Camp Clique

by Eileen Moskowitz-Palma

  I hunted through my bag for my goggles and instead found two pink envelopes with Mom’s handwriting on them, the two letters she sent me before I left for camp. I had thrown them in the garbage unopened and you could see a red smear of pasta sauce on the corner of one of the envelopes and some sticky Mrs. Butterworth’s Lite on the other.

  Addy is such a traitor. We both swore we wouldn’t read Mom’s letters or write her back, but the second those letters came, Addy tore hers open. Then she wrote Mom a letter with lots of hearts and Xs and Os as if none of the bad stuff had happened. As if we hadn’t spent two years lying to everyone for her. Teachers, Addy’s coaches, other moms. We even lied to Dad. But worst of all was lying to Bea.

  I told Dad I didn’t want to read her letters, but he never listens to me, which is how I ended up at this camp in the first place. Just seeing the envelopes with Mom’s perfect cursive made me grit my teeth. You know how people say they can see red when they’re really angry? Well, I was seeing red, spitting red, tasting red kind of mad. It was Mom’s fault I was here in this bunk, where no one liked me. It was Mom’s fault I would be away from my friends all summer. It was Mom’s fault I was about to fail this swim test.

  I held the envelopes out, ready to make a tear right down the middle of Mom’s neat handwriting when Ainsley interrupted the girls from their nonstop talking about the tournament.

  “Time to go to the lake,” she said.

  BEA

  Dear Mom,

  This is probably the first time in Camp Amelia history that someone wrote home twice before lights out on the first day. But this dismal news can’t wait. It’s bad enough that my nemesis is going to camp with me. She’s also in my bunk!!

  Poppy and I bunk together every summer. She sleeps in the bottom bunk and I take the top, and we spend half the night passing notes and candy to each other. Now I’m stuck with Maisy, while Poppy’s on the other side of the room with her cot pushed up against Isa and Hannah’s bunk. I feel so far away from the girls, I may as well be in a different cabin.

  I knew as soon as Ainsley assigned Maisy to my bunk that it was inevitable I would have to give up the top bunk because bottom bunks make Maisy anxious. So do the little dots that show up when someone is replying to your text, Sunday nights, peeing in a public restroom because she gets “stage fright,” arriving to a movie during the coming attractions, and furry animals, including harmless Mr. Pebbles. Then there are all the things that give her the creeps: people who dress up like Santa—she calls them Santa impersonators—the cafeteria lady who has four missing teeth, sushi, and jazz music. I learned back when I was friends with Maisy that sometimes it’s easier to enable her anxiety than it is to deal with her theatrics. So I took the bottom bunk, which I’m sure will be the first of many compromises I will have to make this summer.

  Mom, I don’t know how I’m going to make it six weeks with Maisy and her neuroses seeping into my camp life. It was one thing dealing with her when we were friends, but I can’t summon empathy for her after she effectively draped me in an invisibility cloak and turned me into the Mapleton School nobody.

  I miss you so much. You ALWAYS know what to say to make me feel better. Give Mr. Pebbles a big hug for me. He always cheers me up in these situations too.

  Love,

  Your #1/only daughter

  Bea

  P.S. Make sure you go out with the Single Mom Squad as much as possible while I’m gone so you don’t get too lonely!

  P.P.S. This would also be the perfect time to go on a few blind dates…

  I thought Maisy was going to faint when a toad jumped across the path on the way to the lake. She held her scream in, but it was written all over her face. She was never going to survive six weeks at Camp Amelia. The sooner she realized that, the better for me.

  When we arrived at the lake, Ainsley hung her towel over one of the wooden chairs and pulled off her shorts and T-shirt. She always wore a two-piece bathing suit, usually of the string variety, just in case the boy counselors from the camp across the lake happened to be swimming at the same time as we were. They would have to be watching us with binoculars to see her, but Ainsley wasn’t taking any chances.

  “You guys do your laps while I give Maisy her swim test,” she said.

  Maisy turned ashen and swallowed hard. It doesn’t take much to set off her anxiety.

