Captain: No, that’s a liability.
TJ: You’re a liability, sweetie.
Captain: Um. So! Get ready for the summer of a lifetime as we celebrate our home away from home’s . . .
TJ / Captain: FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY!!!
There was so much hype echoing around the hills, Wiener half expected the clouds to rain confetti. After the guys exchanged a bunch of high fives and chest bumps, they walked Max back to Bunker Hill Cabin. When they reached the front porch, Wiener said, “Peace out, brother,” and offered Max a fist bump. Max gave a weak fist bump back, then walked inside without a word. He thought his big brother was a loser, Wiener could tell. “I’ll see you later, crocodile,” Wiener called after him, praying Max would turn around and offer a thumbs-up, but the cabin door slammed shut behind him.
Deflated, Wiener headed to Wawel Hill Cabin with the guys for more unpacking and to meet their counselor. They’d heard their counselor was a newbie, but they hadn’t met him yet. He’d been on duffel duty all morning, and upper campers, especially upper-upper campers like the Wawels, had the freedom to hang out on their own. Walking over, Wiener couldn’t help but wonder if some of the embarrassing stuff that had gone down on the lacrosse field just now could have been avoided with supervision.
As Wiener entered Wawel Hill Cabin, he bumped right into Play Dough, who’d stopped in his tracks. Then Dover and Totle bumped into Wiener, and they all spread out in a line to see what the big holdup was.
“Hi, I’m Arman,” the counselor said from his top bunk. He waved, and then the holdup was obvious.
“Dude, where’s your arm?” Play Dough asked. Totle elbowed him, probably for being so insensitive. The counselor had a normal shoulder and half an upper arm. It ended in a stump, no fingers.
But the counselor didn’t seem bothered. “It’s right there,” Arman said, shrugging to the bottom bunk where Steinberg and Smelly were shamelessly playing with what looked like a robot arm made of shiny, black metal. The wrist extended into a giant hand with long mobile fingers. It could have belonged to The Terminator.
Dover and Totle rushed over to check it out.
Play Dough stayed planted. “But, I mean, what happened to your real arm?”
Totle was too far away to elbow him again, but Steinberg delivered his laser beam stare.
“Cheetahs ate it,” Arman replied. “In Armenia, where I’m from, there’re a lot of wildcats.”
“I thought cheetahs ate cheese doodles.”
“Nah,” Arman said casually. “Just arms.”
Wiener thought that sounded like a lie and wished Play Dough would call him out on it like how he’d called Wiener out in front of Max. But Play Dough knew nothing about Armenia. He knew nothing about cheetahs. He knew nothing about Arman and his missing arm. This counselor could spin all sorts of stories and the Wawel Hillers would never know what was true and what was totally made up. It wasn’t fair.
“Hey, if you want, you can rub the nub,” Arman told Wiener and Play Dough.
They were still standing by the door, the whole length of the cabin between them and their counselor. But then Play Dough walked over and climbed up to Arman’s top bunk and rubbed his nub. “Coooooool. It feels like an elbow but less bony.”
Wiener didn’t want to be rude by staying put, so he climbed up Arman’s bunk to rub the nub, too. It was cool! But the nub quickly reminded him of Max’s unexcited fist bump, and Wiener began turning over stupid strategies to make things right: Throw Max a pretend birthday party. No—it’s another lie. Take Max on a raid! No—it’s illegal. Get on your knees and beg forgiveness. No—that’s pathetic.
From up top, Wiener sighed and looked around the cabin. He noticed something strange. There were two bunk beds and one, two, three, four beds. Wawel Hill Cabin only needed to sleep seven—six campers, one counselor. So what was up with the eighth bed?
Suddenly there was a knock at the door.
“Oh, guys, he’s here,” Arman said.
“Who’s here?” Wiener asked.
“The new camper. Are you ready?”
The robot arm dropped with a clank to the cabin floor. The room erupted in cheers.
“SO READY, YEAH!” Wiener shouted. His voice cracked on “YEAH” but he was so pumped, he didn’t care. This was just what he needed! Wiener could take the newbie under his wing. And hey, with any luck, Number Eight could be shorter than him. Younger than him. Dweebier than him. Anything was possible. Wiener might still stand a chance of proving to Max just how cool-sauce he was after all!
