Willows vs. Wolverines

by Alison Cherry

  Val, Stuart, and four other counselors make their way over to Doobie, who’s holding a plastic bucket. Each of them reaches inside and pulls out two water balloons—the “anointing tools,” I guess. Val has blue balloons, so I guess they indicate who’s leading which team. When the counselors hold them up in the air, they catch the light of the fire and glow like jewels.

  “We are the emissaries of the Sea Witch,” they say together. “She speaks through us and guides our hands toward captains who are brave and true.”

  “Valerie,” Doobie says. “Which two campers has the Sea Witch chosen to lead your team?”

  Val starts walking around the fire pit, so smoothly it’s almost like she’s in a trance, and everyone follows her with their eyes, mouths slightly open. She stops in front of a girl from Oak with light brown skin and giant dark eyes. “Amira Roy,” she proclaims, and the girl gasps and covers her mouth with both hands. “The Sea Witch has chosen you as one of the two leaders of the Blue Team. Do you accept this task?”

  “Yes,” Amira breathes, and a tear slides down her cheek.

  “By my hand, the Sea Witch anoints you,” Val says, and sploosh, she drops the water balloon right on Amira’s head. Amira screams, and her friends hug her and cheer.

  “Please join the Master of Ceremonies,” Val says, and Amira gets up and scurries over to where Doobie is standing with the other five counselors. Doobie drapes a blue lei around Amira’s neck, and she fingers the fabric flowers gently, like they’re made of glass.

  Val continues around the circle, second water balloon held high, and heads right toward us. My heart starts pounding, and for a few seconds I allow myself to hope that she really is going to choose me after all. Maybe it doesn’t matter that I’m a new camper; maybe she was able to convince the other counselors that I can handle the responsibility of being a captain. On our last Popsicle run, she basically said she was going to put in a good word for me.

  But Val passes right by me and stops to my left. “Lexi Silverman,” she says, and then I don’t hear any of the rest of her speech, because Lexi’s laughing and sobbing and screaming, “Yes yes yes yes!” When the water balloon explodes over her head, she springs up and throws her arms around Val, then runs over to the counselors and tackle-hugs Amira. I’ve never even seen Lexi talk to Amira before, but I guess cocaptainship makes you into instant friends. I try to be happy for her, but my heart aches a little bit despite my best efforts. If I can’t be captain of Val’s team, I don’t really want to do it at all.

  Roo clearly doesn’t feel the same way; next to me, she starts cracking her knuckles one by one. “Don’t worry, you’ve still got a chance,” I whisper to her.

  “Obviously,” she snaps back, and I wish I hadn’t said anything. “Hang on to my camera so the water balloon doesn’t get it wet, okay?” I wonder if she’s really as confident as she sounds, but I tuck the camera under my towel, just in case.

  The counselor who’s leading the green team goes next, and he drops water balloons on a girl from Poplar and a guy from Coyote. Then comes Stuart, who “anoints” Bloody Mary and the boy from Porcupine who told me the Sea Witch story. Mackenzie’s friend Lauren is chosen as one of the purple team’s leaders. Every time another camper is anointed, Roo flinches, and I can see her counting down in her head: four more chances, three more chances, two more chances.

  The red team’s counselor goes last, and when she walks straight toward us with her final balloon, it seems like Roo was right to be confident all along. But she stops in front of Summer instead, who starts happy scream-sobbing like Lexi did. When the water balloon explodes over her head, Hannah clutches her hand and sympathy-cries, and I see more tears breaking out all around the campfire as other campers realize they no longer have a chance of being captain. Some of them are totally hysterical, and the Cottonwood counselor has to lead two of her sobbing campers away from the circle. Josh wasn’t kidding about how many tears there were going to be tonight. When I catch his eye across the circle, he makes a face like, Told you.

