Nat made a face. “Don’t be a perv. Dr. Steve adores everyone at this camp.”
Logan sighed and shook his head. “That was a pretty poor showing.”
Nat smiled. “I should’ve guessed it from your Bubblicious breath.”
Logan grinned. “Dude, it’s watermelon. Want a piece?”
Nat shook her head.
Logan shrugged. “That’s cool.” He stood back and looked at her. “Why so serious today? Where’s the usual Nat sparkle?”
Nat felt a little pit open up in the bottom of her stomach. Why? He has to ask why? “Um, I guess I’m still just rattled by the news that camp is closing.”
Logan nodded slowly, still not seeming to get it. “That’s deep.”
Nat sighed. “Aren’t you upset?” she asked in a frustrated tone, then softened her voice. She didn’t want him to feel like she was accusing him of not caring enough—the way Tori spoke to her about this lately. “I mean, you seem to really like being a CIT. You like being outdoors. You like—” Me, she thought fiercely. But her throat seemed to close up, keeping her from saying it.
Logan nodded. “Yeah, yeah, of course I do. And of course I’m a little upset.” He paused, putting his arm around her shoulders. “I just don’t want to dwell on it, you know? And you shouldn’t, either, Nat. It’s not going to make you feel any better to be all sad about it twenty-four seven.”
Nat shook her head, amazed. Boys were really something else. Could Logan seriously talk himself out of being upset like that? Just because it didn’t make sense?
“I know that,” she said. “I’m just sad. I can’t talk myself out of feeling sad when that’s how I feel.”
Logan nodded, reached to take her hand, and gave it a squeeze. “That’s cool. But what’s making you so sad? Are you going to miss this lake? These bunks?”
Nat’s eyes started to burn. You, she wanted to say. I’m going to miss you and you’re not going to miss me. Don’t you get it? But she just shook her head and looked away. “Everything.”
“Aw, Nat.” Logan put his hand back on her shoulder and gently rubbed it, leading her over to the lake.
Suddenly Nat realized something: the protest! Logan had no idea that they were working on a protest—that there was a chance camp could be saved!
“Hey!” she cried, stopping short and turning to face him. “I forgot to tell you. My bunk is working on something—something big that could save Camp Lakeview!”
Logan smiled. Nat felt her heart melt a little at the sight of it—she’d grown so fond of that smile in the last couple weeks, the way it slowly moved over his face and then lit up his eyes. “That’s great, Nat,” he said with a nod. “Maybe that will help you feel better.”
Nat swallowed. “Make me feel better?” she asked. “It’s bigger than that. We could save the camp.”
“Sure, sure,” Logan agreed, walking a few steps toward the lake. “And even if you don’t, it gives you something to focus on.”
Nat stepped forward, grabbing Logan’s hand and turning him to face her. “Focus on?” she asked. “We could save the camp, Logan. Don’t you get that?”
Logan looked at Nat, but something was missing from his eyes. Nat could tell just by looking at him that their saving camp didn’t mean the same thing to him that it did to her, just like she could tell he didn’t understand why she couldn’t just stop herself from being sad.
“I get it,” he was saying. “It’s great, Nat. Let’s swim.”
But Nat felt like she couldn’t move her legs from this spot until she said more. “If we saved camp, we could be together again,” she said quickly, hoping that her voice didn’t break. “We could have one more summer, at least.”
Logan looked away, then looked back at Nat. It was still missing—the thing she wanted more than anything else to see in his eyes. “Great,” he said lightly. “We’ll play it by ear. Come on, Nat. Let’s have fun.”
Nat felt her body go light, and she followed him over to the lake without stopping again. But she knew she wasn’t going to have fun.
It had been only days since Dr. Steve had made his big announcement, and it seemed like she couldn’t remember what fun even felt like.
“Okay, okay, okay.” The normally Zen Sloan was looking flustered as she flipped through the notebook where she’d jotted down their protest ideas. The girls of 6B were all sitting in a little waiting area outside Dr. Steve’s office, trying to prepare for their big presentation. “Brynn—you’re going to talk about the skit idea?”
