Ben sidled up to Blake. For some reason, she looked jumpy. “You nervous?”
She shrugged. “A little. I just want this over with.”
“Ah. It’ll be fun. We just have to get pumped.”
She gave him a sly smile. “Oh yeah? How should we do that?”
He shrugged. “A huddle? That’s the traditional thing.”
She laughed. “With just the two of us. Wouldn’t that be more like a hug?”
“Maybe. Let’s huggle.” As he listened to himself say that, he realized how head over heels he was. He had it bad.
“I think that’s a kind of designer dog.”
They put their heads together and slung their arms over each other’s shoulders. Blake had been right. This was closer to a hug. She started giggling. “Are you getting pumped?”
Not in the way she was asking about.
“Okay, let’s focus,” he said. At this point, he was talking to himself because canoeing was the last thing on his mind. “We totally have this in the bag. You’re like the state champion of everything and I’m a badass. Except at Hula-Hooping.”
With her face only a few inches from his and her eyes locked on him, he could see how green her eyes looked in the light. They were the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen. And she looked so sincere. When he told her what a badass she was, her eyes crinkled. If he were the kind of guy who wrote poetry, he’d totally write a poem about her eyes. Given who he was, though, she’d have to write a poem about her own eyes.
Their huddle must have looked suspect. All the campers started yelling. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Ben went with it. He spun her around, dropped her into a dip, and kissed her on the lips, full-on. Even if they got lapped three times, Ben felt like he’d already won this race. He handed her a paddle and climbed in himself and flashed a smug smile toward Luke Culpepper.
The minute they took off, they were already behind. For a while, Ben tried, but what was the point. He looked at the beautiful girl in his boat and shrugged. He flashed her a thumbs-up from the back of the boat. “Who cares. We’re good.”
By time they even got to the floating dock, Culpepper and Captain America were already halfway back to the shore. Blake said, “I know I’m not fast, but I really like canoeing.”
“Me, too,” he said. Mostly he liked canoeing with her.
“I like the quiet,” she said with a funny little smile.
It was particularly quiet because they were so far behind all of the frontrunners, but didn’t say that. If she liked the quiet, so did he because mostly, he liked her.
“Should we go out canoeing sometime soon?”
“I would love that.”
A girl who wanted to go out on the lake and enjoy the quiet with him, he was so happy. Who would have known that girl would be Blake Jones?
They lost monumentally, but Ben’d never had so much fun losing in his life. Pine Ridge was starting to really feel like his kind of place.
“I rocked that potato sack race, didn’t I?”
Blake put her hand over her heart and acted all swoony. “I’ve never been so excited by a race in my life.”
He was so damn lucky.
After the games, there was yet another bonfire. Fozzie lit one pretty much every night at Pine Ridge. It made sense, though. Who didn’t love a good fire? Tonight’s fire was a celebration of the inter-camp games. Tomorrow was the dance, which he still hadn’t asked Blake to. Ben went back to his bunk with all the other guys to change. He took a quick shower and threw on his cleanest T-shirt. As soon as he got Blake alone, he was going to ask her to the dance. He didn’t want to leave any room for confusion about their relationship, especially with Luke panting all over her.
Tonight’s bonfire was a roaring orange blaze against a starry night sky. It was perfect. If you were out in the woods, you should be outside, not sitting in the mess hall eating chicken salad, which is probably what they’d be doing otherwise. Like every other old person he knew, Cook Betsy had a thing for chicken salad.
While he was feeling relieved not to be subjected to another evening of chicken salad, Blake walked out. He smiled and waved, but she must not have seen him. Her nose was in the air, and she was looking around like she was surveying the peasants. Now that he knew her better, he thought it was funny how she could manage to look so stuck-up and intimidating.
He walked up to her and sort of bumped into her. “Hey you,” he said. She was wearing more makeup than she had been for the last few weeks, and her hair looked different.
A look of surprise flashed across her face for some reason. “Hi, Ben.”