  Roo is sitting incredibly still beside me, and I’m almost afraid to look at her, but I sneak a glance. “It’s okay,” she says, but instead of meeting my eyes, she stares very fixedly at something about six feet in the air. “There’s always next year.” I think about trying to comfort her, but she obviously doesn’t want to cry in public, and tears always come way more easily when someone’s being nice to you. So instead I hand her camera back, and she takes it, raises it to her eye, and starts clicking away. She looks grateful to have something to hide behind.

  “Captains!” shouts Doobie. “Place your right hands over your hearts, raise your left hands in the air, and repeat the Captain’s Oath after me.”

  The twelve lei-draped captains raise their hands and repeat:

  “I solemnly swear to be honest and square

  And to guide my whole team with a hand that is fair.

  In my color I’m dressed, I’ll be put to the test,

  And I’ll show the whole camp that my team is the best!”

  Doobie lets everyone scream and cheer for a while, and when the hysteria finally dies down, she hands the captains colored envelopes containing their team rosters. Lexi and Amira read their list of names first, and it’s strange to hear Lexi sound so authoritative. She’s always so willing to let Roo and Ava take the lead; this is the first time I’ve seen her try to be something on her own. I’ve just decided she’ll probably do a really good job, when she says my name. Val winks at me from where she’s standing behind Amira, and it takes everything I have not to squeal and clap and bounce up and down. I’m the only other Willow on the Blue Team, and I’m sure Val must’ve rigged this somehow so we could have some quality time together. She probably didn’t want me to be captain because it takes so much time and effort. This way, we’ll get to enjoy Color Wars together without anything getting in the way.

  I spent the first few weeks of camp hoping Mackenzie and I would end up on the same team for Color Wars, but when Lexi doesn’t call her name for the Blue Team, relief floods through me. Honestly, I’m way more likely to have fun if I don’t have to deal with her drama and her weird grudges. Now I can pretend she’s not here for the next two days, and I can focus on having fun with Val and my team. Mackenzie is assigned to the Red Team with Josh, and I try not to feel smug that she won’t be with her new BFF, either. Maybe having nobody to hang out with all weekend will give her some perspective and she’ll finally apologize to me.

  When all the names have been read, Doobie tells us to break into teams for a quick meeting before bed. I rush over to Lexi, who squeezes me tightly. “I’m so glad you’re on my team!” she says. “Amira, this is Izzy. She’s the absolute best.”

  Amira grins at my green face and wet dress. “You were the Sea Witch? That was amazing. Definitely the best prank I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “It was so much fun. Freezing cold, but fun.”

  “Izzy and her supercute older brother have thought up all our pranks. That’s why the Wolverines are losing so badly.” Lexi turns to me. “You’ll help us run the Blue Team, right?”

  “Of course,” I tell Lexi. “We’re going to make this the best Color Wars ever.”

  CHAPTER 19

  When we get to the mess hall for breakfast the next morning, it has been transformed. Instead of individual tables, there are six huge team tables draped in colored tablecloths, and there’s an enormous scoreboard hanging next to the stuffed moose head. It looks like camp crossed with Harry Potter. Lexi and I head toward the Blue Team table and take the two seats right in the center, across from Amira. I hope Val will sit with us, but she moves down to the end where some nervous little kids are sitting, and she has them all giggling within minutes. She’s seriously the best counselor in the entire world, and I’m so proud to be her friend.

  I know I shouldn’t care, but I look around the dining hall until I find where Mackenzie’s sitting. She’s wearing her favorite red shirt that’s faded
from the time her mom accidentally washed it on hot with all the white sheets and dyed everything pink. Since she doesn’t have any friends on her team, I expected to find her sitting alone at the end of the bench and picking at her breakfast, but instead she’s chatting with a pair of twin girls from Poplar. As I watch, she says something that makes them laugh, and I feel a weird pressure in my chest. Since when is Mackenzie so good at talking to strangers?

  I turn away; she doesn’t matter right now. “What’s the schedule for today?” I ask Lexi and Amira.

  Lexi consults her official blue clipboard, which she’s decorated with curly blue ribbons from Arts and Crafts. “We’re making our team banners right after breakfast,” she says. “And then we have swimming relays, and after lunch we have soccer against the White Team and softball against the Yellow Team, and tonight is all-team capture the flag.” I’m relieved we don’t have any one-on-one games with the Red Team today.

