“Right,” he says, completely unaware of how hard I had to search my memory bank to come up with that. “But I don’t really think of it as camping. I’m approaching this like I’m an in-the-trenches observer, if that makes any sense.”
“Like an experiment?”
“Eh, more like personal development. I don’t think I’ll be a very good teacher if I have any hang-ups about the kids I’m teaching. Sharing my life with them puts us all on the same playing field.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
He reels his head back. “Do you think I like building bird-houses out of Popsicle sticks? I have to check my pride at the door every morning. Every morning. But that’s kind of the whole point, right? Getting over yourself . . .”
I shake my head. “How can you only be a year older than me and like a thousand times smarter?”
“Trust me, I’m not that smart. I’ve just had a couple years to adjust to this. You’ve only had a week.” I feel his hand cover mine; it’s calloused but comforting “So what do you think? Are you gonna stick it out the rest of the summer?”
It’s crazy how obvious an answer can be when the question is asked by someone other than yourself.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m going to stick around.”
“Cool,” he says. “Everybody deserves a second chance to make things right, Cricket. Even you. And if Quinn doesn’t realize that, then he’s the jerk.”
“You sound like Fantine.”
“Fantine’s a badass.”
“Yeah.” I chuckle. “She is.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. We just sit with his hand covering mine, soaking up the warm day. It’s the first time since the blowup with Quinn that I feel the slightest bit good about myself. It’s also the first time since I’ve been here that I’m not uncomfortable that the person sitting next to me can’t walk.
“Cricket,” he says. “If Quinn turns out to be a total dick about this—do I even stand a chance?”
I feel my cheeks flush behind my growing smile. “You’ll kick his ass first, right?”
EIGHTEEN
“Oh my God, this shit is bananas!” Staring at the tiny screen of my iPhone, Fantine erupts into a fit of laughter while I try to suffocate myself with my pillow. “How did you let them talk you into this?”
“It was Meredith. She wore me down.”
“You caved for Meredith?”
“She so played the handicapped card. Can you believe that? She’s all, yooooou wouldn’t say noooo to a kid in a wheelchair, wooooooould you? What else could I do?”
“Well, you could have suggested a different song. Not that I don’t love some Gwen Stefani, but ‘Hollaback’ is kind of old. Plus it’s tough with all that spelling. Do you really think Claire can spell bananas that fast?”
“Of course she can’t,” I say. “I tried to convince her but she was dead set on it. Besides, I’m trying to be the new and improved Cricket, remember? I figured I shouldn’t push it. I mean, she can’t help her condition, right?”
She pauses the video with a tap of her finger and looks over at me. “What condition?”
“Whatever it is that makes her think we’re still living in 2008.”
Fantine’s eyes grow wide and her mouth falls open just a smidge. “You’re kidding, right?”
“About what?”
“Oh my God!” she says, collapsing against her pillow, laughing. “She doesn’t have a condition, Cricket. The girl’s just nuts.”
“Wait . . . what?” I sit up on my bed so I can face her. “She doesn’t have some kind of neurological disorder? I mean, beyond the cerebral palsy?”
She shakes her head.
“So the whole Hannah Montana fixation is just . . . she’s just . . .”
“Like I said, she’s nuts.” Fantine snorts. “Something really good must have happened to her five years ago because she doesn’t want to get herself out of the time warp. But I assure you, there’s no condition causing that. It’s a straight-up WTF situation when it comes to Meredith and what she likes.”
Feeling every part the idiot, I bury my face in my hands. So much for being enlightened.
“Ooh! This move right here is amazing. Check this out, you have to do this one.” I stomp across the short distance to Fantine’s bed and collapse down beside her. “See how Gwen does this snake thing against the dashboard?” she says, pointing to the “Hollaback Girl” video she’s watched at least a dozen times already. “You totally need to do that. Quinn will go crazy just watching you.”
