Friends ForNever (15 page)

I stretched out on my cot and reached for my notebook. Nicole glanced at me from her cot and gave me her annoyed look. I could tell she thought it was stupid that I was writing in this every day. But I didn't care what she thought right now. My pen scratched away on the paper while I wrote down Mom's weird craving for chocolate and salty things. I tried to put an excited look on my face because I knew that would annoy her even more. But I couldn't stop thinking about what she'd brought up.

When Mom and Daddy were going through their divorce, Daddy's drinking was just one more thing for me to stress about. We'd always go out to dinner when Blake and I were with him, and he always ordered a beer, and then another. Then we'd drive home, and I'd watch him carefully to make sure he was driving okay. When we got home, he'd sometimes have another beer while we watched TV.

He never acted drunk, but it worried me. Mom would've told him he didn't need another one, but she wasn't around him anymore. I wondered if that was my job now, but I was afraid to say anything. He only did that right after the divorce, and then I noticed he'd cut back to one beer at a time. Once I even asked him, “How come you never have two beers anymore?”

He'd just patted his belly. “Too many calories. Don't you think I'm getting a little chunky?”

Whatever it was, I was so glad he'd cut back. Nic knew all about this. We had talked about it a lot. She knew how much I worried about it, and how it embarrassed me.

I told myself to just let it go. I knew it had to be hard for her, seeing me so happy about the new baby, knowing that I actually liked my stepfather when she only tolerated Richard, Mary Claire's father, and despised Elizabeth, her dad's wife.

There was a time when we'd shared our family problems the same way we passed clothes back and forth. Nic seemed to miss those times. In a weird way I did too—a little. It had brought us closer together.

I was glad I had a whole hour to cool off. I couldn't stay mad at her for the remarks she'd made. She needed me now.

“They did that in my grandmother's day too. In fact, one year she was the riding counselor who woke everyone up yelling, ‘The British are coming! The British are coming!'” said Whitney.

We were talking about one of Pine Haven's Fourth of July traditions. This morning, instead of waking us up with the usual rising bell, one of the riding counselors mounted a horse and raced all through camp doing the whole Paul Revere bit.

“Seriously?” asked Sarah. “That is so cool! Hey, everyone, a hundred years ago today, Whitney's grandmama played Paul Revere on the Fourth!” Sarah announced to everyone sitting nearby. “Only in her day, the rider was naked, right?”

Whitney smacked Sarah with her empty paper plate. “Paul Revere is never naked! That's Lady Godiva. And it was
not
a hundred years ago.”

We were all cracking up over this conversation. It was great watching Sarah tease Whitney just like old times. The whole camp had just finished eating a buffet dinner out on the hill, and now we were waiting for it to get dark enough for the fireworks show over the lake to begin.

“My grandmother told me another story about how one year the whole camp was really excited because the new flag with forty-nine stars was coming out—for Alaska. And then the next year, it had fifty stars because Hawaii had just become a state. Do you know that she still has the little flag with forty-nine stars that they gave everyone on that Fourth of July?”

“Okay, now
that
really is cool,” admitted Sarah. “A flag with forty-nine stars.”

“I know! And just think—my grandmother sat on this very hill, just like we're doing right now, and waved that little flag. Isn't that amazing?”

“Yeah, that is pretty amazing,” I agreed. I looked around at all the girls sitting nearby. The sun had already set, and everything was a soft gray. It was easy to let my eyelids droop a little so I wasn't seeing anything very focused. Then I could imagine we were back in time—thirty, forty, even fifty years ago.

How much had really changed at Pine Haven during all that time? We'd often seen old photo albums of girls at the lake or on the porch of Middler Lodge with the backgrounds looking exactly the same as they do now. Only their clothes and hairstyles let you know it was some other time. I looked at the mountains off in the distance and thought about how many hundreds, probably thousands, of girls had sat here on this hill with their friends and looked at the same view.

“Those little Junior girls are waving at us,” said Whitney. We looked over and saw Mary Claire with two other girls, sitting nearby. I motioned for them to come to us, but Nicole grabbed my hand.

“Don't bring them over here,” she said. “They'll hang out with us all night.”

“Oh, is that your neighbor?” asked Sarah.

“Yeah,” said Nicole, realizing she wasn't going to be able to ignore Mary Claire. “Darcy, come with me. I'll go say hi, and then she'll leave us alone.”

Nic and I brushed the grass off the backs of our legs and went over to where they were sitting. “Hi, Mary Claire. How's it going?” I asked.

“Great! These are my friends—Gracie and Samantha. They're both in my cabin.” The little Junior girls looked up at us and waved. I didn't see Alyssa anywhere.

“Cool. You made some new friends. That's good. Well, we just came over to say hi,” said Nicole, hoping we could leave now.

“Hey, guess what? Nobody in our cabin likes Alyssa anymore. She's too mean,” said Mary Claire.

“Yeah. We were going to short-sheet her, but we don't know how,” said Gracie, the tiny one with red hair and freckles. “Do you know how?” she asked hopefully.

