Camp Confidential 16: Golden Girls

by Melissa J Morgan

  “No. Not really,” Tori replied. She looked up, her eyebrows raised. “How do you do it? How are you such a good captain?”

  Priya laughed—until she realized Tori was not laughing with her. “You’re serious?”

  “Dead,” Tori said, turning fully on her stool to face her. “I’m so bad at all these events. I must be the worst captain ever.”

  Wow. She must really be desperate if she’s asking the enemy for help, Priya thought. Part of her felt like she shouldn’t be giving Tori any pointers. They were, after all, on opposite sides. Jenna would throttle her if she knew that Priya was even thinking about helping the Blue team. But Priya was a good friend first, a Color War obsessive second.

  “Being a good captain isn’t about being good at all the events,” Priya said, keeping her voice down. “It’s about motivation. All you’ve got to do is give them one good pep talk and they’ll get behind you.”

  “Yeah?” Tori asked hopefully.

  “Yeah. Victory is ninety-nine percent attitude,” Priya said. “Just ask Seabiscuit.”

  Tori laughed. It was the first real smile Priya had seen on the girl’s face in days.

  “Where do you get all this stuff?” Tori asked.

  “My basketball coach back home is a real character,” Priya said. “She’s got all kinds of great catch-phrases.”

  “Well, thanks,” Tori said, sitting up straight. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Just don’t tell Jenna I helped you,” Priya told her. “I don’t want to wake up with a frog in my cot or something.”

  Tori grinned. “I promise.”

  chapter SIX

  When Tori walked out of the mess hall after lunch, a stage was set up in the clearing just outside the building. It hadn’t been there when she’d gone in, but there it stood, as if it had magically appeared from nowhere. It was a wooden structure with a big banner strung over it. The banner, much to Tori’s dread, read: PIE-EATING CONTEST!

  Dr. Steve stepped up behind the table that stood in the center of the stage and lifted his megaphone. “Welcome, campers, to this year’s super-colossal pie-eating contest!”

  “Woo-hoo! Yeah! This is so my event!” Jenna shouted, skipping through the crowd.

  “Like everyone doesn’t already know that,” Gaby said under her breath.

  Tori turned around and looked at her team. This was just what she needed. An event they were guaranteed to lose. No one could out-eat Jenna. Especially not after a lunch of hot dogs, potato chips, and bug juice.

  “Can I please have the first-division boys and girls come to the front?” Dr. Steve shouted.

  Okay, at least I have a little time before they get to our division, Tori thought. She looked around and spotted a tall elm tree near the side of the mess hall.

  “Come on, you guys,” she said, taking Candace’s hand.

  “Where’re we going?” Grace asked.

  “We need a sit-down,” Tori said, throwing out some Hollywood speak.

  The team followed her over to the tree, where Tori dropped to the ground. Everyone was watching her intently. That, at least, was a good start. This was her team. All she had to do was motivate them. Alex, Grace, Gaby, Candace, and . . .

  “Where’s Natalie?” Tori asked.

  “Where is she ever?” Gaby said, gesturing over her shoulder.

  Tori looked up and, sure enough, Natalie was hanging out toward the back of the crowd with Lainie and her friends, laughing and pointing as the little kids onstage tried to eat their way through the pudding-and-whipped-cream pies. Tori felt her heart turn to stone just watching Natalie and Lainie act all buddy-buddy. Apparently Natalie really had forgotten her promise to help Tori out with the Color War captainship. Well, fine. If that was the kind of friend she wanted to be, then Tori would just ignore her right back.

  “Should I go get her?” Alex said, already half up.

  “No. Forget it,” Tori said flatly. “Let’s just do this. All right. Who’s going to be our representative in the pie eating?”

  All the girls looked at one another. No one said a word.

  “Come on, you guys, somebody has to go up there,” Tori said. The entire camp erupted in cheers. Someone had just won up onstage, and the second division kids were up.

  “Not me,” Gaby said, leaning back on her hands. “There’s no way I’m going up against Jenna Bloom. It’s totally pointless.”

  “It is totally pointless,” Candace agreed.

  “Yeah. Whoever goes up there is gonna lose,” Grace put in. “And get all gross trying.”

