Camp Clique

by Eileen Moskowitz-Palma

I heard a rustling sound and instantly regretted all those late nights reading Stephen King’s It right before coming to camp.

  “Maisy? Is that you?” I whispered.

  “Bea?”

  “Maisy? Where are you?”

  “Behind you. At the art cabin.” Maisy whimpered.

  I spun around to face the cabin that was a few feet away from our bunk. Everyone called it the art cabin because that’s what it had been back in the antiquated days when Poppy’s Nana Mary was a camper. But over the years, as the camp became more serious about preparing the girls for the bunk tournaments, it was turned into a fitness center. Everyone, including the new girls like Maisy, still called it the art cabin.

  “I’m around back,” Maisy whispered. “On the porch.”

  Maisy was crouched on the porch railing with her back arched like a cat.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  Maisy white knuckled the railing. “I was going to jump. But then I chickened out.”

  “You were going to kill yourself over the bunk tournament?”

  Maisy’s eyes widened. “Are you insane?” she whisper-yelled.

  I tiptoed slowly to her with my arms stretched out like they do on TV shows when someone is about to jump off a bridge. “You’re the one standing on a porch railing in the middle of the night and I’m the crazy person?”

  Maisy rolled her eyes and shook her head, as if I was the unstable person in this situation. “I wasn’t going to kill myself. I swear.”

  “Then what’re you doing up there?” I asked in my most calm and soothing voice.

  “Get me down, then I’ll explain,” Maisy hissed.

  I was done with Maisy bossing me around. I folded my arms across my chest. “Tell me first.”

  She teetered on the edge of the railing as if she were hanging off a cliff. “I thought if I jumped off the railing, I would sprain my wrist or, even better, break my ankle.”

  “What? Why would you want to do that?”

  Maisy put on her most dramatic face and tone of voice. “It’s the only way out of here.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “We jump off that porch all the time. No one gets sent home for a skinned knee.”

  “It’s not funny.” Maisy’s whispers were getting louder. “I can’t go all summer living with a bunch of girls who hate me.”

  “Oooh, yeah.” I resisted the urge to push her off. “I’d hate to be surrounded by people who hate me. I mean, that’s really rough.”

  She looked down at the ground. She knew where I was going. “You could’ve made other friends.”

  “’Cause it’s really easy? Like you can make friends here, right?” I turned away. Maisy could save herself this time.

  “Bea, wait. Don’t leave me,” she pleaded.

  I started walking away. It’s not like she was on top of the Empire State Building.

  “Please, Bea,” she begged.

  I turned back and looked her right in her hazel eyes. “Give me one reason why I should help you.”

  “I have a plan.” Maisy stretched out the last word.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I thought your plan was to jump off the porch.”

  “I have a new plan. A better one.” There was a hint of desperation in her voice.

  Maisy makes good plans. She always has. Once, she figured out we were wasting our time with a lemonade stand on my quiet cul-de-sac, and she came up with the idea to sell gluten-free, fat-free muffins on the commuter train platform instead. In one day we made enough money for a pile of glittery headbands, sequined skirts, and graphic tees from Justice. Looking back, those outfits were mortifyingly tacky, but at the time they felt like pure gold.

  Maisy was steadying herself on the porch railing with two shaky hands.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  “If you make your friends like me, I’ll try my best to help you guys win the tournament.”

  I laughed out loud—to be accurate, I guffawed. “That’s your big plan?”

  She wobbled a bit. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “You want me to get my friends to put up with the Maisy Show all summer in exchange for you,” I made air quotes, “trying your best?”

  “The Maisy Show?” She held her arms out like she was on a balance beam.

  “You can’t expect my friends to deal with all the Maisy drama all the time for the whole entire summer. And you can’t expect me to make it all okay for you.”

  Maisy crouched to a squatting position. “I can’t do this, Bea. I can’t spend the whole summer here with my entire bunk hating me.”

  “Then go home,” I said. “Call your mom and beg and plead. Say whatever you need to get your parents to come pick you up.”

