Together Forever

by P. J. Night

  “There,” she said with satisfaction. “That’ll do, I think. I doubt anyone looks at me closely enough to care if it’s perfect anyway.” Then she stroked her own chin. “A little makeup and voilà! We’ll be good to go.”

  “But why?” Sam asked. She’d been expecting Ali to say, Take me to the mall with your friends when we get home, or ask for her birthday money at least. Trading places for a day seemed fun in a movie or TV show, but a little strange in real life.

  “Does it matter?” said Ali. “Just tell me if we have a deal or not.” She crossed her arms again.

  Sam felt the stain on her chin again. The new blood was still sticky and damp. Well, what choice did she have, she realized. If she said no, Ali would tell Gwen. And not only would she risk leaving camp in disgrace, she’d miss seeing Dennis again.

  Dennis . . .

  Sam couldn’t help but break into a smile as his handsome face filled her mind.

  “What?” Ali frowned. “Do you think it’s so funny?”

  Sam shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I’m sorry. I was just thinking about, well . . .” She sighed. “Him. He was there, Ali! Dennis! Oh, you have to meet him. He’s so sweet and nice.” She reached up to pat the flower he’d given her. But it had fallen out when she fell. She touched the empty spot anyway and dreamily closed her eyes. That’s okay, she thought. He’ll give me another one tonight.

  She opened her eyes to find Ali scowling.

  “Nice enough to stand you up?” said Ali.

  “No, that’s the thing,” Sam explained. “He didn’t. He was sick! I knew there was a good reason. He said he ate some bad meatballs. Poor guy. I felt so bad for him.”

  “Oh.” was all Ali could say, her blood starting to boil.

  “And that’s not all,” Sam went on, unable to keep it all in. “Guess what else he said?”

  “What?” Ali asked, though she knew she didn’t really want to hear.

  “He said he wanted to make it up to me by having another dance!”

  “Another dance?” Ali scowled. “What are you talking about?”

  “Tonight! In his special place,” gushed Sam. “Just the two of us under the full moon!”

  “Really.” Ali’s arms pressed into her ribs, and she bit the soft inside of her cheeks hard.

  “Yes! He told me to come back tonight, and he’d be there waiting for me because, get this: He wants to be ‘together forever’! Oh, Ali. Can you believe it?”

  “No,” muttered Ali. But then again, maybe she could. Because wasn’t it just like Sam to have something amazing like this happen to her? Ali looked at her twin and felt more different from her than she ever had before. She was so tired of seeing that dumb, happy smile, she wanted to shove Sam straight into the dirt.

  But she didn’t. “So, what do you mean tonight? Are you skipping the campfire?” she asked.

  Sam shook her head. “No, of course I can’t miss that. I’m going to go after. I’ll wait till it’s lights-out and everyone’s asleep. I know it’s totally crazy, but if you met him you’d understand. But, Ali”—she leaned in and whispered, even though no one else was around—“I’m only telling you, okay? It’s a secret you have to keep. Please. We can consider this part of our deal, can’t we?”

  Ali nodded quickly, gently stroking her birthmark. “Oh, of course. Don’t worry,” she said. “I mean, why in the world would I ever want to tell?” She stretched out a smile, then she let it go. “But, you know, that doesn’t mean that Gwen won’t find out somehow.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sam anxiously.

  Ali shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. She might be up late with the other counselors since it’s the last night for them, too. I thought I heard somewhere of this allnighter tradition they have. But maybe whoever told me was totally wrong.” She grinned and patted Sam’s hand. “Forget it. You’re right. She’ll never know. Wow.” She sighed. “Your very own dance in a moonlit clearing. I have to say, Sam, that sounds really, really romantic.”

  Neither Sam nor Ali said another word about Dennis for the whole rest of the day. They were much too busy, when they first got back, trying to become the other twin. As soon as they got to their cabin, they changed into each other’s clothes. Then they worked on hiding Ali’s birthmark. Of course, since neither twin had brought makeup to camp, they had to let the rest of their cabin in on their “little joke.”