  Tori sighed. “Look, you guys. I know Jenna’s good, but she’s not unbeatable.” Tori knew it was a lie even as the words were coming out of her mouth, but that was what pep talks were all about, wasn’t it?

  “Yeah she is!” Gaby said, eyes wide.

  “Please?” Tori tried. “Somebody has to do it. Alex?”

  “I would. I really would,” Alex said. “But I can’t eat that much sugar that fast. It’s bad for my health.”

  If anyone else had said this, Tori might have laughed them off, but with Alex it was true. She had diabetes and had to be very careful about her sugar intake.

  “Right. I forgot. I’m sorry.” Okay, the pep talk thing clearly wasn’t working. What else could she do to motivate her team? Tori wracked her brain and an idea suddenly popped into her mind. Her father was an entertainment lawyer and he dealt with stars’ contracts all the time. And what did those contracts build in for incentive? Perks!

  “What if I gave you unlimited use of all my makeup and beauty supplies for the whole rest of the summer?” Tori suggested, looking around at Gaby, Grace, and Candace.

  “What, are you bribing us now?” Gaby said, clearly disgusted.

  “I don’t think you can do that,” Grace put in.

  Tori’s face heated up and she felt completely foolish. She was trying to bribe them. She was trying to bribe her Color War team. How desperate could she get?

  “Tori! There you are!” Clarissa came jogging over in her blue T-shirt. “They need to know who’s gonna represent your team.”

  Tori’s heart started to pound. She looked from one face to the next. Alex shrugged, Gaby scowled, Grace looked up in the sky and whistled, Candace went white as a ghost. Tori swallowed hard, realizing what she was going to have to do.

  “I guess I am.”

  She pushed herself shakily to her feet and no one tried to stop her.

  “Good luck,” Grace said weakly.

  I’ll need it, Tori thought sourly.

  Ten minutes later, Tori found herself up onstage along with Jenna. Adam Bloom was up there as well, representing the Blue team fifth-division boys, while Jenna’s boyfriend, David, was representing the Red team for the boys. With these three eating next to her, Tori was going to come in dead last.

  “You’re going up against me?” Jenna said, slapping her knee. “No offense, Tori, but you couldn’t eat one pretzel faster than me. Good luck! You’re so going to need it!”

  Tori suddenly felt sick to her stomach. It wasn’t like she didn’t expect Jenna to trash talk her. The girl lived for this stuff. But it was one more moment of humiliation to pile on top of all the others.

  Why am I doing this? Tori wondered. I’ve totally lost my mind.

  Pete, the camp’s cook, walked up and placed the pies down on the table. Tori looked down at the metal tin full off graham cracker crust, chocolate pudding, whipped cream, and gummy worms. The very idea of eating all that sugar and fat made her gag.

  “All right, everyone! Take your seats!” Dr. Steve announced.

  Tori moved toward her chair. She glanced out at the crowd, looking for Natalie, hoping to at least get a thumbs-up or a smile of support. But when she found Nat in the crowd, the girl was so wrapped up in conversation with Lainie, she didn’t even seem to realize Tori was competing.

  “The key is to not chew. Just swallow,” Adam said as he sat down next to her.

  Tori’s stomach turned.
/>   “On your mark! Get set! Go!”

  And the next thing she knew, Tori’s carefully made-up face was in the pie.

  “Omigod. You could not pay me to do this,” Lainie said, turning away from the pie-eating contest. “Eating a whole pie without your hands? That is so unsanitary.”

  “I know. It’s pretty gross. And it’s not like it’s a camp skill,” Natalie said.

  “Exactly!” Lainie replied. “You know, Nat, sometimes it’s like we share the same brain. I wish you were in sixth division so we could hang out more.”

  “Me too.” Natalie grinned happily. “Okay, but what if someone gave you a thousand dollars? Would you do it then?”

  “No way,” Lainie replied.

  “Well, what would you eat for a thousand dollars?” Natalie asked.

  “Hmmm . . . interesting,” Lainie said. “Without hands, or with?”

  “Without,” Natalie said.

  “Nothing. No eating without hands in public,” Lainie said. “I mean, what are we, pigs? Look at those people.”

