Just Like Me (10 page)

“
Shhhhhhhh!
” Becca whispered, putting her fingers to her lips.

We all buried our heads in our pillows, giggling as Gina crawled across the gritty cabin floor to grab the ping-pong ball that had rolled toward the bathroom.

Tori scolded, “Giiiiirls!” from her counselor room, and we all shook even harder with laughter.

It was rest time, and we weren't allowed to talk or leave our bunks. But even so, we were practicing for tonight's cabin competition, Egg Emergency. The object of the game was for each team to use spoons to pass as many eggs from one end of our line to the other without touching or dropping them.

In order to practice, we had turned Avery's chopsticks into two long-handled spoons by attaching the chopsticks together with ponytail holders, making two really long sticks. Then, on one end of each stick, we used one more ponytail holder to attach a spoon. We pretended a ping-pong ball we had borrowed from the rec room was the egg, and without leaving our bunks, we took turns passing the ball back and forth with the long-handled spoons.

We were all getting pretty good at it, but as soon as Gina realized how much everyone laughed every time she sneaked out of her bunk to retrieve a runaway ball, she made sure there were plenty of chances to slither on her stomach across the floor like Spider-Woman. But since we had pretty much perfected our passing technique, no one minded that Gina wasn't taking our practice seriously anymore. The more times Gina crawled after the ball, the more our bunk springs squeaked and our beds bounced as we tried to hold in our giggles.

When rest time was over, Avery stood by her cubby straightening her stuff, and I worried that when she saw her Ms. Marcia journal, she might remember that she and Becca and I hadn't even mentioned Ms. Marcia in a couple days. So I didn't waste any time standing around the cabin talking.

Gina and I changed into our swimsuits as fast as we could and left the cabin before the other girls had even figured out how they were going to spend their free time.

But Gina and I weren't quite fast enough because just before we made it down the hill from our cabin, I heard Avery calling, “Hey, Julia!”

I could tell without even turning around that she was up on her top bunk yelling out the window.

“Becca and I are mailing those letters today. Is yours ready?”

“No!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Just go ahead and mail yours.”

I linked arms with Gina and walked faster.

“What letter?” she asked, as we passed the mess hall and hurried down the hill toward the lake.

“Just letters to our moms,” I explained. “Avery wants our moms to all get letters on the same day. You know how Avery is.”

“I think we all know how Avery is,” Gina agreed, smiling.

I was thankful my explanation of Ms. Marcia's “mom letter” was enough to satisfy Gina. And now that Avery and Becca were mailing theirs today, I wouldn't have to be bothered with it again.

“I can't wait to get in the water,” Gina said. “I still smell like that breakfast food we scraped off the mess hall floor.”

Lots of other girls were headed down to the lake too, so there was talking and laughing all around us as Gina and I walked down the steps toward the lake.

Gina smelled her hands.

“Don't my hands still stink?” she asked, shoving them in my face.

“Ewww,” I said, pushing her hands away.

“I washed 'em, but they still smell. I don't know why. I didn't even touch any of that half-chewed food. I
hated
cleaning that floor.”

We both grabbed our swim tags off the board, and Gina went over to get her life jacket.

“Well, hopefully, we won't be doing any more cleaning this week,” I said when she came back.

Gina pulled on her life jacket and buckled and tied it. We headed for the dock.

“I hope you're right,” she said. “But I wouldn't count on our troubles being over.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, Vanessa's in our cabin,” Gina said. “It doesn't take much to get that girl screaming.”

She was probably right.

“But we've got better things to think about than that,” Gina said, pointing. “Look who's at the end of the dock.”

I looked where she was pointing and saw DD Jr. holding his lifeguard whistle between his teeth, like he was just waiting for someone to make him use it. I squinted at him standing there at the end of the dock with his muscle-y shoulders sparkling with sweat in the sun, looking even tanner than he had the day before. He looked so good that I thought I might melt.

“Should we run so he'll notice us?” Gina asked.

“
No!
” I said quickly, even though getting noticed by him sounded like a great idea to me.

“I think I'll just cool him off again,” Gina said, marching toward the end of the dock.

When she got to the end, she jumped higher than she had last time, tucked her legs and grabbed her knees in the air, and yelled, “Cannonball Jr.!”

