Camp Confidential 09 - Best (Boy)friend Ever (5 page)

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Authors: Melissa J Morgan

BOOK: Camp Confidential 09 - Best (Boy)friend Ever
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But out of all the girls around, why did Jordan have to liiike her? It just made it so much more gross. It would be gross to see Jordan looking at any girl with goo-goo eyes. But to feel him looking at her that way, that was gross squared. She took a quick peek at him. Yeah, he was definitely staring in her direction. Yikes.
“Maybe just try a few bites,” Becky suggested in concerned-counselor mode. “I don’t want the sound of your stomach growling to wake everybody up in the middle of the night.”
Priya figured it was easier to eat a little than argue. She picked up her corn on the cob and scraped some of the sweet corn off with her teeth. Grasshoppers would probably rather eat corn than hamburger, right?
She shot another glance at Jordan. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop herself. He definitely wasn’t having any trouble eating. He was heading over to the barbeque pits for another hot dog. Whatever. At least he wasn’t still mooning at her with big moo-cow eyes. She managed another bite of corn.
“Incoming!” Alex called from her place next to Candace.
Priya automatically jerked up her head, looking for the baseball or football or Frisbee that should be flying toward her.
“Not that kind,” Alex said. “Boy incoming.”
Incoming like a bomb. There he was. Jordan. Candace and Alex scooted closer together so he could sit down on their log across from Brynn and Priya. “Hey,” Priya muttered, goosebumps appearing on her arms, even though it wasn’t that cold. She felt as if every single girl in her bunk was staring at her, like she had suddenly sprouted a second head or something.
“How is everyone enjoying their food?” Jordan asked, staring down at his deck shoes.
First—“How is everyone enjoying their food?” What was he, some kind of lobotomized cruise director? Second—deck shoes. True, his sneaks reeked. But Jordan was kinda proud of the stench they’d accumulated. Those shoes weren’t his, Priya was sure of it. She felt her two bites of corn try to come back up her throat.
“Yummy in the tummy,” Brynn said, since Priya hadn’t answered.
Jordan laughed. Hard. As hard as that time at swimming when Priya had floated on her back and pretended her belly button was a whale’s blowhole.
Brynn started to giggle. “Yummy in the tummy,” Jordan repeated, and he actually giggled himself. Yes, giggled. Then he straightened the collar of his polo shirt and glanced at Priya.
She had to help him. Jordan was in there somewhere. Trapped under the clothes and the hair and the cruise-director speak and the giggling. She just needed to bust him loose.
Light bulb. Priya leaned across Grace. “Hey, Gaby,” she whispered. “Do you have one of your secret stash of Cokes with you?”
Gaby checked out Becky and Sophie to make sure they weren’t listening—although they didn’t mind the girls having some junk food contraband inside the bunk, as long as the campers were willing to share with them. “Yes. But it’s for me, as in M-E.”
“What if I do whatever comes up for you on the chore wheel tomorrow?” Priya asked. “Then who’s it for?”
Gaby slapped a lukewarm can of Coke into Priya’s hand. Priya slipped it to Jordan. “Give you a point if you burp the camp motto here and now,” she challenged.
“That’s gross,” Brynn said.
Jordan tossed the can back to Priya. “I’ll pass.”
Dylan, the counselor for 4F, stood up. “Quiet down, everyone. Quiet. I’m about to tell you a story—a true story. It’s what happened to a bride, a bride who always wore a black velvet collar,” he called. “And I have to warn you that her story is intense. So I need you to keep an eye on your neighbors. Campers have been known to faint when they hear the story. If you see someone near you getting pale or having trouble breathing, shoot up your hand, and one of the counselors will be right over to help. The story is that frightening.”
More frightening than the fact that Jordan has clearly been taken over by an alien?
Priya thought.
chapter
THREE
“They’re both asleep,” Sarah whispered late that night after she did a Sophie-and-Becky bed check.
