And she wished that it wasn’t a little bit true.
“So, okay, truth time,” David was saying. “Impressions of Outdoor Adventure Weekend? Now that we’re rounding the finish line?”
Jenna smiled as she hiked along next to her onetime boyfriend, now friend. Things felt very easy and comfortable with David, and even if she wasn’t still crushing on him, it was good to know that they were as close as ever, friends-wise. Jenna knew that they were meant to be friends rather than crushes to each other, which was nice.
“Truth,” she said, pondering his question. “Okay, well, it was definitely fun. I mean, hard, and I learned a lot, but I liked it. I like learning hard things, you know?”
David smiled. “That’s my Jenna. Always up for a challenge.”
Jenna blushed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What can I say? I was the one who was psyched to come to Camp Walla Walla this year, remember?”
“How could I forget?” David smiled. “You were, like, the only one of us who was.”
She frowned at him teasingly. “Are you telling me you’re sorry that you came with us? I mean, you learned how to purify water, and how to tell about different kinds of insects just based on the sort of tunnels and holey things that they leave in the dirt . . .”
“. . . a talent that will really come in handy when I get back home,” David finished wryly.
“Fine. Be a spoilsport. You’re not going to ruin my good time.” Jenna couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken feeling so refreshed—something about the outdoor air was better than the world’s strongest sugar rush—and she wasn’t the least bit bothered by David’s tempered enthusiasm. She turned to him, stuck her tongue out, and crossed her eyes for good measure.
The sound of Tucker’s whistle brought their conversation to a halt, and they rushed forward to gather around where Tucker stood, surrounded by the rest of the campers.
“Guys, we’re coming up on the kayaking leg of our trip,” he explained. “And while, as you know, kayaks are one person per boat, we’re going to team up with buddies so that everyone is accountable to someone else. No matter what, you must have your buddy in sight at all times until we dock farther downstream. Does that make sense?”
Jenna nodded to herself, even though Tucker wasn’t talking directly to her or anything. She glanced quickly at Natalie to see who she’d be buddying with, and wasn’t surprised to see Natalie checking out Reed with curiosity for what she assumed was the same reason.
Then something happened that did surprise Jenna. Big-time.
Natalie stepped forward, obviously planning to ask Reed if he wanted to pair up, when Brynn suddenly popped up and intercepted him.
“Hey, Reed,” Brynn said, sticking her hands in the pockets of her jean shorts and trying, Jenna thought, to look very casual. “Want to be my buddy?”
Reed wrinkled his forehead and shot a quick glance at Natalie over Brynn’s shoulder. Jenna watched as Natalie widened her eyes and shrugged. Obviously she had no idea what Brynn was doing, either. But she didn’t make a big thing out of it, which kind of meant that Reed’s kayaking partner had basically been decided for him.
“Um, sure. Yeah,” he said, looking at Brynn with confusion.
For her part, Brynn completely ignored whatever awkwardness was radiating out of Reed. “Great!” she chirped. “We’ll catch up downstream!” She scampered off, leaving a very puzzled Natalie and Reed in her wake.
Jenna bit her lip and threw another sympathetic glance toward her friend. She didn’t know what to make of Brynn’s behavior, and neither did Natalie, clearly.
Maybe it’s something in the water at Camp Walla Walla, Jenna mused. First Sarah, now Brynn. Everyone is acting all kinds of crazy these days . . .
Okay, Natalie thought. Enough is enough. I need to get to the bottom of this.
She really really really didn’t think that Brynn was the type of girl to cheat on her boyfriend and flirt with a friend’s crush, but what other explanation could there be for her sudden interest in Reed? It didn’t make any sense. And Natalie knew she wasn’t the only one who had noticed what was going on—the look that Jenna had given her moments ago confirmed that she wasn’t imagining things. As much as she may have wished that she were.
First Sarah was co-opting Natalie’s life story, and now Brynn was after her boyfriend. Had everyone in her life gone nuts?
“Brynn,” she said, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Um, can I talk to you before we get in the kayaks?”
