Willows vs. Wolverines

by Alison Cherry

  “I call first turn on the rope swing!” Roo sings as we bump along the dirt road.

  “I call first turn in the hammock,” Ava says.

  “We should do our picture with our tree right away, while it’s still light,” says Lexi. “Will you take it, Summer?”

  We make a left off the road and roll into a small gravel lot, where another white Foxtail van is already parked. “Val, this is the wrong turnoff,” Petra says. “Sandpiper Village is farther down.”

  Roo looks out the window and snorts. “Catfish Hole?” she says. “Ha-ha, very funny. Let’s get back on the road.”

  But Val turns off the van and takes off her seat belt. “It’s not a joke. I thought we’d try something different this year.”

  “What?” Roo gasps. “Why? You said we were going to Sandpiper Village!”

  “This place is a dump,” Ava says. “Everyone hates Catfish Hole.”

  “No offense, Val, but it’s true,” Summer agrees.

  “It’s perfectly nice,” Val says. “There’s a fire pit and a stream and woods. What else do you need for an overnight?”

  Roo’s voice is rising now, edging toward hysteria. “Um, a hill where you can actually see the stars? A rope swing? Water that’s not full of mud and catfish?”

  “And we need to take our tree picture!” Lexi whines.

  “There are lots of trees here,” Val says. “I can still take your picture.”

  “It can’t be some random tree! It has to be our tree!”

  “I don’t get why we—” Roo starts.

  And then Stuart comes around the corner, smiling and waving. “Oooooh, baby!” he shouts with this weird cowboy drawl. “Here comes my woman!”

  Roo looks livid now, even madder than when she found out Tomás was fake. “Oh no,” she says, her voice low and deadly. “No no no no no. You brought us here so you could hang out with your boyfriend?”

  Val’s cheeks flush bright red. “He’s not—that’s not why,” she says. “I thought it would be cool for you to get to know the Wolverines better. Overnights are more fun with more people.”

  “The Wolverines are our enemies,” says Summer. “We’re not supposed to get to know them. We’re supposed to take them down.”

  “That’s a game, though,” Val says. “We’re not enemies in real life. They’re really nice boys. You’ll see.”

  Roo looks like she might cry. “The overnight is my favorite thing in all of camp,” she shouts. “You already ruined the prank war. I can’t believe you’re ruining this, too!”

  She just accused Val of ruining the prank war. Val. Not me. I have to work hard not to smile.

  “Try to have fun, okay?” Val says, but Roo is already out of the van and storming away. Val goes after her, but she stops when Stuart slips an arm around her and says something I can’t hear. When she nods, he kisses the side of her head, and I have to look away.

  Convincing Val is clearly a lost cause, and it’s not like we can drive the van ourselves, so we pile out and gather our stuff in silence. The Wolverines don’t look much happier with this situation than we are, but they don’t seem surprised to see us. I wonder how long Val has been plotting with Stuart to bring us here.

  “Some of you can take the tents over to that flat stretch of ground and start setting up,” Val calls. “Everyone else should start collecting firewood with the Wolverines so we can roast some hot dogs and marshmallows!” Usually her bouncy enthusiasm is infectious, but tonight none of us are buying it, and it falls flat. Mei and Summer grab the tents and trudge off without looking at her.

  I spot Josh collecting wood near the creek, so I head over to help. This place definitely isn’t as nice as the pictures I saw of Sandpiper Village, but at least there’s one person here who doesn’t hate me. “Hey,” he says. “How’s it going?”

  I pick up a thin branch and start stripping the leaves off. “Terrible. Everyone’s still giving me the silent treatment. And we were supposed to be at Sandpiper Village tonight, but Val brought us here instead.”

  “Seriously? Sandpiper Village is eight thousand times better. You can actually swim there.”

  I look down into the creek and shudder. The water is sluggish and brown; anything could be hiding in there. “Yeah. She made up some ridiculous excuse about how we should be bonding with you guys. She obviously just didn’t want to be away from her boyfriend for a whole night.”

