The whistle blew and the Captain announced a Blue win. Or maybe it was White. Jenny was so consumed with her crisis, and the teams were both cheering so wildly, she couldn’t tell. Melman weaved her way to Jenny’s side. “You ready to show the lake who’s boss?” she asked.
Jenny had the urge to tell Melman everything. To confess that she’d found the Hatchet, and fallen in love, and had probably just gotten dumped for the second time in a week. But Melman wouldn’t care about any of that except for the Hatchet part. And if she knew about the Hatchet, she’d probably “do the right thing” and rat her out about finding it after hours. Or she’d “do the wrong thing” and be complicit in Jenny’s Hatchet crime. Jenny didn’t want any more trouble. She just wanted a friend. But since that wasn’t in the cards, she had no choice but to embrace her solo flight. “Ready, I guess.”
“Great. You’re doing the obstacle course. You’ll surf bike to the trambopoline—”
“WHAT?”
“Just use the ladder, I have faith in you.”
Jenny had thought she’d be doing the normal surf bike relay, but now Melman was telling her that she was doing the obstacle course, centimeters from the Hatchet? As she followed Melman to the dock, her mind started to spin. Could she reveal the Hatchet during the race? She knew she wasn’t allowed to ditch an activity to hunt for the Hatchet, but like TJ had said, you’re allowed to find it at one. And now was better than Rest Hour, when she’d need a buddy, as per Color War rules. Because who would risk being her buddy after her last stunt? No one.
Jenny threw off her sweatshirt and shorts so she was sporting nothing but her blue tankini. She looked at Play Dough, who was on his back, detangling his ankles from the life jacket like a netted seal. She glanced at Jamie, who was helping Missi balance on a surf bike, the two of them giggling. She peeked at the spot in the trambopoline where the Hatchet was hidden, her wheels spinning faster, faster, faster.
Jenny boarded the surf bike next to a grinning Missi. “I read the letter you wrote me,” Missi said.
“That’s what letters are for,” Jenny responded.
“Do you really think my hair is full of life?”
Jenny gave Missi a blank stare. “Uh-huh.” Then she focused back on the trambopoline, her fingers gripping the bike handles so hard that her knuckles turned her opponent’s color. Finally, her wheels stopped spinning. She’d settled on a plan that would earn her team a Sealed Envelope. She’d be showered with glory. She’d make camp herstory.
The Captain roared into the megaphone: “On your surf, get set, BIKE!”
Jenny peddled as fast as she could. The water splashed up at her feet. Her heart began racing. Her bangs got damp with sweat. She soaked up Blue’s singing: “Bike, bike, bike your boat, round the trambopoline. Speedily, speedily, speedily, speedily, win it for the team!”
Just you wait, Jenny thought, passing Missi. As her surf bike reached the trambopoline, everything seemed to happen in slow motion, just like it had the night Play Dough saved her from bouncing into the lake. Jenny launched herself onto the ladder, Missi at her heels. She climbed to the jumping pad. She jumped once, twice, three times. Missi began to jump, too. Jenny pretended to wobble backward. She fell against the protective cushioning over the springs. She reached behind her back and wriggled the rag free. Now she just had to wait for Missi to jump overboard so that she could safely grab the Hatchet and whip it in the sky!
But Missi stopped jumping. She rushed over to Jenny, grabbed Jenny’s arm, and pulled her up like a good sport. At the worst time ever. “Sorry I made you fall. Let’s jump off togeth—!” Missi looked at the Hatchet wedged in the springs and then back at Jenny and then back at the Hatchet. “DID WE JUST FIND THE HATCHET?!”
No, no, no, no, no! Jenny screamed to herself. She sprinted through the options in her head. (a) Grab the Hatchet and whip it high in the air with Missi. No, White would earn half the credit, negating any Blue points. (b) Pretend she hadn’t understood Missi, and just jump overboard with her. No, the next obstacle course participants would find it. (c) Explain she’d found it first. No one would believe her, and even if anyone did, it wouldn’t help—she and Play Dough had found the Hatchet on illegal terms.
