Chapter Fifteen
The Accidental Duchess Goes for a Run
Mallory
For the first time, she felt like she was connecting with a guy and their whole relationship was based on a lie. There was never going to be a good time to mention she was lying about her identity. Never. Even worse, he didn’t even know Mallory Jones existed.
Not to mention, why was he into her? Did he like Mallory or Blake? Could he even get to know her while she was playing the part of her sister? It would be like falling in love with Captain Jack Sparrow and then realizing Johnny Depp was a fifty-year-old dude instead of a pirate. Not that she was that good of an actress. Mallory was desperate to pour out her heart to someone, but no one even knew who she was. Her diary was truly turning into her best friend, the only thing she could confide in.
She flopped backward onto the bed. Her life had finally started, but it was a false start. Literally. The only way out was to come clean and tell Ben the truth, but the problems with that plan (losing her first boyfriend, or whatever Ben was becoming) outweighed the one advantage (honesty). Not to mention, the local authorities would put her sister in jail for the rest of summer if she came out as Blake. Even though her sister sort of deserved it, the American penal system was proven to have zero rehabilitative effect, and Mallory didn’t believe in incarceration for the sake of revenge. Gandhi said something like, “An eye for an eye and the whole world will be blind.” That was totally true. Unless there weren’t an even number of people. Then, there’d be like one person who could see at the end, but that wasn’t really Gandhi’s point.
This left her trapped in a lie. Mallory shut her eyes and tried to find a silver lining. Ben never would have noticed her if she’d been acting like herself. He must like loud and sassy girls. Maybe getting stabbed with a hot dog stick and pushed in a lake turned him on? Guys were so confusing. Being Blake was her reward and her punishment at the same time.
No matter how she looked at it, there was an expiration date on her happiness: the last day of camp. She had a little more than four weeks of happiness left.
Later that afternoon, it started raining, a persistent gray drizzle. Fozzie canceled the group hike. Instead, he called all the campers to the mess hall to make some sort of announcement. Mallory sat down and relaxed, thrilled to sit through an announcement rather than go on the forced march. Smiling, wearing matching Pine Ridge T-shirts, and eating rations of mediocre trail mix—to Mallory, that plan sounded like an insult to Chinese history, as if Fozzie had not even bothered to learn from the suffering endured during the Long March. The only reason Mallory would ever go on a long march would be if there was a social cause involved, like if she was protesting one her dad’s ideas. Even then, she’d rather participate in another capacity, like answering phones or writing informative pamphlets.
“I have exciting news. The director of Camp Pembroke and I have scheduled our yearly competition. This means that all of you will have an opportunity to compete in our own little version of the Olympics.” Fozzie looked like he was bursting with excitement about this. Mallory didn’t get it, but then again, she wasn’t into sports. Fozzie explained, “At Pine Ridge, we pride ourselves on beating the pants off Pembroke every August.” He rocked back on his heels and cleared his throat. “The director of Pembroke and I have a friendly rivalry going.”
Mallory tuned out. Blake was the sporty one, not her.
Some people you could sort of see their future, like it was lit up with runway lights. Everyone else had to wander blindly toward an unknown destination, either that or join the military. Blake and Luke Culpepper, her on-again, off-again quarterback boyfriend—they were the kind of people who had air traffic controllers motioning them through to successful jobs as surgeons and super models. Zoe would be an artist. Mallory looked over at Ben—he was an enigma. As for herself, she’d rather focus on Lydia Farrow, who had a guaranteed happy ending.
She pulled out The Accidental Duchess because it seemed like the director was going to talk about this for a while. Just like she was falling for Ben, Lydia was falling for the duke. Married or not, Lydia’s future was not secure. The duke was bound to figure out who Lydia was soon. Not only was she posing as someone else but there was that little matter or Lydia’s criminal past. If he wanted, the duke could annul the marriage and turn Lydia over to Scotland Yard. There were like a hundred pages left and the suspense was killing her.
“Blake, are you listening?” Fozzie’s voice jolted her out of her daydream.
“Wha—?” she said.
“I’m explaining the games.” With a wink he said, “You better listen up.”
Happily ever after slipped even farther away at the thought of games. Competing and sports—those were two things she didn’t do. She’d rather deal with Scotland Yard. Talking her way out of the gallows and back into the duke’s arms sounded easier.
Fozzie called everyone to order again. “Oh, one more thing, there will be a dance with Camp Pembroke the day after the games.” When the girls squealed, Mallory recalled that Camp Pembroke was the summer destination for a lot of rich hotties. Luke Culpepper was at Pembroke. That could get awkward. Would Luke expect that she’d dance with him, make out with him? God knows what kind of relationship he and Blake had. Whatever it was, she was with Ben. She expelled a breath and decided she’d give Luke the cold shoulder. Her sister did that to guys all the time.