The whole cabin was drumrolling now, until Arman whooshed his non-Terminator arm and nub through the air like a conductor. Everyone stopped.
The cabin door creaked open and in walked Number Eight.
He wore high-top denim Nike sneakers, jean shorts, an argyle belt, a short-sleeved button-down, and denim Ray-Ban sunglasses. His hair was thick up top and faded to a zero buzz at the nape of his neck.
“Qué está pasando, mis hermanos de otra madre?” he asked in a secret language.
Wiener’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t speak. He could hardly breathe. The newest addition to Wawel Hill Cabin was, undeniably, devastatingly, the Coolest Kid Alive.
“We are the Notting Hills, the mighty, mighty Notting Hills!” Missi sang her cabin cheer as she skipped along, a laundry bag slung over her back. The Captain had helped her fill the bag with camp towels, toilet paper, hand soap, sticky tack, and, at Missi’s request, a copy of the Camp Rolling Hills’ Fiftieth Anniversary flyer.
Missi had agreed to grab the supplies from the Head Counselor’s Office while the rest of her cabinmates pulled their luggage inside from the porch. It was a risk leaving just as her cabinmates were about to claim their beds—usually her two best friends, Jenny and Jamie, shared a bunk bed, leaving Missi out. But over the winter, Jamie had mentioned that this summer, the two of them would share a bunk bed, or if that made Jenny feel left out, the three of them would push three single beds together to make a Miss Jen-Jam bed! So, for the first summer ever, Missi wasn’t worried about who she’d share a bunk bed with. Thanks to last summer’s Color War drama, their three-way friendship was now tighter than ever.
As Missi started up Notting Hill, she felt her lungs suck in the sweet upstate New York air. It smelled like her farm, except better, without all the manure. Her legs were moving faster and faster, the laundry bag slapping her back like an encouraging teammate: Go, go, go!
Missi wondered which bunk bed Jamie had picked for them. The one by the front door? The one closest to the bathroom? When they’d talked about it six months ago in the comments section of one of Jamie’s Instagram selfies, Missi had asked which bunk bed they should try to claim, but then Jamie had just Liked her comment. Missi guessed it didn’t really matter as long as they were together. They would definitely still be together, right? Jamie remembered the plan?
Before Missi could give it another thought, she was launching up the four . . . five . . . six porch steps of the cabin. Her ears perked up to a Justin Bieber song leaking from inside. Missi bet her cabinmates were jumping on the bare mattresses, lip-syncing with tampons: “Is it too late now to say sorry?” She also bet they were craving her dance moves.
She dropped the laundry bag and burst through the cabin door, shaking her hips and whipping her red hair through the air. After a single whip, she stopped. No one was dancing. Everyone was unpacking.
Missi scanned the cabin for Jamie and spotted her stretching a hot-pink fitted sheet over a top bunk’s mattress. She lunged toward its bottom bunk but stopped short when she saw Jenny on the bed with all her stuff, drying her polished nails in front of a clip-on fan. No, no, no, no.
In a panic, she glanced around the rest of the cabin. Melman was on a top bunk, Velcroing her shin guards to the bunk bed ladder. Slimey was in the bunk below her, fastening tape to a sketch of her and her boyfriend, Smelly. Sophie had snagged the bunk under their new counselor, Cookie, and the two of them were poring over a giant textbook.
There was one unclaimed single bed by the bathroom.
The beds had been selected. Jamie and Jenny had chosen each other over her like always. Only Justin Bieber was apologizing to her, and it was too late now to say sorry.
Dejected, Missi shuffled to the porch and grabbed her lonely duffel coated with cat hair. Then, back inside the cabin, she began to unpack. She shelved her clothes, made her bed with her retro Hello Kitty sheets, and began decorating her space. She tacked the Camp Rolling Hills’ Fiftieth Anniversary flyer to the wall and put two star stickers on either side of NATURE SHACK. In case that didn’t scream I <3 ANIMALS! loud enough, she bordered the flyer with portraits of her seven cats—Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, Doc, and Snow White. And then, hoping it might help soften the blow of rejection, for the first time ever, she put up a picture of her and her mom.
