by Molly Booth
“Ben, if you’re stoned,” she said slowly, “I won’t tell anyone, but you need to go lie down until you’re sober.”
“I am not stoned!” I laughed. “Just being considerate!”
She shook her head. “Fine. But I’m not a camper, and I don’t need a bathroom reminder. Let’s go.”
We walked up toward Dam’s front doors in perfect silence. I’d read somewhere that the best relationships are ones where you can be silent together. That was important. At the threshold, she paused to look at me.
“Fudge nuggets, Ben!” she hissed. “Stop smiling at me like that!”
“Like what?”
“You know what?” She lifted the cooler from my hands. “You’re obviously high, and I don’t know on what, but you should go to bed. I’ll tell everyone you’re puking or something.”
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “But okay.”
“If you’re fine,” she said, rolling her eyes, “you’re more of a weirdo than even I realized. Go to bed.”
It was just as well. Though being around her was incredible, I knew I probably needed time to cool down before I did or said something stupid.
I lingered for a moment in the doorway, watching Bee trudge down the slope. I thought about how we’d been apart for a whole year. And now we’d finally be together again.
Just as long as I didn’t screw this up.
I FELL BACK onto the poofy brown love seat in Luna. “I thought that last round was never going to end.”
“We can’t pair those two up again.” Raph gathered up the few slips of paper left on the floor. “Reading loves the spotlight too much, and Meredith doesn’t know what to do when she starts screaming like that.”
“Do we even know?” I asked. Raph had “turned down the volume” on the game, but Reading had a knack for whisper-screaming.
“And just once, I want Meredith to play something other than an inanimate object.”
“I thought her salt shaker was very convincing.”
“That’s the problem.”
I laughed. I’d spent day three of camp so blissfully busy I’d barely had time to think. Wake up, set up, CIT assignments, lunch, improv all afternoon, dinner, campfire, games, crash. The routine made me so happy I could burst. No way college was going to be this much fun.
Raph stayed for dinner, and I quietly filled him in on Ben’s antics the night before. I was hoping he’d have ideas about what was going on, but neither one of us could explain it, so we chalked it up to boy PMS.
“See you tomorrow!” I smiled at him on our way out.
“Oh, hold up!” He grabbed my shoulders and steered me back toward Luna. “Kangaroo Court tonight.”
“Oh shit!” I said, too loudly. I quickly looked around—no close-range campers. “I mean, oh shiitake mushrooms. I completely forgot!”
“No, you didn’t,” Raph assured me. “I didn’t put it on the schedule in Luna.”
“You didn’t?”
Raph got a scary gleam in his eye. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because then you’d’ve asked me who was on trial….”
I stopped dead in my tracks in the grass. Are. You. Kidding me?
“Raph,” I said, slowly. “This better not be about polar bear swim.”
“Oh dear.” Raph patted my shoulder. A swarm of kids poured out of the dining hall toward us, thrumming with excitement.
Kangaroo Court was one of the best traditions we had at Camp Dogberry, started by Raph when he worked here in college and had joined the mock trial club. We would squish the whole camp into Luna, which became the Dogberry courthouse. Raph was the judge, the campers sat as jury members, and the CITs served as lawyers. Every session a couple counselors were put on “trial” for various “crimes.” Singing in the shower (Donald), irresponsible sunburning (Margo), sleeping late (Ben), and one year, flirting with the day lifeguard (Francis, the art assistant from last year).
The system was a little twisted, because anyone could suggest a case to Raph, and he usually picked whatever sounded the most hilarious.
He married people, too. Mom and Dad, Francis and Sam, and he’d tried to marry Ben and me when we’d “dated” in seventh grade, but I wouldn’t let him. It occurred to me, sitting in my defendant chair that evening, trying not to pout, that maybe Claudia and Hana could get married this year.
I was practicing my pitch in my head, when I realized we were starting. Over dinner, the CITs had set up the courtroom. Campers were crowded in, doubling up on chairs or snuggled against pillows on the floor, and a special group of them were positioned to my right, at a long, narrow card table. These were the jury. I smiled at them. A little waved back at me. Then Maddie whispered to the kid urgently, and his expression went neutral.
