Grace's Twist

by Melissa J Morgan

  Suddenly Brynn gasped. “I am not upset!” she cried.

  Grace glanced at her in surprise. “Why not?”

  “Because I may not have gotten the part,” she said, “but that can only mean one thing. You got it, Grace!”

  chapter ELEVEN

  Grace woke up with a smile already on her face. It stayed there while she brushed her teeth and packed her backpack for the trip to WetWorld. It stayed there all through breakfast. And it was still in place when she climbed into the field-trip bus and started down the aisle.

  She was playing Wendy in Peter Pan! And she was allowed to go to the water park! Just a week ago neither of those things had seemed possible.

  Natalie and Alyssa had already grabbed one of the back seats, but there were lots of other campers in the little aisle between them and Grace. Ronald from 3E had a backpack as big as his whole body, and he was trying to throw it up onto the overhead luggage rack. Traffic in the aisle stopped as he lifted it again and again, never getting it high enough.

  “Do you want some help?” Jenna’s brother Adam asked.

  Ronald was a twerp, but he had a surprisingly loud voice. “Not from you,” he snapped.

  Grace sighed. The rivalry between bunk 3E and Adam’s bunk, 3F, was just as strong as the one between her bunk and Gaby’s. There was no way Ronald would ever take help from Adam or his friends. She leaned against the back of one of the seats and waited for the path to clear.

  “Gracie, back here! I got us a seat,” Gaby called. Grace twisted around to see Gaby in the very front seat, right behind the driver. She was waving and grinning as if they were the best of friends. Ever since the announcement that Grace had gotten the part, Gaby had been super friendly and supportive. That was nice enough, but Grace couldn’t forget how nasty she’d been so many times before that.

  “Um, I’m sitting with Alyssa and Natalie,” she called back. “Remember?”

  Gaby’s face fell. “I thought you changed your mind about that,” she said. “I apologized for telling them about your book. Don’t you remember?”

  Grace did remember. And she also remembered Gaby lying to her about being punished, tricking her into not swimming in the deep end, refusing to help her practice for the audition, and just generally being a bully. She did not remember ever changing her mind about sitting with Gaby on the field-trip bus.

  But Gaby really did look upset. She was glancing frantically around at the other kids on the bus, and Grace suddenly realized that Gaby had no one else to sit with. Grace thought about it. Gaby didn’t seem very popular with her own bunkmates. Whatever had happened between her and Christa must have made them all uncomfortable. And outside of Grace, Gaby didn’t seem to have any other friends. Grace sighed. What did she have to lose? She was in such a good mood just being there and knowing about her role in the play. She doubted even Gaby could ruin her happiness today.

  She stood on her tiptoes and waved to Nat and Alyssa, pointing back toward Gaby so they’d know where she was going. Alyssa waved back, but Natalie made an “are you crazy” face. Grace just shrugged.

  “Excuse me,” she said, turning to go back toward the front of the bus.

  “You’re going the wrong way!” somebody complained.

  “You can’t get through,” another voice whined.

  Why did she have to sit all the way in the front? Grace wondered. Gaby was only three seats away from her, but the aisle was stuffed with campers. “Okay, clear the way!” Grace yelled. She jumped up onto the seat next to her and began climbing over the back of the one in front of it.

  “Good idea,” Devon said.

  Grace almost fell on her face. She hadn’t realized he was standing so close, only five or six people behind her. And here she was climbing over seats like a . . . well, not like a girl. Chelsea would never do something that was so not graceful. Natalie probably wouldn’t, either. Grace flushed. She was stuck with her left foot on one seat and her right foot on another. There was no choice. She kept climbing, her face on fire. Finally she reached Gaby’s seat and plopped down.

  “Well, that was stupid-looking,” Gaby commented.

  Grace’s mouth fell open. She’d practically done acrobatics in front of Devon and the whole third division just so she could get back here to sit with Gaby, and that was the thanks she got.

  “I can do it again,” Grace said. “All the way back to Alyssa and Natalie’s seat.”

  “No,” Gaby said quickly. “I was only kidding.”

