PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Davidowitz, Stacy, author.
Title: Camp Rolling Hills / by Stacy Davidowitz.
Description: New York : Amulet Books, [2016] | Series: Camp Rolling Hills ; Book 1 | Summary: “Stephanie (a.k.a. ‘Slimey’) and Bobby (a.k.a. ‘Smelly’) have concerns regarding their families back home. Stephanie is returning to the camp she adores; Bobby is a first-time camper who does not really understand lots of what is going on around him during his first exposure to life at summer camp”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015022812 | ISBN 9781419718854 (paperback) eISBN 9781613128909 Subjects: | CYAC: Camps—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.D3365 Fi 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015022812
Text copyright © 2016 Stacy Davidowitz
Illustrations by Melissa Manwill
Book design by Pamela Notarantonio
Inspired by the original musical Camp Rolling Hills
copyright © 2013 Adam Spiegel, David Spiegel, and Stacy Davidowitz
Music and lyrics by Adam Spiegel
Book and lyrics by David Spiegel & Stacy Davidowitz
Published in 2016 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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For the fam and our one-day Davidowitz Camp
Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen! Slimey counted the rows from the front of the bumpy, AC-deprived bus to where she stood almost three-quarters back. It was the right row for her to be in, she decided, because it was her fourth summer at the Hills, and she wasn’t the oldest camper but definitely not the youngest, either.
“Hey! Take a seat back there!”
Slimey didn’t think the bus driver was shouting specifically at her—other kids were standing, too—but she thought she’d better sit down, just in case. It wasn’t like she had anyone to talk to in another row—she was just afraid she’d explode if she didn’t stretch her legs. She was shaking, she was so excited.
“I will pull over. Don’t make me say it again!”
She could understand if one of the newbie One Tree Hill girls was still standing, but the Notting Hill girls, now scurrying into their seats, should know better, since they were going into ninth grade. Upper Campers should be good role models, after all.
“Thank you!” the bus driver called in a raspy voice. Slimey guessed it was from shouting all the time. That or smoking. Shouting, she hoped, since smoking was bad for you.
Slimey gave a silent sigh and leaned against the window for some shut-eye. Two hours had passed already, and if she napped for just an hour more, she’d wake up at camp! That plan lasted all of three heartbeats before she got antsy. List-making time! She reached into her frayed purple L.L.Bean backpack—it was three years old, but it was perfect for camp, because she could get it dirty and not care—and took out her sketchbook. She got to work.
Things to Do Now That I’m in Anita Hill Cabin (Upper Camp!)
1. Be a good role model.
2. Make a special camp collage of my friends and our inside jokes.
3. Box-stitch extra lanyard key chains for Mom, since stress makes her lose her keys.
4. Spend A LOT of time with my camp sister/soul sister/BFF.
Slimey had always wanted a sister, and she treasured the times she and Melman pretended they were fraternal twins separated at birth. Fraternal, because they looked nothing alike. Twins, because their birthdays were only three days apart, and they’d always understood exactly how the other felt.
Until last summer. But that wasn’t Melman’s fault. Slimey couldn’t expect anyone to understand that kind of throat-closing, belly-plummeting pain. She didn’t want anyone to, either. She’d gotten used to the I feel bad for you smiles and awkward pats on the back. They didn’t make her feel like curling up in a ball under fifty fleece blankets anymore. They just unleashed a few seconds of heartache, like eating Pop Rocks with Sprite. She could deal with that level of pain on her own. She had to. All Slimey wanted was for everything to stay amazing at camp, like it always was before.
She grimaced as she lifted her practically Krazy Glued leg from the green leathery seat. It left a sweat stain, which was embarrassing, so she put it right back where it was. She didn’t really care about that stuff—wouldn’t care if it was any of her cabinmates sitting next to her—but the actual girl sitting next to her was one of the Notting Hill Cabin campers. The two girls weren’t close—they’d never even spoken—and Slimey knew they probably wouldn’t talk the whole trip. Unless the Notting Hill girl saw the stain and said, “Ew.” But Slimey doubted even that would happen, because Notting Hill was in the aisle seat, talking to her friends. They were two-thirds of the way there, and the Notting Hill girl hadn’t even glanced her way, so the chances that their ride would continue in silence were, like, a hundred percent. Maybe ninety-two.
Slimey knelt up on her seat, wishing she’d find a familiar face. More specifically, a face of one of her cabinmates. One she’d covered with kisses or painted a pretty squirrel on or woken up next to every summer since being a One Tree Hiller.
Melman had always been her bus buddy, and Slimey wished she was here now instead of flying from Heathrow to JFK to take the Long Island bus with Missi. She had a hopeful thought, as fleeting as a camera flash, that maybe Jamie had decided to take the Paramus bus instead of going with Jenny like she always did. Slimey knelt higher to triple-check, but Jamie wasn’t on the bus—no surprise there. Slimey knew better than to think the J-squad could separate, even if just for the three-hour trip to Camp Rolling Hills.
