Just Like Me

by Nancy Cavanaugh

  I’m sure Vanessa, Meredith, Avery, Becca, and Gina were all thinking what I was. This would be tough for White Oak on a good day, but with none of us even speaking to each other, we probably didn’t have a chance.

  Before we had too much time to think about it, Donnie announced, “White Oak, you’re up first!”

  We all looked at each other, but still kept our lips zipped. We followed Vanessa out on the dock as if we already had our strategy worked out. We climbed into the boats and sat down. Vanessa and Meredith in the first boat. Becca and Avery in the second one. And Gina and me in the third boat.

  The rest of the campers and counselors stood on the sand, huddled together talking in groups with their cabinmates. Tori stood over by the boathouse, watching us.

  Once we’d buckled and tied our life jackets, DD Jr. unhooked the boats from the dock, and when we’d drifted out far enough, we put our oars in the water.

  We were ready.

  Donnie yelled, “On your marks. Get set. Go!”

  And the bullhorn blew.

  Tori screamed, “C’mon, White Oak. You can do it!”

  It sounded like she wanted us to win as much as we did.

  Vanessa, Becca, and I grabbed the oars, pulled back, and our three boats inched away from the shore. Somehow that first stroke was completely in sync, and we moved in the right direction.

  “And pull!” Vanessa yelled as we lifted our oars for the second stroke.

  Her voice surprised me, but it felt like such a relief that someone had finally spoken. And because Vanessa finally did speak, all of our lips unzipped.

  “Keep it steady, you guys,” Avery encouraged.

  “Lots of power!” Becca grunted. “Give it all you got!”

  I couldn’t believe it, but I felt our boats glide effortlessly through the water. Vanessa, Becca, and I were rowing together in perfect time. Not too slow. Not too fast. But in perfect rhythm with each other.

  As I watched the shore of Camp Little Big Woods getting smaller and smaller, I felt like we were making really good time, and soon I knew we must be getting close to the other side of the lake.

  “Vanessa, a few more strokes and we’re there,” Meredith said.

  Vanessa looked over her shoulder.

  “Is it shallow enough to get out yet?” Vanessa asked Meredith.

  “Yeah,” Meredith answered, and she stepped out of their boat into the shallow water.

  We stopped rowing, and Vanessa jumped out of the boat too. She and Meredith pulled their boat toward the shore, dragging ours along with theirs.

  “Hurry up, let’s switch places,” Becca said to Avery.

  “Wait!” Avery said, looking over the side of the boat. “It’s not quite shallow enough yet.”

  Vanessa and Meredith kept guiding the boats toward shore so that we could all jump out, switch places, and turn around to head back to camp. Since Gina and I were in the third boat, we were in the deepest water, so I waited before I tried to step out. Gina didn’t. She stepped over the side of the boat, thinking that she’d be able to touch the bottom, but she couldn’t. Her foot sank into the deep water, and she lost her balance. She screamed. Then she grabbed the side of our boat, trying to catch herself. Our boat tipped. It flipped completely upside down, sending me flying into the water with Gina.

  We both went under, but our life jackets popped us back to the surface before we even knew what had happened. We came up sputtering. Our rowboat floated upside down next to us.

  “Oh my gosh!” Avery yelled from her boat. “Are you guys okay?”

  “What is wrong with you?” Vanessa screamed, stomping through the shallow water toward us while she pulled the boats closer to the shore.

  “Vanessa,” Avery said, getting out of her boat, “they could’ve gotten hurt.”

  Gina and I swam toward shore, though with Vanessa there yelling at us, I wanted to swim in the other direction.

  “You guys!” Becca wailed, jumping into the shallow water and hurrying over to us. “This is a race! Let’s go!”

  “A race?” Vanessa snarked. “We’ll never win now. Thanks to those two.”

  Gina and I finally felt the sand under our feet, and we walked toward the beach.

  “Vanessa,” Avery scolded again, “Gina’s right. Don’t you ever think about anything but winning? Technically, Gina could’ve gotten knocked unconscious from a fall like that.”

  “Yeah,” Vanessa said, sounding just plain mean. “Well, technically, she didn’t. And now, technically, White Oak’s going to lose.”

  “We can still try to win!” Becca said, not giving up and trying to get us all thinking about the race again. “Let’s tip that boat back over and get going.”

  “Do you know how hard it is to tip a rowboat over when it’s upside down in the water?” Vanessa said. “I was right about White Oak in the beginning. This team stinks!”

  “Maybe we should just go back to not talking,” I said as I walked past Vanessa and sat on the beach.

  “Yeah, you’d like that,” Vanessa said. “Because then nobody would be talking about how you read Avery’s journal and started a fight. Again.”

  I got up and ran toward Vanessa, ready to push her down in the water. Gina grabbed me by the life jacket and stopped me before I got to her, but the two of us fell into the water.

  Vanessa laughed her head off.

  “You two are perfect for each other,” she said. “Rumper bumper number one and rumper bumper number two.”

  Gina jumped up, ready to tackle Vanessa herself. This time Avery stepped in to stop it.

  “We have to stop fighting, you guys!” Avery yelled.

