The Stars of Summer (4 page)

A TASTE OF CAMP

M
ONDAY MORNING DAWNED HOT AND
sunny, and Gladys's mom insisted she pack an extra-large bottle of water in her lobster backpack. The bag was already stuffed with a swimsuit, a towel, a huge tube of sunblock, a Mets baseball cap, and of course, Gladys's new waterproof reviewing journal.

“Mom, I'm sure they have
water
there,” she said.

“It's just that you're so fair,” her mom replied, brushing Gladys's dark hair away from her pale face. “And, well . . . you haven't spent a lot of time playing outside. Sunburn and dehydration can sneak up on you a lot faster than you'd think!”

For a moment, Gladys considered telling her mom that she actually planned to spend as little time as possible in the sun. But if her parents knew Gladys was hoping to find a shady corner to hide out with her journal instead of doing lots of camp activities, they probably wouldn't be very happy.

“Fine,” she grumbled and shoved the water bottle as deep into the lobster's stomach as it would go.

In the car, her mom listened to the radio, but Gladys could barely hear anything over the thumping of her own heart. She wasn't sure what made her more anxious: managing her secret reviewing assignments or talking to kids her own age.

As it turned out, the entrance to Camp Bentley was swarming with kids of
all
ages. Little kids, barely older than toddlers, clung to their parents' hands, while older kids squealed and screeched and hugged like they hadn't seen one another in ages, even though school had let out less than two weeks before. The one thing everyone had in common was their purple shirts, which read C
AMP
B
ENTLEY:
T
HE
F
UNNEST
C
A
MP
E
VER!
in white letters. Gladys felt pretty sure that Charissa was responsible for both the color scheme and the wording.

Wiping moist palms on her own purple T-shirt (which Mr. Bentley had dropped off while picking Charissa up from her party), Gladys took a deep breath.
You can do this,
she told herself.
A writer for the world's most famous newspaper
doesn't get intimidated by stuff like camp.
She kissed her mom on the cheek and slid out of the car.

She was almost through the camp's giant wooden arch when a hand pulled her shoulder backward. She spun around, and there was Charissa with her two best friends, Rolanda Royce and Marti Astin.

All three were scowling. This Gladys would have expected from Rolanda and Marti, but she thought that Charissa, at least, might have given her a warmer welcome.

“Gladys!” Charissa hissed. “You can't go in that way!”

“Um . . . okay,” Gladys said. “Why not?”

Charissa's ponytail whipped over her shoulder as she gave her head an exasperated shake. “
Because
you haven't been oriented yet! New campers can't use the main gate until they've taken the Camp Bentley Oath of Loyalty. It's tradition!”

“Yeah,
Gladys
,” Marti echoed. “It's
tradition
.”

Charissa sighed. “Did you even read the pamphlet I e-mailed you?”

“Oh. Uh . . .”

Gladys hadn't read it. She'd tried to spend her last day of freedom thinking about camp as little as possible, and she'd figured the orientation pamphlet wasn't a big deal. But now she could see that Charissa was actually hurt.

“I mean, do you even want to be here?” Charissa asked, her voice growing smaller with every word.

“Of course I do!” Gladys lied. “I was just really busy yesterday finishing up some . . . stuff . . . so that once camp started, I could be totally committed.”

This answer seemed to cheer Charissa up. “Well, good!” she said. “Because I think you're
really
going to love it. Oh, and before I forget, here's your CIT pin.”

Charissa pulled a large button—white with purple writing that said
CIT
—out of her canvas bag. Gladys noticed that Charissa, Marti, and Rolanda were already wearing them.

“Cool,” Gladys said, fumbling to pin the button onto her shirt. “What's a CIT?”

“What's a CIT?”
Rolanda's eyes bugged out like she'd never heard such a stupid question in her life.

“Calm down, Ro—she's never been to camp before,” Charissa said. “Gladys, a CIT is a counselor-in-training. You have to be at least twelve to be one.”

“Yeah, and you're
supposed
to have at least four years of camp experience, too,” Marti muttered.

