“I know.” She took the elastic from her ponytail, shook out her hair, and pulled it back, higher than before. “I should’ve stuck with you from the beginning. At least he ditched me now, instead of halfway through the trip. We can still be buddies, right, Mel?”
“Oh,” I said. “Actually . . .”
A shadow crossed Olivia’s face. “Right. Of course. You found someone else.” Then she brightened. “But it’s not too late to switch.”
“Olivia,” I said, and stopped. Adeline was standing just a few feet away, waiting, watching, her face carefully blank. “I . . . don’t think I can.”
“What do you mean?” Olivia said. “Yeah, it’s a little awkward, but I can do the talking if you’re too scared. I’m sure they’ll understand. I’m your best friend, and there are—what do you call them—extenuating circumstances.”
“No,” I said, reeling the word up from my gut like a stone from the bottom of a well. It was heavy. It was hard. And it came out louder than I meant. “I don’t want to switch.”
Olivia looked like she’d been slapped all over again. “Melly?” she said. Not like Melly, what do you mean? or Melly, how could you say that to me? but Melly, is that really you?
That was what decided it for me—that after the past week, my best friend no longer seemed to know me. Whether it was because she’d forgotten or because I’d changed I didn’t know. But I wasn’t the person she thought I was, not judging by the shock in her eyes.
I was used to feeling pulled along by Olivia. I liked it, even. She pulled me forward, to new and exciting places I wouldn’t go on my own: attending Ms. Estrada’s instrument petting zoo, starting a band, going to camp. But ever since we’d arrived at Camp Rockaway, she’d been pulling away from me, only connecting when it suited her.
And when we were together, it felt like she was pulling me backward, away from the things I wanted. Away from the lake, away from the raft, away from my new friends and especially Adeline. It wasn’t fair for Olivia to pull me away from her, just because Noel had turned out to be a total butthead.
Adeline came over and laid a hand on my arm. “Melly, hey, there’s room in Yasmina’s van, but we have to go now.”
Olivia’s eyebrows went up, and I could hear her thinking, Gladeline? But I didn’t care.
“We’ll talk about this tonight,” I promised, giving her one more quick hug. I might be frustrated, but I wasn’t heartless. “Try to have fun without him, okay? You’re awesome, and he’s a jerk. You shouldn’t let him ruin your day.”
I hurried after Adeline and scrambled into the waiting van. Damon slammed the sliding door after us. I didn’t look back.
We bumped along the dirt road away from camp. Skip drove, Blair sat shotgun, and Armani passed out breakfast from a cooler. Granola bars, fruit, juice boxes, hardboiled eggs, cheese sticks, and best of all: Pop-Tarts. There was barely any radio reception near Camp Rockaway, but we sang along to static-filled oldies and country songs, belting so loud my ears rang and Blair threatened to put on talk radio.
The ride grew long—not as long as the ride back to Kalamazoo would be, but close. I leaned my head against the window, my eyes drifting shut, until someone shouted, “Michigan’s Adventure! We’re going to Michigan’s Adventure, aren’t we?” Sure enough, we passed a billboard showing screaming, happy people on a roller coaster, on a water slide, eating cotton candy. It was only five miles away.
“Wow,” Adeline said. “I guess they felt like they had to make up for last year.”
“What happened?” I asked. Toni and Shauna hadn’t mentioned any disasters. Maybe they’d blocked it out.
“The way I heard it, some parent complained that our camp dollars weren’t going to a ‘thematically appropriate activity,’ so we went to the Music House Museum in Traverse City. It’s a museum about the history of musical instruments and stuff. It was okay, but kind of like school. And even though we went on speedboat rides afterward, and got dinner at this marina drive-in, it was not the most popular field trip.”
“There won’t be anything remotely educational about today!” Yasmina said. “I can’t wait to go on the Thunderhawk. I heard it’s like flying, but really scary.”
“What about you, Melly?” Adeline asked. “You have any favorite rides?”
Not the Thunderhawk. Then again, I’d survived a whole week of firsts. “I’m up for almost anything,” I said.
