What else was Lexi supposed to do? Chase her down?
Um, no.
She would admit that it wasn’t supernice of her to put ugly makeup on Nicola, but it wasn’t like she’d drawn the arrows. That was Sylvia.
That kind of thing was always Sylvia.
And if Lexi had tried any harder to help Nicola, she would never have heard the end of it.
Anyway, Nicola and Holly probably deserved everything they got. Like when Holly almost drowned the other day—Lexi had told her to put on her life vest. Duh! How many times was Lexi supposed to try to help these jerks? She was sick of it. They were so nasty to everyone else, always whispering together, laughing, eating all that great candy Holly’s mom sent and never ever sharing any of it. Holly got a care package like every other day, filled with the best stuff in the world.
But did she ever offer even a single Dubble Bubble to anyone else?
No. She knew perfectly well that the Camp Catoctin food was total crap. Lexi would have given anything for a Twinkie or a Ho Ho. Even just a bite of one. But Holly kept it all to herself and Nicola, knowing everyone else wanted some, too.
In fact, she probably shared it with Nicola only to make the point that she wasn’t sharing it with Lexi. Every time Holly even glanced Lexi’s way, she made it clear she hated her. It was so bad that, even though Lexi loved art and wanted to be a painter or a sculptor someday, she made sure she didn’t have any art classes with Holly.
And, of course, Holly was taking, like, all of them.
So on top of everything else, she was screwing up Lexi’s future as a famous painter.
Lexi could have taken the classes anyway, of course, but the idea of sitting through forty minutes of icy glares three times a day sucked. There was no way she was going to do that. It was enough just dealing with Sylvia and her mood swings and temper.
So she wasn’t making friends, so what? It wasn’t like she’d be back again next year. A lot of people went to camp, nearly died of loneliness, and forgot about it later, probably.
Lexi wished she didn’t care.
If her mother hadn’t died last year, she would have been sending care packages, too. Lexi knew it. There would be Marathon Bars, Zotz, Candy Dots, 3 Musketeers, Ho Hos—all of Lexi’s favorites. And there would be little notes, too, like the riddles she used to handwrite on her ANNA HENDERSON notepaper from the kitchen.
Q: What’s smaller than an ant’s mouth?
A: What the ant eats.
Q: What shoes should you wear when your basement is flooded?
A: Pumps.
Q: Why did Lexi’s mother die on Lexi’s twelfth birthday?
A: ———
Lexi felt tears rise, hot and embarrassing and unwelcome, and she blinked hard. It was so unfair that her mother was gone. Just gone. Almost like she’d never existed, like she was a figment of Lexi’s imagination.
Then her father married that wicked witch Michelle the very next Christmas, which made it even more like her mother hadn’t existed. The man who was married to her for fifteen years didn’t even miss her—he just got a replacement! Lexi’s grandparents were gone, and her mother had had no siblings, so it was up to Lexi to remember her mother all by herself.
So she couldn’t find a replacement like he had. She could barely even look at her father, for fear that it would erase the one place Anna Henderson still did exist—in Lexi’s memory—and then she’d be forgotten completely.
Lexi wouldn’t let her mother be forgotten. She couldn’t make anyone else remember, but she could hold on to that herself.
That’s how she did most things anyway—by herself. The truth was, she had no one in the world she could really turn to for . . . well, anything. Not comfort, not advice, not a shoulder to cry on.
Not even a stupid Ho Ho, much less a friend to tear the chocolate outsides off with.
Lexi reached into her front pocket and felt the chain and ring she’d put there. She liked to have them with her, especially here at camp, where she felt so homesick. She couldn’t wear it on swimming days because she wasn’t sure if the water was bad for it, but during arts and crafts day and horseback riding, she could keep it with her.
At night, she looped it over her bedpost, and the ring hung like a dream catcher, keeping her safe from nightmares.
“Hey!” Brittany called behind her.
