Crossing Over

by Stacy Davidowitz

  “We’ll sing you in, we’ll sing you out.

  Hail, hail, the mighty shout.

  Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,

  And we welcome you to Rolling Hills!”

  Hamburger Hill Cabin, here we come, thought Steinberg. As soon as his friends stepped off the buses, he’d race toward them like he did every summer. He was always happy to share his personal bubble of oxygen with the greatest cabinmates in the world.

  “Shot top bunk above Jamie!” Jenny screamed.

  “Shot bottom bunk below Jenny!” Jamie screamed.

  Melman and Slimey raced into Faith Hill Cabin behind the J-squad and scrambled to claim the bunk-bed closest to the door. Once Melman slung her Adidas gym bag on the top bunk and Slimey tossed her backpack on the bottom, the two best friends leaned on each other to catch their breath. Missi and Sophie ran in, giggling, behind them, high on bus fumes and reunited hugs, and snatched the two single beds in the middle.

  Melman breathed in the cabin’s sweet, musky smell of wood and lemon Lysol. There were forty-eight summers’ worth of memories in this cabin, and she couldn’t wait to make an imprint on its forty-ninth. She loved the first moments inside a bare cabin. It was like an empty soccer field; or as Slimey liked to say, a blank canvas; or as Sophie liked to say, a pre-turned vampire—when the possibilities of amazingness were endless. “Take it in, ladies,” Melman said, filling her lungs to capacity.

  Jenny unleashed three spritzes of what smelled like cherries and hair spray. “Taylor Swift perfume,” she said with a sigh, giving it a whiff. “So much better.”

  Melman choked and coughed into the crease of her elbow. So much for fresh cabin smell, she thought. She followed the girls outside to grab their duffels and to get some air. She helped Slimey and then Missi with their bags, and then Sophie with hers, and when she finally went to retrieve her own, she was alone on the porch. Suddenly, she heard whistling in the not-so-far distance.

  Melman looked over her shoulder and saw a woman approaching the cabin, carrying a stack of towels. She was shorter than Jenny but taller than Jamie, and she had the body of a linebacker. Her short spiky hair stood up over her dark green bandana, and her plaid short-sleeved button-down was open over her staff shirt. Melman had never in her life seen anyone with such a cool style. “Are you our counselor?” she asked, her mental fingers crossed.

  “Oi! Yes! I’m Scottie.” The counselor hustled up the porch steps with her hand outstretched for a shake. “And you are . . . ?”

  “Melman.” Melman wanted to hear Scottie speak again. She had the funniest accent—it sounded a little bit British and a little bit Irish. “Where are you from?”

  “Scotland. Scottie from Scotland. My parents were tripping.”

  Melman laughed. “That’s awesome.”

  “Here, I’ll help you with your bags.”

  “Thanks. This duffel is all sports stuff—I mean, soccer stuff—so it’s just going over there.” Melman motioned to the sports-equipment crate on the other side of the porch.

  “Let’s do it!” Scottie dropped the towels and tossed the whole duffel over her shoulder like it was a wounded soldier. Man, she’s strong, Melman thought. Scottie set the bag down and unzipped it, taking inventory of the six balls, goalkeeper gloves, cleats, shin guards, orange cones, and mesh jerseys. “Whoa. You a pro or something? Play football for the USA?”

  Melman smiled. She guessed in Scotland they called soccer “football,” too, just like they did in London, where she’d been living for two years (when she wasn’t at camp, of course). “I don’t play professionally yet,” she said with a smirk.

  “Well, by the sight of it,” Scottie said, unloading the equipment and putting it in the crate, “you plan on working your buttocks off until you do.”

  Melman accepted the compliment with a smile, but her stomach flipped with worry. She thought about the deal she’d made with Coach Sully, her soccer coach back in England, in exchange for going to camp and missing training with her team, the Little Ealings: goalkeeping drills two hours a day, and she had to goalkeep competitively. A tough deal to keep at a not-only-soccer camp like Rolling Hills, but she hoped to make it happen somehow, because otherwise, when she got back, he’d replace her with Sally Oliver-Harrison, who spent half of practice complaining about Melman’s lack of commitment in the summertime, and the other half bragging about how many goals she, herself, had scored. Melman didn’t want to forfeit goalkeeper, her dream position, but most of all not to Sally O.

  Melman helped Scottie roll up the now empty duffel and move it to the corner of the porch.

