Reality Bites #15 Page 6

  “Chelsea,” Alex said, “I think that’s the wind.”

  Chelsea was motionless for a moment, casting her eyes to the side and listening with all her might. Finally she relaxed. “Wow, guys,” she said with a sigh. “Sorry about that. It just reminded me of the sound Cropsy made when he was running after me.”

  Gaby felt her heart thumping hard with frustration. No, she thought. Not tonight. Chelsea is not going to steal my spotlight with this tonight.

  “Everything reminds you of Cropsy!” she cried, surprising herself, even, with the force of her words. “The shape of the trees. The light. The wind! The other morning you said your pancakes reminded you of Cropsy’s eyes staring right at you! You need to get over it, Chelsea! For your sake and everyone else’s.”

  Chelsea’s mouth hung open as she stared at Gaby. Everything fell silent. Even the wind, it seemed, was too taken aback by Gaby’s outburst to continue moaning in the trees. All the bunkmates just stared, looking from Gaby, to Chelsea, to one another with stunned expressions.

  Now I’ve done it, Gaby scolded herself. That was stupid. Any goodwill I built up with the Jake thing is gone. Now I’m just the mean girl again.

  “I can’t believe you just said that to me,” Chelsea said finally, finding her voice. “I was really scared when we went camping in the woods! I can’t help it if some stuff still scares me!”

  “You can’t help it,” Candace agreed. “It’s true, Gaby—that was kind of mean.”

  Gaby felt her stomach sink.

  But then Alex cleared her throat. “Actually,” she said quietly, “I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that, Chelse, but maybe it is time for you to get over what happened in the woods and stop looking for reasons to be scared all the time.”

  Chelsea stared at Alex in amazement. She looked surprised, and a little hurt, too.

  “Yeah,” Valerie agreed. “Not to be mean, but it has been almost two weeks, Chelsea. I know you’re scared, but maybe you’d have more fun if you focused on the now, not what happened last session.”

  “Yeah,” said Jenna softly. “I was going to say something to you, Chelsea, but I didn’t know how. If you’re really that scared, maybe you should talk to a counselor or something.”

  Chelsea didn’t say anything. She closed her mouth tight and looked off to the side, ignoring them all. But Gaby could see the message had hit home.

  Soon Brynn started talking about the Guys and Dolls rehearsals, and she was even nice enough to point out how great Gaby had been in a scene today, which Priya agreed with. Gaby smiled and was able to be genuinely gracious as her bunkmates complimented her. She settled back on her elbows and looked at the stars.

  Everything’s coming up Gaby—and I have Jake to thank.

  chapter SIX

  “What about this one?”

  Spence was holding up a sassafras leaf with just the tiny hint of a smile.

  “Oooh, I love sassafras,” Grace said, moving closer. “I love the little polka-dots on the leaves. And I love that they smell like root beer.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.” Grace grabbed the leaf out of Spence’s hand and waved it under her nose. “Mmm. I could really go for a root beer float right about now.”

  Spence grabbed the leaf and took a whiff. “Wow. How cool is that? But let’s not ignore the more important question.”

  Grace scrunched up her eyebrows. “Which is?”

  Spence smiled, dangling the leaf by its stem. “Will this leaf be good for deck-paging?”

  Grace couldn’t help laughing. “Spence. Say it with me. Day-coo-paaj. Decoupage.”

  Spence shrugged. “Right, whatever. Deck-paaj.”

  “You should probably learn to say it if we’re going to put the craft in the newspaper.”

  Spence gave her a funny look. “Why? I can spell it, and that’s all that matters. That’s the great thing about journalism.”

  Grace laughed. “But what if you want to bring up decoupaging in conversation some day?”

  “I find that extremely unlikely.” Spence placed the leaf carefully in a folder, then glanced at his watch. “Ooh, we should get going. I think we have enough leaves to cover the picture frame. We have just enough time to get these back to the newspaper room and head to dinner. We can probably finish the craft tomorrow.”

  “All right.”