“Roger,” Brynn said, without looking up.
“Who?” Sloan asked, flustered.
“Yes.” Brynn looked up and smiled. “I’ll present the skit idea, Sloan.”
Sloan nodded. “Great. Now, Gaby—you’re going to talk about our personal stories?”
Gaby made a face. “Are we still doing that?”
Sloan nodded. “Sure. Why not?”
Gaby shrugged. “It just seems like certain people don’t think camp was that important in their life at all.”
Sloan sighed. Tori frowned at Gaby.
“That’s not true,” she insisted. “Just talk about the story thing, okay?”
Gaby rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
“Great,” said Sloan, quickly flipping through her notes. “And—who’s going to talk about art? Alyssa?”
Alyssa glanced over, a nervous expression on her face. “Do I have to?”
Sloan shook her head. “No, you don’t have to. But you did a good job presenting to us last night.”
“You’re not Dr. Steve,” Alyssa replied. “I got nervous enough in front of you guys.”
“Okay.” Sloan looked around the group, touching her index finger to her lip. “How about . . .”
But she didn’t get to finish. Rebecca, Dr. Steve’s secretary, appeared in the doorway and smiled at the girls. “Ladies, Dr. Steve is ready for you,” she said, and retreated back to her desk.
“Crap,” Sloan whispered, slamming her notebook shut. Then she looked around at her friends, trying to look positive. “I mean—great! Do you guys feel good? Are we ready?”
Alex looked unconvinced. “I—guess so?”
Sloan nodded. “Awesome,” she said, standing up and walking toward Dr. Steve’s door. “Let’s go.”
They all followed Sloan, if not exactly eagerly. Dr. Steve was waiting for them, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. “Ladies of 6B!” he said with a warm smile as they filed in. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Well,” said Brynn, at the same time Chelsea cried, “Social justice!” and Sloan explained, “We have an idea to run by you, Dr. Steve.”
Dr. Steve looked from one girl to the other, clearly confused. “Okay,” he said. “I gather that . . . well, okay. Why don’t you girls just continue?”
Sloan took a deep breath and sent a warning glance to her bunkmates: I’m handling this one. “As I was saying,” Sloan said, “we have an idea.”
“We want to protest!” Gaby cried, pushing through Val and Alyssa to get closer to Dr. Steve.
“Yeah,” Priya said. “We want to go all the way to congress! We want to make our voices heard!”
“Power to the people!” added Brynn.
Dr. Steve surveyed all of them, looking like he didn’t quite know what to make of all this. “Run that by me again?” he said.
“Ahem,” said Sloan, shooting her bunkmates a warning look. “As Gaby so eloquently put it, we want to try to save Camp Lakeview. We want to arrange a protest to let the state congress know how upset we are about this decision!”
“They should know how much Camp Lakeview means to us,” Alex put in. “It’s not just some camp you can close. It’s our camp!”
Dr. Steve’s mouth dropped open. He looked like he wasn’t quite sure what to say next. “Well—” he began finally.
“We’re going to bring art!” Tori added, glancing at Sloan with a wink. “The best and brightest paintings from the art cl
asses, plus new paintings and drawings of the camp grounds!”
“And we’re going to act!” added Chelsea.
Dr. Steve furrowed his eyebrows. “Act?”
“What Chelsea means is, we’re going to write a skit,” Brynn explained. “We’ll perform it during the protest.”
“It’ll be funny!” Val added.
“But serious,” Candace cautioned.
“But more funny than serious,” Val said.
“But really, what they mean is touching,” Jenna said. “Touching and poignant and not at all, like, cheesy.”
“We’re going to show them how nice we are!” Gaby threw in, jumping up to be seen over her bunkmates’ heads. “All day long we’ll be, like, really nice, and when they ask why we’re so nice, we’ll be, like—”
“We’re Not doing that,” Chelsea corrected her.
Gaby pouted. “I thought we were undecided.”
“It’s obnoxious,” Chelsea said.
Gaby glared at her. “I am way too nice to respond to that.”
