pluses about being back in nyc: cabs, air conditioning, hannah, clothes shopping, frappuccinos, central park. minuses: i miss you guys!
anyway, i wanted to update everyone, and to ask if you guys want to work on a project i came up with for a certain friend of ours. i want to keep it a secret, though, so e-mail me for details.
love, nat
Posted by: Grace
Subject: Grace’s update
Hi! I think updates are a great idea. I’ve been cleaning the attic all morning (don’t ask) and will start helping my mom with laundry after that. Plus I’m still grounded, plus I have tons of homework. But I get to stay in drama club, so that’s good!
Nat, I’m in . . . I have some great ideas too!
Love, Grace
Posted by: Alex
Subject: Updates, updates, updates!
So . . . I went to the middle school football game last night with my friend Bridgette. And . . . drum roll please . . . there’s this boy I think might like me! His name is Peter, and he held the door for me the other day (having crutches makes it hard to walk!).
He was at the game, and we sat together, and it got kind of cold so he gave me his sweater! It was so sweet. I don’t know how I feel about boyfriends, but having a boy friend is great!
Speaking of friends, I definitely want to help, Natalie.
Love,
Al
Posted by: Jenna
Subject: Jenna’s update
Hey, everybody. I’m at my dad’s right now, and he’s taking us to a movie in a bit so I don’t have long. I’m really gr8ful 4 my dad right now. He talked to my mom and they agreed that 1 weekend a month, I’ll stay at home 2 hang out with my friends. It’ll be gr8. (I’m also gr8ful 4 my dad because he’s just a gr8 dad in general!)
Let’s all talk about the idea for u-know-who later today. I’ll be on IM at about 6-ish. My IM screenname is Aries8 . . . talk to you then!
Love,
Jenna
Posted by: Julie
Subject: Great friends . . .
You guys are amazing.
Here’s something else amazing: Camp Lakeview reunion, New York City, February!
More details coming soon . . . . . . get psyched!
Love, Julie
Turn the page for a sneak preview of
camp CONFIDENTIAL
RSVP
available soon!
Calling all Camp Lakeview Campers!
You are cordially invited to the Annual Camp Lakeview Reunion!
When: Saturday, February 19th, 5 to 10 P.m.
Where: Village Bowl, Greenwich Village, NYC
Why: To share Camp Lakeview memories and make new ones!
Who: YOU, of course! It won’t be a party without you!
Dear Lakeview Alumni,
Can you believe that six months have passed since summer’s end at Camp Lakeview? We didn’t want to wait until next June to see all of you again, so we’re throwing a campwide reunion party at Village Bowl! Village Bowl is a retro-stylin’ four-story bowling complex in the heart of Greenwich Village. There will be lots of activities, great food, friendship, and fun!
Join us beneath twirling disco balls for glow-in-the-dark bowling. Play video games and shoot pool in a room furnished with inflatable chairs and sofas. The Lanetown Screening Room will feature an advanced screening of the new animated film Deep Sea Diary, featuring the voices of Brad James and Josie McLaughlan. We’ll dance to KMAXXX, NYC’s hottest DJ; and Dr. Steve himself will wave the checkered flag at the underground go-kart racetrack!
We will provide heaps of burgers, fries, pizza, and sodas. And of course each bunk will load up their bunk table with yummy treats and cool decorations! See your enclosed contact sheet for the Camp Lakeview e-mail addresses for your counselors and CITs, plus all the details about how to get to Village Bowl, shoe rentals, attire, and more.
RSVP soon, please, so we can make sure we have plenty of food and fun waiting for you. We will SPARE no effort to get on our GAME. We really hope to see each and every one of you at the Camp Lakeview “BOWL-DOWN”!
Cordially,
Your Lakeview Staff
chapter ONE
“More bagel, Nat, fewer lists, please,” Natalie Goode’s mother said as they noshed together on tasty cranberry-walnut bagels slathered with cream cheese.
Mr. Edelman, the gray-haired owner and chief bagel maker, gave Natalie a jaunty smile from behind the counter as she came out of her deep concentration and picked up her bagel. She gave him a friendly nod in return. He was always trying out his new recipes on the Goode girls. Cranberry-walnut was their current favorite. Natalie loved the tart bits of dried cranberries tucked in the cinnamon-flavored dough.
Natalie and her mother sat in the trademark black high-back chairs of Mavin Deli. Natalie’s pieces of black paper were spread across her half of the round varnished wood table. Her mom was reading the New York Times, absently drinking her coffee from a large white cup.
They were sitting in the storefront window, just beneath the gold letters that read ESTABLISHED IN 1915. Snow flurries swirled on the other side of the letters, dusting harried pedestrians as they rushed past on their Monday-morning routines.
“Honey, eat,” her mother said again, without looking up from her paper.
Natalie dutifully took a bite of delicious, chewy bagel. As she ate, she studied the rectangle of black paper that she had labeled FRIDAY NIGHT—FOOD. Shifting in her chair, she got back to business—the business of organizing the best reunion party weekend in the history of Camp Lakeview.