  Natalie stood on her toes, trying to see over the crowd and figure out who was up on the stage. Unfortunately, they were all facedown in their pies and it was impossible to tell any of the competitors apart.

  “Okay, you have a point,” Natalie said. “But if I could get a thousand dollars to do whatever I wanted with, I would eat . . . an entire banana split with no hands.”

  “Please. You’d totally get brain freeze,” Lainie said, rolling her eyes like she was so much older and wiser.

  “Good point,” Natalie said.

  “Okay, new topic.” Lainie twirled her hair around her finger. “How do I get Christopher to notice me?”

  “I don’t understand. I thought the other girls said he was crushing on you,” Natalie said, forgetting about pies for the moment.

  “That’s their opinion,” Lainie said. “And sometimes . . . the way he looks at me . . . I think they might be right. But other times I’m not so sure.”

  Natalie shook her head. “Boys. They should really come with a user’s manual.”

  Lainie laughed. “Seriously.”

  Natalie beamed. “Okay, you have talked to him before, though, right?”

  “Here and there,” Lainie said, lifting her shoulder. “But it’s always about sports or camp or Color War. Sometimes I think he just thinks of me as one of the guys.”

  Natalie looked Lainie up and down. She was tall, had perfect legs and gorgeous hair, and the longest eyelashes Natalie had ever seen. “If he thinks that, he’s a moron and you shouldn’t date him, anyway,” Natalie joked.

  “I’m serious here!” Lainie said, bouncing up and down. “You always look so perfect. What should I do? Do you think I need to be more girly? Maybe I could do something with my hair . . .”

  “Lainie, you don’t have to do anything,” Natalie told her. “You’re already the prettiest girl in camp.”

  “Please,” Lainie said with a scoff, looking down at her sneakers.

  “You are! Everyone knows it!”

  “Well, Christopher doesn’t,” Lainie said, screwing her mouth up into a scowl.

  Natalie stared at Lainie for a long moment. This girl had a serious self-confidence problem. How was that even possible when she walked around camp like she owned the place?

  Guess everyone has their secrets, Natalie thought. And here was Lainie Wilcox, Queen of Camp Lakeview, sharing her secrets with Natalie.

  “Okay, how about this—the next time we have a free period, I’ll help you pick out an outfit,” Natalie said. “Something fabulous that’s still totally you.”

  “Yes!” Lainie squealed, hugging Natalie quickly. “I was so hoping you’d say that!”

  “That’s what friends are for, right?” Natalie said with a grin.

  “Winner! Jenna Bloom!” Dr. Steve announced into the megaphone.

  Natalie looked up, surprised. She hadn’t even realized that was her division up there already. Jenna thrust her arms in the air, her face covered with chocolate, and bits of whipped cream stuck to her curly hair. Natalie got up on her toes, wondering who had represented the Blue team.

  In the next second, she got her answer. Tori jumped up from the table, hand over her mouth, looking waxy and pale. She ran down the steps and into the woods just outside the mess hall. A concerned murmur raced through the crowd and everyone fell silent. Two seconds later, all anyone could hear were the sounds of Tori throwing up. A lot.

  “Ugh!” everyone groaned.

  “Oh my God!” Natalie cried. How embarrassing. Poor Tori! She had to find out if she was okay. But Natalie had only taken one step when Lainie grabbed her hand.

  “Okay, the new me,” Lainie said, her eyes bright with excitement. “Where do we start?”

  “I . . . uh . . .”

  Nat looked over her shoulder and saw Belle and Clarissa hustling over to help Tori. Part of her really wanted to go over there, but maybe it would be better if Tori wasn’t surrounded by people right now. She probably felt awful enough as it was, without having it shoved in her face that everyone had seen and heard her puking.

  Natalie focused on Lainie and tried to smile. “Well, like I said, I guess we should start with clothes . . .”

  “Are you feeling any better?” Nurse Carrie asked Tori, who was propped up on about eight pillows on a cot in the infirmary.

  “A little.”

  Tori took the cup of water the nurse was offering and sipped at it. Carrie was the new nurse’s aide this year—young and thin, with dark hair that was always back in a bun. She probably would have been beautiful if she ever wore any makeup or put on something cuter than the big pajama-style scrubs she was always wearing. It was like the woman was pretending she was in the cast of ER.