But then Missi was going toward the Hatchet, and Jenny acted on impulse. She scrambled toward it, too. They were both holding the Hatchet now, and everyone could see. The camp was losing their minds, roaring and pointing and jumping up and down. Missi was so happy and confused she was laugh-crying. The whole thing was so unfair it was making Jenny sick. Missi had already stolen her Best Friend. Now she wanted to steal credit for finding the Hatchet, too?
Panicking, Jenny watched TJ whisper into the Captain’s ear. Before either of them could announce that she and Missi were Hatchet cofinders, Jenny got so consumed with anger she couldn’t think straight. The only words buzzing in her ears were Willamena’s: Anyone tries to steal my thunder, I strike them down. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
So just as the Captain moved the megaphone to her lips, Jenny yanked the Hatchet from Missi’s grasp and threw it overboard.
NOOO! Jenny watched with horror and regret as the Hatchet plummeted into the lake. Then she looked at Missi, who was staring at the rippling water, the tragic aftermath, just as shocked.
There were gasps. Then silence. Then angry yelling, led by Jamie, of all people: “Hatchet Cheater! Attention Seeker! Hatchet Cheater! Attention Seeker!”
The lifeguards swam out to the trambopoline as quickly as they could and dove to rescue the historic Hatchet. As if it were a drowning child.
The boos came in waves so crushing, Jenny had no choice but to sit backward on the trambopoline with her hands over her ears to drown them out. She’d made her story, all right. And it was the worst feeling in the world.
The Magic of an Alma
“Nice and loud!” General Power was on top of a chair on the basketball court, aggressively conducting his team in this summer’s alma mater, set to the Beatles’ 1968 hit “Hey Jude.” The chair wobbled under his feet. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU, BLUE!”
Jenny rolled her eyes, sat up straight for better breath control, and obediently shout-sang:
“Hey, Blue, you’ve fought so well
You compel us to go out and slaughter.”
The officers, except for Play Dough and a few others, who were monitoring set construction in the Social Hall, halfheartedly sang behind General Power. They looked dead-tired—puffy cheeks, twitchy eyes, fading face paint. It was clear to Jenny that they’d stayed up all night writing and fighting. And for what? The alma was TERRIBLE. Everyone knew that words like “fought” and “slaughter” were reserved for the march. The alma was supposed to make your heart go warm and fuzzy. Having hit rock bottom yesterday, Jenny could really use some warm and fuzzy.
“LOUDER!” General Power’s voice boomed into the gray sky. In the distance, a patch of dark clouds floated menacingly toward the basketball court. As if they were being beckoned to match the Blue mood.
“You bring your A-game onto the fields.
White better yield to our wicked power.”
Jenny’s chords went into auto-sing as her mind drifted to last summer’s Color War. When she and Jamie had first sung the alma mater, they’d clutched hands after the first verse. By the chorus, their bodies had begun vibrating with emotion. By the second chorus, Missi had joined them and all vows not to cry were off. The hand-holding had gotten red-rover unbreakable, their voices had cracked, and their faces had turned into wet messes. There had been so much love in those lyrics.
“Hey, White, go on give up,
Don’t try to mend what’s clearly broken.”
General McCarville buried her head in her hands. “Can we—?” She powered off the speaker and “Hey Jude” was silenced. Jenny perked up.
“Is there a problem?” General Power asked, stepping down.
“We need more time, Ashanti.”
“More time for what?”
“To
write.” She crumbled up the lyric sheet in her hand.
“The song. It’s not working.”
“SING is in ten hours,” General Power said. “We are fighting to win.”
“Singing about fighting to win will not help us win,” General McCarville argued. “We need to appeal to the judges’ hearts.”
Jenny’s head twitched back and forth between her two Generals like she was watching a US Open match point. It was awful seeing her Color War mom and dad argue. Blue was supposed to work together in harmony. The officers were supposed to take a united stand. Especially in front of the kiddies! But still, something had to be said, and Jenny was glad that someone with as much clout as General McCarville was saying it.
General Power crouched down to one of his Bunker Hill campers. “What do you think about the alma, Isaac?”
“It’s . . . good,” Isaac said, hesitating.
“What about you, Owen?” he asked another.
“It’s the best song ever, ever, ever!” Owen answered.
General Power shrugged at General McCarville. “Case in point.”
