Suddenly Last Summer #20

by Melissa J Morgan

  But she couldn’t.

  “Tori.”

  Tori turned around to see a slightly manic-looking Brynn shoving some crumpled pages at her.

  “You’re going to play Little Teri Fishbottom, a kind of rough, uncultured girl who comes to camp and gets exposed to culture and art and totally remakes herself. Can you do a Cockney accent?”

  Tori stared at Brynn. “Little . . . Teri . . . Fishbottom?”

  Brynn sighed. “Do you know what Cockney is?”

  Tori shrugged, trying to look helpful. “I could maybe do a southern accent? Sort of?”

  “Good enough.” Brynn shoved the crinkled pages at her and moved on to Priya. “Priya, you’re going to play Elgatha Moss, who comes to camp really embarrassed because she has purple skin but then learns to be herself and feel accepted. You have a big eleven o’clock number called ‘Violet Like My Heart.’ Can you belt?”

  Priya looked confused. “Can I wear a belt?”

  Brynn shoved some pages at her. “Next!” she cried, moving on to Jenna. “Okay, Jenna, you play Orphan Sally . . .”

  Tori lost track of her friends’ roles as she started reading over Brynn’s notes. It looked like they all were playing outsiders and weirdos who learned to express themselves and feel accepted through camp, except for Brynn, who played the counselor. Together they all sang the big finale, called “We Love Camp,” which according to Brynn’s notes was supposed to have some pretty elaborate choreography. Tori looked over Brynn’s lyrics:

  “We love camp

  Though it’s sometimes damp

  We don’t need a lamp

  We vamp

  At camp!”

  Tori didn’t know much about musical theater, but she had a very uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Suddenly, the main doors swung open on their squeaky hinges, letting in a ray of white sunlight that framed a dark silhouette. All of the girls squinted, trying to make out their new (and only) audience member. Sloan gasped.

  “Lainie,” she breathed.

  “Hi, ladies!” Lainie whipped off her designer sunglasses and shoved them into the pocket of her gauchos, smiling widely. “I heard a rumor at lunch that you were revamping your protest based on my comments. So I figured, since they’re making an effort, shouldn’t I do them the favor of coming to check it out? Maybe I’d be willing to help again!”

  Brynn stared at Lainie like she’d seen a ghost. “Oh god,” she whispered.

  “That’s great!” Sloan cried enthusiastically, gesturing to a prime seat in the audience. “We’re just about to do a dry run of Brynn’s new musical that she wrote based on the camp experience! Have a seat, check it out!”

  Brynn gulped and clutched some ragged pages to her chest. “It’s really rough.”

  Lainie just smiled. “Well, of course it is, silly!” She sat down in the center of the fifth row. “I don’t expect you to write a totally polished musical in twenty-four hours! But I’m sure the flavor of your talent shines through.”

  Brynn didn’t say anything. She swallowed again. Then she turned to her bunkmates. “Um,” she said. “Okay. Act one, scene one. It’s me, Tori, and Candace.”

  All of the other girls slowly made their way to the wings of the stage.

  “Tori,” Brynn instructed in a whisper, “climb on Candace.”

  “What?” Tori whispered. But Candace was already crouching down, gesturing for Tori to hop on her back, piggyback-style.

  “Who are you playing?” Tori whispered, reluctantly climbing on.

  Candace grabbed Tori’s ankles and slowly stood up. “The bus,” she replied. “I have the first song.”

  Brynn stood in the center of the stage, making a big show of looking eager and nervous. Candace started walking toward her—slowly, hampered by carrying Tori.

  Candace began to sing.

  “I am the bus

  No Need to make a fuss

  I carry campers every summer

  I know they won’t find camp a bummer . . .”

  When it ended, Tori wasn’t sure how long it had gone on. It was like she had entered a fugue state where she knew she had read her lines, knew time had passed, but when Lainie’s laughter finally grew loud and disruptive enough to end the performance, she couldn’t even tell what scene they were on. Priya was onstage, and then Alex, playing a campfire. Alex was wiggling and moving her arms and making a crazy sizzling noise.

