Chapter Twenty-Three

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The evening following karaoke, the boys headed out to do their own campout. While they were gone, we took advantage of their empty cabin by taping pairs of flip-flops up in several layers of tape, rubbing charcoal on their door handles, placing salt on their toothbrushes, and taping the down the lids to their toilets.

Back at their campsite, we waited until the boys went to the lake to fish and then our cabin, along with Fourteen and Sixteen, snuck into to the tents to place sand inside the bottoms of their sleeping bags. Before we left the area, I checked the rain flies to see how secure they were.

“I bet they are going to think that the sand in the sleeping bag was our revenge prank,” Robbie said gleefully as we headed back to our cabin. Hannah grinned and nodded her head.

“Let’s hope so. It will make their middle of the night wakeup call that much more fun.”

When I ran a few hours later, I caught sight of Drew near the treehouse as I passed, his hands on his hips and a smirk on his face. I offered him a small finger-wave and his smirk only widened. He knew that the sand wasn’t our only trick.

Pulling off our prank wasn’t going to be easy since we weren’t planning on executing it until four in the morning. There was no way I could stay up that late and we didn’t have alarm clocks to wake us up. One of the Cabin Sixteen counselors said she was up around four like clockwork every morning and offered to come by and wake us when she did.

It was still pitch black when someone shook me awake six hours after I’d gone to bed and I proceeded to wake up the rest of the girls. Everyone had wanted to come except for Maria and Lizzy, both saying they’d rather sleep.

It had taken some effort to find what we needed, including me borrowing buckets from both the dining hall and the health center. No one had asked what the buckets were for but the smile on Anna’s face had told me that she knew it wasn’t for something innocent. Finding almost twenty of them had been a miracle.

With those buckets now full of lake water in hand, we snuck across the campus with the other two groups of girls. The six of us counselors went ahead of the campers and we worked on unsnapping the rain flies from the top of the tents, signaling the girls over once we’d slid them off quietly.

We watched the Cabin Sixteen counselors for the signal and as soon as they gave it, we took four buckets of water and dumped them on top of the tent, over the mesh ventilation.

Surprised shrieks rang out from all around us and the tents shook as the boys jumped to their feet. I heard Jordan curse while one of their campers yelled that it was raining.

While the boys scrambled to get their tents open, Sixteen let out a low whistle to signal the second wave, and two more buckets of water were dumped over the top of the tents. The boys cried out again and started shoving each other out of the way so they could get out of the tents.

I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t breathe. One of the Cabin Fourteen counselors yelled for us to retreat and I caught sight of Drew, who was still smiling despite being soaking wet, before I jogging after my group of girls.

“That was amazing!” Cate exclaimed as we came to a stop in front of Cabin Fourteen. All of the girls were grinning and some had their hands on their knees as they tried to catch their breath. The six adults congratulated everyone and sent them inside ahead of us.

“That should put us back in the lead,” said one of the counselors for the eighth graders. “The guys are pretty ruthless, though.”

She wasn’t joking. Her cabin had been the victim of a bra and underwear flag the week before. Cabin Wars was starting to breed desperation.

I nodded my head. “It’s going to be a photo finish this year.”

We all thanked and praised one another before heading back inside our respective cabins. The girls were still awake and buzzing with conversation but we encouraged them to lie back down to try and get a couple more hours of sleep.

“I have to say, I’m impressed,” Jordan said just a few hours later when we ran into Cabin Seven in the dining hall. I laughed when I saw that he had a streak of charcoal along his forehead. “We thought the sand in the sleeping bags was kind of weak but when nothing happened, we assumed you’d given up.”

“The stuff in the cabin was good, too,” Drew chimed in, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “It took me so long to get the tape off of the toilet that I thought I was going to have to run to the staff lounge.”

I turned my head to grin at him. “We couldn’t let the bear thing go unanswered. I think I have my first grey hair from that prank.”

“Seriously,” Hannah agreed, allowing Jordan to press a kiss to her cheek.

The boys didn’t seem too put out with the pranks from the night before as they interacted with our girls. We sent them all in ahead of us so they could get their breakfast and I looked to Drew expectantly.

“What are you guys doing today?”

“Training for the camp challenge next week.” He chuckled when I looked at him with my brows raised. “Hey, we’re going to need to kick your guys’ asses if we want to win Cabin Wars.”

The camp challenge was always held on week seven and it pitted boys against girls in a series of events. The ninth graders would team up with the tenth graders to participate in head-to-head events that included tug-of-war, three-legged races, canoeing, water hauling, trivia, cartwheel races, basketball shoot outs, water balloon tosses, and a sprinting race. It was an all-day event and there were prizes for the groups that accumulated the most points.

