Olivia couldn’t see me, if you’re wondering, because this planning session took place in whispers with all of us on our own bunks in the dark.
We had to be super quiet. Everyone at camp knows Buck has sentries patrolling the walkways after lights-out. No one has ever seen or heard these sentries. They always wear black camo, and their sneakers have special silent soles. Still, we campers know they are there. Their main job is keeping girls out of Boys Camp and vice versa, but they also listen for disturbances.
If you make a disturbance you get demerits, and there go your chances to make Top Cabin.
A ten-to-eleven cabin that won Chore Score and made Top Cabin? Flowerpot would be a legend!
“I’m fine. I’m awake. I’m listening,” I whispered. “And if Lance has a girlfriend already, I don’t think we should try to fix him and Hannah up. It’s encouraging him to cheat, and it’s not nice.”
“That’s what I think too,” said Lucy.
Olivia must have sat up fast because her bunk bed squeaked. “So we did all that PFHL planning for nothing?”
“Shhh!” Grace and I hissed.
Olivia grunted, lay down, and whispered, “So we did all that PFHL planning for nothing?”
“No,” I said. “Or maybe. Or yes—but only if Lance has a girlfriend.”
“So in that case, you find out, Emma,” Olivia said. “You’re the one that’s so interested in fairness to a girl none of us ever even heard of.”
“Okay,” I said, “I will.”
“And you have to do it fast,” said Grace. “Because till you do, we can’t start on PFHL at all.”
“Okay,” I said again. And then, as my friends fell asleep, I lay there wondering how.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Emma
Olivia’s not the only one who hates the wake-up bell at Moonlight Ranch. I do too. But last summer I learned that I can make myself get out of bed if I focus laserlike on one thing: pancakes.
The ones at Moonlight Ranch are extra delicious, and you can get them every day, not just on weekends. To go with your pancakes, there’s cinnamon sugar, maple syrup, applesauce, sunflower seeds, and mini chips. You can have all you want, but if you have all at once, your tummy will suffer.
I know this from personal experience.
Every morning as I got ready for the day ahead, I played a pancake countdown in my head: Wash face, brush teeth, fold up jammies:
Pancakes.
Straighten sheets, pull on jeans, button blouse:
Pancakes.
Out the door, down the walk, to the mess hall:
Pancakes!
That day in the mess hall, I sat down at the table with my pancake-stacked plate, had a drink of milk, cut the first bite, and bit into it—ahhhh.
Pancakes made getting out of bed worthwhile.
Now that I was fortified, I decided to ask for advice in finding out whether Lance had a girlfriend. The one helpful thing I’d thought of was this: Jamil—one of Lance’s campers—has morning riding with me. Maybe he knew. But how would I get him to tell me?
“Start with small talk,” said Grace, who is much sneakier than me.
“Define small talk,” I said.
“You know, like ‘How are you,’ ‘I’m fine,’ ‘What’s new,’ ‘Not much,’ ‘Does Lance have a girlfriend . . . ?’ Like that.” She shrugged.
“OMG, you call that advice?” said Olivia, whose plate had eggs, strawberries, and a double portion of potatoes on it. “I have a much, much, much better idea! Bring up a related subject that seems totally innocent but isn’t.”
“Oka-a-ay . . . so like what?” I asked.
“Lemme think,” Olivia said. “Maybe you just happen to mention something about your boyfriend or your ex-boyfriend. And then you go on to talk about boyfriend-girlfriend as a general kind of a category, and after that, Jamil says something, and you say something, and Jamil says something . . . and soon the state of Lance’s romantic life has been revealed.”
“Yeah, but O,” I said, “I don’t have a boyfriend, and I never did.”
“Make one up,” said Grace, whose breakfast was a bowl of rainbow-colored sugar cereal.
“I don’t think I’m that creative,” I said.
“Not a problem,” said Olivia. “You can borrow mine.”
“What?” I said.
Olivia laughed. “I don’t mean borrow a real live human boy. I mean pretend a boyfriend I used to have is yours. That way you don’t have to invent him from nothing. Now, what do you want to know?”
