Chapter Eighteen
The Inter-Camp Games
Ben
The thought of last night brought a smile to his lips. Those kisses by the lakeshore. He never would have expected Blake to be so sweet and shy, but she was. She got this funny little smile on her face and looked anywhere but at him before he kissed her. It actually seemed like she didn’t know how perfect she was—so beautiful, smart, and nice. He had it baaad. He was only thinking in yearbook speak—“You’re so pretty. Don’t ever change!” That’s all he had, but it was what he was actually thinking. Hopefully she hadn’t gotten in trouble sneaking back into the girls’ cabin. She didn’t need any more trouble.
Derek broke his daydream. “Yo, dudes!” he shouted. “It’s the inter-camp games today, guys, so, uh…I don’t know. Get ready.” Ben smiled in amusement. Kipper probably gave the women a half an hour lecture about rules and schedules. Inter-camp games—from the name, you’d think it would be more than two camps, but it was just Pine Ridge versus Pembroke, a.k.a. the rich kids. Like a fighter, he put on his hoodie and cranked up the volume on his earbuds. It was time to get his swagger on, usually not a big problem for him.
This year, Pine Ridge was hosting. Like the real Olympics, the camps rotated. He hadn’t been assigned to the setup crew, but he noticed that Blake had been. Because he couldn’t help himself, he wandered down to the field a few minutes early to say hi.
From across the field he saw Blake’s blonde head and made a beeline for her. Today, she wore diamond earrings and had knotted her Pine Ridge T-shirt at the waist. First time he’d seen her wear it like that. She was holding an armful of Hula-Hoops like she had no clue what to do with them.
“Hey you,” he said, trying to act all cool, instead of completely desperate for her company like he was.
“Ben?” She looked surprised to see him, sort of dazed.
“Did you skip caffeine this morning?” he said. “I’ll go grab some, if you want.”
Maybe she needed more sleep. They had been up way too late making out on the shore.
“No. I’m just lost. It seems so…I don’t know, what are we going to do with these things even?”
“Hula-Hooping, I guess.”
When Nelly walked up, Blake looked relieved and exclaimed, “Thank God! I had no clue what to do with these.” Had he missed something? Was Nelly the next shift?
Nelly flashed Ben a look. To Blake, she said, “Um, I was just going to ask if you wanted to go get breakfast with me, but…I guess I can take these.”
“Oh, thank you.” She handed over the Hula-Hoops like she was unloading an actual burden.
Blake apparently needed more than four hours of sleep a night.
Just when he was about to head to his own station, a dude in American flag running shorts and the most expensive running shoes money could buy sauntered their direction. His blond hair was nearly as pretty as Blake’s and even Ben had to admire his piercing baby blue eyes.
All casual, Blake said, “Hi, Luke.”
Luke’s gaze passed over Ben like he wasn’t even there and settled on Blake. He said, “Hey, Blake. I missed you.” His voice was suave, and he looked like he wouldn’t mind switching their relationship from off again to on again.
Ben tried to act like a mature human, but it was hard. He sidled up to Blake and slung his arm around her. He hadn’t seen Culpepper since the fight at the end of the school year. He had to admit, he was feeling pretty caveman about the whole thing, the race and Blake.
Blake stiffened.
Luke took in Ben’s “she’s mine” behavior and raised his eyebrows, almost like Ben had issued a challenge.
Blake slid out from under his arm and said, “Ew. Stop being so Animal Planet.”
At the Animal Planet comment, Luke started laughing. “Totally, babe.” He looked directly at Ben and said, “You ready to race?”
Boy was he ever.
Twenty minutes later, he and Luke were at the starting line. A bunch of campers were hanging out on the sidelines, including George and Blake. When Blake caught sight of him, she shaded her eyes and flashed a big smile, the kind of smile that was just for him.
They had a minute before starting so Ben walked over. “You sure look happier than a few minutes ago.”
“Really?” Blake shrugged noncommittally. “I guess it took me a while to wake up this morning.”
The race turned out to be nothing like Fozzie advertised. For one, it was comprised of three equally stupid legs (a potato sack race, a water balloon spoon thing, and a leg where everyone had to keep a rubber ball wedged between their knees while walking as fast as they could). Two, Ben and Culpepper were racing against a bunch of scrawny-looking kids (middle schoolers?). It didn’t matter, though. Ben wanted to win.