  “And where’re you from, Melman?” Scottie asked.

  “New Jersey, but I live in London.”

  “London! We’re neighbors, sort of!” Scottie gave her a fist pound. “Well, I look forward to seeing you on the field, mate.” She hopped off the porch. “TJ asked for my help unloading more bags from trucks. You girls’ll be OK for a few minutes, yeah?”

  “Sure,” Melman said casually, like loose supervision was no big deal, and not a major perk of Upper Camp.

  Melman dragged her duffel of everything-not-soccer into the cabin with an enormous smile, pumped to have such an awesome-sauce counselor. She could already tell that Scottie would be down for late-night adventures, and pranks, and sports during Free Play. Her cabinmates were huddled by her bunk-bed. “Hey, guys! I just met our awesome-sauce—”

  “Melman!” Slimey cheered. The huddle opened, and Slimey showcased her cubby. It looked like Valentine’s Day propaganda—her T-shirts and shorts were in piles of red, pink, and purple. “We’re organizing our clothes by shades of pink!”

  Melman’s smile faded. “Why?”

  Slimey looked to Jenny for an answer.

  Jenny pushed her neck out like a pigeon. “I saw it on a home-decorating show—color coordinating is pleasing to the eye. And also, why wouldn’t we?”

  “Uh, because pink is . . .” Melman searched for a word that wasn’t as offensive as disgusting.

  “Beautiful?” Jenny cut in. “Chic? Trendy? Romantic?”

  Melman thought about asking if Jenny was kidding, but she had known Jenny long enough to know she wasn’t. “Well, I don’t have anything pink.”

  “You didn’t even look.”

  Melman sighed and peered inside her duffel. Just as she suspected, there was nothing pink. “I have blue and white, though. Let’s coordinate by camp colors instead! Go blue and white!”

  Jenny threw three pink shirts at Melman’s head. “You can keep them. My mom packed me like forty shirts, ’cause the washing machine here eats them or something. I always go home with half of what I bring, anyway.”

  Melman glanced over at Slimey for a No way am I wearing these look, but Slimey was busy folding a red tank top and putting it in her red pile. Melman shrugged and tossed the pink shirts into her cubby. She guessed a little pink sandwiched between camp colors wouldn’t kill her. She wondered if Slimey had been brainwashed by her handful of school-year hangouts with Jenny. Or if, more likely, Melman was just overreacting.

  Melman noticed that Jamie, Sophie, and Missi were all hanging up posters of shirtless guys around their beds. Well, at least my poster vibes with their posters, she thought. She climbed to her top bunk, pulled her poster out of her Adidas bag, and taped it to the wall.

  “Ew, what’s that?” Jamie asked Melman.

  “Pelé. He was on the New York Cosmos!”

  Jamie cocked her head. “Is that on Nickelodeon or Disney? I’ve never heard of that show.”

  “It’s a soccer team,” Melman said flatly.

  Jenny dropped everything, including her jaw. “He’s, like, really old!” Melman half expected Jenny to chuck a Disney poster at her head. Luckily, she just flapped her arms. “Did he used to be hot at least? ’Cause a younger picture would be better. Like, I don’t know if I’ll be able to fall asleep if he’s staring over me at night.”

  “I think I just had a nightmare,” Jamie said. “Like, I b
linked, and it was so scary knowing he was on the wall.”

  Melman rolled her eyes. There was nothing scary about Pelé, except maybe how incredibly agile he was on the field. If anything, Jamie should be scared of Sophie’s poster, which had a blood-drained, fang-toothed vampire on it. “Well, I think you’ll get used to him.”

  Jenny climbed up to Melman’s bunk and put two heart stickers over Pelé’s eyes. “So he doesn’t watch us get dressed and stuff.”

  Melman touched the corner of the poster to tear it down, since Pelé now looked like a love-obsessed demon, but she resisted. She wasn’t going to give in to the J-squad that easily. She’d see if she could peel the stickers off later.

  As Melman hung her baseball caps on her bedposts, she wondered what had changed since last summer. There’d been pink stuff before, but it hadn’t all been pink. And the J-squad had had posters of Disney stars, but now everyone had posters of Disney stars. “Hey, Missi,” Melman said. “Did you bring any cat posters this summer?”

  Missi scrunched her nose as if Melman were out of her mind. “I love Buttercup Whiskers III, but she’s hot only when she’s in heat.” Even Missi’s changed, Melman thought.