  Grace didn’t answer. Gaby seemed to use that excuse whenever she did or said something mean. By this point, Grace knew that Gaby wasn’t really kidding most of the time.

  “What ride do you want to go on first?” Gaby asked.

  Grace simply shrugged. It was going to be a long day.

  “This line is too long,” Gaby complained at the Flume of Fear.

  “You’ve said that about every single ride so far,” Grace pointed out.

  “Let’s go on Rio Rafting,” Gaby said. She stepped out of line and started walking away. Grace didn’t follow her. She was sick of Gaby’s attitude—that she got to decide everything and that she assumed Grace would just go along with her. They’d gotten off the lines for the past two rides because Gaby didn’t want to wait. In almost three hours at the water park, they’d managed to go on only one actual ride!

  This time Grace was going to stay put. If Gaby wanted to leave, fine. Grace would go on the Flume of Fear alone, and then she’d go find her bunkmates. They were probably having a great time. And she’d blown them off in order to hang out with Gaby, whom she didn’t even like.

  Grace gasped as she realized it. All this time, she’d been annoyed at Gaby, or confused by her behavior, or sometimes even a little afraid of what Gaby would do next. But she’d never stopped to think about her own feelings about their friendship. But all of a sudden it seemed so clear. She didn’t want to be friends with Gaby. Gaby was a jerk!

  “Come on, Gracie,” Gaby said loudly, stomping back over to the line. “I don’t want to wait for this stupid ride.”

  “Well, I do,” Grace said. “And stop calling me Gracie.”

  Gaby blinked in surprise. “Why?”

  “Because I hate it. In third grade I got caught daydreaming one time and everyone called me Spacey Gracie for the rest of the year.”

  Gaby laughed.

  “You would think that was funny,” Grace mumbled.

  “It is funny. You need to lighten up.” Gaby grabbed her hand. “Come on, let’s go on the rafts.”

  Grace pulled her hand away. “No,” she said. “We’ll just end up waiting on line there until you get bored, and then you’ll leave again, and we’ll lose our place in another line.”

  Gaby opened her mouth, then closed it again. She obviously had no idea how to deal with someone saying no to her. Grace wondered if it had ever happened before. Maybe her bunkmates had stood up to her, and that’s why she wasn’t friends with any of them. “Oh, fine,” Gaby finally said. Then she stood there and sulked for the next ten minutes as the line crept forward. She sulked as they got onto the flume ride, and she sulked all the way through its dips and bumps and its one huge drop.

  Grace was impressed. She thought it must be hard to sulk when you wanted to scream and wave your arms around like everyone else on the ride. But Gaby stuck to it.

  “Okay, now let’s go on Rio Rafting,” Grace said as they walked out of the flume exit.

  “Finally,” Gaby exploded. She took off toward the rafts. By the time Grace caught up with her, Gaby was already frowning again. “This line’s too long,” she said. “If you hadn’t made me go on that stupid flume, we could’ve been at the front already.”

  “Gaby, it’s a water park in the middle of the summer,” Grace said. “All the rides are going to have lines. You have to deal with it.”

  “No I don’t,” Gaby replied. “Look, there’s Christa near the front. Let’s go cut her.”

  “We can’t cut her,” Grace cried, tryin
g to ignore the dirty looks that the people in line were giving them.

  “Sure we can. She’ll let us.” Gaby strode off toward the front of the line. Mortified, Grace followed her.

  “Gaby,” she murmured, catching up. “We could get thrown out of the park for cutting in line.”

  Gaby rolled her eyes. “Whatever. We’ll just say Christa was holding our place.”

  They reached Gaby’s bunkmate. Grace couldn’t help noticing that Christa did not look happy to see them. Her big brown eyes filled with nervousness at the sight of Gaby.

  “We’re gonna go on with you,” Gaby announced.

  “No, I’m . . . um, I’m with Jill,” Christa said in a voice so low that it was practically a whisper.

  “I don’t see her,” Gaby said.

  “She’s in the bathroom.”

  “Her loss,” Gaby said, stepping in front of Christa.

  “Gaby, we’re going to get in trouble.” Christa’s voice shook as if she might cry. The people behind her were glaring at all three of them.

