Sarah panicked. Here she was, caught in the middle again, just like she had been on that first night, out by the cookout. “You should come,” she said, the words barely forming in the back of her throat. “Seriously.” She knew what Avery had in mind, and she didn’t like it one bit—but she couldn’t go against Avery.
Nope. No way.
“Tell her we like to have fun,” Avery prompted. “We have, like, a whole game planned for everyone. All of the tents in our age group are going to play.”
“And they’re all coming out to the lookout point tonight? ’Cause that won’t be obvious or anything,” Natalie said, skeptical.
“The boys have a different meeting place,” Avery said. “But seriously. You have to come. We’ve got a plan and you’re going to love it.”
“This is lame. We’re not into all of this top secret drama,” Natalie said, linking an arm through Sloan’s and preparing to head back to the tent to change.
“Wait!” Sarah said, her voice suddenly sounding louder and much more echoey than she expected. Natalie and Sloan both turned, startled.
“It . . . really is a cool game,” Sarah said, willing her voice to be even and smooth, like Avery’s. She flicked a lock of hair off her shoulder just like Avery did, then remembered that her hair was actually still in a ponytail. Oops.
Oh well. How did that expression go? Fake it until you make it. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t as outgoing or as confident as Avery—as long as she pretended that she was.
She could do that.
“You guys should come out to the lookout point for all of the details,” she said, her voice ringing stronger with each word. “For real.”
Natalie held her hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, whatever. Fine, we’ll be there. But if we get in trouble again, you girls are going down with us. Sheesh.” She and Sloan exchanged a glance and strode off.
As Sarah watched the girls walk away, she felt a firm hand on her shoulder. “Good girl,” Avery said, her eyes twinkling. “They will love our game, you know. It’s totally killer.”
Sarah managed a weak smile. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
She only wished she could be as sure as Avery sounded.
chapter FIVE
Breathe, Sloan told herself, willing herself to be calm. Big, cleansing breaths. In, and out.
“Have you noticed how the dark here is, like, really, really dark?” Brynn asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.
The girls slowly made their way upslope along an overgrown back path, careful to be as stealthy and silent as they possibly could. Just because they were going along with Avery’s plan didn’t mean that they had to be dumb about it. No sense getting caught a second time. Dish duty once was way bad enough.
“That’s the thing about dark,” Chelsea said dryly. “The darkness.”
“I think I saw a snake!” Natalie chimed in, sounding deeply freaked out.
Okay, Sloan thought. They’re going to lose it. Not cool. We’ll definitely get caught if we fall apart right now.
She stepped to the front of their little cluster. “Natalie, you didn’t see a snake.” She had to get her friend to calm down.
“But—”
“You didn’t,” she repeated with as much authority as she could muster. “It’s not even a possibility. We don’t go there. And yeah, Brynn, it’s totally dark out here. So what we’re gonna do is focus on our breathing.”
“That’s your big solution? Air?” Chelsea snorted, incredulous.
“I know, it doesn’t sound like much. But still, trust me, it’ll totally calm you down. Pick a color and a temperature for your breath. Like, mine will be cool blue.”
“That sounds like a toothpaste,” Chelsea put in.
Sloan decided to ignore her. “Mine will be cool blue. When I breathe in, I can see it traveling to all of the corners of my body, filling up the spaces in my fingertips and underneath my toenails and all of that stuff. And when I breathe out, it takes all of the ickiness—including the fact that I am majorly creeped out being out here alone with you guys in the dead of night—with it.” She demonstrated for them, inhaling deeply so that they could hear and letting her chest puff out slightly, then exhaling for effect, hunching her shoulders and slumping over as the air rushed out of her body.
“See? All calm. Yay.”
Chelsea was still grumbling her skepticism, but around her Sloan could hear her friends taking gulping breaths in and blowing out with all of their force. Okay, so maybe they needed some practice with the meditative breathing, but it was better than all of the freaking out and imaginary snakes and ghosts and other grossness. Much better.
