Don't Ever Change (12 page)

“Uhhh-ohhh,” Alyssa says, and that launches a minor chaos of everyone talking at once and fighting with sword-pens and writing on each other’s arms and using the books to crush ants and other bugs.

“Whirled Peas!” I shout. “Whirled Peas,” I say quieter, hushing them. “Nobody else in camp has a book like ours to write down all their secrets and stories and awesome ideas. Only us, and I think that’s cool. Alyssa?”

“It’s cool,” Alyssa agrees, but sort of annoyed.
“God.”

“I know it’s free play and we can do anything we want for an hour, but what do you guys think about spending that time writing together?”

“Okay,” everyone says, “okay, yeah, fine.”

“On the very first page, write this down: ‘My name is,’ and put whatever your name is, and next ‘I’m traveling toward,’ and then write whatever thing or place or feeling you’re traveling toward. Can be anything.”

Billie’s hand shoots up.

“Just write,” I say. “Be creative!”

“Do I have to do it too?” Alyssa whispers in my ear, and I shoot her back a dirty look.

“Let’s take ten minutes and then we’ll all share,” I tell them.

I stare at my own blank book.
My name is EVA KRAMER
and
I’m traveling toward BOSTON
. It’s a good answer, but it doesn’t look good written down. I move the letters in the word around to read
SOBTON
and then
NOTSOB
, and that sort of works:
I’m traveling toward not sobbing when I leave for Boston
. This feels real and deeply what I know, and even though that means it’s
actually working
, something makes me cross the words out. While it’s true that the Eva I know
is
traveling toward Boston, there’s also a more romantic version of Eva out there, maybe one that doesn’t exist yet, who’s traveling toward Paris, and she’s obviously the more interesting Eva, so of course she’s the Eva I want to write about. Mr. Roush is right: I have a serious problem, I’m a fake writer, but there’s no time to worry about that now.

“Okay,” I say, “what did everyone write?”

“It’s only been eight minutes,” Rebecca says.

“I’ll go first,” Billie says. “My name is Billie Westerman and I’m traveling toward finishing all of the books on my summer reading list, including
The Hobbit
and every book in the American Girl series.”

Then Jessica goes: “My name is Jessica Avery, and I’m traveling toward peace.”

And then Maggie: “My name’s Maggie Lamar, and I’m traveling toward peace
fulness
.”

And then all the other girls look down at what they’ve written, and then no one will go. I pinch Alyssa.

“My name is blah, blah,” Alyssa begins, “and I’m traveling toward Corey,” and she waves at Corey across the field.

“Maybe it seems like I didn’t give you enough time,” I say to the group, “but listen, these are just fun little writing exercises. You can really write whatever you want whenever you want.”

“Even when we’re supposed to be playing tetherball?” Alexis wants to know.

“Totally,” I tell her. “If you’re writing, then you don’t have to do anything else.”

“I don’t think Steven will—,” Alyssa starts to whisper in my ear, but I stop her, because Steven told me every camper wants a fun camp experience, and I’m sure he doesn’t claim to know what every single camper thinks is fun.

“So let’s call this Free Write from now on! Go ahead and Free Write, girls. Have fun,” I say.

Suddenly I need a minute away from all this. I spy Foster across the field glancing in my direction, so I get up and tell Alyssa she’s in charge.

“Wait,” she says. “What’d you write in your book? I want to hear.”

“I wrote, ‘My name is Eva Kramer, and I’m traveling toward Paris.’”

“Paris?” Alyssa says. “Pbbth, Paris is so cliché.”

“You don’t even know what a cliché is.”

“I know the Eiffel Tower’s just an overrated tourist place, because I’ve been there.”

“You can’t say the Eiffel Tower’s overrated,” I say.

Alyssa shrugs.

“I’m going to Boston anyway,” I say.

“Boston’s cool,” Alyssa says, and shrugs again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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FOSTER’S LEANING AGAINST
a tree, holding a Sunny Skies baseball cap half-filled with folded slips of paper while his boys play a fluid, lawless game of charades. I peek inside the hat and glance at a few of the clues. Each one is totally ridiculous:
DINOSAUR ROCK STAR, GRENADE WHIPLASH.
I laugh out loud. None of these kids are
ever
going to guess right, but everyone seems happy anyway. Foster’s boys are impressively self-sufficient, too; they don’t even need Foster to help out, so he doesn’t, and I don’t either.

One thing I’ve noticed about Foster is that he has really great posture, and I wonder if it’s part of the reason his group likes him so much. He stands tall when he’s giving them instructions, but when he talks to them one-on-one, he doesn’t bend down like the rest of the counselors do—Foster actually kneels on the ground, right at his camper’s height, so they’re on the same level. I love that, which makes me wonder if there might be something like that he loves about me.

When Foster asks how it’s going, I tell him about my empowerment idea and what I’ve done with the journals. Foster smiles; he says it’s a Very Eva Idea. Then he nudges me and I nudge him and we nudge each other back and forth until it’s like we’re playing our own charades game and the clue is
FLIRTING
.

“Look at this kid,” I say, laughing. “His clue is ‘Banana Underwear.’”

“That’s actually kind of easy,” Foster says.

“Oh yeah,” I say, nudging again, “act out ‘banana’ then, Mr. Sean Penn.”

“I can act out ‘underwear,’” Foster says, and pulls his jeans down just a little, revealing an inch of navy-blue elastic.

“That’s vulgar,” I tell him.

“You want to see vulgar?”

“I do not.”

“Eat lunch with nine boys and a horny eighth grader.”

“Maybe I will,” I say.