  Ainsley tightened her bikini straps and laughed. “Nothing to get freaked out about. Everyone passes the swim test. Look at all those little kids over there. Anyone swimming past that blue rope has passed the test.”

  Ainsley pointed to the hordes of younger campers swimming beyond the blue rope that marked the end of the shallow water. Their shrieks echoed across the lake as they splashed each other and got caught up in the excitement of the first swim of the season.

  Maisy didn’t look very reassured. She put her towel down on a tree stump, pulled off her shorts and T-shirt, and walked as slowly as humanly possible toward the edge of the water. I had witnessed her using the same tactic in PE class. The girl will do anything to avoid breaking a sweat.

  Isa, Poppy, and Hannah were waiting for me at the edge of the dock.

  Isa pulled on her goggles and jumped off the dock into the deep water and shot back up like a cannon. “Whoo! I always forget how cold this water is!”

  Poppy, Hannah, and I counted down from three and jumped off the dock together. The water was better than air-conditioning on a hot day like this. It felt like my entire body drank a tall glass of Mom’s homemade peppermint iced tea.

  I was about to lead us in our laps when Isa got in front of me. She was hard to miss in her red Speedo one-piece and her mirror goggles. “New girl should be at the buoy by now.”

  Hannah cupped her hand over her forehead to block out the sun’s glare reflecting off the lake’s surface. “She’s still only knee-deep. What’s she waiting for?”

  Poppy huffed as she treaded water. “Please tell me she’s not a slow swimmer. The swim race is the Dandelion Bunk’s best event.”

  In all the years I had been friends with Maisy, I had never actually seen her swim. We did spend every Saturday in June on the Slip ’N Slide in her enormous backyard. We drank Capri Suns, ate Sour Patch Kids until we lost the feeling in our tongues, and talked about everything. I had always wanted a sister, and Maisy was the closest I had to one. Losing her and not knowing why was still a slow burn of hurt a year later.

  Ainsley’s voice was coated with her English accent in a showcase of her annoyance. “You have to go all the way in!”

  Isa shook her head. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Give the girl a chance. Maybe she’s just trying to get used to the cold water,” Hannah said. She was upping her retro game, with a fluo-rescent pink and green one-piece bathing suit with a purple zipper down the front. I’m pretty certain there is a picture of Mom in one of her old photo albums wearing that exact same bathing suit in the early nineties, back when she looked like she went through a bottle of hair spray a day to keep her bangs teased at least six inches above her head.

  “Hannah’s right. We need to hold back judgment and give her a chance to settle in,” said Poppy.

  Ainsley sounded 100 percent British now. “You have to get in the water to take the test.”

  Maisy finally made it to where the water was deep enough to swim. She held her head above the water so her face didn’t get wet. Then she cupped both of her hands and pushed them through the water.

  “Oh, no.” Hannah clapped her hand over her mouth. “She isn’t…”

  Poppy hovered over my shoulder so close I could feel her breathing in my ear.

  “I think you have to actually move for it to be considered doggy paddling,” I said.

  Ainsley grabbed the red rescue tube, one of those background objects in your environment that you never really think about. I had never seen it used at camp before.

  All of the shrieks, yelling, and splashing around stopped suddenly as the younger campers stee
led their wide eyes on what was probably the first Camp Amelia lake rescue of the decade.

  “That’s enough, Maisy,” Ainsley said, holding the float out toward her. “Climb aboard.”

  But Maisy was even high maintenance when she was being rescued. She put both hands out to grab the float and ended up pushing it away from her. Ainsley sighed and grabbed it. She held on tight while Maisy tried to climb aboard, but Maisy has no upper body strength, so she flopped around the tube without actually hoisting herself aboard.

  Ainsley held out her hands and said in a nonjudgmental but firm way, “Stop! Just stop.”

  Maisy looked dejected sitting in the muddy shallow part of the lake in her brand-new swim-team-quality bathing suit.

  “Just stand there,” said Ainsley.

  Maisy stood up and Ainsley lifted the float above Maisy’s head and dropped it down so that Maisy was inside the circle. Then she said, “Now sit down.”