Captain America yelled over the top of some little girl’s head, “You’re going down, Iron Cloud!”
Ben shot back, “Over my dead body, pretty boy!”
The Pembroke director shushed them before yelling, “On your marks, get set, GO!”
And they were off. All of Ben’s pent-up-adrenaline and frustration jam-packed into one potato sack. He was flying. So was Culpepper, though. One preteen girl was surprisingly quick. It was the fastest fucking potato sack race in history. Things went downhill from there, though. Blake and George were yelling on the sidelines like it was the state final of whatever it was they were doing.
It all fell apart at the Hula-Hoop. Ben’s dropped a bunch of times, and the only thing keeping him ahead was Culpepper’s shitty performance in the spoon race. Finally, he brought it home, waddling across the finish line with a ball wedged between his knees, Culpepper yelling, “You suck!” at his victorious backside.
Ben crossed the finish line, spiked the ball he’d had wedged between his legs, and let loose a primal whoop. “I won, bitch!” He might not be richer, prettier, whiter, or smarter, but he was faster at the potato sack race, which is when he saw her. The skinny girl in pigtails had beat them both.
He looked at Culpepper and said, “Did we just get beat by a little girl?”
George slapped him on the back. “Tough break, Ben.” With a glance at the winner, he said, “I wonder if she knows that a girlfriend was the prize to this race?”
With some solid post-game analysis, Blake said, “It was the Hula-Hooping. You guys didn’t have the right hip action.” Blake looked like she couldn’t care less that he had made a fool of himself racing a bunch of kids or that he didn’t beat Luke Culpepper, who she didn’t appear to even notice. She was more worried about getting some food. “Want a hamburger? Cook Betsy fired up the grill already. I saw a couple campers with double cheeseburgers.”
Maybe he didn’t need to be the fastest, richest guy around for Blake.
He didn’t see Blake again until the last event of the day, the two-man canoe race. The rest of the day, they had both been too busy. Every now and then, he’d catch a glimpse of Blake carrying water bottles or running across the field. As expected, she smoked the competition in the actual track events.
When he asked how it went, she looked a little shy about it. “Oh, it was nothing.”
“No asthma today?”
“I just took a puff off my inhaler.”
With a big yawn, he said, “I can’t wait till this is over. I’m ready to crash.” It had been a good day, but a long one.
Blake sighed. “You wouldn’t believe it, but Fozzie signed me up for cleanup, too. You might have to do all the rowing. I’m too tired.”
He smiled. “Good. A guy likes to feel useful.”
At the shore, Fozzie explained the race. The goal was to paddle out to a floating dock in the middle of the lake and back to shore. Five or six canoes were beached on the shore waiting for the race to start.
The Pembroke canoe team was comprised of Luke and another Captain America look-alike. Ben looked even more Native American than he normally did next to their pale Swedish flesh. Blake, on the other hand, looked gorgeous, especially in her junky camp shirt and a smile. It was so good to see her happy. He couldn’t imagine the girl he knew from school wearing a ratty T-shirt and a sloppy ponytail. It was crazy how little he’d actually known about her last year. She didn’t even seem like the same person she had this morning.
Ben sidled up to Blake. For some reason, she looked jumpy. “You nervous?”
She shrugged. “A little. I just want this over with.”
“Ah. It’ll be fun. We just have to get pumped.”
She gave him a sly smile. “Oh yeah? How should we do that?”
He shrugged. “A huddle? That’s the traditional thing.”
She laughed. “With just the two of us. Wouldn’t that be more like a hug?”
“Maybe. Let’s huggle.” As he listened to himself say that, he realized how head over heels he was. He had it bad.
“I think that’s a kind of designer dog.”
They put their heads together and slung their arms over each other’s shoulders. Blake had been right. This was closer to a hug. She started giggling. “Are you getting pumped?”
Not in the way she was asking about.
“Okay, let’s focus,” he said. At this point, he was talking to himself because canoeing was the last thing on his mind. “We totally have this in the bag. You’re like the state champion of everything and I’m a badass. Except at Hula-Hooping.”
