Friends ForNever (5 page)

Nicole spun around and glared at me. One eyebrow shot up. “I am not depressed and lonely. Stop feeling sorry for me. I
said
it was a waste of time. There's a big difference.”

Nicole and I walked down the wooded path together, but I didn't bother to say anything. I was getting tired of having my head bitten off repeatedly. Nicole held her paper targets in front of her and studied them like a road map. When Sarah and Patty caught up with us, they immediately knew something was up.

“I sense . . .” Sarah started before I gave her a look. “I sense an attack of hay fever coming on! Hurry, Patty! Help me find some Kleenex before my sinuses explode!” She rushed Patty up the path ahead of us.

“I'm sorry,” I said finally. I didn't know what else to say.

Nicole rolled her eyes in disgust. “If anyone should apologize, it should be me.”

“You? Why you?” I asked.

“I'm sorry I don't have a perfect family who takes walks together and goes out to breakfast and chats about how great our lives are.” She swatted tree branches out of her way as she walked along the overgrown path.

It was such a ridiculous comment, all I could do was laugh. “Nic, you have to be kidding me. If you think
my
family is perfect after all that stuff I told you . . . remember, you know all my darkest secrets. You're the only one who knows that stuff.”

“Just don't give me any advice on how to deal with my family, all right?”

“Fine.” We didn't say anything for several long minutes. I'd always turned to Nic for advice about my family troubles. Why was it so wrong now that I was trying to help her?

“It's all your fault that the plan didn't work out,” I blurted out suddenly.

Nicole turned around and stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

“The plan. If you'd followed the plan the way you were supposed to, we'd go home together at the end of camp. As sisters.” I tried to look serious.

Nicole's mouth twisted into a smile when she realized what I was talking about. “My fault the plan didn't work? No way!
You
didn't get your mom to wear the right dress!”

“
You
were supposed to make sure your dad stopped in town to eat lunch at that little restaurant my mom liked so much. And you should've warned him not to wear white socks with sandals!” I burst out laughing, remembering the first time I'd met Nicole's dad.

Nicole covered her face with her hands. “Omigod. White socks with sandals. And he was wearing that stupid plaid shirt that looked like a picnic blanket.” By now we were both cracking up.

“It was a total and complete failure. My mom was supposed to take one look at your dad when they came to pick us up from camp and fall for him like a rock. We blew it, Nic!”

“
The Plan,
” said Nicole dramatically. “I wonder how many hours we spent that summer working on the plan?”

Sometime during our first summer together a bolt of lightning came out of the sky, and I had an absolutely astounding, brilliant idea. All Nic and I had to do was get our parents together and let them fall in love with each other so that we could become sisters. At that time her dad was still single, and even though Paul was one of Mom's many online “friends,” I'd never even met him. It seemed like our parents really needed our help with their love lives. It was pretty ridiculous, but we were ten.

“I still have that notebook,” I told Nicole. “With all our lists. Sylvia's likes. Dan's likes. Sylvia's dislikes. Dan's dislikes.”

We got to the end of the path, and Nicole collapsed in laughter when we sat down in the field of grass by the edge of the road. “I put down ‘tomatoes,' ‘country music,' and ‘reality TV shows' as my dad's dislikes! And you were so worried because your mom puts tomato sauce in everything!”

I smiled at the memory. “We were absolutely convinced they were a perfect match. Except for the tomato sauce.”

“I can't believe your mom ruined everything and married Parrothead instead.” Nicole stretched out in the grass and covered her face with her arms to keep the sun out of her eyes.

I was going to say something about her dad screwing things up too by marrying Elizabeth, but I stopped myself.

Parrothead. That was Paul's screen name when he and Mom were IMing each other. That name seemed so creepy to me. But his wasn't the only weird screen name.
Crazeecapricorn
.
Chicago_son
.
Sirluvalot
. Gross. Two years ago I thought my whole life depended on keeping Mom from chatting with all those online weirdos.

How could I have known that Paul would turn out to be such a nice, normal guy and that “Parrothead” just meant that he liked Jimmy Buffett's music? And then last summer he and Mom took Blake and me to a Buffett concert, and everyone was wearing grass skirts and funny hats and playing with beach balls; we all decided to be parrotheads after that.

“Why did it work in
The Parent Trap
, but it didn't work for us?” I wailed.

“Because that's Disney. And real life is nothing like Disney,” said Nicole.

“Yeah, I know.” I sighed, trying to act like I hadn't heard the bitter tone in her last remark. I was just glad that I'd been able to steer the conversation toward a happy memory for a while. I didn't want to bring up her father and Elizabeth again. It seemed like it was better to avoid that subject as much as possible.

What if life
was
like a Disney movie, though? Would it have been so unbelievable for Nicole's dad to marry my mom and for us to become stepsisters? It was just too perfect.

But things were pretty good now. I've always been glad that Mom picked Paul instead of Crazeecapricorn or any of the others. But what if she'd never even wanted to meet Paul? What if she'd met Sirluvalot instead and he ended up being my new stepfather?

“Our families sure are crazy. I'm glad we have each other,” I told Nicole. “At least destiny worked for us, even if it totally bombed at bringing our parents together.”

Nicole had a big smile on her face when she sat up. “I miss the plan. Maybe we should come up with another project for the summer.”

“Like what?”

“Like figuring out how to get my dad to divorce Elizabeth! Just kidding. Let's go to canoeing and we'll think about it.”

After lunch there was an enormous traffic jam on the dining hall porch as we all crowded around the rows of wooden cubbies to check our mail. Already I could see a few pieces of mail peeking out of my cubby.