Nat cringed. She’d known they weren’t exactly prepared for this meeting, but still, this was going way worse than she’d feared. What if Dr. Steve said no and put an end to the protest before they even really started? She wasn’t sure anymore whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
Dr. Steve, who’d been watching the girls’ presentation with a stunned, slack-jawed expression, seemed to pull himself together and sit up in his chair. “Girls,” he said, “can one of you summarize very briefly for me what you plan to do? Because I’m getting confused.”
Sloan glared at her bunkmates. “I can summarize!” she offered. “Dr. Steve, what we’d like to do is borrow the camp buses to travel to Harrisburg to stage a protest. We would protest Camp Lakeview’s closure. In front of the congress building.”
Dr. Steve nodded slowly. “And this protest would consist of . . .” he prompted.
“Signs!” cried Nat.
“The skit I told you about,” Brynn added.
“Personal stories,” Priya spoke up.
Val nodded. “Like, we would all take turns telling what camp means to us,” she explained.
“Um, not exactly,” Gaby corrected her. “More like, we would say what we were like before camp and how much better we are now.”
Alyssa looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know if that’s exactly how I’d put it—”
“We’d have chants, too!” Alex cried, trying to cover up her friends’ disagreements.
“What would the chants be?” Dr. Steve asked, a smile playing on the corners of his mouth.
The girls all looked at one another. They hadn’t even really discussed chants; Alex had just thrown that out there to change the subject. Still, they knew they had to say something.
“Heck, no . . . we won’t go . . . if you close Camp Lakeview?” Tori asked.
Dr. Steve broke into a full smile at that, but he quickly covered his mouth with his hand, regaining his serious air. “Girls,” he said. “I’m sure you understand, if I support this protest, if I let you use the buses to go into another city with a huge group of fellow campers—I have to be confident that this protest is organized down to the minute.”
The girls all glanced at one another, nodding slowly. Nat was surprised to feel a twinge of dread in her stomach. He’s goinNg to say No, she realized. Camp is really going to close. Logan and I are really going to break Up.
Dr. Steve continued, “If this presentation was supposed to show me that Camp Lakeview taught you to overcome your personality differences and work as a team to really plan something . . .”
The girls all sighed. They knew what he was going to say.
“Then that was a pretty poor showing.” Dr. Steve looked from girl to girl, an expression of disappointment on his face.
The girls were silent, dejected. They all stared at their hands, the floor, anything to avoid looking at one another or at Dr. Steve. Tori and I blew it, Natalie thought guiltily. Now we’ve lost our chance to save Camp Lakeview because of our stupid argument at lunch.
“However.” Dr. Steve looked at Sloan. The girls all perked up, turning to one another and back to Dr. Steve, surprised to hear him add anything else.
“I feel that this is a noble goal, saving Camp Lakeview, and that if you pull it off, the younger kids could learn a lot from it.” He smiled. “And I can see that you’re all very worked up about this, probably because Camp Lakeview is so important to each of you, in different ways.”
Sloan nodded. “Definitely!”
Dr. Steve nodded, too. “I’m going to give you three days,” he said, looking around at each of the girls again. “This time, I want you to come up with a great protest idea, and I want you to present it to me so that I feel totally confident in your abilities. Got that?”
“Got it!” Alex cried.
“All right.” Dr. Steve nodded toward the door. “You’re all dismissed. And remember: work together!”
“Wow,” Sloan murmured at dinner, sticking her fork into her spaghetti for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Just, wow.”
“I know,” Becky agreed. “You guys have quite a task ahead of you.”
“It has to be the perfect protest,” agreed Brynn, looking thoughtful. “Totally organized, without a dull moment.” She sighed. “Guys, we are going to have to work our buns off on this one.”
“I kind of can’t believe we thought we could organize it during lunch,” Tori said.
“Totally,” Priya agreed. “This is going to be the only thing we think about for the next forty-eight hours.”
Nat picked at her food. She was glad they got another shot at planning the protest. But she still felt horribly nervous—that they wouldn’t convince Dr. Steve, that the protest wouldn’t work, and most of all, that this time next summer, she would be sitting alone in Central Park, missing Logan like crazy.
