Chapter Ten
Mission Abort!
Ben
It was mid-morning break on a perfect summer day. Ben, much to his frustration, was making a placemat. He hadn’t bothered to finish his during class. Kipper had demanded he complete the project during his free time for the class display. The more he thought about what’d he’d rather be doing, the more tangled the yarn got. At least now he understood why Kipper had strongly cautioned him against picking the skinny yarn. He was about ready to throw the stupid placemat in the lake. Damn Kipper. He didn’t want to piss her off, though. She’d been on edge during class. According to gossip, she’d woken up and peed on a cellophane-wrapped toilet seat. Arts and crafts hour had turned into an hour-long lecture about maturity and respect, blah, blah, blah.
He hadn’t even been the one to cellophane-wrap the toilet. Not that he was above that sort of thing obviously. Still, every moment of placemat weaving felt like a minute of someone else’s sentence. It might as well be a license plate.
A soft giggle behind him made him turn around. “Blake?”
A smile quirked the corners of mouth. “Are you…sewing?” She looked delighted.
He held up his placemat. In a faux serious tone, he said, “Technically, I’m weaving.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how I ended up in crafts. Some sadistic mother fu—” As the words crossed his frontal lobe, he knew. The twinkle in Blake’s eye confirmed.
He rocked back and gave her an appreciate nod. “Ooh. You’ve raised your game since the schoolyear.” Sending him to arts and crafts—that was clever and devious, much subtler than her normal trickery. After last night, that made the score 6:3, in Blake’s favor.
Blake blushed and said, “I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s nice to see you doing something productive.” From the tone of her voice, she obviously meant, “something other than torturing me.”
He snorted. “Touché.”
Torturing Blake was becoming less of a priority the more time he spent with her. Last night in the water…the way she looked up at him. It felt like something was happening between them. Two days ago he’d hated her guts. Now, he…he wasn’t sure what he thought, but he didn’t hate her anymore. It was sort of the opposite actually. What did a guy say to a girl in this situation? He opted for, “Uh. Your hair actually looks nice that color.”
Stupid, stupid Ben. The ball was in her court, though, assuming she didn’t kill him after bringing up the hair dye prank.
“Uh…thanks.” She looked thoroughly confused. He didn’t blame her.
A new topic might help. He asked, “So, are you going to the dance tomorrow?”
Damn. Did it sound like he was asking her? Would that be good or bad? His pulse picked up in anticipation of her answer.
She shifted her feet. All noncommittal, she said, “I guess. How about you?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
The more they talked, the more he realized that going to the dance with her didn’t sound like the worst idea ever. At the very least, he’d like to dance with her.
After a moment too long of silence, she made a move to walk off. “Guess I’ll go read.”
He didn’t want her to leave yet. With a goofy smile, he held out the placemat. “Now that I know this is your fault, can you fix this thing for me?”
Blake screwed up her expression and looked at his efforts. “I don’t know anything about weaving, but…” She assessed the placemat and with the grim expression of a doctor giving a terminal diagnosis and said, “I think you need to start over.”
She was right. The placemat was dead, but he wasn’t willing to accept it. He held it up. “No. It took like an hour to get this far.” Or maybe it had been fifteen minutes that felt like an hour.
“Fine, give it here again.” She grabbed the placemat. It was a circular piece of cardboard with black yarn strung across in a pie-shaped pattern.
“You just need to unwind some of it, I guess. It’s worth a try.”
Ben found that he had a great view of Blake weaving. She was on the bench of one picnic table. He was sitting on the table top of the neighboring table. As she looked down, her eyelashes fanned across her cheeks and the neckline to her T-shirt gaped just enough for him to catch a glimpse.
“Do you see what I’m doing?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.” Whatever she was doing looked good to him. He didn’t want to be a pervert or anything, but it was hard not to look. The way she wrinkled her nose in frustration was really cute, too.
A moment later, she returned his placemat. It was somewhat less tangled, but he hadn’t seen a thing she’d done, at least with regard to the weaving.
