“Ha. Nice.” He sat down next to me with only an arm’s breadth of space between us and propped his elbows on his knees. “I actually used to suck at wilderness things, if you’d believe it.”
“You?
“Don’t let my perfect veneer of confidence fool you.” He shrugged, then continued, “This is going to sound stupid, but I had to trick myself into believing I could actually do things like build fires.” He looked down at his hands, his fingers picking apart a piece of bark, his lips turned up the tiniest bit. “One thing I’m really good at is acting.”
I rocked on the log, curious to see where this was going to go. “Now you’re starting to sound like Em.”
He twisted his nose in faux-disapproval until I made a zipping motion across my lips. “I decided that maybe I could try acting like I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t Devthe-guy-who-couldn’t-hike. I was Dev-the-outdoor-guru. And after a little bit, it actually worked.” The bark fluttered in pieces from his hands down to the ground. “It doesn’t work for everything, like calculus, but it helps. I’m not so afraid of messing up, you know?”
Me-as-Marissa leaned sideways and bumped him gently with my shoulder. “Actually, I do.”
He tilted his head to smile at me and I smiled back, forgetting about rope courses and possibly poisonous mushrooms and Lexies for a few moments.
“Dev, I’m sorry, I know I told you to take a break, but can you help spot these two?” Ms. Forrester’s voice broke the silence between us, and Dev popped up to standing so quickly, it jarred me back into reality.
“Sure, Ms. Forrester, on my way.” Dev looked over his shoulder at me and said, “Be right back. Don’t let any strange counselors take my spot,” before bounding off to help with two of the tallest kids in the group.
“I…won’t,” I said, lamely, but he was already hard at work smiling and charming the campers. He definitely didn’t hear me.
45
Flames licked the night sky as Dev and some of the teachers added more logs to the giant bonfire. I had a front-row seat, which meant that my face was starting to feel hot and I had to duck flying embers every time another log was added to the pile. At least it kept me from creepily staring at Dev.
“I cannot wait for this week to be over,” Cassie said as she slid onto the rough log next to me. “The only bright spot to this entire thing is that Mike’s also counseling here and he switched so we could be co-counselors.”
Her sudden appearance and rapid speech gave me whiplash. “Mike?” I asked dumbly.
Cassie laughed like I had asked her who the president of the United States was. “Mike Lyons? You know, our football team’s fullback? My boyfriend. The guy I mentioned the first night?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Every time I want to strangle one of these brats, he talks me down. God, I have a cabin full of terrors.”
“Really?” I looked over at the group of girls a few logs over comparing the gimp lanyards they’d made during break that afternoon. None of them looked menacing. “They seem pretty nice.”
“That’s because they’re in public.” She waved away some of the smoke that came our way with a cough. “They pranked one of the girls the other night so badly, I spent half the night cleaning up shaving cream from her bunk. And that one over there,” she pointed at a girl wearing a daisy crown, “is a mouth-breather. Oh my gosh, I just had to leave the other night to go hang out with Mike because I couldn’t take her breathing anymore.”
“You don’t have a girl named Mary in your cabin, do you?” I asked, remembering what Bethany One had said the other night.
“That’s the mouth-breather. Why?”
“I think she’s friends with some of the girls in my cabin.”
“Do you want to take her?” She asked with a contagious grin.
“Sorry, I’m all out of bunks.”
“Earplugs for the rest of this camp it is, then.”
Thinking about what my campers said about the other counselors, I said, slowly, “Have you tried talking to them on the same level as, like, me or Mike?”
“You mean act like I’m their friend? Because that doesn’t exactly scream ‘responsible camp counselor.’”
I almost said, Neither does leaving the cabin to be with your boyfriend and expecting them to cover for you, but I bit back that reply. Cassie was too nice to deserve snark. “No, I mean don’t talk to them like they’re kids. I think, maybe, if you treat them like kids, they’ll only act like little kids.”