Priya climbed out of the top bunk as quietly as possible and joined the circle of girls gathering in the middle of the cabin. “Everybody knows how to play, right?” Gaby asked as they sat down.
“I don’t,” Priya answered.
“Me either,” Abby said.
Gaby rolled her eyes.
Geez
, Priya thought. Could Priya help it if she hung with boys, and boys didn’t play this “I Never” game, whatever it was?
“Okay, Alex is handing out the candy that we use as tokens,” Gaby went on.
“The Lifesavers are sugar-free, if anyone cares,” Alex said, as she gave eleven of the individually wrapped candies to each girl. Alex only ate treats without sugar because she had juvenile diabetes.
“How it works is, we go around the circle. Each person says something they’ve never done—but it should be something they think a lot of the rest of us
have
done,” Gaby explained. “If you’ve done what the person says they haven’t, you have to put one of your candies in the middle of the circle. Once all your candy is gone, you’re out of the game. The winner is the one who still has candy left at the end. We go around the circle as many times as it takes to eliminate all but one of us.”
Priya nodded. She got it. It didn’t exactly sound exciting. Or even fun. But she got it. And maybe it would keep her mind off Jordan and his BBQ freak show. It’s not like she’d have been able to sleep after that. And everyone else was a little tense after the story Dylan told about the bride and her black velvet choker and the way her head plopped right down onto the staircase when she finally took the choker off, which she was never, never, ever supposed to do.
“I’ll go first,” Gaby said. She tilted her head to one side, thinking. “I never had a birthday party at my house.”
“Come on!” Sarah protested.
“Shhh!” Grace pointed toward the part of the bunk where Becky and Sophie slept.
“It’s true,” Gaby insisted. “Even my first birthday party wasn’t one of those home ones with crepe paper streamers. It was at a tea shoppe. That’s with an ‘e’ at the end.”
“Oooh. Fancy. And I mean that with an ‘e’ at the end,” Grace said.
Sarah tossed a piece of candy into the center of the circle. So did every other girl. “I never go anywhere that doesn’t have an ‘e’ at the end would probably have worked just as well,” she commented.
Gaby gave a cat-who-just-scarfed-a-gallon-of-cream smile. Then she turned to Alex, who sat on her right. “Go,” she instructed.
Alex nibbled her lower lip. “I never . . . I never got my period.”
About a third of the girls tossed in candy. Priya wasn’t one of them.
She was a little surprised. She thought practically every girl in her school had started. It was good to spend some time in an X-chromosome-only situation. You could learn a few things. Priya grinned trying to imagine discussing her period with her little brother. Or Jordan.
She shoved the thought of Jordan out of her head. This game was about distraction from the horror.
“That wasn’t as good a one as mine,” Gaby told Alex. Gaby had been one of the candy-tossers. “You should have known at least some of us would have gotten our period. You have to choose more unique stuff if you want to win.”
Alex gave a little shrug. “I just wanted to know,” she admitted. “I was hoping I wasn’t the last one to, you know . . . get it.”
Priya had just learned something else from the girly game. She wasn’t the only girl who worried about not having gotten her period. Not that she wanted it. Not exactly. But she wanted it if everyone else had already gotten it.
“I’m glad you used the period thing for your turn,” Abby said. “I wanted to know, too. I haven’t gotten mine either, and I keep obsessing. I don’t know if I should ask my mom to take me to a doctor or what. But I don’t want a doctor to do whatever they’d have to do to test me.”
“Lots of people our age don’t have it yet,” Sarah told her. “Look at the candy pile. Not even half of us put in candy for that one. So a lot of us are in the ‘I never’ group.”
Abby nodded. “Yeah. I guess I just got worried because my best friend at school got hers when she was ten.”
“Ten!” Priya burst out at the same time as Valerie.
“Yeah,” Abby insisted.
“I don’t know what’s going on with mine,” Sarah admitted. “I got it once, then I kinda got it one other time. Then nothing.”
“In health, they said that’s normal at the beginning,” Priya said. It felt good to have something to offer to the conversation.