  “Going home is not an option. You’re my only hope at surviving camp this summer.” Maisy breathed in so deeply that her whole rib cage moved underneath her pajama shirt. “Name your price.”

  What could Maisy offer me? I thought about what I really wanted, what I really needed. All I wanted was to feel at school like I did at camp. Some might call it popular; I didn’t care what anyone called it. I just wanted to belong. But I knew Maisy’s language.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “I’ll make you popular at camp if you make me popular at school.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MAISY

  I COULDN’T SLEEP BECAUSE AS SOON AS MY HEAD HIT THE PILLOW, I started wondering how this whole pact thing was going to work. The more I thought about it, the more questions I had that only Bea could answer. After a while, I heard her get up, so I climbed down from my bunk and followed her to the bathroom.

  I could hear her peeing, then the toilet flushed and she opened the door and jumped back.

  “You scared me! What are you doing?” she hissed. Then she looked down at my feet. “Why are you wearing sneakers? You’re not going to sneak out again, are you, because…”

  “Calm down. I’m not going anywhere. I slept in my shoes.” I looked down at the expensive running sneakers Dad had bought me just before I left. I should’ve known that was a clue he was sending me to a sporty camp. “They keep the bugs from touching my feet.”

  “What?” Bea wiped the sleep from her eyes. “I’m half asleep. What do you want?”

  “I can’t sleep. How’s this pact gonna work?” I whispered.

  She held her finger to her lips, then tiptoed to the bathroom door and pushed it closed slowly so it didn’t make a sound.

  “I’m going to make you fit in with my friend group at camp. When we go home, you’re going to make me fit in with yours,” Bea whispered, in a condescending way, as if I was the stupidest person on earth.

  I swallowed hard. “You want to hang out with the M & Ms?”

  “I don’t just want to hang out with the M & Ms. I want to be a part of the group.” Her tone of voice showed she knew she was the one with all the power in this situation.

  “But you don’t even like them,” I said. “You think they’re artificial, superficial, obsessed with popularity.” I ticked each word off on my fingers.

  Bea cut me off. “You know what I really don’t like? Eating lunch alone in the library every day. You know what else I don’t like? Going through a whole school day without anyone talking to me. Not. One. Single. Person,” she hissed.

  As much as I had tried to convince myself that she didn’t mind being alone all the time, deep down I knew she was miserable. But there were some serious problems with her plan. The most obvious issue was that her name doesn’t start with an M. Then there was the fact that I was the last girl in the group, and Meghan made sure to remind me of that on the daily. I mean, it wasn’t like I really had the power to add on to the group when my spot was still kind of weak. Then there was the obvious problem—the M & Ms didn’t like her. They thought Bea was a know-it-all, which was going to be pretty hard to prove wrong. But I had the whole summer to figure it all out.

  I looked Bea in the eye. “It’s a deal.”

  Bea reached
out her hand. “Let’s shake on it.”

  “Um, can you wash your hands first?”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is going to be a long summer.”

  After I climbed back in bed, I must’ve fallen right to sleep, because next thing I knew the sun was shining in through the windows and I could hear the other girls moving around in their bunks. Bea had told me to pretend to stay asleep till she talked to the girls. So, I rolled to face the wall and snuggled deeper into my blankets. I was dying to braid my hair, but I stayed still as a statue so I wouldn’t give myself up. The bedsprings creaked as Bea climbed out of the bottom bunk.

  “Move over,” Bea said. I could hear the mattress coils groan as she climbed into someone else’s bunk, probably Hannah’s.

  Isa’s Staten Island accent was strong first thing in the morning. “What time is it?”

  “Too early for talking,” moaned Hannah. “Ainsley’s not back from her morning run yet.”

  “Especially because it’s not like we have anything to train for because of a certain someone,” Poppy whisper-yelled.

  You know things are bad when the Poppys of the world are hating on you.