If we go to a movie, we can buy treats there. So I won’t have to plan for too much food at our place afterward. But which movie should we go to? Hey, where’s my movie list?
She shuffled her papers like a pack of cards as she searched for her spreadsheet of movie possibilities. A whoosh of moist, cold air buoyed the errant page as the front door opened for a large crowd of businessmen, stamping the snow and ice off their shoes and brushing the sleeves of their heavy wool coats. Natalie grabbed the black paper before it could fall to the floor, which was damp with melted snow.
“Nat,” her mother said again, looking up from her copy of the New York Times. Steam rose from the coffee cup in her right hand. “Eat. Please.”
“But I have so many things to do before Friday!” Natalie insisted. She pulled another piece of paper from her stack titled RVSPs for FRIDAY SLEEPOVER and read down the list of names: Alyssa, Grace, Jenna. With me, that’s four. They’ll have been traveling. They’ll probably be really hungry.
“How many pizzas should I order for Friday night?” she asked her mother. “Do you think Alyssa likes anchovies? I’ll bet she does. It’s so weird that I spent eight weeks in the same bunk with her and I have no idea if she likes anchovies.”
“That’s a stumper,” her mother teased her. “Since
I’ve never met Alyssa.”
Natalie chuckled as the answer popped into her head. “Never mind! I just remembered that Alyssa’s a vegetarian! Anchovies are fish!”
“Only technically,” her mother said dryly.
“I’ll order three extra-large pies,” Natalie said finally. “We can always have the cold leftovers for breakfast.”
“True,” her mom said, amused. Cold pizza had been one of Natalie’s favorite breakfasts ever since she was seven, when she had spent a summer with her father in Rome during one of his movie shoots.
Natalie’s dad was the international movie superstar Tad Maxwell, a fact she had tried hard to hide from her bunkmates at Camp Lakeview. He and Natalie’s mom had split up when Natalie was four, and he wasn’t around much because of his busy career.
But the girls of Bunk 3C had discovered her secret soon enough, when he had showed up in a limo with his personal assistant, his bodyguard, and his gorgeous girlfriend, Josie McLaughlan. That was the reason her new animated movie was going to be shown at the reunion. Some of the campers had never gotten over their shock and awe, but Natalie’s best buds liked Natalie just for being Natalie.
So I really need to make sure they have a great time. They’re such great friends.
“Okay, on to soda,” Natalie announced. “We have to be sure to get some diet, because Alex can’t drink that much sugar. I wonder if the girls like egg creams. We could go to that new restaurant over by Lincoln Center. Or is that just a New York thing?” She wrinkled her brow. “Maybe I should e-mail them all to find out.” She reached for her backpack to retrieve her cell phone. “What time is it? I could start calling—”
“Whoa, honey, slow down!” her mother urged. “The whole point of a reunion is to see your friends again and have fun together. Not drive yourself crazy worrying over every little detail of your preparation.”
Natalie put the backpack down. She knew her mom was right. Her mom gave lots of parties and she attended even more. Natalie had heard many stories of parties gone terribly wrong because the host or hostess was just too worn out to relax and mingle.
It was going to be superfun seeing all her bunkmates again. But Natalie couldn’t control her nervousness. She knew she had to make some plans. In addition to the official campwide reunion at Village Bowl, Natalie was playing hostess at not one, but two sleepovers.
The first one would be smaller, with just Alyssa, Grace, and Jenna, who would also stay all day Saturday. Her mother had already made arrangements for them to have a spa day, but that wouldn’t account for all the time they had together. And there were still breakfast and lunch to work out. Then getting ready for the party.
Then after the party at Village Bowl, the whole bunk was coming over for a second sleepover. That meant that all eleven of her bunkmates would be spending the entire night in her apartment! And most of them would be hanging out until early Sunday afternoon. And that made her supernervous.
I’ve been nervous around these girls before, though, and things have worked out.
She thought back to her first day at Camp Lakeview, a summer camp in rural Pennsylvania. She had been very skeptical that anything good would come of her mother’s decision to send her there. Natalie’s mom wanted Natalie to broaden her horizons, which apparently included the horizon of “nature”—while she traveled all over Europe, buying art for her gallery.
As far as Natalie had been concerned, nature turned out to be the bug-infested, poison-ivy-laden wilds of Far Meadow and the mysterious waters of the lake for which the camp was named. And nature had been heavily populated: There were more kids at Camp Lakeview than students in all the grades of Natalie’s private school back in the city.
Fearing the nature, Natalie spent the first couple days of camp yearning for the familiar skyscrapers of the concrete jungle she called home. She’d missed her soft bed, her immaculate bathroom, and most of all, her privacy.
Then she had grown to love Camp Lakeview, with its mosquitoes, poison ivy, and especially her eleven sometimes-irritating-sometimes-quirky bunkmates. She’d even trekked her way back to the overnight camp in the wilderness when Chelsea had run after that rabbit. Simon had bragged about her to everyone, like she was some kind of fearless trail guide.
