“The fastest girl should go first,” Addison suggests. “That would be Lina.”
“Yes!” she says, sounding pumped. “I am going to fly through the course!”
“That’s the spirit!” Courtney marvels. “Addison, you’re second…” Courtney goes down the line, ending with me. “You’re last because I don’t know your speed yet.”
“Believe me, I’m not insulted,” I say. Relieved is more like it.
“Time!” Sam yells loudly.
Cole runs back from the end of the course to hear the results. The boys are close behind him. “How’d we do?” he asks, and Thomas crowds in next to him, towering over Sam and Courtney. The guy is a muscular giant.
“Fifteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds.” Sam shows him Courtney’s watch.
Cole groans. “Guys! That blows.”
“We can totally beat that time,” Courtney says confidently. “Can’t we, girls?”
That’s our cue to cheer, but I’m too busy biting my nails.
Most of the guys hand over their harnesses, but I notice one keeps his and climbs right back onto the course. I guess he’s going to be a spotter. I feel a helmet being placed on my head, and I jump.
“Don’t worry, it won’t bite,” says a boy with shorn, light brown hair. “Although the spiders inside it might.”
“What?” I scream, and some of the girls turn and give me a nasty look.
“There could be,” the guy continues. “These helmets have been in storage all winter.”
I start taking off my helmet, and Lina stops me. “Heath, stop scaring her! She’s already freaked out about zip-lining as it is.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you, girls,” he says with a smirk. He’s flirting with us and he’s kind of cute! I start to play with my hair and giggle.
“We don’t need protecting,” Lina says, bursting my bubble. I was all set to flirt back. “My dad is an exterminator,” she tells me. “I have no issues with bugs.” I blink.
He starts to laugh. It’s laid-back and light, which is refreshing after the cackling I’ve been listening to all morning from the girls. “I love when your nose scrunches up and you get all mad, Lina,” he says. “God, I’ve missed seeing you do that all winter.”
Aww, that’s kind of sweet.
“Well, now you can watch me do it for almost eight weeks,” she says, missing his flirting entirely. She looks at me. “Heath thinks he’s funny. He’s not.”
“Ouch!” Heath clutches his heart. He’s standing so close I can smell Tic Tacs on his breath. “Lina, you hurt my feelings. I’m just trying to cheer the new girl up. She looks way too tense for someone about to go zip-lining. Are you really Kyle’s twin sister?”
“Yep.”
He adjusts the straps on my harness. “I don’t see it.”
“We’re fraternal,” I tell him as he tightens the strap around my waist and then reaches down and brings another strap through my legs and around. A few more clips and I’m in. “The sports gene skipped me.”
Heath turns to Lina. “Most of the guys will never admit it, but you’re better than most of them at this. Why don’t you give the new girl some advice?”
Lina shrugs. “Watch your balance and don’t look down.”
Shot down again. He sighs and hands me the strap that holds my tether. “You’ll hook on once you start. Good luck, Camping Barbie.” He winks. I can’t believe he heard Kyle say that! “You too, Lina, not that you need it. I’ll see you on the other side.”
I hit Lina in the arm. “What’s the matter with you? That guy totally walked out of an American Eagle ad and he was flirting with you. You totally blew him off!”
She blinks. “He wasn’t flirting. Heath and I are just friends.”
“Looked like he wanted to be more than friends to me,” I say.
She snorts. “You are insane.”
Kyle jogs over to me and hits me on the head. The sound vibrates through the helmet. “Nice look for you. If I had my phone, I’d take a picture to put up on Twitter.”
“You don’t even have a Twitter handle,” I grumble.
He grins. “It would be worth getting one just to post this picture.” He notices Lina, and his face changes. “Hey,” he says smoothly. “We haven’t been introduced yet. I’m Kyle, Harper’s evil twin.”
I wait to see what happens. Please don’t like my brother. Don’t like my brother!
“I’m on Team Harper,” Lina tells him and walks over to the course. Ha! Lina is clueless when it comes to guys, but in this case, that’s a good thing.
“Ready?” Courtney asks me, ruining Kyle’s chance to go after Lina. “Get in line.”
