Wish You Weren't

by Melissa J Morgan

  Sarah smiled. “Blue eyes, huh?”

  Alyssa nodded. “That’s my thing. But Adam and I aren’t really hanging out this year, and I haven’t met anyone else who floats my boat, so I’ll probably be going to the social stag.” She glanced sideways at Sarah. “Are you bringing a date?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I’m not really into dating,” she said. “But it’s like everyone in 4C took a dating pill last week. They’re all talking about who they’re going to bring, how many slow songs they want them to play. They all volunteered for the social committee.”

  Alyssa nodded. “Yeah. Natalie, Chelsea, and Tori are all doing that, too.”

  Sarah sighed. “I just . . . I dunno.” She added a fuzzy tail to a squirrel she’d sketched in. “I feel like everything’s changed so much this year. First we all got split up, then everyone went nuts for the social, then—” Sarah stopped herself just before she said “Abby showed up at camp.” None of her friends were close with Abby, but they all seemed to think she was cool. Sarah didn’t want to look mean by looking like the only one who didn’t like her.

  Alyssa glanced up at her sympathetically, then turned back to her sketch. “That’s true,” she said. “But everything changes. Some things get worse, but some things get better, right?” She looked up and smiled.

  Sarah looked at her for a moment before smiling back. I guess, was what she wanted to say. I sure liked it better before, though. But even to her ears that sounded whiny and childish. Finally she let her lips turn up. “Right,” she said. “You’re so wise, Alyssa.”

  Alyssa just laughed. “I’ll send you a bill with my fee.”

  When Sarah got back to the cabin before dinner, her bunk was already buzzing about something. Sarah had passed Becky outside, talking on her cell phone, and Sophie was sacked out on her bunk, taking a nap. All of her bunkmates were huddled together on three bottom bunks, whispering.

  “We have to do it tonight,” Gaby was saying, “for maximum impact.” She looked up when Sarah walked into the room. “Sars!” she hissed. “I’m so glad you’re back. You’ll love my idea for getting revenge on 4A! It’s a much better prank than bug juice in the showers!”

  Sarah nodded skeptically and settled lightly on the edge of a bunk. “Okay,” she agreed. “Um . . . what is it?”

  Gaby exchanged glances with Grace and Brynn, who nodded eagerly. “All right. It’s kind of similar to what they did to us, in that we sneak into their cabin in the middle of the night and do something to the bathroom. But this . . .” She had to pause as she descended into a fit of giggles. “This is so much better! Honestly, I should be planning pranks all the time.”

  Sarah just nodded. She wasn’t totally convinced that Gaby was on Jenna’s level. She knew Gaby would like to think she was, but in Sarah’s opinion, she didn’t quite have the fun that you needed to have—she didn’t have the prankster’s sensibility. Gaby could be funny, but she could also be mean-spirited, and in Sarah’s experience, mean-spirited pranks only led to trouble.

  “Here it is.” Gaby instinctively lowered her voice, and all the campers leaned in close to hear her. “We wait until Becky and Sophie are asleep tonight. Then, three of us sneak out and in the back door of 4A’s cabin. We go into the bathroom and—and—”

  Here Gaby collapsed into a fit of giggles. Some of the other girls—Brynn, Alex, and Candace—started laughing, too. Sarah snuck a glance at Abby. She was sitting with her face arranged in an almost smile, like she wasn’t sure what to make of any of this.

  “—we steal all of their toilet paper!”

  Gaby started laughing uncontrollably and put her head down to recover. Most of the campers gathered around started laughing, too, even Abby, though she still looked a little confused.

  “We steal all of their toilet paper!” Candace echoed, delighted. “It’s perfect!”

  Sarah let out a few awkward giggles. “Um . . .” she began, “isn’t that kind of mean? I mean, no toilet paper is more of an . . .”—she tried to think of an appropriate word—“. . . inconvenience than having bug juice in the shower, you know? Not being able to go to the bathroom versus getting a little sticky in the shower . . . I think it’s worse.”

  Gaby started a fresh round of giggles. “I know!” she cried. “That’s why it’s the perfect comeback prank!”

  “But doesn’t that raise the stakes?” asked Valerie, who, Sarah now noticed, also looked less than convinced. “I mean, we steal their toilet paper . . . who knows what they’ll do to us?”

