Campfire Cookies (6 page)

By lunchtime, all of the cabin flags had been hung up on cords suspended between the ceiling beams in the mess hall. The doors opening and closing created drafts that made the flags flutter. Even with so many tarantulas, the room seemed festive.

Flowerpot Cabin's giant chocolate chip cookie was in the center of things—right over the silverware
caddies. It looked excellent. Some real country should use the cookie symbol on its flag someday. Who wouldn't be happy to pledge allegiance to a cookie?

The horse-poop flag—
ewww
—had been hung in a far corner.

Olivia and I arrived at lunch at the same time. Hannah wasn't there yet. I had just sat down and was thinking about sandwiches when—at last!—I spotted the back of Vivek's head. It was attached to the rest of him and sitting three tables away with the other boys from Silver Spur Cabin.

Did I feel relieved? Did I feel happy? Did my heartbeat speed up a little?

I cannot say for sure because I did not have a chance to think. Right away, Olivia saw him too and elbowed me. “Grace!
Look
!”

“I know—
shhhh
! Don't stare, O!”

“Go talk to him!” She practically shoved me off the bench.

“That's okay. I don't have to—,” I started to say.

“Is that Vivek?” Emma sat down and leaned over me to get the mayonnaise.

“Grace
refuses
to go talk to him,” Olivia said.

“That is not true! I just do not want to bother—”

“Here he comes!” Olivia announced.

My stomach clenched, which was not my fault; it was Olivia's. She was making such a big deal out of everything.

I did not look up. I did not want to see him and smile too wide, or worse, act all jittery and embarrassed. Instead, I concentrated on a blue bowl full of peanut butter set out in the middle of the table, and I waited to hear Vivek's voice over the hum of talking and eating noises in the mess hall.

He would say, “Hi, Grace,” and I would be casual, “Oh, what a surprise, Vivek. It's you.”

But that's not what happened. I didn't hear Vivek's voice at all. Instead, it was Olivia again. “Oh, never mind. He's talking to Lucy.”

“Wait . . . what?” My gaze left the bowl of peanut butter fast and found Vivek and Lucy, standing by the
milk station and laughing about something. Then Vivek went back to his table, and Lucy came over to ours with her glass of milk.

Vivek never even looked in my direction.

Olivia pounced the second Lucy sat down. “Why didn't you bring him to say hi?
Someone
”—she nodded at me—“is
dying
to see him!”

Lucy seemed surprised. “Vivek? He just got here.” She started to make herself a peanut butter sandwich. “I'm starving. Has everybody done Meet-Your-Horse? Mine's called Spot 'cause he's a pinto. It's not a very original—”

“Lucy?” Emma interrupted. “I think Grace has been kind of curious about why Vivek's late getting to camp. Do you know why?”

Lucy said, “Yes.”

I said, “Emma, it's okay. I can speak for myself.”

“So in that case”—Olivia looked at me intensely—“why don't
you
, Grace, ask
her,
Lucy, to tell
us
why Vivek was late getting to camp.
Okay
?”

Most people think of me as quiet and nice—shy, even.

But most people are wrong.

I have what my father calls a “volatile” temper. It means that when I lose it, I go the tiniest bit ballistic. It does not happen often. Last year at camp, it did not happen at all. . . .

Which explains why my friends were so shocked when I suddenly stood up from the lunch table and said: “WOULD YOU PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE ABOUT VIVEK? IF I WANT TO TALK TO HIM, I WILL!”

Since no one else in the mess hall happened to be speaking loudly at that moment, everybody in the mess hall heard me. This was unlucky.

Another unlucky thing was how I knocked over my glass when I pushed away from the table, and milk splashed everywhere, and then the glass rolled off the table's edge and fell to the floor and broke—
crash!—
into a million sharp and tiny pieces.

Now everyone at lunch was looking in my direction, even Vivek.

It was five or six minutes later that the full force of
embarrassed
hit me. By then I had stomped through the main doors and out of the mess hall and into central
camp, where I was pacing under the cottonwood trees—ten steps right turn, ten steps right turn, ten steps right turn, ten steps right turn—making perfect squares.

Why was I such an idiot? Why was Olivia such an idiot? Why did she have to make such a big deal out of everything?

Because of her I was hungry and alone, and I could never face Vivek, ever—not if we were the last two people on Earth, or at Moonlight Ranch, either.

It was funny how my new bunkmates were impressed that I knew Lucy.

They had all seen the clip of her from the TV, the one where she sounded all extra-humble the way a superhero always does before she (or he) suits up. Anyway, we were at lunch, and my counselor, Lance, had just introduced me around to my new bunkmates, and I got up to get milk and ran into Lucy, and she asked why I
was late getting to camp, and I told her, and then I sat back down again, and the guys were all like, “
Dude!
You
know
her?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, feeling the tiniest bit cool about it. “We're friends.”

