Camp Confidential 01 - Natalie's Secret

by Melissa J Morgan

  Walking to the mess hall, Natalie was actually kind of excited to see Marissa waiting on them. She wondered if all the CITs had cute matching uniforms that they wore when they served. And maybe Marissa would carry a funny notepad in her apron that she would use for taking orders, like in a real restaurant. Natalie wondered what they normally had for breakfast at Lakeview. If the cookout was any indication, the food wouldn’t be any great shakes, but that was no big deal. She could live on scrambled eggs if she had to.

  “Oh, and if the bug juice is yellow, don’t drink it,” Alex was saying to a group of girls.

  “Um, why?” Karen asked quietly. By now Natalie had gotten used to the fact that Karen did everything quietly.

  “Because you don’t know what they put in it,” Alex explained. “I mean, I guess you never can be too sure, but with yellow, it’s like asking for trouble. I wouldn’t put it past them if they peed in it,” she said, lowering her voice.

  “Ew,” Karen said.

  “That can’t be true,” Natalie interjected, holding out hope that Alex was just being dramatic.

  Jenna nodded solemnly. “It is, though. My oldest brother Matt—he’s not here anymore, he’s really old, and this summer he’s going to a summer college program in science, how boring is that?—anyway, his friend used to work in the kitchen. You would not believe the stuff that goes on in there. I mean, pee in the bug juice is seriously the least of it. I can tell you stories—”

  “—Please don’t,” Natalie begged.

  “Okay, okay,” Alex said, breaking into the conversation again like a weary referee. “Let’s just put it this way—if we tell you to avoid something, you’ll just have to trust us.”

  “Fair enough,” Natalie said.

  “This is our table!” Julie shouted, beckoning the girls to a long, cafeteria-style table and bench set just inside the mess hall.

  They’d been inside the mess hall for all of three seconds, and already Natalie’s head was spinning. For starters, the room was enormous, cavernous, with soaring ceilings held in place with long wooden beams and rafters. Which of course made for the kind of acoustics that sent the racket of at least two hundred separate conversations up into the air only to pour loudly back down. Natalie shook her head. So far, everything about camp seemed to be chaotic. Certainly the paint-splattered banners dangling from the walls, hailing color wars of years gone by. Natalie wasn’t sure yet what color war was, and she was almost afraid to ask. It sounded potentially stressful. And there was the clatter of silverware clinking against the surface of the tables. And the laughter coming from her own fellow bunkmates. Was she honestly the only person here who didn’t find camp to be one great big party?

  She looked up to see Alyssa cradling her chin on her palm, looking thoughtful. Okay, so she wasn’t exactly the only one. But that didn’t make it much better. Natalie was still hoping that her mother would come up on Visiting Day, take one look at this place, and throw Natalie into the backseat of her SUV and never look back. But Visiting Day was four long weeks away. And Natalie couldn’t bear the thought of having to mope her way through each passing day. There had to be some way to make the situation better, more bearable, at least.

  Didn’t there?

  A platter of rubbery-looking blackened pucks landed on the table in front of her with an unceremonious thud. Natalie gazed intently at the dish. “Nope, nuh-uh,” she decided, looking at Alex questioningly. “Not a clue.”

  Alex leaned forward and put her face closer to the food. The gesture did nothing to encourage Natalie to try the food. She inhaled deeply—it’s always nice when someone breathes directly on your food, Natalie thought fleetingly—and wrinkled her forehead in concentration.

  “French toast,” she pronounced, pushing the tray toward Natalie. “It’s all yours.”

  Natalie regarded the dried-up slabs of bread again. In no way did they resemble French toast. French toast was what she ordered at her local diner on Sundays, when she and her mother had brunch. French toast was thick and eggy and covered in toasted pecans. It looked nothing like a hockey puck. And it wasn’t black. “Oh, I couldn’t,” Natalie said shortly. “Really.”

  “Come on, Nat, you have to eat something,” Julie prodded. “Here comes Marissa. Maybe she can tell you what else there is for breakfast.”

  Natalie glanced up. It didn’t seem as though Marissa had paid too much attention to any beauty tips this morning. She was wearing a very un-hip plastic apron over cutoff shorts and a tank top, and she had a smudge of something yellow—possibly egg yolk—drying across her cheek. Her eyes looked red and tired, and her hair hung limply at her shoulders. Natalie got the distinct impression that there weren’t too many alternatives to the morning menu. Marissa certainly wasn’t carrying pen and paper, anyway.

  “What’s wrong?” Marissa added, sounding harried. “Do you guys need more food?”

  “No—no!” Alex said quickly. “I mean, we’re fine, we’re all good,” she corrected.

  Natalie could see that working as a waitress was very hard work, and the last thing she wanted to do was add to Marissa’s burden. But the French toast was seriously out of the question. “Marissa,” she began slowly, “is there, ah, anything else to eat?”