“Of course,” Brynn said brightly. “What’s going on?”
“It’s just . . .” Natalie waved Brynn over and behind a big, leafy tree so that they could have some privacy. “Okay, I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it. What’s the deal with you and Reed?”
Brynn’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Natalie sighed. “What do I mean? I mean, the way that you’ve been stuck on him like glue! Do you, like, like him or something? ’Cause if you do, I wish you would tell me honestly.”
Realization dawned in Brynn’s eyes. “Oooh. I could see why you might think that.”
“Really?” Natalie asked dryly. “You can see that?” A blind person could have seen that!
“It’s not how it looks, Nat,” Brynn insisted. “I—” she leaned forward. “Can you keep a secret?”
Natalie eyed her warily. “A Reed secret? Why would you have Reed secrets?” She was full-on exasperated by now.
Brynn burst out laughing and cupped a hand over Natalie’s ear and whispered something. After a moment, Natalie started laughing, too.
She still didn’t know what on earth was going on with Sarah. But for now, one mystery was solved. So that was something.
chapter ELEVEN
Priya would have thought that after a crazy-long weekend of outdoor adventuring, her division would have been given a day or two to just chill out and relax. That way, maybe she and her friends could lounge around their tents and read, give one another manicures, or hang out by the waterfront perfecting their tans.
She would have thought that, but she would have been wrong.
On Monday afternoon, the girls were back at the waterfront, all right. But they sure weren’t sunbathing.
No. Not sunbathing. Instead, what the swim staff had cooked up for them, in the wake of one of the most exhausting experiences of their collective lives, was swim drills.
Swim drills involved all sorts of relays of diving, paddling, treading, and—yes, that old favorite, floating, strung together in an endless stream of combinations and overseen by Landon, the head of the swim staff, who puffed on his whistle like his life depended on it.
Landon was cute, Priya thought, but that didn’t excuse the whole . . . drilling thing.
And he really needed to cool it with his whistle.
She felt a nudge in her side and found Josie prodding her. “You’re up after Jenna,” Josie said, indicating that Priya should start making her way down to the edge of the water sooner rather than later.
Priya sighed. “Great, put me after Superathlete, why don’t you? Make me look even better.” Priya was a fine swimmer, but nothing like Jenna, who, ever since she’d kicked her fear of diving a few summers ago, rocked it out every time she got into the water.
Josie smiled. “You’ll be fine. Do you have your swim tag?”
Priya nodded. “Yup, it’s right—” she trailed off, realizing that, in fact, her swim tag wasn’t “right” anywhere. It was a thin plastic tag that each camper got after taking his or her swim test that indicated which level of water he or she could swim in. It came on a stretchy cord that you could wear around your wrist so that it would be easy to take to and from the waterfront. When it was time to go in, you hung your tag on a board indicating which section of the water you were swimming in. That way, in case of any emergency, the lifeguards could tell at a glance how many swimmers were in the water, even if they weren’t all in plain view.
It was a whole thing. A systemy thing.
And now there would be another whole thing, because wouldn’t you know it? Priya had forgotten hers.
“I’m sorry, Josie, I spaced,” she said, grinning ruefully. “I think my brain is still mushy from all of the adventurousness of the weekend.” She cocked an eyebrow hopefully. “Does that mean that I get to skip drills?”
“Nice try,” Josie replied, shaking her head. “No, what that means is that you get to go back to the bunk—quickly—and get your swim tag. I’ll just send Chelsea in after Jenna.”
“Thanks a lot!” Chelsea protested from her cross-legged position on her towel. “I can’t swim as well as Jenna.”
“None of us can,” Priya reminded her. To Josie, she said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“As soon as I can,” Priya decided, didn’t necessarily have to mean that soon. In a fit of empowerment, she chose to take the scenic route back to the tent, which involved winding her own path around the rec hall on the way upslope.
