Breakout!

by Stacy Davidowitz

  “Up for what?” Jenny asked.

  “Egg Toss!”

  Jenny bulged her eyes. She wasn’t flattered; she was mortified. “What about Sophie?”

  Jenny and Melman looked at Sophie. “I don’t believe in the abuse of eggs for entertainment,” Sophie said. “I find it very uncivilized. But if it’s going to happen one way or another, I would like to be the one to toss and protect.” She gave a three-finger salute, à la Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.

  Melman winced regretfully. “I didn’t know you felt so passionately about it.”

  What?! How had Melman not known? Was she selectively deaf to Sophie’s extensive chats about Duckie, Sondra, and Namaste Edgersteckin, her three egg babies? Had Melman blocked out Sophie’s story about how some deranged monster-bully in the cafeteria had chucked Namaste at her head? Sophie had caught the poor, egg-napped baby in the taco-meat pile on her tray! She should be competing in the Egg Toss, a no-brainer.

  Melman continued, relentlessly upbeat. “The good news, Soph, is that I have you down for the Sneaker Relay!”

  “That’s a problem.” She stuck out her Velcro sandal. “I’m not wearing sneakers, and I’m a size nine. I can’t borrow. Your feet are too small.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes at Sophie’s blatant unpreparedness and Melman’s lack of common sense in her assignment of events.

  Melman nodded at Sophie’s foot. “But you know what, J?” Jenny braced herself for whatever dumb motivational line Melman was about to vomit. “You’re going to toss it out of the egg park!” There it was.

  Jenny ignored Melman and took her place on the court opposite Smelly, while the other pairs took their places beside them. Jenny was losing herself in Smelly’s nervous eyes, thinking about the fact that they’d be tossing an egg until it met its demise. Then they’d lose. Suddenly, Jenny was struck with an idea! She’d learned from Pretty Little Liars that when assailants learn their victim’s name, it pulls on their heartstrings and makes them reconsider murder. “What should we name her?” she asked Smelly.

  “Huh?” Smelly asked.

  “The egg,” Jenny said. “Naming her will naturally motivate us to keep her from cracking to death.”

  “Uh, how ’bout ‘Eggy’?” Smelly suggested.

  Yes, Eggy. That’s a very sympathetic name, Jenny thought sarcastically. This egg was going to die.

  The Captain tapped the mic. “Attention, Blue and White. Before we begin, please note: Eggs will crack. Participants, DO NOT eat the cracked eggs. They are uncooked and WILL give you salmonella.”

  General Power leaned into the mic. “That means you, Lieutenant Play Dough. We all know you’ll put anything with a calorie in your mouth.”

  Both teams cracked up. Play Dough waved at the chuckling crowd like a true sport, but Jenny could tell he was embarrassed—his cheeks turned pink and his eyes glazed over. Sure, Play Dough liked food, but he wasn’t the idiot General Power kept making him out to be. That was another reason this Color War needed Jenny to lead—she’d stand up for her fellow officers instead of blindly focusing on the positive like Melman was doing.

  “You may TOSS your EGG!” the Captain announced.

  Jenny hopped to attention. Smelly lobbed Eggy to her. The shell smacked her inner knuckles but didn’t crack. Jenny gently lobbed Eggy to Smelly. Too short, but Smelly dove to save her. Jenny wished they had a concrete strategy. She looked at Sophie for help, but Sophie was wearing her sweatshirt backward, the hood up over her face. This was all too much for her to stand. And it was all too much for Jenny to stand, too. Eggs were splatting left and right. Smelly lobbed Eggy to Jenny. Jenny caught Eggy against her stomach. She lobbed Eggy to Smelly. Too far, but Smelly sprinted backward and caught her over some Bunker Hiller’s lap.

  “Nice catch, Smelly!” Melman cheered. “See? You can do it, Jenny! You can really throw and catch!”

  Jenny cringed. Of course she could throw and catch. Was she the only one who knew she was athletic? Just because she didn’t want to play sports ALL THE TIME like Melman did didn’t mean she was an uncoordinated Barbie or whatever. But it also didn’t mean she had what it took to be in the last Egg Toss pair standing—so far, every back and forth had been a miracle.

  Jenny looked down the court at Missi and Wiener, who were doing a lot of exaggerated lunging and cradling—they seemed to be doing all right. Maybe she could adopt their strategy. She practiced a lunge. And then she felt a splat against her chest. There was egg yolk dripping down her body. Eggy had died. “You’re supposed to make eye contact!” she yelled at Smelly. “I wasn’t ready. Hellooooo!”