I couldn't believe she'd done that.

DD Jr. got soaked again. And Gina came up for air smiling as if she'd just earned a 10.0 for a perfect dive.

I headed toward the end of the dock and jumped before DD Jr. even had a chance to shake off all the water. Letting myself sink into the deep end, I could feel the icy, cold water on every inch of my skin.

When I came up for air, Gina said, “Let's hit the slide.”

“Yeah, we better get out of here before DD Jr. decides it's payback time and makes you swim laps or something,” I said, laughing.

“Are you kidding me?” Gina asked, pushing her wild curls out of her eyes. “He loves me!”

“Oh brother,” I said, splashing her in the face.

We swam to the raft and climbed up and slid down the slide more times than I could count.

Campers jumped and splashed and swam, filling the warm, summer air with tons of laughter and even more fun.

Finally Gina said, “It's getting kinda crowded. Wanna go get a couple noodles and float around out there?”

She pointed to the center of the deep end.

“Sure,” I said.

So we swam to the far edge of the deep end where a bunch of swim noodles were attached to the swim area rope. We each unhooked one, put a leg on either side, and used the noodles to float out to the deepest part of the swim area.

Gina put her hand up to her nose and sniffed. “Ahhhh! Finally. No more scrambled egg smell.”

I laughed and turned my face up to the sun and closed my eyes, feeling the warmth. The water didn't feel icy cold anymore, and floating on the noodle relaxed my tired, achy body.

“So you gotta tell me. What's with that yarn you lost anyway?” Gina asked.

My stomach sank past my feet to the bottom of the deep end, and my skin got cold and clammy.

Gina and I were having such a good time. Why did she have to ruin it by talking about that yarn?

“It's nothing,” I said, looking toward shore, hoping to see the lifeguard by the boathouse with the bullhorn, ready to blow it to end free swim.

“C'mon,” Gina said. “It has to be something important for you to have gotten so upset about it.”

I curled my toes in the cold water. I didn't want to tell her the truth—that I was
pretending
a baby blanket was from my birth mom when I knew it really wasn't…so I lied.

“It's a piece of fringe from the baby blanket my birth mom wrapped me in.”

“Really?” Gina sounded both surprised and excited. “Do you still have the blanket?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It's at home.”

“Oh good!” she said, sounding relieved. “So you can just cut another piece of yarn from it for your Bible case, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, amazed at how easy it was to keep pretending. “That's what I'm going to do, but I just got really mad when I realized it was gone.”

“Yeah,” Gina said. “I can see why. You're really lucky you have something from your birth mom.”

If what I was pretending really was true, that
would
really be lucky. But now that I had lied to Gina, I wasn't feeling very lucky at all.

Dear Ms. Marcia,

I've always felt like everyone thinks I should have some special connection with China, but I've never really felt like I do.

It surprised me when pretending with the blanket felt so good. I guess that's why I pretended a couple other things too.

In my heritage report, I wrote that my dark hair came from my dad's Italian side of the family and my love of the color green came from my mom's Irish side of the family.

I know that's why Mrs. Fillmore gave me a C+, and why she wanted to talk to me after class. I knew those things weren't true. But couldn't Mrs. Fillmore see that eating my Italian grandma's rigatoni every Sunday and baking Irish soda bread on St. Patrick's Day with my mom feels a lot more like my heritage than eating fried rice with chopsticks or dancing around in a dragon mask on the Chinese New Year?

The real truth is I'm not really Asian, Italian, or Irish.

I wonder if there's a way to feel good about being me without pretending anything at all.

Julia

PS Is Gina your spy? Because it's really funny how the one girl at camp I've become friends with is the girl who can't seem to stop asking me questions.

We ate hobo dinners that night—a meatball, some sliced potatoes, and a handful of baby carrots all wrapped in individual-sized tinfoil pouches. The food was steaming hot when we peeled back the foil, and everything smelled and tasted even better than it looked.

As we licked the sticky cinnamon sugar off our fingers from the tinfoil-wrapped dessert of baked apples, thunder rumbled outside and the sky turned to night before the sun even went down.

