by Jenn Bishop
“When I was your age, I went to sleepaway camp with several of my best friends. One of us—okay, it was me—had this brilliant idea. We were going to write letters back home to our crushes.”
“Letters?” Kiersten asks.
“Yup. Letters. We couldn’t text—no cell phones back then! Anyway, we all wrote our letters and called back home to get the boys’ addresses. On mail day, we brought our letters over to the camp post office. And do you know what happened?”
I shake my head.
“All four letters were addressed to the same boy.” She laughs and takes a sip from her iced tea. I glance over at Gabriella, but she’s focused on Julie.
“So, what happened?” Gabriella asks.
“Well, Kyle Olsen got what I’m going to guess were four pretty creepy love letters in the mail a few days later.”
“But what happened after? When you got back? I mean, who’d he pick?” Gabriella asks.
“None of us,” Julie says. “And we were all so embarrassed, starting the day after we sent the letters, that we never dared bring it up with him.” She plays with the straw in her iced tea. “You know, years later, when we were in high school, Kyle and I had become good friends, so finally I asked him what he thought when he got all those letters. He said he didn’t know who to choose, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Plus, he wasn’t really ready for a girlfriend anyway.”
“If the moral of this story is that we all shouldn’t be fighting over Gregg, then don’t worry, Mom, we aren’t,” Kiersten says.
“No moral to the story.”
“Oooo-kay,” Kiersten says.
“You girls just holler if you need anything. I’ll be upstairs, avoiding the boys.” Julie takes a couple of the empty glasses with her and leaves.
“Sorry about that,” Kiersten says once her mom is out of earshot.
Me and Gabriella sit there quietly, and I think about what Avery said last night. How he could only talk that way to me. Me.
So what if he danced with Gabriella? Kiersten was right. It was just one dance. One dance, a whole month ago.
I mean, sure, Gabby must’ve seen Avery this summer. Not that we’ve talked about it. Since the dance, I haven’t asked her about Avery, and she hasn’t mentioned his name either. Still, she probably saw him at soccer camp last week. But they divide up the boys and the girls for almost everything, so maybe only a little.
I stare down at the date of the party, August 5, and think about last night with Avery. You’re the only one who understands. I draw a little circle around the date, but then it turns into a heart. I go over it again and again with the pen, and everything Kiersten is saying fades into white noise.
It’s a long week at camp without Kiersten. For the first couple of days, she texts me all the time. (As if she’s the one really missing out on hiking day and the field trip to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.) She sends pictures of the beach in Rhode Island where they’re staying. The seagull that attacked Gabby’s bag of chips when she left it unattended. The rope bracelet she bought for me at one of those cute shops by the beach.
It’s almost like I’m there.
Not.
And then I start getting fewer texts. Fewer picture messages. She says she’s used too much of her family’s data plan and that she doesn’t want to get in trouble.
I want to believe her.
—
“The maroon balloons are on sale.” Mom holds a package up to show me in the party-supplies aisle at Target on Saturday afternoon. There’s exactly one week until the party. Next week at this time, I’ll be slathered in sunscreen and eating pizza by the pool with Kiersten. (And Gabby, I guess.)
She and Gabby are supposed to get back from Rhode Island this afternoon. Gabby texted to ask if I wanted to come over for a sleepover tonight. I’ve never been over to her house before, but of course I said yes. I haven’t seen Kiersten in a whole week. In the summer, that’s practically forever.
“Mom.” I sigh. “Our colors are red and white, not maroon and white.”
“You sure folks will be able to tell the difference?”
I reach over and grab six packages of the red balloons.
My mom’s got a lot to think about, with all the stuff she’s managing to get ready for our entirely new house. I probably should’ve shopped for this stuff online and just asked her for the credit card.
She pushes the cart down the aisle. I add a few red and white streamers to our collection of decorations.
“Is that everything on the list?” Mom asks. “You’re sure you don’t need some rainbow sherbet Oreos?” She points to a display of them. “Or a taco inside of a bagel inside of a calzone?”