  “Why?” I yelled back. “We’re not going to win!”

  “You got that right,” Vanessa muttered.

  I splashed water at Vanessa.

  She splashed me back.

  And then we stood, staring at each other and waiting to see if anyone would make the next move.

  “Not this again!” Becca wailed.

  “Why not?” I yelled. “None of us ever really got along. All we did was figure out how to win a bunch of stupid games. So what? I never wanted to come to camp in the first place.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Becca asked, sounding annoyed.

  “Yeah,” Avery said. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I never wanted to come to Camp Little Big Woods, and if it wasn’t for that stupid Ms. Marcia project, I never would have. Do you really think I wanted to spend a week sitting around talking about how great it is that we’re “best” friends just because we started our life together in an orphanage in China?”

  “It’s not our fault you hate being Chinese,” Becca said, sounding a lot like Vanessa.

  I ran at Avery and Becca like I was a crazy person, splashing and kicking water at them. And as they splashed and kicked water back, Gina grabbed my arm, trying to stop me, but then I lunged at her and splashed even harder.

  “And I never wanted you to tell my secret about the yarn. I never wanted any of you to find out—”

  “To find out what?” Gina yelled, interrupting me. “That a blanket that came from your birth mom is important to you? Do you know how much I wish I had something like that from my mom? She hasn’t visited me in months because she’s off on some kooky self-awareness trip. She’s busy going to seminars and reading books about finding herself when she should be looking for me.”

  “That’s why your mom hasn’t visited?” Vanessa asked, using the same quiet voice as when she talked about that photo of her and her dad.

  “Yeah,” Gina said. “Like you care.”

  “My dad hasn’t called in two months,” Vanessa said, sounding a lot like she did care.

  No one said anything, but Vanessa continued, “My mom’s glad we haven’t heard from him, but I’m no
t. I know my dad’s not perfect, but I really miss him. I hoped that maybe when I got home from camp, he’d call and I could tell him about the camp T-shirts we’d won. That probably sounds really stupid, but…”

  Vanessa didn’t finish what she was saying. I don’t think she really knew what else to say.

  I sat down in the ankle-deep water, resting my arms on my knees. I squinted up at the sun and looked at all of them.

  “I was only pretending the blanket was from my birth mom,” I confessed. “I wanted to see what it felt like to have something that connected me to her.”

  They all stared at me. Everyone’s frustrated expressions softened, and nobody looked quite so mad anymore. They all sat down around me in the shallow water.

  “The whole thing’s embarrassing,” I said. “I acted like a baby, sleeping with that blanket, and…and…”

  “And what?” Gina asked.

  Unlike Vanessa, there was something else I knew I wanted to say.

  “I think somehow I thought that if what I was pretending was real, I could take the blanket to China someday and use it to find my birth mom.”

  When I said that last part, it felt like I had let go after holding my breath for a really long time. I didn’t even know I was thinking that until I said it out loud. And when I heard myself say it, it was as if I was admitting what was really true—I didn’t have anything that my birth mom had touched, and I would probably never really know who she was.

  Our three rowboats rested on the shore near us, and the only sound was the tiny little waves slapping up against the sides of the boats.

  But then we heard the distant sound of a motorboat coming across the lake.

  Dear Ms. Marcia,

  If the red thread proverb is true, maybe it doesn’t matter that the blanket isn’t what I was pretending it was.

  Julia

  27

  After DD Jr. rescued us in the motorboat, Donnie took us up to the mess hall to yell at us.

  Apparently he had seen the whole fight through the binoculars he kept in the boathouse, and even though he had only seen what happened and hadn’t heard what happened, he could tell that White Oak had lost their peace big-time. So we got yelled at big-time.

  Once Donnie finished his lengthy lecture about how dangerous our fighting had become, Tori showed up. She looked about as mad as a Christian camp counselor could look. I bet she wished she’d never even met the six of us. She marched us up to the cabin and told us to stay put, so there we all were, lying in our bunks and staring at the ceiling.

  We knew the rest of the campers were down at the waterfront finishing the race. The race we were supposed to win. The race that would’ve given us enough points to win the camp competition. But now we didn’t even get to be there. Red Maple and Silver Birch would be duking it out for first place, since they were tied with each other for second.

  Soon we heard “We Are the Champions” coming through the trees outside our cabin. We knew that meant Donnie had just announced which cabin had won the rowboat relay race, and once he announced that, one lucky cabin would become the Camp Little Big Woods first-place champions.

  It should’ve been us. Instead, the six of us were stuck in our hot, stuffy cabin just watching the minutes tick by until camp was over. After all we’d been through together, it was hard to imagine that this was how the week was going to end.

  I leaned over the edge of my bunk and peeked at Gina. She looked up at me, and after what seemed like a long time, she smiled. And then she did something else. We could still hear “We Are the Champions” playing, so Gina grabbed her brush—the one she used to scratch her mosquito bites—and lip synched the song, dancing around in her bed.

  I smiled at her. I think it was the first time I’d smiled all afternoon.

  Once Gina saw me smile, she bounced around in her bed as if she were the queen of rock and roll.

  I giggled. I loved Gina’s craziness.