  “Stuart’s acting like an idiot too,” Josh says. “When we found out you guys were coming tonight, we started planning a prank, and he told us we couldn’t do it. He said we should ‘hang out with you guys and have fun.’ Like ‘hanging out’ could possibly be more fun than pranking.”

  “Love ruins everything,” I say.

  “Seriously.”

  I glance at Val and Stuart, who are sitting by the fire pit. They’re not doing anything but talking, but it still makes me furious to look at them. I swipe at a pile of dead leaves with my branch. “Ugh. They make me want to vomit. We should prank them. They deserve it way more than you guys do.”

  Josh looks up. “We could, you know. That’s a really good idea.”

  “Nobody’s going to listen to us. The rest of your cabin hates the Willows, and the Willows hate me.” It’s so depressing to think how far I’ve fallen. Five days ago, everyone listened to me around here.

  “We don’t hate the Willows,” Josh says. “Especially not you. I told the other guys about how you came up with the spaghetti and the mountain lion and the Sea Witch, not Tomás, and they’ve spent the whole week talking about how we should recruit you to our side.”

  “Really?” I say. It feels great to know that there are still some people at Camp Foxtail who respect me.

  “Yeah. So what do you think? Should we take the counselors down a notch?”

  I tally the people I might be able to sway. Hannah’s an easy sell, and I’m pretty sure I could convince Mei and Lexi, too. But none of them would team up with me against Roo’s orders. Everyone knows how dangerous it is to be on her bad side, especially after watching her shut me out this week.

  Is it possible I could turn Roo around? She’s still furious at me, but right now, she’s way angrier at Val. If I offer her a chance to get revenge for our ruined overnight, maybe I could draw her back in, and everyone else might follow.

  “I’d need to talk to Roo,” I say.

  “So talk to her,” Josh says, like it’s no big deal.

  I spot her at the edge of the woods on the other side of the fire pit, collecting sticks with Lexi and Ava. “I don’t want to go alone,” I say. “Will you come with me?”

  “What, to be your bodyguard? Are you that scared of her? She’s tiny.”

  “You don’t know her. She looks cute and small, but she’s like a hurricane mixed with an alligator mixed with your school principal.”

  “Eh, I’ve dealt with worse,” he says. “You haven’t known true terror until you’ve smelled Bloody Mary’s socks. Let’s go.”

  Josh and I skirt around the fire pit, where Stuart is taking his guitar out of its case. I’m afraid he’s going to call us all back so we can have a dumb sing-along, but instead he starts singing to Val in this supershowy way. It sounds kind of like an acoustic version of the Squeegeez song we sang for the karaoke competition. His guitar playing is awful, and I’m pretty sure all the chords are wrong, but Val stares up at him with this sappy smile on her face anyway. It’s sickening.

  Roo glances up at Josh and me as we approach. “Oh great, it’s the traitor and her boyfriend,” she says. “What do you want?”

  I feel my face go pink; what if Josh thinks I told everyone we’re dating? “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say quickly. “He’s . . . Josh. He and the Wolverines want to help us get revenge on Val and Stuart for ruining our overnight and the prank war.”

  “Hi,” Josh says. Lexi smiles and waves. Roo and Ava don’t even look at him, but Josh seems totally unaffected by all the tension in the air. Do boys not have the same awkwardn
ess sensors as girls?

  “Get revenge how?” Roo asks.

  “We want to prank them,” I say. “All of us together. We’d love your help thinking up something good.” Josh and I could obviously plan a prank by ourselves, but asking for her help seems like the best way to get her to drop her guard. If I were in Roo’s shoes right now, that’s probably what I would want.

  “Why should we trust either of you?” Roo asks. “You’re as much of a traitor as Val, and this guy is our enemy.”

  “I’m not your enemy,” Josh says. “I was your rival, but that’s not the same thing. And now Val and Stuart’s stupidity is making all of us suffer. Izzy says Val kept you guys away from Sandpiper Village so they could sit there making goo-goo eyes at each other, and Stuart told us we should stop pranking you guys, because apparently his love life is more important than fun. Don’t you want to get back at them?”