Donnie grabbed the microphone. “All right, campers, sounds like we'll have to move our evening activity indoors. Let's start clearing the tables and get this place cleaned up. Egg Emergency starts in ten minutes.”

Chairs scraped against the wooden floor as the two campers from each table assigned to kitchen patrol got up and grabbed dishes and brought them to the dish room window. At our table, it was Vanessa and Meredith's turn.

Before they got up to clear our dishes, Vanessa said, “I can't
wait
'til everyone sees me wearing that first-place ‘Be the Missing Peace' T-shirt.”

“Just settle down, Vanessa,” Avery said. “We haven't won anything yet.”

While they cleared the table, the rest of us talked excitedly about our strategy. Even though we knew we shouldn't get our hopes up, we all believed this was going to be the beginning of White Oak's winning streak. With all that long-handled spoon and ping-pong ball practice and our new cabin team spirit, we really couldn't lose.

“Becca, you
have
to remember to go slow,” Gina said.

“I know! I know!” Becca exclaimed. “Don't worry about me. I'm more worried about
you
having a major rumper bumper. It's not
Scrambled
Egg Emergency.”

“Very funny,” Gina said.

“You guys,” I said. “We just have to work together!”

“Technically, we've got to get our spoons to work together,” Avery said.

“Oh, Avery,” we all groaned.

Our excitement about Egg Emergency was really off the charts because we knew if our practice and teamwork paid off and we won this game, White Oak really had a chance to win the whole competition.

Once the dishes were cleared and the tables wiped clean, each cabin moved their table up against the wall so there would be more room. Then Donnie explained the rules.

When he finished, he ended by saying, “So the team to get the most unbroken eggs in their basket on the other side of the mess hall before my whistle blows wins. Line up, campers, and remember, if you touch the egg with anything but your spoon, it doesn't count.”

Girls from every cabin bustled around, getting into line. The other cabins were trying to figure out their strategies and kept changing their minds about who should stand where, but we already had our strategy all worked out.

Becca, who we always had to remind to slow down, was first. Then Vanessa was second, followed by Avery, who sometimes had a hard time passing the egg because of her bifocals. After that came Meredith. Meredith would pass the egg to Gina, who we always had to remind to be careful. And I was last, because surprisingly, out of all of us, I was the one with the steadiest hand during practice. I couldn't throw or kick a ball and get it to go where I wanted it to go, but I had discovered earlier that afternoon that I had exceptional spoon-eye coordination. Who would have guessed I had this hidden talent?

Normally my stomach butterflies would've been going crazy before a big competition like this, especially because I was last. But our cabin's practice and teamwork had put my butterflies into hibernation, and I felt confident.

The other campers talked in excited voices about the best way to pass their eggs from person to person, but the White Oak team stood in a straight line, ready for steady action.

When Donnie said, “On your marks!”

We all took a deep breath.

When he said, “Get set!”

We exhaled.

And when he yelled, “Go!” and blew the whistle, Vanessa said, “Let's do this, White Oak!”

And then the
Jeopardy!
theme song began playing in the background.

Everyone in White Oak except Becca yelled, “Remember to
go
slow!”

And Becca calmly picked up an egg from our pile and placed it on her spoon and turned. As if she were a professional egg passer and this was her job, she passed the egg off to Vanessa's spoon. Vanessa steadied her spoon to accept the egg and turned to pass it to Avery.

Avery's hands shook a little, but she somehow managed to keep the egg from toppling off. She slowly turned to pass the egg to Meredith, who masterfully took it in her spoon and passed it to Gina faster than any of us could believe. Gina bit her top lip in concentration and slowly turned and reached her spoon out toward me. Then I ever-so-carefully placed the egg in the basket at the far end of the mess hall.

And, so it went. White Oak stayed focused, even though all around us, the mess hall filled with cries of dismay every time we heard an egg crack as it hit the wooden mess-hall floor.

I was happy we wouldn't be the ones cleaning the floor tonight.

The other teams cheered and groaned depending on the fate of their eggs, but for White Oak, it was just the six of us, our spoons, and that one egg that was moving down the line.

We picked up speed, moving more quickly with each new egg. Our nervous excitement turned into intense focus, and even Avery's hands were steady now.

