“You’re the one she talks about all the time,” I lied again. I had my fingers crossed, but still felt guilty. It’s for the good of the pack, I told myself.
“Yeah?” Jer nodded, his bottom lip popping out a little. “I thought I got a vibe from her.”
“You totally did. She’s been hanging around Ash to find out more about you. Since you’re friends with him.”
Jer’s chest puffed out a little. “Makes sense. She’s pretty smart, huh?”
“Super smart,” I said. “And she has a total thing for athletic guys. Like you. She loves—loves—sports.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know. Football, soccer, hockey.” Honesty alert: April hates all team sports. I’ve heard
the best lies have a little bit of truth mixed in, so I listed some individual sports, too. “Um, karate, track. She wants to get into juggling. All the sports.”
“Huh.” Jer got up, brushing the sand off his shorts.
“One more thing.” I jumped to my feet and grabbed his arm before he could strut over to April and ruin everything. “She’s really shy. So it’s tough for her to say she likes someone. But she’s really into you, even if she might not seem like it all the time.”
“Hard to get, huh?” Jer smoothed his hair with his hands. “I can handle that.”
“And, um, she’d kill me if she knew I told you. So don’t say anything, cool?”
“Cool.” Jer stretched and grinned at me. “The coolest girl at camp, and she likes me.” He did a little fist pump and headed toward April. Soon he was next to her, trying to teach her how to skip rocks. She dived into the lake and swam away from him. Jer gave me a thumbs up and paddled after her.
April? The coolest girl at camp? Ha! I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“Freak!” a kid muttered as he passed me.
Today’s post from your Friendly Super-Secret Camp Paleo Blogger is brought to you by the letter L. That’s right: L as in Love. What’s with all the hook-ups going on around Camp Paleo? As our esteemed leader would say, “Cavemen didn’t flirt, onest!”
It’s like way back in first grade, when someone has a birthday party at that clown pizza place. Suddenly that’s where everyone has a party, even though clowns are creepy and the pizza tastes like play dough. Here we are, where two people crush on each other and suddenly the whole camp is pairing off.
As we move into our second and final week of Camp Paleo, let’s remember the real reason we’re here: figuring out what we like about ourselves. That’s right, ourselves. You’re missing your chance, lovesick campers! Let me remind you, we all go home at the end of the week. Maybe you’ll exchange email addresses, but the only person you can count on seeing again is the face in the mirror.
Take this week and figure out who you want that person to be. And then be him or her.
