Willows vs. Wolverines

by Alison Cherry

  “Really? ’Cause it doesn’t seem like it, unless you need me to help you with something. Otherwise it’s like, ‘Mackenzie? Who’s that?’ ”

  “I don’t—”

  “Ever since we got here, you’ve been a total show-off, parading around in your stupid FOXY shirt and practicing your dumb karaoke dance moves, and I’m sick of it. There’s more to life than making everyone think you’re popular and important, you know.”

  That stings, and I stare at her. She never minded when I was popular and important at Camp Sweetwater. Is she bitter because all that attention isn’t rubbing off on her this time?

  “Mackenzie—” I start.

  “Whatever. Why don’t you go hang out with your new friends?” She spins around and starts pushing through the crowd toward the door. She collides with a guy doing the cakewalk, and he yells, “Dude, watch it!” at her retreating back. I can’t see her very well through the crowd anymore, but I think I see her whip off her glasses and swipe a hand across her eyes.

  “Mackenzie, wait!” I start to chase after her, but I’ve only gone about three steps before Lauren grabs my arm. She looks slight and delicate in her flowy flowered shirt, but her grip is surprisingly strong.

  “I don’t think she wants to talk to you right now,” she says.

  I twist away. “Stay out of this! It’s none of your business. And you have no idea what she wants. She’s my best friend.”

  “Oh yeah? Then maybe you should start acting like it,” Lauren says. And then she pushes past me and strides toward the door after Mackenzie, like she has more of a right to chase her than I do. I’ve known Mackenzie since we were in preschool, and fourteen days ago, Lauren was an anonymous stranger. How could she think Mackenzie would want her over me?

  But Lauren’s out the door now, and she makes a beeline for Mackenzie, who’s huddled on the ground with her back against our favorite tree, her knees pulled up to her chest and her face buried in her stuffed elephant. I watch through the window as Lauren sits down on the ground and wraps both arms around my best friend. Mackenzie’s not a touchy-feely person—hasn’t Lauren picked up on that?—and I wait for her to pull away. But instead, Mackenzie puts her head on Lauren’s shoulder and keeps crying, and Lauren strokes her hair like she’s done it a million times.

  At least Mackenzie still thinks I’m worth crying over, but that’s not really much of a comfort.

  As I’m standing there with my nose pressed to the screen, wondering if I should go outside and try again to explain myself, someone taps my shoulder, and I whirl around. There’s Roo, carrying her camera in one hand and an inflatable turtle in the other. Lexi and Ava are right behind her. “Hey, we’re about to get some cotton candy,” Roo says. “Want to come with?”

  I turn back to the window, where Lauren’s rubbing Mackenzie’s back and saying something that’s making a small smile creep onto my friend’s face. She’s right—Mackenzie doesn’t want me right now. She wants the shiny new person who hasn’t had time to make any mistakes yet. Roo and Lexi and Ava are the ones who actually care about me. They’re not perfect, but they like me, and they respect me, and they probably don’t expect me to be flawless, unlike some people.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Lexi links her arm with mine, and we head off to cram our faces full of sweet, sugary fluff.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mackenzie and I haven’t been in a fight since we were eight and couldn’t agree on who was going to be which Pokémon character for Halloween. That fight ended the next morning when I offered to share my Fruit Roll-Up, and by the time we were done licking our sticky fingers, we were ready to play on the jungle gym together like nothing had ever come between us. I cross my fingers that she’s not any better at holding grudges now.

  We’re both waiters at breakfast the next morning, and I rush through setting the table and retrieving pitchers of orange juice and water so I can talk to her alone before everyone else gets here. When I approach the Maple table, she’s busy laying out forks and knives. I give her my most sheepish smile and say, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she mumbles, but she doesn’t look up. I guess she’s going to make me work for this, but I’m willing to do whatever she wants. I’m so ready for everything to go back to normal.

