Acting Out (15 page)

“You're the nicest girl in the cabin,” I said.

Amber rolled her eyes and smiled a little. “Oh, please.”

“You are. Katherine's the meanest, Isabel's the quietest, Meredith's the fairest, Mei's the feistiest. . . .”

“You're the funniest!”

“No, I'm not!” I sobbed. I was crying my eyes out. It was like the pipes had burst. All the water was gushing out, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. The Kleenex was a shredded piece of fluff. Amber ran and got me a handful.

“I am not funny,” I said again. I blew my nose three times. I hadn't cried this hard since I was a little kid. Now I even had the hiccups.

“How can you say that? You are so funny. You're one of the funniest people I've ever met!” She smiled at me. I could tell she really meant it too; she wasn't just trying to cheer me up.

“Amber, I'm . . . I have a secret. I've got to tell someone. If I don't, I think I'm going to explode.” I held my breath, trying to make the hiccups stop.

Amber's eyes widened. “Okay.”

“I'm . . . all summer I've been trying to be . . . I'm really nothing like everybody thinks I am. That's not the real me. I know I'm always cracking jokes and being a big goof and a real loudmouth.” I took a deep breath. It was so stupid that I kept hiccuping. “But before camp, I was
nothing
like that. I was always pretty quiet. I always followed the rules. I was more like”—I started to say
more like you,
but then I stopped myself—“more like Isabel.”

Amber's mouth twitched in a half smile. “You were like Isabel?”

“I was! Only maybe not as shy. I was
boring.
Nobody ever noticed me.”

“Well, you're not like that now!”

I slid off my top bunk and went over to the mirror. I looked terrible. My eyes were all puffy and red. My face was blotchy. I turned and looked at Amber. “This is just an act! I'm not even JD. That's not my name. Before camp, nobody ever called me that.”

Amber frowned. “Did they call you Josephina?”

“No!” I couldn't help laughing. She'd remembered that stupid made-up name from the first day. “I made that up too. My real name is Judith. That's what my family calls me, my friends back home, all my teachers—Judith. Not JD.” I crossed my arms and looked at her. There. I'd said it. I'd finally told somebody the truth.

Amber stared back at me. She shrugged a little. “Well, okay. Is that the big secret?”

“Yes! Don't you think it's terrible that I've been pretending to be something I'm not? That I even lied about my name? That nobody at this camp really knows me?”

Amber frowned again. “What have you been pretending to be that you're not?”

“Funny!” I huffed. I threw up my hands. “Crazy! Wacky! A troublemaker! I'm not really like that. Don't you get it?”

Amber raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I get what you're saying. I just . . . don't know what the big deal is. You are funny, JD. You
are
. And so nobody's ever called you JD till now. So what? You're JD to us.”

I sat down on the edge of her bed. “But it's a lie. All summer I've just been pretending.”

“Maybe that's how it started out. Maybe you were putting on a big act in the beginning, but don't you think you're JD now?” Amber asked.

I stared at a patch of sunlight on the floor. “I don't know.” I didn't tell her about trying to be like Chloe Carlson. Now it sounded really silly that I'd wanted to borrow someone else's personality for the summer. “I'm not sure who I am. I'm not really Judith anymore. But JD's just an act. I'm . . .” I started to say “Smudge” because that's who I felt like. A rubbed-out nobody. But that was so ridiculous I started to laugh. I still had the stupid name tag around my neck with the smudge side showing. I took it off and tossed it up to my top bunk.

Amber smiled while I sat there on her bed and giggled. One second I was bawling my eyes out, and now I couldn't stop laughing. Couldn't she see what a mess I was? I finally got ahold of myself.

“And now I'm supposed to do something for the talent show, and I'm going to bomb! I've got to come up with some kind of funny act, but I can't think of anything!”

“You won't bomb. You'll be great.”

“Amber! Haven't you heard a word I've said? Do you know how hard I try to come up with funny things to say? It's not like they just pop into my head. I sit there and strain my brain. It's like trying to remember all the state capitals. And then sometimes I can't think of anything funny, and Courtney or Lauren will look at me and say, ‘What's wrong with you? You're being so quiet.' ”

Amber reached over and patted my leg, because I'd practically been shouting at her. “But it works. You do come up with funny things to say. A lot. You may think that you're not naturally funny, but you really are when you try.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the metal bed frame. “What am I going to do for the talent show? I have to get out of it.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Will you do an act with me?”

“Well, I'll help you think of something to do. You're the actor, remember?”

“Okay, if you can come up with something funny for me to do, I'll do it. I don't mind being up on stage and making a fool of myself, as long as I get laughs. Can you write me a funny poem or something?”

“Funny poem,” said Amber slowly, giving it some thought. “What about a song?”

“Yes! Anything!”

Amber bit her lip and smiled. “I need some paper. What if we . . . yeah, you should definitely do a funny song. I'll write the words and you can sing it.” She grabbed a spiral notebook and a pen from the shelf by her bed.

“Can I read some of your poems?” I asked.

“Oh, they're not funny. Maybe sometime. Yeah, maybe later. But let's work on this for now.”

