Alex's Challenge (5 page)

They started drawing on the blank slab of wood that Valerie had brought over to Alex. The slab was the size of a laptop or dinner tray. Alex looked at it, wondering what the heck she'd do with it. It was so drab and dull and, well,
woody.

Valerie had started on her stool again, but with Alex's wide-eyed look of confusion, Valerie pushed her project aside. Alex thought that was really nice. Valerie picked up a pencil and a ruler and started drawing on the slab; she drew a paddle shape and turned it over.

“Now, you try,” Valerie said to Alex.

“Why? You already did a good job on the other side,” Alex answered. She didn't see why anyone should do the work twice.

“But my cutting board outline was sloppy. I definitely think you could do a better job,” Valerie said, trying to appeal to Alex's competitive streak.

Her approach worked. Alex started making the shape, using the eraser to fix any wobbly lines. When she was finished, the shape was perfect.

Valerie told Alex that she had a secret gift for drawing, but Alex insisted that if she could draw, it was only because her mother was an art teacher.

Next, Valerie showed Alex how to use the saw to cut the shape into the slab. They thought the spewing sawdust looked like Chelsea's hair in the morning, and they thought the buzzing noise sounded a whole lot better than Julie's alarm clock. Alex didn't realize that more than thirty minutes had gone by. Finally, Valerie got out a wood plane—kind of like a big nail file—to sand the splinters off the freshly cut board. Alex used the tool to rub the rough edges until they became smooth, and it
was
just like filing her nails into the perfect short shape she liked to keep them in. Another twenty minutes later, the girls were almost done with the entire cutting board project. The new boys in the class were barely finished drawing theirs.

“Whoa! What, are you two going to start your own carpentry class?” Adam's friend Jack said to them.

“Maybe we will!” Alex laughed. She never dreamed she'd actually enjoy woodworking. Not only that, she was pretty good at it. She was petite, but also very strong. That meant she could hold the wood against the noisy, gigantic saw that chopped it into usable pieces. Her arms didn't get tired when she was sanding with the wood plane either—back and forth, back and forth, smoothing all the edges. Tomorrow, she was going to stain it a reddish brown color to go with her mother's dishes. It wouldn't look plain or boring at all when she was done with it. She was shocked at how excited she was to start making her next project.

She was also excited because Valerie had been so much fun to partner with. Alex usually spent all of her free time with Brynn, and she realized that she might've been missing out on getting to know other cool girls. Valerie was so helpful, and she didn't complain once. Nor did she ask Alex to do anything for her. She didn't bring up the Adam thing anymore either—Val seemed to have that sixth sense of when to drop things. Alex thought that she and Val just
got
each other. They laughed at the same jokes, they never ran out of things to say, and neither one of them wanted to flirt with all the boys who kept teasing them. Yes, Alex was feeling much, much better about woodworking. The last two weeks of her time at Camp Lakeview might even be a whole lot better than she imagined.

chapter
FOUR

 

The next day, Alex spotted Adam drinking orange juice at the table right behind her at breakfast. He kept poking Jenna, trying to tell her something. Alex couldn't help but notice, now that Valerie had said something, that he did seem to be hanging around all the time. She'd seen him at meals in the rec room, in woodworking, and out on the soccer field. But Jenna had been eating and playing soccer with Alex, so Adam was probably just spending more time with his sister because
part
of what Valerie had said was totally true. Alyssa had been buddy-buddy with Simon's friend Trevor a whole bunch of times. Alex figured Adam was probably upset about it. She imagined that no one, boy or girl, would enjoy getting dumped.

It worked out really well for Alyssa—too well as far as Alex was concerned. She couldn't help but think it: Alyssa got together with Trevor so she could spend a lot more time with Natalie and Simon. Simon
was
pretty much Natalie's boyfriend. It was really weird how things worked out, and the whole incident just confirmed for Alex how strange her friends started acting once they became interested in boys. Alex thought camp (and school, for that matter) would be a lot more fun if the boys and girls just stayed friends and stopped flirting so much. Alex knew she sure wasn't flirting with anyone. She thought she might even talk to her parents about going to an all-girl high school one day.

