Camp Confidential 09 - Best (Boy)friend Ever (2 page)

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Authors: Melissa J Morgan

BOOK: Camp Confidential 09 - Best (Boy)friend Ever
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“Yuck,” Abby cried.
“Yeah, yuck,” Candace echoed. She was kind of a human echo.
“What’s yuck? The kissing or the fish poop?” Alex said.
“Both,” Abby answered.
“With kissing a little higher on the yuck scale,” Priya agreed.
“I wouldn’t mind deciding for myself. With the right person,” Brynn admitted.
“I still say Priya’s found her perfect guy,” Gaby said. “She’s with Jordan practically every second possible. They spend all their free time together. And they’ve been in a ton of the same activities this summer. Like tomorrow, they both have nature together.”
“We both like nature. So what?” Priya asked.
“All the magazines say it’s good for couples to have things in common,” Valerie joked, winking at Priya.
“Yeah, I bet if you and Jordan took that quiz from
Seventeen
, you’d definitely get ranked Much More Than Friends,” Grace agreed.
“Just because we both like nature?” Priya protested. “Lots of people like nature! Grace is in nature with me, too.” Luckily, they’d reached the bunk by then. “I call first shower!” Priya shouted, ending the conversation.
“Bat!” Priya called out the next day during nature. The bandanna tied around her eyes made her blind as a . . . you know.
“Tree!” someone to her left answered.
“Moth!” someone behind her squeaked. She was positive it was Jordan, trying to disguise his voice.
Two other people called out “moth” from somewhere in front of her. She was pretty sure Grace was one of them, because of the Grace-like, but not moth-like, giggling.
Priya spun around in the direction the squeaky definitely-Jordan voice had come from. “Bat!” she called out again. She got answers of “tree” and “moth” from all around her, along with some more probably-Grace giggles. She focused on one particular “moth.” This time it had been called out in a deep, booming voice. But Priya’s best friend couldn’t fool her. She knew him inside out. She’d been there at the most embarrassing moment of his life, and he’d been right there at hers. Jordan’s—calling his second grade teacher “Mommy” in front of everybody. Priya’s—peeing in her pants at Holly Perry’s seventh birthday party after proving that she could chug a half gallon of lemonade without taking a breath (thanks very much for
that
dare, Jordan) and then getting really, really involved in a game of hide-and-seek.
“Bat! Bat! Bat!” Priya yelled. Arms outstretched, she stumbled toward the voice calling “moth” that she was sure was Jordan’s.
Gotcha
, she thought. Then she launched herself into the darkness, and tackled . . . somebody . . . onto the grass. She jerked off her blindfold. Green eyes. Messy, longish brown hair. Freckles. Yep, it was Jordan.
“Great echolocation, Priya,” Roseanne, the counselor in charge of the nature hut, called. “You guys see how the bat located its dinner? When Priya called ‘bat,’ that was like a bat sending out a sonar pulse. And when you guys answered, that was like the bat receiving the echoes from the pulse. That’s how bats pinpoint where things are.”
“I rule!” Priya shoved her fists into the air.
Jordan climbed to his feet. “Congratulations, bat girl. You just ate a moth.”
“So? Good source of protein,” Priya told him as she stood up.
“Priya’s right,” Roseanne agreed. She ran her fingers through her long curly hair, making it even more wild. Priya was glad her dark hair was short, short, short. Pretty much nothing she did could mess it up. “Insects are high in protein and low in fat and cholesterol. They are really nutritional. In fact, I have some chocolate-covered grasshoppers back in the nature shack if any of you want to try them,” Roseanne continued.
“No thank you. I’m on a special diet. Nothing that hops,” Grace joked. “I’m really missing the frog legs and kangaroo meat. But I’ve lost like an eighth of a quarter of a pound already.”
Maybe if they were gummy grasshoppers she’d go for it
, Priya thought. Grace had a serious gummy bear habit.
“That is completely disgusting. And chocolate does have fat,” Chelsea, one of the Bunk 4A girls, decreed. She narrowed her eyes at Grace. “You might want to consider cutting out chocolate if you’re serious about losing weight.”
“But I’m not,” Grace answered.
Priya shot Jordan a wicked smile. “I’m thinking three points,” she whispered to him. No way would he let a grasshopper into his mouth, even one that was covered in sweet, chocolaty goodness. He was the Picky Eater poster boy. Jordan didn’t even like the foods he
was
willing to eat to touch each other. He even brought a supply of those plastic picnic plates with three separate sections with him to camp so he could keep his food compartmentalized. Not just to camp, either.
“Eating the ’hopper would put you one point ahead of me,” she added, just to torture him. As if he didn’t totally know that already.
“How is that extreme?” Jordan asked. “How is that worthy of our challenge?”
“Oh, right.” Priya shook her head. “You eat bugs every day. It’s not extreme at all.”
“You know what would be extreme?” Jordan asked, leaning close to her, his breath hot against her ear. “If you made me kiss someone.”
Priya jerked back and stared at her best friend.
Wh-what?
She felt herself blushing. Even though
she
wasn’t the one who’d started babbling about kissing. Kissing. She didn’t think she’d ever heard Jordan use the word before. Maybe she’d just had an ear malfunction. “Huh? I didn’t hear you.”
“You missed a moth,” Jordan said. He whipped out one foot, and she was face down in the grass before she had time to react.