  “This is really weird,” said Jennifer as she dabbed at Ali’s chin. It was Megan’s makeup, but she did the honors since she was the most skilled of all of them.

  “I think it’s fun!” said Stefi. “Of course, you’re not going to fool anyone, you know,” she told the twins.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Jennifer paused to scratch a bugbite on her neck, then she blended in the final edge. She sat back to let the others see. “Check it out. What do you think?” she asked.

  “Hey, not bad.” Megan nodded.

  “Let me see,” Ali said.

  Megan handed her a mirror, and she held it up to her face. She checked her chin from every angle. It looked as flawless as Sam’s.

  “Here, sit next to each other,” said Stefi. She pulled Sam down onto the cot next to Ali so the bunkmates could study them, side by side.

  Sam grinned. “So? Think we can do it?” she asked.

  Stefi made a who-knows face.

  “I say go for it,” said Megan. “Isn’t that the fun of being twins?”

  Georgia raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t know. They look good now, but what happens when Ali opens her mouth?”

  Ali replied by shooting her a sour, narrow-eyed smile. “I guess we’re lucky then, aren’t we, that the color war starts with silent lunch.”

  In fact, it was lucky for them. For being the only table that didn’t talk at all, they earned an extra hundred points. Their team did well from there on too. As they had hoped, they swept the canoe races and got first in Frisbee golf. But they struggled in a few other competitions, such as archery, thanks to Sam (or Ali, as she called herself). By then her mind had wandered back to Dennis, and she could barely hit the target, let alone make a bull’s-eye. Of course, since the real Ali never did either, no one seemed too surprised. They actually did fool a few people, including Gwen. Ali couldn’t believe how nice Gwen was being to her—when she thought she was Sam. But they couldn’t fool everyone forever. Georgia was almost right, but not exactly; people could tell Sam wasn’t Ali as soon as Sam opened her mouth and said something sweet.

  And then came the color war grand finale: the talent show.

  “Okay, this has been fun,” said Georgia, “but I think it’s time to stop.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sam and Ali together.

  “This is the talent show,” said Georgia. “And everyone knows who has the most talent, Sam. You. If we’re going to win, we need you to be you.”

  Sam bit her lip and glanced at Ali. Ali’s face looked long and dark.

  “Whoever agrees with me, raise your hand,” said Georgia.

  Unanimously the others lifted their arms.

  “We’re not saying you can’t be in it,” Jennifer told Ali.

  “Of course not,” the other girls said.

  Ali looked at them all, then raised her own hand and bitterly rubbed her chin. The makeup smeared, revealing her birthmark. She wiped what came off on the side of her shorts.

  “Whatever,” she said. “I was getting bored of this anyway. I don’t even want to be in the stupid talent show.”

  And with that she stormed away. Sam hurried to catch up.

  “Wait, Ali!” she called. “Hang on. Please. Stop.”

  Ali turned.

  “I tried,” Sam began.

  Ali rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Will you . . .” Sam swallowed.

  “Don’t worry,” Ali said. She looked over Sam’s shoulder at their bunk. “I’m not going to tell Gwen about your little ‘dance.’ Do whatever you want. I don’t care. Go show off your many talen
ts. I’m sure Bunk 9 will win.”

  Bunk 9—and Team Red—did win, thanks to Sam’s singing and a quick but impressive gymnastics routine. The girls tried to talk Ali into singing backup, but she refused.

  “I’d rather roll around in poison ivy,” Ali informed them.

  She wished she could sit out the rest of the night and stay in the cabin all by herself, but Gwen had eventually noticed that Ali was missing from the festivities and told her that unless she was on her deathbed, she had to join everyone. So much for Gwen’s being nice to her earlier that afternoon.

  “You don’t want to miss the awards!” she said.

  Ali sighed. In fact, she did. She knew she wouldn’t be getting any. She’d just be watching Sam.

  The first round of awards went cabin by cabin. This was when the counselors recognized their campers’ outstanding “accomplishments.”

  When Bunk 9’s turn came, Gwen stood by the campfire. She pulled a pink bottle out of a bag.