Lucy looked up from her granola. “Did you say you have a boyfriend, O?”
Olivia shrugged. “Lots of ’em. But nobody special now. The one I’m thinking of is from the beginning of the school year.”
“Was he white, black, Latino, or other?” Lucy asked.
I was pretty surprised by that question, and I guess Olivia was too. “Why is that important?” she asked.
“It’s just one of the questions,” Lucy said. “If you’d rather, you can tell me his religion, political party, last book read, and approximate household income.”
“Approximate . . . what?” Olivia looked at me, then at Grace. “What is she talking about?”
“No idea,” said Grace.
Lucy giggled. “It’s what they ask on dating websites. I look at them sometimes with my mom.”
“O-h-h-h,” said Olivia. “Now I get it. In that case, he was a black kid at my school, one of the few. And he was an older man—in the seventh grade! And I don’t know about his political party, but his last book read was probably Hatchet—”
“That’s a good one,” said Grace.
“—and I don’t know about religion either, but I don’t think he’s Jewish because he gave me a Christmas present. Since we broke up, his name is unimportant, but if you want to know, it was Brian.”
“Why did you break up?” Grace asked.
Olivia made a tragic face, looked at her eggs, and sighed. “Physical incompatibility.”
Grace said, “Seriously?” while I both wanted and did not want details.
Seeing our expressions, Olivia laughed and shook her head. “You guys! All I mean is he was shorter than me! We looked terrible together in pictures.”
• • •
At Moonlight Ranch, chores are after breakfast, and that day mine was the most despised of all: shower, toilet, and sink.
In my belly the pancakes contended with orange juice as I squeegeed the shower walls and scrubbed the floor. As I worked, I tried to picture myself saying, “Good morning, Jamil. I have a black boyfriend named Brian who’s probably Christian and in seventh grade. How are you?”
Meanwhile, Grace was sweeping the bunkroom, and Lucy was dusting. Olivia’s job was to sweep the walk outside. When I was done, she would come in and clean the mirror.
Later, after we left for activities, a counselor would come around to inspect the cabin and score five categories: bathroom, surfaces, windows, beds, and overall tidiness. Some counselors barely inspect at all; others give you zeros for a single dried-up bug wing on the floor.
When the bell rang for activities at nine o’clock, Grace did a preinspection. This had been Hannah’s idea to keep us competitive.
Grace took preinspection way seriously. She strode through like the sergeant in a war movie, hands behind her back, turning her head right and left. She even peered under the beds and behind the toilet. Anytime she found anything bad, she pointed at it, then at the person who had failed to meet her high standards.
Poor Grace. She was trying to be firm, but she was more like comical, and that morning Olivia followed behind, mimicking her every move. Lucy and I tried not to laugh, but Olivia was hilarious, and finally we busted up.
Grace was not amused. “Do you girls want to win or not?”
“Lighten up a little, shee-eesh!” Olivia said. “We will win. We’re the best. That Brianna girl doesn’t have a chance.”
“We won’t win unless we’re serious,” said
Grace. “And whatever you think about Brianna, O, she got Purple Sage Cabin a Dandy Dust Mop, and we don’t have anything like that.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, no mop can beat our elbow grease!” Olivia said.
“Ewww,” said Lucy, checking out her elbows.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Is that something Jenny says?”
“Bingo!” Olivia pointed. “It means ‘hard work.’ ”
I said, “We gotta go, you guys. Got your hat, Lucy? Is everyone wearing enough sunscreen? You too, O. Even dark-skinned people need sunscreen.”
“I know, Emma,” said Olivia.
“Just checking,” I said.
Finally we were ready to file out the door, Grace and Olivia to first activity, me and Lucy to riding. Since campers all leave at the same time, it was morning rush hour on the walkways and paths of Moonlight Ranch.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Emma
Lucy and I picked up our bridles in the horse barn as always, then walked the short distance to North Corral to catch our horses. Mine was a palomino mare called Sunshine, seventeen hands high with a star on her forehead and a sock on her right foreleg. To me, she was beautiful. I even liked the warm-hay-and-dust smell of her.