Missi leaned onto her jean pillow and stared at the photo, slipping into the memory of last Christmas. Totally stuffed from sweet-potato pie, she’d heard the “cock-a-doodle-doo” bell and trudged to the door, expecting to welcome friends, neighbors, Santa even. Anyone but Rebecca Joy Snyder. But there she was, standing on the snowy stoop in a forest-green sweater and a jeweled infinity scarf. She had twinkling brown eyes and a butterfly of freshly sun-kissed freckles across her face. A long, red braid hung like a horse’s tail down her back. She gave Missi a bow and said, “Darling, I am your birth mother.” As if Missi had any other kind.
Missi had felt a lot of stuff that day: hyper like a goat, angry like a crow, confused like a chicken, and timid like a field mouse. And when her mom retrieved a selfie stick from her luggage, Missi also felt poorly dressed. She’d raced to her room to throw on a skirt, slick back her frizz, and apply strawberry ChapStick. Then the two of them had posed in front of the ornamented Christmas tree. Rebecca Joy had wrapped her arm around Missi’s shoulders. Missi hadn’t been sure what to do with her hands, so she’d clasped them together like a caroler. Missi was captured in the photo as a bony, awkward mini-version of her effortlessly beautiful mom. Her mom would never get bent out of shape over a bunk bed.
From across the room, Missi heard the J-squad giggling. Jenny was painting Jamie’s toes, and Jamie was too ticklish to stay still. She kept spazzing, the nail polish streaking her skin. Missi wanted to smile at them, but she didn’t have it in her. They were so in their own little bubble, she doubted they’d notice her anyway.
Needing a distraction, she reached into her cubby and pulled out the chunky beaded necklace and silk top Rebecca Joy had brought her all the way from India. She’d given it to Missi the day after Christmas, and at the time, it hadn’t meant much. It wasn’t until the winter snow began to melt, and Missi had spent more and more time with her mom, that the gift began to mean everything. Things had become amazing between them. They talked about all the things they would do together one day, and how they were weird in exactly the same ways. How, to them, life seemed to glitter with magic. Trash could look like art, and honking cars could sound like music. “You’re a snowflake, you know that?” her mom had told her one spring afternoon, and Missi had shrugged modestly, even though for the first time in her life, she believed she was as special as her mom said she was.
Missi slipped on the necklace and top. Instantly she felt more confident, like she was more than just the J-squad’s third wheel. Ready to hang, she left her bed and climbed up to Jamie’s top bunk, where the J-squad was sitting cross-legged, surrounded by art supplies. Jamie was tearing out a centerfold of a shirtless teen idol, and Jenny was cutting out a blown-up photo of Play Dough’s face. “Whatcha girls making?” Missi asked curiously.
“It’s a surprise,” Jenny said.
“She’s putting Play Dough’s face on Shawn Mendes’s body!” Jamie said.
“JAMIE!” Jenny screamed.
“Whoops,” Jamie replied.
Missi wasn’t sure who Shawn Mendes was, but based on last summer’s wall art, she assumed he was a Disney star. Missi’s grandparents hoarded a lot of TVs—they had eleven in their farmhouse—but none of them was hooked up to cable. Without access to most shows, she didn’t know basic pop culture, and that was kind of embarrassing, even at camp.
Missi would never forget how awkward she’d felt the first day of camp last year, when everyone was decorating their areas with teen celebrities she’d never heard of. In a panic, she’d torn a centerfold of a cute guy named Austin from Jamie’s J-14 magazine, tacked him to her wall, and pretended to be his most devoted fan. She wasn’t proud of this. She hadn’t liked hiding her Buttercup Whiskers III poster under her bed to collect dust. She hadn’t liked having a guy she’d never seen on TV watch her sleep at night. She hadn’t liked lying to her best friends just to fit in.
Missi had decided that this summer would be different. She was done pretending. If her mom could be herself without apology, then so could she.
Still, that was easier said than done. The J-squad had already left her out of the sleeping arrangements. What would they leave her out of next if they found out she was more hyped about her pet goats than teen heartthrobs? So, Missi took a breath and let out one last, hopefully harmless lie: “Yeah, I love him on that Disney show.”
“Who?” Jenny asked.
“Um . . .” Missi tried to remember the name of the idol Jenny had just mentioned.
“Shawn Mendes isn’t on Disney,” Jamie said. “He’s a singer.”
“I know,” Missi lied. “But he’s probably sung for Disney.”