  Gaby recovered from her giggles for long enough to put on a serious face. “Val,” she said, “pranking is a tough business. They call it a prank war for a reason. I have nothing to offer you but blood, sweat, and . . . maybe no toilet paper the day after tomorrow. But that’s what pranking’s about. If you don’t have the stomach for it, then . . .” She shook her head doubtfully.

  Val nodded. “Well, I don’t have the stomach for it,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter, because when they retaliate, they’re doing it to all of us. Anyway”—she glanced at Sarah—“they already decided who’s going tonight. And too bad for us, we’re out of it.”

  Sarah nodded. She had to admit, she felt relieved. “Who’s going then?”

  “Me, Alex, and Grace,” Gaby said. “We figured it out at the social-committee meeting.”

  Sarah felt her stomach sink. She hadn’t even wanted to go, but hearing that they’d figured this whole thing out without asking her hurt a little bit. She was beginning to wonder whether she’d made a mistake not signing up for the social committee. She really didn’t care about the social at all, but she felt like she was missing out on valuable time with her friends.

  “All right, then,” Sarah said quietly, hoping that someone would pick up on the hurt in her voice. “I guess it’s all decided.”

  “Right,” agreed Gaby, totally oblivious. Suddenly she looked up, toward the doorway. “Shhh,” she whispered. “Ixnay on the ankpray alktay.”

  Becky burst into the room with a big smile. “You guys ready for dinner?” she asked. “We should start walking over. Someone go in there and wake up Sophie.” She turned and started heading out of the cabin. “I don’t know about you guys, but I have the worst craving for bug juice!”

  “Not funny, Becky,” Gaby muttered as she and the rest of the campers all rose to their feet. “So not funny.”

  “Psssst.”

  It was just a tiny noise. Like a mouse noise, maybe, or an ant farting. Sarah tried to ignore it. It was the middle of the night, and she was in the middle of a very cool dream about joining the Red Sox and somehow, at the same time, curing cancer. It was one of those amazing coincidences that only happen in really good dreams. She turned away from the mouse noise and snuggled deeper into her pillow.

  “Psssst. Sarah.”

  Now the ant was farting her name. This was serious. She opened her eyes just a crack and looked at her pillow. It was just as she’d left it: down-filled with a Red Sox pillowcase. No mice or ants. Sarah was trying to build up the energy to turn over when Grace’s voice suddenly became clear.

  “Sarah. Wake up, sister!” A hand reached out and shoved her shoulder.

  “What?” Sarah hissed as she turned over. Now that she was fully awake, she realized how much more fun she’d been having asleep. What are the chances of falling into a joining the Red Sox/curing cancer dream again? That combination doesn’t happen every day.

  “Sars, you have to get up and help us with the prank.”

  “Ankpray!” came Gaby’s forceful whisper from the darkness. “Keep it down, Grace!”

  “Right, the ankpray,” Grace continued, softening her voice. “Anyway. Alex won’t wake up, so we need an extra person.”

  Sarah looked at Grace and rubbed her eyes. “So you chose me?” She didn’t know whether to feel touched or not.

  “Of course!” Grace smiled. “Well, we tried Val, too. But she must have been having a really good dream or something. She threw her teddy bear at m
e and knocked me off her bunk.”

  Always one step ahead of me, that Val. Sarah took a deep breath and raised herself up out of her sleeping bag. She looked down and saw Gaby standing by the door of the cabin, clutching her empty duffel bag. “All right,” Sarah whispered. “But you both owe me.”

  “Sure,” her friends whispered in unison as she swung her legs out of the sleeping bag and onto the floor. Her ankle had finally stopped hurting, she noted with satisfaction. Stepping carefully in the dark, Sarah raised herself up and slipped on her flip-flops. She grabbed her hooded sweatshirt from the cubby, ran a quick hand through her hair, and walked toward the door.

  “Let’s go.”