“Good luck with that,” she said, standing up.
“What are you up to?” It was free hour. He had to admit he was pretty curious about what the evil queen did with her free time.
“I might torture some small animals,” she said. “Or maybe read.”
He noticed a book poking out of her bag. Something about a duchess. Before camp, he would have guessed Blake only read Machiavelli and celebrity gossip, but romance—that was a surprise. They’d read Machiavelli in class last year. That dude would not be impressed with Spite, Malice, and Revenge. According to him, revenge was for sissies, a sign that you didn’t squash your enemies right the first time.
Maybe revenge was just a bad idea in general, though.
“Good luck with your placemat,” she said sweetly. Like a normal person, she walked off to sit under a tree and read a book. Girls were so freaking confusing. As near as he could figure, Blake had been torturing him all year because he didn’t want to go out with her. As if he was some amazing prize. It didn’t even make sense.
She didn’t even seem like the same girl, except for the stabbing with the hot dog stick. Unless…maybe that really had been an accident. He rubbed his temples. She was giving him a headache.
That’s when he decided—he would take a break from revenge. Maybe she was the best actress ever and was the same jerk he remembered from the school year, but it didn’t seem like it. At this point, he was starting to feel like the bad guy.
There was one problem with his plan: she hadn’t triggered his worst prank yet. A land mine was sitting in her bathroom caddy just waiting to go off. He had to find a way to fix it.
All he needed was to get into the building and find her caddy. It would take two minutes.
It was a hot, lazy day. Everyone was lying around in shady spots or in the water. From where he sat, it looked like the entire camp was outside. Even though it was the middle of the day, it was worth a shot. With placemat in hand—because he didn’t dare lose that stupid thing—he walked casually toward G7A. A bunch of wet towels and swimsuits were draped over the porch railings to dry in the sun. One lone bikini top dangled from a hook on the door like an improvised “Do not disturb” sign.
He was just about to walk in when he saw someone sprawled out on the front porch bench—it was Kipper. She was taking a nap.
As quietly as he could, he walked past her, making sure the screen door didn’t slam shut. Inside, the coast was clear. He made a beeline to Blake’s bunk. He was pretty sure her shower caddy was against the wall by her bed. Ten seconds and he’d be out of there—revenge plan completely defused.
But that was not in the cards. She was in her bunk, propped against the wall with her nose in the Duchess book. It must be a damn good book. When she noticed him, she startled slightly and stared at him intently. “Ben? What are you doing in here?” She glanced around, as if to see what else she had missed. “I didn’t even hear you walk in.”
“Sorry to surprise you.” What was he going to say? “I was just uh…just dropping by to…” He thought fast. What did he actually want to say to Blake? Instead of making up a ridiculous excuse, he went with something he actually meant. “I was just dropping by to say sorry.”
“Oh.” She dog-eared a page in the book and set it on the bed beside her. “Really?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I never should have pulled that hair dye prank.”
Saying that out loud felt so right. This plan was working better than he could have imagined, if he could just get the whitening system out of her caddy…
“If you would be okay with it, I’d like to put all of that behind us and start over.”
Blake sat up and tucked her legs under her. “That sounds…amazing. I would love that.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
At this point his mind was racing. He could see the caddy but had no clue how to grab the whitening system without her noticing. From where he was sitting he could see that she had some lotion, toothpaste, dental floss, and shampoo in the caddy. He could ask to borrow some lotion, but that seemed pretty weird. That’s all he had, though.
He stood up, faux casual, looked out the window (as if he cared about the view), and sat down again, but closer to the caddy this time. All he had to do was reach down…
She was looking at him with a funny look, probably wondering what he was doing.
“Mind if I borrow some lotion? My hands are dry.”
“I…guess.”
