I was sitting on the couch in the family room with Bitey purring in my lap, and obviously we were both okay. Even so, I said uneasily, “Don’t be mad.” Then I added, “This wasn’t my fault.”
“I know! I know!” wailed Lexie. “It was my fault, like I said. I opened the window. It’s so hot today, and I was trying to save money by not using the air conditioner.” My sister looked appealingly at our parents, and they didn’t punish her due to the tragedy of breaking up with her boyfriend.
Mom and Dad sat down on the couch, one on either side of Bitey and me.
“I’m proud of you, Pearl,” said Mom.
“Bitey is a lucky kitty,” added Dad. “You knew just what to do.”
“Did I act responsibly?” I wanted to know.
“Absolutely,” said Mom.
“I think you deserve a reward,” said Dad.
The reward turned out to be a lemonade at the Daily Grind and not a cell phone, but it was nice to sit in the air-conditioning with my parents all to myself and tell them the story of Bitey’s adventure in great, great detail.
11
V. JBIII and I had a fight.
A. It started at WaterWorks.
The next morning I woke up before anyone else in my family, including Bitey, who was still recovering from his unfortunate adventure. I knocked on my sister’s closed door and let myself inside.
“It’s already half over,” I announced.
Lexie turned so that she was facing the wall. “What is?” she mumbled.
“Camp.”
“So?”
“I just thought that was interesting.”
“It isn’t interesting at”—Lexie rolled over again and peered at the clock on her desk—“five twenty. Pearl, it’s only five twenty! Nothing is interesting at five twenty in the morning. Go back to bed.”
“Okay, but I’m not going back to sleep.”
“Whatever.”
I didn’t see how my sister could possibly sleep. The last two weeks of camp were the best ones, I thought, as I lay on my bed, fully clothed and ready for the day. In three hours we would board the bus, and when we got to camp, the Starlettes and the Dudes and the other campers in my age group would have a big meeting with our counselors and some parent volunteers so that we could hear the list of reminders about Camp Merrimac rules and safety, blah, blah, blah, and then we would board the buses again and ride half an hour to WaterWorks. In case you are one of the people, like JBIII, who has never been there, WaterWorks is New Jersey’s premier outdoor water park. (That’s what it says on their Web site. JBIII and I looked it up together on his parents’ computer so he could have a chance to get excited about the trip beforehand.)
At WaterWorks there are about a million excellent water rides, three of which I’m too short for, that’s how scary they are. You have to be either an adult or an abnormally tall child in order to qualify for the right to plummet through total darkness and get shot into a fake tide pool. But that’s okay. There are plenty of other rides for shorter visitors.
“We have to go on River Rapids,” I told JBIII. “That starts off as this nice, lazy raft ride along a river in Africa, if Africa were plastic, and then all of a sudden you’re speeding through rapids, and at the very end an elephant sprays you with his trunk. Oh, and there’s the Blizzard Blast, which is like a roller coaster through water.”
“Why is it called Blizzard Blast?” JBIII wanted to know.
“Because before you get to the water, you’re zooming around and around a mountain in the Yukon.”
JBIII looked interested. “Huh,” he said. “Is the water very cold?”
“No, just regular. But at the end of the ride is a stand where you can buy Blizzard Blast ice-cream cones.” I looked at the Web site again. “Ooh, there’s Thunder Alley. That’s an excellent ride. So are the Jungle Swings and Island of the Lost. For little kids there’s Pelican Beach and Toe Dippers and attractions like that, but we won’t be interested in those.”
* * *
I lay on my bed and thought about the water rides, and then I thought about the Garlic Festival, which the entire camp would be visiting at the end of the week, and then I thought about the last week of camp, which for the older kids—and that included JBIII and Lexie and me—was overnight camp, like in The Parent Trap. I got so excited thinking about all these things that by the time the Starlettes and the Dudes and the other ten- and eleven-year-olds were boarding the buses to WaterWorks later that morning, I sounded a little like Justine.
“JBIII!” I called as I ran down the aisle. “JBIII! Sit here with me!”