  “Our first award,” she said, “goes to Jennifer Howard for Most Bugbites. Thanks for keeping the mosquitoes away from the rest of us, Jen!”

  Jennifer jumped up and took it, grinning. “Thanks a lot. I just wish you’d given this to me four weeks ago,” she said.

  “Our next award goes to Georgia. Georgia, come on up here,” Gwen said. She held up a lanyard from which dangled a toothbrush. She slipped it over Georgia’s head. “For you, Georgia, the Lost and Found award, for losing your toothbrush twenty-six times this session. That’s a record, I believe. So congrats!”

  “This next award goes to our bunk’s cutest couple, Stefi and Bingo,” Gwen said to a chorus of giggles.

  The How Does She Do It award went to Megan. It was a huge foil-covered question mark, which Gwen hung around her neck. “In recognition,” Gwen explained, “of somehow going four whole weeks without doing your laundry.”

  “Let’s see . . .” Gwen reached in her bag again and pulled out a toy watch. “Ah, Ali, would you come up here?”

  Ali slowly obeyed. She stood by Gwen and let her buckle the toy around her wrist.

  “The Sleepyhead award!” Gwen laughed—and so did the rest of the camp.

  Ali muttered “Thanks” and slunk back out of the circle and sat as far back as she possibly could. There was just one more award for Gwen to give. She couldn’t wait to see what it was for.

  “And finally, for Sam.” Gwen held up a gold star, which she pinned to Sam’s chest. “The Neatest Bunk award!”

  Sam bowed around the circle. “Thank you so much!”

  From the shadows, Ali shrugged. Wow, how boring, she thought.

  But that was only the beginning, it seemed. Gwen held up a ruler next. “And here’s one more,” she announced. “I don’t always give this, but I had to for you, Sam.” She pretended to knight Sam. “The Extra Mile award!”

  That’s more like it, Ali thought.

  The more serious, official Camp Minnehaha awards came soon after, and Sam was on her feet through much of those. There were medals for Most Improved and Outstanding Spirit and for high points earned in various sports. Then came the highest award, given to one exceptional camper each summer. It was a small silver trophy called the Minnehaha Cup.

  The director, Miss Abby, a tall woman with wiry, gray pigtails, stood up and spoke. Dried pink foam from a messy color war event called color tag still covered most of her camp shirt and cargo shorts. “I can’t tell you what a hard decision this is for the staff to make,” she said. “We are so proud of each and every one of you, and we hope each one of you is just as proud of yourself.” But this year, she explained, the vote had been almost unanimous. “Samantha Harmon,” she declared, “it is with great pleasure that I present to you the Minnehaha Cup!”

  The air was instantly filled with snaps and whoops, Camp Minnehaha’s official form of applause. Stunned, Sam rose to her feet and walked toward Miss Abby. She caught a glimpse of Gwen, who was standing, and saw her wink and let out an extra-loud “whoop!” The rest of Bunk 9 had jumped up and were cheering at the tops of their lungs too. Only Ali stayed silent and seated. She was thinking again of how it must feel to be Sam. She’d hoped that spending the day switching places might give her a clue. But it didn’t. Instead it ended up making Ali feel more different than ever from her.

  Sam stood by the fire, meanwhile, just trying to take it all in. The Minnehaha Cup! She never thought she’d earn it. Well, she’d hoped, but she’d been sure she’d lost any chance as soon as Gwen caught her sneaking off. But no. Gwen must have really had a lot of faith in her, as well as Miss Abby and everyone else.

  “Thank you,” Sam said as she took the cup with a humble little bow. She looked at it and saw her face in the polished surface, smiling back at her. It was a face that had spent the whole day thinking way more about a boy than camp. What would Gwen and Miss Abby think, she wondered, if they found out about that?

  Head down, she walked back to her place in the circle and rejoined her proud bunkmates. They jumped up to hug her as the whole camp stood and linked arms. It was time to sing, for the last time that summer, the Minnehaha song.

  Oh, Friends of Minnehaha,

  Together we will stay;

  In fair or stormy weather,

  Friends forever and a day.