  “You know, I threw up in front of an entire wedding once,” Carrie said, pulling up a chair.

  “You did?” Tori asked.

  “Oh, yeah, but unlike you I didn’t even have a tree to hide behind,” Carrie said. “It was last summer, and it was my sister’s wedding. The night before, we all went out for seafood because it’s her favorite, and I woke up feeling not quite right. I figured it might be food poisoning, but I was the maid of honor, so it wasn’t like I could stay home sick. So I just had some crackers and tried to ignore it. But then I got into my bridesmaid’s dress and it was so tight. And the church was, like, a million degrees. And all of a sudden, just as my sister was about to say ‘I do,’ I felt it happening.”

  “What did you do?” Tori asked, sitting forward.

  “Let’s just say I had to buy the pastor a new pair of shoes,” Carrie said, cringing.

  Tori laughed and so did Carrie. “See? You’ll be able to laugh about this one day.”

  Tori’s heart turned as she remembered the grossed-out sounds coming from the other campers as she crouched behind that tree. “I don’t think so.”

  “Believe me, last summer I never would have thought I could laugh about that, but here I am.” She lifted her hands as she stood, and Tori smiled weakly. Actually, Carrie was pretty, with or without makeup and cool clothes. “So, your counselor and a bunch of your bunkmates want to see you. Should I let them in?”

  Instantly, Tori wondered if Natalie was out there, or if she was off with Lainie somewhere. Either option didn’t appeal much. If Natalie wasn’t out there, that meant she really didn’t care about Tori anymore. But if she was out there, she was pretty much the last person Tori wanted to deal with just then. She couldn’t take pity from Natalie on top of everything else.

  “Actually, could I just see Belle first?” Tori asked.

  “Sure,” Carrie said.

  She walked out of the recovery room and, seconds later, a very concerned-looking Belle came in. Tori sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed as Belle perched on Carrie’s vacated chair. Tori knew what she had to do. It was all she’d been thinking about since the moment she realized she was going to lose her lunch and the entire pie. But her pulse raced with nervous
ness nevertheless.

  “Are you okay?” Belle asked, her dark eyes searching Tori’s face. “I told them the pie-eating contest could only be trouble, but do they listen to first-year counselors? Nooo.”

  “I’m fine,” Tori said firmly. “But I don’t want to be captain anymore, Belle. I quit.”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, Tori felt ten times lighter. She should have done this on day one.

  “I don’t think you really want to do that,” Belle said.

  “Yes, I do,” Tori said.

  “But what will your team think?” Belle asked.

  “They’ll probably be relieved!” Tori told her. “I haven’t done a single thing right.”

  “That’s not true!” Belle said automatically.

  “Fine. Name one thing,” Tori challenged, lifting her chin.

  Belle looked at her blankly. “Well, I . . . you . . .”

  Tori felt her spirits sink slightly. She really hadn’t done anything right.

  “You can’t quit,” Belle said finally. “I won’t let you.”

  Desperation welled up in Tori’s chest like a water balloon. “Belle—”

  “No, Tori. If you quit now, you’re going to regret it, I swear. Part of my job is to help you guys deal with stuff like this, and as far as I’m concerned, quitting is not the way to handle a tough situation.” Belle stood up and started pacing in front of Tori, between the two beds. “I know you didn’t ask to be captain, but your team is counting on you now. You can’t let them down.”

  “But that’s all I’ve done,” Tori said.

  “If you really think that, then you should try to turn it around,” Belle told her. “You can do this, Tori. I know you can. All you’ve got to do is play to your strengths.”

  “I don’t have any strengths!” Tori cried. “I stink at everything camp. I don’t even know what I’m doing here right now!”

  “Tori—”

  “No. Forget it,” Tori said, jumping up. “If you won’t listen to me, then I’m just going back to the bunk.”

  She turned and ran out of the recovery room, nearly slamming right into Priya in the doorway. Priya took a step back, her mouth hanging open slightly. Tori’s eyes met hers, and in that one second she knew that Priya had overheard it all. She knew what a loser Tori was. Such a loser that she couldn’t even convince Belle to let her quit.