  “Sorry,” Smelly said. “I couldn’t tell. You’re wearing sunglasses.”

  Jenny had forgotten. She’d thrown them on before lunch to hide her swollen-from-crying eyes and had apparently kept them on long after the sun had set. “We should have named our egg something beautiful,” Jenny told him, moving the sunglasses to the top of her head. “Like ‘Isabella Ryan.’” That was Jenny’s all-time favorite name. It would be the name of her first-born baby or puppy, whichever came first. “With a name like Isabella Ryan, you would have been more careful.”

  “I liked ‘Eggy.’”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Uh, OK.”

  Jenny tended to have a kind of power over people—the kind that got them to agree with her, which was the billionth reason she would have made an amazing Lieutenant. Simply put, Melman was too nice. There was no room for niceness in war. It was how eggs died, and points were lost, and Sealed Envelopes were forfeited to the enemy.

  The Captain boomed into the mic: “The Egg Toss goes to . . . WHITE!”

  Jenny looked down the court at Missi and Wiener, who were holding hands and jumping up and down. Their dumb, nameless egg baby was being Simba’d by Totle for all of White to worship. Then Jenny watched as Jamie leapt onto Missi and covered her with a million kisses. Laughing hysterically, the girls fell to the ground and rolled on top of cracked eggs. It was gross.

  Jenny felt her heart go all runny like yolk, and threw her sunglasses back down over her eyes. She wished Christopher were here. He’d lift her high in the sky à la Dirty Dancing and yell at Melman, “No one puts Jenny in the Egg Toss!” Then they’d hold hands and kiss and he’d assure Jenny that she was too good to be Lieutenant. She was too pretty and too smart and too athletic and too amazing.

  Since Melman hadn’t assigned Jenny to any more events, Jenny offered to chart the results for the rest of the Novelty Relays. Melman didn’t seem to think she’d need the results for her records, since the judges kept track of everything, but Jenny knew from recent past experience that TJ and the Captain were privy to making errors. (Cough, cough, not making Jenny a Lieutenant.) Plus, Jenny probably had salmonella festering on her shirt and could use the distraction. Relay after relay, she wrote down the competitors and the winner.

  After Blue took home the Shuttle Relay, the Captain tapped the mic to hush the crowd. “Bravo and brava, Blue and White! We have one last event for tonight’s Novelty Relays: the Frozen T-shirt Contest!” There were a bunch of extra-loud cheers. The Frozen T-shirt Contest was by far the best, most exciting, event of the Novelty Relays. It was also the event that Jenny had studied the hardest. The Captain carried on: “Each officer will be given a frozen T-shirt. The officers’ job is to unfreeze their shirt just enough so that they can wear it, arms and head through all the right holes. The first team to have all of their shirts on wins!”

  As fast as lightning, Jenny scribbled strategies on the back of the score chart:

  HOW TO WIN THE FROZEN T-SHIRT CONTEST

  (1) Find a puddle. Immerse your T-shirt.

  (2) Hog the water fountain. Run water over your T-shirt.

  (3) Spit on your T-shirt. Suck on a lemon to get the saliva going.

  (4) Wack your T-shirt against the basketball poles.

  (5) Wack your T-shirt against the courtside light poles.

  (6) Climb the light pole and hold your T-shirt
up to the bulb.

  (7) As a last, gross resort, pee on your T-shirt.

  Jenny wanted to relay these strategies to Melman, but Melman was already huddled up with the Blue officers. She thought about slipping the info to Play Dough, who was getting a drink of water, but by the time she reached the fountain, he’d be huddled up, too. Running thin on ideas, she turned to Sophie.

  “Sophster.” Sophie was still shaken up by the eggs (literally, she was shaking), so Jenny tried to be extra-sensitive. “Do you think Melman knows how to unfreeze a T-shirt?”

  “Probably.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “If you knew the answer, then—?”

  “Because I do know how to unfreeze a T-shirt. And I know how to do it better than anyone else.” Jenny offered Sophie the paper and watched her read the strategies in two seconds flat.

  The Captain continued into the mic: “Since both Blue and White have three wins, the winner of the Frozen T-shirt Contest will earn the second Sealed Envelope of the war!”

