Like Bug Juice on a Burger (6 page)

Another
way to fall.

My hands started burning again

just thinking about it.

Meanwhile,

Joplin had opened her trunk.

She was shoving clothes and towels

into the cubby by her bed.

I did the same thing.

Then she took out her sheets and sleeping bag

and stood on the edge of the bunk below hers

and started making her bed.

I tried to, too.

But I’d never made a top bunk before.

It was impossible.

Whenever I got one corner of the sheet

around that thin mattress,

the other corner popped off.

And I couldn’t even reach the far side.

Finally, I climbed up on top

and crawled around

until I’d tucked everything in.

Then I climbed back down

and checked my bed

and saw

a disaster.

“Have bears been fighting up there?”

Joplin asked me.

I looked over at her bed.

It was
beautiful,

smooth and tight.

Just like my mom’s, at home.

“Don’t worry about it,” Joplin said.

“I got good at it last year.

Besides, it gets messed up anyway.”

I knew that.

But still.

That bed was my only space in the whole cabin.

In the whole
world,

until I got home.

I wanted to like it.

Joplin looked at my face.

“Hold on a sec,” she said.

Then she stood on the bunk beneath mine

and, with her long arms,

pulled and reached and tucked

until my bed was beautiful, too.

My heart felt funny,

watching her be so nice.

“Thank you,” I said

when she was done.

She shrugged.

“Don’t tell anybody,” she said.

Very serious.

“I don’t want to be making everyone’s bed.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“I promise.”

I pulled the Band-Aid off my chin

as soon as I heard the other girls

coming up the steps of our cabin.

Because that Band-Aid looked ridiculous.

It turned out all those other girls

were friends from the summer before.

Dylan, Montana, Kylie, Amelia, and Gwen.

“Look!” one of them said,

pointing out the window

as the rest were walking in.

“You can see our cabin from last year!”

“Where?” the others said.

They all leaned over my cubby

and knocked over my bottles of

sunscreen.

And talked over one another:

“Yes! I see it! There!”

“That was the
best
cabin.”

“Didn’t you
love
that cabin?”

I wanted to make them pick up my sunscreen.

Because that sunscreen

was important to my mom.

But I’d only just met them.

I didn’t want to be bossy.

They probably wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

They were still talking.

“Remember,”

one of them said,

“when Dylan was standing on that rock?”

And then

for some reason

they all started singing.

Something about a desperado

from the wild and woolly West.

“What’s a desperado?” I asked Joplin.

“And why’s the West woolly?”

She shrugged.

“Most of the songs here make no sense,” she said.

That stupid woolly song was
catchy.

I couldn’t get it out of my head.

Even after those other girls stopped singing,

and Hope hurried us across camp for lunch.

We waited in a long line at the dining hall.

That line took forever.

I felt faint

from hunger

before I got to the food.

I longed for a juicy burger,

with ketchup only,

on a bun.

Just like my dad makes me, at home.

But when I finally got to the front of the line,

the teenager behind the counter said,

“Tuna?

Or meat loaf?”

I hate tuna
and
meat loaf.

I looked at both dishes.

One swimming in mayonnaise.

The other: hunks of gray meat.

“Do you have
anything
else?”

I asked the teenager.

“Salad,” she said.

She pointed at a bin of lettuce

and tomatoes.

“And rolls.”

I hate tomatoes, too.

But I said,

“I’ll try a little salad.

And a lot of rolls.”

“Two’s the limit,” she said,

dropping two rolls on my plate.

“Even if that’s all I’m eating?”

I asked.

“Yep,” she said.

She scooped me out some salad.

Then she looked at the person behind me

and said,

“Next.”

My plate felt too light

as I walked to the Gypsy Moth table.

Joplin was already sitting there,

eating a huge tuna sandwich.

She stopped when she saw my plate.

“Aren’t you hungrier than that?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

I sat down next to her.

“Would you please pass the bug juice?” she said.

I looked at her, confused.

She pointed to the jar beside me.

“That’s
bug
juice?” I said.