“Policy forbids surfing on school trips, dear,” Nanci said.
Everyone began shouting at once, and Fonda started to quake. If she hadn’t barfed her breakfast on the boat, she would have lost it right there on the dock. Her failure was epic and public and proof she’d never be as cool as her sisters, no matter how hard she tried. Two hands touched her gently on the back. It was Drew and Ruthie, letting her know they were there for her. The gesture meant everything, but it did nothing. It was over.
She was over.
“Tell them about the water guns,” Drew urged.
“And the makeup samples,” Ruthie added.
Fonda was about to say something depressing like What’s the point? or No one cares, when a high-pitched whiz sound distracted them. Everyone looked up to find a boy zipping by in a harness. “Wooo-hoooo,” he called, his dangling legs bicycling overhead.
“Whoa,” Henry said. “What is that?”
“A zip line,” Nanci said proudly. “It goes around the entire island. It’s one of the many activities you can sign up for.”
“Looks rad!”
“We also have giant inflatable trampolines and water slides in the bay.”
“Yes!” said Ava R. “What else?”
“Cliff jumping, rock climbing, and jewelry making with shells.”
Everyone began shouting again, only this time they were elated.
“I want to do them all!” Ava H. announced.
“Me too!”
“Same!”
Nanci put her hands on her hips like Wonder Woman. “That’s what I’m here for. Sign up for as many as you want!”
“I thought we were going to learn things,” Sage said.
“You are. We offer late-night breakout sessions while you sip hot chocolate and eat s’mores by the campfire.”
Before long, the jeers turned to cheers morphed into a praisefest for Fonda, the nesties, and their awesome overnight. Right when Fonda thought it couldn’t get any better, Nanci made an announcement.
“You have thirty minutes of free time before lunch,” she said. “You can use it to explore the local boutiques, jump in the ocean, or check out the campsite. Just don’t fill up on ice cream or candy at the Sweet Spot.”
But of course, that’s precisely what they did. And it was delicious.
chapter twenty–three.
DREW REACHED FOR a red grip, pulled herself up a little higher, then paused to admire the shell friendship bracelet she, Ruthie, and Fonda had made. This one is special, she thought as she Spider-Woman’ed her feet onto the pegs of the rock wall. It proved that when the nesties worked together, they could accomplish anything. Well, almost anything. Will was still ignoring her.
“Why did I agree to this?” Ruthie shouted over the pop music that was blasting in the boulder gym. She was only two feet off the mat, and her forehead was already glistening.
“It’s good exercise,” Drew called down to her.
“This is inhumane. My arms are literally shaking.”
“At least you have arms,” Sage whimpered. “My bones have liquefied. I’m all skin.”
Fonda suddenly appeared beside Drew. “I totally know why you wanted to do this,” she panted. “And for the record, I have mixed feelings about it.”
“What do you mean?” Drew asked, trying to sound innocent.
Fonda flicked her chin toward the arching ceiling, and Will, who was only a few feet away from ringing the victory bell. “If you want to stalk, stalk. I just wish you didn’t rope me into it. Actually, a rope would be good. If I fall—”
“If you fall, you’ll land on the mat, and I’m not stalking,” Drew insisted. “I boulder all the time at Battleflag. Ask Doug.”
“If I don’t die, then yeah, I’ll ask Doug. And if I do die, it’s because you’re a stalker.”
“Shhh,” Drew hissed. “The walls have ears.” And she didn’t want them to hear she had dragged her friends to a boulder gym because Will was there. They would think Drew was holding on to some pathetic fantasy, one where Will saw how athletic she was and chose her over Keelie. And they would be right.
“At least you-know-who isn’t here,” Fonda whispered. She was referring to Keelie, and yeah, Drew was well aware of her absence. “You think they broke up?”
“Dunno.” Drew placed her hand on a yellow peg and hoisted herself higher, like someone who didn’t get a tingle at the thought of the Will and Keelie Are in Like show getting canceled.
“Is everyone having fun?” Fonda asked for what must have been the ten billionth time. Her hands were practically raw from all the high fives. And yet she still wanted reassurance. What was it about happiness that felt too good to be true?
“Everyone is having a blast,” Drew told her again. “Even Ruthie.”
“Yeah, she’s only mentioned her phone six times since we got here.”
Drew laughed. “I still think she’s having fun.”
“Help!” Sage called. “I get dizzy when I look down.”
“Then don’t look down!” yelled Owen.
“He’s right,” Ruthie said. “Keep looking up.”
“How do you know that guy?” Sage asked.
“He’s my friend.” Ruthie giggled. “He goes to our school.”
“Oh, I wondered why he was following us.”
“I’m not following anyone,” Owen said. “I’m leading. Try to keep up, will ya?”
Drew sighed. He said Will.
Then, a second later, Henry said Will. As in, “Will, get your butt out of my face!”
To which Will responded, “Dude, get your face out of my butt!”
Laughing, Henry began to lose his footing. “Uh-oh,” he said, sliding. “I can’t hold on!”
In a shocking act of heroism, Fonda reached for Henry’s swinging leg and tried to place it on a grip. The sudden gesture threw him even more off balance, which threw Fonda off balance, and they both plummeted toward the mat.