“So, I have this idea,” Valerie said, hopping onto her stool at their table later that day during woodworking. Valerie was always a few minutes late for class because she was a free spirit. Alex was used to it—no one she knew was as prompt as she was. When Valerie finally arrived, Adam scurried away from the girls' table. Thankfully, Valerie didn't say anything about the situation—surely, she thought Adam was flirting with Alex again. Valerie was so wrong about her theory. Alex and Adam were just good friends!

“You like to play chess, right?” Valerie asked Alex, unpacking her woodworking supplies. Valerie just figured that Alex was super smart. A few weeks ago, when Grace had to read
Call of the Wild
because she had fallen behind in her fifth-grade reading class, Alex was the one who had helped her the most. Alex had read the book two times—for fun. In fact, Valerie guessed that some of the other girls, mainly Chelsea, were even jealous of Alex because she was smart in addition to being athletic and well-liked. This thought made Valerie excited for one reason in particular: because really smart people knew how to play chess.

“Actually, I don't,” Alex answered, standing next to the metal table in the woodshop. She had come into class with her soccer ball in her hands, and the instructor—a nice college student named Jeremy (a guy who really needed to take the tape off the bridge of his glasses)—had taken it away from her. He wasn't worried that Alex and Valerie would cause trouble or break things. Instead, he didn't want the boys in the class to start a game of keep-away right there in the cabin. They were kind of wild sometimes, especially Adam Spasm and his friends.

“Oh well,” Valerie said, twisting her long black braids and slumping a little on the stool. Valerie was always sitting. Alex always stood.

“Do you play?” Alex asked, putting her hair in a ponytail with the rubber band that was around her wrist. She wished she had a mirror, so it wouldn't look so crooked.

“Yeah, but not here this summer. No one knows how to!” Valerie said. “It's okay.” She started getting all the tools together for her next project.

“Wait, I've always wanted to learn to play,” Alex said, following Valerie to the supply closet. Alex was telling the truth, too. She'd seen people—all ages and races—playing chess in the park last Christmas when her parents took her to New York City. They were competing on concrete tables outside in the cold—and it was
really
cold in New York in December. Those chess players had the kind of dedication Alex could admire. She asked her parents to teach her, but they didn't know how either. At home, they usually played GoStop, a Korean card game that was totally fun.

“Will you show me how?” Alex asked.

“You can't be serious,” Valerie said, staring at her bug-eyed.

“Oh, I'm serious,” Alex said, sneaking a peek at Adam across the room. She just didn't get why girls
like
-liked boys so much. He was cute, but he was teaching his friends how to spit really long saliva wads and then suck them back into their mouths. She wondered if Simon did stuff like that when his friends were around and if Natalie would still like him if she saw.

“I'd love to!” Alex added. “I mean it!”

The girls made a plan to get together in the rec room after dinner for serious chess lessons. Valerie told Alex that it might take a few nights for her to pick it up. But then Valerie thought of how fast Alex had learned woodworking. She secretly hoped that they could start playing in two nights because, after all, Alex was really smart.

“So what's your idea?” Alex asked.

“Oh, it's no big deal,” Valerie said. “I just noticed that the chess set in the rec room is plastic. And it's all beat-up. My dad always plays with me on this really nice marble set we have at home. I thought it would be really cool if we made one in here to keep at Lakeview.”

“That's an amazing idea!” Alex said. She loved doing that kind of stuff. She was always helping the counselors with whatever they needed—and anyone else. Why not help the camp? Maybe they could even carve their initials on the bottom with a dedication. It was the least she could do to give back to Camp Lakeview. And it would be fun to play on “her” board year after year, she thought. The only worry Alex had was that chess would be really difficult to learn.
It will be okay. Val will help.