She was next to the stable, a few yards from the classroom building, where she had hoped no one would see her, but she’d know Brittany’s shriek anywhere.
Lexi turned around. “What?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at art or something?”
“I came out to find a rock for a project.” Lexi lied easily these days. Sometimes she herself was amazed at how quickly things came to her.
“Oh. Whatever.” Brittany waved it off and left, undoubtedly in hot pursuit of the other counselors.
Lexi took a deep, wavering breath.
She wished like crazy she was home, in her room. She’d be alone, but it was better than being with these people.
She hated it here.
She hated everyone here. Especially her “friends,” Sylvia and Tami.
She’d left arts and crafts class because Sylvia had been talking—in a really loud whisper—about how dumb-looking Tami’s mom had been in her big Jackie O. glasses on the day everyone got dropped off.
Lexi had noticed Tami’s mom, not because of the glasses but because of how hard she hugged Tami when it was time to leave. Like she didn’t want to let go.
The driver Lexi’s dad had hired—she couldn’t pronounce his name, though she read it over and over again on the license he had on the glass divider in his Town Car—let Lexi out at the wrong building, and she’d had to walk like half a mile to get to the check-in.
Obviously she hadn’t had any tearful good-byes.
And it made her really sad that Sylvia was so spoiled that she could just make fun of someone for having a mom who loved her. Lexi would have said something, but if she did, Sylvia would turn the same wrath on her that she did on all the people she thought were weaker than she was. Like Nicola. And Holly.
It was Sylvia’s idea to get the boat for Holly. She thought it was hilarious that it said Fat Oxen. They didn’t actually know it had a leak, and Lexi couldn’t believe it when Holly didn’t put on her life vest, even once the boat started sinking.
But, honestly, that’s what she got for eating all that candy her mom sent by herself.
And Nicola had ignored Lexi when she tried to stop her on the way into the dance, so what had happened was her fault.
Lexi didn’t need to feel sorry for either of them.
Her hand started to hurt, and she realized she had made a fist around the chain in her pocket. Hard. Her knuckles hurt. Her palm was scratched by the ring.
Worse, she didn’t feel like anything of her mother had come through to her. That was the real reason she’d brought the thing—because her mother had worn it all the time. Lexi couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have it on.
It had to have absorbed some essence of her mom.
Hadn’t it?
A tear dropped onto the laces of Lexi’s blue Keds.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Sylvia!
Lexi closed her eyes and rubbed them. “I got a gnat in my eye,” she said with a sniff. “It’s killing me.”
“Lemme see.” Sylvia yanked Lexi’s hands down and put her hand under her chin to look. “I don’t see anything.” She narrowed her eyes. Her breath smelled like Skittles.
“My eyes watered so much, I think he might have floated out.” Lexi gave a fake laugh, but it was more like an old dog barking. “I hate those things.”
“Me, too. Fucking things.” Sylvia had been experimenting with cuss words lately. “So, you know Gabriella Sanchez?”
“Sort of.”
“She farted in music today. It was so fucking funny.”
“Oh, my God, are you serious?” Lexi was so glad i
t hadn’t been her. “Did anyone notice?”
“Um, obviously.” Sylvia rolled her eyes. She was wearing eye pencil on her inside eyelid, which made it look really creepy. “What kind of person does something like that?”
A couple of days ago, Gabriella Sanchez had split her last piece of gum in half to share with Lexi. Lexi thought she was really nice.
“Fool,” she said to Sylvia, choosing the safer route of agreement over the potentially fatal route of arguing. If she didn’t, Sylvia would get mad and start saying the same kinds of things about her, and then she would be friendless and a laughingstock.
She honestly didn’t think she could take that.
“How dumb,” she said instead.
“I know.” Sylvia nodded, apparently satisfied that Lexi was complying with the Rules of Sylvia. “So . . . what are you doing out here anyway? Didn’t you want to make a pot holder for Mommy?”
Lexi looked at her sharply.