  “Our banner should have tons of glitter,” Amira says. “Then it’ll be supersparkly in the sun and catch everyone’s attention.”

  “I think we should—” I start to say, but a chorus of screams and whoops from across the room cuts me off. When I turn around, everyone from the Red Team is standing on their benches. They wait until everyone’s looking at them, and then they shout:

  “Through your thoughts we softly tread,

  Spreading fear, inspiring dread!

  Hiding under your warm bed,

  Lurking, silent, overhead.

  Think we’re sweet like gingerbread?

  Better watch your back instead.

  We will get inside your head

  And take you down, cause we’re TEAM RED!”

  “Impressive,” calls Doobie, who’s dressed in a hideous rainbow shirt and pants that include all six colors. “Scorekeeper, give the Red Team ten points.” The Red Team cheers, and everyone else groans. “You all want points, get to work and be as clever as the Red Team.”

  “Ugh,” mutters Amira. “That was annoyingly great. There’s no way I can come up with something that good.”

  “Me neither,” says Lexi.

  “I’ll work on it,” I say, but I’m more irritated than they are. I’d recognize a Mackenzie-written cheer anywhere. She always used to write the cheers for our Sweetwater Olympics teams, and we always won prizes for them. My suspicions are confirmed when everyone at the Red Team table starts high-fiving Mackenzie; one girl I don’t know gives her a hug. It’s been awful not having her as an ally this past week, but it feels even worse to have her actively working against me.

  When breakfast is over, we spend an hour on our banner, and I start to feel a little better. Val writes out “We will leave you black and BLUE” in bubble letters, and Amira draws a giant pair of crossed swords on one side and a boxing glove punching a cartoon guy in the face on the other. The younger kids go nuts with glitter on the whole thing, and I know it’s dumb, but seeing everything so sparkly kind of cheers me up. Glitter improves pretty much every situation.

  By the time we’re done, the banner looks fantastic, and the day only gets better from there. I swim the front crawl in the last leg of our relay, and even though my teammate was pretty slow with her backstroke, I manage to pull ahead at the very end and put us in second place. Our White versus Blue soccer game is interrupted when two little boys wearing nothing but underwear and purple paint streak across the field, but their team leader intercepts them, and we end up winning. I’ve hated softball ever since I got hit in the face with a ball last year during Sweetwater Olympics, so Lexi and I sit that one out and work on our cheer while our team battles Stuart’s. Captains—and honorary captains—get special privileges.

  I’m trying to think of more rhymes for the word “blue” when I idly glance up and see something really weird across the field. Val and Amira have been in the dugout area for most of the game, psyching up our batters, but now Val’s standing a little ways off with Stuart. She’s laughing, so I assume she must be teasing him about how badly his team is losing. But then he slings an arm around her shoulders. For a second I think he’s going to put her in a headlock or something, but it doesn’t turn into anything but a friendly side-hug. She doesn’t hug him back or anything, but she does tip her head toward his for a moment so that her forehead grazes his jaw. Then Stuart lets go, and Val starts cheering for a girl from our team who hit a double, and everything is normal again.

  The whole thing only lasts about five seconds. If I had looked up a moment later, I would’ve missed it. But I didn’t miss it, and I can’t wrap my mind around what I just saw. Why on earth would Stuart and Val be acting friendly? He’s on the other team, not to mention that he’s superannoying and he’s Public Enemy Number One. And then something horrible occurs to me: He’s probably trying to lull Val into a false sense of security so he can weasel information out of her, like I did to Josh before the Sea Witch prank. I bet she’s too smart to fall for something like that, but just in case, I figure I should say something later. She could lose the whole prank war for us if she lets her guard down and reveals some crucial piece of information to the one person who’s always looking to take us down.

  Someone starts shouting in the other dugout area across the field, and when Lexi and I look over, we see Roo yelling at one of the kids on her team because he’s holding his bat incorrectly. “What is she doing?” I say. “She’s not even a captain.”