  A sharp pang of guilt lodged in Sam’s throat and made her voice shaky and hoarse. Tears welled in her eyes as she thought, I love this place so much! At the same time she thought about Dennis and smiled. She could feel the sparks even then from his touch. But is he worth it? she suddenly wondered. After all, he was just a boy.

  Oh, what am I thinking? she suddenly told herself. He wasn’t “just a boy” at all!

  From the first moment they’d met (so awkwardly!) she’d sensed he was different from everyone else. And he wouldn’t just be a summer boyfriend, no matter how far away he lived. They would find a way to be “together forever.” She knew that deep down in her soul. She just wished she didn’t have to sneak away to see him. A moonlit dance was wonderful to think about, but the risks were so great. She wasn’t even nervous, she suddenly realized, about hiking through the woods at night alone. But she was deathly afraid of being caught. Was she brave enough to go?

  CHAPTER 13

  The answer came that night, long after lights-out, when the last girls who had sworn to stay up all night finally gave in and closed their eyes.

  Then the door of Bunk 9 slowly opened, and a girl in a hooded sweatshirt tiptoed out. Carefully she made her way past the cabins, the main lodge, and the sports fields, until she came to the Old Stump Trail. Then at last she turned on the flashlight she’d been holding tightly in her hand. The beam it gave off was weak from four weeks of late-night trips to the latrine, but it was still enough to help her find the path through the tall, whispering trees.

  Suddenly, two lights flashed just ahead of her. She stopped, afraid to move.

  “Me-ew.”

  She smiled. “Hey, Magic,” she whispered, bending down and holding out her hand. The cat was basically invisible—like ink spilled on a road. He padded over silently and ran his back under her palm, then he moved along and disappeared into the night.

  The girl kept moving too. If only the moon would come out, she thought. Where was it anyway? Hadn’t the boy in the clearing promised the moon would be full for their dance? She paused to peer up through the branches and realized she couldn’t see a single star. The sky was a thick black blanket propped up by leafy arms. She held her flashlight close to her body and tiptoed on, as if she were afraid of waking the forest up.

  With each step her heart beat a little faster. She was eager but nervous, too, and not just because she was in the woods in the middle of the night all alone. She also knew what she was doing was wrong, to some people at least. And she knew how bad it would be if she were to get caught. But there were some times, she’d decided, when you just had to follow your gut. You couldn’t sit and worry about what was “right” or “wrong.”

  “Wh
o-whoo!”

  She jumped at a sudden sound behind her, and her light swung wildly as she turned. She waved the beam like a sword down the trail behind her, trying to see what was back there. It definitely wasn’t Magic. She tensed. Every tree looked like a monster—or something that one could hide behind.

  Suddenly two more bright dots flashed at her. “Ah!” she gasped. They disappeared as the light swept by.

  Were they eyes? She tried to find them again.

  “Who-whoo!”

  She caught the face of a large, solemn owl on a branch and let out a heavy sigh.

  She watched him blink one eye, then the other, before his head turned completely around. She gasped, then suddenly realized she was looking at his back. She lowered her flashlight and let him melt back into the night. Hopefully, that would be the last living thing—except for Dennis Shaw, of course—that she met on her hike that night.

  Finally she came to the place she’d been looking out for, where the wide Old Stump Trail curved, and a smaller, much less-traveled one split off and went straight. She took a deep breath and ducked under a branch and carefully pushed her way in through the dense undergrowth.

  Now she really wished she had the moon to help her. With nothing but the misty beam from her flashlight, she could barely tell where to place her footsteps. She kept her head down and looked for signs that someone had recently been through. A few broken twigs and a familiar footprint made her feel a little more secure. With almost every step forward, though, a rogue root or vine seemed to send her stumbling back two. Branches swatted at her from the right and the left, and she pulled the sweatshirt down around her head as far as she possibly could. The smell was strong—but she was grateful for its deep, heavy hood.

  She wondered how much farther away the clearing was. She had to be getting pretty close by now. She tried to guess how long she’d been walking and what time it might be. . . .

  Oh no! she thought all of a sudden. What if I get there too late?

  What if Dennis gets tired of waiting for me and goes back to camp?