  “I’m really, really sorry about forgetting your birthday,” I say. “I totally screwed up. When we get home, I’m going to get you the best present, and I’m going to—”

  “I don’t want a present,” Mackenzie says. “That’s not the point.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m going to get you one anyway, though. Do you want to hang out during Free Time today? We can do whatever you want. Swimming or a trail ride or whatever.” I hold my pinkie out like a white flag of surrender, but she still doesn’t look at me.

  “I have plans with Lauren today,” she says.

  “Maybe tomorrow, then?”

  Mackenzie nudges a fork two millimeters closer to a plate with the tip of her finger. “I’m not free then, either. Don’t you and Roo have superimportant boy bands to talk about or something?”

  I sigh. “Come on, Mackenzie. I said I was sorry.” I’m about to remind her that I need her help thinking up a new idea from Tomás—she should be flattered to know she’s important and necessary. But then I remember all the stuff she said yesterday about how the prank war is stupid and how I only talk to her when I need something, and I swallow the words back down. I can wait a few more days if I have to.

  “Hi,” says Lauren’s voice right behind me, and Mackenzie finally looks up. I hadn’t noticed other people were starting to arrive. “You okay?” she asks, like Mackenzie could possibly need protection from me.

  “Yeah, thanks.” Mackenzie turns to me and says, “See you,” which obviously means go away.

  Fine, I think as I storm back to the Willow table. I don’t need her anyway. I can plan another amazing prank by myself. But I’m not totally sure that’s true.

  I try to get a seat next to Val at breakfast—she always makes me feel better—but Petra and Mei snag the spots on either side of her while I’m busy fetching platters of bacon from the serving station. Instead, I claim the spot across from Roo, who raises her camera and takes a picture of me as soon as I sit down. I should be used to this by now, but I’m already annoyed, and for some reason her sneak-attack photo makes it worse. I hold my hand up in front of my face. “Can you not?” I snap.

  She takes one more photo of my hand-covered face, probably to prove that she doesn’t have to listen to me. “What’s with you this morning?”

  I sigh and stab my bacon. “Sorry. It has nothing to do with you. Mackenzie and I are in a fight.”

  “Who?”

  “My best friend in Maple. You’ve met her. The girl with the purple glasses?”

  “Oh, her,” Ava says, like she’s remembering a really bland cracker she once ate.

  “I don’t get why you’re even friends with her,” Roo says. “She doesn’t seem that interesting.”

  “She’s just shy, she’s actually really—” I start, but then I stop myself, because why should I defend Mackenzie when she’s refusing to speak to me? “You know what, never mind.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Roo says. “You have us to hang out with now.”

  Lexi nods. “Yeah.”

  “Right. Thanks.” But it doesn’t make me feel any better. Having other people to hang out with isn’t the point. I want them to tell me it’ll blow over, that Mackenzie and I will still be best friends. But they don’t seem to care at all if my friendship with her ends in a flaming pile of wreckage.

  Nothing goes right for me all morning. It turns out Mackenzie’s in Nature with me after all, but she spends the whole time pretending I’m not there and talking with this girl from her cabin. It’s unbelievably hot and humid, so I’m dripping with sweat within the first ten minutes, and then I get a bunch of burrs stuck in my hair. In soccer I wipe out while failing to score a goal and end up with grass stains down the entire
left side of my favorite shirt. Lunch is “Mexican Fiesta,” which means hard yellow taco shells filled with ground hamburger meat, packaged orange cheese, iceberg lettuce, and watery, bland salsa. It’s like no one who works in the kitchen has ever tasted actual Mexican food, and the whole thing makes me grouchy and homesick. All I want to do is curl up with my grandma and a big plate of her spicy enchiladas and watch Corazón de Hielo, Alma de Fuego while she pets my hair.

  And then it’s time for stupid Fishing, which of course I have with stupid Josh.

  I gather my rod and bait from the bored-looking counselor-in-charge, who seems way more focused on his car magazine than on teaching us anything, and sit down at the far end of the dock. I managed to bait my hook fine yesterday, but today I feel so gross already that impaling a worm seems extra disgusting. As I’m trying to psych myself up to do it, Josh comes up behind me and looms over my shoulder. I was really hoping he’d leave me alone for once, but everything else has gone wrong today, so it figures this would too.

