Avery leveled Chelsea with a steady glare, and then cast her eyes toward Sarah, who was deliberately ignoring the whole unraveling scene. She smirked.
“That was then,” she said, tossing an arm around Joanna’s shoulder and dragging her closer to their own boat. “This is most definitely now.”
Ugh, Chelsea thought. The worst part was, she knew that Avery was right. Sarah—the old Sarah, the other Sarah, the one who’d been their friend was gone. Totally and completely gone.
The only question was, why? But no one knew the answer to that.
“Psst.” Natalie sat up in her bunk, blinking and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the post-lights-out darkness. “Yoo-hoo. Anybody up?”
“Please. Anika and Josie just left for that staff meeting. Is anybody not up?” Avery snapped from her own top-bunk position.
“You guys, how much do you want to bet that ‘staff meeting’ is just code for ‘party time for the counselors?’ ” Chelsea asked, giggling.
“Ohmigosh, totally,” Nat said, gathering her long, thick hair into a sensible ponytail. “Which is why I think we should have some ‘party time’ for the Oak tent, too.”
“Sounds good. Count me in!” Sloan said as she slowly emerged from under her covers.
“I’ve got brownies,” Jenna said. “Mom sent them up in her most recent care package.” She snickered. “Except I told her that at Walla Walla, they should really be called CORE packages.” She giggled again. “I crack me up.”
Natalie tossed a pillow in her friend’s direction. “Silly.”
“Fair enough,” Jenna said, hugging Natalie’s pillow toward her. “But now you don’t get any brownies.” Ever since Jenna’s parents had divorced a few summers ago, they had taken to smothering her with elaborate parcels and gifts while she was away at camp. Not that any of her bunkmates minded.
“Mean,” Natalie said. “I’d be totally mad at you if it weren’t for the fact that I have a much better plan than a brownie party.” She smiled to herself at the thought.
“Better than chocolate?” Priya sounded doubtful. “Unlikely. We’ll be the judge of that.”
“How about . . .” Natalie paused for effect. Her father wasn’t the only one in the family who knew how to milk a dramatic moment for all it was worth. “... a raid? On the Seneca tent?” The Seneca tent was where Reed, David, Jordan, and Connor were staying.
“I like your thinking, Goode!” Sloan said, clapping her hands together and shrieking a little bit with excitement. She placed a hand over her mouth to keep any stray squeaks from reaching the “staff meeting,” wherever it was being held.
“Ugh. As if.”
It was Avery, of course, spreading her own special brand of sunshine across the tent. She even added a little gagging sound for flourish.
“Thank you for that, Avery,” Natalie said when it seemed as though the choking noises had died down, at least momentarily. “For a moment there it almost felt like the tent was having fun together. What would we do without you?”
“It’s just, you guys are new, so you don’t know,” Avery said, bitterness dripping from every word that came out of her mouth. “Raids are, like, so not cool here at Walla Walla. No one does them. And you shouldn’t, either.”
Well, if Natalie had been interested in a raid before, Avery’s “warning” just about completely sealed the deal. If there was one thing Natalie hated, it was someone telling her what she could or couldn’t do. Especially if that someone was a pouty sourpuss who’d been miserable and negative since minute one of their meeting.
No way, no how, Natalie thought, mentally planning the girls’ stealth route down to the Seneca tent. She’s not going to ruin our fun tonight. I won’t let her.
Out loud she said, “Hmm, Avery. Thanks for warning us. But I think we’re going to give it a shot, anyway. I mean, there’s a first time for everything, you know?”
She meant it, too. Of course, as for the first time when Avery would chill out and just act like a normal human being with the rest of her Lakeview tentmates, well, who knew when that would be? Natalie knew better than to expect any miracles any time soon.
“Whatever,” Avery said, sounding completely bored by the whole exchange. “Suit yourself.”
“Shh!”
Snap.
“Ow!”
“Shh!”
“Sorry!”