  Gaby and Grace followed as Sarah began leading the way toward 4A’s cabin down the trail. The air was chilly and felt cool in her lungs. Actually, it was kind of fun being out at this time of night—even if she wasn’t totally convinced that the prank was a good idea. Sarah tried to make it sound better in her mind as she walked silently through the dark. It’s all in good fun. Besides, if Jenna really was behind the prank this morning—and she probably was—they deserve to be hit back. And sure, it’s a little crude, but it’s a great revenge prank, right? Right! Sarah tried to quiet the contrary voices in her mind—like the one that said Jenna didn’t seem to be behind the prank this morning, or the one that said messing with toilet paper was a level of nastiness she didn’t want to sink to. Sarah looked around at the faces of Gaby and Grace, her good buds. She was out in the cool night air with her friends, having some fun, and that was all that mattered.

  “All right,” Gaby whispered as they approached the cabin. “We have to be super-quiet. Quieter than quiet! If anyone hears us, we’re sunk.”

  Grace and Sarah nodded obediently.

  “We’ll sneak in the back door, right to the bathroom. Sarah, you take the right stall; I’ll take the middle; Grace, you take the left. We’ll remove the TP and put it in this duffel bag. Before we leave, we’ll check the supply closet and take out any extra. That make sense?”

  Grace and Sarah nodded again. “Aye aye, captain,” Grace whispered.

  “Good. Are you ready?”

  “Yup.”

  “Yup.”

  Gaby nodded solemnly. “Okay. Ladies, let’s move in.”

  They snuck over to the back door, a crude wooden door with a latch and no screen. Gaby silently lifted the latch, then pulled back the door and gestured to Grace and Sarah to go in. The door creaked a tiny bit on its hinges, but nobody stirred. In the bathroom, the girls all tiptoed to their assigned stalls. Sarah carefully pulled out the toilet paper roll, walked out of the stall, and placed it silently in Gaby’s bag. When all three were done, Gaby headed to the supply closet beside the showers and opened it up. There were six extra rolls of toilet paper on the second shelf, and Gaby carefully grabbed them one by one and placed them into the bag. Then she looked at Grace and Sarah and nodded. She pointed wordlessly to the back door.

  When they slipped out of the back door without incident, Sarah had to admit to herself that they’d pulled it off beautifully. She was even a little surprised. Part of her had been convinced that someone in 4A would wake up to use the bathroom in the middle of the raid and find the three of them with their arms full of toilet paper. But when they got back to 4C and high-fived one another, Sarah was pretty sure they’d gotten away with it.

  “Awesome!” whispered Gaby. “Good job, ladies.”

  “What do we do with the toilet paper?” Sarah asked. It suddenly occurred to her that a duffel bag full of toilet paper rolls might look a little suspicious to Becky.

  “I already thought of that,” whispered Gaby. “We’ll just put them in our supply closet, shoved in the back. Nobody will notice.”

  Sarah nodded. “Cool.”

  Grace beamed at both of them. “Guys, this was so much fun! I really think we got them back good. That will teach them to mess with us!”

  “Yeah,” Gaby agreed, looking starry-eyed. “This might just be the prank to end all pranks!”

  Sarah nodded very slowly. “Yeeeah,” she agreed. “Well, um, I’m going back to bed.”

  “You rats.”

  Sarah blinked as she finished tying the laces on her sneakers. She was exhausted this morning, because she’d been too excited to fall back asleep after the prank. Natalie and Chelsea were standing in the cabin doorway. And they looked pretty mad.

  “Worse than rats,” Natalie corrected Chelsea. “Rats just steal other people’s garbage because they’re hungry. They don’t go around stealing basic human necessities—like toilet paper!”

  The two girls stormed through the cabin toward the bathroom. Natalie was from New York. She knows the finer points of rat behavior, thought Sarah. She, Abby, Gaby, and Valerie—her bunkmates who were awake and ready in the bedroom—followed the blaze of indignation into the bathroom. There, Natalie had already opened up the supply closet, and was loading toilet paper into Chelsea’s waiting arms.

  “How convenient,” Natalie was saying. “They just happen to have—let’s see—nine extra rolls of toilet paper. How interesting, considering that in all of 4A, we have none.”

  Chelsea nodded thoughtfully. “It does raise some questions,” she agreed. “Like, who would be so immature as to steal toilet paper? And why on earth, since it’s been established that we did not prank 4C the other night?”

  “I think the immaturity question is the more interesting one,” Natalie went on. “Considering that, even if they suspect Jenna of pranking them, that’s no reason to punish all of 4A to make up for it.”