“Amber, I just want you to know that you are saving my life!” I told her. I let out a huge sigh. For the first time in days I felt like maybe this would all work out.

Amber had a look on her face like the wheels were already starting to turn. “What if we wrote a song kind of like . . .”

The screen door banged open, and the entire Guard Start class walked in. Even Claudia and Shelby.

“Hey! Are you feeling better?” asked Mei.

“We've got great news!” Courtney said.

“What?” The only great news I could think of was that Alex had canceled class for tomorrow.

Courtney was all smiles. “Lauren thought of a great idea for the talent show. We're all going to do a hip-hop routine, and she'll choreograph it for us!”

The whole Guard Start class stood there with huge smiles on their faces, and Amber and I looked at them.

“Well?” asked Courtney when I didn't say anything.

“You've been whining for days about how you needed some help thinking up an act,” said Lauren.

“This way you don't have to do it alone. We'll all do it together,” added Shelby.

“I'm not much of a dancer, but they talked me into it,” Claudia said. “It'll be fun.”

“And I have
the
most amazing routine for us to do,” said Lauren. “It's one that my sister's high school spirit line did. It had people talking!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because of the moves. And the music. You have to see it. It's really wild.”

“I can't dance,” I said. Amber clutched the spiral notebook to her chest. She had a polite little smile on her face, like this was the first time she'd heard anything about a talent show.

“I'll teach you. Don't worry. We've got three days to work on it. We'll practice every spare minute we have.” Lauren did a couple of spins across the floor.

“That's a great idea, you guys!” said Amber. She tucked the spiral notebook back on her shelf.

“No, it isn't,” I said.

Lauren stopped spinning. Everyone stared at me.

“I mean, yeah, it is a good idea, but Amber was going to help me think of an act too.”

“Oh,” said Courtney.

“Okay,” said Mei. Everyone looked at Amber. Nobody said anything.

“Oh, no, we were just . . . we hadn't really thought of anything to do yet,” stammered Amber. “You all do the dance routine. Can I watch you practice?”

“Sure,” said Lauren, standing in the middle of the floor with her arms crossed. There was a really long pause while we all looked around at each other.

“So . . . what do you want to do, JD?” Courtney asked.

JD. I was JD again, like I'd always been. Why did I pick Amber, who I barely knew, to spill my guts to? What if I'd picked Katherine instead? Then there'd be a giant banner hanging from the dining hall:
JD IS A FAKE! LET'S ALL HATE HER NOW!

“I don't know,” I said.

“Well, I think you should do the dance routine,” Amber told me. “Honestly, JD. I said I'd help you, but I really didn't have any ideas. And Lauren already has something planned out.” Amber smiled at me, that sweet smile. I bet it sucked being the nicest person in the cabin sometimes.

“Whatever,” I said.

“Well, we don't want to force you to do it,” Lauren said, barely keeping the sarcasm out of her voice. “Do something else. I was only trying to help you out.” She kept her arms crossed and watched her toes wiggling in her flip-flops.

I wanted to tell everyone the truth. Just get everything out in the open once and for all. Maybe I'd even tell them all about Justin, too. Then I wouldn't have any more secrets and I could stop all this pretending. I could be me again. Whoever that was.

But Amber had barely blinked when I told her. Was it really such a big deal after all?

“Thanks, you guys. I really appreciate it. Let's do it! This way I won't be by myself. But let me warn you—I dance like a gorilla.”

Lauren looked up at me and smiled. “You won't when I'm through with you!”

“Okay, Claudia and JD, you're both still a little late on that part. Let's break it down.” Lauren lined up Claudia and me beside her and showed us one more time. “Now with the music.” She nodded at Amber, sitting on the floor next to the iPod speakers. Amber started the music again.

Claudia and I followed along with Lauren while the others watched us.

“Bounce, bounce, together left, together right, shoulders and foot,” Lauren called out over the music. She signaled for Amber to stop the music. “Much better. Claudia, you were right on the beat that time, and JD, you just need to pick up the tempo a little more.”

I wiped my sweaty face on my shirt. I had no idea that dancing was such a workout. “Are you sure you don't want to slap a gorilla suit on me and let me prance around while the rest of you do the real dancing?” I asked.

“You're getting it. I can't believe what a good job all of you are doing, considering how little time we've had. Okay, let's take a short break.”

We all collapsed on the floor or found seats on one of the wooden benches. We had the whole lodge to ourselves since it was morning free time. A nice breeze blew in from the open doors and windows and cooled us off a little.

“I was wondering,” Shelby started off, “if maybe we should tone this down a little?”

Lauren wiped her face with a hand towel. “What do you mean?”

“Well, this dance. It's pretty—extreme. Don't you think maybe it's a little much for the camp talent show?” asked Shelby from where she sat on the floor.

“That's why we're doing it,” said Lauren. “It'll be the talk of the night!”

There was no doubt about that. When Lauren had shown us the dance routine she'd planned, we'd all watched her openmouthed. Some of the moves were . . . well, shocking. Just the way we were supposed to shake and move and strut. We even had to do this one part where we totally stuck out our hips. It was hard for me not to laugh every time we did that, because I felt so embarrassed about it.