by Beth Vrabel
“That’s ridiculous.” I crossed my arms.
You know what stinks more than having a huge fight with one of your best friends in front of your nemesis? Nothing.
Except maybe one thing.
After April left with Kira, I stood there stunned for about five minutes. That’s about how long it takes for eggs to turn into crusty, black bits that make Scott, this boy in Sheldon’s A-frame who put on swim trunks the first day and hasn’t changed since, smell like flowers.
“Oh no! The ‘eggs’ are burning!” I yelled.
“Why do you make little air quotes when you say eggs?” Amanda asks. “It makes me angry.”
“Because they aren’t real eggs. They’re a powdery and green and gross egg-like substance.”
“They’re eggs. No air quotes,” Amanda snapped.
“No. The air quotes indicate that while some people, ahem, Mr. Bosserman, say they’re eggs, they’re not really. They’re ‘eggs.’”
“But they’re made from eggs. So they’re eggs.” Amanda clenched her fists.
“Listen, eggs are disgusting enough. I mean, we’re eating something squeezed out of a chicken’s butt. Why do we have to eat ‘eggs’ that are even grosser?”
“Kumbaya. Kumbaya.” Amanda took a deep breath. “When you think about it, everything is disgusting. A disgusting miracle.”
“Huh. You’re really getting spiritual.”
“Guys! The eggs are burning!” Megan pointed to clouds of blackish smoke puffing up from the crustified egg mixture. She waved her arms over the small flames but ended up sending a stack of paper napkins over the grill. They smoldered and quickly burst into red flames, too.
“We have to do something!” I screamed. “Where is Jessica?”
I spotted her red hair across the campsite, talking with the counselor who bunked in Sheldon’s A-frame—she was totally ignoring us.
Amanda took some deep breaths. “We need to—puff—calm—puff—down!”
“Aaahh!” I whapped on the side of Megan’s huge vat of hot cocoa, spilling it over the grill and dousing the flames.
We all sighed softly as the horrendous stench was squelched by the comforting aroma of chocolate.
“That was a close one,” Megan murmured.
I put my fist up for a bump all around, but no one took me up on it. “We are in huge trouble,” Amanda murmured.
I lowered my fist.
Jessica stomped across the lawn, screaming, “What have you done?” Campers trickled out of their A-frames and toward the picnic tables. They covered their noses with their hands or the tops of their T-shirts.
Mr. Bosserman surged forward, waving his arms to get through the groaning crowd like he was swatting away gnats. When he got to the front, I could see why his son put him in charge of a caveman camp. He stomped around, grunting, gesturing toward the still-smoking-cocoa-soaked grill, the egg juice all over the floor, the spatula in the dirt. Jessica scooted toward the front, saw Mr. Bosserman’s scary purple face, and stepped back.
“What happened here?” he bellowed.
Amanda shrugged. “Well, first Lucy picked a fight with April. Then she got into a fight with me.” She leaned into Mr. Bosserman and lowered her voice. “Between you and me, I think she has some anger issues.”
“Fool-headed kids! Now what are we supposed to do?”
“Um.” I put down my spatula. “Is there a diner nearby?”
Mr. Bosserman stomped to the back of the campsite with Jessica while the rest of the campers sat down at picnic tables. Mr. Bosserman and Jessica were far enough away that I couldn’t hear what they said, only that he was yelling. A lot. He gestured toward all of us and Jessica walked back without any of her usual perkiness while he yelled some more into a phone.
Jessica stormed toward me with scary straight robot arms and stiff legs. Her usual smile was totally wiped off her face. Instead, her lips were pressed in a white line. “You!” She pointed at me. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
I sucked on my lip, not sure how to respond.
“She burned breakfast?” Amanda offered.
“And got me fired! I can’t go losing a kid one day and having her destroy the entire campsite’s meal the next. Ugh! This was supposed to count toward my community service college credit!” Jessica shuddered. “I hate kids! Hate them!” She kicked the downed spatula and stomped off to our A-frame.
Amanda gave a low whistle a second later when we heard a massive ripping sound. “There goes the kitten poster.”