“That's true,” Charissa said. “But Gladys has other experience that's going to make her an awesome CIT.” She grinned at Gladys, who smiled back tentatively, wondering what this experience might be. “Anyway, it basically means you get to help one of the counselors or staff members do their jobs. We do our CIT duties in the morning, then we have the afternoon free for swimming and crafts and stuff like that.”

“What kinds of duties?” Gladys asked.

“Well, it depends on your skills,” Charissa said. “Like, Marti's really good with kids, so she'll be helping with the Tiny Tots group. And
I'm
great at organization, so I'll help my parents in the front office.”

“What about you, Rolanda?” Gladys asked, trying to be friendly.

Rolanda stared at her. “Swimming, duh.”

“Ro's training to be a lifeguard,” Charissa said, “so she's going to help Coach Mike teach swimming lessons.”

“Swimming lessons?” Gladys gulped. “Do we all have to take swimming lessons?”

Rolanda laughed. “Only if you can't pass your swim test—which is, like, the easiest test ever. Just one length of the pool.” She gave Gladys an appraising look. “You
can
swim that far, right?”

Gladys didn't answer. The closest she usually got to large amounts of water was boiling a pot of spaghetti. Her mom had been a champion swimmer when she was a kid, but Gladys was pretty sure that talent had gotten lost somewhere on the way to her own gene pool.

A bullhorn sounded from within the camp. “Ooh, the welcome ceremony's about to start!” Charissa cried. “You guys go ahead through the main gate. I'll take Gladys around to the new campers' entrance.”

“We'll save you a spot,” Marti said, and she and Rolanda joined the stream of kids bustling through the arch.

“I can't wait to see your face when you get your CIT assignment,” Charissa said as she led Gladys along the white fence that enclosed the camp's property. Gladys almost had to jog to keep up. “It's
such
a perfect fit! Mommy and Daddy weren't sure that a first-time camper would be able to handle it, but I told them that you definitely could.”

“Uh, thanks?” The focus of Gladys's anxiety switched from the swim test to the CIT thing all over again. What would she have to “handle”? For some reason, she pictured a cage full of snakes. “Camp Bentley doesn't have a zoo, does it?” she asked.

“A zoo?”

Gladys had never been so happy to be on the receiving end of Charissa's “You're talking like a crazy person” stare. So it wasn't snakes, then.

“Okay, here we are,” Charissa announced. They were at a nondescript gate in the fence. “The other new campers must have already gone in, but if you hurry, you can catch up before the introductions. I'll see you after!” And with that, she took off running back the way they had come.

If Camp Bentley had so many rules—or, at least, traditions—just for how to walk in, then Gladys wasn't sure she'd be able to keep up.
I really should have read that pamphlet,
she thought.

Close-growing trees shaded the pathway she was walking down now, and the noisy crowd at the arch seemed miles away. Gladys was starting to feel almost calm when another bullhorn blast ripped through the air, sounding much closer than it had from the front entrance. Her path curved around a corner, and she spotted people ahead.

There were probably twenty kids in the camp uniform—most very small, though a few bigger ones were mixed in—all standing in a clump, glancing around nervously. Gladys saw steps that led up the side of a stage. Charissa's mom was standing on that stage in her purple camp shirt, though a huge oak tree blocked Gladys's view of what Mrs. Bentley was facing. But soon enough, she heard.

“Wellllcome to Camp Bentley!” Mrs. Bentley bleated into a microphone. “Who's ready to have the awesomest summer ever?!?”

An enormous cheer rose up from beyond the stage, and the sound actually sent Gladys stumbling back a few paces into the woods. Never before had she heard screaming, clapping, and whooping like that—definitely not at school assemblies, and not even at
Glossy Girl: The Musical,
the Broadway show she'd seen with Charissa and her parents.

Mrs. Bentley let the cheering die down before she continued. “We have an
amazing
summer planned for everyone this year! There will be swimming! There will be archery! And in August, we'll divide into two teams for an epic color war!”

