by Molly Booth
But at least I got to see Claudia again.
“This cabin’s still the worst.” Bobby swung the creaky door open, with Connie hovering just behind him. I got to see my weird Dogberry friends too, I guess.
“I know.” I sighed and got up to unpack my stuff into the drawers under the counselor bed. “I don’t get it. There’s a new guy in Whitetail, and in Snowshoe with Ben, so why am I out here?”
“Did you ask Nik?” Connie, all legs and elbows, sat on one of the beds.
“Why bother? They’re not gonna change it now.”
“At least there’s some privacy out here,” she said. Privacy at camp? Not a thing. “So, guess what? I’m headed to Wash U in the fall.”
Bobby, Connie, and I were all around the same age, but I graduated a year early, got into Yale a year early.
“Yeah? Congrats.”
“Thanks.” She smiled. “I’m pumped to go out west. Bobby’s going to USM.” She jerked a thumb at him. Bobby pretended to chug an imaginary beer. “So now you have to tell us,” she continued. “What’s college really like?”
“It’s tough,” I said. “I worked my ass off and still got a couple Bs.”
“Not bad,” Connie said.
“I don’t care about your grades,” Bobby clarified. “What’s the party scene like?”
“Boring,” I said firmly. “New Haven’s nothing like the city.”
“Aww, man,” Bobby sympathized, even though he’s from Maine, so he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Yeah,” I said. “And the worst part was that Donald lived on my floor.” He was no doubt telling all his friends what a pain that had been, so I might as well tell mine.
“Seriously?!” Bobby laughed.
“Yeah, can you believe that?” I replied. “King’s idea, I’m sure. They wanted to put us in the same room, but I got out of it.” Actually, Donald had thrown a fit, but they didn’t need to know that.
“That’s such bullshit,” Bobby groaned. “Can’t your dad be cool for, like, five seconds of his life?”
“He’s supporting the better health care bill—” Connie offered. Bobby threw my pillow at her.
“Yeah, so anyway,” I said, swinging my legs around over the edge of the bed. “Donald shows up to campus with a truckload of stuff—”
“And another U-Haul for his ego?” Bobby asked.
“Nice.” I reached over to slap his hand. “Yeah, and we’re at the same boring parties, where he’s bragging about all the girls he’s slept with. And we have two classes together, and he doesn’t even acknowledge me. Looks right through me. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“What did you do?” Connie leaned forward.
“There was this girl he was hooking up with, and I told one of her friends that Donald was a virgin.”
“What?!” Bobby shouted, cracking up. “Dude!”
“Oh my God!” Connie squealed in laughter.
“I know, and she dumped his ass.”
“Dude!!” They both lost it. I grinned at the ceiling.
“So, then, you two are kind of even now, right?” Connie said, sounding hopeful. “So maybe you can just relax this summer?”
I wanted to point out that King and his family had pulled so much shit that nothing I did could even come close to leveling the playing field. But being a drama queen was Donald’s thing, not mine.
“Sure,” I said instead. “Relax and hook up with Claudia. She got even hotter this year.”
“You mean balder?” Connie snickered.
“Jealous?” Bobby raised his eyebrows at her.
“As if.”
“Short hair is a thing,” I explained patiently. “Tons of girls have that cut in New York.”
Connie looked doubtful. These Mainers, man.
“It looks pretty good,” Bobby offered. “Her neck is, like, really elegant.” He winked at me. I laughed. This effing kid.
“Dear lord,” Connie groaned.
“The point is, I’m totally asking her out this summer.”
“Hell yeah!” Bobby high-fived me. “I’m totally hooking up with Margo again this year.”
“Oh excellent.” Connie rolled her eyes. “So she’s going to act like it’s not happening, and you can spend another summer whining about it?”
“She’s got you there.” I smiled. I had to admit, Margo was definitely the dude of that hookup situation.
Bobby sighed. “I mean, I’d rather not keep it a secret and sneak around all the time,” he acknowledged. “But at least I’m getting some.” He pointed at Connie. “Who are you going to hook up with?”