  “We’re tied, Sophie,” Jenny said, flipping over the paper to the chart. “So it’s über-important that Melman knows what she’s doing. We need to get her this paper.”

  Before Jenny could say another word, Sophie began a weird origami project, folding the paper into an elephant—no—a Dutch hat—no—an airplane! “Omigod, you’re a genius!” Jenny squealed.

  Sophie threw the paper airplane across the court. It soared toward Melman, but at the very last second swooped down and over, crashing into the back of Jamie’s head.

  Jenny full-body cringed as she watched Jamie rub her hair, spot the paper airplane at her feet, look around in massive confusion, and then unfold it. “No, no, no, no, no!” Jenny muttered under her breath.

  “My bad,” Sophie mumbled. She put her hood back up over her face.

  On the court, TJ rolled out a cooler of frozen T-shirts. “I froze the shirts under the birthday ice cream three weeks ago. They’re rock-solid.” He lifted the cover—the ice was so cold, it was gassing up before the officers’ eyes. Jamie was so absorbed in Jenny’s strategies, she didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Ready, set . . . UNFREEZE!” the Captain called.

  Jenny watched with horror as Play Dough approached his T-shirt with his tongue. “Spit, Play Dough, you’re supposed to spit!” she yelled from the bleachers. But it was too late. Play Dough’s tongue suctioned to his shirt. Then Melman neglected her shirt to help Play Dough detach himself. Too nice.

  Meanwhile, Jamie had her shirt immersed in a courtside puddle and was shouting at her fellow officers: “Wack it! Wet it! Bring it to the light!” They were doing just as she said. Jamie had never looked so competent in her life.

  Jenny wished she could take credit for her ideas. But she and Sophie would be thought of as traitors. Jenny already had egg yolk hardening on her clothes. She didn’t also need blue paint thrown on her, like how the officers had done to Play Dough.

  Ten minutes later, all eight White officers were wearing their unfrozen T-shirts, and only six of the Blue officers were wearing theirs. Play Dough’s tongue was finally free, but he and Melman were super-behind in the T-shirt unfreezing department. And so, protocol being protocol, both teams had to watch for five more minutes until they finally got their shirts over their heads. Then TJ blew his whistle, and without even saying it aloud, the Captain whooshed her arms to White.

  The White team erupted: “Ne-der-bau-er! Ne-der-bau-er!”

  Jenny could barely process the fact that half the camp was screaming for Jamie, and the other half was probably wishing she’d been assigned to Blue.

  Jamie lifted her velour pants so they wouldn’t drag on the ground and pranced over to Jenny with a huge smile. Jenny froze in terror as Jamie threw her arms around her neck and whispered: “I recognized your handwriting! Omigod, thank you, thank you!”

  Jenny peeled Jamie off of her. Jamie was on White. She was a Lieutenant. Didn’t she know that embracing Jenny, that thanking Jenny, was so not OK? “For what?” Jenny asked, trying to play it cool.

  “For the—” She stopped herself and pulled Jenny’s list from her pocket. “I’m so relieved. I thought you were mad at me all day today!”

  Inside, Jenny stumbled a little. She had been mad at Jamie. But admitting that would be admitting a whole bunch of other stuff she didn’t want to admit. “Why would I be mad at you?” Jenny asked.

  Jamie shrunk at the shoulders. “Um. Because I’m Lieutenant and you’re not.”

  Well, that’s dumb, Jenny thought. Jamie should have asked her if they were on OK terms instead of assuming that they weren’t and walking around like God’s gift to camp. But Jenny didn’t want to seem needy or resentful. So she lied. “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I’m scared for you.”

  “Is that why you air-dropped me help?” Jamie asked, trying to understand.

  Jenny’s lies seemed to be piecing together nicely, so she decided to keep at it. “Yeah,” she said. “I helped you, because without me you’d just embarrass yourself.”

  “Oh,” Jamie said.

  “Yeah,” Jenny confirmed. “Sorry, but it’s true.”

  Jamie squinted in thought. And then said meekly, “I thought I was doing OK on my own. I was sort of proud of myself.”

  Jenny thought back to the full day of activities they’d had, from Tug-o-War to volleyball to tennis to the Novelty Relays. Jamie had been spirited and organized. She’d led her team to victory on more than one occasion. She actually deserved to be proud of herself. But now was not the time for compliments. Admitting Jamie’s success was admitting that camp didn’t need Jenny to lead a team, after all. That the position she’d been striving for really could go to any Upper Camper. That Jenny’s destiny was possibly nothing special. So Jenny did the only thing she could think of. She laughed. A really mean, nasty laugh.