“It should have an official start day. So you could be completely prepared,” Valerie said, getting nods from everyone.
“My turn,” Grace said after a moment. She glanced around the circle, like she was trying to read each girl’s mind. When she spoke, her voice was low, and deep, and intense. “I never . . . never . . . ever . . . took off my black velvet choker.”
“Not funny!” Abby whisper-screamed. “I can totally see that bride’s head bouncing down the stairs.”
Priya bit down on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from launching into a loud hee-haw fit. Abby’s eyes were so wide they looked almost ready to fall out of their sockets.
“I don’t think any of us should have to give up candy for that one,” Gaby said, sounding annoyed because Grace wasn’t taking the game—
her
game—seriously.
“That wasn’t my real turn,” Grace protested.
“Yes, it was,” Gaby insisted.
“Who votes that Grace gets another go—this time only?” Alex asked. Everyone but Gaby and Abby raised their hands.
“Okay, seriously, I never went to pre-school,” Grace told the group.
“Good one.” Priya applauded softly as everyone was forced to toss in a Lifesaver.
“My mom has this whole kids-should-be-kids theory,” Grace said.
“That explains a lot about you,” Valerie teased. Grace tossed a Lifesaver at her. “I’m keepin’ it,” Val said, catching it in the air.
“No fair,” Grace protested. “I didn’t lose that because I did an ‘I never.’”
Alex held up her hands. “I’m staying out of it this time.”
“You can’t use that Lifesaver in the game,” Gaby told Valerie, reaching for the candy.
“Fine.” Valerie quickly unwrapped the Lifesaver and popped it in her mouth. “Purple. My fave.”
Priya snorted a laugh. She was starting to really like Val’s style.
“My go,” Sarah said. “I never had a boy ask me to go to the Potomac Cruise Dance with him.”
Nobody threw in a Lifesaver.
“Do you understand how to play this game?” Gaby demanded, glaring at Sarah.
“Shhh!” Grace put her finger to her lips.
“But everybody is going on the cruise, right?” Abby asked, eyes wide. “I know we get to choose activities for the other days, so we’ll be in different groups. But everyone’s going on the cruise, so why would we need to be invited?”
“We don’t,” Alex told her.
“We don’t,” Sarah repeated. “It’s just that some guys are asking girls. There’s going to be swing dance lessons, so it’ll be kind of like a camp dance. You can go without a date. Or you can go with one. I just wondered if anyone else was going with one.”
Priya had almost forgotten about it the dancing part of the cruise. How was she going to deal with a dance without normal Jordan to make it fun? There had been some dances at their school last year, but she and Jordan hadn’t gone. They’d hung with Sammy, watching horror movies or playing in these massive hide-and-seek games with Sammy and his friends.
Maybe she and Jordan hung out with Sammy so much because Sammy was sick a lot when he was little. He’d had to skip a lot of school, and had had a ton of doctors’ appointments. Priya almost always had to come straight home after she got out of school because her mom had to cart her along to whatever appointment Sammy had. So no after-school stuff for Priya. No going over to other kids’ houses. But when they got back from the doctor of the moment, there was always Jordan next door. For her and Sammy. Even when Sammy got totally better, the three of them kept on doing everything together.
“
Some
guys are asking. What guys other than David? Obviously David is going to ask you, right?” Gaby said.
Sarah shrugged. “I’m not sure. He said some other guys were asking people.”
“But it’s okay just to go alone, right?” Abby asked. “Girls can dance in groups, right?”
“Of course,” Valerie said. “I don’t think I’ll be going with anyone.”
“Oh, who cares,” Gaby muttered. “Come on. Let’s play. Abby, your turn. Make it good.”
“Hmmm. I never had a boy crush on me. Forget about having a boy ask me to the Potomac Dance,” Abby said.
A few girls tossed Lifesavers into the circle. Priya wasn’t one of them.
Grace gave a muffled yelp. Gaby shook her head, her eyebrows raised. Brynn reached across the circle with her foot and gave Priya a light kick.

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