How did Maddie get on this jury? She was so clearly biased.
“Order in the court!” Raph banged his gavel on his tiny folding table. The gavel’s name was George, and it had a bowtie and googly eyes. The crowd hushed, except the rest of the counselors, who smirked at me from the back of the room. Ben waved, with this bizarre smile, and then winked. What the actual frick?
“This court is now in session!” Raph declared. We didn’t have a judge’s wig, so he wore our family’s Santa beard. “We bring to trial the case of the People—”
He gestured to Wallace, the prosecutor, who waved at me cheerfully. Cheeky.
“Versus Beatrice Leonato.”
I did a queen wave. Nessa, my lawyer, shifted in the chair next to mine.
Raph turned to Wallace. “What are the charges?”
Wallace stood confidently. He’d done this last year, too. “Your Honor, the defendant is charged with cowardice and hypocrisy.”
“Hypocrisy? How dare you!” I cried out, slamming my fist on the table. The room shook with laughter.
Raph looked at Nessa. “Counsel, get your client under control.”
My lawyer turned red but then looked at me, held a finger to her lips, and deliberately patted my knee. The room giggled again. She was good.
“Prosecution, please be more specific,” Raph entreated.
“Specifically,” Wallace declared dramatically, “she is charged with skipping out on polar bear swim while encouraging everyone to be a team player. Constantly.”
Laughs again, especially from the returning campers. Margo and Donald whistled in agreement at the back of the room. I mentally gave them the finger.
But okay, so I did use the term “team player” a lot—especially in improv class. Even if we explained the rules, there were always actions during games that Raph and I had to gently stop: campers would whip out guns and “shoot” the other campers in a scene, or one camper would be a dinosaur—“I’m a dinosaur”—and the other would say, “All the dinosaurs are dead.” The best way to not shame the kids, but also let them know that wasn’t okay, was to frame it under teamwork. “Pause! Okay, let’s start rewind a little, and everyone try to be a team player!” Once I’d figured this out, it kind of became my catchphrase in class.
“So you see, by skipping out on a Camp Dogberry team-building activity, i.e., polar bear swim”—Wallace circled a hand thoughtfully—“Bee is being cowardly as well as hypocritical. The prosecution rests.”
He sat to thundering applause.
Well, I was doomed.
FIREFLY TAG. LIGHTS flashing, screams of joy, and definitely some actual crying. Somebody’d tripped on the other side of the field.
“Everyone okay?” I called out breathlessly.
“We got it!” I heard back from Ben.
I dropped back down to the ground. I’d been tagged for a while—I’d let a little catch me—and I was waiting for my opening to get back in the game. I heard footsteps approaching from behind, I turned in my awkward squat—
“Quick.” She caught my hand and dragged me backward, into the trees. We stumbled through the brush and came out on the dirt road behind camp, the streetlamp illuminating our faces.
Claudia re
ached forward, grabbed my cheeks, pulled me in. Lips and tongues and breath. I felt light everywhere on my body.
“Sorry, I just couldn’t—”
“I know.” I smiled. “But we should go back.”
She stared into my eyes, her forehead pinched in thought. There was something she wanted to say. My legs shook, just a little, from the anticipation. Or maybe from other things too.
“I don’t want this to end,” she said finally.
“Me neither,” I agreed. Who would ever, ever want that?
“I mean,” she breathed, “when we’re together, I don’t want this to end.”
My turn to stare at her. I knew what she meant, but did I have the courage to say it back?
Instead, I ran my fingertips across her forehead, brushing her temple, down her face and neck. I pulled her T-shirt’s neck down, kissed her collarbone, in a way I hoped—in a way I knew—was sexy. She shuddered. I pulled back.
“Me neither.”
“So, then.” She shuddered again when she spoke. Kind of a spasm. It was so hot. “Fourth of July is Friday.”