With the excitement of the inter-camp dance announcement lingering in the air, Fozzie stood around like he was trying to remember something for a second before adjourning the meeting: “That’s it for announcements, Campers. Now, let’s play ball!”
What a dork. That sounded like something she might blurt out if she forgot what to say.
As she walked blindly away from the hall, trying to remember what was next, Fozzie tapped on her shoulder. She about jumped out of her skin at the touch.
He said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, I was spaced out.”
He cleared his throat and said, “Blake, I hear that you are quite the athlete.”
“Uh…not really. That sort of gets blown out of proportion.” Mallory prayed he believed her. She couldn’t pretend to be athletic. That was one thing she absolutely couldn’t fake.
He chuckled. “Don’t be bashful.”
Mallory started to sweat. This wasn’t going anywhere good. If worse came to worse, maybe she could pretend to break a bone.
He handed her a schedule. “You don’t need to do any trail cleanup that day, but you’re on setup and cleanup crew and a few events.”
Mallory glanced at the schedule. It looked like he had her running all day.
Everyone in the region knew about Blake’s athletic prowess, mostly because she had become a state track champion and debuted in a Nick Jonas music video in the same week—it had been a big thing on the local news. Where Blake had inherited Olympic-sized athletic talent, Mallory had inherited activity-induced asthma and a general allergy to exercise.
“I’m going to have Ben compete, too.” With a devious chuckle he said, “I might as well use Bellevue’s top athletic talent while I can.”
Mallory’s mouth fell open. What was this, the Tri-Wizard Tournament? She certainly hadn’t put her name in the Goblet of Fire. She was just about to raise an argument along those lines, but it died on her lips when she saw how excited he looked. It was really cute. Cute, but also a little sad. Oh, Fozzie Bear! It’s too bad she wouldn’t be able to bring home a medal for him.
Feeling a little bad for Fozzie, Mallory wandered away from the announcements. The rain had started to clear up much faster than anyone expected. The sun was peeking through the clouds. She found Ben hanging out on the playground equipment, which he used way more than the actual little kids. He was doing shirtless pull-ups on the monkey bars. While he was distracted torturing himself, she counted his six-pack and decided sweat might actually be sexy. It was almost impossible to fathom that she was having a flirtation with a boy so gorgeous she could feel the pull toward him from across the room. It was the first time she understood why they called it “attraction.”
With a smile (probably because he knew she was staring), he dropped down and said, “What’s up?”
She dropped onto a picnic table, setting her notebook and pen out, as if to write something. Before the announcement bowled her over, she’d been planning on writing a poem for creative writing. Now that she knew she had to prepare for the trauma of the inter-camp games, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to focus on a poem. Complaining seemed like the best option: “I’m so annoyed about this inter-camp games thing. I hate running in the off-season,” she lied. The only reason she would ever run is if she was being chased.
“That’s okay. You’ll barely have to wake up to blow the socks off everyone here. I’ve never seen anyone run like you. You’re an animal.”
She laughed. An animal—that was an apt description of her sister. Mallory, on the other hand, was domesticated. You might as well put a Persian cat in a race as ask Mallory to run. She liked to sit in sunny spots with her books. “I haven’t run once since the last meet.”
“You mean State, where you PR’d and set the state record in the 400 m?” He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Mallory nodded. The whole school knew Blake’s list of achievements. They’d held an assembly in her honor after the state track meet. It was supposed to be for the whole team, but it came off as a party just for Blake. “You’d be surprised how much slower I feel in the off-season. I think I hurt my knee or something, too. I just feel…past my peak.”
He scoffed. “You won State two months ago.”
“It feels so much longer, though.”
“That’s easy enough to fix. Let’s go for a run. We have some free time.”
“You mean now?” Panic hit her. What had she been doing talking about running with Ben? She would have smacked herself in the forehead if he hadn’t been staring.
“We’re going. Go get your shoes!”
He was off running to the boy’s cabin. For a second, he jogged backward. With a smile in his voice, he said, “I’ll pick you up in five minutes at your cabin. South Paw Trail?”
A wave of conflicting emotions hit her. Heading back up the South Paw Trail to the cave sent a thrill through her whole body. Gasping for air and sweating on the way up to the cave while Ben watched—not so much. She could pretend to be her sister while standing in place, but while running—she wasn’t going to fool anyone.