“I'm just glad you're into it,” Valerie added, walking over to ask Jeremy how the heck they were going to pull off this project. “Because carving out all of those little pieces would take me forever by myself.”

The two girls laughed a long time before they got to work. They figured out the dimensions of their board and pieces, and they made a to-do list so they'd be able to get it all done during those last two weeks of camp—or hopefully even earlier. Alex and Valerie were concentrating so intently on this idea that they didn't even notice when everyone else left the room for their swimming period.

“Girls,” Jeremy said, “if you don't go now, I'll have to lock you up in here.”

“Okay. We'll be fine, Jeremy,” Alex said to their instructor while Valerie started gathering their stuff.

“She's not kidding, either,” Valerie said, giggling. Alex was still working away.

“I'm glad to see such enthusiasm,” he said. “But I was kidding. I missed lunch, and I'm starving!”

“And we have to swim. Come on, Alex, let's go to the lake!”

Alex looked up. “Huh?” she said.

“Class is over. Let's hit the water,” Valerie said, now gathering Alex's stuff, too.

They ran to the bunk, threw on swimming suits, and headed out to the diving board. Alex didn't even run her post-free period errand that she usually ran. She was in too big of a hurry. She was having too much of an amazing time with Valerie. Plus, her mind was on the chess set, and she just wasn't being her usual organized, on-time, strictly scheduled self.

“Let's be swim buddies,” Valerie said, leading the way toward the blue, or more advanced, section.

That's when Alex's memory kicked back in. She suddenly realized that Brynn was probably standing around the corner waiting for her. But it was too late. Alex and Valerie had already dashed to the end of the dock, and they were all set to hurl themselves into the water. Before her plunge, Alex thought that Brynn would be okay since she had been swimming with Sarah for the past two days. At least Brynn wasn't alone, and she probably didn't even remember that Alex was supposed to meet her since she and Sarah had been so tight lately. Alex thought to herself,
Brynn is really cool—she'll totally understand.
After all, Brynn was always losing her camp projects and scripts and keys and swimsuits and socks, and Alex was always helping her find them. Surely, Brynn would understand this one time Alex when just happened to space out.

“Hey, what's wrong?” Valerie said as she looked from the diving board into the water way down below.

“Oh, nothing,” Alex said. She didn't want to worry Valerie with any of it, especially if Sarah had been dissing Valerie for Brynn lately.
What a mess!
Alex thought.
Are Sarah and Brynn becoming best camp friends? I don't understand why everyone can't just have fun together.

“So, partners?” Valerie asked, getting antsy to just get into the water already.

“Sure,” Alex said, knowing deep down that Brynn probably would be upset no matter what excuses Alex came up with. Alex decided to hope for the best, and off the diving board they went, the two of them at one time, even though they were not supposed to do that. Their bodies plunged through the twelve feet between the diving platform and the water. After six more seconds, their heads bobbed back up to the top. Alex and Valerie were laughing and splashing each other so much that they didn't even hear the lifeguard blow the whistle.

“Girls, girls!” the lifeguard called. “We can't have that. One at a time, you know that.”

They ran off before they could cause any more mischief. They went to the nearby swimming area where the rest of their friends were sure to be. By the shore, Natalie was lying on a blanket reading her magazines like always. Alyssa was right beside her. Alyssa was so funky and cool, Alex couldn't believe she'd just go and dump Adam like that for Trevor. But Alex would never get involved or say anything to either of them about it—she stayed out of other people's business. Alex decided not to join them and headed toward the lake.

“Hey, Alex,” Natalie said. “Hey, Valerie.”

Valerie stayed by the blanket to talk for a while. Alex smiled at everyone and said she had to go say hello to Brynn. She and Sarah were floating ten feet off the shore on two separate rafts. Alex swam out to them—assuming she could triple-up with them as a buddy—and gave Brynn a small, playful splash. She acted like nothing had happened, took a gulp, and hoped for the best.

“Ow!” Brynn yelled. “You just got water right in my eye. Geez!”