I barely followed. My mind was so many places. “Yes.”
“There’s going to be a party.”
“Yes.”
“So let’s get a tent, for after the party.”
Suddenly, my mind was just one place: in a tent. With Claudia. And our clothes were off.
“Mmm…” I let out the tiniest moan. Maybe I should’ve been embarrassed, but she’d just shudder-spasmed, so I think I was okay? She smiled and pushed a loose curl behind my ear. I was okay.
“Sounds good?” she confirmed.
“Sounds perfect.”
One more kiss that I felt down to my curling toes. She went back up to the game first so we wouldn’t seem suspicious.
As I stood there in the dark, tingling all over, I realized:
A tent. Was I really going to have sex for the first time in a tent?
DURING THE THIRD round of Firefly Tag, I got my proof. Did I ever.
I’d tried to keep an eye on Hana and Claudia, where they were on the field. This game seemed like the perfect opportunity to slip off and hook up somewhere. That’s what Margo and Bobby did.
My plan only faltered once, when I got too into the game and tagged, like, twenty campers in a row. I finally let Jay catch me because, you know, that kid was cool.
Crouched down in frozen mode was when I saw it: Hana hunchedover in front of me, maybe twenty yards away. In one motion, Claudia approached, grabbed her, and they disappeared into the woods. I quickly switched off my light and followed them.
They retreated down the little hill, to the road that runs behind Camp Dogberry. The girls paused under a streetlamp. I followed and positioned myself behind a tree, far enough away that I couldn’t quite hear their whispers. Then they kissed, and I could see this thing between them. My breathing felt sharp. Then, at the end of the conversation, before they made their way back toward the field, I actually heard Claudia say—
“So let’s get a tent, for after the party.”
And I realized: Claudia had completely forgotten about our conversation. The hangout that I was agonizing over wasn’t even on her radar anymore.
Asshole.
I watched Claudia romp off into the game again. Just like that. Like I didn’t matter in the slightest. I felt that familiar heat rising in my stomach.
“Where’s John?” I heard a camper’s voice call.
Firefly, I thought to myself. You’re a firefly. Bzz. I switched on my flashlight, switched off my brain.
But I couldn’t get back into it. After another round, I handed my flashlight off to a CIT who’d forgotten his and stalked back to my cabin, knowing Bobby and Connie would eventually turn up. They did. Good old lackies.
“Dude, sing-along?” Bobby poked his head in. Connie’s appeared too, but the minute she saw me, she stopped smiling and looked concerned.
“You know, singing,” Bobby reminded me. “It’s like words that you say with your mouth, but you say them longer?” I didn’t respond. “We say them around a campfire, because we get paid to….Yeah, it’s making less sense as I say it out loud.” He sat down on a camper’s bed.
“What’s going on?” Connie asked.
“You guys were right. About Claudia and Hana,” I said. I swung my legs around and leaned forward on my bunk. “I need to come up with a plan.”
I DIDN’T BREAK rules, and this was a super obvious one: the sun was supposed to wake you up. Anything else was against nature.
Unless you were a nocturnal animal, like a bat. Most humans are not nocturnal, though, I thought to myself blearily. There’s absolutely no reason for me to be awake for this activity invented by Satan. Or whoever came up with polar bear swim. The name made it sound cute. But we were not polar bears, and I bet polar bears would think we were insane for doing this.
Team player, Bee, you’re a team player.
But my teammates were so evil! I vowed to get back at Raphael—maybe I’d take him to court for…being a jerk. Loving Lin-Manuel Miranda inordinately. Wait, that was impossible. My brain was too tired to think.
Stop. Just get up, Bee.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, which actually hurt—every blink felt heavier. I rubbed at them, flattening the puffy lids. I gritted my teeth and pushed back the sleeping bag and almost screamed from the cold. As I pulled on sweats and a sweatshirt, I checked Hana’s bed: she was already gone. Probably down at the docks warming up. How did that girl wake up freezing every morning? I’m sure she thought it was invigorating or something ridiculous like that.