  “Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Gaby said. “We’ll only get in trouble if you tell. And you won’t, right? You already snitched on me once. If you do it again, you’ll be worse than a snitch. You’ll be a rat.”

  “Okay, okay.” Christa stepped aside to make room for them. She shot Grace a panicked look. She thinks I’m going to bully her, too, Grace realized. The thought made her want to laugh. Here was Christa thinking she was a bully when in reality she was just Gaby’s latest victim. Obviously Gaby had been pushing Christa around all summer, and for the past two weeks Grace had been letting Gaby push her around, too.

  She didn’t get it. She wasn’t a shy, self-conscious person like Christa. Or even like Karen, who got bullied by Chelsea a lot. So why was she allowing Gaby to walk all over her?

  “You know what?” she said. “I’m not going to do this.”

  “Do what?” Gaby asked.

  “Cut in line,” Grace said. “And I don’t care if you call me a baby or make fun of me or whatever you’re going to do.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gaby tried to sound innocent, but it didn’t work.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Grace said. “You’re a bully, Gaby. It’s not cool.”

  “Well, you’re a loser who can’t even read,” Gaby shot back. But she didn’t sound mean anymore. In fact, Grace thought she sounded frightened. She clearly didn’t like it when someone stood up to her.

  “I am not a loser,” Grace told her. “I just didn’t pay enough attention to my schoolwork last year because I was busy having fun. With my real best friend, who never tries to push me around like you do.”

  “Why don’t you just leave us alone?” Gaby snapped. “I should’ve known better than to hang out with a girl from 3C.” She turned her back on Grace, pulling Christa along with her.

  “You shouldn’t let her cut you, Christa,” Grace said. “She’s going to keep bullying you until you say no.”

  But Christa didn’t even have the guts to look back at Grace. Oh, well, Grace thought. Maybe I set a good example for her to follow once she gets up her nerve.

  One of the women in line behind them gave Grace a thumbs-up.

  “Thanks,” Grace said. She walked away from the Rio Rafting line feeling better than she had since she’d gotten on the bus that morning. She hadn’t wanted to be rude to Gaby, but telling her off felt great. Now all she wanted to do was to find her bunkmates and start having fun on this field trip.

  She went straight to the wave pool. Chelsea and Karen were lying out on two of the lounge chairs next to the pool. Both of them were completely dry, and Chelsea’s hair was perfect, as usual.

  “Hey, you guys,” Grace greeted them. “You haven’t gone on a single water ride all day, have you?”

  “No way,” Chelsea said.

  “It’s a water park, you know,” Grace teased her.

  Chelsea shrugged. “I don’t want chlorine in my hair.”

  “Suit yourself,” Grace said. “Do you know where everyone else is?”

  “I think they all went to the three-story-high waterslide to cheer Jenna on,” Karen said. “No one else was brave enough to go on it.”

  “I’ll do it if you will, Karen,” Grace said.

  Karen gazed back at her, eyes wide. Chelsea frowned. “Karen’s hanging out with me,” she said. “I don’t want to stay here all alone.”

  “Then you should come with us,” Grace told her. “Come on, Karen. What do you say?”

  Karen glanced at Chelsea. Then at Grace. “Well . . .” She took a deep breath. “Okay.” She leapt up off her lounge chair and started walking away as fast as she could. She’s afraid Chelsea will stop her, Grace thought. And she’s probably right.

  “Hey!” Chelsea cried.

  Grace shrugged. “Sorry. You can come with us if you want.”

  For a split second, Chelsea looked as if she might. Then she shook her head. “No, thanks.” She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  “Come find us if you get lonely,” Grace said. Then she took off after Karen.

  “I can’t believe you got us all on that waterslide,” Natalie said half an hour later. “That was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my whole life.”

  “I can’t believe all you guys were willing to go on it just because Grace wanted you to,” Jenna said. “You didn’t even think of going on it to keep me company.”

  “You didn’t need company,” Alyssa pointed out. “You were brave enough to do it alone.”

  “Yeah, Jenna, I think I would have wimped out if you guys weren’t with me,” Karen said.