  We glance over in time to see Stuart tucking a piece of Val’s hair behind her ear. I’ve never understood why girls think that’s romantic. If my hair’s bugging me, I can fix it myself.

  Roo seems to be wavering, but she’s still not quite ready to give in. Part of me wants to tell her to forget it and walk away; I’d rather deal with the silent treatment for a few more days than beg. But another part remembers my conversation with Josh on Monday, when I told him I wasn’t sorry for what I had done, that it was the Willows’ problem if they couldn’t accept that I lied to help them win. It was for a good cause, but I really shouldn’t have tricked them like that. Maybe they would’ve come around and let me plan pranks if I had waited a few days for them to get used to me. I never even tried to be patient with them, and maybe they do deserve an apology for that.

  I take a deep breath and try to swallow my pride.

  “Listen,” I tell them. “I just want to say . . . I shouldn’t have lied to you about having an older brother. I was so excited when I found out about the prank war, and when you guys didn’t let me be in charge right away, I got upset. I really wanted you to like me and think I was cool, like the girls at my old camp. And then when you did, I didn’t want you to stop thinking I was cool. I never thought you’d find out the truth. I just thought we’d win the prank war, and that would be it.”

  Roo and Lexi and Ava are staring at me now, but they don’t say anything, and I’m not sure if I’m making sense or getting through to them. But it’s not like things can get worse than they already are, so I forge ahead.

  “Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I’m really sorry. I can totally see why you’re mad at me. But I promise I’m never going to lie to you again, and I really think we should prank Val and Stuart, and it would be much more fun if you guys did it with me. So can you maybe forgive me? It only has to be for five more days, and then you can go back to hating me again as soon as camp’s over, if you want.”

  Nobody says anything for a few seconds. And then, to my surprise, Lexi says, “Okay. I forgive you.”

  Being Color Wars captain must’ve done something to her; I’ve never heard her express an important opinion without looking to her friends for approval first. I guess Roo and Ava are pretty surprised too, because they stop gaping at me and gape at her instead.

  “What?” Lexi says. “It’s not that big a deal. She didn’t hurt anybody. She’s a good friend, and she’s loyal—you guys should’ve seen how hard she worked to help us win Color Wars. And she comes up with the best pranks. She should’ve apologized sooner, but now she has, so I don’t see why we have to shut her out. This silent treatment thing is getting exhausting.”

  After a few seconds, Ava shrugs. “Yeah, whatever. I’m fine with it if you guys are.”

  Roo looks over at Stuart and Val again. A few feet away from them, two of the Wolverines are having a sword fight with sticks and shouting insults at each other in bad British accents, but neither counselor is paying any attention. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist for them anymore.

  When Roo turns back to us, there’s a new resolve in her eyes. “Tell me what you have in mind,” she says.

  CHAPTER 25

  We can’t exactly call a full Willows-Wolverines meeting right in front of Stuart and Val, so Josh rounds up the Wolverines who are best at pranking—Beans, Groucho, and Bloody Mary—and Roo, Lexi, Ava, and I meet them at the edge of the woods. I expect that the boys will take some convincing, but they’re into the idea of a combined prank right away, and they seem excited to be doing it with me, specifically. The way they’re looking at me kind of makes me feel like a rock star again.

  My instinct is to come up with a killer prank myself and assign everyone the roles I think they’ll be best at. But I’m pretty sure Roo won’t stick around if I’m remotely bossy, so I ask if anyone else has ideas. Lexi has a few that are surprisingly decent, and so do Josh and Beans, and pretty soon Roo starts chiming in too. Once we have a basic framework, we agree to tell the rest of our cabins what’s going on, then reconvene to put the final touches on the plan after s’mores. I feel like I’m floating as we scatter and I head off to find Mei, my designated outreach person. After three days of being completely alone, it is so ridiculously nice to be part of something again.