Plus, there were Cabin Wars points to be dished out. The camp challenge could very easily decide the winner.

“Are you really?” Hannah turned to Jordan and he shook his head with a grin.

“No, but we probably should. The boys want to spend time at the lake and with your girls.”

Our campers felt the same way because our Sunday was spent swimming, playing in the obstacle center, and lazing around camp. The boys were with us almost every step of the way, even during the showing of Secret Life of Pets that played later that evening.

Over the next few days, minor pranks were played back and forth between our cabins. Missing socks, fake snakes, pillow cases full of rocks, and Axe bombs appeared in the cabins. The Axe bombs, which were two cans of Axe deodorant with the nozzles taped down, were one of the proudest pranks I’d done. We’d thrown them in during the rest period and according to Drew, it had taken almost two days for the smell to go away.

The seventh week seemed to go by even faster than the week before it had. All joking aside, we did spend some of our free time practicing different events that we would run into during the camp challenge. With the points still as close as they were, we really needed to be as on point as possible.

The girls had their strengths and weaknesses. Hannah, September, and Lizzy were the only ones who could pull off real cartwheels. Half of the girls couldn’t handle tug-of-war without shrieking the entire time. Canoeing was something we should have spent more time on because our coordination sucked. Basketball and sprinting were two events I would definitely be participating in, but I couldn’t catch a water balloon to save my life.

It was going to be interesting.

Thursday after dinner, when we’d been given the okay to skip our evening activity by Howard, we were split up on the empty soccer field. I was helping some of the girls run with their legs tied together while Hannah sat with another group on a bench, oars in their hands so they could practice rowing in sync.

“One, two, one, two,” I chanted, jogging between two sets of girls I’d tied together. “Say it out loud, girls. One, your outside leg. Two, your inside leg. Come on.”

Hannah was barking something similar to the other girls and I almost laughed at how ridiculous we were. Cabin Wars had turned us into a couple of drill sergeants. I didn’t even care about lap dances, thongs, or who waited on who anymore. It was all about pride at that point.

“I could have been a coxswain,” Hannah said as she came to stand next to me while the girls took a break from their running and rowing. “Giving orders seems to be my forte.”

I chuckled and sat in the grass. “Which four are you thinking?”

“Nicole, Robbie, Cate, and Thalia. I keep thinking one of us should be in there with them but the less weight, the better. If they can just stay in sync and work together they should be fine.”

Counselors were allowed to participate in the events but we were limited to two each. The decision to place ourselves in had to be strategic. Even though we were teamed up with Cabin Sixteen, they would be entering their own sets of counselors into each event. The only things we’d actually participate in with them directly would be the tug-of-war, water hauling, and the water balloon toss. We had already agreed to meet up with the older girls the next evening for one final training session before Saturday.

Jenny appeared on the field with her hands full of popsicles that she’d run and picked up from the dining hall. She passed them out and we all began devouring them greedily. Evening with the evening air being cooler, only in the mid-seventies, it was warm outside thanks to the stifling humidity that had risen.

“Okay,” Hannah announced as she stood up once the frozen treats were eaten. “I’m calling it. Let’s go back to the cabin and shower.”

The girls all moved to their feet and we walked back to the cabin slowly. I think the realization that the summer was just a week away from being over was really sinking in. The girls had been more melancholy since we’d had our talk about keeping in touch beyond the summer.

“What are you guys going to do with your boyfriends once camp is over?”

I turned my head to look at Alexandra and shrugged my shoulders. “Drew and I haven’t really talked about it.”

“Why not?” Thalia asked with her brow furrowed. “You’re kind of running out of time.”

“I know, I know.” I sighed and dropped my arm across her shoulders. “What about you and Kevin?”

Thalia’s cheeks went red. “We’ve talked about it. We’re going to stay friends once camp is over but trying to do the long distance romance thing isn’t going to work for us.”

“That’s a mature decision, kiddo,” Hannah chimed in. “Not an easy one, either. Jordan and I are going to try to make it work with the distance but the odds are definitely against us.”

The conversation was light for the rest of the evening and I thought about what the girls had said while I took my lap around the lake. Drew and I haven’t had that conversation and we needed to. The thought of backing off after camp was over and just remaining friends made my stomach hurt. It was something I needed to prepare for, though, especially if he didn’t share my feelings.

My feet made soft thuds every time they hit the dirt path and the sound helped soothe my erratic thoughts.

There was no use in dwelling on it. Instead, I resolved to share my feelings with Drew. Soon.