“Don’t say ‘sorry,’ just be quieter,” Natalie stage-whispered, taking her role as Raid Commander extremely seriously. Too bad the pitch-black at Walla Walla was, like, really black. This was beyond pitch-black. More like black-hole black. The girls kept stumbling into one another, or over dry twigs that insisted on snapping as loudly as possible.
It wasn’t exactly subtle. Thank goodness the counselors were all otherwise occupied. But who knew for how much longer?
Well, this makes it a good thing that Avery decided to stay behind, Natalie thought. Being down a bunkmate or two meant they were at least fractionally less disruptive as they stomped through the backwoods path to the boys’ tent.
She stopped at a clearing. “That’s it,” she whispered, waving one hand up so that the girls behind her would catch her signal and, with any luck, stop in their tracks before there was a six-girl pile-up. The crunch of leaves on the ground told Natalie that everyone had just about caught up.
“Who has toilet paper?” she asked.
Jenna and Priya each waved a double-ply roll. “The better for tp-ing their rafters, my dear,” Jenna said with a goofy little giggle.
Natalie nodded, and then realized that in the moonlight her gestures were probably going unnoticed. “Great,” she said out loud—still as quiet as she could be. “Who has the toothpaste?”
Sloan and Chelsea stepped forward. “For drawing mustaches and other decorations on their sleeping faces.”
Natalie grinned. “Bless their little hearts. They do sleep like babies. Or, I hope they do. Chelsea, I totally think you should do freckles on Connor’s face. His skin is just too perfect.”
Even in the dark, Natalie could feel the heat radiate off of Chelsea’s face as she flushed. Obviously she agreed with Nat’s assessment. “I know, right? It’s not fair.” Chelsea seemed excited at the prospect of spending non-talking, non-one-on-one time with Connor. Which Natalie could understand.
“Have you got your supplies, Nat?” Brynn asked. “I’m going in on the tp thing, so I’m trusting you to handle the boys’ outhouse.”
“I won’t let you down,” Natalie swore solemnly, raising a roll of duct tape over her heart like a patriot. “I am going to duct tape all of the bathroom stalls in place—from the inside, mind you, this babe wasn’t born yesterday—to completely and totally ruin all of those little boys’ mornings.” She smiled to think of the boys squirming and complaining, only to eventually slide under the bathroom stalls tomorrow morning bright and early.
Taping the stall doors together was cruel and unusual. In other words, it was just about perfect.
All of those summers at Lakeview hadn’t been for nothing. By now, Natalie was an old pro at the delicate art of raiding. And duct tape.
Sloan, Jenna, Brynn, Chelsea, and Priya lined up in a military-style formation, then saluted teasingly. Natalie put her non-duct-taped index finger to her lips and waved them toward the tent. They nodded in unison and crept forward, moving silently but steadily in the cool night air.
Natalie took a deep breath and made her way into the outhouse. It was exactly like the girls’ outhouse, except in reverse, meaning that it opened on the left instead of on the right of the building.
“Building,” though, was a generous term; it was basically a stack of plywood nailed together haphazardly. Nat grabbed at the door to keep it from slamming shut behind her.
She then decided to hold her nose for the remainder of her raiding activities. It was a boys’ outhouse, after all, and members of the boy species were not exactly known for fantastic hygiene. Blech.
She slid underneath the f
irst toilet stall, mentally high-fiving herself for wearing her oldest,holiest sweatshirt, the one from her mother’s college sorority days that was so threadbare its lettering was mostly just a ghostly outline of silkscreen. Once inside, she glanced briefly at the rusted toilet seat, shuddered—ugh, boys—and turned her attention back to the door. She set about taping up the edge of the door and then reinforcing her tape. After three layers, she was satisfied. She pulled lightly at the door. It jiggled in its frame, but didn’t come loose. Perfect for when the guys came tearing in first thing in the morning.
She dropped to her knees again and slid out from the stall and into the one adjacent, repeating the same actions two more times until the next two stalls had been summarily sealed shut. She peeked at her watch, noting with some concern that fifteen minutes had passed. She needed to be getting back to the rest of the girls outside.
