Free Outside In by Karen Romano Young

thought it passed the time. Camp wasn’t terribly interesting, after all. It was great that there were enough kids to get up good bunchy games like capture the flag or steal the bacon, but generally it was too hot to play for long anyway, and we’d end up slumped over the picnic tables and fences, playing cards or weaving baskets or making lanyards out of the plastic gimp string or tie-dyeing the shirts that Joanie had brought.
    Pete didn’t flirt back. It wasn’t because he was at work, but because he just wouldn’t. I’d known him to like only one girl, and it wasn’t Lucy, but a dark-haired girl who quit walking home through Marvin Road sometime lastwinter. Dave said Pete did a great job keeping the snow shoveled off the front walk all season. I didn’t know if he ever talked to her.
    He sure didn’t want to talk to Joanie, but she kept trying. She always sat next to me, and at first I thought it was just because I knew the Ascontis. But after a while I think she realized that I was just as good with gimp as she was. When I started making elf swings from Popsicle sticks and gimp, she got interested.
    It was Dave who leaned over and said, “Who could swing on that? Barbie?”
    Joanie took a look and shot right back, “Of course not. Her butt’s way too big.”
    “You should know,” Dave said.
    When he went away, she said, “Who, then?”
    And because I’d seen her trying to weave the long, stiff grass that grew at the edge of the baseball field into a tiny basket like the big ones we’d made, I told her.
    By the end of camp we were friends, good friends, who rode bikes to each other’s houses and wished we were going to the same school in the fall. But first, before camp ended, Joanie made an enemy.
    “I’ll bet you can’t keep your mouth shut until lunchtime.”
    Joanie shuffled her deck of cards. “Hmm?”
    “If you can do it, you can have two rolls of gimp. Two whole rolls, any color.”
    “How about me?” I volunteered. “I’ll do it.”
    “I mean Joanie,” said Pete. “You I can shut up anytime.”
    “Cannot!”
    “Shh, Chérie!” He had his finger to his lips, shushing.
    “You can’t—”
    He put his hand over my mouth, hard. I kicked him.
    Joanie said nothing, and that was saying something, I realized. Pete did, too. “Then you’ll do it?” he said. She nodded, her nose in the air, eyes on her cards. He put his finger in her face. “All morning,” he said. “Not a word until lunch.”
    He walked away.
    I jumped onto the fence beside Joanie. “What are you, crazy?”
    She shook her head, shuffled her cards.
    “You’re not going to let him do this, are you?”
    She nodded.
    “Why? It’s a free country. You can talk if you want.”
    She pointed at the gimp box.
    All morning she didn’t even say “Gin,” just turned her cards over face-up on the table and waited for everyone to notice she’d gone out. Then, when they all said, “Oh! Joanie!” she just smiled.
    Pretty soon she got tired of it. She couldn’t laugh out loud or yell at her partner or even name trump. She made charades-like motions for the hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds. True to form, she made those motions into teasing for Pete, using the heart to tell him she loved him, motioning toward an imaginary diamond on her hand, pretending to hit him on the head with a club. But they all were stumped about the last motion she made, until Ziggy guessed “I dig you” instead of “I spade you.”
    I went and said in Dave’s ear, “Your brother is paying Joanie Buczko gimp not to talk until lunch.” He smelled of warm grass and Bazooka bubble gum. He just walked away. Nathan followed him to the baseball field, glancingback at Joanie twice as he went. Eventually Ziggy went to play baseball, too, and the camp was split boy-girl as usual, except for Sandy, who stuck around. Curious, I guess.
    When Bunny and Pie and Micky (who didn’t know) were all off doing other things, Pete started goading Joanie to talk.