  For a moment, Marissa looked as though she wanted to cry. Then she brightened. “I think there’s fruit!” she said, darting off in the direction of the kitchen. Natalie’s spirits soared. She’d be able to at least make it through the morning on a banana. Lunch had to be better than this disaster.

  “Here you go,” Marissa pronounced, depositing a cracked plastic bowl in the middle of the table. Natalie reached in and grabbed an apple. Her finger immediately sunk through the skin and into a mealy bruise.

  “Um, thanks,” she said, sighing. “Do you know what’s for lunch?”

  After the girls had finished eating—or, in Natalie’s case, pushing food around on her plate in the hopes that Julie would think she was eating—they filed out of the mess hall so that Marissa and the other CITs would be able to clean up. If Marissa was going to be spending so much time in the kitchen, Natalie fretted, she’d never have any energy leftover for the bunk. And then who was going to help her when she flat-ironed her hair? Alyssa was cool, but she didn’t seem like the kind of girl who spent a whole lot of time on her hair, after all.

  Natalie was so completely lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice that she had stomped directly into someone. A boy someone, to be specific. The boy someone grunted and stepped forward forcefully. Her foot caught on the back of his shoe and practically pulled it off his foot.

  “Hey, what’s your problem?” the boy asked, whirling around. He sounded annoyed.

  “It wasn’t on purpose,” Natalie said, feeling defensive. So she was a klutz. Whatever. Just one more reason why she wasn’t going to win Camper of the Week.

  But one look at her victim, and Natalie felt like maybe there would be some upsides to spending the summer at Lakeview, after all.

  The boy, whoever he was, peered at her curiously. He had thick, curly black hair and eyes so deeply blue that it took Natalie a moment to figure out what color they were. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized she was staring, but she couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter, anyway, because whoever he was, he was staring right back at her.

  Then one of his bunkmates jostled into him, and the moment was broken. He reached down and coaxed his foot back into his sneaker, stood up, stretched his arms over his head, and walked out of the mess hall without another glance in Natalie’s direction.

  “His name is Simon,” said a voice in Natalie’s ear.

  “Huh?” Natalie asked, spinning to see Marissa standing just beside her, looking exhausted but eagerly taking in the scene. “Who?” she asked again, trying to sound casual.

  Marissa shot her a knowing look. She waved her hand toward Simon’s retreating frame. “His name is Simon. He’s in bunk 3F.”

  Natalie shrugged. “Whatever,” she said, feeling colo
r rush to her cheeks. She gathered her composure and nodded toward the exit, where Julie and the rest of 3C were making their way out of the building. “I have to, uh, catch up,” she said, and took off before Marissa could say anything else.

  Simon. Okay. So he had cool eyes. But so what?

  What did she care about Simon?

  chapter FIVE

  The next morning, the girls returned to their bunk after breakfast. By now, Natalie had had a chance to see that Julie hadn’t been exaggerating yesterday—there really wasn’t any time to do any last-minute primping—not that there was any reason to, in this humidity. The morning chill had gradually warmed over, and already little trickles of sweat were forming on the insides of Natalie’s elbows and the backs of her knees. She could only imagine what the weather would be like by midday.

  For now, though, the girls were responsible for doing chores. Back home, Natalie’s mother worked such long hours at her art gallery that she had hired a housekeeper to come in once a week to clean. Natalie often straightened up her room—at least, she made her bed every morning and emptied out the dishwasher when necessary—but that was about the extent of her acquaintance with chores. Julie proudly held up the chore wheel that she had created. On the inner circle of the wheel, she had written up all the tasks, such as scrubbing out the toilets, emptying the wastebaskets, or sweeping the front porch. On the outer circle were all the girls’ names. Every day, Julie would shift the outer wheel, so that each day the girls would rotate which chores they were responsible for. “I can’t wait until it’s my turn to do toilets,” Grace quipped as she headed outside with the trash.

  “Girls, before you start your chores, listen up. I want to give you your schedules, okay?” Julie called out. “Every day after breakfast, we come back to the bunk and clean for a half an hour. Then after that, we’ve got a specialty that we travel to as a bunk: nature, arts and crafts, ceramics, woodworking, drama, photography, and the newspaper. It switches every day. After that comes instructional swim. Today you’ll be taking your swim tests for placement. After swim comes a free choice, then sports, then lunch, second free choice, then siesta after free swim. While you do your chores, I’ll be talking to each of you individually and taking down your selections for your free choices. You should pick three, and I promise I’ll do my best to make sure that you get two of the ones that you pick. Okay? Get to it! Karen, come talk to me about free choice.”

  Dutifully (and, truth be told, somewhat eagerly), Karen put down her scrub brush and scampered over to Julie’s bunk. She didn’t seem very sorry about having to put off bathroom duty.