“Good, good,” Sloan said, starting up the procession again to get the girls to the big rock. They crept along for a few beats, the crackle of leaves under their feet and the big, deliberate breathing (that even Sloan had to admit sounded sort of silly, even if it was kind of working for them all) the only sound in the chilly night air.
After a bit, they heard soft voices.
“We must be close to the clearing,” Sloan said. They quickened their pace, and were soon rewarded by the sight of a cluster of girls milling around, yes, a big rock.
“This must be it,” Sloan said, crashing forward and looking for Avery. She found her leaning against the rock, flanked on either side by the ever-present Joanna and Sarah. The rest of Sarah’s tent—and, as promised, the rest of the girls from their age division—were gathered there as well, casting shadows against the rock in the moonlight.
“You made it,” Avery said, gathering her long hair into a quick ponytail and stepping toward them. “Good. You’re the last ones. Now we can get started.”
“You still haven’t told us what your super-exciting and fantastic game is,” Sloan pointed out. “Clue us in, pretty please?”
“It’s called Assassin,” Avery said, drawing out each syllable of the word.
Immediately the rest of the girls, the Walla Walla lifers, began to buzz.
“Still no idea,” Sloan said simply.
“I know,” Avery said. “How sad. It’s simple enough: Everyone gets a spoon.”
“That does sound simple,” Sloan quipped. “And boring.” Who wanted a spoon without ice cream or other yumminess attached to it? No one, that was who.
“Everyone gets a spoon,” Avery continued, ignoring the jab, “and everyone gets a name. Don’t tell anyone whose name you draw. That person is your target. Your job is to ‘kill’ your target.”
“That sounds like a major violation of the honor code,” Priya said, sounding doubtful.
“It’s a game, duh,” Avery said. Even in the dark, Sloan could see her rolling her eyes. “You don’t do anything to them. You just have to take their spoon. Once you have their spoon, you inherit their target. In the meantime, you avoid having your own spoon stolen. The last one standing wins.”
“Is there a prize?” Jenna asked, her eyes shining. Sloan was still seriously wary of anything Avery had cooked up, but of course Jenna was all over the game. Jenna lived for games.
“Bragging rights,” Avery said simply. “Maybe some ice cream from the canteen.”
“There should be ice cream,” Jenna asserted. “Ice cream is a good prize.”
And it made sense with the spoon, Sloan thought. She liked the idea of putting the spoon to practical use.
“Okay,” Avery said, waving her hand impatiently. “Ice cream, whatever. So, ok, rules: We’ll all pick names tonight. Then tomorrow at breakfast, grab yourself a spoon. You’re allowed to hide your spoon, but not on your body or anything. So no stuffing it down your pants and stuff.”
A few of the girls giggled at that.
“And you can totally do whatever it takes to get your target’s spoon.”
“What, like go through their stuff and whatever, and try to figure out where they’re hiding it?” Natalie asked.
“Go through their stuff, spy on them, listen in on their conversations, anything you need to do,” Avery
confirmed. “That’s what makes it so much fun. You learn a lot about your fellow campers.”
Sloan thought it was pretty funny that Avery didn’t express the slightest interest in getting to know the girls from Lakeview in conversation, but seemed totally content to go through their stuff and uncover all of their innermost secrets. It didn’t seem like the most direct way to get to know someone.
“You learn a lot, huh?” Sloan mused.
Was it Sloan’s imagination, or did Sarah’s face pale at that comment? It was hard to tell in the moonlight, but Sarah was definitely starting to look a little queasy.
“So you can take someone’s spoon whenever, wherever?” Jenna asked, still hung up on the rules.
“Almost, but not quite,” Avery replied. “The mess hall is off-limits. When you’re in there, the game is on hold. You need one place where you can let your guard down. Otherwise people get way too wired up. You’ll see, there’s like a whole ‘Assassin mood’ that comes over the camp. So, yeah—safe zone. But beyond that, there really are no rules.”
“Cool!” Jenna said, clearly eager to get started.