“Maybe what we really need is a…” I spot a home slushie machine a few aisles away. “A watermelon-slushie-filled pool!”
“Now, that’s just…well, probably very sticky.” Mom laughs.
“Anyway, Kiersten’s taking care of the snacks.” I cross off the items that are already in our cart one by one until there’s only one thing left. “We’ve got everything for the party…but I still need a new bathing suit.”
I take over pushing the cart as we head to the clothing section and pick through the bathing suits, looking for the best patterns in my size. There’s a sparkly purple bikini, so I add it to the cart.
Mom glances down at the bikini. “That’s pretty grown-up.”
“Mom, I’m going into seventh grade.”
“Are you sure?” She squints as she looks at me. “I swear, two years ago you were in diapers.” Mom laughs. I peek down the aisle to make sure nobody I know heard that, even though obviously it isn’t true.
“Man, Mads, seventh grade! That’s the ultimate boy-crazy year, if I’m remembering correctly.” I keep flipping through the bathing suits, too fast to really look at them.
Mom picks a red one-piece, practically a little-kid bathing suit, and holds it up. “How about this one?”
“It’s so boring.”
“School colors,” Mom teases.
My mom will never get it. She’s not the kind of mom who’s into clothes. She’s not as nerdy as Dad, but…maybe doctors just don’t have time to think about clothes. Plus, once she’s at work, she has to wear that white coat over her clothes anyway. What’s the point of wearing something cute if you have to cover it up?
I pick up a sporty green two-piece. “What about this one?”
Mom nods. “Try it on to make sure.”
I take the bathing suit into the fitting room.
Mom waits on the other side of the door. “I’m surprised you and Kiersten didn’t go shopping for the party together.”
I slide the bottoms on over my underwear. No bathing suit ever looks right in the fitting room when you’ve got to cram your underwear into the bottoms. It looks like I’ve got a lumpy butt. Or worse, like I pooped my pants.
“She was with Gabby and her family all week. Remember?”
The price tag scratches my back as I put on the top.
“Oh, that’s right. Sorry, hon. This week—this whole summer, really—is just flying by. Everything all right with you two?”
I open the door. “Everything’s fine,” I snap. “I’ll see her tonight at the sleepover.”
Mom tilts her head a little to the side while she looks at me.
“What?” I turn my head and twist my body to see what I look like from behind, but it’s pretty impossible.
“Nothing,” Mom says. “It looks nice. I like that color on you.”
“Froggy green?”
“The froggiest.” She smiles and looks down at her watch. “We’d better hurry up! Grammy should be back with Cammie in half an hour.”
I step back into the fitting room and close the door behind me. I wad up my socks and stuff them into the top of the bathing suit, but it only looks like a fake uniboob. I sigh.
Maybe next summer.
Mom and I look at some of the lamps and bedding and then walk over to the toile
tries area. As we’re passing by the shaving cream, I pipe up, “Can, um, I get a razor?”
“For…?”
“My legs.” I stick one out for her to take a closer look. While I’m not exactly a yeti, it is true that you can see my leg hairs if you look really hard.
“You know that once you start shaving, there’s no going back, right? It’ll make your hair grow in even darker and thicker.”
“I know. Remember that time Michaela Powers shaved her arm?”
“I do,” Mom says. “And I’m glad not to be her mother. Okay, but that’s it. I swear, you walk into Target with a list of five things and somehow you always come out with a full cart.”
She waits patiently while I decide between all of the different packages. How are there more than twenty kinds of razors? I mean, don’t they all do the same thing? I settle on a three-pack of orange, pink, and yellow ones, and then we make our way over to the checkout area. I’m scanning the candy when I hear a familiar voice a few counters away.
Gregg!
I peek real quick, and sure enough, it is him. He’s in line with his older brother. Kiersten’s right, his older brother is pretty cute. Real tall and with that swoopy hair that he has to brush out of his eyes.