  Vanessa, Meredith, Avery, and Becca all looked over at Gina, but they didn’t find her all that funny. They didn’t laugh. They didn’t even smile. So I picked up my journal, which was lying on my bed, ripped out one of the blank pages near the back, crunched it into a tight ball, and threw it across the room—right at Vanessa.

  Everyone froze when the paper hit Vanessa in the chest. We all knew this was it. We were either going to find a fun, funny way to get out of the mess we’d gotten ourselves into, like we had done that day in the dish room, or we were going to let our fighting be the thing we remembered most about camp.

  Thankfully, the air filled with scrunched-up paper bullets and balled-up socks as we threw whatever we could find that would fly. Becca even found the ping-pong ball we’d used when we practiced for Egg Emergency, and that ball was whipping back and forth across the room faster than a world-class ping-pong match.

  Every hit from a paper bullet or a pair of socks or the ping-pong ball seemed to help us forgive each other for all the things that had happened. All the things that were said that we didn’t mean—and even the things that were said that we did mean.

  The throwing, ducking, and giggling felt so good. Finally, even though we weren’t supposed to get out of our bunks, we headed to the middle of the room with our pillows. And we let each other have it.

  I don’t know what tired us out more, the pillow fighting or the laughing, but the six of us finally fell in a huge heap on the floor.

  We lay in the pile of pillows trying to catch our breath.

  “I’m really sorry I messed everything up for us,” I said.

  “We know,” Gina said. “But it isn’t all your fault. We’re all sorry about stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Vanessa said. “I’m sorry I yelled at everyone so much.”

  “Ditto,” Becca said.

  We were all quiet for a few seconds, still lying in a heap on the floor.

  “Julia?” Vanessa said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You shouldn’t feel weird about what you were pretending. I’ve saved all my dad’s phone messages, and now that he doesn’t call very much anymore, I play the old messages and pretend they’re new ones.”

  Next Gina spoke up, “Once when my mom canceled her visit with me, I taped a photo of her on my computer screen and talked to her like we were Skyping.”

  “I write letters to my grandma,” Meredith said. “Even though she died last year just before Christmas.”

  “Sometimes I pretend the hostess at the Chinese restaurant is my sister,” Avery said.

  “Sometimes I wish I had a sister,” Becca said. “Or even a brother.”

  Maybe there were things about their adoption that bothered Avery and Becca after all. Maybe there were things that bothered everyone. Really important things. Things that were really hard to understand.

  We were all quiet again for a few long seconds.

  “You know what two things we should all be the most sorry about?” Gina asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That we waited until now to talk about all this stuff,” Gina answered. “And that there wasn’t a camp award for having really big fights, getting into huge trouble, and then making up. Because White Oak would be the champions of that!”

  And we all laughed until tears streamed down our faces.

  • • •

  When Tori came back to the cabin after the rowboat race to check on us and found us in the middle of the sandy concrete floor with tears streaming down our faces, she didn’t know what to think. But when she realized our tears were from laughing and not from fighting, she was so happy I thought she might cry.

  “Donnie had his doubts, but I knew you guys would figure it out,” she said, grabbing all of us and squeezing tight.

  But when she let go, she looked around the cabin. Socks and clothes and scrunched-up paper littered the floor.

  “Looks
like you chose an interesting method to work things out,” Tori said, laughing.

  We all laughed too.

  She looked at her watch and said, “If you guys hurry, you might be able to get this cleaned up before dinner.”

  So we scooped up all the paper and tossed it into the garbage. We collected our flying socks, which were in every nook and cranny of the cabin, and we brushed the sand off our pillows and put them back on our beds.

  As I set my pillow at the head of my bed and straightened out my sleeping bag, I saw my “Ms. Marcia” journal lying at the foot of the bed. I picked it up to put it underneath my pillow, which was where I kept it now instead of leaving it out in the open. Avery saw me with my journal and said, “We don’t have to talk about any of the Ms. Marcia stuff if you don’t want to.”

  Becca looked up at me from her bunk to see what I would say.

  “Thanks for saying that,” I said. “And I know I’ve already said it, but I’m really sorry I read your journal.”

  “I know,” Avery said. “I forgive you.”

  As I slid my journal underneath my pillow, I said to Avery and Becca, “Do you guys ever wonder about your birth mom?”

  Neither Avery or Becca answered.

  “Like, do you wonder if she loved you?”

  Vanessa, Meredith, and Gina stood on the other side of the room, staying really quiet.

  “Sometimes,” Avery finally said.

  And in the quietest voice I’d ever heard Becca use, she said, “Me too.”

  “Me three,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if those blankets we all got from the orphanage really were from our birth moms?” Avery asked.

  Becca and I didn’t answer, but Avery knew even without us answering that we agreed with her.

  Just knowing that Avery and Becca wondered and wished for some of the same things I did made me feel a lot better. And feeling a lot better made me see things in a way I never had before.

  “You know what?” I said. “In a way, the blankets really were from our birth moms. The three of us each have one of those blankets because we were in a place that took good care of us. When our birth moms knew they couldn’t keep us, they made sure we were somewhere where we’d be okay.