  “HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA OH MY GOD . . .”

  Brynn caught Tori’s eye. She looked defeated. Not surprised, but defeated.

  For a moment, they all just watched Lainie laugh.

  It took a long time.

  Finally, Lainie started gasping for air.

  “Oh my god,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Oh, wow. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in . . . my life.”

  Tori glanced at Alex, who had stopped sizzling. Alex’s expression seemed to say what Tori was thinking: This is Not good.

  “It’s unpolished,” Sloan broke in insistently.

  “That’s right!” Candace agreed. “We’re not wearing costumes, and we don’t have any sets!”

  “I’m not even wearing my belt!” Priya cried.

  Sloan nodded. “Right now, it’s just a big hunk of coal. But once we rehearse it and refine it and really make it shine, it’ll sparkle like a diamond! You’ll see.”

  “Oh, no, I won’t.” Lainie was already standing up and walking out to the aisle. “If I thought last night was a train wreck, I don’t even know what this is. What’s bigger than a train? A cruise ship?” She glanced at the stage. Tori and her bunkmates shrugged and nodded: Sure, a cruise ship was bigger than a train.

  “It’s like a cruise ship,” Lainie went on, walking to the door, “ran into another cruise ship, pushing them into another cruise ship, and so on and so on, like dominoes.” She paused and smiled. “It’s like twenty-seven cruise ships piled on top of each other in a blazing, smoking mess of twisted metal. With all sorts of people bailing out in those little round life preservers. That is how bad this thing is.”

  Brynn gulped.

  Lainie shook her head. “This protest is DOA,” she announced. “You’d be better off doing nothing at all. If I were a state congresswoman and I saw this musical, I would close the camp just to keep something like this from being written ever again.” Now at the door, she wiggled her fingers in a tiny wave. “Ta,” she said. “See you at dinner.”

  The door closed behind her.

  Immediately Sloan turned to Brynn, already on damage control. “She’s crazy,” Sloan said. “You know that. She has no taste. We see what a great idea we have here. Sure, it’s not perfect right now, but this musical has tons of potential!”

  Brynn just shook her head dejectedly. “It’s a cruise wreck,” she said softly. “Lainie was right.”

  “She’s Not right!” Sloan insisted. “Come on, Brynn, believe! We can make this work.”

  Brynn shook her head again, looking from Sloan to the rest of her bunkmates. “Does anyone believe this can work?” she asked. “If even one of you believes this thing could convince state congresspeople to change their minds, speak up now.”

  Tori looked at her friends uncomfortably. Everyone seemed to be doing the same thing—looking from person to person, waiting to see if anyone was crazy enough to speak up.

  Brynn sighed and looked at Tori. “See?” she asked.

  Sloan frowned. “But if we don’t do the musical, what will we do?” she asked. “How will we save Camp Lakeview?”

  Everyone looked around at one another. Nobody seemed to have the answer.

  “We don’t,” said Nat finally, looking close to tears. “We don’t save it.”

  Everyone’s face changed as they all slowly began to understand. They hadn’t been able to think of a protest, so there would be no protest. Camp Lakeview would close as scheduled.

  As the silence was growing, the dinner bell rang.

  “Dinner,” said Brynn, g
athering her loose pages of script. “I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t have much of an appetite.”

  “I guess it’s better to do nothing than to do something we don’t believe in,” Jenna was saying that night as a few girls stood in the bathroom, getting ready for bed.

  It had been a solemn evening in bunk 6B. The musical idea had failed and nobody had a better idea for the protest, which meant that at their meeting with Dr. Steve the next day, nobody would have anything to say. They were all slowly coming to terms with the truth: no ideas, no protest, no chance of saving the camp.

  Tori was unprepared for how miserable she felt. She knew she loved coming to Camp Lakeview; she knew she loved her friends here. Still, deep down, she had believed that even if camp closed, she would still see them in little get-togethers or hear from them via the camp blog. It wouldn’t be the end. But now it did feel like the end of something. No matter what, they would never come together again in this space, sleep in these bunks, be surrounded by all of these people. For the first time, Tori felt like she was understanding what it meant for the camp to close. Even if she went to surf camp next year, even if she saw all these girls again, it would never be the same.