“You’re starting to sound like Grace.” At my surprised head-tilt, she added, “You know, giving calm, logical advice that assumes the whole rest of the world is logical, including me?” She tossed a piece of bark in the direction of the campfire and turned back to face me, propping her hands onto her knees in a listening pose. “Anyway, I’m tired of talking about campers. How’s the ex-crush thing working out for you? It kind-of sucks that you were stuck with him.”
I glanced back at my campers, some of whom were avidly listening in. Diana gave me an almost cartoonish wink before going back to talking with one of the boys from Dev’s cabin. “Yeah, it does.”
“And Kris?”
This time, I tried not to look at the girls. I didn’t need them getting involved in yet another one of my personal dramas. Instead, I picked out his familiar dark hair on the other side of the fire pit. “I’m so over him.”
“That bad, huh?” When I didn’t give any details, she patted my arm in a way I guessed was supposed to be sympathetic. “It’s better that way. Anyone who hates us athletes isn’t even worth talking to. Anyway, I have to get back to my cabin before they set themselves on fire or something, but I wanted to check on you. Party in the woods later tonight? We can get away from the kids. I promise it will be more awesome than last time,” she paused, waiting for my answer.
“Um, maybe?” Not, I added silently. But, instead, I smiled as she waved and bounced off to the other side of the horseshoe of log seats.
“You’re not going to leave us to go party, are you?” Bethany One crept over from her bench and took Cassie’s vacated seat.
“Right, like I’d ask you guys to promise me you won’t sneak out, and then go do that myself.” Plus, I didn’t need a repeat of the first night.
“And you’re a geek,” Eliana added, making it sound like it was a good thing.
“I guess.”
We were then hushed by one of the teachers, who started lecturing us with a history/geography lesson about the Pine Barrens. Just as the kids started shifting around in boredom, he broke into a story about the most famous occupant, the thirteenth Leeds child, “better known as the Jersey Devil.”
Like every other kid from the area, I had grown up on stories of the Jersey Devil. As the teachers and some of the counselors took turns telling different stories, I curled my arms happily around my knees, basking in the familiar tales. The crackle and pop of the bonfire accompanied the storytellers’ hushed voices and turned the pines and oaks surrounding us into shadowy outlines. Even the lake was mirror-still. The perfect setting for a horned monster to swoop in.
A familiar silhouette replaced Mr. Hamm. Dev was in his element, his very stature transforming as he took center stage in front of the bonfire. A delicious shiver ran over my skin as his voice carried over us, low and creepy.
“Every seven years, when a blue mist rises off of the lake, the Jersey Devil comes searching for his next victim.” Every head turned towards the lake, where the moonlight made the fog rising off of it look a pale, pale blue. Whispers started working through the crowd. Dev continued with a serious expression. “The last time a camper disappeared from the Barrens without a trace was on a night just like this one. Seven years ago.” Bethany One’s nails dug into my palm. “Tonight, as we gather around the bonfire, watch your backs. Because the Jersey Devil is wandering and hungry for his next kill. Beware.”
On those words, bodies leapt out of the woods and Bethany One, along with most of the campers, let off a
deafening scream. My own heart jumped into my throat and I had to take deep breaths to make my heart rate go back to normal. When the light from the bonfire revealed some of the counselors standing around us draped in black tablecloths, the kids started laughing. The other male counselors surrounded Dev, making gruesome faces accentuated by sticking flashlights under their chins. With a final cackle and a bunch of moans, Dev and the other guys slunk back into the shadows until it was just the bonfire and silence.
After an appropriately creepy period of time, Mrs. Forrester asked us to break back into our cabin groups to move to the smaller fires in the field behind us to roast marshmallows. While Dev was busy lighting the fires—with matches, my brain noted—I herded our cabins over to one. Unlike in high school, the girls and boys automatically separated like oil and water, the boys taking the far side of the fire and three-quarters of the marshmallows.
My cabin crowded around me, wielding their roasting twigs like stakes. Genevieve, who was usually one of the quieter ones, stepped forward and put her hands on her hips. “Enough with this secrecy. Half of the people in our cabin think they know what’s going on with you and Dev. Why don’t you set the record straight for once and for all?”