For her part, Sloan didn’t care quite so much. She wasn’t competitive the way Jenna was, and she didn’t love the idea of her fellow campers snooping through her stuff and eavesdropping and all of that. Then again, snooping was kind of fun when you were on the snooper side of things rather than the snoopee.
So maybe it was worth a shot.
She shrugged. “Okay, I’m in.”
“Great,” Avery said, grinning a small but contented smile. She held out a baseball cap filled with what Sloan realized were tiny, folded-up slips of paper. “Pick a name.”
Sloan closed her eyes and stuck her hand in the hat, letting her fingers close around a piece of paper. She fished her paper out, unfolded it, and quickly read the name on it. She looked at Avery and nodded, then slipped the paper into the back pocket of her cutoff shorts.
“Next,” Avery said primly.
Jenna practically lunged forward, her hair bouncing every which way. She pulled out her own slip of paper, read it, and pocketed it.
One by one each of the girls moved toward the hat, and one by one each received her assignment. As papers were balled into tiny wads and slipped into shoes, socks, pockets—some even tucked under headbands—the mood in the air shifted. It was a small but noticeable change, Sloan realized. Something about the glint in people’s eyes, or the wariness with which they all now regarded one another. Everyone was sizing everyone else up. Everyone was suspicious. No one knew who had them as a target, and no one wanted to give away who they had.
If Sloan had thought that things were tense at camp between the Lakeview girls and the Walla Walla girls before, she was in for a whole new thing now. That was nothing compared to the cloud of distrust that hung in the air right now. That, back then, had been love and friendship and puppies and rainbows.
But now? Now things were about to get interesting. Way interesting.
And all at once, Sloan kind of couldn’t wait.
The game was on.
Dear Daniella,
Greetings from Camp Walla Walla! Bet you never thought I’d last this long up here, given the whole Outdoor CORE thing and all of that. I may not be a girly-girl like Natalie, that girl I’ve been telling you about, but I’m not exactly the rugged type. Oh, well—maybe all of this toughening up will prepare me for the next monster winter outside Beantown?
Meanwhile, Outdoor CORE aside, apparently there’s a whole other tradition here that the campers play (behind the staff’s back, natch)—a game called Assassin. Have you heard of it? I never had before I got here, but Avery swears it’s HUGE in Greenwich, CT (where she’s from).
Of course, according to Avery, everything she likes is, in reality, Huge some place that’s other than here. One thing that’s definitely kind of huge? Avery’s ego. Blech. She is such a pain.
But anyway, Assassin: It’s actually pretty cool. We’re each assigned a secret “target” and have to steal our target’s spoon. (Did I mention the spoons? Yeah, there are spoons.) Once you capture someone, you inherit their target. And then the last one in the game wins . . . something. It’s a little unclear. There might be ice cream, I don’t know. That would at least explain the spoons. Or maybe you just win an Avery-sized ego-bump. Who knows? Whatever, everyone’s playing, and even though Avery is kind of annoying, it’s fun.
And the interesting, maybe-kinda best part of it all? My target is this guy named Connor. He’s pretty cute. We talked at the cookout on the first night, and ever since then we’ve sort of smiled at each other on our way to and from the mess hall and stuff. Natalie and Jenna think he likes me. I mean, they’re probably just exaggerating, or getting carried away, but still, it could be cool if he did. Or not. We’ll see.
Did I mention that he’s pretty cute?
To confirm: there is cuteness.
But, okay, whatever. No big deal.
Not much else to report. I took my lifesaving test the other day and passed. So the whole Walla Walla boot camp mentality is good for some things, at least. And Sarah—Sarah Peyton? From Lakeview? She’s still being a weirdo and pretending we were never all friends. I think a tad bit of Avery has rubbed off on her. Double-blech.
Anyway, write soon and tell me what’s been going on up in Boston. How’s that summer school program in Beacon Hill? And have I mentioned you’re crazy for voluntarily choosing extra school for your summer vacation? Extra school! It defeats the whole purpose of vacation!
And on that note, I’ve gotta run. I’ve been getting the hairy eyeball from some of the girls in the bunk while I write, and it’s starting to weird me out. Everyone’s been so paranoid since we started this game! The demand for ice cream is higher than I thought.