And then, just as the J-squad shared one of their looks Missi thought they were going to stop making after last summer, Sophie shouted from across the room, “HE HAS! It’s called ‘Believe’ and it’s in the Disney movie Descendants.”
“How do you know that?” Jenny asked, totally baffled.
“We sang it in chorus. It’s a very inspiring song.”
This made Missi feel even more out of the loop. For a fleeting second, she considered climbing back down the ladder and taking a nap in her single, lonely bed, but then she pictured her mom telling her, “Don’t let your lack of pop-culture knowledge get in the way of a first-day hang. Us Snyder girls are braver than that.” She climbed the rest of the way up the ladder and sat on the edge of Jamie’s bed.
Jenny taped Play Dough’s face on top of this guy Shawn’s face, and then she and Jamie clapped in rapid succession. “Yay, Play Shawn! JINX. Yay, Dough Mendes! DOUBLE JINX. Yay—”
“Body-face mashups! TRIPLE JINX,” Missi cried. It was followed by crickets.
“I love you girls,” Jenny said, “but it’s honestly so claustrophobic up here.” Since they were on Jamie’s bed, and Jenny couldn’t possibly be asking Jamie to leave her own space, Missi said, “No worries,” and began to climb back down. When they were little, even up to their Anita Hill summer, the three of them could easily fit on a camp bed. But she guessed now, at age fourteen, it was a tight squeeze.
“But don’t leave-leave,” Jamie said to Missi. “Take my bungee chair.”
“Okay,” Missi said, surprised by how good that invitation made her feel. She plopped into Jamie’s trendy chair made of bungee cords (everyone except for her had brought one to camp) and craned her neck up. “So, how were each of your eighth-grade graduations?” she asked. Missi had seen Instagrams of Jenny and Jamie wearing lacy white dresses with funky belts.
“So good!” Jamie and Jenny said in unison. Then they looked at each other and began gabbing about girls from their schools. Missi couldn’t hear so well from six feet below, especially with Jenny’s fan droning in her ear. She went to flick it off just as Jenny said something to her about a dress.
“Yeah, my graduation dress was white, too,” Missi said, hoping she’d answered Jenny’s question. She’d been inspired by the J-squad’s look, but also white was an obvious choice since most other colors clashed with her red hair.
“That’s not what I asked,” Jenny said. “I asked: Are you, like, in a religious cult?”
“Oh! What? No
,” Missi said. She didn’t have to look down to know that Jenny was referring to her outfit. She didn’t get how it could be religious or cult-y—the top had elephants on it—but sometimes Jenny just liked to be dramatic. “The beads and top are from my mom,” she told them, then froze, anxiously awaiting their reactions.
She imagined Jamie’s face would cloud with confusion. Jenny would shriek with excitement: “IT’S LITERALLY BEEN A DECADE.” Then Jenny would invite Missi to climb back onto Jamie’s bed, totally cool with the claustrophobia if it meant hearing all about her mom’s four summers at Camp Rolling Hills in the ’90s, and her hitchhikes across Australia, and her meditation guru boyfriend in India, and the near-death experience that had brought her back home.
As expected, Jamie’s mouth dropped. Missi clutched her beads, ready to spill the whole long story. But then Jamie said, “Ow, I think I got that Airhead stuck in my braces,” and Jenny peered into Jamie’s mouth to confirm.
That’s it?! Missi figured the J-squad hadn’t heard what she’d said. Or maybe they’d heard, but since they saw their moms every day, the weight of the news hadn’t sunk in. Or maybe now wasn’t the time for The Missi Show, as her grandparents called it. Maybe something so personal was too much for them to handle on the first day of camp.
Missi decided she’d let Jenny deal with Jamie’s Airhead crisis, and she’d catch up with the rest of her friends. “Good luck! I’ll be back,” she called to them, then walked over to Slimey and Melman, who were playing catch with a soccer ball on Slimey’s bottom bunk.
“Am not!” Melman said, giggling.
“Oh, come on!” Slimey said. “Just admit it!”
“Just admit what?” Missi asked.
Slimey laughed into her tie-dye pillow. Melman hugged the soccer ball to her chest, sighed away her giggles, and said, “Nothing, nothing.”
Then they stopped talking.
Missi stood over them, digging her fingernail into their bunk bed ladder. She felt bad for being nosy. She hadn’t meant to intrude, just join in on the fun.
Freefall Page 2