Drew shut her eyes, bracing for the worst. As a wannabe nurse who devoted much of her summer to helping out in the camp’s infirmary, Drew was skilled in the art of wound dressing and scrape cleaning—but broken bones and concussions? Not so much. Fortunately, the worst never came. Henry and Fonda landed in the center of the mat and started cracking up.
“Are they okay?” Sage called.
“Don’t look down!” Owen warned.
“Oh no!” Sage moaned. “I’m going timber.” She landed on the mat with a thunk.
“Right behind you!” Ruthie shouted.
Owen jumped. “I’ll save you!”
Before long, all five of them were rolling on the mat, laughing themselves breathless. “This is way better than Pendleton!” Henry said.
Drew warmed at the sight of the different friend groups coming together and bonding. It was what Fonda had always wanted; it was what she had always wanted. Sort of. She and Will were still clinging to their grips, the only two not laughing.
“Henry was right, this is more fun than Camp Pendleton,” Will said while making his way down the wall. He didn’t bother marking his victory by ringing the bell, probably for the same reason Drew stopped climbing. The top no longer felt like the place to be. Together did.
“Have you done the zip line?”
“No,” Drew said, hoping he couldn’t hear her speeding heart. “You?”
“Not yet.” Will shimmied down beside her. “Wanna try it with me?”
“Aren’t you going with Keelie?”
Drew regretted the question the instant it shot from her mouth. Could she have sounded any more jealous?
“No, Keelie’s afraid of heights . . .”
Panic prickled. Was she the backup?
“Which is fine,” Will continued. “Because, no offense to Keelie, but I’d rather zip-line with you.”
Drew’s clammy hands became sweaty. “Huh?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said; I just don’t get it.”
Will scoffed. “What don’t you get?”
“Aren’t you and Keelie a thing?” Drew asked, no longer caring if she sounded jealous. She was jealous. And the sooner she knew the truth about Will and Keelie, the faster she could jump down from the wall, run to the bathroom, cry to her friends, eat frozen yogurt, cry again, eat more yogurt, then start to heal.
“What kind of thing?” Will pressed.
Drew shrugged. “A thing-thing.”
He smiled, amused. “No.”
The flutter of harp music behind her belly button returned. “You don’t like Keelie?”
“I do like her. But I don’t like-like her.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I like-like someone else.”
“Who?” Drew dared.
Will lowered down a little. “I’m not telling.”
“Come on, give me a hint.”
“Fine. Her name sort of rhymes with flea.”
The harp music stopped. “It is Keelie.”
“No it’s not!”
“I saw you close-talking on the boat,” Drew pressed.
“Yeah, well, what do you think we were talking about?”
Drew shrugged.
“I didn’t know if Flea liked me or like-liked me, and Keelie told me to straight-up ask her.”
“Well, did you? Who is it?”
“I told you, her name rhymes with flea.”
More guessing games? Really? “Whatever, I give up.”
Will lowered down a few pegs, then looked up at her with those denim-blue eyes and said, “Her name is D.”
The harp music returned. Maybe that nickname wasn’t so bad after all. “Wait. What?”
“D rhymes with flea,” Will said.
“It’s me?”
“Yeah, that rhymes too. But, yes. It’s you.”
“Oh.” Drew turned away so he wouldn’t see her blush. The sudden movement, combined with the sweat on her palms, made her lose her grip and smack down on the mat beside the others.
“Incoming!” Will called, and then he jumped down and landed beside Drew.
“Do you like-like anyone?” he whispered, probably so their friends, who were lying beside them, laughing, wouldn’t hear.
How could you even ask me that? Isn’t it obvious? Drew wanted to shout. But all she could do was pretend she didn’t hear him. Responding in front of everyone would have been embarrassing. And falling off the wall because of her sweaty hands was embarrassing enough. Instead, Drew took pleasure in knowing that their crush conversation was far from over and gave in to the laughter.
* * *
During dinner, Drew told her friends all about the rock talk she had with Will. When she got to the part where he asked her how she felt, Fonda demanded change.
“Speak up and put an end to the oppression!” she insisted.
Drew smirked. “Oppression?”
Fonda bit into a French fry. “You have been kept down for too long. Make yourself heard!”
“This isn’t a political rally. You know that, right?” Ruthie said. “Drew’s talking about testing positive for the crush virus. And she would have made herself heard if she had some privacy. Right, D?”
“Exactly,” Drew said, smiling at her new nickname.
“Life is a political rally,” Fonda declared. She had gotten a taste for changing the system and obviously liked it. Her mother would be proud. “Now, rise up and fight!”
“What does that even mean?” Sage asked.
“It means she has to tell Will if she’s one like or two.” Owen placed a hand on Drew’s shoulder and nodded. “No more shyness. Own your feelings. It’s time.”
After dinner, Drew spent her free period and five dollars of her helmet money on a cup of pecan praline fro-yo topped with peanut M&M’s and almonds, then delivered it to Will as they settled around the campfire.