“That’s the spirit,” she said, hugging me around the shoulders.
At the amusement park entrance, the counselors passed out our admission wristbands. I caught Olivia watching me from across the crowd. She shook her head slowly, sadly. I gave her an encouraging thumbs-up, and she turned away. I hoped once she’d been on a few rides she’d forget Noel. While she was at it, she could forget me. She’d been doing it all week, after all.
I felt guilty, but only a twinge. Things always have to be about her. Can’t just one day be about me?
“Okay, Van Three,” Blair said. “Skip and Armani and I have been talking, and we think it would be smart to start the day on the water park side and then come back over for the rides.”
“But it’ll be hotter in the afternoon,” someone protested.
“Exactly,” Blair said. “If we do the water park now, we won’t have to compete with all the people waiting until it’s super hot. Besides, do you really want to ride all the way back to camp in a soggy swimsuit?”
When she put it that way, almost everyone agreed. Armani passed around a bottle of sunscreen, and away we went.
All morning, we slid down water slides, rode inner tubes on the Lazy River, and swam in the wave pool. It seemed like every five minutes the counselors were making us run to the drinking fountains to rehydrate. By the time Blair announced it was time for lunch, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do more: take a nap or eat a moose. Instead we went to the concession area, where I ordered a slice of veggie pizza and some French fries, just like Adeline.
The afternoon went by slower, mainly because the lines were longer. But it was still fun. I went on every ride with Adeline, even on the Wolverine Wildcat, which was old and wooden and so rickety my teeth rattled; even on the Shivering Timbers, which was twice as tall and made me light-headed just looking at it. I was terrified every moment, but I was glad I’d done it.
Adeline surprised me by balking at the Flying Trapeze.
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “You just went on the Thunderhawk. That’s way scarier.”
She shrugged. “Not to me. On the Flying Trapeze, you’re dangling in those little chairs, swinging out so far you’re almost sideways. I always think the chains are going to break and send me spinning into the next county.”
“I think it’s cool. It reminds me of little spiders, spinning out on their lines of silk,” I said.
“Don’t work your poetic wiles on me,” Adeline growled.
“What if I just ask?” I said. “I did go on the Thunderhawk with you. Which, honestly, scared the crap out of me.”
“I could tell by the way you screamed bloody murder the entire time. My ears are still ringing!” she said. “Fine. I’ll give it a try. But if the chains break—”
“I’ll make sure we play a very nice song at your funeral.”
The Flying Trapeze was way bigger than the swings at the Kalamazoo County Fair, but that only made it more magical. From the moment the machine hoisted us into the air and we began to spin gently out, farther and farther, I was enchanted. I could see the tops of the trees—the other rides—the water park. I looked for Lake Michigan but couldn’t quite see it. I let go of the chains and held out my arms.
I was at the machine’s mercy. Even if I hadn’t been hurtling through the air, I couldn’t escape my chair until the ride stopped and they unlocked the safety bars. I could’ve felt helpless. I could’ve felt trapped. But I didn’t. I felt safe and powerful. I felt free.
Adeline sat with her hands firmly on the chains, a determined expression on her face. “Hey, look,”
I yelled. “No hands!” She shook her head at me and smiled, and my heart lifted its wings and flew higher still.
It was the most wonderful feeling.
“Okay,” Blair said afterward, checking her watch, “we’ve got time for two more rides. What’ll it be?”
“It’s so hot,” someone moaned. “Can we please go on some water rides?”
“It’s up to you. Just don’t blame me when you ride back to camp with a soggy butt.”
We went on the Grand Rapids first. All of us, even Armani and Skip, fit on two round rafts. Water sloshed around us as we bumped through the obstacle course. Whenever we hit a rock or went down a slide, waves gushed over the side. And when we went under the waterfall at the end, everyone got drenched. Blair, who’d stayed on dry land to watch our stuff, smirked as we exited, dripping. But none of us cared.
The Flying Trapeze would’ve been the perfect way to dry off, but almost everyone wanted to try something new. We lined up for the HydroBlaster instead.