  Tori felt her eyes watering and reached up to wipe a tear away before everyone else could see.

  Then, out of nowhere, she heard a loud “No!” Tori looked up. It was Jenna raising her voice. Across the bathroom, she was huddled with Nat, Alex, and Val, and Nat was speaking to the group in hushed tones.

  “It is a good idea,” Val said cautiously.

  Jenna nodded. “Maybe. But this is getting ridiculous.” She turned and looked right at Tori. “Why don’t you just ask her, Nat? I’m tired of the tension between you guys.”

  Tori had no idea what was going on. “What are you guys talking about?”

  Alex caught her eye. “What’s going on is, Nat has an idea about how to save the protest.”

  Tori looked over at Nat. She was huddled down in her bathrobe, looking uncomfortable. But she met Tori’s eye. “You do?” Tori asked.

  Nat nodded. “It, um, it involves you.”

  Jenna turned back to Tori. “Nat needs to ask you if you’d be willing to do something, but she seems to think you’re mad at her.”

  Tori laughed sharply. She couldn’t help it. “I am mad at her,” she admitted. “But last I checked, she was mad at me, too.”

  Val sighed, clearly tired of the conversation already. “Why don’t you guys just make up already? Look, we’re all stressed about camp closing. But there’s no reason we have to fight with each other about it.”

  Tori looked at Nat. She still didn’t feel ready to make up. And judging from Nat’s shell-shocked expression, her former best friend wasn’t ready to apologize, either. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want from me?” Tori asked.

  “I have an idea about how to save Camp Lakeview,” Nat replied, looking very serious. “But I need your help.”

  chapter EIGHT

  Tori looked skeptical. “What is it?” she asked. “And what can I do that nobody else can do?”

  Nat took a deep breath. It was just as hard as she’d expected to ask her old (former?) friend for help. After their fight that morning, Nat had been sure they wouldn’t speak to each other for days.

  “Brynn’s musical was kind of a mess altogether,” Nat explained. “And to be fair, of course it was since she wrote it in a few hours. But there were moments in it that were good, right?”

  Tori shrugged. “I guess.”

  “The thing is,” Nat continued, “we don’t have the expertise to make it work. But maybe— maybe if we got someone in here who really knows music . . .”

  Tori raised an eyebrow. “Like who?” she asked. “I don’t know anything about music. Do you?”

  “No,” Nat admitted, giving Tori a meaningful look. “But I know who does . . .”

  Tori looked behind her. Nat was looking out at their cubbies, right at Tori’s care package from the other day, with the Judy Renaissance CD on top.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Tori warned. “If you’re talking about Judy Renaissance, they’re my dad’s clients. I don’t know them or anything. I can’t just call them up and tell them we need them to save our little summer camp!”

  Nat shrugged, still serious. “Can you try?” she asked. “They’re from Harrisburg, right? And one of them even went to Camp Lakeview! Maybe it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition. Maybe they would be into helping us out.”

  Tori took a breath. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve never done anything like that before. It’s asking a huge favor of my dad—and I’ve never asked him to use his clients to get anything for me.”

  Nat nodded slowly. “Maybe it’s time?”

  Tori sighed. “This is going to be hard for me. I really have no idea how my dad will react. He might be mad at me for even asking. I mean, these are his customers, basically.”

  Nat was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “Just now, when everyone was realizing that the protest is dead and we’re going to have to deal with camp closing, how did you feel?”

  Tori looked incredulous. “Are you kidding? I felt awful.”

  Nat nodded. “Me too,” she said softly. “The question is, did you feel awful enough to take this little chance with your dad?”

  “Girls,” Dr. Steve greeted Nat and her bunkmates as they all crowded into his office. “I have to say I’ve been looking forward to this meeting and seeing what you ladies have come up with.”

  Nat smiled. Brynn looked a little sheepish when she admitted, “Actually, it’s kind of rough still. Kind of still at the outline stage. But we have some pieces of songs we can perform for you.”