“For me?” he asked. The sun was setting behind him. As it slipped below the horizon, Drew thought of a coin dropping into a piggy bank. Everything in its orange-colored wake had one last chance to matter before the opportunity fell away.
“I was thinking about what you asked me at the boulder gym,” Drew began. This was super awkward. The entire grade was nearby. She looked down at her UGG boots, her nervous wiggling toes. “And . . .”
“Yeah . . . ?” He wrapped both hands around the fro-yo cup and held it like a prayer.
“Here.” Drew handed him a plastic spoon. “I hope you like-like it.”
This time it was Will who looked down. “I do like-like it,” he said. Then he lifted his gaze, found hers, and joked, “I’m nuts about it.”
“Yeah.” Drew giggled. “Me too.”
chapter twenty–four.
ON PAPER, THE first day of the field trip had been perfection. Ruthie saw a whale shark, ate fro-yo before lunch, made a new friendship bracelet, bounced on water trampolines, almost climbed a boulder wall, learned about the constellations, and laughed her abs off. But this wasn’t paper. It was real life. And in real life, one could have everything and still feel like something was missing. Especially when that something was resting at the bottom of the Pacific, along with Ruthie’s only hope of becoming relevant in the twenty-first century.
On paper, day two was off to a great start. They had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and were now on the beach, suiting up for a midmorning snorkel. But as real life would have it, there was only one size-five flipper in the bin. Which was fine. Ruthie didn’t want to snorkel anyway. Her heart was so heavy she’d probably sink. All she could do was gaze out at the horizon and sigh.
“What’s wrong now?” Sage asked, her lips stretched wide from the mask.
“The ocean.” Ruthie sighed again. It wasn’t that she wanted to mope, it was that she didn’t know how to stop. “It’s triggering.”
“I know you’re bummed,” Drew said as she wiggled her foot into a flipper. “But maybe losing that phone was a good thing. You were kind of addicted.”
“Maybe.”
Ruthie secretly disagreed, but she didn’t see the point in arguing with a girl in like-like. Drew was glass-half-full about everything now that she and Will had tested mutually positive for the crush virus. And Ruthie’s glass had been shattered.
“Drew’s right.” Fonda sprayed her legs with sunscreen. “You were a library book on that thing.”
“A library book?”
“Yeah, checked out.”
The girls’ snorkels bounced as they nodded in agreement.
“Maybe,” Ruthie said again. Though this time, they were right. She was checked out. The allure of a device that delivered world news and endless animal videos could not be denied. But that allure would have worn off eventually. She would have learned to control her usage. And if she didn’t, weren’t there apps for that? Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like Ruthie was getting another phone. Ever. The only job she qualified for turned out to be fake.
“I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I’m going to be deviceless and disconnected for the rest of my life. Maybe even longer.”
“Let’s go in the water!” Drew enthused as she and the others began flipper-marching into the ocean. “It will take your mind off things.”
“Okay, be right there,” Ruthie said. She made a show of rummaging through the bin for another flipper, but really, she needed a minute alone.
If only she had Foxie, the stuffed fox she kept behind her bed. Foxie was her confidant, the one she talked through her secret uglies with, uglies so ugly she wouldn’t even share them with the nesties. And right now, her debilitating self-pity felt ugly.
Once everyone was in the water, Ruthie sat against a
rock and drew a picture of Foxie in the sand.
“I’m ashamed of how pouty I’ve been,” she told the Foxie proxy. “But I can’t stop feeling sad.”
Are you sure this is about the phone and not something else? the Foxie proxy would have said if it talked.
Ruthie looked out at the ocean and the clusters of black tubes poking through the water. Her classmates were learning and exploring—two of her favorite things—and she was on the sidelines. Why?
She leaned her head against the rock, closed her eyes, and considered her answer. The sun felt comforting on her face—a warm reminder that some things would always be there.
“Maybe this isn’t about the phone,” she told the Foxie proxy.
Go on . . .
“Maybe it’s about shame.”
How so?
“I didn’t earn the money to buy it, I couldn’t keep it safe, and I didn’t tell my parents about it. The whole thing was an epic fail, and I’m not used to failing.”
Failure is an integral part of being human. It’s how we learn.
Ruthie smiled a little—a sand drawing of a fox talking about being human . . . Ironic, much?
“It’s time!” Owen announced as he flipper-marched out of the ocean and hobbled toward her.
Ruthie quickly erased Foxie. “Time for what?”
Owen lifted the mask away from his face. There was a red ring around his eyes that might have looked dorky to some, but Ruthie found it endearing. “I’ve been charting the tides and observing the currents, and if the subwater sand patterns are saying what I think they’re saying, your phone would have washed ashore this morning at roughly nine forty-seven a.m.”
Ruthie stood. “That’s impossible.”
“Actually, it’s quite probable.” He squinted up at the sky and drew an imaginary line from the sun to the ocean, and from the ocean to the beach. “It’s over there!”
Ruthie followed Owen to a fly-infested heap of seaweed, where he dropped to his knees and started digging. There was no way. But what if there was . . .
“Voilà!” he said, pulling a phone out of the oily green tangle.
Crush Stuff. Page 12