“It sounds like something a plumber would use to unclog a toilet,” Adeline said.
“Close,” Skip said. “It’s a kind of pressure washer. You use it to hose off scum that’s stuck on really bad. I once used one on a boat I was restoring.”
“Sounds like heaps of fun. Maybe I’ll sit this one out, too,” said Blair.
“Relax,” Yasmina said. “It’s another raft ride. The catch is it’s completely in the dark.”
“All right,” Blair said. “Just remember, it’s the last one. So make it count.”
These rafts held only two people. Adeline and I were last to board our little sky blue raft. I sat in front, my knees squished to my chest. Behind me, Adeline’s knees hugged my hips. We waited in the dark as the rafts ahead of us lurched forward, screams echoing up the dark tunnel toward us.
“Melly?” Adeline said in a low voice. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah?” I whispered back, twisting to face her.
“I was wondering—” she began.
Then the raft started to slide forward, fast, and I hurried to face forward.
But not before Adeline’s lips touched mine.
Twenty
We hurtled downward into the blackness, water splashing around us. The slide twisted this way and that, sending us swinging far to one side, then the other. But I barely noticed. My heart and stomach and brain were doing far more elaborate acrobatics. Had Adeline really kissed me? Or was it just a bump, an accident, as the raft suddenly started moving?
The ride couldn’t have lasted longer than a verse of “Ring Around the Rosie,” but by the time our raft burst out of the chute into the sunlight, I’d experienced a symphony’s worth of emotions. I blinked and climbed out shakily, my knees unsteady. My fingers rose to my face. My lips buzzed.
Adeline bent to tie her shoe. When she stood, she flashed her usual grin. “Fun ride, huh?”
“Um, yeah,” I said. Had I imagined it? Maybe it hadn’t been Adeline’s lips I’d felt. Maybe it was her hand, or her hair.
No. Lips did not feel like fingers. They did not feel like hair. Accidentally or on purpose, Adeline had kissed me.
“Kind of a tame one to go out on, if you ask me,” Yasmina said.
Adeline shrugged. “I guess it was a little tame. But I liked it.”
A little tame, but she liked it? Was she serious?
“Looks like it knocked the wind out of Melly,” Yasmina said.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just a little dizzy.”
I was quiet on the ride back to camp. We all were, compared to the ride down, but I barely said a word. I felt like I’d swallowed a seed. It had sprouted in my stomach, and now it was sending out tendrils—creeping, curling, leafing, blooming. Growing dark, tiny berries that made my mouth tingle. Did everyone’s first kiss make them feel this way? My fingertips drifted to my lips again, but I lowered them quickly in case Adeline noticed.
She sat so close to me our arms and knees brushed, so close we knocked into each other when the van took a turn. Every time we made contact, my heart beat faster. Was Adeline talking louder than normal? I couldn’t tell. I felt like all my senses had been scraped raw—every touch, every scent, every sound was more.
For days I’d felt there was something special about Adeline. I’d known she liked me as a friend, and of course I’d liked her. I’d wandered camp hoping to find her and lit up like a giddy firefly when I did. But it had never occurred to me to kiss her.
Now that she’d kissed me, it seemed so obvious. Of course I wanted to kiss her. Of course that was what that shiver down my spine, that glow in my belly, meant. It wasn’t so different from my crush on Arjit, except it was even stronger. It had only taken me so long to recognize it because I wasn’t expecting it—not at Camp Rockaway, and not a girl.
It was funny that all this time my friends had been pushing me toward David. Even I’d begun to see his potential. But something was missing. It was like the time Dad forgot to put baking powder in Mom’s birthday cake. The batter looked perfectly normal when he poured it in the pan, but it refused to rise in the oven. It came out a vanilla-flavored hockey puck.
Why Adeline and not David? I didn’t know. Of course everybody couldn’t like everybody. There’d be total chaos: Olivia, Candace, and Noel times a billion. Still, I wondered if meeting Adeline had flipped a switch inside me. Would I only like girls now, or was she an exception to the rule?
Or maybe there were no rules. Maybe you had to let your heart work on a case-by-case basis.