“Want to walk over to the dock with me?” He figured it would be better to ask her to the dance in private, rather than next to a bunch of junior campers.
“Uh…sure,” she said, looking oddly surprised.
“Remember when you knocked me off the dock last week and we almost kissed? Or maybe I just imagining that.” He chuckled at the memory. “You had me so confused.”
Blake raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”
He reached for her hand to hold on the way down to the dock. Instead of acting all silly and girly about it like before, she looked at their joined hands as if to verify what was happening.
“You seem a little weird tonight. You okay?”
“I just feel disoriented. Everything’s, uh, changing so fast.”
He laughed. “You’re telling me. Good changes, though.”
At the end of the dock, he said, “So, would you like to go to the dance with me?”
Blake’s jaw actually dropped. In shock or excitement, he couldn’t tell. It was not the reaction he would have expected, not after everything they’d been doing. Didn’t a date seem like the next logical step? “The dance tomorrow—I thought we could go together, as a couple. I wasn’t sure if I should ask you.”
Her expression changed from shock to a smile. Maybe it was just his imagination, but her smile looked a little twisted, like there was something he was missing. The way things were going, though, he didn’t care if he was missing something. If they could put the battle behind them, maybe all of their time could be like last night. Blake was way cooler than he’d ever expected. Most of the time.
Chapter Nineteen
Sucks to Be Elinor
Mallory
Blake and Mallory were doing their best to take turns. This morning Mallory was hiding out in a hammock tucked on the outskirts of camp where no one would notice her while Blake got the American summer camp experience she’d never wanted until it was on someone else’s plate. Never mind, for the moment, it was just her and the duke. Hopefully, Blake decided to go home before she wrecked everything. So far so good, but something was bound to go wrong. One day of juggling had already been too much. It was pure luck that nothing had gone wrong.
Blake’s return had been a wake-up call. No matter how much she tried, Mallory could never be her sister. It was a whole constellation of little things—posture, expression, mannerisms, style. One glance and anyone with eyes could see that Blake was a teen queen, the center diamond of the inner circle, the top girl on the cheerleading pyramid. Mallory wanted to think something snide, but really it was sort of admirable. Blake didn’t spend her life constantly reassessing her own self-worth. Oh well.
If Blake didn’t get bored and go home soon, Ben would notice. Blake was a star and Mallory just the girl who copied her look. The haircut wouldn’t fool anyone much longer.
Mallory halfheartedly flipped through The Accidental Duchess. Lydia’s day wasn’t going any better than hers. She sighed and dropped the book to her chest. Just as she shut her eyes, she heard footsteps coming her way.
“Mallory!”
Mallory opened her eyes to see her Hollywood-perfect sister staring at her with her hands on her hips and a dreamy look on her face. A squirrel scampered up the tree behind her completely unnoticed.
“You’ll never guess what happened last night!”
“What?” As long as it didn’t involv
e Ben. Zoe had promised to keep Blake distracted. She’d assumed everything worked out.
Blake twirled her hair and looked at the treetops. “It was amazing.” Blake was like Marianne from Sense and Sensibility. Her highs were higher and her lows were lower than anyone else’s, like she had a premium on all emotions. No one else could feel as deeply or intensely as her. Mallory exhaled a breath. Elinor might be the heroine of the novel, but sometimes it sucked to be her. Sucks to Be Elinor might as well be the title of her life.
“I saw Ben.”
Mallory’s heart dropped to her stomach. “What?”
“He was so different than he was during school. He apologized for turning me down when I asked him to the Sadie Hawkins Dance.”
“Really?” Mallory’s stomach dropped to the floor. Had Ben recognized Blake and pieced together the mystery?
Blake nodded. “He was so nice. He asked me to some dance tonight.”
The horror of the situation hit her full-on and sacked her like a three hundred-fifty-pound defensive lineman. She took a puff off of her inhaler, but it didn’t help. She could barely breathe. Her Ben, the boy who made her heart beat faster, had asked out her sister. There was no way to fix this. It was the worst thing that could have happened. The rational part of her brain (which was rapidly shrinking) yelled that he thought Blake was her. He had asked out the wrong girl.