  Spence started walking the rocky path back to the building where the newspaper elective met, and Grace easily fell into step behind him. Ever since they’d had the conversation about Grace feeling weird this year, things had been so easy between them. In fact, Grace felt like these days, Spence was even easier to talk to than her bunkmates. He made her laugh, was totally interested in what she had to say, and better still, he never brought up the camping trip or made her feel weird about all the things she had missed.

  Not that they had started “canoodling,” or whatever Gaby would call it. In fact, Spence had never said anything directly romantic to Grace. She knew he liked her a lot, but whether that was as a friend or something more, she wasn’t sure. And actually, for now, that was just fine with her.

  Spence and Grace ducked into the newspaper room after it had already half cleared out.

  “People must be hungry today,” Spence observed.

  “It’s pizza night,” Grace replied. “You know what that means. Crazy stampede into the mess hall.”

  “Right, everyone’s camping out for their right to pepperoni.” Spence dropped the folder of leaves among his pile of notes on the desk. “Mission accomplished! Let’s go get in the pepperoni line.”

  “Um, Spence,” Grace said, grabbing the folder and walking over to carefully place it inside the cubby with her name on it, “maybe we should put this somewhere safe, so we don’t have to leaf-hunt again tomorrow.”

  Spence wore an expression of mock outrage. “Are you calling me disorganized?”

  Grace just looked him up and down. “Didn’t you have a notebook when we went into the woods?”

  He glanced down at his hands, then reached into his pockets. “D’oh!” he cried. “You think I left it on that rock we were sitting on? Or down by the lake?”

  Grace smiled. “I honestly have no idea.”

  “Oh, well.” Spence stopped searching his pockets and sighed. “At least it didn’t have anything important in it. And it’s not supposed to rain or anything, right?”

  Grace shook her head. “Not according to the weather board.”

  “Then I can get it tomorrow.” Spence pushed up his glasses on his nose and grandly gestured to the doorway. “Shall we?”

  Grinning, Grace walked around him and out the door. The sun was going down, and a cool breeze blew off the lake as the two of them headed toward the mess hall.

  “Tomorrow,” Spence said, “that picture frame will not know what hit it.”

  “I know,” Grace replied enthusiastically. “Do you think it has any idea that it’s about to become a great work of art?”

  Spence nodded solemnly. “A masterpiece of the modern world.”

  “The Met will want to do an exhibit on us.”

  “And the piece de resistance?” Spence asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny digital camera. Holding it up toward the sky, he threw an arm around Grace and pulled her close to him. “Smile!”

  Grace smiled. It wasn’t hard.

  He clicked the button, then put down the camera and flipped it over to look at the LED screen. Grace and Spence smiled up from the picture, looking happier than Grace had felt since she got to camp.

  “Perfect,” said Grace. “The perfect picture for the perfect frame.”

  “I’ll print it out tonight,” Spence promised. Laughing voices were approaching, and he looked down the path. “Oh, look. It’s your posse.”

  Grace felt a twinge of disappointment at the news that her friends were approaching. Not that she wasn’t happy to see them—she just wasn’t sure, right at that moment, that she wanted to share Spence with th
em. Soon she could make out Gaby’s voice, then Chelsea’s and Priya’s.

  “Heeeeey, guys!” Gaby called in a playful voice. “Spence and Grace! What have you been up to?”

  Spence shrugged and dropped his camera back in his pocket as the threesome surrounded them. Grace said a quick “hi” to each of her friends, but she couldn’t help noticing that they weren’t actually looking at her. They only glanced at her quickly before fixing their gaze on Spence.

  “Nothing much,” Spence replied. “Talking. Chillin’. Making masterpieces. You guys know how it is.”

  Priya and Chelsea erupted in giggles. Grace wasn’t even sure why—did they understand the joke? But then Chelsea gave a blinding smile and touched Spence on the arm.

  “You’re always making masterpieces, Spence,” she said in a flirty voice. “It must be hard to be so talented.”

  Grace was feeling annoyed about this whole conversation. What had happened to her friends? They were acting like idiots. If they stopped to think about it, they would have known Spence wouldn’t be impressed by this kind of stupid act. He wasn’t the type. He was more . . .