“Uh-oh,” she heard Jenna say, looking at something right behind Nat. “Look who’s coming for a visit.”
Nat spun around. Oh, No. It was Lainie—a girl who Nat had almost become friends with, until she realized that Lainie could be shallow and two-faced and that she had a huge crush on Logan, who she called Christopher. (Which was actually his first name, but Nat liked Logan sooo much better.)
Lainie moved to the side, and Nat gasped—speak of the devil, Logan was following along behind her. What were Logan and Lainie talking about? Nat felt her stomach drop a hundred feet. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse . . .
“Hi, ladies!” Lainie called in her loud, girly voice, sidling up to their table with Logan close behind. “Look who I found, sitting all by his lonesome out on the porch.”
Nat turned to Logan, who was wearing a sheepish expression. “I was with a camper,” he explained. “He . . . um . . . the spaghetti tonight didn’t agree with him.”
Several of the 6B girls dropped their forks onto their plates for the last time.
“Anyway,” Lainie said with a big smile. “Christopher here told me something wild. He told me that you guys— cute little 6B—are planning, like, some crazy protest to save the camp or something?” She looked around at the girls, wearing an incredulous expression. Nat knew the intended message was, Silly little 6B actually thinks they can make a difference?
“We are planning a protest,” Sloan affirmed. “It’s really in the early stages right now, and we don’t know for sure whether Dr. Steve will approve it. But we’re going to work really hard on it.”
“That is precious,” Lainie gushed, patting Sloan on the shoulder. “Well, I’ll tell you what. If someone is trying to save Camp Lakeview, I want to be a part of it. Sign me up to help!”
Nat turned to face Lainie, stunned. “Are you kidding?”
Lainie shrugged. “Of course not,” she said, smiling warmly at Logan. “I wouldn’t want to miss a minute of camp. After all . . .” She glanced from Nat to Logan and back again. “Who knows what could happen in a school year?”
> Nat felt her stomach clench. So that was it: Lainie wanted to save camp because she thought Nat and Logan might break up, and she wanted to be around in case her beloved “Christopher” became single again. Nat’s chest burned with anger. She wants to help Us? Well, she can help Us by getting out of here and Not touching our protest with a ten-foot pole, she fumed to herself.
But Sloan was smiling her warm, crooked smile. “That’s great, Lainie,” she said. “We’ve planned to spend all our free time tomorrow in the auditorium, working on the protest. Sort of whoever’s free at a given time can head over there, and then in the evening, we’ll all work together to rehearse.”
Lainie smiled a huge, sickly sweet smile. “That sounds perfect!”
Nat groaned inwardly. This wasn’t all hard enough—now she had to work with Lainie, too?
As she was about to put her head down on the table and moan, though, she felt Lainie staring at her. “What a cute top, Nat,” Lainie said, lifting a ruffle from the top of Nat’s cotton cami. “What is that red shape, exactly? A heart?”
Nat glanced down at her top and felt her face growing hot. “That’s spaghetti sauce.”
Lainie laughed, a grating, tinkly sound. “Cute,” she said, flashing a dark look at Nat. As soon as it came, though, it disappeared, hidden behind a fake smile. “See you girls tomorrow! Come on, Christopher. I want to show you my new purse, back at our table.”
Logan flashed an apologetic look at Nat and mouthed, See you tomorrow in the auditorium? Nat just nodded. Her head felt heavy. In fact, everything felt heavy.
Never had a task seemed so impossible as getting this protest planned well.
chapter SIX
Jenna ran like her life depended on it, across the sports field, past the mess hall, along a row of cabins, and finally to the auditorium. She was just getting out of a nature hike, and she knew her bunkmates had been working on the protest all day.
Throwing open the auditorium door, Jenna noticed that inside it was fairly quiet and organized. After their messed-up presentation the day before, she’d been expecting chaos. But all of the girls were sitting in a big group in the audience, conferring quietly as Gaby stood onstage at the microphone.
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