“You see it?” he asked.
“No, do you?” Priya yanked him down next to her.
“Jordan. Priya. Playtime’s over,” Roseanne teased, but with an I-mean-it edge to her voice.
Now that was something Priya
and
Jordan had heard a bunch of times. They’d been hearing it their whole lives.
Priya scrambled up, managing to step on Jordan’s foot accidentally-on-purpose. He grinned at her. And her world was normal again.
Except she knew she really hadn’t had an ear malfunction. Jordan had used the K word. And just yesterday she’d told everyone in her bunk that Jordan had no interest in kissing anyone, ever.
Didn’t she know her BBFF at all?
“Bug juice. I will perish of dehydration if Priya doesn’t pass me the bug juice!” Brynn exclaimed.
“Priya!” Sarah, Alex, and Abby called together with their hands cupped around their mouths.
Priya blinked. “Huh?” She realized that she was holding a forkful of spaghetti halfway to her mouth. She also realized everyone at her table in the mess hall—which meant every girl in her bunk—was staring at her. “What?” she asked.
Sarah smiled. “Brynn has asked you for the bug juice, like, three times.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Priya passed the plastic pitcher of bright red bug juice across the table to Brynn.
“I’m going to live!” Brynn cried dramatically, green eyes all twinkly. Brynn pretty much said everything dramatically. She was really into theater. She’d just played Little Orphan Annie in a small camp production. She already had the red hair, but that’s not why she got the part. And Priya was sure Brynn would get a part in the big camp production at the end of the summer. Brynn was really talented. Although sometimes it got annoying when she didn’t keep the drama on the stage.
“What were you thinking about, anyway?” Alex asked Priya. “You were totally zonked.”
Priya felt her cheeks get hot. She knew her face had to be turning red, even with her tan.
“She’s blushing. It has to be good,” Gaby observed. “We must make her tell.” She smiled, looking over at Priya like she was hoping Priya would blush even more.
Priya took a mega bite of the spaghetti to give herself time to think. Should she tell them what had really been going through her brain? The girls in her bunk were pretty cool. But she didn’t know them that well. Because, like they said, she spent almost all her free time with Jordan.
But what she’d been thinking about tonight . . . it was nothing she could talk to Jordan about. Because it was
about
Jordan.
“Well?” Gaby prompted as soon as Priya swallowed. The girl could be a little pushy. Geez.
“If she doesn’t want to tell, she doesn’t want to tell,” Alex said, knocking a soccer ball back and forth between her feet under the table.
“No, it’s okay,” Priya told her, deciding to go for it. This sitch was probably something she could use the girl-POV on. Even back at home, she didn’t hang with girls that much. She, Jordan, and her little brother—only one year littler—mostly did things together.
“Well?” Gaby said again, her lower lip sticking out in a pout. She always pouted when she didn’t get what she wanted right when she wanted it. That or threw a tantrum.
Priya sucked in a deep breath. But she still didn’t feel ready. So she took a long drink of bug juice. Choked on it. Then started to talk. “Um, you know that competition I have with Jordan?”
“As in the competition that has required three visits to Nurse Helen?” Becky, their counselor, asked. It wasn’t all that much of a question.
“Uh-huh.” Priya nodded. “But we aren’t doing anything that might require a nurse anymore. I swear. So, anyway, I was telling him that I’d give him three points if he’d eat a grasshopper—”
“What?” Valerie burst out. Gaby’s pout opened up into an O of surprise.
“Roseanne said she had chocolate-covered grasshoppers in the nature hut,” Grace explained. “Priya wasn’t going to just catch one in the field and make Jordan eat it with its legs kicking or anything.”
“Oh, ew.” Abby wrinkled her nose.
“Ew,” Candace echoed.
“I’m sure they were sterilized or something,” Grace reassured Becky. “Roseanne wouldn’t offer us food—or whatever you call it—that would send us to the nurse.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the grasshopper,” Priya said quickly. “See, Jordan said something after I gave him the grasshopper challenge. Something, um, weird. I don’t know what it means.” Her words came out faster and faster. “Maybeitdoesn’tmeananything.”
“You should sign up for drama next time,” Brynn said loudly and slowly. “You need to do some work on your e-nun-ci-a-tion.” She winked.
“So tell us what he said already,” Gaby ordered.
Priya reached for her glass of bug juice again, then told herself not to be such a chicken. “He said that if I wanted to give him a really extreme challenge, I should make him kiss someone.”
Sophie, their CIT, put a bowl of sort of old looking fruit on their table and lingered, ears wide open.
“Ooooh.” Grace leaned closer.
“Yeah, ooooh,” Candace said.
“I need more details,” Valerie told Priya. “Was there anyone else in the group when you two were talking about the kissing thing?”
“No,” Priya answered. “He didn’t exactly whisper it. But he leaned in. He was definitely only talking to me. I thought maybe my ears were full of wax. Or, actually, I was hoping that was it. I was hoping I didn’t hear him right. But I know I did. I know that he said I should make him
kiss
someone. And Jordan’s never, ever used that word before. Maybe he doesn’t know what it means. You think that could be it? I heard him right, but he meant something totally else? Like, I don’t know, he wants to play a variation of dodgeball with somebody.”

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