  “She can get really intense sometimes,” Lexi says.

  “Is she like this at home, too? How do you and Ava deal with it all year?”

  “No, she’s . . . It’s not . . .” Lexi glances at me sideways. “Okay. If I tell you something, do you promise to keep it to yourself?”

  “Sure,” I say, and my heart speeds up. I love it when people trust me enough to tell me secrets.

  Lexi leans closer and lowers her voice. “Roo’s not the most popular girl in our class. She really wants to be, but there’s this other girl, Sienna, and everyone’s completely obsessed with her for some reason. They’re always falling all over themselves to dress like her and tell her how pretty she is and do whatever she wants, which I think is kind of weird, honestly, because she’s not that amazing. But she goes to stay with her grandparents in Colorado every summer, and being free to boss everyone around for four weeks gives Roo a serious power trip.”

  Everything suddenly makes so much more sense: how much Roo seems to care about everything here, how she saw me as a threat when I first took over the prank war, how angry she is that she didn’t get to be captain. I never realized how similar the two of us are. I bet Roo has that ticking-clock feeling in her chest that I sometimes get, counting down the days until she has to go back to real life, where nobody thinks she’s that special.

  “Oh,” I say. “Wow. Yeah. I can totally see that.”

  “Seriously, though, you can’t tell anyone. She’d kill me if she knew I’d said anything. Nobody knows except Ava and me.”

  “I won’t tell.” We both watch Roo throw up her hands and stalk away from the younger camper, who immediately runs to his captain for comfort. “Does it bother you, the way she acts here?”

  “It can be a little much sometimes, but she really seems to need it. And we know it’s going to end when we get home, so we just deal with it.”

  “But if she’s always the ringleader here, and Sienna’s in charge at home, then you never get a turn.”

  Lexi smiles. “I’m getting a turn right now,” she says. “So . . . what else rhymes with ‘blue’?”

  The cheer we come up with isn’t Mackenzie-level clever, but it’s pretty solid, and we debut it right after dinner:

  “If you try to break Team Blue,

  We’ll spring back like we’re bamboo!

  Toss you in a witch’s brew,

  Eat you for dinner like a stew!

  So respect us, it’s our due,

  Or we’ll bite you like a shrew,

  Kick you with a steel-toed shoe,

  And jump away li
ke a kangaroo!”

  Screaming it out loud makes me realize that it doesn’t actually make a ton of sense. But the little kids love it, and it must be basically okay, because Doobie shouts, “Scorekeeper! Ten points to the Blue Team!” I’m still a little embarrassed that it’s not as good as Mackenzie’s cheer, though. I sneak a glance at the Red Team table to see if she’s reacting to it at all, but she has her back to me and doesn’t turn around.

  The rest of the evening is dedicated to an epic six-way capture the flag game. In order to win, you have to hang on to your own flag and capture two other teams’ flags. We’re allowed to hide our flag anywhere on the camp property as long as it’s out in the open, and we decide to dangle ours from the roof of the horse barn, a little too high for someone to jump up and grab it. We station guards in front of the building, including Sadie Pasternak, who’s known for her piercing shriek. Then we split up into teams to hunt for the other flags.

  “I’ll take the youngest kids,” Val says. “We’ll search the area around all the cabins and the main field, if that sounds okay.”

  “I can go with you and help,” I say quickly before Amira and Lexi ask me to head up a different search party.

  Val looks surprised and pleased. “Thank you, Izzy,” she says. I feel a tiny bit guilty letting her think I’m doing this out of the kindness of my heart, but I really need to talk to her, and I can’t figure out another way to get her alone.

  We gather the five smallest kids and head off toward the cabins. They run ahead and start searching right away, but I hang back with Val. The sun is getting lower in the sky, splashing slanted golden light across the grass, and as we walk quietly together, it actually feels kind of like our Popsicle runs. For a second I consider asking if she wants to sneak off and grab some Popsicles right now, but we can’t exactly leave in the middle of an important game.