  Dr. Steve looked a little surprised. “Um . . . all right,” he replied. “Though I have to say, I thought you’d have a full presentation together by now.”

  Tori nodded. “We know, but we hit some roadblocks in the planning.”

  “These songs might be rough,” Brynn added, “but they’re full of heart.”

  “Yeah, try to think of them as works in process,” Sloan agreed.

  Dr. Steve nodded. “All right,” he said slowly. “Shall we start, then?”

  Nat stood up. “Just one moment,” she replied. Quietly she walked out of Dr. Steve’s office and then out of the building, into the bright sunlight of the sports field. There she met up with four “campers”—or at least, to the casual observer they’d look like campers. They were all crouched down to look shorter, decked out in Camp Lakeview T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps. Natalie walked them back into the building and through the door of Dr. Steve’s office.

  “Hello,” Todd, the tallest “camper,” greeted Dr. Steve cheerfully.

  Dr. Steve looked confused. “Hello,” he replied. “Am I missing something? Are there several extra people in this office right now?”

  “Dr. Steve,” Tori explained with a smile, “this is Judy Renaissance. They’re a local band that I know of through my dad, and they’ve been nice enough to help us refine our protest.”

  Dr. Steve looked confused. “How on earth . . . ?” he began. “How did you get onto camp grounds with no one stopping you?”

  Nat shrugged sheepishly. “I may have met them in the parking lot with some camp regalia.”

  Todd smiled. “I used to come here myself when I was a kid,” he explained. “I don’t remember you, though.”

  Dr. Steve nodded. “Before my time,” Dr. Steve said. “Well, welcome, sirs, I suppose. I’m eager to see what you and these very creative ladies have come up with.”

  “Awesome,” Billy, the guitar player, said. The band members looked around at one another and all hoisted their instruments in the air. Todd looked at Nat and her bunkmates.

  “Ready, ladies?” he asked.

  Nat nodded and smiled.

  Billy struck an opening chord on his guitar, and soon the whole room was filled with bouncing, pulsing music. Nat couldn’t help it—she bounced
on her toes, swaying and shaking. It was impossible to listen to Judy Renaissance’s music and not dance. As the intro came to an end, she looked around at her bunkmates as they all opened their mouths to sing the first verse of the reworked “We Love Camp”:

  “Sitting on my bunk bed

  Splashing in the lake

  At Camp Lakeview, I feel a happiness

  I don’t have to fake.”

  As the chorus approached, Billy went off on an amazing guitar riff, and Frank, who hadn’t been able to bring his whole drum set, began drumming wildly with his sticks on Dr. Steve’s desk.

  “We love camp!”

  They were all dancing now, bouncing up and down and waving their arms to the beat. From where she stood, Nat thought they looked like a breathing, pulsing animal—all arms flailing, instruments wailing, and girls shouting to the beat.

  “Save Camp Lakeview!”

  Abruptly the guitars and keyboards stopped, and the band members took deep breaths and wiped their brows. The girls all fell back to earth, smoothing their hair and smiling at Dr. Steve.

  “Wow,” Dr. Steve said simply.

  “It’s rough,” Nat rushed to explain. “I mean, the lyrics. We’ll definitely refine them in the next few days before the protest . . . but we wanted to give you an idea of what the performance would be like.”

  “And the lyrics are all written by Us,” Brynn broke in. “Just so you know. The guys have helped us shape them up a little and adapt them to the music, but this is a pure camp-generated performance!”

  Dr. Steve nodded slowly, looking from the girls to the band and back again. “And the . . . Judy Renaissance?”

  Todd nodded.

  “They’re able to help you plan the protest and to be there on the day of?” Dr. Steve asked. “This isn’t too much of an imposition on them?”

  The band members shook their heads vigorously.

  “Absolutely not,” Todd replied. “Actually, we’re between tours right now, so we’re right in the area. And we’re locals, dude. I came here as a kid. We know how much this camp means to the area, the kids that come here. If I knew there was some way that we could help and we didn’t give it our all, I’d feel terrible!”