Connie turned red. “Like you care.”
“You’re right,” Bobby said happily. “I don’t care.”
She got up and smacked the back of his head. “Come on, guys. We’re supposed to meet at Monarch.”
As we left the cabin, I felt almost a fondness for the creak in the creaky door. It felt good to be back at camp but have friends this time. Even these two.
At CPR training, I made sure to get paired up with Claudia. I cracked a joke about how all the breathing dummies were white, and she laughed. Unlike the rest of Dogberry, I felt so chill with her. We’d been thrown together to teach the knot-tying elective last year, and she’d been so cool about it. Just handed me a rope and showed me knot after knot, almost silently. Even though she was friends with Donald, I never felt judged around her. That’s why I liked her.
That, and her intense gaze—the way she looked at me, like I needed to be untangled. Her eyes were what most people would call honey-colored, but with Claudia, it was more like fierce bronze. Fierceness doesn’t come from an easy life, and I knew, I felt, that we got each other. Knot after knot, I’d fallen for that bronze gaze. But I didn’t have the balls last summer, and I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.
Now I had another shot, and no way in hell I wasn’t going to take it.
COUNTDOWN TO CAMP: four days.
Which was good, because my sisters were driving me absolutely up the wall. Like I was clinging to the ceiling.
“It’s my night to sleep on the top bunk!” Ava insisted.
“But you always take Smooshie up there with you!!” cried Layla, cat lover.
“Two bedrooms is what I can afford right now, but we’ll find somewhere bigger when we can,” my mom had explained apologetically, biting her lip, when we’d first seen the new place. I’d looked at the small white box-shaped room, with one window, too high at the back.
“Totally!” I’d agreed, smiling. “Not a problem, Mama.” Immediately, my nose had started burning in that fuzzy, pre-cry way. When she’d turned around, I’d wiped the tears out of my eyes. Ben had seen and quickly given my shoulder a squeeze. Sigh. I knew better than to complain. Ben had to sleep on the couch. But still, it was pretty clear then that this rooming situation was going to cost me my sanity.
I wasn’t wrong. Writing in my journal, I became aware of deadly silence. I looked up from my bed: Ava and Layla were rigging some kind of cat pulley–system. Smooshie watched, naively curious.
“Hide,” I whispered to him.
Sharing a small room with seven-year-old twins made a cabin with patchy mosquito netting sound like a fancy hotel.
A knock came at the door—
“Vanessa, phone call!” My mom poked her head in, smiling. The way she said it, I already knew it wasn’t my dad.
I jumped off the bed, grabbed the cordless from her, and ran out onto our teeny back porch.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Ness, how’s it going?”
“Ben! Do you really want to know? The girls are bouncing off the walls, and Smooshie’s about to die in a tragic elevator accident.”
“Our place doesn’t have an elevator.”
“It does now.”
“Oh good.” He laughed.
“How’s camp?”
“Orientation’s fine,” he said. “We did some team building stuff on the ropes course today. And I double check
ed for you—Sophia and Wallace are both on the CIT list, for the whole summer, just like you.”
“Yes!! Thanks, bro.” My best camp friends. They’d both said they were coming back, but you never knew.
“No problem. Yeah, so, we did CPR, which you’ll do on Sunday, and first aid—”
“Cool, cool,” I said. “But what’s the camp news?” Not that I didn’t care about CPR, but, like, c’mon. There had to be more important stuff happening at Camp Dogberry. There always was.
“Let me think.” I could hear him running his hand down his face. “All right. Claudia got a real short haircut.”
“She did?”
“Yeah, it looks pretty cool.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good. Anything else? Who’s my counselor?”
“I don’t want to spoil everything—you’ll be here in a few days, and you can do all the gossiping you want.”
That was a lot of gossiping. “Reaaaaally, Ben?” I whined. “You can’t even tell me, like, one more thing?”
“Fine.”
“Yay!”
“Andy got a new car. It’s a blue hatchback.”