Yes, it had taken her a while to settle in, but by the time summer was over and she was due to come home, it was difficult for her to believe that she hadn’t been a Lakeview camper for years.
Six months had passed since the end of camp. She was back in the greatest city of the world, in her second semester of sixth grade, and doing lots of fun things with Hannah, her best friend in New York. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had shared Jenna’s care packages of chocolate-on-chocolate cupcakes, and cheered for Grace and Brynn in the campwide production of Peter Pan.
At the thought of seeing the girls of Bunk 3C again, her stomach fluttered with anxiety. Although she had many fond memories of them, she figured they had changed a lot since they’d seen one another. It would almost be like getting to know eleven new people—but with the added responsibility of making sure they had a fun weekend.
On top of that, she was going to see Simon again. Planning what to wear to dazzle him was almost more than she could handle from now until the party.
Her mother interrupted her thoughts. “Sweetie, it’s just pizza and a movie, and your good friends in sleeping bags. Nothing to be worried about.”
Can she read my mind? Or am I that obvious? Natalie smiled at her mother, knowing she meant well. But her stomach still fluttered. Because it was much, much more than that.
They’re coming to my city and staying in my home. What if they don’t like the food, or the movie, or any of the activities I’ve planned? What if they think I’ve ruined the reunion for them? I don’t have a whole summer for them to get used to my world, the way I got used to theirs.
“Paging Mia Hamm!” Alex Kim’s mother called from the barely open sliding glass door that led to the back yard.
“On my way!” Alex called back.
Alex wore thick leggings and a heavy hockey sweater as she dribbled her soccer ball across the brittle brown grass in the back yard. As she panted, her breath curled upward like smoke.
She had been practicing since dawn. She needed to drastically improve her game by next Saturday. She played indoor soccer for the Blue Angels. Last Saturday, with both teams tied, she had lost control of the ball, and the Maroon Menace, their rivals for the league championship, scored a goal in the last eight seconds of play.
That game would have been ours if I hadn’t messed up, Alex thought, angry at herself for her sloppy dribbling skills.
The sliding glass back door opened farther, to reveal Alex’s petite mother in a cream-colored velour tracksuit and pink Uggs, holding a jade-green bowl in both hands. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail that bounced when she talked.
“Alex, you know you need to eat,” she admonished her daughter. “Take extra-good care of yourself, sweetheart. You have a big weekend ahead of you.”
Alex came into the warm house and sat at the dining room table. A bowl of steaming oatmeal was waiting for her. Picking up her spoon, she sampled it, and instantly detected the artificial sweetener her mom had used. Wistfully, she remembered the rivers of maple syrup she used to drown her hot cereal in before she was diagnosed with diabetes. She could still have honey on occasion, but the days of maxing out on sugar and syrup like her friends were definitely over.
Her mom said, “Be sure to take the new batch of insulin needles to practice this afternoon.”
“I will,” Alex replied. For each activity she was engaged in, she had to provide an insulin kit for the coach. She had hopes of switching to insulin pills she could take by mouth, or maybe even an insulin pump, but for now, her usual dosage was one injection a day.
She also wore a silver medical I.D. bracelet. That would alert people to her condition if she couldn’t speak for herself. She had been very lucky that Julie, her Lakeview counselor,
had known what to do after Alex had collapsed at camp. But without reading the warnings on her bracelet, an unknowing stranger might not interpret Alex’s dizziness and confusion as symptoms of her blood-sugar imbalance. With the wrong emergency care, Alex could wind up going into diabetic shock. That meant a coma . . . or worse.
“We need to leave for school soon,” her mother told her, as she quickly put the vegetables into a bright blue snack container.
“Okay, Mom.” Alex took the snack container from the counter. She hoisted up her heavy school backpack from the floor so she could load it in. She unzipped the main compartment and pulled out her Firefly cell phone.
A text message winked in the window of the faceplate, which was decorated with sparkly soccer balls:
CU soon! B.
She grinned. “B” was Brynn, her bestest bud from camp. Brynn was coming to spend the night on Friday. Alex’s game was bright and early on Saturday morning. As soon as it was over, the two girls would get ready for the reunion together and take the bus into New York City.
When she’d first received the official Camp Lakeview invitation to the reunion, Alex had been nothing but excited. Then things got complicated—Natalie Goode invited her to spend the night at her apartment on Friday. Coolness, except that was the night before her next soccer game. And since she had essentially lost the last one for her team, she knew she had to show up for this one.
Not realizing Alex’s dilemma, Nat had described in excruciating, you-cannot-miss-this detail all the fun activities she had planned for her guests: a movie at a local theater, and a spa day where everyone could have manicures, pedicures, and facials. Alex had wanted like anything to go.
But she had a commitment to her team. And with their standings hanging in the balance of this Saturday’s game—after she herself had handed the victory to the Maroon Menace—she knew she couldn’t skip the Saturday morning game.
TTYL Page 12