Slimey remembered the bus driver’s warning and her own promise to be a good role model. If there was a silver lining to what had happened last summer, it was that she’d gotten practice at being one. She had to be strong for her mom. She pictured her dad giving his famous I’m proud of you wink, and she shrunk down in her seat, pulling her sticky shins out from beneath her. The suction made a fart noise, which would’ve made Melman crack up. Notting Hill didn’t seem to notice.
Slimey looked out the window as they passed a farm with cows, some milling about, some just standing around, taking it easy. Sometimes she wished she lived on a big open farm instead of in a cramped house in New Jersey, where there was only room for her, her mom, her cockatiel named Lois Lane, and maybe a cat or two if her mom wasn’t allergic. Missi had seven cats, not because she lived on a farm, but because her grandparents were hoarders.
Farms made Slimey happy. It meant she was closer to camp than to home.
She flipped to the next page of her sketchbook, but it was already taken up by a drawing of her pink Chuck Taylors. She’d tho
ught she had twenty-eight pages left, but she now figured she was down to twenty-seven, since that page was used up and she’d just made her Things to Do Now That I’m in Anita Hill Cabin (Upper Camp!) list.
She opened to the middle of the used pages and flipped through her sketches of Lois 1 and Lois 2, a yellow rose, and a Dustbuster with an eye patch. She’d draw anything, really. Except people. People were really hard, and her sketches never looked like the person. At least, that’s what people said when they saw her drawings of them.
Slimey flipped to the very back of the sketchbook, where a worn, folded piece of paper from an old sketchpad was tucked neatly inside. She opened it up on her lap, shook her head, and smiled at the sketch of her Junior Counselor she’d made back when she was a tiny Slimey in One Tree Hill Cabin. Her JC had gotten really mad, because Slimey had made her nose bigger than how she saw it herself. What the JC hadn’t understood was that art is interpretive and impressionistic and abstract, and you can’t expect someone to draw you exactly like you.
Slimey wished she’d told her JC that before she’d gotten her nose job. It was much smaller and more button-y now. Melman said the operation was for nasal congestion, not vanity, and that Slimey shouldn’t feel bad. Their cabinmate Sophie said the JC had gotten her nose bitten off by a vampire, but Sophie was weird and obsessed with vampires and blamed or credited them for pretty much everything.
Slimey began to brainstorm about what she wanted to draw on page twenty-four, but she was sidetracked by the singing, which was really more like on-pitch screaming, coming from the girls behind her.
“I live ten months for two.
I come back for you.
I come back for you!!!”
The singing from the older girls in the back made the medium-age girls directly in front of her sing, and then some younger girls all the way up front, and then the boys in the middle, and then the boys in the back, until almost everyone was belting their cabin songs from the summer before. Except for the little new kids way up front, who were either going to be in One Tree Hill Cabin or Bunker Hill Cabin—depending on if they were boys or girls—and had no idea what was happening. Everyone was singing except them and Slimey.
She felt a rush of excitement as her Lauryn Hill Cabin songs from last summer played in her head. She wanted so badly to sing them—her counselor, Sara, had helped her cabinmates write them, and they were amazing, but she knew she couldn’t just start singing them by herself. That would be awkward.
She swallowed the melodies and closed her eyes, trying to block out the cacophony of singing and yelling, which she could tell, even without looking, was making the bus driver nuts. She felt a pinch of sorriness for him. But there was nothing for him to say, really—no one was standing anymore, and the songs were silly but appropriate enough by camp-director standards. Plus, the guy had signed up to drive a camp bus, and with camp buses came a lot of noise.
Slimey fumbled with her silver locket—open, close, open, close. What. Should. I. Draw? She opened her eyes with anticipation, hoping to see a horse or a sheep or something inspiring, but instead she saw a gas station.
She glanced to her left and noticed that the Notting Hill girl was gone. Likely talking to one of her friends in the back. Or snagging a snack from the sleeping bus counselor. It didn’t matter. What she spotted instead was much more interesting.
He was sitting all alone across the aisle. He was about her age, no older than thirteen, no younger than eleven. Even though it must have been a million degrees out, he was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. Underneath, he had headphones on. Not earbuds but hard-core headphones, and he was listening to the oldest, biggest iPod she’d ever seen. He was leaning against the window, his knees a little bit bent, the tips of his Nikes against the back of the seat in front of him.
He seemed nervous, and he wasn’t singing. To Slimey, that meant one thing and one thing only: he was definitely new.
She thought about saying hey. She knew how he felt, sort of, and she was ready to pull her hair out, not because of all the noise, but because she was simultaneously so bored and excited. Her mouth was about to make the h sound, when the bus bumped her forward, sending three of her colored pencils to the floor. She tried to catch them with the bottom of her right Chuck, but they rolled out of foot’s reach. As she bent down to get a visual, the blood rushed to the top of her head, making her too dizzy to spot them.
“Hey,” a boy’s voice called from a few feet away.
Slimey hoisted herself up and stared right into New Boy’s warm brown eyes.
“Are you looking for these?” New Boy stretched his arm across the aisle.