Sam is standing at the front of the group with a stopwatch, and I realize this is happening. Like now. “As soon as your first teammate makes it to the top of the obstacle course and the first pillar, your next teammate can start,” she says. “Let’s win this thing!” The group cheers. Lina gives me a thumbs-up. No one looks worried but me.
Don’t look down. Keep your eyes closed the entire time. But if I do that how will I know where I’m going? This isn’t good at all.
“Go!” Courtney screams, and Lina jumps onto the course. I see Kyle and Heath watching her. The rest of the girls cheer her on as I feel my heart pound harder inside my chest. We move up. Then we move up again. It keeps going until Camilla is just three ahead of me and on deck to go next.
“Go!” Courtney hits Camilla on the back, and she scurries up the wall like a spider. I watch in awe as she goes from one part of the course to the next without even a flinch. The boys on the ground boo her. “All right, all right! Girls, keep your eye on the ball!”
Maybe I’ll be okay, maybe I’ll just take it slow and…
“Oh!” I hear a collective gasp, and I look up. One of the girls has fallen off the log walk and banged into one of the wood pillars. That can actually happen? You can FALL? DOWN? She doesn’t look hurt, just dazed, as Cole pulls her back up. Everyone cheers.
“That’s going to really screw up our time,” Jeanie grumbles. “You and I are going to have to book it.”
Gulp.
Jeanie looks down. “Wait, you’re not wearing sneakers?” she screeches.
Oh God. I forgot. “Um…”
“Someone give her your sneakers,” Jeanie moans, and I watch Cole laugh as Courtney pulls off her Converse and throws them at me. “Quick! Tie them on,” Jeanie barks. “I don’t care if they’re too big. Just wear something!”
“You’ve got sixty seconds,” Cole sings. “If you don’t get your last girl across in time, we win automatically. I say we move to the finish line to see how this thing plays out.” Sam glares at him, and the two take off for the other end of the course.
Talk about the pressure! I reach down and with sweaty fingers tie as quickly as I can, not noticing Jeanie jump onto the course. Courtney leans down and ties my other shoe.
“You’ve got to go,” she says, as she ties a double knot. “Now!”
There is no time to argue. I step onto the platform and start scurrying across the long rope wall. Okay. This part is not as hard to do as I thought. You just hang on and climb sideways.
“Hurry!” I hear Lina yell. The other girls are at the end of the zip line course waiting for me. “Fifty seconds!”
The second part is the log, and when I see it, I stare at it for a second before I hear the cries from the finish line. I take a deep breath and balance my first foot and then the other. Once I get the hang of it, I move faster and reach the end. Section two down! Then it’s the jumping part—from one platform to the next, but they’re close. I’ve had to jump from the boat to the dock before, so this is easy. The last jump takes me to the first pillar, where one of the guys is waiting. The next part is petrifying. Maybe I’m better off staying exactly where I am—twenty feet in the air on a platform—than zipping through the air.
“FORTY SECONDS!” I hear Courtney yell, so I take a deep breath and jump to the cute guy standing there
. He steadies me from falling over the other side.
“Steady there! You made it!” I notice he has a nice smile as I cling to him for dear life. “Kyle didn’t think you’d make it this far. I’m Justin, by the way.” He has a rope necklace and several bracelets on his arm.
“I can’t do it.” I stare at the next pillar, where a guy is waiting to spot me. It’s only ten feet away, but from that pillar to the end is the long one. “I can’t.” I close my eyes and then open them again. You can see the whole camp from up here. It looks like a cute little miniature model I’d like to explore. If I live.
“You have to,” Justin says. “If you don’t, you’re cleaning our trash for a week. Jeanie will not be happy. She’ll eat you for supper after she roasts you first. In public.”
“HARPER!” I hear the girls yell.
“I can’t,” I start to say and then realize he’s holding my zip line rope, the one I swing from. He’s starting to move it forward, and I cling to him tighter. “Don’t!”
“I’m saving you!” he says. “Good luck!”
My feet leave the platform and are flying through the air, the grass and dirt below zipping by at a terrifying speed. I’m still screaming when I land. I grab the pillar and shut my eyes. “I’m out! Done! Not going again!”