JBIII was already sitting next to a Dude, but I got hold of his arm and yanked him into an empty seat and plopped down next to him, completely ignoring the look that Lexie, who was one of the CITs on the trip, shot at me.
“Isn’t this great?” I said. “I can’t wait for River Rapids. I think we should go on that ride first. And then Thunder Alley. And after that we should eat lunch. Did I tell you that there are two places to eat? Well, two main places, and then there are ice-cream carts and cotton-candy carts and candy-apple carts all over the park, oh, and a store called Fine and Dandy, I Like Candy. Guess what it sells?”
“Candy?” asked JBIII.
“Yes, but more candy than you’ve ever seen in your life. There’s a whole section of true penny candy. Each piece only costs one cent. Honest.”
“I thought you didn’t like candy.”
“I don’t like to eat it. But I like looking at it. You can buy candy necklaces and candy that crackles in your mouth—I might like to try that sometime—and chocolate that’s shaped like New Jersey. Oh, oh—also there’s a stand where you can buy personalized things like toothbrushes and key rings and little tiny license plates. They have every name you can think of. Except Pearl. I always mention that to the guy selling the stuff. I say, ‘My name is Pearl. I don’t see anything here with my name on it. You should alert somebody.’ And he always says he will, but I’ve been to WaterWorks four times now with my family and I’ve never found anything personalized with ‘Pearl.’ Now that I think of it, ‘JBIII’ might be hard to find, too, but I bet you can find a lot of stuff that says James.”
The buses were rolling along the highway by then. I paused to take a breath and felt in my pocket to be sure my money was there. It was, which was good, but I had less than half the amount I usually bring to WaterWorks. That morning Mom had given me enough money for lunch, and I had placed the bills carefully in my waterproof wallet along with the meager remains of my allowance. I would have to think very carefully about how to spend the money. There was the arcade with the games that spit out tickets for prizes, and the booth where you could get temporary body art.…
I wondered how much money Jill had brought. Fistfuls, probably. I imagined her getting on the bus in the afternoon carrying stuffed animals, her face painted like Cat Woman, and then she would sit with JBIII and she’d be all like, “Hi. Look what I won for you.” And she’d give him a WaterWorks pen featuring a happy person sliding back and forth on a tiny raft.
I tried not to think about that and was in the middle of telling JBIII how we should spend our afternoon, when we turned into a sprawling parking lot, and ahead of us I saw the giant blue arch with WATERWORKS spelled out in dripping yellow letters.
“We’re here,” I said reverently. “This is it.”
The bus drivers let us out near the entrance, and the very first thing that happened was that Edward, the drama counselor, who today was the counselor in charge of our trip, said, “Form groups of six, please.” As fast as I could I grabbed JBIII, Juwanna, Deanna, and Misty, and then I let JBIII choose one Dude. I saw Jill edging toward us and I announced loudly to Edward, “We have six!” so then Jill tried to join the Bra Girls’ group but it was full, too, and I don’t know where she wound up. But Lexie wound up as my CIT, and Juwanna’s mother and our counselor Janie wound up as the adults for our group.
At last our adventure could begin. We walke
d beneath the arch and through the Group Sales booth where we were each given a blue wristband that would let us onto all the rides.
Before us spread the wonderful world of WaterWorks.
“Now,” I said to our group. “I’ve been here before.” (Lexie eyed me sharply.) “I mean, my sister and I have been here before.”
“Well, so have I,” said the Dude, whose name was Cooper.
“Me, too,” said one of the Starlettes.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, we should go on River Rapids first. It’s right over there. Come on, JBThree.”
“Actually, if we want to split up, we can do that,” said Janie, placing her hand on my shoulder. “There are two adults here, plus Lexie. Anybody want to start out on Thunder Alley?”
“I—” JBIII started to say.
But I was already walking toward River Rapids, hurrying JBIII along by the sleeve of his T-shirt. Cooper ran after us. We were followed by Lexie, Juwanna, and her mother. Ten minutes later I was whirling through the plastic African countryside, sitting behind JBIII, who kept shouting, “Whoa!” and then spluttering and laughing when we got sprayed with water.