  But then Grace noticed that Spence was grinning. “Right,” he agreed. “I am ahead of my time.”

  Giggles all around. Grace was suddenly tempted to flee the scene and get in the pizza line. The doors hadn’t opened yet, though, and the rest of 5A was MIA. Besides—Grace was hesitant to admit this even to herself—a big part of her wanted to stick around and see what happened. Was Spence really impressed by all this flirty stuff? Did he view her as just a friend, while he was crushing on Priya or Chelsea or Gaby? Was that why everyone had been so weird about Grace and Spence hanging out together?

  “Well, you’ve found the perfect partner in crime,” Priya said, glancing at Grace with a quick smile. “You and Grace seem to be having a good time . . . hanging out together.”

  Priya’s eyes jumped back to Spence as she searched his face—looking, it seemed to Grace, for some kind of sign that their “hanging out” was more than just hanging out. Spence didn’t seem to get that, though.

  “Yeah,” he replied, pushing back his light blond hair. “Grace is an awesome friend.”

  Friend. So there it was. Spence didn’t like her as anything more. Grace was surprised not to feel immediately crushed. It was more like she didn’t know how to feel. She waited to see which of her friends Spence would flirt back with first.

  Priya smiled. “So,” she said.

  “So,” Chelsea repeated.

  “So,” Gaby broke in pointedly, “do you have a date to the social yet, Spence? Popular guy like you, I bet you do.”

  Priya bit her lip and Chelsea started fiddling with the hem of her T-shirt. Both of them glanced at Spence out of the corners of their eyes.

  “Well,” said Spence, glancing toward the mess hall crowd, “actually, I don’t. I’ve been kind of lazy this year. But the truth is I have someone in mind.” He looked at all the girls and smiled. “And she’s standing right here.”

  “Really?” asked Gaby, twirling her hair. “Well, there are definitely some great ladies standing right . . . here.”

  Gaby gestured right to Priya and Chelsea, totally ignoring Grace. Thanks, Gaby.

  “Who could it be?” Chelsea asked, trying to sound casual, but her voice was a little too high and wobbly.

  “That’s very interesting,” Priya added, winking at Grace. “Well, are you going to tell us who it is, Spence? Or are you going to let us die of suspense?”

  Spence pushed his glasses up on his nose again, then put his hands in his pockets. He glanced at the line for the mess hall again. He seemed totally unaware of the urgency in the girls’ voices.

  “Okay,” he said finally.

  But then he did something unexpected. He turned away from Priya, Chelsea, and Gaby, and turned right to Grace.

  “This isn’t exactly how I planned to ask you,” he admitted. “But do you want to be my date for the social, Grace?”

  Grace couldn’t stop the huge smile from breaking out on her face. “Yeah!” she cried happily. It was only then, after she’d agreed, that she saw Priya and Chelsea deflate a little, and Gaby watching her and Spence curiously.

  Before Grace could react further, the dinner bell rang and chaos broke out.

  “Great!” Spence said. “Not to be rude, girls, but I have to make a break for the pepperoni.” Before any of them could say another word, he was gone, sprinting for the mess hall doors.

  “Wow,” said Priya after a moment.

  “Wow,” agreed Chelsea.

  “Wow,” Gaby finished. Grace felt as if Gaby was studying her like someone might study a strange but fascinating insect.

  If only Grace knew what to do. She was happier than happy to be going to the social with Spence, her new favorite boy person at camp, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something weird had just happened.

  “So,” she said finally. “Who’s hungry for pizza?”

  Once they met up with the other girls in 5A and sat down to dinner, things seemed to get a little more normal. They all made a big deal of Grace and Spence going to the social together, of course—especially Brynn, who was thrilled that she and Grace would both have dates. But the weird feeling Grace had had before they went into the mess hall was gone. Priya and Chelsea seemed a little quiet at dinner, but Grace told herself that was probably just a coincidence.

  There was no Survival Camp episode that night, so after dinner, everyone except Brynn marched to campfire, while Brynn headed to a special rehearsal. Grace was really beginning to miss Brynn. Oh well, she told herself. Once the play’s over, things will go back to normal.

