Camp Confidential 09 - Best (Boy)friend Ever (10 page)

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Authors: Melissa J Morgan

BOOK: Camp Confidential 09 - Best (Boy)friend Ever
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Her underwear was ruined. She had to toss it. But not until she got upstairs and put on a new pair. She’d find a bag and throw this pair away somewhere outside the hotel room so no one would see it in the bathroom trash. She didn’t need everyone talking about her. Looking at her. She could deal with this on her own.
So, the first step in dealing was getting a pad. She couldn’t just stay in the stall all night bleeding on herself. Priya cleaned herself up as well as she could with some toilet paper, then she hiked up her shorts and stepped out of the stall. There was no vending machine for pads. Great. Her mother had sent some stuff with her to camp—just in case. But Priya hadn’t brought any of it on the trip.
She slammed the door stall door shut.
Toilet seat covers
, she decided. She could make a pad out of toilet seat covers. Priya pulled out about ten of the covers and folded them into a bulky rectangle. She got her shorts down again and positioned the “pad” in the center of her underpants, pulled them up, then her shorts.
It felt . . . like she had a huge wad of paper between her legs. But it was better than nothing. She waddled out of the stall and studied herself in the mirror. From the front she looked okay. From the back she looked a little bulky. Nothing anybody should notice, though.
She hurried out of the bathroom and toward the elevator, then stopped and rushed back to the computer room. “Uh, Jordan, I have to go. Keep reading the reviews. You’ll find something good.”
She backed out quickly, not wanting to give him the bulky view, just in case, not giving him time to answer.
“Hey, Priya, what’s up?” he called after her.
She pretended she hadn’t heard him. It’s not like she could tell him. There were some things you just couldn’t tell a boy. Even if he was the best friend you’d ever had.
chapter SIX
Priya opened the hotel room door and flipped off her flip-flops. It was almost impossible to tiptoe in flip-flops. She stepped inside, then quietly shut the door behind her.
Underwear
, she thought.
First, I need new underwear
.
Except even though her toilet-seat cover pad was ginormous, Priya was pretty sure she already felt a new wet spot. The thing just didn’t fit right. Which meant her new underwear would get wrecked, too. And she could end up with blood on her pajamas. And maybe even on the hotel sheets.
She stood frozen in the dark room, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. What was she supposed to do?
Priya could wake up Sophie. But going to their CIT would make such a production of the whole thing. Not that Sophie wasn’t cool, but . . .
Who else? Priya’s eyes skimmed over the sleeping girls. She didn’t know any of them well enough for something like this. Something this
personal.
Except in that “I Never” game they’d all talked about some personal stuff. Alex had admitted that she wanted to know if she was the only one who hadn’t gotten her period. And Abby had said she was freaked about going to a doctor for not getting hers. That was totally personal information.
Priya was pretty sure Valerie had said she’d gotten her period during the game. And Val was in the bed closest to the door. And Priya needed help. So she tiptoed over.
“Val,” she whispered.
“I didn’t take the eyeball out,” Val muttered, throwing one hand over her face.
“Valerie, wake up.”
But it was Sarah who answered. “What’s wrong?” She sat up and looked at Priya.
“Nothing.” She’d been okay with telling one person. Just one. She’d been in a bunk with Valerie and everyone for half the summer, but she didn’t know them that well.
Sarah yawned. “Nothing?” she sounded confused.
Why wouldn’t she be? You didn’t stand over somebody’s bed in the middle of the night for nothing.
Spit it out
, Priya told herself. “Nothing, except I got my period. And they don’t have a machine in the bathroom, and I don’t have any stuff,” she confessed.
“Oh, wow. Are you okay? Do you want me to wake up Sophie? Or I could run and get Becky,” Sarah offered.
“No, that’s okay, “ Priya said quickly. “I just wanted to borrow a pad.”
“I don’t have anything with me. I should, since who knows when mine will come back. But maybe Val does.” Sarah grabbed Valerie by the shoulder and gave her a shake.
Val blinked rapidly, then stared around the room like she’d never seen it before. “D.C. field trip. Hotel,” Sarah whispered, helping her out.
“I was having the freakiest dream.” Valerie shook her head, like she was trying to shake the dream free. “What’s going on?” she asked Sarah.
“Priya got her period! She needs to borrow some pads,” Sarah explained. “And keep it down. Everybody else is still asleep.”
“No prob,” Val said. She flipped on to her stomach, leaned over the side of the bed, and pulled her suitcase out from underneath. Then she jerked upright. “Wait. You got your period? It’s your first one, right? Are you okay?”
Priya wished Valerie would just hand over the pad so Priya could run into the bathroom. Why did other girls always want to talk about stuff so much?
“Are you getting food? Because if you are, you have to share,” Brynn said softly from the other bed as Val leaned back down and started rooting through the suitcase.
“I wasn’t. But—” She pulled a big bag of M&Ms out from a side pocket and tossed them to Priya. “If you’re like me, you’re jonesing for chocolate right now.”
“I
so
am,” Priya answered. “Is that a thing? I mean, is that something that happens to you when you get it?”
“I love chocolate always,” Valerie said. “But there are times when it is vital for my survival.”