But how was she going to fix that? By telling him I lied to him.
Even worse, he might have realized Blake was Blake. Even with identical genes, she couldn’t cosplay her sister any better than she could Wonder Woman. She was an obvious fraud. If Ben had spent more than a minute with the real Blake he would have known it, and that was the minute he’d chosen to ask her out. The scared, irrational part of her brain screamed that Ben knew exactly what he’d done.
“Can you believe it? Ben asked me out!”
Mallory couldn’t speak.
Blake tossed a cracker at her. “Hey, did you hear me?”
Mallory felt sick.
Blake scrunched up her forehead and asked, “You guys weren’t seeing each other, were you?” She shuffled her feet. “I mean, it seems like you must have patched things up for me.”
Mallory started to say, “I think we were—” She’d never really explained the state of her relationship with Ben to Blake.
Blake was already talking over for her. “I really owe you one. I’ve had a crush on him for so long. I know I acted like a lunatic all year long.”
Mallory tried to explain that Ben was hers. “Blake, Ben and I kissed. We were—”
“You just kissed? That’s it?” Blake looked like that was no big deal.
“Well, yeah, but…” Kissing was a big deal to Mallory.
Blake softened her expression. “Well, that seems to have fixed things.” With a sassy lilt she said, “It usually does!”
Mallory tried to fight out of the despair. She said, “But, Blake, I think he meant to ask me out. Not you. I want to go out with him.”
Blake shook her head. “Mal, I mean, he asked me out. If you are upset about it, why don’t you go talk to him as Mallory. As far as Ben is concerned, I’m the only Blake from here on out. I don’t want things to get confusing.”
Mallory choked on a laugh. Things couldn’t get any more confusing. They’d reached the apex of confusion. It absolutely couldn’t get any worse.
Feeling sick to her stomach, Mallory excused herself. “I don’t know. I need some space.” She needed to get out of there. She couldn’t listen to Blake talk about Ben anymore. She couldn’t bear it. The happiness that had been so pervasive and felt like it had overwhelmed her yesterday disappeared. In one move, Blake sucked all the happiness from her life.
As Mallory walked away from the hammock—toward…she wasn’t really even paying attention—she picked up speed until she was running down the path toward camp. She’d never wanted to run before, but she couldn’t stop. She wanted to run away from her life.
Finally, because she was Mallory and not Blake, she went to her assigned class, canoeing with Derek, even though Derek was the dumbest guy on the planet and she didn’t even care about canoeing, at least today. She went because she, Mallory, didn’t make a habit of breaking rules. Only Blake did that.
Zoe intercepted her, “What happened?”
Mallory started to talk, but she was trying to hard not to cry to get any words out.
“You get in the canoe. I’ll paddle. You cry.”
“How did you know?”
“Ugh. Because you look like the love of your life just broke up with you.”
“That’s because he did.” Or something. There was no bouncing back from this problem.
Mallory launched into an explanation of how her life had gone from ecstasy to agony in less than a day, how her sister had drained all hope from her life. Basically, she would never be able to appreciate another sunset. “I’m going to be a crazy cat lady. I shouldn’t even bother fighting it.”
Zoe, the good friend that she was, automatically took Mallory’s side. “Your sister is a grade A bitch, Mallory. Ben didn’t ask her out. He was trying to ask you out.”
“It doesn’t matter. He thinks I’m her. Since I’ve been here, I have been her. I used her name. I wore her clothes. I put a lot more care into my hair than normal, even when it was orange. He doesn’t know the real me, the one who doesn’t style her hair and wears ugly shirts. I even did sports. No one from Bellevue would recognize the girl from this summer as Mallory Jones. Not to mention, he didn’t notice that she wasn’t me…” Then she remembered her earlier thoughts. “The worst part is that I don’t even compare! Knowing how to apply eyeliner is not enough to turn me into Blake. I’m a pale shadow of my sister. Everyone knows it, including Ben.”