One more stall . . .
She shimmied underneath and sideways, feeling like a sand crab—
—and then opened her mouth to shriek.
In a flash, a strong hand was over her mouth. Startled beyond belief, she straightened to standing and reeled backward against a very strong figure.
“Don’t scream or we’ll both be in big trouble for going against lights-out.”
It was a boy’s voice. A Reed-boy’s voice. Natalie nodded, and he took his hand off of her mouth.
She turned to face him.
And almost freaked out all over again.
He waved his hand in her direction, jokingly indicating that he wasn’t above helping to keep her quiet if she was going to have trouble controlling herself.
Which it looked like she was.
Not that it was her fault or anything. Reed was wearing a face mask!
An avocado-green face mask, from which his startled blue eyes poked out, round and wide. His lips looked ultrared against the patchy edges of the thick, pasty substance, too. All in all: creepy.
The effect was unnerving. Now that the urge to yelp had died down, Natalie just wanted to collapse in hysterics. She and Hannah had done plenty of home facials back in NYC, but none of their guy friends ever wanted in on the makeshift spa treatments.
“What are you doing?” Natalie asked, placing her own hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter that threatened to bubble up.
Reed sniffed indignantly. “It’s a thermal reconditioning night mask for sensitive skin.” He looked away. “It’s from Paris.”
Natalie raised an eyebrow. “Really. And you’re hiding out in the bathroom with it on because . . .”
Now it was Reed’s turn to arch an eyebrow in Nat’s direction. “Are you kidding? The guys in my tent would eat me alive if I came to bed this way.”
“Fair enough,” Natalie said. “I mean, not supersensitive, you know? But I guess I don’t blame them. A reconditioning night mask isn’t exactly very boy-ey or anything.”
“Which is why you aren’t going to tell anyone that you caught me wearing it, right?” Reed asked, a slight panic creeping into his voice. “Why did you catch me wearing it, anyway?” he asked, suddenly suspicious. His eyes lit up from beneath the weight of the mask. “Were you pranking us? Oh my gosh, you were! You were raiding us! You are so busted.”
Maybe we are. Or . . . maybe not. Natalie took a moment to assess the situation. A guy in a thermal reconditioning mask wasn’t really in a position to make demands, after all. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said, drumming her fingers thoughtfully against the walls of the stall. “You don’t mention to anyone that the girls from the Oak tent were out on a raid tonight, and I won’t mention to anyone just how your oh-so-sensitive skin retains that outdoor-fresh glow.”
“The guys are going to freak when they see that the bathroom stalls are taped shut,” Reed protested.
“More than they’d freak if they learned about your grooming habits? Come on, Reed, even I don’t go further than the occasional self-styled manicure at camp.” She chuckled. It was funny, she thought, to find a boy who liked primping as much as she did. She could hardly blame Reed for wanting to inject a drop or two of luxury into this hard-CORE rugged summer experience.
Maybe this meant that the two of them really were perfect for each other?
“Okay,” Reed said finally. “You keep quiet, I keep quiet. It’s a deal.”
“Shake on it?” Natalie asked, extending her hand.
Reed shook his head no. “Soothing aloe cuticle cream,” he explained, waggling his fingers at her.
Natalie finally collapsed into a heap of the quietest giggles possible. She just couldn’t hold back any longer.
There were worse things than being able to trade beauty secrets with your boyfriend, she decided.
Okay, so the raid had seemed like all fun and games last night, when Priya had been so busy winding toilet paper over the rafters of the Seneca tent to the sheer oblivion of Jordan and his bunkmates. But it wasn’t quite so amusing this morning, now that her eyelids felt like sandpaper and she’d staggered through calisthenics. (Jumping jacks at 6:45 in the morning? Really? Wasn’t summer vacation supposed to be . . . well, a vacation?)
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Brynn teased her, poking her in the side as they made their way down the winding path to the cavernous mess hall. “I don’t want you passing out in your oatmeal or anything like that. The last thing we need is for any unusual behavior to give us away. So far, we escaped scot-free.” She frowned. “What does that mean, anyway: scot-free?”