Only one other camper from our bunk had gone down with her. Though it pained me, I wrote on our little whiteboard that Hana and I were at polar bear swim, in case of an emergency. Little Bat was, blessedly, only a couple minutes from the waterfront, and we had the oldest girls, twelve-year-olds, so they’d be fine for an hour. I shoved my bathing suit and towel under my arm and headed to the bathrooms.
Gulls barked obnoxiously over the harbor. A breeze took a swipe at the back of my neck. The sky had just started to go from gray to a pink; the transition looked disgusting. Worm colored, as far as the eye could see.
That was mean. Margo loved worms.
The fluorescent lights of the bathroom hurt too. I punched open a stall door and sat down on the toilet lid. Where was my camp counselor to tell me not to sulk? I sulked a bunch.
Finally, I stood and stripped in the stall. My body immediately began shaking. My teeth started chattering, for real. As I pulled my damp bathing suit over my shivering body, I heard the swinging squeak of the door, and then Hana and Margo coming into the building. Laughing. Like the demon polar bears they were.
“Is she even up?” Margo asked. Margo didn’t come to polar bear swim that often, so clearly she was just here to watch me die.
“I don’t know,” Hana replied. “Maybe we should go get her?”
I couldn’t decide what to do. Should I scream and terrify them? Burst out of the stall and terrify them? Anything that ended in terrifying them.
“Are you going to tell her today?”
What?
Hana paused, then shook her head, I could hear it. “No, I don’t think I’m going to tell her at all.”
Tell me what? I leaned forward.
“Seriously? You’re not going to tell Bee that Ben’s in love with her?”
What?
My legs gave out. I wrapped my towel around me and sank back down onto the toilet seat, as softly as I could.
I FELT BAD, thinking about Bee, still mostly asleep, trying to understand all of this. We’d been waiting in the bushes outside and watched her fumble into the bathrooms, then followed her in after a minute or so. I knew Bee would take forever to change. We’d timed it right, at least.
Margo nodded at me. She had bags under her eyes that almost matched her purple hair. How late had she been up? Well, she had the littles this session.
“Yes, I’m sure
.” I nodded back. “I’m not going to tell her that Claudia told me that Ben told her and Donald that he’s in love with Bee.”
Keeping all of that straight felt like being a CIT again.
“Right, right.” Margo eyed Bee’s feet under the stall door. “And Claudia told you to tell Bee?” She’d decided beforehand that I should be the one with the info that Ben liked Bee. Because if this were actually real, Claudia might’ve told me. I got the reasoning, but I was afraid Bee would hear all the lies in my voice.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “And Claudia said Donald thought I should tell Bee, too. But I realized I couldn’t.”
“Really? Why?” Margo prompted, with a goofy grin that didn’t match the fake sincerity in her voice. I had to look away and collect myself.
“Because,” I said finally, “Bee doesn’t like Ben.” Well, she hadn’t told me otherwise, had she?
“Are you serious?” Margo pealed laughter. “She totally likes him. She just won’t admit it!” I swear I could hear Bee’s breathing.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, pretending to think about it. “It feels like something happened between them last year, but she won’t tell me about it.”
“Well, they can’t have hooked up.” Margo shook her head. “Because lord knows Bee doesn’t think anyone should ever just hook up.”
I froze. Had this just become about Margo and Bobby? And was it suddenly real? I glanced at the stall, and then back to Margo, indicating that she should keep going.
“But anyway, Ben!” She snapped back into the script, thank goodness. “He’s not a hookup person, either. They could be dating snobs together, in snobby, snobby romance land.”
“Totally.” I laughed. “And he’s definitely the kind of guy I could see Bee with.”
We almost heard a snort. It was like a stifled snort. We paused. I didn’t know what to say next.
Luckily, Margo had it covered. “Maybe you’re right, though.” She sighed. “I wouldn’t want him throwing himself at someone who wasn’t interested. He’s, like, the sweetest guy.”