He wanted to smack his head into the wall for asking that. If he could just get through this moment, though, he would be so normal from then on. So polite. He picked up her lotion and the box of whitening at the same time. Like a spy, he dropped the whitening next to his foot to pick up on the way out. Because he felt like he had to, he squirted some lotion onto his hands. She watched, probably wondering what drugs he was on.
After he rubbed it in, he looked at her with a big smile. “That smells just like—”
“Freesia.” She had a big smile on her face. “You like it?”
He laughed. “It’s a little girly for me, but yeah. I’m sure it smells better on you.”
Desperate for a change of topic, he said, “So what’s your book about?”
“Oh nothing. It’s just…well, it’s about a woman who is pretending to be someone else, someone with an arranged marriage. Along with the new identity, she gets a fiancé. It’s pretty good.”
“My mom loves romance.” His mother had stacks of romance novels all over the house. “I picked one up once, but then my brother turned on X-Men and I forgot about it.”
“That’s probably like romance for guys.”
“Yeah—defeat the enemy and get the girl.”
He should probably go soon before Kipper woke up and ended the party, but it was nice sitting next to Blake. When she looked up briefly, he followed her gaze. She had pasted a poster of fireflies in a meadow on the bottom of the top bunk. “Fireflies?” he asked.
She smiled shyly. “I’m sort of obsessed. I was hoping to see some while we were up here.”
He’d never thought about fireflies beyond, “Cool, a firefly.” Chelsea had some in a jar once, which was neat.
“See that picture?” she asked, gesturing to another poster on her wall. It looked like a picture of beetles or something from a biology book. It was an accurate scientific drawing of a bunch of bugs, twelve of them. Then he read the caption below the picture: “Fireflies of North America.”
She explained. “I took it out of an old taxonomy book. I just love that they look like a regular beetle most of the time, but every now and then, they become absolutely magical.” She looked a little sheepish.
“That’s really cool,” he said.
“Some fireflies don’t ever light up. Others are diurnal so you can only see their light in shadowy sections of the forest.”
“That’s amazing. I guess it’s a good metaphor for a lot of people.”
With a smile, she said, “Yeah, the firefly sort of gives me hope.”
Why would she need hope? Blake was one of the brightest lights he knew.
Just then, Kipper walked in. She did a double take on her way to the bathroom. “Ben? What are you doing in here? There are no boys allowed in the Chipmunk Bunk!” She walked toward him. “You know that. Out, out, out!”
“Really?” That explained why half the Chipmunk Bunk hung out 24/7 at the boys’ cabin.
“Yes. Out!”
“Sorry, Kipper.” He held up his placemat. “I was just coming by to see if you could help me with this.”
With that, Kipper went from angry to exasperated. She shook her head. “Fine. Meet me out on the porch. I’ll be right there.”
Ben waved at Blake and whispered, “I better go weave.”
“Good luck with that,” she said, her voice winking with good humor and a touch of sarcasm.
Not long before lights-out he tracked down Nelly, his hair dye prank accomplice. Her perfectly matched pajama set reminded him of something from the sleepwear section of the JC Penney catalogue. He would know because his mom had a stack on the kitchen table. Every now and then she’d circle things and never buy them.
“Nelly,” he said. He’d been waiting outside the girls’ bunk hoping he’d run into her. After the whole conversation with Blake that afternoon, he’d left without the whitening paste.
She smiled a little too brightly. “Hi, Ben.”
“So, I just wanted to tell you that I’m done pranking Blake.”
“Oh. Any reason?”
“It just felt mean.”
“You like her, don’t you?” For some reason, Nelly looked like a sad puppy when she said this.
She was right, not that Ben was going to tell her that. “Um, not really, maybe.” He floundered a bit and settled on, “She’s a lot nicer than I realized and I don’t want to be mean.”
She nodded but didn’t look the least bit impressed.
“I wondered if you would do me one more favor?”
“No, I’m done helping you. I don’t want to do one more mean thing to Blake.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked into the bunk before Ben could get in another word.
All he could do was hope and pray that Blake didn’t decide that tonight was the night to start whitening her smile.