  After a few songs, Grace noticed Priya, Chelsea, and Gaby all deep in conversation a few feet away. She decided to walk over. She’d gotten kind of a weird feeling before dinner—maybe if she just hung out with them a little, she could get rid of it . . .

  The three of them were speaking softly when Grace approached. She could just barely make out a few of the words Priya was saying.

  “. . . such a flirt,” Priya was saying. “I mean, who knows? Who knows if he really—” Suddenly she looked up and saw Grace walking over. Her voice went back up to normal volume and she hastily smiled. “Hey, Grace!”

  “Hey,” Grace replied cautiously. Why would Priya cut off what she was saying like that? What had she missed? “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Gaby replied quickly.

  But Priya gave her a look and turned back to Grace with a smile. “We were talking about the social,” Priya replied. “And what a dry spell we’re all having with boys . . . except for you!”

  Priya’s smile widened, but there was something weird about it—it was a little too big and a little too fast. She was the only one smiling, too. Gaby was watching Grace with an indifferent look, and Chelsea was scowling.

  “Well,” Grace said hesitantly, sitting down, “I’m sure you guys will find people to go with, if you want to. You’re all so awesome!”

  Priya’s eyes warmed and she smiled a genuine smile. “Thanks, Grace.”

  “So . . .” Grace went on. She still wanted to know who Priya was talking about before.“Who’s a big flirt? You were saying something when I walked up.”

  Chelsea coughed suddenly and looked away. Priya’s smile left her face and she started to look a little nervous. “Who was I talking about? Um . . .”

  “David,” Gaby interrupted loudly.

  Grace furrowed her eyebrows. That didn’t make sense. “David? He seems pretty happy with Jenna. I don’t think he’s that flirty.”

  Gaby shrugged. “We meant before Jenna.”

  “You mean when he was with Sarah?” Grace was totally confused.

  Priya sighed. She shot Gaby an annoyed look. “Actually,” she admitted, “we weren’t talking about David. We were talking about Spence.”

  Grace looked back at Priya, surprised. She knew she must look hurt. Why did you lie then? “Oh. Okay.” But th
en she thought about it. If Spence is a big flirt . . . what does that say about him and me? “You think Spence is a flirt?”

  Chelsea rolled her eyes. “It’s not what we think, Grace. It’s the truth. Spence flirted with Priya last summer, then he flirted with me at the beginning of camp. He was flirting with all of us before dinner. Didn’t you notice?”

  Grace bit her lip. Yeah. She’d noticed Spence puffing up a little, responding to all the attention. But she’d forgotten about all of that when he’d asked her to the social. “I guess.” She paused, realizing that all three girls were looking at her funny—like they had just told her something hugely embarrassing, like that her underwear was showing. “What? Do you . . .” It hit her all at once. Her stomach dropped. “You think he doesn’t really like me, then? He just flirts with me in newspaper because he flirts with everyone?”

  Priya reached out and touched Grace’s shoulder. “No, no, no. That’s not what we were saying. How could he not like you? You’re awesome!”

  But Grace wasn’t convinced. She felt her face getting hot.

  Gaby leaned in. “It’s just . . .” she began, then bit her lip. “Spence liked Priya for a long time, and Chelsea, too. They’ve had this thing started for a while now. So why would he . . .”

  Gaby didn’t finish because Priya shot her a look of death. “That’s not what I was saying.”

  Grace watched hopefully as Priya turned around and met her eyes. Priya looked concerned, but also worried—like she had something more to say.

  “Grace,” she said gently. “All I was saying is, Spence can be really flirty, and he just likes girls. So sometimes . . . you know, when a guy has a personality like that . . . it can be hard to tell who he really likes. That’s all I’m saying.”

  That didn’t make Grace feel better at all. She looked at Gaby and Chelsea, who were both looking at her with Well, duh expressions. She blinked to clear her eyes, which had started to water.

  “You don’t think Spence could actually like me,” she said coldly. And as soon as she said it, the reality of the words hit her—her friends didn’t think she was good enough for Spence to really like. Why?