“Because it’s my private life?” At their defiant looks, I sighed. I was facing a wall of pure pre-teen stubbornness. “If I tell you, will you stop bothering me?”
“Depends on what you tell us,” Diana said, but when Giselle elbowed her in the side, she screwed up her lip and nodded.
Checking out of the corner of my eye to make sure Dev was still busy doing bonfire-y stuff, I tore open the bag of marshmallows and started handing them to the girls as I spoke.
“Start toasting marshmallows so it doesn’t look weird while I’m talking.” Some of the girls waved away the marshmallows, grabbing doughnut holes from the box behind us and started toasting those instead. “Oooooh-kay, whatever floats your boat. Anyway…” I closed my eyes for a second. I couldn’t believe I was going to do this. “Once upon a time, there was a geeky book nerd.” The boys from Dev’s cabin started making torches out of their marshmallows and I spoke faster. He’d be back any minute now, or I’d have to rush one of the boys to the first aid station. Either way, I didn’t have much time. “This nerd also happened to be a knitter who taught knitting classes to pay for her yarn and book addictions. She was very happy crushing on cute guys who looked like book characters, until her best friend messed it all up.”
“I like crushing on book hotties like Evan,” Bethany Two said softly around a mouthful of marshmallow. I smiled at her and nodded. I loved my mini-me book nerd camper.
“Her friend had to ruin her perfect bookish happiness by telling her that a non-book-boyfriend-y boy was the perfect love interest for her. And knitterly girl, after much protesting about her shyness, agreed to try to woo him. This knitter tried smiling, being nice, and even acting like her favorite romantically successful book characters, but the boy never asked her out. Instead, he teased her, always asking her to knit him a pair of socks. So, what was a shy, knitterly girl to do?”
“She asked him out?” Genevieve asked, eyes wide.
I tilted my head and gave her a grin. “No. She knit him socks.” I said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, though it really did sound ridiculous.
“Ohmigosh, you are such a wimp.” Came a voice from the group, overlapping with someone else’s “What happened?”
“He ended up dating another girl, who was a lot bolder than knitterly girl and actually kept hanging around him instead of knitting and reading books. So, knitterly girl went back to reading books about cute boys and they all lived bookishly ever after. The end.”
“Telling fairy tales? Or leprechaun stories?” Dev asked teasingly as he passed us, but he didn’t wait for the answer as he rushed over to where his campers were building a multimarshmallow torch by melting and sticking marshmallows together until they made a giant blob on the end of one of their skewers.
I froze, cold dread washing over me like an early fall wind on Prince Edward Island’s cliffs. Giselle took in my expression and shook her head.
“I don’t think he heard anything important.”
“And what if he did?” Bethany One asked. “Maybe you’ll finally get together because of it.”
“He has a girlfriend, Bethany,” I said tiredly.
“We’ll see about that.” Lilliana practically skipped over the invisible line the boys and girls had drawn and looked up at Dev while he was busy confiscating the bag of marshmallows. Before I could stop her, she drew up by his elbow and smiled innocently at him. “Dev, do you have a girlfriend?” I dropped onto the closest wooden stump and prayed that no one could see the abject horror that had to be written across my face.
He smiled distractedly at her. “I think you’re a little bit young for me, Lilli.” He pulled another bag of marshmallows from a hole in one of the log benches. “Where the heck did you guys get all these?” he asked the boys, only to get innocent shrugs.
Lilliana giggled. “I don’t want to date you, silly, I’m just curious. All the girls are, because you’re really good looking. The girls at your school have to think you’re cute, too.” My jaw dropped at how sugary-sweet she made her voice, freakishly innocent and younger sounding.
Dev fell for it. “Sadly, no,” he winked at her. “You can tell the other girls that I’m not dating anyone, but I only date tenth graders and up.”
“Like Phoebe?” I was going to kill that girl. Strangle her. Or throw her in the lake. Or roast her over the bonfire.
Dev looked across the bonfire at me, but I couldn’t see his expression in the light and shadows of the fire.