There is something comforting about a horse. It’s big. It’s solid. It’s reliable. It counts on you for food and grooming. You count on it to carry you around. Even that time last year when Katinka bit me, I didn’t blame her. I had been saddling her, squeezing the cinch around her middle. How would you like it if someone did that to you?
That day I found Sunshine in a cluster of horses near the center of the corral. I walked carefully around their swishing tails to avoid getting kicked, then came up on her left and tossed the reins over her neck.
“Good morning,” I said. “Sleep well?” Sunshine nuzzled me and blinked her big eyes. “Okay, open up now.” I clicked the bit against her front teeth till she parted them and clamped down. After that I pulled the bridle over her ears and buckled the straps. “Ready? Let’s go get a saddle on, whaddaya say?”
I gave a gentle tug to lead her out of the corral. Meanwhile, all around me campers were doing the same thing—bridling their horses and taking them out the gate and down the hill to be saddled. Among them was Jamil. His horse was a bay called Zippety, which lived up to its name, always walking fast near the head of the line on trail rides.
I took one breath for courage, then launched into small talk. “So, Jamil, how are things in Silver Spur Cabin?”
If I had said, “So, Jamil, aren’t those zombies I see by the fence?” he could not have looked more surprised. In fact, he turned his head to see if I was talking to someone else. Then he must’ve remembered he’s the only Jamil at camp. “How do you know I live in Silver Spur Cabin?”
I knew for about two hundred reasons. Because we were both ten-to-elevens. Because we had been at camp three weeks. Because I don’t keep my head buried in a feed trough the way the average clueless boy does.
Most of all I knew because Lance was his counselor, and I was trying to fix Lance up with Hannah.
None of those answers fit in with my small-talk strategy, though.
“I guess I know because Vivek’s my friend, and he’s in your cabin too,” I said.
Jamil said, “Oh,” but I thought he sounded suspicious.
By this time we had joined the parade of campers and horses walking down the path to the horse barn. Since we were walking together, we ended up tying our horses side by side. Then we went in and got currycombs and brushes.
You have to groom the horse before you saddle it. That’s what they teach you at Moonlight Ranch.
“Vivek is friends with a lot of girls,” Jamil said as we worked.
Woot! That was small talk, right? All of a sudden, this was going much better than expected. Too bad I couldn’t think of a better reply than, “Uh-huh.”
“He’s friends with that Lucy girl too,” Jamil went on. “Do you know her?”
“Yeah. We’re in the same cabin. She’s right over there.” I nodded toward Lucy, who had come down the hill ahead of us and was already saddling Spot.
“Yeah, I saw her.” Jamil stood on tiptoe so he could look over his horse at Lucy. “She’s really, uh”—he paused—“brave.”
“You mean about the coyote,” I said. “I know.”
After that I was out of things to say and still no closer to Lance’s love life. Was I going to have to take desperate measures? Mention my fictitious older boyfriend? Maybe. But first we had to return the combs and brushes and lug out blankets and saddles.
Western-style saddles are heavier than the English kind, and last year I had a hard time hefting mine over the horse’s back. This year it’s easier. I know I’m taller, and maybe I’m stronger, too.
Since this was Jamil’s first year at camp, Cricket, a seven-eight-nine counselor, came over to help him thread the latigo through the cinch rings and then make sure the cinch was tight enough. If it wasn’t, the saddle would slide off.
I have to admit it made me feel a little bit superior that I didn’t need any help.
How you mount a horse wearing a Western saddle is you stand on the horse’s left side facing its tail, put your left foot in the stirrup (otherwise, you end up standing in the air backward, and I’d rather not say if I know that from personal experience), and step up into it while swinging your right leg over the horse’s back.
One thing you never ever do is grab the saddle horn. That marks you as a tenderfoot for sure. Instead, you hold the reins and the horse’s mane in your left hand and the cantle of the saddle with your right.
