I, on the other hand, do not think it's lame. I don't think it's lame because Raf is on the other side of the room. Evening activity is the best, because it's either the whole camp or the entire Lion unit.
“Rachel!” I look up to see Miri beckoning me to her.
In a minute, I mouth, then follow my bunk to a bench in the corner. As soon as I sit down, Janice, green pen in mouth (that can't be good), flicks the lights on and off. “Settle down, everyone,” she says. “Sit with your bunks! It's time for a sing-down.”
“Told you,” Morgan mutters, taking a seat.
“Here's how it works. Every bunk gets a—”
“We know how it works!” interrupts Blume, looking extra-scruffy in a sweatshirt with its sleeves ripped off. His bunkmates laugh.
Janice starts pacing up and down the room. “Not everyone knows, Blume. Now be quiet, please. As I was saying, every bunk gets a pad of paper. I'm going to say a word or an expression or a theme, and together as a bunk, you write down as many songs that contain it as you can. Then each bunk will have a chance to sing one of the songs. Remember, if you repeat a song someone else has sung, you're automatically disqualified. Last bunk standing wins.”
“What do we win?” Blume asks.
“Glory,” says his counselor. “And for being a pain in the ass, you get to be secretary.”
His bunk laughs again.
All of the Lion unit is here. I spot Miri sitting with the rest of bunk two, but she's slightly behind them. Aw, Mir. Why isn't she making friends? I'll have to give her a pep talk. She has to be friendly and outgoing, and she can't be afraid to put herself out there.
“All right, get ready,” Janice says. “The songs have to have a color in them. Got it? You have two minutes, starting now.”
No time to worry about Miri; must think of songs. I huddle with my bunkmates. Deb plays secretary.
“ ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ ” Carly whispers.
Poodles: “ ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ ”
Alison: “ ‘Yellow Submarine.’ ”
Me: “ ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road?’ ”
Deb scribbles it down. Yes! I got one!
We throw out a ton of songs before Janice announces that our time is up and that bunk five will go first. The boys' counselors gather them and count, “One, two, three!”
“Brown-eyed girl. You, my brown-eyed girl!” they shriek in disastrous voices.
“Damn!” Deb crosses out our number-one song.
We're going clockwise, so next up is bunk fifteen. “Ready, girls?” Penelope asks.
“It was an itsy bitsy, teenie weenie yellow polka-dot bikini,” they sing. Kristin shakes her butt. Liana tosses her hair.
“Bunch of jerk-offs,” Morgan mutters.
“Bunk two, you're up,” Janice announces.
The girls from Miri's bunk lean in together. Well, all except Miri. “Baby beluga in the deep blue sea!” they sing.
“Bunk eleven!”
“Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree!”
“Seventeen!”
That's Raf's bunk. The group counts to three and then sings, “Red, red wine, you make me feel so fine.”
“Seven!” says Janice.
“Blue moon,” the youngest Lion boys croon, “you saw me standing alone. Without a dream in my heart. Blue moon!” And that's when they all spin around, pull down their pants, and moon us.
“Ew!” we scream. All the girls, anyway. The boys just laugh.
Janice bites her pen like she's a rabbit with a carrot. “You're eliminated for lewdness!”
The boys are bent over with laughter. I doubt they care. Poor counselors. They're definitely going to have their hands full with this cheeky group. Pun intended.
“Fourteen, you're up!”
Poodles pretends she's a conductor. “One, two, three . . .”
“We all live in a yellow submarine,” we sing, and then cheer. Wahoo! Fun!
We go around the circle again, and we have to cross out some of our songs. Then Miri's bunk sings “Brown Eyed Girl” again, which makes no sense. I mean, how hard is it to put an X beside one of your entries once someone else sings it?
“You're out!” Janice shouts.
We go round and round and round, and bunks get eliminated, either for duplication or for not being able to come up with something new, until it's just us, fifteen, and Raf's bunk.
And then Raf's bunk sings “Yellow Submarine,” which we already sang, and they're out.
Now it's between us and fifteen.