“I doubt it,” I say, nudging her closer to the wall so we can share her pillow. “Did you see him at the pool tonight? He won’t even look at me.” I take out my ponytail, give my head a scratch, and settle further into the pillow. Gwen’s voice is starting to give me a headache. “This morning at the craft shed it almost seemed like he was getting over it, but then all of a sudden he just froze up. Like he remembered he hated me.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” she says, pausing the music again. “He just doesn’t know how to go about forgiving you. Some guys are stupid like that. And from what Colin’s told me, Quinn has a particularly hard time letting things go. Besides, I saw you having a pretty good time with Aidan anyway.”
“Please, Aidan’s my . . . friend.”
“Friend. Right.”
“He is!” I smack her arm. “We’re just friends. Or becoming friends. Besides, he knows how I feel about Quinn.”
“I’m just saying I think he’d be more than happy to take you for a ride on his wheelchair.”
“You’re disgusting,” I say. She just laughs. “I can’t think about Quinn right now anyway. I’ve got other things to worry about.”
“Like what?”
“Like how the hell we are going to pull off a three-girl reenactment of that.” I point to the frozen image of Gwen on the screen, her washboard abs and bright red lips gleaming under the Hollywood sun. I might as well kill myself now. “The majority of that video is dancing.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Do you live under a rock? Have you completely forgotten who I’ve got to work with?”
“Why, Constance, whatever are you talking about?” Her grin borders on that fine line between a smile and all-out hysterics.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I say in a low voice, aware that the subjects in question are asleep in the next room. “Claire can hardly stand up without knocking someone over, and Meredith . . . I mean, seriously. She’s in a wheelchair! I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen someone in a wheelchair dance. I’m telling you, Fantine, the whole thing is going to be a freakin’ disaster, and yours truly will be center stage looking like the queen of the freak show. Tell me again why counselors have to participate?”
“That’s just how it is. Each counselor performs with their group and then one lucky leader, that’d be you, gets to supervise all the campers in one big group performance. Think of how much fun that’s gonna be!”
“This totally sucks,” I say, kicking my heels into the bed. I’m about five seconds away from completely losing it, when I hear a small voice outside the curtain.
“Cricket?”
“Uh . . . yeah?” Fantine and I exchange a glance, scrambling to sit up in the bed. “Who is it?”
Claire’s very round, sunburned face appears from a gap in the curtain. “It’s me,” she says warily. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I say, motioning her inside. “What’s going on?”
She thunders through the doorway, her Twilight nightgown trailing behind her. Her hair is matted and her eyes are red.
“Are you okay?”
“I had a bad dream. It scared me.”
Comforting people isn’t really my gig, but I remember back to how Carolyn handled these situations when I was little.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I say, patting the foot of the bed. “Sometimes talking about it makes it not so scary.”
“Okay,” she s
ays, and drops down right beside me, forcing me to shift to my right so I’m not crushed.
“What happened?”
“I was at the archery range with James and Shia LaBeouf—”
“Shia LaBeouf ?” I’m not sure how but I manage to stifle my laughter.
She nods. “I like him. He’s cute.”
“He totally is,” I say.
“He’s super cute.” Fantine nods in agreement.
“Everybody was shooting, but the targets weren’t right. They were purple Jell-O, and wherever the arrow landed is how much Jell-O you had to eat.” I cover my mouth trying not to laugh. This sounds more like a Tim Burton movie than a nightmare. “And then Rainbow showed up and she was covered with roly polies. They were crawling all over her, and she was screaming at all of us. She said we had to eat all the Jell-O or she’d throw us in the roly poly pit. I hate roly polies, Cricket!”
Without hesitation, I put an arm around her shoulder. “It was just a dream,” I say. “Dreams are crazy and stupid sometimes, but they can’t hurt you.”
“And neither can roly polies,” Fantine adds.
“Yeah,” I say. “Roly polies are just cute little bugs who curl up into balls when they’re scared. They definitely can’t hurt you.” Fantine and I exchange another glance, while Claire proceeds to snot all over my shirt.