  “Winning that tournament every summer is the only time I feel… like I’m in charge. Back home my mom and agent run my life.” Poppy let out a loud sigh. “The Justice photo shoot made me the most popular girl in fourth grade. But this year, all the girls at school turned on me when I got the Abercrombie campaign.”

  No wonder I thought Poppy looked familiar. I probably had a shopping bag at home with her actual face on it.

  “We lost all that power as soon as ‘The Girl Who Is Afraid of Everything’ moved into our bunk.” Isa groaned.

  “I can’t stop thinking about what Ainsley said. Maybe we’re the Mean Girls we all hate back home,” Bea said.

  Isa cut in, “Maisy gave up before she even started. All she cares about is herself.”

  The ironic thing is that Dad said one reason he was sending me to camp was so I could focus on myself. I had spent the whole last year worrying about Mom so much that I hadn’t had much time to think about me.

  “The only way to prove Ainsley wrong is by being nice to Maisy, whether she’s good at rope climbing or not,” said Bea. “What good is winning the Cup if we’re as judgmental as all those people back home who drag us down?”

  Hannah sounded suspicious, which helped prove her point that she didn’t belong in that horrible math class. “I thought you hated Maisy.”

  “Yeah,” Poppy jumped in. “You spent all year texting us about how materialistic she is… how fake… how all she cares about is being popular.”

  Bea acts all innocent, but she knows how to throw some shade.

  “And how she spent the past year following the M & Ms,” added Isa.

  Seriously, the girl could cut deep with her words.

  Bea cut in. “That was before she was part of our bunk.”

  Isa groaned. “The girl’s phobias are going to keep us from winning the Cup. Why should we bother wasting our time on her?”

  “That’s my point,” said Bea. “Maybe Ainsley was right about us.”

  “Don’t say that. I already feel so guilty about the way we treated her yesterday,” Poppy admitted.

  Bea started talking faster. “Would you guys be friends with me if I wasn’t such a good swimmer? Would we all be friends with Isa if she wasn’t the faster runner at camp? Or Hannah, if she wasn’t amazing at the ropes course? Or Poppy if she wasn’t such a fast kayaker?”

  “Of course we would all still be friends,” said Hannah.

  “There’s only one way to prove that to ourselves,” said Bea. “We give Maisy a chance.”

  I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath until I let it out. I needed this. It was the only way not to think about what would be waiting for me back home at the end of the summer.

  BEA

  This past school year has been one of complete loneliness. I was the outsider in a sea of groups because tweens believe being unpopular is as contagious as the stomach flu. No one wants to catch being unpopular right before middle school. Things got so bad, I considered moving in with Dad to get a fresh start in a new school district. But the thought of leaving Mom behind made it hard to breathe. Even worse, Monica’s kids are allergic to cats, so I’m not even allowed to bring Mr. Pebbles for a visit. Mom thinks that’s just a cover for Monica, who doesn’t want to get cat hair on her pristine furniture. Not to mention, when I brought up moving in with Dad casually at dinner, Monica gave Dad the “We’ll talk about this later” look. The next day, he gave me a lecture about “not messing with things that work,” like me living with Mom.

  As much as I didn’t want to trust Maisy, my destiny was now tied to hers. I was going to have to do everything in my power to make this pact work.

  After breakfast, I took advantage of Ainsley getting pulled aside for a counselor meeting. As we left the dining cabin, I turned left at the birch tree with the peeling bark and headed down the rocky path.

  “Where are you going?” Hannah asked.

  Normally, we spent our post-breakfast free period poring through Poppy’s fashion magazines. But I led us deep under the canopy of birch trees, where the air felt cool and damp. “We’re not giving up on the ropes course.”

  Isa narrowed her eyes at me. “I thought we agreed to be nice to Maisy. Now you want us to torture her?”

  I spoke in an octave deeper than I usually do because I read somewhere that doing that can give the illusion of confidence. “We’re going to help Maisy conquer her fear.”