This is no longer a game. After the way they've been treating us, it's war.
“We're out of songs,” Deb whispers. “Someone think of one, quick!”
Come on, magic! I need a remember-a-song spell! What can I do? I need to think of something!
And that's when I look up at Janice and see her green pen, which makes me think of the green song.
Me: “Kermit's song. You know? Green. How does it go?”
“ ‘It's Not Easy Being Green,’ ” Poodles says, high-fiving me.
“Brilliant!” Deb says, scribbling it down.
Liana whispers something into Natalie's ear, then motions to the rest of the bunk. Two seconds later, they belt out, “It's not easy being green!”
Aaah!
My whole bunk groans. “She was so eavesdropping,” Morgan says. “I hate her.”
She totally was eavesdropping! How dare she steal my green!
“Fourteen, you're up.”
“Hold on!” Poodles says, and motions us in. “Anyone got anything?”
“Count with me, everyone,” Janice instructs. “Ten! Nine!”
“Anyone have anything?” Alison begs. “Carly?”
“Seven! Six!” The whole unit is cheering now.
“Poodles? Morgan? Rachel?”
Liana is a thief. She sucks. I wonder how she'd feel if she were really green, as in poof, you're now Kermit's sister.
“Three! Two! One!” Janice makes a loud buzzer sound, and her pen explodes all over her mouth and chin, giving her a green beard. “Fifteen wins! Nice game, everyone. Off to snack. Be back at your bunk for curfew at ten-fifteen. No excuses!”
Thief, thief, thief.
“Hey,” says someone behind me.
I look up to see Raf. Yay! “Hi.”
“You going to snack?”
I'm going anywhere you want me to go, mister. I shrug oh so casually. “Maybe. You?”
“Sure. Come with me. Do you know my boys? Blume, Colton, and Anderson?”
Come with me, he says! Finally. I can't believe it's taken me over four days to get some quasi-alone time with him.
The scraggly guy, the cute Texan, and the guy who really does wear too much hair gel say hello.
The five of us skip down the stairs of the rec hall. It was light when evening activity started, but now it's pitch-black. I look up to see a sky layered with shining stars. Wow. This is amazing. I fill my lungs with night air. “It's so nice here,” I say.
“It is, huh? Are you cold?”
I am a bit chilly. My arms are covered in goose bumps. “Maybe I should stop back at my bunk and get a sweater.”
Raf pulls his black sweatshirt over his head. “Take mine.”
Omigod. I am wearing Raf's sweatshirt. Raf's deliciously yummy-smelling sweatshirt. Does this mean he likes me? Or is he just being polite?
We talk all the way down the hill to the back of the dining hall and then meet up with some of the others. Raf, Colton, Anderson, Blume, Morgan, Carly, Alison, Poodles, and I get our cookies and then debate what to do next.
“Let's go hang out on our porch,” Morgan says.
Poodles steers Carly toward Anderson. Carly turns pink but goes up to him anyway. Guess she does have her eye on him after all.
Raf and I follow the rest of the crowd back to our bunk. I can't believe how much walking we're doing. I must have walked like a hundred miles since I've been here. Lower Field, Upper Field, Lower Field, dining hall. It'
s better than a treadmill.
“So how'd you do on your exams?” Raf asks me.
“Not bad. You?”
“Good, I think. But math was a killer. Bet you didn't think so,” he says, teasing.
Raf knows that math is my best subject. I grin. “It was okay.”
“What did you get?”
“My final grade?”
“Yes, your final grade.”
“Ninety-nine.”
He laughs. “What happened to the last two percent?”
“Very funny,” I say with a happy smile. I love when he teases me. I look up at the endless sky. “Hey, there's the Big Dipper!”
He nods. “And here you are,” he says softly.
“Here I am.”
“I'm glad.”
“You are?”
“Very.”
And that's when he lifts his arm and puts it around me. Omigod. Raf's arm is around me. Around me.
You don't put your arm around just a friend.