  “Talking about being in heat,” Jenny said, “I have one word for you: Totle.” She fanned herself. “Like, he’s always been OK-hot, but now he’s hot-hot. Did you see his abs?” Jenny looked to Sophie, since Totle was her camp crush last summer, but Sophie shrugged. She’d moved on to someone new, Melman guessed, like she did every year.

  “Who do you think Sophie’s gonna like this summer?” Slimey whispered up to Melman from the bed below.

  “I don’t know,” Melman said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. She didn’t want Slimey to feel bad that she didn’t care. But frankly, she didn’t. This is what she did care about: six whole periods of sports a day, all-you-can-eat meals, Canteen snacks, and being crazy-silly with her best friends! Plus, as much soccer as she could squeeze in.

  Jenny carried on, tucking in her pink, flowery comforter. “I’d probably go for Totle myself if I wasn’t dating Christopher.”

  “Omigod!” Missi blurted, gripping her dresser to steady her giggling self. “I just remembered your story about the Slimelly and Christojen double date!”

  Melman cocked her head. “Who?”

  “Slimey and Smelly and Christopher and Jenny!!!!”

  Ah. She’d almost forgotten Jenny’s talent for mash-up nicknames that always got more confusing and harder to say.

  Jenny pulled Slimey to her bed and the two of them plopped down, smiling ear to ear. “Omigod, it was so funny,” Jenny squealed. “Christopher almost ordered slugs, and then we snuck into an R-rated movie, but it was like in French and soooo weird, so we left!”

  Everyone but Melman laughed. Even Sophie laughed, but she might have been laughing at the book she was reading. Missi crumbled to the floor, absolutely hysterical.

  Melman rolled her eyes. She already knew about the double date, and the version Slimey had emailed her said nothing about slugs or a French movie. Jenny’s parents had taken the four of them out to dinner in Jericho. Jenny’s dad had threatened to order escargot—which is snails—for everyone if Jenny didn’t stop whining for parent-free time. Then the six of them saw a romantic comedy set in Paris, and Jenny whined about how boring it was (because she couldn’t make out with Christopher with her parents one row behind them), so they left. Christopher had apparently said dumb things like “Bonjourno! I speak French like a French person,” and touched Slimey’s shoulder to see if it was slimy. Smelly and Slimey had kept each other laughing by texting back and forth emojis of pineapples and thumbtacks.

  Melman sort of understood why Jenny would spice up the story, and why Slimey wouldn’t call her out on it—it would be awkward and make her feel bad. But still. It was weird that they were all laughing over something that didn’t even go down the way it was told.

  “Omigod, what about at my bat mitzvah?” Jenny squealed. “Remember when Christopher licked my face? But not, like, my real face . . .”

  “The chocolate sculpture of your face!” Jamie piped up.

  Melman hadn’t heard that story, but she figured if it was as funny as the J-squad was making it out to be, then Slimey would have told her about it. She looked down at Slimey to check in, but she was giggling along with them.

  “Wait, were the chocolate sculptures of my face weird?” Jenny asked, clearly fishing for compliments.

  “No, they were so unique!” Jamie said.

  “Your ear was delicious,” Sophie inserted, her eyes still glued to her book. Missi nodded so hard in agreement that Melman worried she might give herself whiplash.

  While the girls continued to reminisce, moving on to Missi’s sleepover party when Wiener milked her family goat, Melman kicked back on her bed and let her mind drift. No doubt, she was glad that the J-squad had expanded their clique, but everyone knew inside jokes from the school year were there as placeholders only until camp started, when every little thing was pee-in-your-shorts funny.

  The creak of the front door opening interrupted Melman’s thoughts. She swung her legs over her top bunk and looked down. It was Scottie, bringing the towels inside from the porch. “Wow, the pink is blinding,” she joked, plopping the stack on the floor. She was right—so much had been going on, Melman hadn’t even noticed the cabin’s transformation into what looked like a bubblegum factory explosion. Just as Melman was about to chuckle at Scottie’s joke, Jenny gave a mean, fake giggle, and then Missi and Jamie exploded with laughter.

  Scottie introduced herself with her whole “Scottie from Scotland” spiel and learned all the girls’ names, then jogged to the bathroom to “take a leak.”