  Maisy wedged herself next to me on the path, which was really only wide enough for single-file walking, and hissed, “What if I don’t want to conquer my fear?”

  “You wanted me to help you fit in. This is how,” I whispered back.

  “Isn’t there another way?” She was breaking into a sweat.

  “This is it.”

  As soon as we got to the clearing that led to the ropes course, I stood up straight with my hands clasped so the girls would know I meant business. “We didn’t give Maisy a chance yesterday.”

  Isa shook her head vehemently. “That’s not true—”

  “Not a real one,” I cut in. “We all forgot it was her first time doing a ropes course. It’s not like any of us aced it on our first try.”

  Poppy nodded, always ready to give someone a second, third, or even fourth chance. “Bea’s right. You guys should’ve seen how bad I did at my first photo shoot.”

  Hannah picked up a helmet off the ground and handed it to Maisy. That was her way of saying she was in.

  Maisy stared at the helmet. I gave her a look that said, “Take it or you’re going to sabotage the pact.”

  Maisy put the helmet on. “You need to come with me, Bea.”

  I pulled on my own helmet and adjusted the chin strap. “That’s the plan.” I turned to the other girls. “And the rest of you guys need to be supportive, even if she has another nervous breakdown.”

  Isa shrugged in a passive-aggressive way. “It’s not like we have a shot at the Cup otherwise.”

  I held out a rope harness for Maisy to step into. “Our only goal is to get across that zipline today.”

  “It makes sense to break it up into parts. That’s how I learned algebra.” Hannah pulled on a belaying harness. “I’ll belay for you, and Isa will belay for Maisy.”

  “And I’ll be here for moral support,” said Poppy.

  I pulled my rope harness tight. “Thanks, guys.”

  Maisy chattered as we walked to the tree. “What if I didn’t put my helmet on right? Is it tight enough? If I’m not supposed to fall and I have people spotting me, why do I even need a helmet? Do people fall off? Is that a thing? Is that why we need helmets? And spotters? And harnesses?”

  Maisy’s nervous energy made the air around us thick. I unclicked her chin strap and swung the helmet around. “It was backward. But it’s all set now and if it was on any tighter, your head would po
p off.”

  Maisy put both hands on her helmet and looked satisfied when she wasn’t able to jiggle it around. “Seriously, why do we need to wear helmets and harnesses if it’s so safe?”

  I leaned into her and kept my voice low. “You’re never gonna be friends with these girls if you don’t show them you’re at least trying.”

  “Fine.” Maisy sighed. “But remember, my life is in your hands.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You are so dramatic.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I should be at drama camp right now,” Maisy said.

  I slipped my feet into the plastic footholds and climbed to the first rung. “Come on. Right behind me.”

  I was shocked when she actually grabbed on to the plastic holds and stepped onto the tree. Clearly, she was as desperate as I was for this pact to work.

  “You know you can climb the tree. You did it yesterday.” I moved up to the next rung and felt Maisy close behind me.

  “It’s not the climbing that’s scary, it’s that tiny little platform.” Her voice was shaky and breathless.

  “You’re not that big, and the platform isn’t that small. There’s plenty of room.” I kept reaching hand over hand, foot over foot, with Maisy so close I could feel her breath on my shins.

  “Come on, Maisy! You can do it!” yelled Poppy.

  I pulled myself up and squatted down on the wooden platform. “All you have to do is climb up.”

  “Great job, Maisy!” Poppy yelled from right underneath the tree.

  I put both of my hands on top of Maisy’s as soon as she touched the platform. “I have you.”

  She pulled herself up, breathing super heavy, and flopped on the platform, looking just like that big trout that leapt onto the dock at my grandma’s summer cottage that one time.

  “That was the hard part! Ziplining doesn’t require any upper body strength. All you have to do is jump!” yelled Hannah.

  Maisy sat up and tried to catch her breath. “Jumping is the hard part.”

  She is the type of person who lays her clothes out the night before, even on the weekends. It was starting to make sense why ziplining would be scary for a control freak like her.