I still haven’t seen Gregg in person since that day in the library, almost a whole month ago. And I’m not ready to now. I can feel my face getting flushed just standing here and thinking of all those emails. Even though I stopped writing back, I still get a couple each day. I grab one of those trashy magazines and pretend to read it.
“Maddie, really?” I bet Mom’s shaking her head at me, but I can’t look up to confirm. Especially since she said my name out loud. Wait—what if Gregg heard her?
I flip the pages faster. Someone famous cheated on her husband. Someone’s too fat. Someone’s too skinny. Meanwhile, I can still hear Gregg and his brother talking about the movie they just got out of.
Oooh, I always like the photos of celebrities being “just like us.” There’s Taylor and her cat!
“Maddie,” Mom says. “Can you give me a hand here?”
No, Mom. I need to hide behind a magazine to avoid Gregg.
I sneak another quick peek at where Gregg and his brother are standing. But they’re not there anymore. Did they finish checking out?
“Maddie, I can’t reach the stuff in the back of the cart.”
I add my bathing suit, the streamers, and the razors to the conveyor belt. “Sorry. I was a little distracted.”
“A little?” Mom turns and raises her eyebrow.
I spot Gregg and his brother heading out the door to the parking lot and let out a sigh of relief.
—
“I think this is it!” Gabriella stands on her tippy-toes on a folding chair in her basement, her arms reaching deep into the top shelf of the closet.
“Yessssss,” Kiersten says. “I’ve always wanted to play with a Ouija board. Promise you won’t tell my mom?”
You’d think Ouija boards were made for Kiersten’s mom, they’re just hokey enough, but apparently not. My mom definitely doesn’t care. It’s just a piece of cardboard, she’d say. I reach out my pinkie to swear on it. “Promise.”
Gabriella hops off the chair, Ouija board in hand. “I wonder if there are any ghosts in the room right now,” she says with a fake spooky voice.
We sit down on the carpeted floor and form a circle around the Ouija board.
“Oh, wait, I forgot the snacks! I’ll be right back.” Gabby jogs up the stairs, leaving me alone with Kiersten.
Kiersten pushes up her sweatshirt sleeve, revealing her pale blue rope bracelet. It’s tight around her wrist and frayed. It’s not the only bracelet wrapped around her wrist either. There are at least a half-dozen friendship bracelets. “Oh, I brought yours,” she says. She grabs it from her duffel bag.
I slide it over my wrist. It feels so huge—way too big—until I remember it’s the water that helps tighten it up. But there’s no ocean here. Nothing to make it cling to my wrist like Kiersten’s and Gabby’s.
“So, you guys had fun?”
Kiersten nods. “Yeah, a lot of fun. Except”—she glances up the stairs—“it was a little weird. I didn’t know Gabby’s parents that well…and her dad’s kind of intense.”
“Like my dad?”
“Maddie, your dad is fun. I mean, he might get upset about the Red Sox a lot, but he doesn’t, like, pick on everything you do.”
“Did he pick on you?”
Kiersten peeks upstairs again and lowers her voice. “No, but with Gabby, he’s sort of relentless. It’s like she can’t do anything right, which is crazy, because Gabby’s amazing at so many things, you know?”
I nod, even though I don’t know.
“Anyway, we had a lot of fun, but I’m still happy to be back home. Especially because it means the pool party’s in one week!”
I hear Gabby’s feet on the stairs. “I hope you waited for me!” She’s breathless by the time she’s sitting down in our circle. She lays down a plate of hummus and cut-up veggies.
“So, who wants to ask the first question?” Kiersten says.
The only fair way to decide is to rock-paper-scissors it out. Gabriella wins, bashing Kiersten’s scissors with her rock, which means Kiersten gets to go second and I’ll go third.
We each place two fingers on the cream-colored plastic pointer. “Is there anybody in the room with us?” Gabriella asks.
I swallow, listening for any sounds. From upstairs, I can hear Gabriella’s sister, Brianna, arguing with their mom.
And then the pointer moves, creeping closer and closer to the YES spot of the board.
“Gabby, are you moving it?” Kiersten asks.