  Maisy sighed. “I can walk back to shore. The water isn’t even deep.”

  “Camp procedure. You fail the swim test, you get a ride back to shore,” Ainsley said.

  She made a great show of pulling Maisy to the lake’s edge. She was probably thinking about the guy counselors across the lake who might see her in lifeguard action.

  “The girl doesn’t even know how to be rescued the right way,” said Isa, as she waded back to shore with the three of us on her heels.

  When we all got back to the sandy shore, Maisy jumped off the tube. “I was just warming up. Let me try again. Please?”

  Ainsley shook her head and the tips of her hair sprinkled water on us. Her voice was kind. “You should’ve told me you don’t know how to swim. You could’ve gotten hurt.”

  “Do you know what this means?” shrieked Poppy.

  “What?” Maisy looked around at all of us. “What does it mean?”

  I could hear the bite in my own voice. “You’re disqualified from the swim race and the kayak race.”

  In that second, I saw something no one else did. A flicker of relief passed over Maisy’s face, and I hated her even more than I did before.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MAISY

  GETTING OUT OF KAYAKING WAS THE BEST THING THAT’S HAPPENED to me since I got here. Do you know how often those things tip over?

  Ainsley waved the other girls back to the water. “You guys didn’t fail the swim test. Nothing’s stopping you from doing laps.”

  I think Ainsley had enough of the girls and their drama, too. They started to complain, but when Isa ran to the dock, they all followed like a bunch of sheep. It was kind of weird to see Bea in a group. I’ve always thought of her as someone who doesn’t need to be part of things. When we were friends, she always wanted to hang out just the two of us. Then when I became part of the M & Ms, she seemed perfectly happy eating lunch alone in the library with a book in her hand.

  I was so cold my teeth were chattering and my wet towel wasn’t helping the situation, but I was really happy to be out of the water.

  Ainsley sat in a wooden chair with chippy blue paint that didn’t look very comfortable. She kept her eyes on the other girls in the water, which was pointless because it was obvious that none of them needed to be rescued. “Don’t think this means you’re getting out of swimming. Starting tomorrow you’re gonna use this time slot for lessons with the little kids.”

  “I thought the little kids are the ones swimming in the deep end over there,” I said, pointing to the group of girls who were goofing around with their wacky noodles and inflatable floats.

  “I mean the really little kids. The only kids who come here not knowing how to swim are usually first graders,” said Ainsley.

  “As if failing the swim test wasn’t already a blow to my ego?” I said, crumpling to the ground in my wet towel. I pulled it around me as tight as I could. “Why couldn’t my dad send me to an adventure camp with a heated pool?”

  “This should warm you up.” Ainsley pulled a triangle-shaped hunk of aluminum foil from her bag, revealing the biggest slice of pizza I had ever seen. “My step-dad owns a pizzeria. He’s always paranoid I’m gonna starve while I’m here, so he sends me on the bus with a few fresh slices.”

  She ripped the slice right down the middle and handed half to me. The crust was soft and the cheese was thick, with just a smear of sauce. This pizzeria step-dad knew the right cheese-to-sauce ratio.

  I took a bite, expecting cold pizza, but it tasted like it had just come out of the oven. “How is this still warm?”

  Ainsley spoke with her mouth full. “Magic pizza shop aluminum foil. My step-dad won’t tell anyone where he gets the stuff.” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “How’d you end up here?”

  I took a really small bite of pizza so I could make it last as long as possible. “My dad waited ’til the last minute to register for camp.”

  “Oh. I get it.” Ainsley tore off a piece of the crust and popped it in her mouth. “Your parents are getting divorced.”

  As if my life was that easy.

  “No. They just thought camp would be good for me. You know, to get me out of my comfort zone,” I said.

  “You’re gonna have to get yourself in a totally different comfort country if you want to make friends here,” Ainsley said.

  I was so cold that the bones in my fingers hurt, but the pizza was good enough to almost make me forget. “Can’t I just switch bunks?”

  “There’s a strict no-bunk-switching rule. Bailey put you in here on purpose, so her bunk can win the tournament. She can’t stand that we win every year and, no offense—but with you in our bunk, she actually has a chance,” Ainsley said.

