Ten

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Book: Ten by Lauren Myracle Read Free Book Online
Authors: Lauren Myracle
interrupt—”
    I rolled my eyes.
    â€œâ€”then fake it till you make it. That’s all.”
    â€œSure, sure. That’s all. Easy for you to say.”
    â€œYou’re going to do great. I have complete and udder faith in you.”
    â€œDid you just say you had udder faith in me?”
    She smiled. “You inherited that charm and wit from someone, you know.”
    â€œYou mean Dad? Dad’s not charming and witty. He’s just weird.”
    â€œBye, Winnie,” she said, chuckling. She gave me a final knee squeeze. “I’ll see you at three, and you can tell me all the fabulous things you did.”
    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 wasn’t yet ready to go that far.
    I guess being here wasn’t 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 didn’t 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 “nature geeks,” but I didn’t mind that one bit. In fact, I thought it said more—in a bad way—about the whispering girl than it did about Jake and Lily. Ever since I was Ty’s age, Sandra had drilled into me that being geeky was definitely better than being snobby.
    â€œPlus, you can be geeky and still be cool,” Sandra had often pointed out. “If you’re a snob, you’re a snob, and snobs are stupid.”
    So the counselors were cool, and so was the schedule of activities they’d planned for us. Like, tomorrow we were going to break open owl droppings and see what was inside. I’d 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, he’d 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, “Whoa, buddy. Nature stays outside.”
    Thinking about Ty made me lonely, though—and also pointed a big blinky arrow at the one part of camp I didn’t like. Without Amanda here, I didn’t know a single soul. I’d possibly seen one of the girl campers at Garden Hills Pool, but I wasn’t sure. Either way, I’d never officially met her.
    If Mom was here, she’d tell me to skip over and say, “Why, hi there! Do you have a red polka-dotted one-piece, and do you wear a nose plug when you swim?”
    But I didn’t, and anyway, Polka Dot had plenty of friends already, so she didn’t need me. There were eleven kids in the survival camp—six boys and five girls—and 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 weren’t 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. I’d learned already that he was gorrrrrrgeous , that he played the guitar, that he was “emo, but not really,” and that he had a

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