interruptââ
I rolled my eyes.
ââthen fake it till you make it. Thatâs all.â
âSure, sure. Thatâs all. Easy for you to say.â
âYouâre going to do great. I have complete and udder faith in you.â
âDid you just say you had udder faith in me?â
She smiled. âYou inherited that charm and wit from someone, you know.â
âYou mean Dad? Dadâs not charming and witty. Heâs just weird.â
âBye, Winnie,â she said, chuckling. She gave me a final knee squeeze. âIâll see you at three, and you can tell me all the fabulous things you did.â
By lunchtime, I had yet to reach a verdict, as the only semi-fabulous thing that had happened so far was getting to take off our shoes and tromp around in the river, looking for good skipping stones. Yes, that was fun, but was it fabulous ? I wasnât yet ready to go that far.
I guess being here wasnât horrible, though. The counselors were nice enough. One was named Jake and the other was named Lily, and they told us they were both in college studying to be forest rangers. They didnât seem like the type of people to pick favorites or be randomly mean to kids, which was good.
They were very excited about leaves and bark and animal droppings, and I heard one girl camper whisper to her friend that they were ânature geeks,â but I didnât mind that one bit. In fact, I thought it said moreâin a bad wayâabout the whispering girl than it did about Jake and Lily. Ever since I was Tyâs age, Sandra had drilled into me that being geeky was definitely better than being snobby.
âPlus, you can be geeky and still be cool,â Sandra had often pointed out. âIf youâre a snob, youâre a snob, and snobs are stupid.â
So the counselors were cool, and so was the schedule of activities theyâd planned for us. Like, tomorrow we were going to break open owl droppings and see what was inside. Iâd have to wait and see, but that might qualify as fabulous.
The camp itself was cool, too, I suppose. It was at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, so there was lots of nature around. If Ty was here, heâd be cramming rocks and feathers and sticks into his pockets like crazy. Then, when he got home, Mom would grab him before he entered the house and say, âWhoa, buddy. Nature stays outside.â
Thinking about Ty made me lonely, thoughâand also pointed a big blinky arrow at the one part of camp I didnât like. Without Amanda here, I didnât know a single soul. Iâd possibly seen one of the girl campers at Garden Hills Pool, but I wasnât sure. Either way, Iâd never officially met her.
If Mom was here, sheâd tell me to skip over and say, âWhy, hi there! Do you have a red polka-dotted one-piece, and do you wear a nose plug when you swim?â
But I didnât, and anyway, Polka Dot had plenty of friends already, so she didnât need me. There were eleven kids in the survival campâsix boys and five girlsâand Polka Dot was part of a foursome made up of all the girls but me. The four of them clearly knew each other outside of camp, which I deduced from multiple clues:
All four girls wore matching ensembles: cute shorts, white T-shirts knotted at the small of their backs, white tube socks pulled up to their knees, and sneakers of a matchingish variety. Meaning, their sneakers werenât identical, but they were certainly in the same shoe family. Me? I had on my hand-me-down hiking boots from Sandra.
Also, all four girls thought bugs were gross and said ew w w w when Jake showed them a grasshopper in his cupped hand.
Also times two, they were all obsessed with some boy who worked at Starbucks, and they talked about him almost constantly. Iâd learned already that he was gorrrrrrgeous , that he played the guitar, that he was âemo, but not really,â and that he had a