Zoe frowned. “I don’t know what kind of Parent Trap bullshit you two are up to, but this is ninety-nine percent crazy talk.”
“Why does everyone always say that about us. I think it’s way more Sense and Sensibility.” She explained her theory about how she was Elinor and Blake was Marianne.
“There’s nothing to be done for you,” Zoe said. She rowed the canoe back to the dock and called, “Derek, I need your help.”
Derek ambled over to the shoreline in his usual not-a-care-in-the world fashion. Mallory slumped into the canoe until she was actually lying on the bottom and then pulled a life jacket over her face. “I don’t want to feel the sun today.”
Zoe pointed and said, “We need a shot of your grappa, dude. This one is having a breakup catastrophe.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Just have one shot to take the edge off.”
Any other day Mallory would have said no, but not today. One shot couldn’t hurt, right?
Chapter Twenty
Mallory Is an INFP Crazy
Ben
Kipper, apparently, was a psychology major at college, and she’d taken it upon herself to replace arts and crafts with a personal development course for the day. She explained that she was “sick of all the damn fun and games.” Today, the campers would spend the morning “working on their future, including career options.” She wanted them to dig in and uncover all of their deep, dark, and dirty secrets faster and more efficiently. Like Ben had any secrets.
Ben figured he and Blake could take the blame for this turn of events. It looked like they’d pushed the Kipster too far.
Someone said, “You mean like Buzzfeed?”
Kipper angled her gaze down on the camper. “Sort of, but more sophisticated and nuanced.” She shook her head, as if annoyed at everyone else’s incompetence, and continued. “I’m studying industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Kentucky. That’s partially why I wanted to be here at camp. I like to see how the campers interact. Most of you probably enjoy taking personality tests because we’re all selfish beings who can’t ever have enough information about ourselves. Especially teenagers.” Kipper said this with a smile on her face.
Georg
e dropped his chin down and looked over his glasses in a piercing way. “Kip’s ready to snap, I think.”
A few minutes later, Ben watched Blake sneak into the back of the cabin. She sat down on the edge of the group, a few seats away from him. Derek and Zoe flanked her. They looked like they were half supporting her weight. She wore a pair of dark sunglasses. Her face and shoulders were burned to a crisp. His mom would describe her as a hot mess.
Blake scowled at the Meyers Brigg assignment. “Jesus. Like I need to take a quiz today.” She sat down and dropped her head onto a desk.
Ben looked over his shoulder and explained, “It’s not like you have to study or anything.”
That didn’t help. “Like I want to know which Disney princess I am. I already know. I’m Belle. Do you think that makes me happy?” She glared at Kipper. “I’d rather be Cinder-fuckin’-ella.” A few tears ran down her face at that announcement. Ben had no clue why Cinderella was better than Belle or why anyone would care.
Kipper began to explain the Meyers Briggs test, which explained your personality type with four letters. I for introverted, E for extroverted, T for thinking, F for feeling, blah, blah, blah. Each combination of letters was associated with a personality type and apparently useful for stuff Kipper thought was important.
Feeling a mixture of terror and concern, Ben asked Zoe, “What’s the matter with Blake?”
Blake continued to rant. “And I don’t need to take any personality assessment to tell me that I’m an INFP. Do you know what that makes me?” Tears were streaming down her face. “It makes me a doormat. I might as well give up now and never even go to college. You know who else is an INFP?” She stared at Kipper. “Snow White. And ET. I mean, what did they ever do? I wish I were my sister. Like every other mean girl, she’s a freaking ESFP. I was a hater, but now I just wanna be one.”
Ben didn’t know what to do. This was scarier than Alien for sure and that used to give him nightmares. An evil creature might as well be ripping its way out of her. Crying, crazy talk—at least the alien situation presented an easily identifiable problem.
Breaking the Rules of Revenge Page 15