“Oh, sorry. Forgot.” She said it so breezily that she might have been talking about whether or not Lexi had a cat. “Well, you could make it for your stepmommy. It’s almost the same.”
It occurred to Lexi only now that the fact that everyone was making their pot holders for their moms probably had a lot to do with why she suddenly felt like she had to get out of there when Sylvia started ragging on Tami.
Now Lexi did start to cry. “Like I’d do anything for that bitch,” she said, the word bitch tingling illicitly down her spine. It was better to call Sylvia’s attention to that than to her tears. “She could burn her hands right down to the bone before I’d give her a pot holder.”
Sylvia snorted with laughter and thumped Lexi on the back. “You are so funny. You just crack me up.” She thumped her again, and it kind of hurt. “So what should we do until lunch? I do not want to go back into the classroom. Tami’s all mad at me and crying because I dared to insult her mommy.”
“How does she know?” Lexi hadn’t told her. She wouldn’t do that.
“She got dizzy from the heat during riding, so they sent her to arts and crafts instead. It was, like, right after you left, so when she came over and sat down, I thought she was you and I added that Tami’s mom also had the ugliest shoes on that I’ve ever seen. They looked like those special shoes people wear when they have clubfoot, you know? I was totally right, but she got all upset.”
“Did you apologize?”
Sylvia laughed immediately, like it was a joke. “Um, no. Duh.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Hey.” A light came into Sylvia’s eyes. “Want to go down to the boathouse? Maybe we can see someone doing a blow job.”
“Cool.” It was the last thing in the world Lexi wanted to do. “Probably Emily, right? I heard she and Danny are doing it down there all the time.” She hadn’t heard any such thing, but it was a pretty logical guess. And, more to the point, it was the kind of risqué thing to say that made everyone think Lexi was cool.
And she would much rather they thought she was cool than know she was a wimpy little kid, crying over her mommy.
Two nights later, Lexi left the meeting hall early because she had cramps.
Fortunately, there wasn’t anyone around to convince of her ailment, because, in truth, she was self-conscious about “women problems” and tended to ride them out in agony under normal circumstances. But as usual, her counselor, Brittany, was nowhere to be found, so she took the opportunity to sneak out the back of the all-camp meeting and creep through the darkness to cabin 7.
Unfortunately, Nicola and Holly had beaten her to it.
Of course.
They always did. They always seemed to be wherever Lexi wanted to be alone.
Fuckers.
She felt sort of guilty for having that last thought—influenced, undoubtedly, by Sylvia—but she felt good about it, too. Because these two girls—with their secret conversations and pig-out sessions and letters from home—weren’t what you’d call nice.
They thought they were so great, they didn’t want anyone else around them because that would ruin their little club.
Well, tonight Lexi didn’t care. She wanted to be alone, and no matter where she went, someone was there and she’d thought coming all the way back to the cabin from a mandatory assembly would mean that she would finally and definitely be alone to cry or whatever, but no, here were these two.
Again.
“Um, what are you doing here?” Lexi asked, knowing she sounded meaner than she felt, and only hoping that might chase them away so she could finally breathe. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the assembly with everyone else?”
Nicola made a nervous move to get off the bed, but Holly stayed put, biting down on her lower lip. “Aren’t you?” she challenged.
But there was just enough of a waver in her voice to let Lexi know she didn’t have the confidence of her convictions.
“I was excused,” Lexi lied. “But you weren’t. And”—she tried a bold move—“they were wondering where you were after roll call.”
“They took roll?” Nicola asked in full panic.
Lexi nodded. “And Brittany’s coming to look for you.”
“Oh, crap!” Nicola scrambled down from the bed, followed more slowly by Holly.
“Yeah, you’d better hurry.” Lexi egged them on, knowing full well that no one was coming to look for them. No one had even noticed they weren’t there to begin with.
Holly’s pudgy heel stuck on the blanket and pulled it through the ladder of the bunk bed. Something clattered to the wood floor.
