Fearless (9 page)

“Are you excited about seeing your boyfriend?” Molly asked me, raising her voice so I could hear her over the sound of the music playing in the background.

“He is not my boyfriend!” I snapped, but that only made her laugh.

We had just walked inside Camp Crockett's dining hall for the first dance of the summer. It was a major deal. We'd all spent the whole afternoon waiting in long lines for the showers, racing around trying to find hair dryers, borrowing clothes from each other, and getting dressed in something besides the T-shirts and shorts we'd been wearing all week. Everyone always went slightly crazy on the day of a dance. And now here we all were.

The Camp Crockett boys were crammed together on one side of the dining hall, and all of us Pine Haven
girls were in a huge cluster by the doors. So far the two separate groups hadn't blended together at all.

Molly had been teasing me all day about seeing Ethan Hurley again. Last summer, we'd danced together at both dances.

He'd even written me. Twice. Once at camp, between the first and second dance. And then about a week after camp ended, he'd sent me an e-mail. I e-mailed him back, but then he never replied. So of course I couldn't write him again either.

Even though I kept acting to Molly like it was no big deal, I'd still been thinking about Ethan all day. What would our reunion be like after not seeing each other for a whole year?

Reunions were always movie moments. We'd be standing in the dining hall with crowds of people all around us, and there'd be lots of noise from the music. But the whole time, I'd be looking at all the faces in the crowd, trying to see
his
face.

That's when I would see him. He'd be looking around, straining to see over all the people in the crowd. Then his eyes would meet mine, and his face would break into a smile. I would smile back, but there would still be about a hundred people between us.

With a frustrated look, Ethan would glance at the
crowd in his way. We would both be pushing through the hordes of people, but it would take us a long time to get through them. The whole time, we'd keep our eyes on each other—until finally we'd meet in the middle.

“Hi, Jordan. I was hoping I'd see you here.”

“Hi, Ethan. I was looking for you, too.”

I kept telling Molly there was a good chance Ethan didn't even come back to Camp Crockett this year. But I couldn't stop looking through the crowd of boys for him. He had blond hair, and he was on the short side, about Molly's height. But he was really cute, and we'd had a good time last year at both dances.

“There's a good chance he did come back,” Molly was saying.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” I told her.

“No, I see him. He's wearing a green shirt.”

Ethan was talking to two other boys in the crowd. His hair was a lot longer now. It actually looked really good on him. Suddenly the thought of carrying on a conversation with him made my whole face blush. So I spun around and took off in the opposite direction. Had he seen me?

“Hey! Where are you going? Aren't you going to talk to him?” asked Molly, following after me.

Now the big open space in the middle of the dining
room was filling up with people dancing. The music was turned up high, and I could feel the vibrations of it as I weaved in and out of all the people clustered together.

“I can't just walk up to him and start talking to him. What would I say?”

“Good question. Why don't you go crazy on him and say something like ‘Hi.' Then if you really want to walk on the wild side, you could say, ‘How are you doing?'”

“Shut up. I slightly hate you for making fun of me right now.”

“I can't believe this! You know the guy. You've danced with him. You've written him letters. Why are you suddenly terrified about talking to him now?”

I finally stopped walking because I felt like we were deep enough in the crowd that he couldn't see me anymore. “I'm not terrified. I'm just not sure he wants to talk to me.”

Molly clutched her head in her hands and groaned out loud. “Why wouldn't he want to talk to you?”

I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her closer. “Maybe he doesn't like me anymore,” I said. “Why did he never write me back after I wrote him?”

Molly sighed. “He probably just got busy. Don't take it personally.”

“But what if I said something stupid in my e-mail?
What if he wants to avoid seeing me tonight?” I said. I was trying to keep my voice down, but it was hard to carry on a conversation with loud music blaring all around us.

“Why don't you go stand out in plain sight,” she suggested. “Then, if he doesn't come talk to you, you'll know he doesn't like you. If he does, then you can stop acting like a slice of fruitcake.”

We were in the middle of this conversation, so I didn't see him approaching me. Not Ethan. Another boy with short red hair and braces. “Uh, hi. Do you want to dance?” He was looking directly at me, so he obviously didn't mean Molly.

He caught me so completely off guard that all I could do was stand there with my mouth open.

I didn't want to say yes. Ethan might see me dancing with him, and then he'd leave me alone for the rest of the night. But I didn't want to hurt this boy's feelings. What could I possibly say to get out of dancing with him?

“My shoes hurt my feet,” I blurted out finally. “They're giving me blisters.”

Molly swiveled her head around and gave me the strangest look. “On your brain, maybe.” Then she looked at the guy. “My friend has to go soak her feet,
but I'll dance with you.” She walked away with the redheaded boy, and the two of them were laughing by the time they were out on the dance floor.

I couldn't believe she'd said that! If I was going to soak anything at the moment, it would be my flaming hot face. In the punch bowl.

So now here I was, standing all by myself looking lonely and abandoned. What if Ethan saw me right now? What would he think? I glanced around quickly, and luckily, I saw Whitney a few feet away. For whatever reason, she wasn't with her best friend Sarah at the moment. I rushed over to her.

“Hi, Whitney. Mind if I hang out with you while Molly dances?”

Translation: Don't you dare leave me standing here all alone, or I'll have to hide under a chair.

“Hi, Jordan. I love that outfit.”

I glanced down at my cropped pink jeans and pink-and-white-striped shirt. I wasn't sure—had I overdosed on pink tonight? Did I look like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol?

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a lot pinker than I wanted to feel at the moment.