  “You know what?” Jamie said, tossing her skinny arms up. “You’re just jealous. And yeah, maybe you would have made a really good Lieutenant, but no one asked you to be one. They asked me. And so far, I’m doing awesome. I don’t need any more of your help.” She tossed Jenny her airplane of strategies and scores. “In fact, you’ve been trying to keep me in your shadow for four summers, and I realize now that, without you, I’m a bigger, better person! Bigger and better than you!”

  Jenny was glad that she had her sunglasses on. She was not glad that the sunglasses didn’t extend to her chin, where a tear was sliding. She caught the tear with the back of her hand and then rubbed her chin like she was deep in thought and not losing control of her emotions. “Yeah, well, you look like a grandma with your hair like that,” she told Jamie.

  “And you look like a loser,” Jamie fired back. “A mean, eggy, no-one-cares-about-you LOSER.”

  Lake Bread for the Teenage Soul

  Play Dough was sitting on a life jacket inside a canoe inside the Boat Shack, munching on white bread, and he couldn’t have been more relieved. Lunch had ended an hour ago and snack wasn’t until 3:10 P.M., and if General Power thought Play Dough could wait that long, he was high on Cheez Whiz. Leading a team used a lot of energy. Leading a team poorly and getting called out for it used up even more. He could tell by the sweatfall of his pits. This week, it had reached a record high.

  TJ’s voice blared from the corner of the shack. Play Dough jolted forward.

  TJ: Good afternoon, Rolling Hills! The time has come to talk about one of Color War’s biggest events. It rhymes with Ratchet Stunt. Can anyone guess what it is? [singing the Jeopardy theme song] Do, do, do, do—

  Captain: TJ, we don’t have a lot of time.

  TJ: The Hatchet Hunt!

  Captain: Every summer we hide the Color War Hatchet on the campgrounds.

  TJ: But not in any cabins! Maybe under a cabin or around a cabin, but certainly not inside of one.

  Captain: No private spaces—they understand.

  TJ: Past hiding spots include: The Dining Hall chimney. Backstage, inside the papier-mâché hi
ll for the Fourth of July show. And my favorite, the toilet of the Social Hall unisex bathroom.

  Captain: We don’t repeat hiding spots, so save yourself time and don’t look there.

  TJ: Other toilets, though—knock yourself out.

  Captain: The Hatchet is not in any toilet. Please don’t go reaching inside toilets.

  TJ: Then where should they look, Captain?

  Captain: We have clues for you. Two clues will be announced per day until the Hatchet is found.

  Say a clue now! Play Dough thought back to past clues. When the Hatchet was hidden in the Dining Hall chimney, the clue was “Longest word in English,” which led campers to “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” which led them to Mary Poppins, which led them to chimney sweeps, which led them to the chimney. That one was easy. The clues for the toilet-bound Hatchet were really hard. The first clue was “Crib Lay Age” which is “Glacier Bay” scrambled, which is a national park in Alaska, which is irrelevant. The relevant part: Glacier Bay is a brand of toilet, the kind that the Hatchet was hidden inside.

  The Hatchet Hunt was Play Dough’s favorite part of Color War. He was subpar in athletics, had subpar brainpower, and was only good-par at art stuff that required stick figures, but, oh boy, was he adventurous. Chimney climbing? Scenery destruction? Toilet digging? Sign him up. Plus, Play Dough bet finding the Hatchet would make up for all the dumb mistakes he’d made so far. He could see it in the headline of the Hilltop-per, Camp Rolling Hills’ only online blog: “Lieutenant Garfink, a Blue Pioneer and Hatcheteer! Not a Fat Moron, No Sir!”

  TJ: The very first clue is . . . Wait for it—

  Captain: Lady and the Tramp.

  That Disney dog movie from sixty years ago? Play Dough’s mind was already spinning with hiding spots. He dissected the word “Disney.” Disney dis-knee this knee when your knee hurts you go to the infirmary = the steps of the infirmary! He then dissected the word “dog.” Dog woof! ruff! sounds like “roof” = the roof of any cabin! He would have to narrow that down a bit more.

  TJ: And when can teams search for the Hatchet?