Reunion #21 Read online

  She felt a hand clutch at her wrist. It was Brynn. “Um, he knows it’s us,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “How does he know it’s us?”

  Priya made a face. She honestly had no idea how Dr. Steve found out who was responsible for the raid. “Maybe the boys told him?”

  Brynn shook her head. “The boys didn’t know who raided them,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, right. That.” Priya was at a loss.

  That was, until she happened to glance to her left just in time to catch a knowing look pass between Avery and Joanna. Avery glanced up, caught Priya’s eye, and winked at her.

  Priya’s blood boiled. Would Avery really have sold her tent out?

  She didn’t have to think about it for too long. The answer was beyond obvious.

  Yeah, she would have.

  “There is one person who knew that we were going out on a raid last night. One person who really, REALLY doesn’t like us.”

  Brynn caught Priya’s drift immediately, but seemed to want to give Avery the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t know. I mean, being a snitch is lame.”

  “Well it’s definitely mean, but it’s not necessarily totally lame if there’s a whole Outdoor CORE honor code to live up to and all,” Priya pointed out. “And something tells me that Avery is all about the Walla Walla honor.”

  “Will the girls from the Oak tent please stay after breakfast to assist the kitchen staff in clearing the tables and washing dishes?” Dr. Steve said, earning a round of hooting and cheering from the extremely chipper punishment-free tables.

  Priya’s eyes flew open. She watched in anger as Avery stood up, smoothed out her shorts, and wandered in the direction of the restroom. She waited about a half a second before leaping up from the bench and scrambling after her.

  “Avery,” she called, reaching out to the girl as she rested her hand on the door to the girls’ room. “What the heck?”

  “What do you mean?” Avery asked, her eyes wide and innocent. “What was I supposed to do? With the honor code and everything, I had to tell.” She shrugged. “Sorry,” she said, not looking the least bit sorry about it at all.

  “Yeah, okay, fine, we get it, you’re all honest and stuff,” Priya said. “But what about you and Joanna? I mean, if our tent is punished, that means that you two are on dish duty, too. Right?”

  The corners of Avery’s mouth turned up in a perfect little smirk. “Wrong,” she said. “Exactly, completely wrong. Dr. Steve said that we’re exempt from the punishment because we were exempt from the raid. And actually, we get to sleep in tomorrow during calisthenics as a reward for adhering to the Outdoor CORE code. So, um, yeah—you’re wrong.” She pulled the door to the bathroom open and stepped one foot inside before turning back to Priya again.

  “Enjoy kitchen duty,” she said. “Hope the raid was worth it.”

  All Priya could do was sigh.

  chapter FOUR

  You are brave, Brynn thought to herself, gritting her teeth together with every step. You are strong, you are an athlete. Like a contestant on Survivor. That’s right—the wily contestant who wins the whole darn thing.

  Except, hopefully, without having to eat bugs and stuff.

  “Brynn! Are you even paying attention to what you’re doing, or are you all up in your own head?”

  “My own head,” she called out, embarrassed that Tucker, the ropes instructor, had caught her day-dreaming and called her out.

  Even though, she thought, my own head is way better than this whole crazy obstacle course that we’ve got going on here. I swear, if I look down even once, I’m going to completely lose it.

  She was suspended what felt like miles above the ground, slowly climbing across a rope ladder that stretched horizontally across two tall trees. Even after more than a week at Camp Walla Walla, she had no idea what kind of trees those were. She didn’t care, either. Mainly they were the type of trees that existed for the sole purpose of making her life more difficult. If there were no trees from which to hang ropes, there would be no ropes course at Camp Walla Walla, and therefore no earthly reason why Brynn should find herself crawling across the sky like Spiderman, pretending she was performing her own stunts while filming the latest rock ’em sock ’em action movie. Enough said. She was not a method actress.

  “You got it, Brynn!” Jackson, Tucker’s C.I.T. and the ropes assistant, shouted. Jackson was cute. When he wasn’t shouting at innocent girls and freaking them out.