  I find Mei looking for marshmallow-roasting sticks behind the girls’ tents. When she sees me coming, she automatically glances around to make sure nobody’s watching. But as soon as I tell her Roo sent me and explain our plan, she starts looking a lot more relaxed and happy. “I’m definitely in,” she says. “Val and Stuart totally deserve to be pranked. And I’m, um . . . I’m glad Roo’s not going to freak out if I talk to you now.”

  I smile at her. “Me too.”

  “Should we go see if they’re ready to start the fire? If we’re stuck here at stupid Catfish Hole, we might as well make the most of it and eat as many s’mores as possible.”

  It would be so easy to slip back into my friendship with Mei like nothing happened, but I don’t feel quite right about that. “Hang on a second,” I say. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m really sorry I lied to you about Tomás.” I repeat everything I said to Roo and Lexi and Ava, and it comes out smoother this time. Maybe apologies get easier with practice. Maybe Josh was actually onto something.

  “I honestly didn’t care that much about the prank thing,” Mei says when I’m done. “The stuff you came up with was really good.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “But . . . I was kind of mad anyway when I found out.” Mei looks down at the branch she’s holding and peels off some of the bark, like she doesn’t want to make eye contact with me. “Remember when we talked about my sister leaving for college, and you made it seem like you knew what I was going through? I felt like a total idiot when I found out you didn’t really.”

  Oh. It never occurred to me that those lies had hurt anyone. “Wow, I didn’t mean it that way at all,” I say. “I’m really sorry. And I obviously don’t think it’s idiotic to be sad about your sister leaving. That’s how you’re supposed to feel.”

  “I know. But I trusted you and told you personal stuff, and I thought you trusted me back. But then it turned out you were lying the whole time.”

  “I do trust you,” I say. “Can we try again? I could tell you something personal now. Something juicy and embarrassing. Would that help?”

  A smile tugs at the corners of Mei’s mouth. “Maybe. It’s definitely worth a try.”

  I think for a minute, and then I say, “Okay, here’s one. Do you know what a telenovela is?”

  “Like those soap operas in Spanish?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “There’s this lady in the retirement community where my great-aunt lives who’s always watching those. They seem really stupid.”

  “They are. But here’s the thing. There’s this one called Corazón de Hielo, Alma de Fuego—it means ‘Heart of Ice, Soul of Fire.’ I watch it every single day with my grandma. I tell everyone she makes me, but I actually watch it even when she’s not home. I’ve really missed it
while we’ve been here. You’re the only one besides my family who knows.”

  Mei laughs. “What kind of stuff happens on it?”

  “Right before I left, there was this guy named Rodrigo who had amnesia, and he fell in love with his evil ex-wife all over again because he didn’t remember who she was. They were on a cruise ship, and he was chasing her all over the place trying to declare his love to her, and she fell overboard and got eaten by sharks.”

  “Whoa,” Mei says. “That’s . . . umm . . .”

  “Ridiculous, I know,” I say, and she laughs again. “But I don’t care. There’s something weirdly addictive about it.”

  “So, you speak Spanish?” Mei asks.

  “I speak it okay, but I understand it really well. My grandma lives with us, and she’s from Mexico, so she speaks Spanish most of the time. I pretty much always answer her in English, though.”

  “I do the exact same thing when my parents speak Mandarin to me! It drives them nuts. They’re making me go to Chinese school on Saturdays so I can get better.” She wrinkles her nose. “Maybe I should find some Chinese soap operas for practice.”

  I laugh. “Maybe.”

  “Well, anyway, your secret’s safe with me,” Mei says. “By the way, I’m glad you’re bunking with me again. Petra thrashes around when she sleeps.”

  “I’m glad too. I never should’ve switched in the first place.”

  Mei smiles, and just like that, we’re friends again.

  * * *

  Stuart and Val let us stay up really late eating marshmallows, and by the time the campfire burns down to embers and ashes, we have a solid prank plan for tomorrow. Unlike our other pranks, it barely requires any preparation, and we’ll be able to gather everything we need during the day tomorrow with no problem. It’s not the most cohesive plan, since it’s a mix of all our ideas, but I kind of like that about it. I like that it belongs to all of us.