  “Squeamish, nemesis?” he asks cheerfully. “Do worms scare you as much as ghosts? Are you going to scream?” He flails his hands around and demonstrates a falsetto shriek.

  I try to think of a snappy retort, but all I can come up with is Your MOM’s scared of worms and ghosts, which doesn’t seem particularly clever. “Can you please get off my case for one hour? Is that too much to ask?” I say instead. I’m trying to sound ferocious, but it comes out kind of sad and tired.

  Josh’s expression changes, and I think for a second that he’s actually going to leave. But instead he sits down next to me on the sun-scorched dock. “You okay?” he asks, and weirdly enough, it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to make fun of me. It sounds like he actually wants to know.

  “Bad day,” I say. “Whatever.”

  “You want me to bait that hook for you?”

  “I can do it myself.”

  He shrugs. “Yeah, I know. But you obviously don’t want to, and it doesn’t bother me.” He holds out his hand. “Come on, give it here.”

  I look at him closely, trying to figure out if this is some kind of trick. I know I’m never, ever supposed to let down my guard around a Wolverine. If I give him the worm, he’ll probably drop it down my shirt or something; plus, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be an empowered girl and bait my own fishhook. But I don’t have the energy to think too hard about Josh’s motives right now, and letting someone else skewer a worm for me one time probably isn’t going to ruin feminism.

  I hand him the hook, and three seconds later he gives it right back, expertly baited.

  “Thanks,” I say. “That was really fast. Do you fish a lot or something?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “My grandpa has this boat, and he likes to take me and my brother out.” He looks at the way I’m awkwardly holding my rod. “I take it you don’t fish a lot?”

  “I hate fishing,” I say. “I have no idea how I ended up in this activity.”

  “I think they throw the preference forms out and assign everything randomly. I specifically said I didn’t want Arts and Crafts, but I’ve still got it next week. I got a D in art last year. I can barely draw a stick figure.”

  “At least you don’t have to kill anything in Arts and Crafts.”

  “I’m so bad with a pencil, I probably will kill someone,” he says, and I smile against my will. “Anyway, you don’t have to kill anything either, except the worm. If you catch a fish, throw it back.”

  “It’ll still hurt the fish, though. And I don’t know how to get the hook out.”

  “I can show you.”

  I want to say, Why are you being nice to me? But I’m afraid that if I call attention to it, he’ll remember we’re supposed to be enemies and go back to taunting me. Plus, I actually don’t mind this side of Josh. I almost feel like I’m making a new friend.

  “Hey,” I say. “Thanks for not ratting us out about having a Ouija board.”

  Josh shrugs. “The Ouija board rule is so stupid. We don’t want to get you guys in trouble or anything. We just want a fun prank war.”

  “Yeah, us too.” I swallow hard. “That was a pretty decent prank, actually.”

  Josh grins. “I know.”

  “How did you even know we were going to use the Ouija board that night?”

  “Seriously? You think I’m going to reveal my sources to you?”

  I shrug. “Fair enough.”

  We cast our lines and sit in silence for a minute, and then he asks, “So, what’s bad about today?”

  I remind myself that I probably can’t trust him. Who knows if he’s being genuine right now? Maybe he’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security, and then he’ll use everything I tell him against me. But the weird thing is, I kind of want to tell him anyway, even if letting down my guard is a betrayal of my cabin. Roo and Lexi and Ava are great, but they clearly don’t care about my friendship with Mackenzie. Mei probably isn’t into having deep conversations with me either after the whole bunk-swapping thing. If Val and I were still doing our daily Popsicle runs, I’d ask her what she thinks about the situation, but I never have time alone with her anymore. Josh is sitting right here, basically a captive audience, and unlike everyone else, it seems like he’s willing to listen.

  “I’m in a fight with my best friend,” I say.

  “That girl from Archery?”

  I nod. How weird is it that he remembers Mackenzie, when my actual friends didn’t seem to know who she was?