“Well, sort of,” I said. Last summer Reb Callison taught me how to short-sheet, but I'd never done it to anyone. It cracked me up to think of these little Junior girls trying to figure out how to do it.

“No, Gracie. If we short-sheet her, then she'll short-sheet us, and then she'll throw all our clothes in the lake and set our beds on fire. Right, Darcy?” Mary Claire looked up at me and smiled.

“She won't set our beds on fire. She doesn't have any matches!” said Samantha.

“Whatever,” said Mary Claire. “We just ignore her when she says mean stuff to us. She told me my body odor smells like a goat that died.”

“Tell her that a family of beavers wants to adopt her,” suggested Nicole.

I poked her in the ribs and shook my head at her, but I had to admit it was a pretty good comeback. “Good plan to ignore her. Well, I think the fireworks are about to start, so we'd better sit down.”

Nic and I found a spot in the grass. “Oh, I'm so glad!” I told her. “Mary Claire has Alyssa under control. And she has some new friends! Didn't she look happy?”

“Yeah, she did. You're a great big sister,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. But then I looked at her. It was so dark now I couldn't see her expression. Was that a compliment? Or was she being sarcastic?

“So are you, you know. Mary Claire really looks up to you, in case you haven't noticed.”

“No, she doesn't. She likes you better than she likes me. Not that I
care
.”

Well, maybe she'd like you if you said more than two words to her.
“I know you think she's annoying now, but when you're older, maybe you two will be closer.”

“Don't count on it. Maybe by then Mom and Richard will be divorced, and he and Mary Claire will be out of my life completely. Nothing lasts forever, you know.”

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I didn't.

“Well, it looks like your advice worked.
Take the high road
. You should think about starting your own column. You can name it Darcy's High Road.”

“Look, they're starting!” I shouted. An explosion of silver sparks appeared over the lake, lighting up the water below. I was so glad to hear the popping sounds of the fireworks. It meant we could put an end to this conversation.

“Guess what? I actually got a semiwarm shower!” announced Sarah as she came in the door. We were all getting ready for the second dance with Camp Crockett.

“How long was your wait?” Patty asked her. “I was in line for twenty minutes.”

“Lucky!” said Sarah. “My wait was more like forty-five.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked Nicole. She was kneeling in front of her trunk, sorting through all her clothes. All day things had been pretty tense between us, but I was hoping that we could have fun together getting ready for the dance, like we did the last time.

“I can't find my red tank top,” she said. “I want to wear it tonight.”

As soon as she said that, my heart sank. “Uh, I was wearing it yesterday. Remember?” She knew I'd worn it yesterday—she'd seen me in it. This whole search through the trunk was just an act. It gave her one more reason to be mad at me about something.

Nicole stopped looking through her clothes and glared at me. “I don't remember you asking to borrow it.”

I tried to think of the best response to that.
I didn't know the rules had changed. You didn't ask to borrow my white shorts, either. Why are you being so snappy about everything today?

“I'm sorry. I didn't know you were going to wear it tonight,” I said finally. It seemed safer than those other responses.

Nic slammed her trunk shut and went over to her laundry bag hanging on a nail by the wall. The red tank top was wadded up inside. “Great. This is just great. Now I won't be able to wear my own shirt.” She pulled it out of the laundry bag and held it up for me to see, like I needed to look at the evidence of my crime. Patty and Sarah glanced at us and looked away.

“Borrow something of mine,” I offered. I went to my trunk and opened it up. “Go ahead. Take anything you want.”

“I don't want to wear any of your clothes. I want to wear my red tank top.”

“I have a white tank top you can borrow,” offered Patty.

“Or you can wear this,” said Sarah, holding up a red T-shirt. “It might be a little big on you, but you can tuck it in.”

“You're all missing the point,” Nicole said, tossing the tank top toward the laundry bag. It missed and fell to the floor. “Darcy took my tank top out of my trunk without asking me if she could borrow it.”

“I'm sorry. I could . . . wash it out if you want me to,” I suggested, knowing that wouldn't be good enough either.

“It'll never dry in time!”

“Nic, please. Can't you find something of mine you'd like to wear?”

“No, I can't! I just wish you'd have a little more respect for my things.” She turned her back on me and went back to searching through her trunk.

It would've been so easy to snap back at her, to list the dozens of shirts, shorts, and pieces of jewelry that she'd borrowed from me in the last month. Two days ago she'd worn my pink flip-flops because they matched the shirt she was wearing.

I walked over and picked up the tank top from the floor and dropped it into the laundry bag. “Why are you mad at me?” I asked softly.

“I am not mad!” she said through gritted teeth. “It just annoys me, that's all.”

Everything annoys you these days,
I wanted to say. But I kept quiet. We all did. Sarah went over to Side B so Whitney could French braid her hair. Natasha and Ashlin came in from the showers. I was glad that other people were around so I didn't have to be alone with Nic when she was in a mood like this.

In my head I did a quick inventory, trying to remember if I had any more of her clothes in my trunk. But if I took them out now and gave them to her, would it make things better or worse?

Nic had picked out a black tank top, and now she was standing in front of the little mirror on the wall, brushing her hair. Then she stopped and went back to her trunk for something.