When we were all astride our horses and circling them around by the barn, a kid named Theo asked, “Where are we going anyway?”
Three counselors were leading us that day, Cricket, Matt, and Gail. Cricket answered, “Cider Creek Wash. How does that sound?”
“Sure!” “Where again?” “Do we get to canter?” asked various campers.
“These horses have a full day ahead of them,” Matt said. “We’ll have to see.”
Morning riding lasts from nine fifteen to noon, but the actual on-your-horse part is about ninety minutes. The counselors pick a destination four miles away and a route that loops around. Sometimes we have time to stop and go for a canter in a safe flat place where the horses won’t trip. Other times we’re just sightseeing.
I have noticed that some horses trudge like hauling a person is a pain, but Sunshine isn’t that way. She likes having a kid aboard. She lifts her hooves neatly, arches her neck, raises her head, and moves her ears alertly to hear the sounds of birds, the breeze, horses’ hooves, and human conversation.
By this time, I had recovered from the sore thigh muscles that go with riding a horse when you haven’t in a while. I tried to ride the way I’d been taught: sit up straight, square my shoulders, flatten my tummy, allow my lower body to move in sync with the horse’s gait.
Leaving camp, I admired the rugged and rocky landscape, so different from what I’m used to at home. The scenery where I live in Pennsylvania is dominated by gray sky, green trees, and black asphalt. Here in the high Sonoran Desert, the rocky earth was pink and gold, the sky a brilliant blue, the grasses and cacti sage green. Because the air was so clear—very little moisture and no pollution—the colors seemed to glow. Looking around, I couldn’t help but feel happy, which made me feel confident, too.
Surely I could find out whether Lance had a girlfriend.
I touched my heels to Sunshine’s flanks so she’d catch up with Zippety. “Hey, Jamil,” I said, suddenly inspired. “So, uh . . . in Silver Spur Cabin . . . do you guys have any, like, decorations on the walls?”
“Such as party decorations?” Jamil said.
“More like pictures, I was thinking. You know, photos of your family or maybe your special friends from home?”
“I have a picture of my new nephew on my phone, but—of course—no phone,” said Jamil. “I still can’t even believe that. I’m always pa
tting my pocket.”
I said, “Oh, I know,” to be friendly, but really I was used to being without it by this time. “So, no photos for decoration, huh? What about Lance?” I forged ahead. “Does he have photos of his special friends, like, uh . . . maybe on his bureau or anyplace?”
Jamil turned his head to look at me. “That’s a weird question.”
I bristled. “No, it’s not. It’s small talk.”
“Whatever,” said Jamil, “but why do you care about Lance’s pictures?”
“I don’t!” I said, and then I had nothing else to say, so what did I do? I kept talking. “Our counselor, Hannah, has photos,” I said, which was a lie, but Olivia had encouraged me to be creative, right? “I just wondered if having photos was a normal thing for counselors.”
“No idea,” said Jamil. “Hey, aren’t you in the same cabin as that other crazy girl, Grace?”
“Grace isn’t crazy,” I said, but then I remembered her yelling at Olivia in front of everyone at lunch.
“Says you,” Jamil said, and I could tell he thought I was crazy too, like it’s some kind of Flowerpot Cabin thing.
I decided to try a more usual question. “So, where are you from?”
“Why?” Jamil said.
“I’m from near Philadelphia,” I said.
“And that Lucy girl is from California, right?”
I looked around. “You can talk to her yourself, if you want. She’s right over there.”
“No, no, that’s okay,” he said hastily. “I wouldn’t want to bug her or—”
“Hey! Lucy!” I called.
“Oh, jeez. Now you’re yelling,” he said.
Lucy rode up on my left. “Jamil wants to talk to you,” I said.
“Hey, Jamil,” Lucy said.
“Hey,” Jamil said.
“What do you want to talk about?” Lucy said.
Jamil was very tall for a kid our age, but now he slumped down like he wanted to be as small as possible. “Just, like, uh . . . where you’re from and all,” he said. “I mean, I heard about you and the coyote. I guess you’re really brave.”
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