  She seriously wanted to fling her shoe at him from high above, but decided she’d probably need it for the descent. Reaching the opposite tree, she quickly found her footing and scampered down, not allowing herself to look at the height she’d just scaled until she was back on level ground once again.

  “You got it!” Jackson repeated, coming over and reaching out a hand to high five.

  Brynn simply stared at his hand. “I almost died,” she said, wishing she weren’t whining but knowing she probably was. It was hard to feel high five-y when your heart was still pounding in your chest and there was still a decent possibility that you were going to hurl.

  “Nah,” Jackson said, affable. “I would have caught you if you’d fallen.”

  “Great.” Brynn rolled her eyes. “Very reassuring. You had a game plan. So you’re telling me people have fallen?”

  He patted her on the back. “Why don’t you go help yourself to some water from the fountain? Hydration is important, you know.”

  “I do know,” Brynn agreed. “I’m learning so much here at Walla Walla.”

  She couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t answered her question about the fall. Oh well. It was probably one of those things she was better off not knowing.

  “Jackson, you are so smart.” It was Avery, sidling up to the C.I.T. with an eager grin on her face. “Did you have to get, like, certified to teach ropes?”

  Ick. Avery’s flirting was as transparent as an ice cube. Did she really think that she was going to be able to get the attention of a C.I.T.? Brynn made a face to herself, then looked up to see Natalie with a similar expression on her face.

  She offered a weak cheer for Natalie as her friend made her own way up the first tree of the ropes course, white-faced and looking every bit as panicked as Brynn had felt when it was her turn. She wandered to the water fountain, pressed the button, and ducked under it, gulping the cool water down greedily.

  Well, okay, it was lukewarm water. But still, she was thirsty.

  I’m learning so much here at Walla Walla, she thought. Even things I didn’t know I didn’t know! And never wanted to know!

  “For instance,” she said aloud, “one of the many things I’ve learned at Walla Walla is how much I love standing on my own two feet. On the ground. Not dangling in the air like a character out of The Jungle Book.”

  She didn’t care that there was no one around to listen; she wasn’t quite done complaining and so she grumbled to herself, wiping the last droplets of water from her chin.

  She heard a small snort next to her and turned to find Joanna standing beside her, chuckling to herself. It was pretty rare to see Joanna without Avery around, but even rarer still to hear Joanna laugh at anything other than something that Avery (or Sarah, for that matter), had said. No wonder Brynn had been so confused by the noise.

  Joanna looked startled, like she herself thought that there was maybe something wrong with listening in on Brynn’s conversation—which, Brynn supposed, would have technically been rude, except for how she was really only talking to herself, anyway—and closed her mouth quickly, looking guilty.

  Since Joanna voluntarily talking to a Lakeview girl was about as rare an occurrence as a unicorn sighting, Brynn decided she was going to go with it and see what she might discover. “I can’t believe you’ve been coming back here summer after summer,” she offered, peering cautiously at Joanna to see how she responded to the direct address.

  Joanna remained quiet, but she did nod—albeit shyly.

  “And you have
n’t broken anything yet?” Brynn asked, nodding toward the ropes course. From her spot between the two trees, Natalie clutched desperately at the rope and shrieked something about broken nails and an acute fear of heights.

  Joanna shook her head. “You get better at it the more you do it,” she explained. “It really does get to be fun.”

  “I’ll just have to take your word for that,” Brynn said. “You’re not getting me back up there again. I will have to conquer my fear of heights or train to be an action movie heroine some other way.”

  “That’s right, you’re the one who loves drama,” Joanna said, blinking. “Sarah also—” she paused, biting her lip.

  “Sarah told you I love drama?” Brynn asked. If that was true, then it meant that Sarah was talking about her old friends. Which might mean that she was talking about how they were old friends. Like, about how, once upon a time, she actually deigned to speak to them every now and then. Brynn suddenly had more questions than she could ask at once running through her brain.

  “No,” Joanna said abruptly, shaking her head so that her ponytail whipped back and forth against her cheeks. “I just meant that . . . um, well, you should talk to Sarah. You know, because of her connections and stuff.”