I skimmed the printout of Mom and Paul's e-mail first, thinking there might be some big announcement. There wasn't. In a way, I wished I didn't know about the whole baby-planning thing. That way, if it never happened, I wouldn't be so disappointed.

“How many letters did you get today?” Nicole asked as we squeezed through the crowd and walked up the hill toward the cabin.

“Three. An e-mail from Mom and Paul, one from my dad, and a card from my friend Olivia.”

“Lucky you,” said Nicole, unfolding the printout of the e-mail she'd found in her box. I always got more mail than Nic did, and she always seemed bothered by that. I couldn't help it—either my family was really big on writing or hers wasn't.

“Hi, Nicole. Hi, Darcy,” I heard someone say behind us.

It was Mary Claire. Another Junior girl was with her.

“Hi, Mary Claire. Who's your friend?” I asked.

“Alyssa. She's in my cabin. She's on the top bunk, and I'm on the bottom.”

“That's cool. So how do you like camp?” I asked.

“Good,” said Mary Claire. The neck of her T-shirt wasn't wet today, but it did look all stretched out and wrinkled. While Nicole read her e-mail, I made small talk as we walked up the hill together.

Alyssa was a lot smaller than Mary Claire. She had long hair that hung in her eyes, and enormous front teeth. It looked like she'd gotten her permanent teeth before her mouth was big enough for them.

“Mary Claire has been talking about being friends with Middlers, but I thought she was lying,” said Alyssa.

“No, she really does know both of us,” I told Alyssa.

“Huh. I'm surprised Spud has friends.”

“Spud?” I asked.

Mary Claire smiled nervously. “That's my nickname. Alyssa gave it to me.”

Alyssa laughed. “Yep. This girl loves her taters. You should've seen how many she ate the other night. Hardly left any for the rest of us. Right, Spud?” She poked Mary Claire's belly. Alyssa was undoubtedly the most annoying kid I'd ever met in my life.

We were at the top of the hill now, so I said good-bye to them, and Nicole and I headed toward Middler Line.

“Mary Claire has a new friend,” I said, as if Nic had missed the whole conversation completely.

“Thank God.” Nicole glanced up from her e-mail. “Mom writes such great letters. It's all about the fight she had with Richard over the credit card bills. He's using the wrong cards again, the ones with the really high interest rates.” Nicole offered me the paper. “Want to read it? It's riveting.”

“Uh, no thanks.” My parents never wrote me about their credit card bills. Mom told me about cute things the dogs did, and Paul had written me a funny poem. Daddy's e-mail was a bit of a surprise. He said he'd bought a motorcycle! Good thing Mom wasn't still married to him. Actually, if they were still married, she probably wouldn't have allowed something like that.

“Don't worry. You're not missing anything,” Nic assured me. As we walked into the cabin for rest hour, she crumpled the paper up and dropped it into the trash can by the door. I always thought it was weird that Nicole threw most of her mail away right after she read it, but now I could sort of see why.

I decided to go ahead and write Daddy and Mom and Paul back right away, since last summer I'd gotten lots of complaints from them about not writing often enough. Sarah had her bat mitzvah coming up in November, so she spent rest hour studying her Torah passage.

When rest hour ended, Nic and I met up with a group to go to Angelhair Falls. About six or seven of us showed up for the hike, along with Rachel, one of the hiking counselors. It was a fun tradition to go to the falls during the first week of camp, so I'd really been looking forward to this.

It was an absolutely beautiful hike through the woods. As we walked along, I felt like we were inside a green, leafy cavern. Sunshine came filtering through the branches overhead and made a pattern of dancing light on the leaf-covered ground. I loved being totally surrounded by trees like this. It always made me feel like I was a part of nature.

“I can't believe how beautiful everything is around here,” said a newbie, coming up beside Nic and me. “It's nothing like living in the city.”

“Just wait till you see the falls,” I told her.

“Oooh! I can't wait. I'm Brittany, by the way.” She was really bubbly and smiley.

“I'm Darcy, and this is Nicole. So how do you like Pine Haven so far?”

“Oh, I love it! Everyone's so friendly. How many years have you been coming here?”

“This is my third,” I said.

“Hey, I have a question for you. Why do they call the bathrooms here Solitary?”

I laughed. “I honestly don't know. I wondered the same thing my first year too.”

“Hmm. Interesting. I figured there was some story behind that name. Well, what about the CATs? Where'd they get that name?”

“Oh, I do know the answer to that one. It stands for Counselor Assistant in Training,” I explained. The CATs were the oldest group of girls—the sixteen-year-olds who weren't old enough to be counselors yet.

“How much farther to the falls?” asked Erin Harmon, giving Rachel a wink.

“How much farther? How much farther?” Rachel teased. “Are you tired already?”

“No, we're not tired. Just eager to get there,” said Brittany.

“I'll let the rest of you tell me when we're getting close to the falls,” said Rachel. “Whoever's the first one to hear it will get a prize.” She winked back at Erin.

We tried not to crunch through the leaves and underbrush too loudly, so that we'd be able to hear the sound of the falls.

“Pretty annoying, huh?” Nicole whispered to me as we walked along.

“What is?” I asked.

Nic jerked her head in Brittany's direction. Now she was just ahead of us, talking to a couple of other girls.

I shrugged. What was so annoying? “She's just being friendly,” I whispered back. Actually, I'd been pretty impressed that one of the newbies was so outgoing. Usually they waited for us to talk to them.

“You call it friendly? I call it pushy,” Nic murmured. “I hope she gets the prize.”

We hiked for another half hour or so until one of the newbies near the front of the group stopped. “Wait. I think I can hear running water.” We all paused and listened. The sound of a little babbling stream came through the trees.