The rain outside was turning into a storm with lots of lightning and thunder. The sound of the rain on the roof made us all talk and cheer louder, and as the game clock ticked, the excitement from the storm
and
the game kept growing and growing. Now campers' squeals and screams came not only when their team's egg cracked open on the floor, but also with each intense crack of thunder that seemed to shake every inch of Camp Little Big Woods. And when the lights flickered and almost went out, everyone gasped. Everyone except all of us in White Oak. We stayed calm and steady.

All our rest-time practice paid off big-time because we were super focused like we were world-class athletes. Nothing was going to stop us from winning this event, which meant we might actually have a chance at those T-shirts. The last minutes of the game ticked by, and just as Gina tipped her spoon to pass what would probably be our last egg, a bolt of lightning flashed so brightly that the mess hall lit up like a night game at a football stadium. The thunder cracked in the same instant, sounding almost like a sonic boom.

Gina screamed. Everyone did. Everyone except the rest of us in White Oak. But Gina didn't just scream. She grabbed me. And the egg we were passing began to topple. I leaned to one side trying so hard to save the egg that Gina had just placed in my spoon, but I lost my balance. As I tried to steady myself, I stepped backward and stumbled. My left foot landed right in our basket of eggs, and the cracking I heard under my foot shook my insides more than that super huge, super close bolt of lightning.

I screamed louder than anyone.

And everyone in White Oak yelled, “
Oh no!
”

Just then Donnie's whistle blew, ending the game.

I lifted up my foot. My old torn and tattered green-and-white gym shoe was so full of eggs that Sarge Marge could've thrown it into a frying pan and made someone an omelet bigger than even Becca could eat. Vanessa, Meredith, Becca, and Avery came to see how bad it was. We looked down at our basket full of gooey egg yolks, watery egg whites, and broken pieces of eggshell all mixed together, and we knew that our chance at winning had been crushed. Again.

Tori came over from where she was watching. “Oh girls! I'm so sorry!”

“
I'm
the one who's sorry,” Gina said. “It was my fault. I made Julia fall.”

“It was my fault too,” I said. “I should've just let that last egg fall. We still would've won.”

I looked at Vanessa and waited for the screaming to start. Earlier in the afternoon, Gina and I had talked about how our cabin's troubles might not really be over.

Vanessa held her jaw tight, as if she was trying to keep her anger from coming out, but it was just too much to keep a lid on.

“You two are unbelievable!” Vanessa spat out in a whisper as Tori turned to go help Donnie count eggs so that they could tally up the scores. “I don't know which one of you is worse.”

“Vanessa,” Avery warned, “don't forget about all those dishes we washed and all the food scraps we scraped off this floor. We don't want to have to do that again.”

“But we were winning by a mile,” Becca said. “And now we've got nothin'.”

Besides my stomach butterflies, which were frantically flapping their wings as they woke from hibernation, I felt my heart thumping like a dog scratching an itch.

“We can't fight!” Avery said. “Teamwork. Remember? Do you really want to wash this floor again?”

We all looked around at the broken eggs littering the wooden floor. All our work from this morning was covered in slimy egg whites, thick, sticky egg yolks, and shattered pieces of eggshells.

“It's just such a bummer!” Vanessa said, sounding more disappointed than mad. “I really thought we had this!”

“Me too!” Becca said.

I let out a huge sigh, relieved that our cabin's peace hadn't shattered like so many of the eggs all around us had.

I knew Vanessa and Becca's competitive spirit must be smashed into tinier pieces than those eggshells. But thankfully they decided not to lash out at Gina and me.

Instead, Vanessa said, “It was just an accident.”

“Yeah,” Meredith said. “It wasn't anybody's fault.”

“Technically…” Avery started to say.

“Avery!” Becca yelled. “Technically, there's nothing else to say about this. No explanation needed.”

Even though Tori had gone over to help Donnie, she had kept her eye on us. When she saw that we were somehow managing to get along, even after such a devastating loss, she smiled bigger than she had on the first day of camp. We had just lost what we'd been working so hard to win, but she had just won what she had wanted all along.

Dear Ms. Marcia,

Losing that game and not fighting about it makes me wonder if there might just be a red thread holding all of us together after all.

Julia