Whatever, she thought. Josie wouldn’t be too upset. Or, if she was, she’d get over it. Priya was still all kinds of sore from all of the hiking. The slope needed to be wound around as opposed to charged up. There was just no alternative, alas.
Once her bunk was in plain sight, she took her sweet time on her way to the front door, planning to grab her swim tag, maybe splash some water on her face, and head back out. After all, she couldn’t really keep Josie waiting forever—no matter how much she might have wanted to.
The moment she stepped inside, though, she stopped in her tracks.
There, right before her eyes, was Joanna—with her hands deep inside Avery’s trunk!
“Oh my gosh!” Priya said before she could catch herself. “Avery is going to kill you if she catches you snooping around!”
Joanna whipped her head toward Priya, her eyes wide and panicked. “Um, no,” she stammered. “I was just, uh, borrowing her lip gloss. She said I could . . .” she trailed off, looking defeatedly back into the black hole that had once been Avery’s pristinely packed trunk. “She’s going to kill me,” she concluded, miserably. “There’s no way I’m going to get this back to the order that I found it in.”
“She’s your target, huh?” Priya asked. Assassin-fever had dimmed slightly while they were all fending for themselves and fighting for their lives in the wild, but now that they were back, it was on again in full force. Either way, it was funny just to see Joanna elbow-deep in Avery’s private belongings.
Or, it would have been funny, Priya decided, if Joanna didn’t look like she was going to throw up.
Priya made a quick decision. “I won’t tell,” she said. Okay, fine, not the most competitive strategy, but Joanna looked like she was going to lose her mind. A little reassurance—and a promise to keep Joanna’s secret safe—was literally the least she could do. “And I can help you put that back in order.” She nodded toward the clothing explosion.
“Seriously?” Joanna’s eyes lit up. “That would be so awesome. If I don’t make it back to swim drills soon, they’ll start worrying about me.”
Priya crossed the floor and kneeled down next to Joanna, scooping a heap of T-shirts out of the trunk and beginning to fold them methodically.
“Honestly, though,” Joanna said, lowering her voice so she suddenly sounded much more serious. “It’s really nice of you to help me. I mean, I know that Avery and all the rest of our friends haven’t been that nice to you Lakeview girls since you got to camp. That I haven’t been that nice to you.” She flushed guiltily.
“That’s true,” Priya admitted. “But . . . two wrongs don’t make a right, I guess. And I would really hate to see what would happen to you if Avery came back and found her trunk looking like this. I’d be an accomplice to a very ugly crime.”
Joanna giggled. Priya couldn’t believe how much nicer Joanna seemed when she wasn’t around Avery. And she bet that Joanna wasn’t the only one stuck under Avery’s thumb.
Laugh-sucking Avery had to be stopped at all costs.
“Also? I really detest swim drills.”
Joanna burst out laughing at that. “Drills aren’t so bad,” she protested. “You get used to them, and, you know—eventually you get caught up in the spirit of competition and everything.”
“If you insist,” Priya replied. “I’m just gonna have to take your word for it.”
The girls worked in silence for a few moments, giving Priya the chance to marvel at Avery’s vast wardrobe. The girl had polo shirts in every color of the rainbow and then some. And the tank tops! She had tank tops of every length, weight, ribbing, texture, print, and pattern! Even if camp ran year-round, Priya thought, Avery wouldn’t have a chance to wear every single article of clothing she’d brought with her for the summer.
“You know, I’m, ah, glad you showed up here, to tell you the truth,” Joanna said suddenly, breaking the silence. Her expression was tentative, but she seemed resigned to charge forward with whatever it was she was trying to say. “Not just because I needed help cleaning up. But, uh, because . . . I kinda found something.”
“Avery’s spoon?” Priya guessed.
“Nope.” Joanna shook her head. “Better. Or maybe worse. I don’t know. It’s a secret, and I feel kinda weird about knowing it.”
Priya finally put her folding down and turned her complete attention to Joanna. “Okay, you must spill. Now.” She settled into a comfortable cross-legged position on the floor and folded her hands in her lap, like a patient child at story time.