I groaned. “I hate you.”
“And I love you.” He laughed. “I have to go to lunch. Hang in there with the girls.”
“I’ll try.”
“How’s Mom?”
“She really likes it here.” I smiled. “I think it makes her happy.” I didn’t think, I knew. She’d told Aunt Deb on the phone, like, five times.
“Good. See you in a few days. Call if you need anything, but unless it’s an emergency I have to wait to—”
“Call at the end of the day. I know.”
We said our good-byes, and he hung up. I secretly wished he could’ve stayed until I left for camp too. It had been awesome to have Ben with us for a whole month—I’d missed him so much during the year, when he was at college. The new apartment had felt better with him here.
I brushed my bangs back, tried to think positively. Maybe it was a little cramped, but at least we’d moved out of Aunt Deb’s. And no matter what, it was still better than home home, living with Dad. I didn’t miss him hovering around like a storm cloud in scuffed-up loafers.
I took a deep breath and went back inside, read my camp packing list for the four hundredth time, using it as my calming mantra.
Watershoes optional, watershoes optional, watershoes optional.
I THREW A stack of plastic mats out onto the one patch of pavement at Camp Dogberry: the foursquare court. Claudia turned the hose on them, spraying away the layers of dust and grime built up over a year in the sports shed. Training week had passed quickly, in a blur of CPR, child psych overviews, and so. Much. Cleaning. The CITs and other leaders were coming tomorrow, which meant the campers would be here in two days. That was kind of terrifying.
Except that meant I’d get to see my Vanessa tomorrow. It’d only been a week, but I missed all three of my sisters.
Claudia and I had also been prepping Monarch this week. Repainting the white soccer lines, setting up the volleyball/badminton net in its patch of sand, and writing lists of games that worked last year and games that didn’t: notably, Dodgeball had been a disaster—the kids didn’t like the confines of organized teams, because they wanted to whip the squishy balls at whoever they wanted to (their friends and secret crushes). Thus, Sproutball was born, which was every-kid-for-themselves, free-for-all chaos. It was a new addition, but I liked it almost as much as Mashed Potato War or Capture the Flag. And I got to plan all of it now. Aces.
When I thought about that, I seriously couldn’t wait for camp to start.
But.
All week, as I sorted the balls (soccer, volley, beach, squishy, etc.), I felt more and more pathetic. Here I was, back at this camp where I’d been since fifth grade, planning to pit children against one another in Sproutball death matches. Part of me wished I could’ve gotten an internship, like all my other premed classmates. But then I wouldn’t have been able to help Mom move—most internships don’t start you know, whenever you’re done moving.
“Done,” Claudia said, winding up the hose. “We should spread these bases out to dry in the grass.”
I followed her lead, and then we spread ourselves out to dry too. The grass was still pointy and hard from its first summer cutting. It poked through my shirt and athletic shorts like needles. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant sensation, but I found it comforting. That’s how the grass was at the start of camp. Soon the whole field would be torn up.
“Can I ask you something?”
I kept my eyes closed. “Yeah, sure.”
“What do you think about Hana?”
Something in Claudia’s voice made me nervous.
“Hana’s the best,” I said. “She’s a good kid.”
I heard Claudia roll over, felt her look at me, and ignored it. “She’s pretty, right?”
“Not like Bee,” I mused, then quickly realized what I’d said. “I mean, yeah, whatever. I can’t think of the Leonato girls like that. I’ve known Hana since she was, like, eight or something.” That should shut Claudia up.
“Well, I think I’m in love with her.”
I sat up so I could stare down at her. “What?!”
Claudia turned red, all the way up to her sticky-out ears. “I said I think I’m—”
“No, don’t say it again,” I pleaded. “Unsay it. Right now.”
“What?” she asked, confused. “No—I’m in love with her.”
I’d forgotten that though Claudia didn’t speak often, when she did, she didn’t know how to do the shutting up part. It was one of her talents.
I scrambled to my feet. “You’ve just ruined the entire summer!”