After Molly had danced with the redheaded boy, she found Whitney and me. Luckily, she kept her mouth
shut about Ethan until Whitney got asked to dance. When the two of us were alone again, she demanded, “Why haven't you talked to Ethan yet?”

“Because I'm waiting for him to come over and say hi to me first.”

“Why does he have to say hi first? This
is
the twenty-first century, you know. Girls don't have to sit around waiting for boys to come to them. We can make the first move.”

“I don't want to stalk him! Boys hate that.”

“Jordan, so far you haven't gotten within five hundred feet of him or even made eye contact. I'm pretty sure that stalkers tend to be a wee bit more outgoing than that. What's the worst thing that could happen if you said hi to him?”

I could think of about fifteen bad things that might happen. Number one, he didn't remember me. Number two, he didn't like me anymore because of some random, weird thing I'd said in that e-mail last year. Number three, he had a girlfriend back home. Number four, he had his eye on someone else he wanted to dance with. Number five, he was looking at me right now and thinking,
What did I ever see in that pink nightmare?

But if I tried to explain this to Molly, she'd tell me I was just making excuses. “So you're saying you'd be
willing to go up to any boy here and ask him to dance?” I asked her.

“Sure I would. Why not? What's the worst thing he could do?”

“Laugh in your face. Say no. Make up some lame excuse why he doesn't want to dance with you.”

“Oh, like, ‘Sorry I can't dance with you. I have blisters on my brain'?” asked Molly.

“Just because I didn't run right over to him the second I saw him and say, ‘I can see my future, and guess what—you're in it,' doesn't mean I won't talk to him eventually,” I told her.

Molly put one hand on my shoulder. “Look, I know you're afraid. But sometimes you have to face your fears. You know what would've happened to you if you'd been on the
Titanic
?”

I glared at her. “Are you going to tell me I would've drowned?”

“Yes! And you know why? Because you're afraid. A lot of people were afraid to get in the lifeboats at first. They didn't want to be lowered hundreds of feet into the cold, dark ocean. They wanted to stay on that warm, safe,
unsinkable
ship. You wouldn't have gotten on a lifeboat, Jordan. But I would have! Don't you get it?”

“No, I don't. What's your point?” I asked. I was
totally confused by how lifeboats applied to me talking to Ethan.

“My point is, sometimes you have to face your fears and do something that looks dangerous. It just might save your life.” Molly crossed her arms and nodded at me, convinced that she'd just given me an amazing argument.

“Well, you're wrong about me drowning on the
Titanic
. I would've been too afraid to cross the ocean on a ship in the first place. So fear can save your life.”

Molly sighed. “I give up. I'm going to ask that boy to dance with me. The band kept playing till the end, Jordan. Right up until the ship sank. Remember that!”

Okay, I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I didn't want her abandoning me again.

“Molly, wait!” I yelled. But she'd already walked over and asked a tall, skinny boy in a “Rock Star” T-shirt to dance with her. How could she leave me alone like this?

Just then I felt someone's hands on my shoulders. A really deep voice said, “Hey, cutie. Wanna dance?”

I almost died. It honestly felt like my heart dropped out of my chest—not a healthy situation at all. I also completely stopped breathing, and that's not particularly good for long-term survival either. The hands swiveled me around, and I was facing—Rob Thompson.

“Rob! You scared me to death!” I hissed at him through clenched teeth. Rob was Eda's son. He was a Camp Crockett counselor. He was nineteen and more than six feet tall, so he towered over me like a tree.

Rob laughed at my reaction. He was the closest thing Madison and I had to a big brother. He teased both of us a lot, but me especially, since I'm so much younger than he is.

Rob's sandy blond curls were cut short to keep them
from completely taking over his head, which curly hair can do very easily if you don't watch it. He wore glasses and had a little bit of acne, but otherwise, he was sort of cute, in a slightly geeky way.

“Hey, small stuff—you're not dancing. The question is why. Insecurities? Lack of rhythm? Bunions?”

I frowned at him. “I have danced. A little,” I lied. I was pretty sure Rob hadn't watched me every single second, so how would he know the difference?

“Oh, yeah?” His eyebrows went up above the rims of his glasses. “Listen. I've personally seen at least two different guys walk up to you. You either turn them down or walk away. That is
cold
, my little sista. Icy. Frosty. Glacial. You can't be dissing these little dudes like that. You'll give them a complex. Break their hearts. Crush their souls.”

“Why don't you go embarrass Madison now, okay, please? That is, if you can find her. She's dressed like a shrub.”

Madison and all the other CATs were busy doing Porch Patrol duty. That meant they walked around outside Camp Crockett's dining hall with flashlights to make sure nobody went past the dining hall porch. They always made it a big deal by dressing up in camouflage and taping tree branches and leaves to their clothes.

“Uh, yeah, nice try to get rid of me. I've seen her already. I actually saved her from a vicious woodpecker attack. Certain death loomed before her, had I not been there with my swift reflexes. So now you're my next project.” Rob propped his elbow on my shoulder and leaned down.

“Okay, small stuff. Look around. These are the finest that Camp Crockett has to offer, I'm sorry to say. Pathetic. Disappointing. Downright sad. But you're only twelve, so it's not like you've got lofty standards—am I right?”

“I wish I was invisible,” I groaned. Why was Rob torturing me like this?

“Eh, sorry. Can't help you there. My invisibility cloak's at the cleaner's. Here's what I want you to do.” He was still leaning on me. “Name the little dude of your dreams. Point him out. He's yours. Done deal. I'll work my magic, and you'll be paired with him for the rest of this romantic evening.”