  She took a big chug from her water bottle, then tilted it toward me. I was super thirsty. But I shook my head and flashed a no-thank-you smile since backwash freaks me out.

  I swallowed the last piece of cheesy goodness. “I have to find a way to convince my dad to let me come home.”

  Ainsley wiped her greasy hands on her towel. “It’ll never happen. The camp director is a pro at talking parents into making their kids stay. I mean, if they let every homesick kid go home, they would be out a boatload of money every summer.”

  I couldn’t handle a whole summer of Bea’s side-eye. Doesn’t she know that back home she’s the lucky one? At the end of the school day, she has her mom to go home to, a mom she can talk to. A mom who’s her best friend. The Gilmore Girls have nothing on Bea and her mom.

  I wiped my hands on my wet legs, which didn’t help get the pizza oil off but sort of moisturized my legs. “So, I’m stuck.”

  “Yeah. You better figure out a way to make it work.” Ainsley blew her whistle and waved the girls back to shore.

  I don’t know what kind of magical powers these girls had, but none of them looked cold as they ran to the path that led to our bunk.

  Ainsley hung back at the lake to talk to another counselor who was just starting her bunk’s swim time. I was busy concentrating on not stepping on anything gross like a spider, a worm, or, worse, a snake when Bea slowed down to walk with me.

  Her wet hair hung down her back in perfect corkscrew curls. Too bad it would turn into a hot mess as soon as she brushed the life out of it.

  “You should call your mom,” she said. “She’ll be speeding up I-95 as soon as she hears what this place is really like.”

  Bea was basing this theory on the Mom she used to know, the one who had it all together, with her weekly gel manis, Lululemons, and hair blown out at the salon every other day. The Mom who would stay up past midnight responding to emails about playdates and fund-raisers. That Mom had been replaced with someone who wore the same stained sweatpants and didn’t wash her hair for days, whose voicemail and email boxes overflowed. That Mom wouldn’t be rescuing me anytime soon. That Mom is the reason I’m here.

  “My mom’s not coming for me,” I said.

  Bea talked in a voice that was probably supposed to sound encouraging but that just sounded fake and desperate. “She defini
tely will. There’s no way she would make you stay somewhere so remote and physically challenging. She obviously didn’t understand what Camp Amelia was like when she registered you.”

  I tried to ignore my wet feet sliding around in my flip-flops and my Speedo straps digging into my shoulders. So far, everything about camp was uncomfortable.

  “It’s not gonna happen, Bea. I’m stuck here for the summer,” I said. Saying it out loud was awful because it made it really sink in.

  It was totally obvious the other girls were eavesdropping because they were the quietest they’d been since we all got to camp.

  Bea kept talking in that fake voice. “You can move to a cabin with other girls who are… less sporty. You know, girls who aren’t as competitive.”

  Ainsley called out from behind us with a mouth full of pizza. I knew there had to be another piece in that big bag of hers. “Nice try, Bea. You know there’s no bunk switching.”

  I glared at Bea. “Trust me, I would rather be anywhere but here.”

  Bea’s face turned so red it matched her bathing suit. “Trust you? That’s funny.”

  Ainsley stepped in between us. “Maisy, come with me. You need to check in with the nurse for your new camper physical.”

  Dad would have been shocked at how fast I headed toward that nurse’s cabin. As much as needles, tight arm pressure cuffs, and crinkly paper gowns freaked me out, a medical exam had to be better than hanging out with my bunkmates.

  BEA

  As I watched Maisy and Ainsley walk away, I pretended they were walking deep into the cover of the forest where there was a porthole waiting to take them to a distant realm. But because it was real life and not one of my fantasy novels, they simply made a right at the white birch trees near the center of camp where the nurse’s cabin, main office, and therapy cabin were located. Maisy was sure to have a panic attack when they arrived because the mere sight of a Band-Aid is enough to quicken her pulse.

  “The best thing Maisy could’ve done was drop you,” said Hannah, breaking me from my thoughts. “She was actually doing you a favor.”