  Grace grinned. Hanging out with her bunkmates was cool, but getting Karen to come out of her shell a little bit was even cooler. As soon as Grace had announced that Karen wanted to go on the slide, all the other girls had agreed to join in. Everybody knew that Chelsea bullied Karen, but no one had ever had the nerve to say anything about it before. Now that Karen had taken a stand, they all wanted to support her. Grace could tell how much the support meant to Karen.

  It’s how I felt when they all helped me study for Mom’s quiz, she thought. Like I was surrounded by the best group of friends in the world.

  “Who wants to play Shoot-the-Starfish?” Alex asked.

  “Not me,” Sarah replied. “But I am a little shaky after that thirty-foot drop. I’ll go play one of the other games.”

  “Yeah, I want to keep my feet on the ground for a few minutes,” Valerie agreed. “That slide was fun, but it knocked me out!”

  “So let’s go over to the arcade, and we’ll all play whatever games we want for half an hour,” Grace suggested. “Then we can do the Tarzan rope-swing ride.”

  When they got to the arcade, Brynn took off for the karaoke booth. Alex and Jenna headed to Shoot-the-Starfish. Karen went with Sarah and Valerie to check out the ancient video games like Pac-Man.

  “Let’s play that Loch Ness game,” Natalie said.

  Grace glanced over to the game, which was basically Whack-a-Mole with miniature Loch Ness monsters instead of moles. The game looked pretty boring. But playing the game at that moment were Simon, Adam, and Devon.

  “Yeah. Let’s go,” Alyssa said, trying to sound casual.

  Grace burst out laughing. “You guys are so obvious!” she said. “You just want to hang out with your boyfriends.”

  “Adam is not my boyfriend,” Alyssa said.

  “But you want him to be,” Nat replied.

  “Not as much as you want Simon to be yours,” Alyssa shot back.

  “Please,” Grace said. “You both like them, and they like you. It’s disgusting.”

  “Well, you like Devon,” Nat said.

  “I do not.”

  “Fine,” Alyssa put in. “Then let’s not go play the Loch Ness game.” She exchanged a smile with Natalie, and they both stared at Grace, waiting for her reaction.

  Grace thought about it. Devon was cute. And he was a good actor. And he
seemed to like her. He’d helped her prepare for auditions, and he’d complimented her a few times now. But that didn’t mean she liked him. Still . . . it couldn’t hurt to play the same arcade game he was playing. And her friends really wanted to hang out with his friends. “No, that’s okay,” she said aloud. “We can play the Loch Ness game. It looks like fun.”

  She led the way over to the game booth, ignoring the fact that Natalie and Alyssa were totally laughing at her.

  By the time they got to the booth, the boys were at the front, each armed with a giant rubber-tipped mallet. A buzzer rang, and the little Nessie heads began popping up from holes in the board along the front of the booth. Immediately the guys went to work, smashing the mallets down on anything they could hit.

  Natalie and Alyssa cheered loudly, and Grace couldn’t help but join in. When the buzzer rang again to signal the end of the game, Adam had one Nessie hit and Simon had two. Neither one of them qualified to win anything. But Devon had five hits.

  “Choose your prize,” said the guy in the Scottish hat behind the counter. “A stuffed Nessie or a stuffed lobster.”

  Devon turned around. “Grace, which one do you want?” he asked.

  Grace told herself to ignore the fact that Nat’s eyes were bugging out of her head and Alyssa’s gasp was so loud that everyone in the park could hear it. It was harder, though, to ignore the heat creeping up her neck, signaling that she was about to turn bright red from embarrassment.

  “Um, the Nessie,” she said.

  The Scottish-hat guy handed over a little stuffed animal that looked like a brontosaurus wearing a plaid scarf. And Devon turned and gave it to Grace.

  Don’t be a dork this time, she ordered herself. Come up with something cool to say.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Devon just nodded, flashing one of his adorable smiles.

  “Now when people say the Loch Ness monster is just a legend, I can show them this to prove it really exists,” Grace added. There! That was at least a little bit of her true personality.

  Devon laughed. “Yeah, it would be hard to argue with that.”