Joanna glanced at the floor, then looked back up. “So, you know how there was this rumor that Avery used to take that one bed in every tent so that she could sneak out and meet her boyfriend?”
Priya nodded, recalling all too vividly Avery’s reaction that first day when she discovered that Brynn had inadvertently taken her bed. Her ears had barely stopped ringing from the shrieks of indignation.
“But then this year, her boyfriend supposedly wasn’t here?” Joanna posed this as a question.
“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you? If her boyfriend was here?” Priya pointed out. “Since you’re friends and all?”
“No way. She keeps that kind of stuff a secret,” Joanna explained. “But we heard the same rumors that you heard—that whoever she’d been seeing was gone this year.”
“But she still sneaks out of the tent at night all the time,” Priya mused, starting to catch Joanna’s drift. It wasn’t like she and her friends had never wondered where it was that Avery disappeared to at night, though they’d long since decided that a) she was probably just visiting her friends in other tents and b) since Avery clearly didn’t care about them, they couldn’t be bothered to care about her. Much.
“Right. And . . . I just found—THESE!” Joanna reached under Avery’s mattress and pulled out three manila envelopes. She lifted the flap of one to reveal a stash of envelopes. Priya squealed. She couldn’t help herself. “Are those what I think they are?” Envelopes. Hand-written envelopes. This was big.
Joanna nodded, eyes shining. “They’re love letters! They’re not signed—I already checked,” she confessed. “And she kept them, instead of giving them to whomever she’s writing them to. Which, okay, is extra weird. But if you read them, you’ll see that whoever these letters are for is totally at camp this summer! She’s been writing these love letters to some guy at camp!”
“Omigosh!” Priya exclaimed, clapping a hand over her mouth in excitement. “That is the juiciest gossip ever!” She leaned closer to Joanna conspiratorially. “Who do you think it is?”
“I have no idea,” Joanna said, shaking her head. “Trust me, I’ve been racking my brain.”
Priya rubbed her hands together like a cartoon villain. “We need to get to the bottom of this,” she proclaimed. “I propose—an alliance!”
Joanna appeared to consider this. “Like, we’ll investigate together?” Her eyes sparkled with interest.
Priya nodded. “Tot
ally. We’ll go undercover and figure this out. But the one catch is that all of the Lakeview girls have to be let in on the scoop. It’s too good not to be shared.”
Joanna frowned. She was obviously doubtful about the wisdom of this plan.
Priya placed a reassuring hand on Joanna’s arm. “I promise you—you can trust my friends. They’ll be so psyched that you included them in this, they’d never rat you out. They’re cool girls,” she said.
Joanna looked Priya straight in the eye. “I know. I could always tell that.” She wrinkled her forehead, thinking for a moment. “Yeah, I guess that would be okay. For you to tell them, I mean.”
Priya grinned. “So, does this mean we’re on? Operation Mystery Love is a go?”
“Ew,” Joanna shrieked, laughing. “Not if you insist on calling it that cheesetastic name.”
“Whatever,” Priya said, waving her hand dismissively. “We’ll come up with something cooler. Nat and Sloan are good at that kind of stuff. But the name is, like, the least important part of it. The most important part is getting the dirt on who Avery’s boyfriend is.” She squinted mischievously at Joanna. “And if there’s one thing I can promise you, it’s that the Lakeview girls are geniuses when it comes to getting the gossip.”
“I hope so,” Joanna said, grinning. “’Cause I have a feeling that this secret is a good one!”
chapter TWELVE
Sarah was worried.
There were lots of reasons for Sarah to be worried, mainly because she’d told her Walla Walla friends . . . things. Things that were maybe, possibly, sort of the opposite of true. Things that she really wouldn’t want to see revealed, uncovered, or otherwise unraveled.
She’d been worried about all of this since she’d first learned that Natalie, Jenna, and the rest of the Lakeview crew had touched down on Walla Walla territory. That much was natural. It made sense, as much as any of this whole stupid mess that she had created made sense.
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