“You dropped something.” Lexi had just enough time to pick up the small round dough ornament—the kind she could remember making for the Christmas tree when she was younger—before Holly thumped to the floor and snatched it from her.
“You can’t have that!” she cried.
“Who said I wanted it?” Lexi grabbed the item back, heedless of how that contradicted what she’d just said. It was a rope of dough, swirled into a circle with tiny perfect individually painted alphabet noodles, spelling out WORLD’S BEST DAD! (The exclamation point was made from a carefully broken l.) I LOVE YOU, (the comma was a broken piece of an O) HOLLY XOXOXO.
And for reasons Lexi wouldn’t fully understand for a long, long time to come, it infuriated her.
“Give that to me!” Holly cried.
Like Lexi wanted it! “What, this?” She held it up, taunting Holly. She knew it was wrong, but she was so mad at the way Holly and Nicola thought this whole cabin was theirs alone, and the way they freaked out on Lexi every time she came anywhere near them. Like she wanted to steal their candy or their stupid dough ornaments or whatever. “You can have it. I don’t want the stupid thing.”
She didn’t want the stupid thing with its stupid message for Holly’s stupid dad.
So she hurled it at Holly.
And Holly, who probably wouldn’t have been able to catch so much as a firefly if it landed on her arm, put her hands out in a pitiful attempt to grab the thing, only to accidentally bat it away.
It hit the wall and smashed to the floor in a pile of dough shards and little painted noodle letters.
Holly looked at it in horror, then looked at Lexi. “You did that on purpose!” Tears filled her eyes. “You are such a jerk!”
“Oh, please.” She hadn’t, of course. But she wasn’t sorry to see it, either. So Holly had a mom who sent care packages and the “world’s best dad”—what right did she have to whine about anything? She should be glad for all the stuff she had, not yelling at Lexi. “Get a life.”
“I hate you!” Holly shrieked. She glared at Lexi while Nicola moved forward to inspect the broken ornament.
“Oh, no!” Lexi mocked, putting a hand to her chest. Her heart was thumping hard; she could feel it. “What a huge surprise.”
Nicola glanced back at Lexi but said nothing.
“Why don’t you just get out of here? Go back to Tami and Sylvia and ruin your own lives instead of everyone else’s!”
Lexi wanted nothing more than to leave the cabin, to leave the entire camp. Sometimes at night she fantasized about sneaking out to the highway and hitchhiking all the way to California to start a new life.
But Lexi wasn’t so much of a dreamer that she didn’t know what a failure it would be. She’d seen Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway on TV, and she didn’t want to end up in a life of prostitution and drugs.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Lexi plopped herself down onto her bed, willing herself to stay there and look obstinate, rather than running away and revealing a weakness to these two.
“God!” Holly then whispered something to Nicola, and they spoke in hushed voices. If Lexi had really wanted to hear what they were saying, she probably could have, but the fact was she didn’t want to. She didn’t need to know what terrible things they were saying about her.
So she took the chain out of her pocket and hung it on the thumbtack she’d pressed into the bedpost.
The whispering on top of the bunk increased.
She didn’t brush her teeth or change her clothes because she didn’t want to give those two the chance to talk about her out loud.
Instead she climbed in between the sheets, turned off the small bedside light, and lay in the semidarkness, staring at the ring as if its years on her mother’s finger might give her magical powers (or at least protect her from evil) until tears burned her eyes and she closed them.
She was not going to let Holly and Nicola force her out of the cabin and back into that boring assembly.
She was not going to let Michelle force her out of her home and into a life of drugs and prostitution.
She was going to stand her ground and lie here until one of them left first, even if that took all night and into the morning.
So she kept her eyes fastened on the ring, watching the facets sparkle in the changing light. The chain seemed to have a soft glow, a faint line in the dark. Her mother had looked at the same thing, probably hundreds of times—were her thoughts and memories caught in there somehow? If Lexi tried hard enough and long enough, would she feel her mother with her?
She tried. And tried.
Finally she fell asleep.
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