  Brynn’s forehead crinkled up. She had absolutely no clue what Joanna was talking about. “What do you mean, Sarah’s connections?”

  Joanna opened her mouth as if to say something, but just then, two hands planted themselves over Brynn’s eyes from behind. “Guess who?”

  “Uh, well, I smell Juicy Couture body wash—and fear—so I’m guessing Natalie?”

  “You guessed right,” Natalie said happily, her pretty face popping up in front of Brynn’s own. “I survived. I’m thinking we deserve medals or badges or something.”

  “Badges would be cool,” Brynn agreed. “If we were still young enough for Girl Scouts. Hey—” she continued—“do you know anything about Sarah and act—” she trailed off when she realized that Joanna had slipped away while she and Natalie were chatting.

  “Sarah acting really weird this summer? Yeah, I know all about that,” Natalie replied, running some water from the fountain over the flats of her palms and splashing it against her flushed face. “Why?”

  Jenna rushed up to them, panting an d sweating. “Ready for swim?” she asked. She fanned the air in front of her face. “I’m, like, dying of heat. I think being up in those trees gets you closer to the sun and stuff. Remind me to wear extra sunscreen tomorrow.”

  Natalie and Brynn cracked up. “I think you’d have to get a lot closer before you needed stronger SPF,” Natalie said, “but yeah, let’s head over to swim.” She made a face. “I just wish they would let me sit out free swim once in a while and read magazines.”

  “Magazines are not the way of the Outdoor CORE,” Jenna said solemnly. She made a tsk motion with her index finger. Nat and Brynn had to concede the case.

  “Ugh, I’m never gonna last four whole weeks,” Brynn said as the girls marched off. “I think I need to start my own group—Indoor CORE. Our core values will be all about watching romantic comedies and reading gossip magazines. And nail polish. There will also be nail polish. You guys can be my first two group members.”

  “Fun!” Natalie said, clapping her hands together and breaking into a skip. “I’ll write us a cheer or something. And there could be fun uniforms with velour sweats and printed flip-flops.”

  As Natalie waxed nostalgic about the wide array of silk-screening choices available for their custom track suits, Brynn let herself get carried off into the fantasy. It wasn’t until halfway through swim that Brynn realized she never had found out what Joanna really had been talking about, what with the whole Sarah and her “connections” thing. But since it didn’t make any more sense than Sarah’s random cold shoulder did, she decided to just forget about it. It just seemed like the easiest thing to do.

  Sarah could hear Natalie’s high-pitched voice across the waterfront.

  “Drills, drills, drills. I am so sick of drills! Diving drills, treading drills, floating drills . . . can’t we just have a good, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness free swim? Look—my magazine got all wet!”

  “Well, that’s what you get for bringing it down to the waterfront, Nat,” Sloan replied logically. “Key word: water. We are at the front of the water. Wetness was always a danger. It’s not like you needed a Magic 8 Ball to predict that one.”

  In response, Nat stuck her tongue out at her friend, making Sarah think of how much fun Natalie used to be when they were all in a bunk together back at Lakeview. She glanced around: Avery and Joanna were off doing who knew what. (Unlike Natalie, Avery loved drills and thrived on competition. For all Sarah knew, she was off with the lifeguards right now thinking up some new ones and getting extra CORE credit, if there was such a thing.) Maybe now was the time.

  Sarah took a deep breath. Yes, now was the time. It was as good a time as any, after all. Wasn’t it?

  She tentatively approached Natalie and Sloan where they were settled at Natalie’s beach towel, Nat playfully swatting Sloan with her (undeniably wet) magazine. Sloan seemed to take it as all in good fun, though.

  The girls were so focused on avoiding the tiny sprays of water that rained from the corners of the magazine that at first they didn’t even notice Sarah walking up to them. For a moment Sarah thought about running away, forgetting the whole thing, but she reminded herself that she could hardly blame them for not noticing her when she’d been taking as little note of them as possible ever since day one of Camp Walla Walla.

