Best Friend Next Door (18 page)

Our cabin is called Icicles. That’s what our counselor, Meredith, tells us as Sophie and I trek across a path packed with snow. Deepwoods is in a valley, so it’s not as freezing cold as up on the main road. Meredith is probably twenty and has glasses and a hat with earflaps. Sophie and I are wearing our backpacks. Our suitcases will be delivered on a pickup truck later. Even though we’ll only be here for three days, we had to bring a ton of winter gear, like boots and snow pants and long underwear.

“In the summer camp season, we call the cabin Sunflower,” Meredith says as she points to the lodge and the camp store and the sledding hill. “But we change the names in the winter. Icicles is for fifth-grade girls. We also have Snowball and Blizzard. That’s a boys’ cabin.”

Sophie grins at me and raises her eyebrows.
Huh?
Does she like boys now? It’s strange how I can’t read her expressions anymore.

When we get into Icicles, Meredith pulls off her hat and shakes out her long curly hair. She shows us where we hang our coats and snow pants, and the rack near the heater where we’ll dry our boots at night.

“But don’t take off your boots now,” she says. “We’re going to head up to the main lodge in a few minutes for hot chocolate in front of the fireplace. That’s where we’ll have the welcome ceremony.”

“Is Emme Hoffman-Shields here yet?” I ask.

“She has a hyphenated name?” Sophie asks. She’s holding her pillow under one arm. For some reason, she insisted on bringing it all the way from Canada even though the camp said they’d be providing pillows.

“She hasn’t arrived yet,” Meredith says, checking her list. “But speaking of Emme”—she turns to Sophie—“you two have been assigned to share a bunk bed. You can decide now whether you want the top or bottom bunk, or you can wait until she arrives.”

My stomach flips.
Oh, no.
Please not the pukey feeling again.

“What about me?” I ask. I thought
I’d
be in a bunk bed with one of them. After all, they’re
my
best friends.

“The number of campers wasn’t even this year,” Meredith says, “so you’ll actually have a bed to yourself.” She smiles brightly in the way people do when they’re delivering bad news that they’re trying to package as good news. “That means you don’t have to battle it out for top or bottom bunk.”

Meredith gestures to a lumpy-looking single bed off to one side of the cabin, way far away from the bunk beds, next to the doorway leading to the bathroom.

“Single bed,” Sophie says. “Lucky.”

But she says it in this way that she’s
really
thinking I didn’t get so lucky.

A few minutes later, Emme walks into the door of Icicles with a pillow under her arm. She brought a pillow, too? The next thing I notice is that Emme has a streak of blue in her hair, just in front of her left ear. She got a streak in her hair, too? We haven’t talked in a few days since she’s been in Boston. I hadn’t even told her about Sophie’s pink streak.

“Surprise!” Emme says to me. “I had my streak done at a salon yesterday. What do you think?”

“Nice,” I say, shrugging. I glance over at Sophie. “This is Emme,” I say. Then I turn to Emme and say, “This is Sophie.”

Emme notices the pink streak in Sophie’s hair and Sophie notices the blue streak in Emme’s hair and they both start laughing.

“I love your hair!” Emme says to Sophie. “Hannah didn’t say you had pink in it.”

I thought Emme hated pink.

“We hadn’t talked,” I say.

“I love your hair, too! You have such a cute bob and I love the blue,” Sophie says to Emme. “You went to a salon for it? Lucky! I had to do mine at home. And I love that you’re living in my old bedroom.”

I thought Sophie was jealous of Emme taking over her house.

“I’ve heard
everything
about you,” Emme says to Sophie. “Did you hear I kept your smiley face on my bedroom wall?”

Sophie squeals. “Really? That’s so cool! Why didn’t you tell me, Hannah?”

“You didn’t ask,” I say.

“Did you know we’re sharing a bunk bed?” Sophie asks Emme.

“Do you care whether you’re on the bottom or top bunk?” Emme asks.

“Not really,” Sophie says.

“Me neither!” Emme says.

They both giggle and then they hug. They HUG. My two best friends have known each other for thirty-seven seconds and they’re
hugging
.

As Emme and Sophie arrange their pillows on their beds, I sit on the edge of my misshapen mattress. It turns out my bed is also right under the sloped roof. If I’m not careful when I sit up, I’ll bonk my head.

“Five minutes until the welcome ceremony,” Meredith says. A bunch of other girls have trickled into the bunk and she’s showing them around.

I glance over at Emme and Sophie’s bunk bed area and I’m shocked to see them both taping up pictures of pandas on the wall. They
both
brought pictures of
pandas
?