Soon we heard a rumbling sound as a golf cart rolled down the dirt path toward our site. It parked in front of us and Grandma climbed out. “What did you do now, Toots?” she asked me.
“Darn kid wrecked breakfast, that’s what.” Mr. Bosserman’s face was slowly going back to normal color, but still sort of pinkish.
“It was an accident,” I mumbled. “April and I had a fight.” I peeked up at Grandma and saw that she was studying my face. Suddenly my knees got shaky again. My chin shook a little. If all these people weren’t here, staring at me, I’d rush forward and bury my face in Grandma’s mushy waist. I really wanted my mom, but Grandma would do, too.
“Buck up.” Grandma nodded at me. “It’s all right.”
“It’s what?” Mr. Bosserman snapped.
Grandma ignored him, getting out a box filled with single-serve cereals from the backseat. It was like one of those scenes in Robin Hood movies where he gives loaves of bread to peasants. Everyone rushed forward, hands out, grabbing at little boxes of corn flakes and cocoa rice. Grandma opened another box and began throwing apples and clementines to the cluster of starving campers.
Over the cheers for Grandma, Mr. Bosserman continued yelling, “That girl needs a tighter rope! She’s out of control, thinking she can just run off when she feels like it. Shoot arrows with her eyes shut. Wreck meals. I don’t know if we can get that grill running again!”
Grandma whipped around to him, thrusting the box of fruit into his chest. Her eyes narrowed behind her smudgy glasses and her lips pursed. “Don’t you go blaming Lucy. She’s a kid. Where were you? Where was the supervision?”
“I’m dealing with the counselor who should’ve been there,” Mr. Bosserman grumped. “Don’t get in a fret.”
“Did you just tell me not to ‘get in a fret’?” Grandma pushed forward so her forehead was an inch from Mr. Bosserman’s forehead. Some of his frizzy white hair had to be tickling her cheek.
Mr. Bosserman stepped back. “Sorry.”
Grandma smiled and then lowered herself into the golf cart. She smoothed her fingers across her apron. “We still on for tonight?” she asked as she turned the key in the ignition.
“Nine o’clock, right?” Mr. Bosserman asked. “I made shoo fly pie.”
She nodded, making her chin wobble. Then Grandma pointed at me. “Clean up this mess, Luc.”
I knew she wasn’t just talking about the grill.
After scrubbing the grill for about a half hour, Mr. Bosser-man told me to get lost. Actually he said, “Quit your brutzing and moaning and let it rest.”
I think I got the translation right and even tried speaking a little Mr. Bosserman. “I got in a fret with April. Have you seen her?”
“Maybe let it go awhile,” he said. “Let her calm down.”
“Nah, I’ll be rutching until I talk to her.”
“Go check the A-frame. Think I saw her there.”
“Thanks, Mr. Bosserman. And sorry about the grill.”
I found my former friend on a grassy area behind our A-frame. She whipped through tae kwon do forms with way more force than necessary.
If you don’t know about tae kwon do, here’s a quick lesson. First: if your instructor is an old purple walnut lady named Miss Betsy, you’re probably going to hate your first class. Second: if you make it to the second class, you’re going to find out that it’s a real sport, not a throw-a-punch-there-add-a-kick-here sort of thing. Forms are a way to sort of showcase wha
t you know. The first time I showed Mom and Dad a form, they said it looked like a dance. In a lot of ways, I guess it is. But even though we do the same steps, April’s dance is much more complex than mine. She pours everything into her forms, where I just try to not mess up the steps.
It reminded me suddenly of Shemanda doing yoga on the lakeshore the day before. Maybe this was April’s meditation. If it was, then she was seriously looking for some Zen. And I knew I was the one who made her so mad.
Just as I was about to say her name, someone else beat me to it. “April! That’s awesome!” I hadn’t seen Kira sitting at the base of a tree trunk. “I’m going to take tae kwon do when camp’s over.”
April grinned, wiping her forehead with the hem of her T-shirt. “Yeah, it’s hard, but it’s a lot of fun.”