“That was great!” he cried when the ride ended and we met up with Juwanna’s mother, who had been holding our stuff and taking pictures of us. “Let’s go on it again!”
“No,” I said. “If we repeat rides we won’t get to go on all the good ones. Now, the next one should be Thunder Alley.”
“All right,” said JBIII, who was eyeing the entrance to Tunnel of Terror, where a bunch of Dudes in another group were about to get hauled up four stories to the top of a spooky enclosed water slide.
“Don’t worry. We’ll go on that one later,” I assured my best friend. “I planned the whole day, and that’s an afternoon ride.”
JBIII frowned at me but said nothing.
After we’d gotten soaked on Thunder Alley we all decided we were hungry, and I said, “The best place to eat is Amazon Joe’s.”
“Pearl,” Lexie said, and I knew she was going to remind me that Amazon Joe’s features mostly fried food, and Mom and Dad would prefer that we eat the boring salad-like food at Country Kitchen.
“Please?” I said to her. “We probably won’t be back here for another year.”
Lexie smiled. “All right.”
So we lined up at Amazon Joe’s and I told JBIII the best things to order and then we sat outside at little round tables under grass jungle huts and ate our hot dogs and French fries and onion rings. I still had enough $$ to order a vanilla milk shake for my beverage.
It was later, after Juwanna’s mother had made us wait half an hour for our food to settle, that I noticed JBIII talking to Cooper. I edged closer to them and heard JBIII say, “Let’s go on River Rapids again. That was an excellent ride.”
“No!” I exclaimed, running to him. “You can’t do that. It’s time to—” I stopped talking when I saw JBIII’s face.
He was frowning again, but it wasn’t the kind of frown you make when you can’t figure something out; it was the kind of frown you make when you’ve already swatted at a fly 65x and then you see it land on your arm again.
I changed the subject. “Look, there’s the popcorn cart! Come on, let’s buy popcorn!”
“Pearl, I don’t want any popcorn,” JBIII replied.
“But I do.”
I realized just then that if I bought popcorn I wouldn’t have enough $$ to buy a WaterWorks souvenir later. I was about to ask JBIII for a loan when he said quite loudly, “Unfortunately, you aren’t the boss of me.”
I took a step back. “I didn’t say I was.”
“Well, you’ve been acting like it all morning. You might as well put a leash on my neck and lead me around like a dog.” (Cooper snorted at this, and even Lexie’s face changed from surprise to amusement before she looked appropriately CIT-ish again.) “Maybe I don’t want to do every single thing you want to do,” JBIII went on. “Just leave me alone for a second, okay?”
I sat down on a bench for one second and then stood up again. “Was that long enough?” I asked. “Look. There’s Tunnel of Terror. Let’s go on that now.”
“No! Pearl! Seriously. You’re being a—” I don’t know what JBIII was going to call me, but it couldn’t have been anything very good because he suddenly stopped talking, and just in time—unlike the cabdriver I had annoyed on my birthday.
“Janie,” he went on, “can Cooper and I please switch groups?” He looked wildly around WaterWorks and spotted a cluster of Dudes and Starlettes. “Randall!” he called. He held a quick conference with the Dude named Randall, and before I knew it, Randall and Mary Grace, the chattering Starlette, were switching places with JBIII and Cooper. And JBIII was getting strapped into an African river raft with three Dudes and a grinning Jill. JBIII was high-fiving Cooper and not paying any attention to Jill, but still.
“Well. What should we do now?” Juwanna’s mother asked, and everyone automatically turned to me.
“I don’t care,” I said.
“Tunnel of Terror!” cried Mary Grace. “I already went on that twice, but I want to go again. It’s so much fun. Have you been on it yet? It’s the coolest ride here. You have to try to sit in the very…”
Mary Grace would not stop gabbing and bossing. How could anyone stand her?
“Pearl?” said Lexie quietly. “Want to take a walk? We could try to find that stand with all the personalized stuff. Maybe they have your name now.”
So Lexie and I got permission to walk around by ourselves for a while, and she gave me a dollar from her $$, which was very nice of her. But there were no Pearl things, and I was getting a stomachache from the onion rings and milk shake.