“You don’t have a choice. This isn’t the end of the ride.”
I recognize that voice. I open my eyes. “Ethan.” I feel my heart stop, which is funny because I thought it did already when I flew through the air a minute ago. “Hi.”
“Hi.” His brown eyes look vaguely suspicious. “What are you doing here?”
“Up here? Oh, you know,” I say, holding the pillar tighter. “I thought it would be fun to train to be a trapeze artist this summer. This is circus camp, right?”
“Nope, that one is down the block.” His mouth curls into a sort of smirk. “Kyle I get coming here, but you make zero sense. You are not the sleepaway camp type.”
“THIRTY SECONDS!” I hear, but with Ethan, time seems to have stopped.
“What exactly would that type be?” I’m about to make a comment like Kate and say “lame,” but I think of Lina and Courtney and some of the other people I’ve talked to so far. They don’t seem lame. Instead, I reply, “I’m really sorry she tried to get you fired.”
Ethan looks away. “You should really get going.”
The end of the course seems so far away. I can’t do it. I can’t. “I think I’ll just hang here for a while.” I close my eyes again. The view is making me dizzy.
“FIFTEEN SECONDS!” Courtney yells.
“You can’t just hang out on top of a zip line post,” Ethan says incredulously.
“Yes, I can,” I say defiantly. The screaming has intensified. The guys and the girls are all standing together at the end of the course counting down the time.
“You’re going to lose,” Ethan reminds me.
“I’m going to lose, anyway,” I say. “I can’t get across in ten seconds.”
“You can if you go now,” Ethan says. “Not that I want to clean your dishes.”
Fair enough. I sort of cost him his job.
A slight breeze cools my face. I look at the ground, even though Lina told me not to. That settles it. “I’m not going.” I’ve learned my lesson from my pillar time with Justin. I hold my tether tight and keep my arms around the pole so he can’t push me off.
“TIME!” Cole shouts, and the guys erupt in cheers. My bunk is going to kill me.
“Are you planning to live up here?” Ethan asks, sounding agitated now.
“I lost, so there is no sense in going now.” That gives me an idea. “Can you tell Hitch to bring me a helicopter? You guys have one of those here, don’t you?” I hug the post, blocking out all thoughts of Jeanie roasting me like a pig. Justin was kidding. Right?
“As much as you might like to hang out here, I want to celebrate the guys’ victory over lunch,” Ethan says. He grabs my hands and pulls me off the pole.
“What are you doing?” I say angrily as he clips himself to my belt. I didn’t even know he could do that. Won’t we fall off? “I told you! I’m not leaving this post!”
“You might be used to getting your way back home, Harper McAllister, but that is not the way things work at Whispering Pines.”
He throws his hands around my waist and then, before I know what’s happening, we’re both flying through the air. I throw my arms around Ethan tight and scream the entire way like a little girl.
Harper McAllister @HarperMc
Didn’t last two hours before someone tried to kill me by tossing me off a zip line. Can I come home now? Please @McDaddy? #sendhelp
6
NEW DIGS
“CHIN UP, GUYS,” COURTNEY SAYS. “We’ll get them next round.”
Seven girls shoot daggers in my direction. They’re all sitting on their newly picked cabin bunks, which I’m told is supposed to be the best part of day one, but no one is happy.
“Why were you wasting time up there talking to Ethan when you were supposed to be zipping across?” Jeanie asks me for the hundredth time. “You were just standing there chatting!”
“No one gets to talk to Ethan but Jeanie,” Addison says in a teasing manner, but Jeanie is not in a jokey mood, which makes me wonder: Are Jeanie and Ethan a couple?
“That’s not it! We could have won,” Jeanie insists from her bottom bunk. The bed is right under the ceiling fan that’s supposed to cool down the room, but with her eyes on me, I feel nothing but heat. “Instead we have to clean their plates because you choked.”
“I didn’t choke.” I am sitting on the floor near my trunk. “Ethan was helping me look for my contact lens.” Jeanie eyes me skeptically. “Yep, on the first zip, it blew out of my eye. I thought it landed on the platform. Ethan was helping me look.”