Claudia looked baffled. “But—”
“Who’s ruined the summer? I’ll kill ’em!”
We both jumped: Donald had appeared on the field, sunglasses on, hands and forearms splattered with paint, sucking a purple freezer pop.
“Claudia! Kill Claudia!” I demanded, pointing at her. “She’s ‘in love’! Or something.”
Claudia stood, defensively, and turned a shade of red I hadn’t realized was humanly possible. I felt bad, for a split second, but then I envisioned all the drama and gossiping and PDA that would happen as a result of this. I hated when camp became high school. Like what had happened last summer—or hadn’t happened (whatever Bee wanted)—that had been totally high school.
“She’s in love?” Donald smiled, his teeth a violent shade of grape. “With Hana?”
Claudia narrowed her eyes. “How did you know?”
“Oh my God!” I stumbled a few yards away and threw myself back onto the field, facedown in the pointy grass this time. “This is a nightmare.”
“C’mon, Ben.” Donald gently kicked me. “This is adorable, man. What’s better than two of our favorite people getting together?”
“No,” I said into the dirt. “It’s a disaster. Plus, who tosses the word love around like that? What happened to like?”
“I know what I feel,” Claudia said indignantly. “We’ve been talking all year—”
“Just because you’ve sworn off dating women,” Donald chided me, “doesn’t mean Claudia has to.”
I stood up. The prickly grass had won. “I just don’t want to waste my time dating. I’m premed.”
“We know.” Claudia sprayed me with the hose. Donald cheered.
“You guys are such jerks.” I took off my soaked shirt and started down the path toward Dam. They followed, not drenched.
“We’re the jerks?” Donald laughed, with kind of a snap. “Claudia just told you something personal, and you had, like, the worst possible reaction.”
I glanced behind me at Claudia, who was staring pointedly at the ground. Oh, crap.
“God, you’re right.” I stopped in the middle of the trail, wringing water out of my shirt. “I’m sorry, Claud.”
“It’s cool.” She shrugged. But it clearly wasn’t.
“It’s just�
�romance, or whatever, creates drama.” I slid a hand over my face. “I think we’d all be better off just staying friends.”
“We are being friends!” Donald shoved me. “We’re going to help Claudia, our friend, get the girl!”
“See!” I protested. “Games! Drama! You’re doing it right now! You’re like the drama activity leader!”
“I kind of like that!” Donald smiled. Then he started rubbing his palms together—never a good sign—and focused on Claudia. “So, first party tonight. What are you gonna do?”
I bit my cheek and pulled my wet shirt back on.
“Umm…” Claudia thought for a moment. “Go for a little while, feel awkward, drink, and leave?”
“No! Well, probably.” Donald led the way up to the veranda outside the dining hall. He jumped up onto the banister. “But you’re also going to make a move! Tell her how you feel!”
“Oh.” Claudia shook her head. “Yeah, no. I don’t think I can do that. I wouldn’t know how to…what to say.”
“That’s true, she’s pretty bad at that,” I added, hoping to squash this idea.
“What if I told her for you?” Donald hopped down in front of Claudia.
“You?”
“Yes!” Donald clapped. “I’ll pull Hana aside at the party, one-on-one, and tell her that—”
I glanced around: “Maybe we should shut up about this outside of the—”
“Hey, all.” Nik, our camp director at our place of work (who also happened to be Hana’s mom) had appeared at the top of the stairs. Exactly what I was afraid of. Donald was being so unprofessional it was ridiculous.
Claudia backed into the corner, like a terrified wild animal. A flickering feeling of déjà vu hit me. Didn’t I feel extra terrified of Nik last summer? Guess I didn’t anymore….
“You all coming in for lunch?” Nik asked.
“Sure, yeah.”
“Absolutely, in a minute.” Donald smiled.
“Great.” She opened the door and called into the dining hall, “Donald, Ben, and Claudia are coming in a minute! They have to talk about all of you first!” She tuned back and beamed at us.