  “Hi,” Sarah said softly.

  Too softly, though, as neither girl looked up to see her. So she cleared her throat—in her own ears, the sound was as loud as a car engine revving—and tried again. “Hey.”

  Finally, Natalie dropped her magazine into the sand glanced at Sarah. “Hey,” she said, clearly surprised. “Uh, what’s up?”

  Now that she was actually talking to Natalie, Sarah found that she really had no idea what to say. Where to begin? How to explain? Things had gotten so weird and messy—she couldn’t possibly undo it right now, all by herself. Could she?

  “I just . . .” she twirled her hair around her fingers nervously. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry that you guys got busted. About the raid, you know? That’s a bummer.”

  “Yeah,” Sloan said, raising an eyebrow. “What with the kitchen duty and all.”

  She raised her hands up in front of Sarah’s face like a commercial for dish soap. “I’m just lucky I don’t care about my nails like some people here at camp.” She cast a pointed—but good-natured look at Natalie, who just shrugged.

  “We would have gotten away with it, too,” Natalie chimed in, “if it weren’t for your friend. She’s so stuck on the honor code and whatever. It’s like no one here knows how to have any fun.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  Sarah flinched, recognizing the voice. Avery had suddenly appeared right beside her, Joanna in tow, as usual. Yeah, sure, Avery was her friend. But she had an idea that things were about to go from awkward to worse.

  “You think we don’t know how to have fun?” Avery asked, her voice low. Sarah recognized that tone of voice. Avery was about to challenge the girls to something. Something she wasn’t sure they would want to take Avery up on.

  Sarah froze in place. There wasn’t anything she could say or do. She was stuck—literally—between her two groups of friends.

  That was, if the Lakeview girls even still counted as friends. She wasn’t sure about that.

  “No, I’m sure you’re a ton of fun,” Natalie said, sounding bored. “What with your snitching and gossiping and all-around grouchiness. Good times.”

  “Maybe there was a reason that I didn’t join you on the raid,” Avery said. “Maybe I wanted to see if you’d really go through with it.”

  “And ratting us out to Dr. Steve and making sure that we got in trouble was just, like, icing on the cake?”


  At that, Avery could only smirk. “Look, you guys won. You proved yourselves.”

  “Awesome, that’s what we were going for.”

  Sarah sighed. She knew Nat well enough to know that the girl didn’t care at all about impressing Avery. Sarah sometimes wished she could be as fearless as Natalie, but the point was that Avery was the kind of girl that most people at least tried to impress. She just was. Natalie was going to have to learn that, sooner or later.

  And it was starting to look like sooner was more likely.

  Avery straightened her spine and stepped closer to Natalie, who rose from her towel and flipped her sunglasses off her face and onto her forehead. Sarah thought they looked like rival superheroes from a movie. She almost didn’t want to watch. But she couldn’t look away, either.

  “Great. So I guess that means that you guys are cool with meeting my friends and me out by the lookout point after lights-out tonight.”

  Natalie looked incredulous. “Why would we do that? So you can get us put back on dish duty? Or maybe something even better this time—maybe we’ll be forced to scrub out the outhouses. No, thanks.” She turned back to her soggy magazine.

  “I’m not going to turn you guys in,” Avery said, her eyes flashing. “Duh. I’m going to meet you out there. Why would I turn myself in?”

  Natalie put her hands on her hips. She didn’t look at all convinced.

  “Trust me, you’ll want to meet us—” she gestured at Joanna, who seemed a lot less confident than Avery sounded—“if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Now, that just sounds like a threat,” Natalie said lightly. “Don’t you think, Sloan?”

  “Why yes, I do think,” Sloan said agreeably. “Not nice, Avery.” She wasn’t intimidated by Avery, either. Sarah wished she could be as strong and outspoken as those girls were.

  “Sarah, tell your old friends what they’re missing if they don’t come out to the lookout point tonight,” Avery said, surprising Sarah with a hard tap on the shoulder. “Now.”