Miss you,
Chelsea
“Did I ever tell you that I’m allergic to nature?” Natalie sneezed for emphasis, turning away from Reed as she did so and covering her face with her hands. She came up for air still sniffling delicately. “See?”
“I think they have pills for that now,” Reed replied. “You can buy them at most major drugstores.”
“So not the point,” Natalie said. “I’m just saying: I prefer to enjoy the great outdoors from the comfort of indoors. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sue me. Or call me crazy. Do whatever you want to me—as long as that doesn’t involve dragging me on a ‘division-wide nature walk.’ Achoo.” She sneezed again for good measure.
“You are preaching to the choir, Nat,” Reed assured her, stumbling slightly over a rock in their path. “Identifying leaves all morning is hardly my idea of a good time. Ow.” He stubbed his toe on a tree root he hadn’t seen protruding from the earth and lurched forward, grabbing on to Nat’s arm as he did so.
Natalie smiled and grabbed him right back, steadying him. Okay, so maybe every now and then nature managed to get it right. “Whoa, Nellie,” she said.
“Nature is against me,” Reed said. “Nature hates me.”
“I think you hurt nature’s feelings,” Natalie pointed out. “The leaves are just having a little bit of harmless payback.”
“Harmless?” Reed paused on the path and lowered himself until he was sitting on a relatively flat rock, dusting it off as best as he could before he settled in. “What if I get blisters? It’s not like I can just run off and get a pedicure here in the middle of the wilderness. My feet are going to be rough when I get back to L.A.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s a bummer,” Nat mumbled, a little bit thrown. She wasn’t used to crushing on a boy who was more worried about his nails than she was about her own. Then again, she’d been dreaming of the paraffin treatment offered at the little day spa around the corner from her New York apartment basically since they left the tents that morning. So she couldn’t exactly blame him for craving a little luxury as much as she was. Maybe it was like she had thought the other night at the raid, after finding him with the face mask on.
Maybe they were ju
st completely and totally perfect for each other.
“Hello, fellow slowpokes,” it was Brynn, huffing and puffing her way down the path with ruddy cheeks and a look of frustration. “We’re losing the rest of the group. What if we get separated and lose our way in the wilderness and have to live off of weeds and drink mud and all that to survive?” She flung her hand toward her forehead and swooned dramatically.
“I think we’re, like, ten feet from the clearing at the big rock, Brynn,” Nat said dryly. Not that she’d expect any less overblown a performance from her friend.
“Right. Cool. Sure,” Brynn said, surveying the scene and nodding to herself. “Good news about the mud. But what are you doing on the ground?” she asked, finally noticing Reed hunched over his sad, sore feet, rubbing them mournfully.
“Blisters,” Natalie explained. “He needs a salt bath or something.”
“I think we’re supposed to do a lake swim right after this. The water should help,” Brynn said. She strode forward and pushed past Natalie, holding out her hands to Reed. “Up. We’ve got to get back to the group. You can be my nature walk buddy,” she said, her eyes bright and her smile perky. Almost as an afterthought, she turned to Natalie. “I mean, we can all be buddies. All three of us.”
“Um, yeah, sure,” Natalie said, wondering if she was the one going crazy, or if it was everybody else. Was Brynn flirting with Reed? With the whole helping him up, and asking him to be a buddy, and the big, bright smile?
No. No way. Brynn would never do that. First of all, Brynn had a boyfriend. And B, she knew that Reed and Natalie were together, that they had come to camp together. They even had a history together! They went way back, to L.A. and the Oscars. Obviously Natalie was just losing her mind and reading things wrong. Just like thinking that Reed was being a little bit whiny for not being able to hack the nature walk when, in truth, she completely agreed with him. Heck, she’d been whining since the whole thing started.
And actually? She wasn’t about to stop now.
She glanced up to see that the whole time that she’d been lost in her own thoughts, Brynn and Reed had managed to make their way more than a few paces ahead of her. Whoopsie.
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