“How convenient that you didn’t ask the rest of the camp,” she said. Jenny agreed. It being their first summer, the Bunker Hillers didn’t know an alma from a march. They had no idea that the lyrics were supposed to conjure tears of pure camp joy.
“Do you want me to poll the rest of the team?” General Power asked. “Because I can poll every last—”
“Poll whoever you want,” General McCarville cut in. “If we sing this, we will lose. These lyrics are an embarrassment to Rolling Hills. They’re an anti-alma.”
Jenny’s heart skipped.
“An anti-alma?” he huffed.
“Where’s the peace?” she asked. “Where’s the love?”
Jenny looked around. The little Blue campers up front were wriggling. The ones in the middle were frozen. The older campers were sighing with frustration. The officers were whispering nervously. Jenny let her mind go as blank as paper. Then she channeled her angst into poetry, like she did at home, except this time the poetry was full of positive rhythms and rhymes. Forget “slaughter” and “yielding to power.” The Blue alma mater needed “friends forever” and “groovy weather”! Lyrics that were inspirational! Moving! Creative! Ambitious! Bloated with peace and love! And most important, lyrics that fit this summer. Fit this war. Three-quarters back in the restless crowd, Jenny leapt to her feet and belted:
“Hey, Blue, you’ve done so well
When you fell you pushed on with spirit.
The Hatchet is not the heart of this war,
We’re fighting for the people in it.
“And Rolling Hills, you make us feel so loved, so real
We carry our friends with us forever.
It’s no surprise that as we grow we always know
That thinking of you brings groovy weather.
Nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah.”
General Power’s head flopped to the side. General McCarville’s jaw dropped. The officers detangled themselves from their whisper-huddle. Everyone was gaping.
Jenny was mortified. What had she done? Had she just exposed her deep-seeded uncoolness to half the camp?! Jenny Nolan isn’t supposed to be a poet, she thought. She’s supposed to be a . . . She blinked, confused. Cheerleader? Homecoming Queen? Miss Whatever? That didn’t feel right, either. She didn’t know what she was supposed to be anymore.
And then a Sherri Hiller began a slow clap. The Highgate and Wawel Hillers joined in. Then the Notting, Faith, and Anita Hillers. Then the Hamburger, San Juan, and Jonah Hillers. Within thirty seconds, all of Blue was clapping, faster, faster, faster. A stampede of applause.
General Power surrendered with an I don’t know how to process this shrug, and General McCarville took center stage. “Wow! Holy trippy wow!” As she gushed, the dark clouds finally crept over the court. “Jenny Nolan—those lyrics!” The clouds turned black. “Can you believe what that girl poured from her chords?” Before the camp could respond, the sky opened up and cried. Literally, a torrential downpour. Jenny’s rendition had made Mother Earth feel all the warm and fuzzy feelings that the alma’s first draft hadn’t been able to.
“RUN FOR COVER!” General Power shouted.
The hills rumbled with thunder and the sky lit up in zigzags. Blue scattered.
Jenny dodged growing puddles and sprinted to the shelter of the Social Hall awning, where Sophie was standing and singing “Hare Krishna.” Jenny assumed the song was some weird plea to the weather gods.
She felt someone behind her and spun around to find a soaked General McCarville. “Jenny,” she pleaded, resting her blue-smudged forehead on Jenny’s bangs. “You have to write it. Please. Write our alma mater. It’s my last summer at the Hills and I need this victory.”
Jenny’s heart wanted to swell, but instead it ached. She hadn’t been awarded Lieutenant for a reason. It had only taken her one egg murder, two heartbreaks, multiple friendship losses, and a double Hatchet travesty for that to ring clear. She’d be foolish to think SING would end any less terribly. As she’d decided yesterday, now was the time to lie low. To fade into the background. To leave Rolling Hills and never return. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she finally said, breaking free.
“It’s a very good idea,” General McCarville argued. “C’mon. Those lyrics. You just—came up with them on the spot? That’s insane!” She looked at Sophie. “Right? Tell her!”
“I prefer the term ‘nutty as a fruitcake.’ But yes, agreed.”