“No idea,” Priya grumbled. “Don’t know, don’t care. And anyway, I’m awake,” she insisted. “Even though I’d rather not be. How many hours until lights-out?”
Brynn shook her head, her short hair fanning out in either direction with the gesture. “Check it out. Jordan looks all zombified, too. Guess we interrupted their beauty sleep when we so awesomely raided their unsuspecting little butts. Some girlfriend I am!”
Priya glanced in the direction where Brynn was pointing. Jordan did look like he was dragging this morning. It almost made her feel guilty, for a minute.
Almost. Then she remembered how ridiculous the Seneca tent had looked with swaths of downy white toilet paper hanging from every available surface. And then she just had to laugh again.
“Sit next to me,” Priya said to Brynn, settling herself on one of the long benches at the Oak tent’s designated mess hall table. The goal was to sit as far away from Avery as possible, but since everyone (except Joanna) had the same goal, speed was key. This morning, Priya’s slowed reflexes got the best of her; Brynn flanked her on one side, but Avery and Joanna settled on her left, buffered only by a cheerily clueless Anika.
“What do you think we’ve got up for brekkie this morning, then?” Anika asked, looking way too excited at the prospect of mess hall food. Priya had already learned to manage her expectations in that department. When it came to camp food, Walla Walla and Lakeview were definitely matched in the Thanks-But-No-Thanks department.
Priya peered at a platter that was being slid underneath her nose by a dubious Brynn. “Something yellow. Eggs, maybe? Yeah, I think it’s eggs.”
“You ‘think’ it’s eggs,” Anika repeated.
“Very reassuring.”
“Well, I guess it could be creamed corn. But that’s more of a lunch thing.” Priya smiled to show that she was kidding—sort of. “It’s probably not creamed corn.”
“It’s eggs, you weirdo. Who eats corn for breakfast?”
It was Avery, of course, unable to let an opportunity for a swipe pass. Next to her, Joanna snickered nastily.
“No one, of course,” Priya retorted. “And by the way—you should let the Corn Flakes people know. I don’t know if they got the memo.”
Avery rolled her eyes as though Priya’s reply didn’t even warrant a response. Which was just as well, Priya decided.
She turned back to her breakfast, which turned out to be eggs. She had managed to clean most of her plate—the whole calisthenics-first-thing-in-the-morning thing was making her
ravenous these days—when Dr. Steve strode in, clipboard in hand. He looked more serious than usual, which was kind of like saying that he looked serious, period.
He strode to the middle of the room and lifted the whistle that he wore around his neck to his lips, emitting a short, sharp tweet. The entire mess hall was quickly silenced.
“It has come to my attention that members of a certain tent conducted a raid last night,” he said.
A murmur rushed through the crowd, causing Priya to exchange a panicked glance with her tentmates. From across the table, Natalie bit her lip. Luckily, though, Josie and Anika didn’t seem to realize what was going on. Or that their own campers were responsible for the raid. That would have been bad. Really bad.
“As you all know, raids are strictly prohibited—they are an insurance liability.”
Priya didn’t know a lot about insurance or liability—those were words that her father used when he was on the phone for work—but she had a sinking feeling that in this particular situation, they could only mean bad news.
“And we rely on our campers to adhere to the Outdoor CORE honor code.”
Priya swallowed hard. Did Dr. Steve really expect whomever was behind the raid to come up and volunteer themselves to him? And what’s more, were she and her tentmates going to do just that?
She suddenly felt ill. And she had a feeling it wasn’t from the eggs.
“So I’m glad to report that we already have the information as to which tent is responsible for this . . . egregious infraction.”
Egregious infraction. These were ten-dollar words that Dr. Steve was throwing around. Dr. Steve never used words like that back at Camp Lakeview.
Well, this isn’t Lakeview anymore, now is it? Priya wondered how long it would take for that reality to sink in once and for all.
Reunion #21 Page 5