“Tomorrow?” Foster asks, but I don’t answer, just nudge. “Look at all those promising female writers,” he says, looking out across the field at my clump of doodling girls. “Intimidating, if they can write like you.”

“Foster,” I say, “if they can write like me, I want you to drown me in that sludge Steven calls a lake. Just lay my dead body in a canoe and let it drift away.”

“Are nine-year-old girls the competition now?” Foster asks. “Because that means I’m out of a job. I was planning on putting ‘Eva’s Competitor’ on my résumé and using you as a reference.”

“We’re friends now,” I say.

“
Now
?” Foster says.

“Yeah,
now
.”

Foster smiles his smile that I guess I’ve seen a ton of times before, but this time it makes me feel extra crazy good. I know Michelle and Steph think Foster’s cute, but they also think we’re destined to fall into some predictable summer romance, which is exactly the type of peer pressure that I can’t
help
resisting, like with the chow mein and so many other things. But I’m not trying to taste Foster Hoyt just to prove a point and then spit him out, because
we’re friends now
, and besides, there’s Elliot in the picture, even though he’s a smoker.

“Charades,” I say. “Ugh.”

“Not an Eva Thing?”

“I’ve never liked it. I hate that you can only communicate with body language, because you can’t learn that. It’s like, I’ve done all this work to be better at talking and writing, and here’s this game that forces you to unlearn all that and express yourself through mime gestures and monkey faces and just
being a good sport
.”

“You’re a good sport,” Foster says.

“No one has
ever
called me that,” I say. Then I point to the boy whose turn it is, who’s still nowhere
close
to impersonating Banana Underwear. “For instance, this might be a lame point to make, it may seem straightforward, but when you’re playing charades, you have to remember that no one knows what the clue is, so getting frustrated at your team doesn’t help anything. But look at this kid—”

“Oliver.”

“Look at Oliver. He’s getting pissed the other boys can’t tell he’s acting out Banana Underwear, but instead of trying a new tactic, some other way of getting Banana Underwear across, he’s just getting madder and, like, more
emphatic
. I hate being misunderstood like that over and over.”

“Okay,” Foster says, “that’s fair, but it goes both ways. The guessers have to shout out a lot of guesses, because if they just sit there waiting to guess until they’re a hundred percent sure, then they’re not really playing.”

“Foster, that’s like a life lesson, I think.”

Then, at the exact same time, I reach for my notebook and Foster reaches for his recorder. We laugh.

“You can have it,” I say. “You said it.”

“We can share it,” Foster says, and then whispers into his tape recorder. I write down
CHARADES
, and that’s it, and Foster nudges me. “Do you ever go to readings?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, trying to sound like a Good Sport.

“There’s this reading at Book Soup on Sunday that I really want to go to.”

This is Foster asking me on a date, and
I know it
. This is so distinctly an Open Door that there’s no question I’m going to walk through it, but just as I’m about to say the perfect response, a boy comes crashing into Foster’s legs. He wants a new clue because the last one was too hard, so Foster asks me to fish around in the hat and find something more guessable. But each clue I unfold and peek at is more impossible than the one before—not to mention that some of them are outright illegible. Then I unfold
HARRY POTTER & THE SORCEROR’S STONE
.

“Here you go,” I say, handing the slip of paper to the kid.

“What do you think, Trevor?” Foster asks, kneeling down, studying his face.

Trevor reads it and then he smiles, the spark of an idea animating his eyes, and it’s pretty magical. I feel good about his chances. I squeeze Foster’s arm.

Trevor goes back in front of the group, and everyone stops talking. He unfolds and folds the clue a few times, biting his lip, staring down at the dirt, thinking. I’m rooting for Trevor, but I’m also rooting for Foster and me, because it feels like if Trevor can get this one, then Foster and I will get our first date.

Finally Trevor slips the clue in his pocket and begins, raising his arms in the air, making a big circle three or four times.

“What’s he doing?” I whisper to Foster.

“That means the
whole thing
,” Foster whispers back. “He’s going to act out the whole clue instead of just the individual words.”

At first I’m annoyed, because the words are so plain, anyone could act them out. “Sorcerer” could be broken down into a few simple gestures (waving a wand, stroking a beard), and for “Stone” you can just pretend to lift something heavy. “Harry” is even easier—just point to your hair. But the Whole Thing? I can’t even imagine that. The Whole Thing is like everything, and how do you act out Everything? How do you communicate
Everything
? You can’t.

Trevor starts off crouching on the ground, like he’s scared and hiding, then there’s some bird impressions and a bit where he’s pretending to be lost. Later he waves his hand frantically, trying to indicate something that’s moving really fast, but no one can tell it’s a train. Then he changes strategies, going for more of a wizard thing, miming the costume—a hat and scarf and glasses. Finally he does the wand, but the way he’s casting spells looks more like he’s hitting somebody with a stick, so no one guesses it, which then derails into an extremely confusing impersonation of a Quidditch game, and after that there’s a bunch of gestures I can’t interpret at all. The rest of his team aren’t even guessing at this point, they’re just shouting, “What is that?” and “Do that part again!” and I’m feeling depressed and responsible because I picked it. But Trevor doesn’t give up; he keeps trying stuff, experimenting, throwing himself into it, until gradually it’s like this emotional one-man performance, and suddenly I find myself really visualizing this frightened and heroic boy-wizard. He’s in the midst of mime-fighting some villain like Voldemort or Severus Snape when, magically, a kid yells out, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone!!” and Trevor throws his fists in the air and cheers and the whole thing’s over.

Foster runs to his group and high-fives everyone, and hugs Trevor, and he even hugs me, but he forgets about the reading and Book Soup and Sunday, because that whole thing’s over too.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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