She could feel the blood rush back down from the top of her head as she scooted toward him from the window to the aisle on the sticky, leathery seat. She slowly took the colored pencils from his fist. She was trying to make the moment last but was also trying to grab the pencils safely so she didn’t get stabbed if there was another big bump. Before she could even say thank you, the Notting Hill girl stood between them, waiting for Slimey to move back to the window seat.
“How many times do I have to say it?” the bus driver yelled. “SIT DOWN!”
Slimey scooted over quickly, and Notting Hill plopped down by her side. She looked at Slimey and smiled, curving her lips open like she was actually going to say something, but then someone called Notting Hill’s name, so Notting Hill scooted around onto her knees and faced the back of the bus.
A 100 percent talk-free trip, Slimey thought, smiling to herself. I was 100 percent right!
She couldn’t really see New Boy through Notting Hill’s body—the girl was moving a lot, and the bumpiness of the bus didn’t help—but she did see his backpack. L.L.Bean, like hers, but with brown initials threaded in: R.E.B. Perfect sketch material.
Slimey was feeling lighter with every mile from home. She kissed her locket, like she did every day, tucked it under her T-shirt, and began to draw.
One. More. Hill.
Bobby dragged his wheel-less duffel up the biggest of the four big hills he’d hiked in the last ten minutes. He’d passed soccer fields and volleyball courts, a gazebo and huts, two flagpoles and a lake. The camp was pretty and smelled good, like fresh air after a storm, even though there was no storm—the sun was blazing, and it was hot.
When he’d gotten off the bus, grabbing his stuff and making a run for it had seemed like the best thing to do. Listening to counselors shouting names of hills and cabins he’d never heard of had made him feel out of place, and he thought it would be nice to hold on to his baseball mitt, if not his dignity. But, of course, Bobby hadn’t found the mitt—his mom had buried it somewhere at the bottom of his duffel—and here he was, wandering around alone, following weathered, unreadable signs for Boys’ Side.
He reached into the front pocket of his hoodie and brought a folded note to his nose. It smelled familiar, like his mom’s perfume. As the fragrance loitered in his nostrils, he wished he was home, watching TV on the couch. Bobby breathed out of his nose, blowing the misleading sense of comfort from his body, along with a little snot. Misleading, because he knew it was light-years away from the anger he’d felt toward his mom this morning when she’d given him the boot.
Bobby crumpled up the note, shoved it back into his pocket, and kept moving. When he was three-quarters up the biggest of the four big hills (he now knew where the name “Rolling Hills” came from), he heard voices over a loudspeaker. The sound echoed from behind him and above him and below him.
Grown-up Guy: Good morning, Camp Rolling Hills! Can I get a Rrrroooollling Hills? Welcome, or welcome back—whichever it is, you’re welcome! We’re pumped like limitless ketchup that you are here with us ahora. This is going to be an amaaaa—
Woman: TJ! You’re gonna break the mic . . .
Same Guy = TJ: —zing summer!
Woman: So much to do—no time to waste!
TJ: So find your counselors, and make haste!
Woman: Dinner’s at six today
—
TJ [butchering an Italian accent]: A’spaghetti and a’meatballs.
Woman: I’d have abs of steel if they weren’t so irresistibly delicious.
TJ: Oh, Captain, you do have abs of—
The loudspeaker went off with a sharp squeal of feedback. Bobby took it that TJ and the Captain ran the camp. That, or they were staff who’d hijacked the loudspeaker system. It really could be either.
Bobby spotted a cabin up ahead with SAN JUAN HILL etched into a piece of driftwood nailed above the door. He was glad he’d arrived, even though he was nervous to meet his cabinmates and totally confused by the name of the cabin. He knew San Juan was in Puerto Rico, but they weren’t in Puerto Rico. They were in upstate New York. The “Hill” part, he got.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair. The Surf Hair he’d applied that morning made his hair look like he’d just gotten out of the ocean, and it smelled like the piña coladas his mom would drink when family vacations had still been a thing. Bobby might’ve felt lousy about being here, but he didn’t want to look it.
He lugged his duffel up the four . . . five . . . six porch steps to where five more duffels were piled beside the door. How’d they get here so fast? he wondered. The other campers must’ve used a shortcut.
A small kid, even smaller than Bobby, stuck his head—well, really, his entire torso—out the cabin window. “We’ve got a new kid!” he cried. The window suddenly slammed shut on him, and he laugh-cried in pain, wriggling back inside.
Bobby hurried to help him, but four boys and a teenager with a STAFF shirt rushed out of the cabin, blocking his way. And . . . they were chanting.
“We welcome you to Rolling Hills.
We roll, you roll with us.
If loyal to your cabinmates,
We’re glad to add a plus!”
One kid with a curly ’fro was lounging on Bobby’s duffel like it was a reclining beach chair. Bobby itched to say, Get up! You’re crushing my stuff! But he didn’t want to make the kid feel bad. Bobby’s gaze darted from one guy to the next. It was all the same: relentless enthusiasm, all focused on him. He’d never had to avoid so much eye contact in his life.
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