Campfire Cookies (10 page)

“I don't mind doing it,” I said.

“Doing what?” Lucy said.

“PFHL!” Grace said.

Lucy giggled. “Piffle to you too!”

And after that, we got down to work.

If a teacher assigned you to write a list of adjectives to describe me, Emma Rosen, not a single one would be “sneaky.” This failure of mine is not a problem most of the time, but it is a problem when you're carrying out a plan like PFHL.

In fact, if you want the whole truth, my trouble with PFHL isn't only lack of sneaky.

My trouble is that I'm not graceful and athletic like
Grace, or brave and quick-thinking like Lucy, or beautiful and outgoing like Olivia.

I am just normal. Normal smart. Normal looking. Normal nice.

My only special quality is this: I am good at organizing. At home when my friends do a project, they put me in charge because they know the project will get done, and they won't have to worry about it.

Here at camp, the Secret Cookie Club membership had been ready to put me in charge of PFHL, too—then I said no. Remember that time when Olivia called me bossy at lunch? It hurt my feelings. And I decided then and there I wouldn't be the boss of anything at camp this summer.

Let someone else worry for once.

So Olivia took over PFHL planning the night Hannah was at the counselors' meeting, and actually, Olivia did okay. We made a plan. We got assignments. We even came up with a timeline. We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves—not to mention sleepy—when Lucy said, “What if Lance has a girlfriend already?”

Olivia yawned. “Then they'll just have to break up.”

“But that's not fair,” Lucy said. “What if his girlfriend is nice?”

“No one is as nice as Hannah,” Grace said.

“Besides, who has time to worry about random unknown girls?” said Olivia.

I said, “Uhhh . . .”

And Olivia said, “Uhhh . . . what, Emma? And hey, are you okay over there? We haven't heard from you in a while. Are you worrying about your assignment?”

Olivia couldn't see me, if you're wondering, because this planning session took place in whispers with all of us on our own bunks in the dark.

We had to be super quiet. Everyone at camp knows Buck has sentries patrolling the walkways after lights-out. No one has ever seen or heard these sentries. They always wear black camo, and their sneakers have special silent soles. Still, we campers know they are there. Their main job is keeping girls out of Boys Camp and vice versa, but they also listen for disturbances.

If you make a disturbance you get demerits, and there go your chances to make Top Cabin.

A ten-to-eleven cabin that won Chore Score
and
made Top Cabin? Flowerpot would be a legend!

“I'm fine. I'm awake. I'm listening,” I whispered. “And if Lance has a girlfriend already, I don't think we should try to fix him and Hannah up. It's encouraging him to cheat, and it's not nice.”

“That's what I think too,” said Lucy.

Olivia must have sat up fast because her bunk bed squeaked.
“So we did all that PFHL planning for nothing?”

“Shhh!”
Grace and I hissed.

Olivia grunted, lay down, and whispered, “So we did all that PFHL planning for nothing?”

“No,” I said. “Or maybe. Or yes—but only if Lance has a girlfriend.”

“So in that case,
you
find out, Emma,” Olivia said. “You're the one that's so interested in fairness to a girl none of us ever even heard of.”

“Okay,” I said, “I will.”

“And you have to do it fast,” said Grace. “Because till you do, we can't start on PFHL at all.”

“Okay,”
I said again. And then, as my friends fell asleep, I lay there wondering how.

Olivia's not the only one who hates the wake-up bell at Moonlight Ranch. I do too. But last summer I learned that I can make myself get out of bed if I focus laserlike on one thing: pancakes.

The ones at Moonlight Ranch are extra delicious, and you can get them every day, not just on weekends. To go with your pancakes, there's cinnamon sugar, maple
syrup, applesauce, sunflower seeds, and mini chips. You can have all you want, but if you have all at once, your tummy will suffer.

I know this from personal experience.

Every morning as I got ready for the day ahead, I played a pancake countdown in my head: Wash face, brush teeth, fold up jammies:

Pancakes.

Straighten sheets, pull on jeans, button blouse:

Pancakes.

Out the door, down the walk, to the mess hall:

Pancakes!

That day in the mess hall, I sat down at the table with my pancake-stacked plate, had a drink of milk, cut the first bite, and bit into it—
ahhhh
.

Pancakes made getting out of bed worthwhile.

Now that I was fortified, I decided to ask for advice in finding out whether Lance had a girlfriend. The one helpful thing I'd thought of was this: Jamil—one of Lance's campers—has morning riding with me. Maybe he knew. But how would I get him to tell me?

“Start with small talk,” said Grace, who is much sneakier than me.

“Define small talk,” I said.

“You know, like ‘How are you,' ‘I'm fine,' ‘What's new,' ‘Not much,' ‘Does Lance have a girlfriend . . . ?' Like that.” She shrugged.