Note to self: Ask Mom to send vanity contact lenses, contact lens case, and contact solution. Otherwise people might get suspicious.
“That’s why he had to bring you across?” Addison asks. “You were blind?”
“Exactly.” I glance quickly at Lina and see she’s buried her face in her pillow.
Stupid zip line. Who does Ethan think he is? He could have given me a heart attack! He didn’t apologize when we landed, or at lunch afterward, either.
“Forget the boys!” Courtney says. “We’ll retaliate soon enough. How are those beds, huh? Hitch sprang for new mattresses this year. Are they comfy?”
Everyone says yes, but I know they’re lying. Would it have killed Hitch to get pillow-top mattresses? When I lie down on my top bunk bed, I can feel the springs. I also see cobwebs on the ceiling. There are probably bugs and spiders everywhere, too. I am never going to be able to sleep in here. Never. I might as well sleep on the porch. But then I’ll get eaten by a bear and mauled by mosquitoes. Or is that the opposite?
These cabins Dad talked so fondly about on the ride up are in serious need of a makeover. I’ll need to light a dozen candles to get the musty, damp smell out of here, and I haven’t even approached the bathroom. Our bunk beds are made of black metal frames that look like hospital beds from the 1950s. The ceiling fan looks as old as my grandmother. And the walls of the cabin could use another coat of paint. You can still see signatures etched into the wood and notes from past campers. NAT, ERIN, MEL—BFFS 4EVA! PINES RULES, ASH DOESN’T—XO, COURT!
“Everything okay, Harper?” Courtney asks. “You look a little unnerved.”
“Me? Nope!” I use a cheerleader voice. “I love bugs!”
Courtney looks at me strangely. She’s standing in the doorway between our cabin and the hall that leads to 10B’s cabin. Sam and Court have a room in between the bunks. The only plus I can find so far is that the bathroom is on our side, near Lina’s and my bunk bed. I just hope it isn’t as gross as the rest of this place.
Lina doesn’t seem bothered by the one-star housing conditions. She’s humming as she sets up her space. She has a black-and-white-print comforter spread nea
tly across her bottom bunk, and canvas sacks hang off the bottom of the bed, where she’s stashed journals and colored pencils. A purple shag rug is on the floor, and a London Blue poster hangs behind her headboard. Her area looks homey. Most of the other girls have set up their spots the same way—adding fabric photo boards behind their pillows, posters of their favorite celebs, and lots of throw pillows. Two girls even have those Dream Lites stuffed animals. I only have my silk canopy for ambiance. At least it doubles as a mosquito net.
Sam pops around the bend. “Are you guys ready to go to the canteen yet?”
“What’s the canteen?” I ask, and Jeanie snorts. Geez. I can’t ask a question?
“You can buy snacks and supplies there,” says Trisha, a girl with braces, who is wearing a boy band T-shirt. “Usually we go during free time.”
There’s a place here where we can shop? Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?
“I don’t know if we can go right now,” Court tells Sam to my disappointment. “They haven’t finished unpacking.”
Sam gapes. “You mean you haven’t even played icebreakers yet? Or asked them what their best day all year was? You can’t say today,” she warns us.
“Philly, New Year’s Eve,” Jeanie, Camilla, and Addison say at the same time. Melody, Trisha, and Vickie—my other bunkmates who won’t even say hi now that I’ve saddled them with kitchen duty—all start talking at once. The way the girls parrot one another reminds me of Margo, Kate, and me. Being on the receiving end is kind of grating, actually.
“Jeanie’s mom invited us for a sleepover party,” Camilla tells me.
“I throw the best parties,” Jeanie brags. “We had one winter break, too.”
“I was in Utah for winter break,” I chime in, trying to get their attention. “The powder was so fresh! You guys know Park City, right? Home of the Sundance Film Festival? I ran into Emma Stone in the lodge bathroom, and she told me she loved my cardi. Such a sweetheart.”
“Anyway,” Jeanie says loudly. “New Year’s was the best day of the year because my Pines roomies were there.” The group cheers as if they were at a football game. I notice Lina is looking at her comforter. I guess she was the only one not invited. How rude!