At three o’clock everyone met in the parking lot and lined up for the buses. I tried to talk to JBIII, but he pretended to be having such a thrilling conversation with Cooper that he didn’t hear me. Then he waited until I had boarded the bus, and he walked down the aisle right past my seat and sat nine rows behind me, still jabbering away to Cooper.
He did the same thing an hour later when we were leaving Camp Merrimac to go home, except that he sat with this kid named Austin.
I sat with Justine, who was holding a wooden sailboat in her lap. She had made it that morning, and little pieces of it kept falling off as we drove along.
“Pearl?” she asked, as a paper sail loosened and came away from the mast. “Are you mad at me?”
“No,” I said.
“Then why aren’t you talking?”
Because I didn’t feel like talking, that was why. I found a piece of paper in my backpack and wrote Justine a long note about my fight with JBIII. I passed it to her, and she stared at it and stared at it and finally was just like, “What?”
“Never mind.”
The only good thing about the rest of the day was that I knew I could make up with my best friend in the morning as we walked to the bus.
12
V. JBIII and I had a fight.
A. It started at WaterWorks.
B. It continued at the Garlic Festival.
The next morning Lexie and I left our apartment and rode the elevator to the lobby. We sailed by John, who was engaged in a conversation with Mrs. Olson and was trying very hard to appear interested in what she called the blowhole on her flute, which I thought only whales had blowholes, but whatever.
I was thankful that Mrs. Olson didn’t see me since I didn’t want to have a conversation with her about Bitey’s rude behavior. I ran outside and looked across the street, expecting to see JBIII in front of his building, but he wasn’t there. Lexie and I waited for five minutes, Lexie checking her watch approx. every eight to ten seconds, and finally she said, “Maybe he’s sick today.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully.
“You want to ask his doorman to call his apartment?”
I squirmed. “Um, no.”
Lexie stared at me. “Everything all right? Did you and JBThree make up yet?”
“Everything is tot
ally fine.”
“Okay. Well, let’s go on to the bus stop. Maybe one of JBThree’s parents will bring him later.”
“Or maybe he’s already there,” I said hopefully.
He wasn’t. And he still wasn’t there when I caught sight of the bus chugging up Fourteenth Street. But a minute later when the bus was idling at the curb and we were starting to board, JBIII suddenly came hurrying along Sixth Avenue with his father.
I started to call to him, but Jill was standing in line behind me, and she pushed me up the steps, like she was in a great big hurry to be person #6 to get on at our stop. I sat in the first empty seat I saw and slid over to the window, leaving the aisle side free for my best friend. But JBIII walked past me, talking and laughing with Austin, and they found a seat in the back with a couple of other Dudes.
At least JBIII hadn’t sat with Jill.
Lexie settled herself behind the bus driver, and I saw her turn around and look at me like, “Is there anything I need to know?”
I shrugged and got a pad of paper out of my backpack and drew a picture of Jill encountering a water snake, even though none of this was really her fault.
Then I thought for a while and decided that JBIII was not the only one who could ignore people, and so I ignored him for the entire day at Camp Merrimac, including lunchtime and free time, and by the afternoon I thought he looked a little sad, like Bitey looks when he’s found a Q-tip and you take it away from him before he can eat the cotton swab.
The buses arrived, and JBIII was the very first person to board ours. This time he sat by himself.
I walked past him.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw JBIII’s mouth open and his brow crease into a frown, but this frown wasn’t annoyed; it was sad and perplexed, like someone had given him a wonderful piece of candy that had mysteriously disappeared before he could put it in his mouth.
I sat down two rows behind JBIII, far enough to make my point, but near enough so that I could see him easily. JBIII kept turning around to look at me. The first time he looked, I pretended I was really interested in the back of Lexie’s head. The second time he looked, I pretended to laugh hysterically at something Justine had said, even though she was, in fact, asleep. The third time, I glared at him for a moment, then casually got out my drawing pad and began sketching. JBIII whipped his head around to the front, the way Lexie and I whip our heads around when we’re fighting and want to make the point that we aren’t speaking to each other.