The cheers rose up again, but at least this time Gladys was ready for it. She held her ground, then even took a few steps closer to the kids grouped by the stage steps. As Mrs. Bentley began to speak again, Gladys tapped the shoulder of a girl who was compulsively smoothing the front of her shorts. “Excuse me,” Gladys asked, “but do you know why we're standing here?”

“'Cause Mrs. Bentley said to,” the girl answered in a voice barely above a whisper. Her braces flashed in the sunlight as she spoke. “She said to wait here 'til she calls our names.
And
she said no talking.”

“They're ridiculous, these rules,” a louder voice said. “Stand here. Wear this shirt. Be quiet. Like we're
children
.”

Gladys turned around to see who had spoken and spotted a boy leaning against a tree trunk. She was surprised she hadn't noticed him there before, but standing under a leafy branch, he blended right into the shadows.

The fact that he was dressed in black from head to toe probably also helped him blend. He wore a black shirt, black pants, black boots, glasses with black frames, and a black brimmed hat that Gladys knew was called a fedora, since her dad sometimes wore one, too.

She smiled at him.
Here
was someone who understood! She was about to say that she agreed about the rules—and ask how he'd gotten out of wearing the camp shirt—when he pushed himself off the tree with one foot and continued.

“Of course, most of you
are
children—so you wouldn't know any better than to follow along.”

Gladys felt her smile flatten out.

“She said
no talking
!” the girl with the braces hissed. “If you're talking, we won't be able to hear our names being called!”

Oh, NO
. An image flashed into Gladys's mind: Charissa, in their sixth-grade classroom, announcing everyone's names as they came back from winter break. Gladys hadn't enjoyed the attention then, and her class only had twenty-two students. How many campers were there at Camp Bentley? Gladys edged up closer to peek carefully around the trunk of the big tree . . . but the moment she did, she wished she hadn't. The entire field beyond the stage was crammed with kids—there had to be at least two hundred sitting out there.

The boy, meanwhile, was ignoring Braces Girl's warning completely. “Oh, I'm used to hearing my name called over the sounds of cheers and shouts,” he said, his chest puffing out slightly. “For example, at the Preteen Choice Awards—”

“
SHHH!
” Flecks of spit sprayed out of the girl's mouth. “It's starting!”

She was right—Mrs. Bentley's voice seemed to be getting louder. “Please welcome our newest class of campers,” she cried. “The Flamingo Fives!”

Cheers erupted, and the cluster of tiny kids ran up the stage steps. One by one, they accepted pieces of paper from Mrs. Bentley as she called their names, then exited down the other side of the stage, where a counselor was waving a F
LAMINGO
F
IVES
sign.

“But the Flamingos aren't our only new campers this year!” Mrs. Bentley said into her microphone. “So let's please give a big old Camp Bentley welcome to our next new attendee, Sophie Appelbaum!”

Braces Girl sucked in a huge breath, smoothed her shorts one last time, and climbed the steps.

Mrs. Bentley's voice echoed around the field. “Sophie has transferred from West Dumpsford Day Camp,” she said, “and she'll be joining the Ninja Nines group! Let's all give her a round of applause!”

Cheers rose from the audience again.

When Mrs. Bentley next introduced a boy named Ian DeBaun, Gladys realized that she was going in alphabetical order—and that the
G
's couldn't be too far off. Gladys also noticed that Ian—who, it was announced, had just moved to town from Indiana—got significantly less applause than Sophie, who was a local.

Dread now clumped in Gladys's stomach like cold oatmeal.
Will anyone other than Charissa cheer for me?
she wondered.

She didn't have to wait long to find out.

“Our next new camper, joining us as a CIT, is Gladys Gatsby!”

Gladys's ears seemed to stop working properly, because she couldn't tell if the buzzing she heard was cheering or a malfunction in her brain. Her legs, at least, seemed okay; in fact, they must have carried her onto the stage of their own accord, because suddenly she was looking out at the enormous crowd but didn't remember how she'd gotten there.

Handing her a piece of paper, Mrs. Bentley nudged Gladys toward the far steps, which she managed to descend without tripping even though her limbs felt numb. Then she noticed Charissa beckoning to her from under a banner that said CITs, so she hurried over and sank down next to her on the grass.