  “Especially those who wake up early to answer the call of Mother Nature!” Chelsea finished.

  “Yes,” Natalie agreed, handing a final roll to Chelsea and narrowing her eyes at the assembled 4C campers. “Especially those people. But you know, Chelsea, it’s all right—I’m sure these girls know about karma.”

  “Ooh, karma,” Chelsea repeated, backing out of the bathroom and turning to head out of the cabin. “What goes around comes around.”

  “That’s right,” said Natalie. “So we can only imagine what will come around as revenge for this. Ta-ta, ladies.”

  “Ciao,” said Chelsea.

  And then they were gone, ends of toilet paper flapping behind them.

  Valerie looked at Gaby. “I told you. Now who knows what they’re going to do to us.”

  Gaby just shrugged, looking satisfied. “We’ll deal with that when it comes. For now . . .” She smiled. “We just savor the feeling of a job well done.” She paused. “And keep an extra roll of toilet paper in your cubby, just in case.”

  chapter SIX

  “You all are so dead.”

  Jenna stood in front of 4C’s table in the mess hall, looking furious. Her arms were folded, and her eyes shot daggers at Gaby. Even her hair looks angry, Sarah thought sleepily. She took another bite of pancakes as Gaby returned Jenna’s glare.

  “You know what they say about karma, Jenna,” Gaby said airily, sipping her OJ. “What goes around comes around.”

  “Look.” Jenna’s voice was sharp and gravelly. “I am going to say this one more time, very slowly. I. Did. Not. Put. Bug Juice. In. Your. Showers. I did not put the stupid bug juice in your stupid showers. Okay? But now I kind of wish I did, because you totally had it coming and I didn’t even realize it yet.”

  Gaby regarded Jenna coolly, slowly chewing her pancakes. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I mean you were . . .” Jenna sighed. “Forget it. Look, all that matters is you have got some serious payback coming. All of you.” She slowly looked around the table, taking time to lock eyes with every camper. “I’d learn to sleep with one eye open, if I were you guys.” With that, she turned on her heel and stalked back to her table.

  Sarah took a sip of her juice and swallowed as everyone seemed to process Jenna’s threat. “If she really did put the bug juice in our showers, she’s a great actress,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, she did it,” Ga
by said with certainty. “She’s just mad we figured it out. And sure, she’ll get us back . . . but we’ll get her back even harder.”

  Maybe it was lack of sleep, but this whole prank war was sounding stupider to Sarah than it had ever seemed before. What will be missing when we wake up tomorrow? she wondered. The toilets? Our bunk beds? Will all of our underwear be floating in the lake? Her concern was made greater by the nagging feeling that Jenna really hadn’t pranked them first. But if not her, who did it? she wondered. She couldn’t come up with any candidates at all. Really, they didn’t know the other campers well enough for them to want to prank 4C.

  It was a mystery. But one thing was for certain: All of 4C had better be on the lookout for Jenna’s revenge.

  “Two, four, six, eight! Who do panthers love to hate? Tigers! Tigers! TIIIIGERRRS!”

  Sarah’s ankle was feeling back to normal, and she was finally getting the chance to play softball.Unfortunately, she was still stuck in left field—nowheresville—with the strangest boy at Camp Lakeview. David was playing center field and making up silly cheers to pass the time. The cheers seemed to annoy the heck out of Abby, who cast an evil glare in his direction from the pitchers mound every five seconds. David either didn’t notice or did a great job of pretending not to notice. The whole thing would have made Sarah want to laugh . . . if she weren’t incredibly depressed to be stuck in left field.

  It was the third inning and not a single ball had come in Sarah’s direction. David had caught the ball exactly once and immediately made up a cheer describing how great he was. Sarah felt miserable. She’d psyched herself up to impress Abby once they started playing. Now she wasn’t sure what was worse: playing in a game and performing badly or not even having the chance to perform at all. It seemed entirely possible that she could spend the whole two weeks out in left field, watching grass grow and memorizing David’s cheers, and never once see the ball come in her direction. Why is my life like this? Sarah wondered miserably. Did Abby put me out here on purpose, so I’d never get the chance to prove myself? Why is life so unfair?