  “She seems really fun,” Slimey said, hanging her two lockets—the one from her dad and the one from Smelly—on the underside of Melman’s bed.

  Melman felt a wash of relief. With all the pink stuff and boyfriend talk, she was starting to feel a little crazy. “Yeah, and the way she dresses—”

  “So weird!” Slimey interrupted. Melman felt a tug from her hamstrings to her heartstrings.

  “She’s due for a makeover,” Jenny agreed.

  “No way, Princess Dudette,” Scottie called from the toilet. The girls froze and covered their mouths. Melman hadn’t even been the one to say anything hurtful, but she still felt her whole body tense up with guilt.

  Melman watched Jenny mouth something to Jamie.

  “What?!” Jamie said.

  “I’m going to do it in her sleep, anyway!” Jenny whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear, maybe even Scottie. Melman wanted to yell “Shhhhh!” but she didn’t want Scottie to hear that, either. All she could do was face-palm.

  Melman knew Jenny long enough to understand why she would want to make over anyone who didn’t wear short shorts and cute tank tops and padded bras and sunglasses so enormous they covered half her face. But Slimey? Melman hoped on her prized jersey that Slimey didn’t actually think someone as awesome-sauce looking as Scottie should change.

  She climbed down from her top bunk and began to unload her shorts into her cubby. “Scottie isn’t like you, Jenny,” Melman said softly so that Scottie wouldn’t hear. “Or you, Slimey.” She didn’t want to look anyone in the face while she stood up for fashion for the first time in her entire thirteen years of life. “Like, she’s different, so maybe she should look different.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Slimey shrugged. Melman let it go—she was sure she was over-thinking it.

  Scottie passed by the girls and headed to her Counselor Corner, offering Melman a high five on the way. The slap wiped out some of the guilt she’d felt seconds earlier.

  When Scottie’s curtain whooshed closed, Sophie stood up on her bed and whipped out a cell phone from the pouch around her waist. Even Sophie has a cell phone this summer? Melman thought. Is everyone turning into Jenny? Sophie plugged a portable microphone the size of a finger into the phone and held it in the air. “Who’s ready for an inte
rview?”

  Melman looked around at her cabinmates. Most of them seemed confused. Jenny and Jamie held their hands over their mouths and snickered. She guessed it was cool by J-squad standards to sneak in a cell phone, but it was totally weird to sneak one in for a reason other than to text guys. “What’s the interview for?” Melman asked.

  Sophie mistook Melman’s question for volunteering and raced over to her. “What’s your favorite part of camp, Melman?” Melman stole a What is happening? look with Slimey, who gave a shrug that said, It’s Sophie, what do you expect? Melman smiled and leaned into the contraband gadget. “The Faith Hillers, what-what!”

  “And Slimey?” Sophie asked, bringing the mic to Slimey’s mouth. Slimey tilted her head in thought. “Quickly,” Sophie said, motioning to the Counselor Corner.

  “The love . . . and beads and macramé!”

  Sophie pressed something on her cell phone, tucked it in her pouch, and looked over her shoulder to make sure she was in the clear. She was. Scottie was still in the Counselor Corner and there was punk rock music leaking out. Sophie gave Melman and Slimey a thumbs-up. “Georgina will be so grateful,” she whispered.

  Melman almost asked who Georgina was, but she and Slimey both knew better than to follow up with questions if they wanted to get any unpacking done. Instead, they shrugged and burst into giggles.

  The girls continued to unpack and gossip, and Melman tried to cling to the excitement she’d felt this morning. She hadn’t expected to feel so different from her best friends, but she refused to let guy-talk and girly stuff put a damper on what would surely be the best summer of her life. Every summer was always better than the last.

  Melman popped her head into the Counselor Corner. “Hey, Scottie. Can you turn it up?” After all, what was unpacking without crazy music and bursts of silly dancing?

  “Can we strike yet?” Dover whispered impatiently, standing on his top bunk at a seventy-five-degree angle. His ’fro was smushed against the ceiling.

  “Gimme one . . . minute,” Steinberg said from the cabin floor. He took inventory of his last pile of potential robot parts: fourteen potato chip bags, three safety pins, four tennis balls, eight bunk-bed ladder rungs, six flashlights, two dust bunnies, one Cup O’ Noodles. All together there were few conductors, even less insulation, and a big, fat surplus of miscellaneous. He welcomed challenge, but feared the unsolvable.