Her easy smile was a windshield wiper, pushing aside all my guilt. Anger pelted me in its place. Here I thought April was working off steam after our fight when she was really just showing off!
“Is there anything you’re not good at?” Kira asked.
April’s face flushed and she laughed. “Tons of things!”
“Name three.”
“Um …”
“That’s what I thought!” Kira said. “You can’t even think of three faults.”
“I could tell you three things.” I stepped off the A-frame toward them, letting all my meanness flare through me, starting at my toes and erupting through my mouth. I held up one finger. “She doesn’t stand up for her friends.” A second finger. “She’s always trying to be someone she’s not.” A third finger. “She still picks her nose at night. She used to all of the time, until I convinced her it was gross.”
My hands flew to my mouth, trying to cram the words back inside. But it was too late. April’s eyes filled with tears. I thought she’d yell at me, but what she did was even worse. She whispered, “I hate you.”
I stood there shaking, wanting to tell her I hated her, too. But I couldn’t.
“Come on,” said Kira, putting an arm around April and turning her away from me. “She’s not worth it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Even Shemanda was mad at me.
When I walked up to them later (after spending about an hour or so crying into my mattress), they turned their backs to me. “We heard what you said to April,” Sheldon said over his shoulder.
“And it’s terrible,” Amanda finished.
“She’s happy here. She’s popular,” Sheldon spit out.
“Why can’t you be happy for her?” Amanda added.
Sheldon and Amanda looked at each other and shook their heads. “Wait a second, where’s the trilobite?” Sheldon asked.
Amanda’s hand flew to her neck. “The string! It was fraying a little, so I took it off while we were making breakfast!”
They rushed to the picnic tables to look for the fossil. Mr. Bosserman called out that we had an hour of free time before our next adventure: canoe riding on the lake. We were supposed to spend the time with our friends. I stomped into the woods—alone.
I sat down on a log and pulled out a granola bar I’d stashed in my pocket. A few seconds later, leaves rustled behind me. I guess someone finally noticed I was missing. I turned to see, but no one was there. Huh? I nibbled on the bar. More rustling.
This time when I turned around, a fat squirrel stared at me. He sat on his back legs a few feet away. I held out a piece of granola and the squirrel slowly stepped forward on its two back legs. Suddenly I remembered Sam telling me about his cousin, who got bit by an albino squirrel at a nature center. He said its rodent teeth of pain latched onto her finger and wouldn’t let go until she twirled around three times.
Probably the only thing worse than being friendless at camp is being friendless at camp with a squirrel stuck to your finger. I broke off a piece of granola and threw it, hitting Mr. Chubs in the head. I thought he’d run off, but he didn’t. He turned the piece around in his paws and nibbled alongside me. This is what my life had come to, getting sympathy from a squirrel.
Mr. Chubs stuck around until Sheldon started yelling. Even though he was back at the picnic area, Sheldon shouted loud enough for me to hear and Mr. Chubs to freak out and run. “It’s three hundred fifty million years old!” Sheldon screamed. “It’s not like it just got up and scurried off on its own!”
“I put it right here!” Amanda yelled back. “Right here!”
“I thought it meant something to you!”
“It does!”
I strained to hear Sheldon’s quiet response. “It’s okay. We’ll find it. Don’t worry.”
Oh man. It was like listening to one of those made-for-TV movies that make Mom all weepy on Sunday afternoons. Only this one involved creepy shrimpy-looking fossils.
I probably would’ve fallen asleep there in the woods, but Mr. Bosserman called us all to get ready for canoeing. Sheldon and Amanda held hands as they walked toward the other campers.
Later that horrible day, during screen time, I pulled up the Camp Paleo blogger site to see if SSCPB had answered my question. She did.
Dear LoneWolf:
No. It’s never okay. Ever. No wonder you’re alone.
SSCPB
Well, that was direct.
I shifted my gaze to the back table where April sat with Kira. Jer was there, too, peppering April with baseball facts he’d read online. She put on earbuds.