“He likes you,” Alison says to me. She's wearing her pj's and sitting at the foot of my bed.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah,” says Poodles, who's standing in the center of the room, flossing her teeth. “Definitely. He was, like, giving you moon eyes the entire sing-down. He has it bad.”
Yes!
“I saw it too,” Carly adds. She's back on the floor, doing her stomach crunches, her feet anchored under her bed.
“You're lucky,” Morgan says. “He's one of the best guys here.”
Puh-lease. He's one of the best guys anywhere.
“Before lights-out, we need to do your electives,” Deb says, sitting on Poodles' bed. “They start on Thursday after lunch, so tell me what you want to take for both elective A and elective B.”
“What are the choices?” I ask.
“You have to pick two: A&C—that's arts and crafts, Rachel—pottery, sailing, windsurfing, canoeing, tennis, archery, drama, waterskiing, baseball, and basketball.”
“Basketball!” Morgan says. “All the guys take basketball.”
Brilliant! I'm going to take basketball too!
“Taking what they take is obvious,” Poodles says, shaking her head.
That is so true.
“I'll take basketball with you,” Carly says. “I have a killer shot.”
“That's A for Morgan and Carly. What do you want as your B elective?”
“Drama,” Carly says.
“Oh, me too,” says Morgan. “We'll be in the play!”
“All right,” Deb says. “Poodles? What do you want to take?”
“Sailing and sailing,” she says.
Deb shakes her head. “You have to chose two different ones.”
“Sailing and windsurfing, then. At least I'll get to stay at the beach.”
“Done,” Deb says, scribbling on her notepad. “Alison?”
“Same with me. Sailing and windsurfing.”
“Rachel?”
“I'll take sailing and . . .” Windsurfing sounds a lot scarier than sailing. I mean, you have to do windsurfing alone, right? Just stand up there and hope the wind pushes you? I am so not into standing up there solo in my bathing suit for the world to see. Hmm, come to think of it, I'm not even allowed to go windsurfing because of my dolphin status. Crap. Now what? I've never canoed, played tennis, or arched (that can't be the right verb), and although hanging out with Raf at baseball and/or basketball sounds fun, how do I know which one he chose, if either?
“Um, A&C?”
“You know what?” Alison says. “I think I want to change my windsurfing to A&C too.”
“Me too,” says Poodles. “Can't be too obvious, right?”
After we're done, I head to the bathroom to get washed. As always, I practically freeze my face off while washing it. I quickly brush my teeth and then retreat into the cubby room to change into my pajamas. I gingerly remove Raf's sweatshirt. Instead of folding it and putting it away, I take it to bed with me.
Snuggling with Raf's clothing will be like snuggling with him. Well, not quite, but it will have to do.
Deb turns off the lights.
Hello, yummy sweatshirt. Of course, I can't help remembering that the best love spell involves a piece of the victim's (er, I mean, guy's) clothing. Not that I'm putting a love spell on Raf. This time I won't need one (hopefully). And this time I want the real thing.
“Rachel, wake up!”
I am being poked in the head. “Yes?” I ask, opening one eye. Poodles is motioning me to follow her. “It's time.”
“For what?” I whisper.
“To get them back,” Morgan tells me. She is dressed all in black.
The clock says 3:00 a.m. I throw off my covers and hurry to join them. “What's the plan?”
“We're painting their faces,” Morgan says. “Poodles borrowed paint from A&C.”
Trying not to giggle, the five of us get into position. Poodles is painting the girls on the top bunks while Morgan does the bottom ones. Carly and I hold the paint and act as artistic directors. Alison's duty is standing by in the bathroom in case Deb or Penelope wakes up.
Natalie gets red glasses painted on her, Trishelle becomes a Dalmatian, and Kristin gets the measles.
“What do you think?” Poodles whispers while painting green whiskers. “It's Molly the mouse.”
I swallow my laughter.
Molly wrinkles her nose in her sleep but doesn't wake up. Next we visit Liana.
“Turn her into a cat!” I whisper.
“Actually, I have another idea.” Poodles dips the paintbrush into my jar of black paint and paints a goatee on Liana's chin and a mustache on her upper lip.