Jenny sighed. How could she tell her General that if she let the team down one more time, she’d shame-spiral? That if she failed herself one more time, she’d never recover? “I just— I can’t.”
General McCarville nodded with understanding. She’d seen Jenny dig herself into a hole this week. “How about this,” she began. “You write it. I’ll pass it along to the Lieutenants as an anonymous submission. If they’re on board, I’ll say it was all you. If they veto it, you’ll stay anonymous—no harm done.”
Jenny mulled it over. She didn’t want to disappoint her General by saying no. But she didn’t want to say yes and then write something anti-alma-esque, something even more bitter than her poetry about Willamena and Christopher. After all, she wasn’t feeling very mushy with love. Just because she was able to harness positivity for a couple of verses, didn’t mean she had it in her to write a whole heartwarming song.
“She’ll do it!” Sophie cried, hopping to Jenny’s side.
“Um.” Jenny bulged her eyes at Sophie, but General McCarville paid no mind. She was jumping up and down. “AMAZING! I haven’t slept! I can’t even string a coherent sentence together, let alone WRITE A WINNING ALMA MATER! Thank you, thank you, my BLESSED FLOWER CHILD!” And with that, she skipped away to her fellow officers.
Jenny turned to Sophie. “What was that?!”
“A chance to heal.”
Jenny shook her head, trying to grasp what that meant. “Heal who? Me?” It’s true writing poems made her feel better. She guessed Sophie understood that since she buried her head in books to make herself feel better, too. “What do you mean?”
“Yes, you. Lately you’ve been sadder than a hippie in a sports bra.” She moved on before Jenny had a chance to question her metaphor. “If you really want to patch up your problems, write lyrics with a message. Let your words bring change! Revolution!”
Jenny’s first thought was that Sophie was reading too much and socially interacting too little. But then again, maybe Sophie was on to something. Jenny had used every fiber of her being to hide all the uncool stuff about her. For four years. As someone who celebrated her uncoolness, could Sophie see right through Jenny’s facade? Would her camp friends like her any less than they liked her now if she showed her true colors? “Hmmmm,” Jenny mumbled while she sorted out the next steps. Maybe she could just be herself. Maybe she could try to write something totally heartwarming. Skies didn’t just open up as she sang SING lyrics
every day. Lightning didn’t just strike when she wrote poetry at home. Sophie didn’t just inspire her out of nowhere, or ever, really. Surely these were signs.
“All right, I’m in.” Jenny rubbed her fingers together, wishing she had a pen in her hand. She had the sudden urge to write. This very instant.
Apparently, Sophie could tell, because she pushed Jenny out from under the awning and into the rain. “Go! Feel! Heal! Write!”
“Thanks, Sophster. Keep doing you,” Jenny called over her shoulder, racing toward Faith Hill Cabin. The lightning flashed behind her. The hills shook with thunder. She stomped through puddles, and slipped through mudslides, and let the rain beat down on her head like a symphonic melody.
Three and a half hills later, Jenny arrived at her cabin a wheezing, muddy mess. She ran inside, pressed record on her contraband cell phone, rested it on the bathroom floor, and hopped into the shower. She hummed the alma melody over and over, asking herself what message she wanted to send and to who.
As Jenny watched the soap spiral into the drain at her flip-flopped feet, all of her camp memories rushed back to her like an end-of-summer slide show: Meeting Jamie for the first time and bonding over One Direction. Cuddle-spooning during thunderstorms, afraid their braces would get struck by lightning. Dancing together in matching sequined costumes four Camp-stocks in a row. Everything was once so magical.
The drain abruptly clogged with mud, and those same memories flashed through Jenny’s mind in a totally unflattering light. She’d made fun of Jamie for saying Harry Styles was hottest. She’d told Jamie that their braces were likely to get struck by lightning so that Jamie wouldn’t break the cuddle-spoon to play jacks with Missi. She’d never let Jamie help with the choreography in all of their Campstock history, even though Jamie had tried to help every summer.
Four years of ziplocked guilt vibrated inside her. She let the hot water run cold and the pressure go weak as she rehashed dozens of other favorite camp memories, now tainted with her power-hungry meanness. Their friendship had needed healing well before this war had even started.
Breakout! Page 12