“Do you think you can go back to bed?” I ask when she’s finally stopped snorting.
She nods. “Yeah, I can go to bed. Thanks, Cricket.”
“No problem,” I say. “Good night, Claire.”
We wait for her to disappear into the main room before I climb back into my own bed.
“That was one jacked-up dream,” Fantine says. “Don’t you ever wonder why we dream what we do?”
“In this instance, no.”
“So you think Jell-O target practice is normal?”
“No, it’s definitely weird,” I say, adjusting the scratchy covers. “I’m talking about the part of the dream that really scared her. The Rainbow part.”
“Why?” She props herself up on one elbow and narrows her eyes on me. “You said it didn’t bother you that your dad had a financial interest in the camp, but you’re always grumbling about Rainbow under your breath. So which is it? Do you care or don’t you?”
“No”—I blow out a sigh—“I don’t care what he does with his money.”
“So what’s your problem then?”
“My problem is her. Half the time she treats me like a bratty kid, because, if you remember, she told me I was one. And then she’s commenting on my personal life. She knows stuff about me, Fantine. Stuff I’ve never told her—or anyone here.”
“Like?”
“Like . . . meat.”
“Meat? I thought we weren’t talking about Quinn anymore.”
“Ugh, you are so gross. I’m talking about meat like from a cow. Tonight at dinner she said she knew I wasn’t a big red meat eater but wanted me to try Sam’s beef anyway because it was really good.”
“It was good.”
“Yeah, it was. But you’re missing the point. I never told her that I don’t eat a lot of red meat. She just knew it. How could she possibly know that about me?”
“A lot of people don’t eat red meat, Cricket.” She dims the lantern on our bookshelf before collapsing into her pillow with a sigh. “She probably just figured you for one of those trendy vegetarian, experimental lesbian types. I wouldn’t read into it.”
“You’re wrong,” I say firmly. “She knows things about me and my life, things she shouldn’t know. And it’s not just the meat thing. There have been a lot of other little things. This morning after breakfast she told me Sam was making cream puffs for dessert tomorrow because she knows they’re my favorite. And yesterday I heard her tell Pete that I used to sleepwalk—”
“Whoa, take a breath. So she knows a lot about you, so what? You either ask her how she knows you so well, or you ignore her. I don’t care which you do, but you gotta pick one because you’re starting to ramble again. I’m about ready to rip my ears off.”
“Well, thanks for the help. And here I thought I was the camp bitch.”
“What can I say.”
“Fine. I won’t complain to you anymore. But if something goes down with her you better have my back.”
“Oh, I got your back. I’ll make sure the Mystery Machine is gassed up and ready for action whenever you need me.”
“Sometimes I really hate you,” I say, my grin going unappreciated by the dark room.
“I know. I hate you, too.”
“And I am so not a lesbian.”
NINETEEN
Up until my arrival at camp, I’d been waking up on the same time frame as the cable guy: somewhere between ten and two. This six-thirty crap should be reserved for high school dropouts with paper routes.
I lumber out of bed, noting that Fantine’s wool blanket is already spread smooth and tight across her empty bed, and grab my bathroom supplies off the tiny wooden shelf. I make my way through the bunkhouse, saying halfhearted good mornings to the campers, and walk out the door into the already warm morning.
“H-h-he-hello, Cricket,” James says, crutching by me with a fish-shaped oven mitt on his hand. “How are you t-t-today?”
“Peachy-keen, James. How are you?”
He stops suddenly and scratches his head with his salmon-covered hand. “Happy and t-t-tall,” he finally says. “I am h-h-h-happy and t-t-tall today.”
“That’s good, James. Happy and tall beats the hell out of tired and bloated.”
I walk through the restroom’s wide doorway, making my way past the low sinks and the toilets with supporting hand rails to the middle changing stall, where I strip down to my birthday suit. It’s a sad, sad sight. My once smooth skin is covered in bruises, Band-Aids, and dime-sized mosquito bites. But miracles happen when scalding hot water and scented shower gel come together. Within a minute I feel awake, alert, and slightly less disgusted with the day that lies ahead.