Gabriella shakes her head.
The pointer comes to a stop over YES.
“Can you tell us your name?” Gabriella asks.
The pointer begins to move again. This time it jolts across the board to X. What name begins with X?
It jumps again. This time to A. Then D. Then…H?
Kiersten pulls her hands off the pointer. “Gabby!”
“What? It wasn’t done spelling!” Gabriella’s lip quivers as a smile starts to sneak out of the right half of her mouth.
“Well, if that’s how you want to use your turn…” Kiersten shakes her head. “So, it’s my turn now, right?”
“Sure,” Gabriella says.
“No moving it this time,” Kiersten says. “I’m serious.” She closes her eyes and clears her throat.
“You don’t have to close your eyes,” Gabriella says.
“It’s my question,” Kiersten says. “I can do whatever I want.”
“Fine. But I’m keeping my eyes open.” Gabriella looks at me.
Our hands are pressed to the pointer so lightly it’s hard to believe it will move at all.
“I want to know why my dad left,” Kiersten says.
“You need to say it as a question,” Gabriella says. “That’s what the rules on the box say.”
“Like you’re such a big rule follower?” Kiersten jokes. “Fine.” She clears her throat again. “Why did my dad leave?”
I can feel it through my fingertips. I’m not doing the moving—at least, I don’t think I am—but the pointer is creeping across the board. I glance up at Gabriella, but she shakes her head. It wouldn’t make sense for it to be Kiersten. She asked the question because she doesn’t know. And anyway, then I’d be able to feel her pushing it, since she’s right across from me.
Slowly the pointer shifts over to the letter S and comes to a stop.
Kiersten opens her eyes. “S? What does that mean?”
“It’s not done yet,” Gabriella says. “You have to be patient.”
This time Kiersten keeps her eyes open. The pointer moves faster now, shifting over to N and stopping there.
“Snakes?” Gabriella asks.
Next it slides over to the letter O, pauses for a second, and finally comes to a stop at W.
“Sno
w,” Gabriella says. “He left to get away from the snow?”
Kiersten shakes her head, and that’s when I notice the tears in the corners of her eyes. “Not the snow,” she says. “And not to get away from it either. Jessica Snow. That’s Dad’s girlfriend’s name.”
I know that Kiersten’s dad has a girlfriend—Kiersten met her when she went to Florida to visit him—but I didn’t know her name. I definitely didn’t know her last name was Snow, and neither did my fingers. Gabriella’s either.
But there is one thing I do know. Kiersten wasn’t the one moving the pointer. Nobody did. That’s what the tears tell me. She wouldn’t ask that question if she knew the answer.
“Do you think he—I mean, did he know her before he moved to Florida?” Gabriella asks.
“He must have. I mean, why else did he move down there? I guess…” She stops to sniff. “Sometimes I think he went there to get away from me and Bryant and Mom.”
“No way,” I say. “He wouldn’t.”
“He must’ve known her before he moved there. I don’t know how.”
“Do you think your mom knows?” Gabriella asks.
“If she knew, she wouldn’t have so many self-help books out from the library all the time.” Kiersten finally lets go of the pointer to wipe her eyes. “I just wish I knew why, you know? Why we weren’t enough.”
“Men are dumb,” Gabriella says.
Kiersten takes a deep breath, lets it out, and then looks at me. “You ready?”
We put our hands back on the edges of the pointer. Unlike Kiersten, I keep my eyes open. Even though I don’t think it could be any of us moving it on purpose, I still need to see it with my own eyes to believe.
“Can I do a two-part question if the first is a yes-or-no one?”
Gabriella sighs. “Fine.”
“Is there a boy out there that likes me?”
Kiersten giggles.
“Come on,” I say. “It’s a legitimate question. At this rate, I’m going to be sixteen before anyone ever kisses me.”
“Especially if we find out that the boy who likes you lives in Zimbabwe,” Kiersten says.
I stare down at the Ouija board, my fingers pressing against the pointer ever so lightly. Come on.
The pointer slides over toward YES.