With her face only a few inches from his and her eyes locked on him, he could see how green her eyes looked in the light. They were the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen. And she looked so sincere. When he told her what a badass she was, her eyes crinkled. If he were the kind of guy who wrote poetry, he’d totally write a poem about her eyes. Given who he was, though, she’d have to write a poem about her own eyes.
Their huddle must have looked suspect. All the campers started yelling. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Ben went with it. He spun her around, dropped her into a dip, and kissed her on the lips, full-on. Even if they got lapped three times, Ben felt like he’d already won this race. He handed her a paddle and climbed in himself and flashed a smug smile toward Luke Culpepper.
The minute they took off, they were already behind. For a while, Ben tried, but what was the point. He looked at the beautiful girl in his boat and shrugged. He flashed her a thumbs-up from the back of the boat. “Who cares. We’re good.”
By time they even got to the floating dock, Culpepper and Captain America were already halfway back to the shore. Blake said, “I know I’m not fast, but I really like canoeing.”
“Me, too,” he said. Mostly he liked canoeing with her.
“I like the quiet,” she said with a funny little smile.
It was particularly quiet because they were so far behind all of the frontrunners, but didn’t say that. If she liked the quiet, so did he because mostly, he liked her.
“Should we go out canoeing sometime soon?”
“I would love that.”
A girl who wanted to go out on the lake and enjoy the quiet with him, he was so happy. Who would have known that girl would be Blake Jones?
They lost monumentally, but Ben’d never had so much fun losing in his life. Pine Ridge was starting to really feel like his kind of place.
“I rocked that potato sack race, didn’t I?”
Blake put her hand over her heart and acted all swoony. “I’ve never been so excited by a race in my life.”
He was so damn lucky.
After the games, there was yet another bonfire. Fozzie lit one pretty much every night at Pine Ridge. It made sense, though. Who didn’t love a good fire? Tonight’s fire was a celebration of the inter-camp games. Tomorrow was the dance, which he still hadn’t asked Blake to. Ben went back to his bunk with all the other guys to change. He took a quick shower and threw on his cleanest T-shirt. As soon as he got Blake alone, he was going to ask her to the dance. He didn’t want to leave any room for confusion about their relationship, especially with Luke panting all over her.
Tonight’s bonfire was a roaring orange blaze against a starry night sky. It was perfect. If you were out in the woods, you should be outside, not sitting in the mess hall eating chicken salad, which is probably what they’d be doing otherwise. Like every other old person he knew, Cook Betsy had a thing for chicken salad.
While he was feeling relieved not to be subjected to another evening of chicken salad, Blake walked out. He smiled and waved, but she must not have seen him. Her nose was in the air, and she was looking around like she was surveying the peasants. Now that he knew her better, he thought it was funny how she could manage to look so stuck-up and intimidating.
He walked up to her and sort of bumped into her. “Hey you,” he said. She was wearing more makeup than she had been for the last few weeks, and her hair looked different.
A look of surprise flashed across her face for some reason. “Hi, Ben.”
“Want to walk over to the dock with me?” He figured it would be better to ask her to the dance in private, rather than next to a bunch of junior campers.
“Uh…sure,” she said, looking oddly surprised.
“Remember when you knocked me off the dock last week and we almost kissed? Or maybe I just imagining that.” He chuckled at the memory. “You had me so confused.”
Blake raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”
He reached for her hand to hold on the way down to the dock. Instead of acting all silly and girly about it like before, she looked at their joined hands as if to verify what was happening.
“You seem a little weird tonight. You okay?”
“I just feel disoriented. Everything’s, uh, changing so fast.”
He laughed. “You’re telling me. Good changes, though.”
At the end of the dock, he said, “So, would you like to go to the dance with me?”
Blake’s jaw actually dropped. In shock or excitement, he couldn’t tell. It was not the reaction he would have expected, not after everything they’d been doing. Didn’t a date seem like the next logical step? “The dance tomorrow—I thought we could go together, as a couple. I wasn’t sure if I should ask you.”
Her expression changed from shock to a smile. Maybe it was just his imagination, but her smile looked a little twisted, like there was something he was missing. The way things were going, though, he didn’t care if he was missing something. If they could put the battle behind them, maybe all of their time could be like last night. Blake was way cooler than he’d ever expected. Most of the time.