“It's brave what she did,” said Jamil, who is almost as tall as Lance and skinny and from Cleveland. “Plus, she's hot.”

Hot? I had never thought about Lucy that way. In my mind, “hot” is a word that goes with singers and models, not people you actually know.

“If you say so,” I said, and then Zach changed the subject.

“Sorry you got such a lousy bunk,” he said, “but Jamil here—he insisted on the single, and Lance let him have it.”

“I'm claustrophobic,” Jamil said. “Can't stand being closed in by the ceiling or a bunk above my head.”

“Poor, poor baby,” said Zach.

I started to say I didn't care what bunk I got, but before the words left my mouth, Grace stood up and
yelled at Olivia, then everybody turned to look.

At first I didn't even didn't realize my name was part of it—then Jamil said it was and added, “So I guess that Asian girl's your friend too, right? And I guess she's crazy?”

“I never used to think so,” I said.

If that sounds lame, please consider that I was really sleepy at the time. I had taken a night flight from Pennsylvania to D.C., and then a red-eye to Phoenix. That was all my dad could get when he changed my ticket. A van had picked me up early in the morning at the airport and brought me here. When I arrived, there was just time to throw my bags in Silver Spur Cabin and come to lunch.

I had been looking forward to seeing Grace, actually. Now I looked over again, and saw she was going out the door. Was she okay? And where was their counselor, anyway? On the first day of camp, counselors usually eat with their campers. I could see Lance at the salad bar right now—going wild with the bacon bits.

I might've gotten up to ask about her . . . except I had
just constructed for myself a cheese and tomato sandwich that could only be described as epic.

And I was
so-o-o-o
hungry!

My mouth watered as I prepared to take the first bite.

Whatever was up with Grace, the girls would sort it out.

So Grace put on quite the performance in the mess hall, and after it all of us sat still for several seconds, brains blank, mouths open. Since when did quiet, perfect Grace throw tantrums?

Let me just say, it was more than
my
mind could fathom!

At the same time, there was one thing I wanted to
make perfectly clear: “You guys,” I said, “what happened just now, you know it wasn't my fault—right?”

Lucy aimed her big unblinking eyes at me. “You shouldn't tease Grace about Vivek,” she said.

“I wasn't teasing!” I protested. “I was
encouraging
.”

Emma had stood up from the table by this time. Where was she going? “You were bossing her, O,” she said. “And no one likes to be bossed.”

This was more than I could take. “Seriously, Emma? That is pretty amusing coming from you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Emma asked.

“Only that you're the biggest boss of all!” I said.

“Hoo boy,” said Lucy, under her breath.

I fight with my brother, Troy, all the time, and he fights back. Now I expected Emma to do the same, but she didn't. Instead, she turned toward the kitchen and walked away.

“What the heck!” I looked at Lucy. “Do my armpits smell? Everyone is abandoning me!”

“Only Grace abandoned you,” said Lucy. “I'm still
here, and Emma just went to get stuff to clean up the spill. See?”

Lucy was right. Emma was coming back. She had a broom, a dustpan, and a rag. Her face was all pouty. Without looking at either Lucy or me, she started sweeping up broken glass. I wondered where Hannah was, anyway. Cleaning up seemed like a counselor kind of job.

“Look, Emma,” I said, because apparently more clarification was needed. “I am sorry to be the one to tell you, but you
are
bossy. It might be that you can't help it, but still it is a fact. Jenny says when you recognize a character flaw in yourself, you should take the opportunity to correct it and become a better person. So maybe that's what you should do, Emma. No offense.”

“Jenny is your housekeeper, right?” said Lucy.

“Wow—good memory,” I said.

“Sometimes good, sometimes bad,” said Lucy. “What do housekeepers do exactly?”

Emma answered before I had the chance. “They clean rich people's houses.”

“Hey, you take that back,” I said.

“Which part?” Emma asked.

“Which part of rich people's houses do they clean?” Lucy said.

“Not that,” I said. “The part about rich people. And also everything else, Emma. Besides, Jenny doesn't clean our house. She cooks and takes care of us.”

Emma had swept up the last of the glass. “I am not taking anything back—except for this broom to the kitchen. Then I am going to see about Grace. Remember her? Who wants to come with me?”

On a scale of one to ten, my surprise at opening the door of Flowerpot Cabin to find Hannah there crying her eyes out rated ten.

Hannah is our counselor! She is the one with all the answers!

She is calm, beautiful, kind, and smart.

And now she was standing by the one lonely desk in
the room, staring into the wastebasket on the floor, and sobbing!

What could our calm, beautiful, kind, smart counselor who was
twenty years old—
a
grown-up!
—possibly have to cry about on the second day of camp?