I spent the rest of the screen time hour ignoring the ping of Sam’s Skype requests and the feeling that every other camper’s eyes were boring into the back of my head. They’re not staring at you, I told myself. They’ve all got much better things to do than worry about you. Even my inner voice sounded disappointed in me.
I ended up on the Able Wolf Sanctuary website. Under the “Meet the Pack” subhead, I found the profile for Sascha and Ralph. It read:
“For the longest time, Sascha was so determined to be the Alpha wolf that she wouldn’t connect with anyone else, even when they weren’t trying to take the top spot from her. This determination to be number one ended up keeping her alone. It wasn’t until we took a chance that she’d connect with Ralph—another wolf everyone had given up on—that she finally made a connection. We won’t say everything’s been easy since that day. Sascha has really given us a run for the money, and we mean that figuratively and literally. She’s tried to run away about a half-dozen times.” I could see sanctuary owner, Adam Able’s, mustache twitching as he typed the lame joke.
I kept reading. “Ralph has gotten stronger, too, and has stood up to Sascha a few times. Thanks to his generally even temperament, we’ve even been able to introduce a couple other wolves who might become permanent members of Pack Sascha.
“While it’s natural for a wolf to establish a hierarchy, or order of importance, among a pack, we hope that Sascha’s need to be alpha doesn’t ultimately cost her the best and only companions she’s made.”
I clicked “Accept” during Sam’s next Skype request, but it was too late. Screen time was over. I only saw a flash of his face.
We had dinner at the eMagine mess hall that night since the grill was still reeking of hot-cocoa eggs. I thought I’d get a few “thank yous” for this minor miracle, but nope. Once again, I was a solo eater in the cafeteria. Grandma, at least, gave me an extra scoop of refried beans.
I lingered toward the end of the line back to the A-frame. I had this wild hope that everyone else would be asleep by the time I arrived and I wouldn’t have to deal with April and Kira hating me. But no such luck.
Kira sat on the stoop, a small, smug smile on her face. “You really did it this time.”
I ignored her and walked into the A-frame. Every single person stopped midsentence. The room was a disaster, worse than when Kira had freaked out over her missing designer makeup bag. Clothes were scattered all over the room, and it looked like someone took a bathroom bag and dumped all of the shampoo, conditioner, and soap bottles, along with toothbrush and toothpaste, onto the floor. Wait a sec. Not just a
ny bathroom bag. My bathroom bag. And all the clothes? They were mine, too.
“What is going on?” I yelled.
Kira sauntered back into the A-frame, leaning against the side and crossing her arms. “Seems like something else has gone missing. April’s laptop.”
“What? April, you can’t think I would—”
“A little suspicious, don’t you think?” Kira continued. “Every single one of us has something expensive stolen from our A-frame. Everyone, that is, but you.”
“That’s because I don’t have anything expensive to steal!” I snapped. Both Mom and Dad worked hard but there wasn’t a lot of extra cash for expensive toys.
Jessica stood, her hands up. I wasn’t surprised that she was still hanging around. Even though Mr. Bosserman said she was fired, I didn’t think he actually was going to go through with it. Besides, he still had to find a replacement counselor. I think she thought if she did a good job keeping us quiet, he might change his mind. “Now, now, camper wampers! No one said anything about stealing. That’s a biggie word there!”
I looked to Amanda for help, but she sat cross-legged on her bunk, hands resting on her knees and chanting. From the sound of her jaws grinding, I don’t think the meditation was helping.
April crossed her arms and turned away from me.
“April, you know me!” I whispered. “You know I would never steal anything.”
“I thought I knew you,” she said. “But now I’m not so sure.”
“Come on now, campers.” Jessica held up her hands in a stopping motion.
“What do you care?” Kira turned on Jessica. “I heard what Mr. Bosserman told you after our breakfast fiasco. You’re out of here the second your mom comes to pick you up.”
Jessica’s face flamed for a moment and her fists clenched. I think if there had been another kitten poster nearby, it would’ve been shredded. Then she took a deep breath and in her usual chipper voice said, “Let’s get cleaned up and ready for bed. I’m sure everything will turn up soon.”