I push myself off the bed and walk over to them. “You like pandas now?” I ask Sophie.

“Who doesn’t?” she says.

Maybe me,
I think darkly. Maybe I’ll be the only person in the world who hates the panda bear.

On the way to the welcome ceremony, I pause to cinch the elastic on the top of my boot. When I catch up, Emme and Sophie have linked elbows. They’re singing a song about being made out of glue and sticking together.

“What are you singing?” I ask.

“Just something I heard on the drive from Boston,” Emme says. “Want me to teach you?”

I shake my head. I consider reminding her of the song “Make New Friends (But Keep the Old).” Instead I stoop over and cinch my other boot tighter.

At dinner, I sit across from Emme and Sophie. They don’t stop talking the entire time. It’s like they’re long-lost best friends. When the director stands up to make a speech, they both whistle instead of clap. At the evening sing-along after dinner, they get the other kids going in a round of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Forget about long-lost friends. They’re the exact same person!

“What’s with the killer stare?” Sophie says as we’re walking over to the tables to sign up for tomorrow’s activities. For once, she and Emme aren’t stuck together like glue.

“What killer stare?” I ask innocently. So maybe I was glaring a little, but I thought she was too busy bonding with Emme to notice.

Sophie rolls her eyes like
whatever
and then grabs a pen and starts reading the sign-up sheets.

“Oooh, look,” Sophie says. “They have ice-skating tomorrow morning!”

I’ve had enough. I squeeze through the crowd, zip up my coat, and walk to the camp store. Meredith told us that’s where they sell things like spare toothpaste and Deepwoods key chains and sweatshirts. They also have a computer you can use to email your parents. I sit on the hard wooden bench, log onto my email, and write to my dad and Margo.

Hey,

I don’t think I like it here. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

Hannah

I send the email and then head slowly back to the lodge. On the way, I hit my forehead on a low pine branch. An avalanche of snow pours down the back of my coat.

I might actually hate this place.

At seven thirty the next morning, a bugle plays “Reveille” over the camp loudspeaker. I sit up too quickly and whack the top of my head on the ceiling. Two head injuries in less than twelve hours. Nice.

I glance across the cabin. Most girls are rubbing their eyes and pushing their hair out of their faces. But Emme and Sophie’s bunk bed is empty.

The toilet flushes, rattling the water bottle on the shelf next to my bed.

“Where are Emme and Sophie?” I ask Meredith as she steps out of the bathroom.

“Polar bear ice-skating,” she says, twisting her curls into a loose bun. “They signed up for it last night after dinner. They’re having a picnic breakfast on the lake.”

They’ve ice-skated onto the lake to eat
breakfast
? I can’t believe this winter camp was
my
parents’ idea. I should have said no right away!

Meredith must see the look on my face because she says, “Don’t worry. I noticed that you didn’t sign up for a morning activity yet. After breakfast, we can get you fitted in skates and you can join them for ice fishing. What happened to your forehead? You have a red mark.”

“Nothing.” I touch my head with my fingers. “I’m fine.”

Meredith leans in closer and peers at my forehead. I try to keep my mouth from quivering. I suddenly feel like I’m going to cry.

At breakfast, I sit with the other girls from my bunk, but I barely say anything. My toast is dry and the eggs taste like rubber. I wonder what Sophie and Emme are eating out there with the other polar bears.

For my morning activity, I sign up for arts and crafts. It’s just me and two other girls in a musty cabin, gluing together Popsicle sticks to make birdhouses. None of my Popsicle sticks line up and I forget to make a door or windows. My birdhouse ends up looking like a lopsided jail.

I run into Emme on the front porch of the dining hall. It’s a few minutes before lunch. I was sitting on a bench trying to adjust my left boot. For some reason, it’s either too tight or too loose. Emme plops down next to me. Her cheeks are bright red and her pale blue scarf is wrapped around the lower half of her face.

“How’s it going?” she asks. “We missed you on the ice this morning. It was amazing. I can’t believe I skated on a real lake!”

“Good for you,” I say. I don’t look up from my boot.

“Too bad I hid a boot,” Emme says.

When I don’t respond, she says, “Palindrome alert. Did you know that one?”

When I still don’t respond, she says, “What’s wrong, Hannah? Are you mad we went ice-skating without you?”

I shrug. I have that feeling like I’m going to cry again. “Where’s your best friend?”

Emme touches her gloves together, lining up her fingers one by one. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks quietly. “You know you’re my best friend.”

I stare hard at her. “I do?”

Emme looks away. “If you’re wondering where Sophie is, she went to reserve tubes for the sledding hill this afternoon. We heard that the good ones go first.”