My bigger question was, how could Adeline leave me in the parking lot with a squeeze on the arm and a promise to see me later, no explanation, no indication of what she was thinking? She was acting like nothing had happened, when I knew nothing would be the same again.
Our counselors sent us up to the lodge. The kitchen staff had the day off, so dinner was simple: sub sandwiches, salad, and Popsicles on the lawn. Everyone looked sunburned. Everyone looked tired. Everyone looked happy—almost. I found Olivia sitting alone at the fringe. Her eyes flickered up at me for a second, then dropped away. She kept chewing, not saying a word.
I’m not sure why people talk about having to face the music when they’re in trouble, because to me there’s nothing worse than a stony silence. I’d seen this look on Olivia’s face before: her dark eyes black in the shadow of her furrowed brow, her mouth pinched shut. The difference was that I’d never seen her look at me this way, with this mixture of anger and disappointment and hurt. I’d never given her a reason to.
I took a deep breath and decided to copy Adeline and pretend everything was normal. Maybe pretending was all it would take to make it true. I settled on the grass beside her, balancing my plate on my lap. “Hey. How was your day?”
She surprised me by answering almost normally, too. “Okay.”
I tried again. “I never thought we’d go somewhere as cool as Michigan’s Adventure.”
She shrugged. “It was all right.”
“I heard it was one of the best trips yet,” I said, feeling bolder. “Adeline said last year they went to a music history museum and—”
“Oh, Adeline said, did she?”
I could’ve kicked myself. Was I trying to rub my decision in Olivia’s face?
“You know how you told me not to let Noel ruin my day?” Olivia said, her voice growing louder. “Guess what. He didn’t. You did.”
“Olivia, I—”
“Your best friend, who you’ve known almost your entire life, gets ditched by the boy she likes, in front of all his friends. And what do you do? You run off with some random.”
Her words stung. Adeline was anything but some random—to me, at least. “I had to. If I’d ditched Adeline, I wouldn’t have been any better than Noel.”
“Really? Let’s consider that a moment.” Olivia’s voice was tight and high. “First of all, I’m pretty sure Noel didn’t ditch me because his best friend was in trouble. You were right, he’s a jerk, plain and simple. He like
s my bass chops more than he likes me. Second, it wasn’t an either-or situation. You could’ve been Adeline’s buddy without ditching me. All you had to do was wait for a van with room enough for all of us. But no. You hightailed it as soon as you got the chance. You didn’t even look back to see who I ended up with.”
There was absolutely nothing I could say to that. She was 100 percent right.
“Anyway, it didn’t matter who I ended up with because all I could think about was how my best friend completely abandoned me on one of the worst days of my life. Can you imagine what that felt like, Melly? For Noel to say the things he said in front of all his friends, and me not able to say a word without sounding like everything he said was true? I needed you. I needed my best friend, and you completely failed me.” Tears cascaded down her cheeks.
I felt like there was a bone lodged in my throat. I struggled to whisper around it. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
And I was. Would it have killed me, this morning, to say, Hey, Adeline, let’s all wait for the next van so Olivia can come, too? It probably would’ve been fine. It probably would’ve been fun. But I wasn’t looking that far ahead. All I could think was how I didn’t want to spend another ounce of energy on Olivia.
My moment of selfishness had ruined her entire day. I’d known she was hurting, and I’d gone anyway. I was a terrible person, a terrible friend.
“Olivia, it was a really bad thing I did. Please forgive me.”
She didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she whispered, “Do you know what he said to me, in front of everyone? He said, ‘Bros before hos.’ Why would he call me that, Melly? I’ve never even kissed a boy, except for Truth or Dare. There’s no way he could know about that.”
“It’s just a saying,” I said. “A mean one. You know that.”
“I can’t believe I have to play in a band with him all week,” Olivia said. She began crying again, her plate shaking so hard in her hands it threatened to spill on her lap. “And Candace! She sure didn’t waste any time. I heard Noel won a pink teddy bear in one of the carnival games and gave it to her.”
Drum Roll, Please Page 14