  As she swept the front porch, Natalie thought about which free choices would be most interesting to her. Photography could be really cool—definitely something she could keep up back in the city if it turned out that she was any good at it. So she would choose that. And secondly, she wouldn’t mind writing for the newspaper. Her English teacher in school was always telling her she was a good writer. And for a third choice she would pick drama. Drama was something else that she would probably be good at. After all, it ran in the family. Which was, of course, one of the reasons why she usually steered clear of it. But if it came down to drama or nature, she’d take drama all the way. It was definitely better than any of the other, “campier” choices available. What was woodworking, anyway?

  Natalie brushed all the excess dust off the porch and directly onto the ground. Julie hadn’t given her a dust pan and, besides, the ground was nothing but dirt, anyway. She picked her broom up and walked back inside the bunk.

  Inside, though, she was immediately given the shock of her life. Over Alex’s bed was a huge poster of Tad Maxwell from his latest movie, Spy in the Big City. Instantly, Natalie’s blood ran cold. What was that poster doing up? Was Alex a fan of the “spy” movies? Did she know who Tad Maxwell really was? No, Natalie decided, she couldn’t know. It had to be some sort of coincidence. And if Natalie could keep her cool, Alex would never know, either.

  She willed herself to maintain her composure. “Hey, Alex, is that your poster?” she asked as casually as she could.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah,” Alex said, tossing a wet sponge into a bucket of soapy water. She had been working on the sinks in the bathroom. “Isn’t it cool? My older brother loves Tad Maxwell ’cause he kicks so much butt, and then he got me into the ‘spy’ movies. I’m a huge fan. I think he’s really cute, too. What about you?”

  “Oh, um, you know. I think Tad Maxwell is cool,” Natalie stammered, “but there are, you know, lots of other things I like better. I’m more into chick flicks,” she said, pulling herself together.

  “Yeah, me too!” Grace said, coming up behind her. “And musicals. Does it get any better than Grease?” She broke into a few bars of “Summer Nights,” causing all the girls to crack up.

  “Nat, you’re the only one who hasn’t chosen her electives yet,” Julie said, interrupting the laughter. “Do you know what you want?”

  “Yeah,” Natalie said, crossing the room to squat on the floor next to Julie’s bed.“Anything but nature! Seriously, though,” she continued, “I’d be into photography, the newspaper, and . . . drama. Yeah, drama could be cool,” she finished, sounding slightly uncertain. She glanced at Alex’s poster again.

  Natalie thought maybe she already had enough drama in her life.

  Julie worked on putting together the girls’ free-choice schedules while they were in arts and crafts. Natalie and her bunkmates were hard at work twisting long plastic strands into specially woven patterns. “What are these things for, anyway?” Natalie whispered to Jenna. She was used to being really good at things when she wanted to be, but at camp, everything was different and unfamiliar. She felt really frustrated.

  Jenna shrugged. “It’s lanyard. It’s a camp tradition. You’ll have about a million lanyard key chains by the time the summer is over.”

  Natalie thought about the cool lip-gloss key chain that Hannah had given her at her last birthday. That was way more useful than this . . . lanyard. But she had promised herself that she would give camp a try, so she kept her opinion to herself. And, anyway, the pink and turquoise color scheme she’d thought up was looking pretty good, in her opinion. Way tropical.

  “Okay, girls, I’ve got your schedules worked out,” Julie announced as the girls worked. “Now, I want you all to know that I did everything I could to make sure that you each got at least one of your three choices, and I’m pretty sure I was successful. But if you’re not totally happy with your free choices, just know that we swap every two weeks, okay? So you won’t be spending two full months doing something you’re not that into. But try to keep an open mind—you might find you’re better at something than you would have expected.” With that, she called the girls over to a corner of the art room one at a time to let them know their schedules.

  Natalie watched in anticipation as one by one, the girls were given their choices. Grace skipped back to the art table after talking to Julie. “Ceramics and drama,” she said, beaming. “So awesome. I wanted to be in the school play, and I wanted to learn to use the kiln. Last year, Alex made a really cool coffee mug, and I want to do the same thing.”

  Brynn was also thrilled with her choices. “Drama,” she practically sang. “I heard that the play this year is going to be Peter Pan, and I think I’d be the perfect choice for Wendy. And also the newspaper,” she said as an afterthought. She began to hum the chorus to one of the songs from Peter Pan under her breath. Natalie could see that Brynn already had visions of her name up in lights.

  “Natalie?” Julie called.

  Natalie pushed her lanyard aside and jumped up. She rushed over to Julie, wishing she didn’t feel so nervous. It’s just free choice, Nat, she reminded herself. “What’d I get?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Well, you’ve got the newspaper for first free,” Julie said. “With Alyssa. I thought you two would like to be together.”

  Natalie exhaled sharply. “Great. That could be fun.”

&n
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