  “What’s the fight about?” he asks.

  I obviously can’t tell him the parts that have to do with the prank war, so I keep my explanation simple. “She’s mad I forgot her birthday.”

  “Seriously? That’s a dumb thing to fight about.”

  “We usually make a big deal out of each other’s birthdays,” I say. “We do funny surprise birthday pranks and stuff. I can see why she’s upset.”

  “Why don’t you just say you’re sorry?”

  “I did, a bunch of times. She’s still mad, though.”

  Josh’s eyebrows furrow like he’s trying to understand a really hard math problem. “But . . . why is she still mad if you apologized?”

  “Because it’s more complicated than that. And besides, sometimes people stay mad no matter what you say until they’re ready to forgive you. Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”

  Josh scratches the back of his neck. “Not if I said sorry. Isn’t that the entire point of saying sorry?”

  How does he not understand this? Don’t all humans understand this? Maybe boys aren’t as complicated as girls. When the boys in my class fight, they usually yell and shove each other for, like, thirty seconds, and then someone breaks it up and makes them apologize, and two minutes later they’re talking about video games again.

  “Do you have any sisters?” I ask.

  “What? No. Why?”

  “I guess maybe it’s a girl thing,”

  He nods slowly. “Girls are weird.”

  I think about the strange power dynamics that seem to be going on between Roo and Lexi and Ava and the way they offered me an “opportunity” before the karaoke competition, like they wanted to go into business with me. I’ve never seen boys do anything like that.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Girls are super weird.”

  “Wait till Friday night,” Josh says. “All the girls in the camp are gonna go insane.”

  “How come?”

  “Color Wars is this weekend, remember? Captains get chosen at the campfire on Friday. Do you know about the Sea Witch thing?”

  “Yeah. A counselor dresses up and kidnaps one of the captains, right?”

  “Right, and then they announce the rest of the captains and split everyone into teams, and all the girls freak out. Some of the guys, too, but mostly the girls. Some of them cry because they’re happy, and some of them cry because they’re upset, but basically all of them cry. Stuart was the Sea Witch last year, and the girl he ‘kidnapped’ got so excited she accidentally
elbowed him in the face and gave him a black eye.”

  I seriously doubt the girls are as bad as he’s making them sound; if I get chosen as a captain, there’s no way I’ll cry or punch someone. But that’s not what catches my attention. “Is Stuart always the Sea Witch?” I ask.

  “He’s done it the last couple of summers, and I think he’s doing it again this year,” Josh says. “I don’t know why he likes it, honestly. Tromping through the cold lake in the dark wearing a dress doesn’t sound very fun to me.”

  “No, that doesn’t sound fun at all,” I say, but my mind is spinning now. I suddenly remember this old Mexican legend my grandma told me about Devil’s Alley, a street everyone was afraid to walk down because the devil appeared there every night. The only way to keep him from terrorizing the town was for everyone to leave offerings of gold, which always disappeared by the morning. But then one day, two guys got suspicious that it was someone dressing up as the devil and stealing everybody’s stuff. So they dressed up as devils, too, and they scared the pants off the first fake devil, who never stole anything again.

  Ever since we heard the Sea Witch story in Arts and Crafts, Mackenzie and I have been trying to think up a prank we could do at the Color Wars campfire. Now that I know Stuart is the one dressing up as the Sea Witch, I suddenly know exactly what it should be. And the best part is that I didn’t need Mackenzie to think of it. This idea is 100 percent mine, which proves I can handle the prank war on my own after all.

  Josh is going to freak out when he discovers how much he just helped the Willows.

  Dear Mom, Dad, Lina, Tomas, and Abuela,

  Things at camp are all right, but my activities aren’t nearly as good as last week. Fishing is the absolute worst. It’s soooooo boring, and I swear there aren’t actually any fish in the lake, because not a single person has caught anything. Also, I don’t think the counselor who runs Nature actually knows anything about nature. Three girls got poison ivy yesterday because he didn’t warn them what it looked like. I wish I could do last week’s stuff again.