Fantine and the girls are waiting for me at the foot of the bunkhouse steps when I emerge from the bathroom.
“Hurry up!” Claire says. “We can’t be late for breakfast.”
“I’ll catch up with you guys in a minute,” I say, directing my comment to Fantine. “I need to put some new Band-Aids on the blisters.”
“Sounds good. Let’s go, ladies. We’ll save Cricket a spot.”
While they go on their way to the mess hall, I run up the steps and into the bunkhouse. I plop on my bed, brushing off my already dusty feet, and trade out my Bieber Band-Aids for some equally cool Pooh Bear ones. I tug on some socks, carefully slide my feet into my shoes, and am nearly to the door when I hear someone on the rickety front porch.
I push the door open and peek my head around the corner. “Oh boy,” I mumble, suddenly feeling sick. “Hi,” I say in a voice that’s about four degrees south of nervous.
“Hey,” Quinn says back. “We need to talk.”
“Okay?” I step out onto the porch and tug the door shut behind me. “What do we need to talk about?”
“You and Aidan.”
“Me and . . . Aidan?”
“Yeah,” he crosses his arms. “I just want you to know that I think it’s really crappy you’re using him just to get to me. It’s not going to make me jealous if that’s what you were hoping for.”
Well now, if this isn’t an Edward/Bella/Jacob moment, I don’t know what is. Where is Claire when I need her?
“Aidan is my friend,” I say, struggling not to crack a smile. “I’m not using him for anything, and I’m certainly not trying to make you jealous.”
“Oh really?” He drops his sly guy demeanor by taking off his sunglasses. “You expect me to believe that all of a sudden you’re going to be best friends with somebody in a wheelchair? How stupid do you think I am?”
“Well, at this point I don’t think you’re stupid, but I am starting to think you’re an asshole. Contrary to what you might think,
my existence here doesn’t completely revolve around you.”
“Oh, that’s rich, Cricket. You have a come-to-Jesus moment two days ago and now you’re suddenly a changed person? I’m the asshole?”
“Are you comparing yourself to Jesus now? First Efron and now Jesus . . .”
“Of course not. I’m saying that if you expect me to believe you’ve done a complete one-eighty just because of something I said, then you must think I’m an idiot. People don’t change overnight.”
“For the record,” I say, fighting a strong urge to poke my finger in his chest. “It wasn’t something you said to me, it was something you screamed at me—in my face. And I never said I was changed, but I am working on it. A fact that seems to be acceptable to everybody else in this dump except for you.”
His eyes soften just slightly and for a moment I catch a glimpse of the guy I haven’t seen in a while. “Why do you care what I think of you anyway? According to Rainbow, you’re leaving as soon as your dad gets back.”
“Ah, yes. Good ole Rainbow!” I say with sarcasm. “Actually, I’ve decided to stay. Not that it makes any difference to you now, but . . . yeah, I’m going to stick around and see this thing through.” I feel that stupid knot of emotion building up again, but rather than burst into tears, I push by him. “You know what the really sad part is?” I call over my shoulder. “I’m doing exactly what you told me to do. I’m trying to be the person I want to be, and you can’t even acknowledge that.”
TWENTY
Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, Claire, Meredith, and I spend more time analyzing Gwen Stefani and every freaking second of the “Hollaback Girl” video than even her most faithful stalker.
To my surprise, both of them have memorized the lyrics, though Claire still trips up every time we have to spell out the word bananas. Our choreography, on the other hand, is worse than I feared it would be. Claire maneuvering her enormous body in a cheerleader’s uniform is nauseating. And as for Meredith, well, it seems her athletic skills are limited to the pool. The girl’s got zero rhythm. I can’t even imagine how much worse she’d be if her legs actually worked.
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