“Oh, Phoebe is too smart to date a guy like me,” he told Lilliana lightly.
I wanted to melt into the sugar sand under my feet as Lilliana turned and gave me a thumbs-up.
46
“Phoebe… Feebs, wake up.” An insistent voice broke through my dreams and my eyes shot open. The wood and screen walls around me registered as unfamiliar to my brain, as did the shadowed face that seemed to be hovering just at my side. I started to scream but a hand reached through the screen and covered my mouth. “Feebs, it’s me. Calm down.”
Oh, right. Dev. And camp. And he had just used my nickname for the first time ever, which my sleepy brain hadn’t expected. I pushed his hand away and fumbled for my glasses. No longer blind, I sat up, checking to make sure none of the girls had woken up because of us. When I was satisfied they were still asleep, I turned back towards the window. Dev pulled his arm back through a hole between the screen and the wooden frame. Some protection that turned out to be. “What?” I mouthed at him, gesturing to the sleeping cabin and giving him the universal sign for “What the heck?”
“Come out here for a few. I need your help.”
I caught his eyes as best I could in this lighting and, after a second’s stare-down, sighed. “Give me a minute.” I threw a hoodie over my flannel pajamas and slipped my feet into a pair of sneakers. Checking one last time that the girls were all still asleep, I stepped outside.
“Over here.” Dev waved from the walking path and I carefully made my way over. Grogginess plus clumsiness plus random pieces of wood and rocks were definitely a bad combination. As I got closer, I could make out his shorts and sweatshirt combo. Even in the middle of the night he looked gorgeous, especially with the shadow of stubble across his chin and tousled hair. Me, on the other hand…
“Nice pajamas.”
“Uhm. Yeah. Thanks.” I tugged at my Hello Kitty pajama pants with one hand while trying to tame my Bride of Frankenstein hair with the other. All of that, plus my glasses, definitely made me not gorgeous. “Why are we out here in the middle of the night?” Where I didn’t want to be. He supposedly didn’t have a girlfriend, which meant I was pretty much a flat-out reject. Now, I was a Hello Kitty pants-wearing reject.
A wide grin spread across his face.
“We’re playing Jersey Devil
.”
I knew I had just woken up and was still a bit groggy, but that made absolutely no sense. I stared at him with a frown until he continued. “You know, tradition. The counselors always go around the cabins leaving footprints after the bonfire.” He held up a stick with a shape at the end that looked like a three-clawed foot. “Mrs. Forrester asked me to do it and I thought you might want in on this.”
Right. The stories at the bonfire. So that was where the footprints had come from when I was a camper. I opened my mouth to say no—my warm sleeping bag and a chance to not expose him any further to my freakish middle of the night look were definitely tempting, but then he caught my eyes. The smile he gave me made it impossible not to agree. I covered my sigh with a yawn.
“What do you need me to do?” Another yawn, then I pulled myself together. If Maeve could battle a Gancanagh in her underwear, I could make a few footprints in my pajamas.
“Awesome. I knew I could count on you.” He reached behind a tree and handed me a broom. “Your job is to get rid of our footprints.”
“Got it.” I took the broom from him with one hand while zipping my hoodie up the rest of the way with the other. “I don’t want to ruin our chance to terrify a group of eleven year olds.”
“Tradition, Feebs. You can’t be a piney kid without having at least one run-in with the Jersey Devil.” He yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth. “If we hurry, we can still get an hour or two of sleep before reveille.”
“Joy. Let’s get this over with.” I followed him down the path, my eyes glued to the ground and, occasionally to the back of his bare legs. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked. I had slipped my own hands into my sleeves. A cool wind was whipping between the cabins.
He shrugged, “Nah, I’m hot tonight.”
My eyes wandered upwards for a second and I suppressed the urge to say, Yes, you are. I blinked a few times and forced my eyes back on to the path.
“So, why’d you pick me to help out? Adam or Cassie would love this. They’d probably even figure out ways to put footprints on the cabin roofs or something.”
Bookishly Ever After Page 23