Priya ate a handful of the candy. Maybe the talking wasn’t so bad if it came with M&Ms.
“Hey, I’m the one who asked for food,” Brynn complained.
“Priya has priority. She got her period, so it’s like a medical thing,” Valerie answered.
“Should we try to find you a heating pad or something?” Brynn asked. “Maybe at the front desk?” She blinked. “Hey, wait. Didn’t you say you never? During the game?”
“First time,” Priya admitted.
“I read this cool thing. In Uganda when a girl gets her first period, she stays home from school, and her mom and aunts hang with her and fill her in on everything she needs to know,” Valerie said. She pulled a little cloth pouch out of her suitcase and gave it to Priya. “Then later her girlfriends come over and party, and they sing this beautiful song about menstruation.”
“I’ll sing you a beautiful song about menstruation if you give me some of those M&Ms,” Brynn offered. Priya popped another handful, then passed the bag. Then she hurried over to the rollaway and grabbed pajamas and clean underpants out of her suitcase.
“Be right back,” she whispered, then locked herself into the bathroom.
A moment later there was a soft knock on the door. “It’s Alex. I’m leaving some Midol from Val outside the door. It’s good if you have cramps. Have you got them?”
Priya realized she did. She’d thought her tight achy stomach was from dealing with all the Jordan craziness.
“A little. Sorry I woke you up,” Priya told her.
“I’m having some of my sugar-free Reese’s I stashed away, so I’m not complaining,” Alex answered.
“I’m leaving you the rest of the M&Ms.” It was Brynn. “Well, the rest after this handful.” She cleared her throat. Then she started to sing softly. Yes, sing. “
Priya, you’re now a woman/ And that’s sayin’ somethin’/ You get free chocolate/ And that’s saying a lot . . .
”
Priya started to giggle, her whole body shaking so hard she had trouble sticking the wingie things of the pad to her underpants.
“Why is everyone up?” she heard Sophie ask.
“We’re celebrating Priya, the way they do in Uganda,” Brynn answered. “
She’s menstruating, so we’re celebrating
,” she added in song.
“You okay in there, Priya?” Sophie was right outside the door now.
“Yeah,” Priya answered.
The truth was, she was more than okay. She was good. Thanks to her roomies.
Her girlfriends.
How had she gotten along without girlfriends—real ones—before this summer? Boys were great. But boys would have been useless in this situation. Boys wouldn’t have known she needed chocolate. Boys definitely wouldn’t have been able to give her pads. And they wouldn’t have made her laugh by singing to her about menstruating. They probably wouldn’t even say the word ‘menstruating.’
Sometimes you really just needed your girls around you.
Priya and Alex staggered off one of the National Air and Space Museum’s flight simulators. It still felt kind of weird walking with a pad in her underwear. But at least she didn’t have to waddle the way she had when she’d had all those toilet-seat covers stuffed down her underpants.
“How amazingly cool was that?” Alex asked.
“Extremely amazingly cool,” Priya said. Her head felt like it was still somewhere around her toes after that last barrel roll they’d done. It had really felt like they were flying through the sky in one of those old-fashioned barnstormer planes, like the one Snoopy rode in when he was in Red Baron mode.
“Where to next?” Alex retucked her navy shirt into her shorts.
“Let’s check the map,” Priya answered. It was the map that she and Jordan had sent away for and used to plan out almost every minute of their trip to the museum. The place was massive. “Next up—the paper airplane contest in the How Things Fly gallery. I’m an expert at paper airplanes. I’ve had a lot of practice—I like to throw them at my little brother—and I can get some extreme distances.”
“I only know how to do the basic,” Alex admitted.
“I can teach you some variations, no prob.” Priya lowered her voice. “I owe you for last night. Or we don’t have to do the planes at all. I mean, we don’t have to follow the schedule Jor—” She stopped. “The schedule I planned out.”
“Are you kidding? It seems like you know more about this place than the tour guides. Can you believe Brynn attempted to talk me into going to that
Elephant and the Basketball
play with her instead of coming here? She’s my best camp friend. And I’d do almost anything for her. But, puh-leaze.”
“Grapefruit,” Priya corrected automatically. She wondered how Jordan was doing. Only about the thousandth time she’d wondered the same thing since she hit the museum this a.m. Had he found the perfect thing to use to impress Brynn in one of the reviews after she’d bailed on him last night?
“Huh? Grapefruit?” Alex shook her head.
“The name of the play.
The Elephant and the Grapefruit
. Not basketball,” Priya explained.
Priya suddenly felt like spewing the whole Jordan slash Brynn deal to Alex. That was what girlfriends did. Talked. And Alex was getting to be a girlfriend. Except it wasn’t Priya’s story to tell. It didn’t have anything to do with her. So Jordan liiiiked Brynn and was going to try and get her to liiiiike him back today while they were at the play. What did that have to do with Priya? A big fat donut of nothing. So it’s not like she’d be talking over a problem with Alex in a girlfriend kind of way. Because there was no problem.
So why did Priya have a kind of sick feeling in her stomach?
It was just period cramps, she decided. That or a side-effect from the flight simulator. Or a combo of the two.
“How do you think the writer came up with that title?” Alex asked, pulling Priya out of her thoughts. “Come on.
The Elephant and the Grapefruit
?”

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