“OMG, you call
that
advice?” said Olivia, whose plate had eggs, strawberries, and a double portion of potatoes on it. “I have a much, much,
much
better idea! Bring up a related subject that seems totally innocent but isn't.”

“Oka-a-ay . . . so like what?” I asked.

“Lemme think,” Olivia said. “Maybe you just happen to mention something about
your
boyfriend or your
ex
-boyfriend. And then you go on to talk about boyfriend-girlfriend as a general kind of a category, and after that, Jamil says something, and you say something, and Jamil says something . . . and soon the state of Lance's romantic life has been revealed.”

“Yeah, but O,” I said, “I don't
have
a boyfriend, and I never did.”

“Make one up,” said Grace, whose breakfast was a bowl of rainbow-colored sugar cereal.

“I don't think I'm that creative,” I said.

“Not a problem,” said Olivia. “You can borrow mine.”

“What?”
I said.

Olivia laughed. “I don't mean borrow a real live human boy. I mean pretend a boyfriend I used to have is yours. That way you don't have to invent him from nothing. Now, what do you want to know?”

Lucy looked up from her granola. “Did you say you have a boyfriend, O?”

Olivia shrugged. “Lots of 'em. But nobody special now. The one I'm thinking of is from the beginning of the school year.”

“Was he white, black, Latino, or other?” Lucy asked.

I was pretty surprised by that question, and I guess Olivia was too. “Why is that important?” she asked.

“It's just one of the questions,” Lucy said. “If you'd rather, you can tell me his religion, political party, last book read, and
approximate household income.”

“Approximate . . .
what
?” Olivia looked at me, then at Grace. “What is she talking about?”

“No idea,” said Grace.

Lucy giggled. “It's what they ask on dating websites. I look at them sometimes with my mom.”

“O-h-h-h,” said Olivia. “Now I get it. In that case, he was a black kid at my school, one of the few. And he was
an older man—
in the seventh grade! And I don't know about his political party, but his last book read was probably
Hatchet
—”

“That's a good one,” said Grace.

“—and I don't know about religion either, but I don't think he's Jewish because he gave me a Christmas present. Since we broke up, his name is unimportant, but if you want to know, it was Brian.”

“Why did you break up?” Grace asked.

Olivia made a tragic face, looked at her eggs, and sighed. “Physical incompatibility.”

Grace said,
“Seriously?”
while I both wanted and did
not
want details.

Seeing our expressions, Olivia laughed and shook her head. “
You guys!
All I mean is he was shorter than me! We looked terrible together in pictures.”

•  •  •

At Moonlight Ranch, chores are after breakfast, and that day mine was the most despised of all: shower, toilet, and sink.

In my belly the pancakes contended with orange juice as I squeegeed the shower walls and scrubbed the floor. As I worked, I tried to picture myself saying, “Good morning, Jamil. I have a black boyfriend named Brian who's probably Christian and in seventh grade. How are you?”

Meanwhile, Grace was sweeping the bunkroom, and Lucy was dusting. Olivia's job was to sweep the walk outside. When I was done, she would come in and clean the mirror.

Later, after we left for activities, a counselor would come around to inspect the cabin and score five categories: bathroom, surfaces, windows, beds, and overall tidiness. Some counselors barely inspect at all; others
give you zeros for a single dried-up bug wing on the floor.

When the bell rang for activities at nine o'clock, Grace did a preinspection. This had been Hannah's idea to keep us competitive.

Grace took preinspection way seriously. She strode through like the sergeant in a war movie, hands behind her back, turning her head right and left. She even peered under the beds and behind the toilet. Anytime she found anything bad, she pointed at it, then at the person who had failed to meet her high standards.

Poor Grace. She was trying to be firm, but she was more like comical, and that morning Olivia followed behind, mimicking her every move. Lucy and I tried not to laugh, but Olivia was hilarious, and finally we busted up.

Grace was not amused. “Do you girls want to win or
not
?”

“Lighten up a little, shee-
eesh!
” Olivia said. “We
will
win. We're the best. That Brianna girl doesn't have a chance.”

“We won't win unless we're serious,” said Grace. “And whatever you think about Brianna, O,
she
got Purple Sage Cabin a Dandy Dust Mop, and we don't have anything like that.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, no mop can beat our elbow grease!” Olivia said.

“Ewww,”
said Lucy, checking out her elbows.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Is that something Jenny says?”

“Bingo!” Olivia pointed. “It means ‘hard work.' ”

I said, “We gotta go, you guys. Got your hat, Lucy? Is everyone wearing enough sunscreen? You too, O. Even dark-skinned people need sunscreen.”

“I
know,
Emma,” said Olivia.

“Just checking,” I said.

Finally we were ready to file out the door, Grace and Olivia to first activity, me and Lucy to riding. Since campers all leave at the same time, it was morning rush hour on the walkways and paths of Moonlight Ranch.