“That is so mean!” I murmur. Mean but funny.
Until Liana's eyes start to flutter.
Poodles jumps back.
Uh-oh.
“False alarm,” Poodles tells me. “She's still asleep.”
After Morgan puts the finishing touches on Cece (I'm not sure what she's supposed to be; she just has stripes and Xs across her face. A ticktacktoe board?), we sneak back to our side of the cabin.
“Won't they know it was us?” Carly asks.
“Probably,” Poodles says, laughing.
“Maybe we should paint ourselves, too, to fool them,” Carly says.
Morgan rolls her eyes. “Then we'd be painted.”
“Let's just get rid of the evidence,” Poodles says, tiptoeing toward the door. “Morgie, come with me. We'll leave the supplies in front of the A&C.”
The remaining three of us get back into our beds. “You know,” says Carly, “I'm going to hide the mirror so they don't know what they look like.”
“But they'll still see each other,” I try to explain, but Carly is already in the bathroom, removing the mirror from the wall.
Alison and I fall asleep, giggling to ourselves.
“Bunk fourteen, time to get up!” Janice says, stomping across our floor. Then she disappears into the cubby room and into bunk fifteen. “Bunk fifteen, it's time to get—” Audible gasp. “What happened to you?”
We all jolt up in bed, smiles on our faces.
“There's something on my face!” Trishelle shrieks.
Kristin: “Mine too! What is it, what is it?”
Cece: “It's red!”
Liana: “Well, it's all over my three-hundred-thread-count pillowcases.”
“Now we're even,” Poodles says.
They try to scrub the paint off, but without a proper shower, they are forced to go to flagpole with multicolored faces.
“They look like Teletubbies,” Morgan snorts at breakfast over her stack of pancakes.
“Girls,” Deb admonishes, “I hope you didn't have anything to do with this.”
“Us?” Poodles innocently bats her eyelashes. “Why would we do such a thing? Pass the maple syrup.”
Of course, bunk fifteen knows that it was us—not that they can prove it. They keep glaring at us from their table.
“We got them goo
d,” Morgan says.
Alison bites her lower lip. “And now we'd better watch our backs.”
8
CHOPPY WATERS
It's Thursday, a few days later, and Alison and I are lying across the bow of a sailboat, legs stretched out as the wind whips through our hair and the sun kisses our skin. I can't believe I've been missing out on sailing my entire life! What else have my parents deprived me of?
After handing us life jackets, Harris, who is as über-hot as my bunkmates have described and in fact has a cleft in his chin that reminds me of a superhero in a comic book, divided up the Lions who had chosen sailing and then sent us out in boats.
Luckily for Poodles, Harris has chosen to come with us, sending the others (who include gelled-out Anderson; immature, nose-stuffing Brandon; and a few younger Lion girls I recognize from Miri's bunk—but no Miri) out with some of the CITs.
And now our boat is up and running, sailing across the glorious lake.
But the best part of sailing?
Raf's elective is windsurfing.
I literally cannot take my eyes off him. Partially because he's wearing bright yellow swim trunks but mostly because I watched him take off his shirt and expose his dark and smooth six-pack of a stomach. Fine, it's more like a four-pack, since he's only fifteen, but still. It's a lean, mean Greek-god-machine four-pack. Not that he's Greek. Actually, I don't know what his ancestry is. With a name like Kosravi, I always kind of assumed Russian.
“Coming about!” Harris calls as the boom swerves to the other side of the sailboat, turning us around. Alison and I cling to our seats, trying not to slide off.
Since we're now heading straight for the windsurfing section, toward my Russian-Greek four-pack, I suck in my stomach and strike my most enticing pose.
He's waving at me! Sure, his upper torso is now covered by his life jacket, but I think I just saw his arm muscles ripple.
A gust of wind emerges from nowhere (a gust of wind, my beating heart, whatever) and tilts the sailboat dangerously onto its side. We all shriek as the cool water splashes our arms and legs. A growl echoes over the lake and I check out Colton, who has just fallen face-first off his board into the water, thanks to my little magical burst.
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