Five Summers (23 page)

JO STUDIED HER REFLECTION IN THE BATHROOM mirror. After her talk with her dad, she had changed into a black tank top, brown jodhpurs (she’d wanted real army fatigues, but camouflage wasn’t allowed during capture the flag thanks to a male counselor who had painted himself brown and green one year, hidden in a tree, and scared a female camper so badly she’d had to be taken to the ER), and black boots, and then she’d slicked her hair back with pomade, strapped her cell phone and a granola bar to her calf, and applied two thick stripes of eye black across her cheeks.

She knew she was overcompensating with the outfit, but Jo needed all the celebratory spirit she could muster. Because somewhere along the path on the walk back to Souhegan, she’d realized something she’d been trying to deny for a long, long time: it was time for her to go. Her dad was right. She needed to move forward, to grow up, to stop holding on to the past. And that meant leaving camp. For a while, anyway. She had to convince the others to band back together for one last hurrah. Jo took a deep breath and tried to smile. She was preparing for the rally of a lifetime.

Skylar was back in bed, with her blanket covering her head. She, Emma, and Maddie had all come back from breakfast separately, still, it seemed, in terrible moods. Emma was paging through a thick novel and Maddie was doing her makeup, and neither was talking to anyone. Jo tried to ignore their chilly stares and cued up her iPod to play Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” She’d seen it used to powerful effect in
Apocalypse Now
and hoped it would make a compelling motivational soundtrack for the day.

As the surging strings and triumphant horn calls filled the cabin, Maddie looked up with a death glare.

“Please turn that off,” she said.

Emma nodded in agreement. “Seriously, Jo—
no
. Not today.”

Skylar, true to form, didn’t stir until the crescendo.

“Ladies,” Jo announced, “last night is in the past. Today is a day that will live in infamy.”

“That was Pearl Harbor,” Emma snapped.

“Fine,” Jo said. “But today will, too. Because today is the day that we finally claim victory against the boys in capture the flag.”

“I’m not playing,” Emma said. “Give it up.”

“You’re crazy,” Maddie sighed.

“We first played capture the flag together eight years ago,” Jo continued, ignoring them. “It was a cloudy Sunday in August, and even though we were small in stature we had big dreams. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it off the Green before all our bandanas were snatched, and we had our first taste of defeat.

“The following year we amped up our game but fell victim to a classic fake out by a group of senior boys who led us into the north field and ambushed us,” Jo went on. “Our third summer we had to forfeit when Maddie lost her glasses and ran into a tree. The next year was a dark time, when two weeks of rain made the ground so muddy that capture the flag had to be canceled. And during the last game we played together, we literally touched greatness when I was at last able to get my hand around the boys’ flagpole—”

“Poor word choice!” Maddie yelled, but Jo could see that she was trying not laugh, even while scowling.

“—only to be tackled by an eleven-year-old in an ILLEGAL move that was upheld for reasons unknown by a member of
my own family
.” Jo clapped her hands together and held them underneath her chin, saying a little prayer. Everything about the previous two train wreck nights could be made right if she could only pull this off.

“Now,” Jo said as she reached into her duffel and pulled out four green bandanas still in their crisp cellophane wrappers. “Before you guys even got here, I took the liberty of ordering custom bandanas for us this year for solidarity and good luck.” She slipped a bandana from its sleeve and unfolded it to reveal the Camp Nedoba logo, surrounded in a circle by all four of their names.

“That’s sweet, Jo,” Emma said, the bite gone from her voice. “But nobody’s in the mood.”

“And what does . . .
katiff fatwah
mean?” Skylar asked groggily, hanging her head over the side of the bunk and squinting at additional letters printed on the four corners of the fabric.

“That’s CTF FTW,” Jo corrected. “Capture the Flag For the Win.” She sighed. “I know I can go overboard and be a little stubborn sometimes”—she looked at Maddie—“and I know that no one but me wants to spend all day running around in the woods after a plastic flag. But guys,” she said, swallowing hard, “I need this.
We
need this. And I can’t do it by myself. So, please, let’s suck it up and show Adam and Nate and Charlie—in absentia—that we’re not afraid of them anymore. And that we won’t let anything keep us apart.”

No one said anything for a few minutes, and Jo started to worry that she’d misjudged the situation. She should have started with the sincere part and left the jokey theatrics to the end after she’d won them over with her heart and loyalty.

“I think I need more coffee before I can deal with this,” Skylar said finally, clambering down from her bunk.

“I need a shower,” Emma said.

Maddie capped her lip gloss and let out a deep breath. “I don’t know,” she murmured.

“Lucky for you, I do,” Jo said, blocking the door. “I’ve been waiting for this game my whole life.”

“That’s really sad,” Maddie said.

Jo paused, wondering if she should tell them about her decision to quit. It would be
so
much easier to get them on her side with the added push of a little sympathy. But no, she decided. She didn’t deserve a victory that was won by manipulation.

“Maybe,” Jo said. “But who in this cabin
doesn’t
need a win today? Who doesn’t need to feel better about themselves? We all came here—or stayed here, as the case may be—expecting different things out of this reunion, and so far I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been disappointed.” Skylar stood still at the edge of the bed, staring down at the floor. Emma hugged her knees and let out a deep breath. Maddie stared off at the corner of the cabin where the glass from the photo frame still lay in glittering shards, her nostrils flaring.

“We need this, you guys,” Jo said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not going down without a fight. So come on—who’s with me?”

WHEN EMMA SAW THE CROWDS OF CAMPERS LINED up on the Green, on opposite sides of a bright yellow line of caution tape that had been stretched across the grass, she knew she had made a terrible mistake. She thought Jo was just being her normal over-the-top camp self, wearing the eye black and playing the weird opera, but almost everyone else had shown up for the game with the same level of commitment. People wore face paint and had pre-arranged team outfits. Even Meredith, Allie, and Ruth wore matching pink ringer tees and white denim shorts. They looked like the Easter Bunny’s harem.

Mack came out ten minutes before the start time to thunderous applause, wearing his referee T-shirt and whistle along with a pair of incongruous butter-colored Crocs. He dragged his Adirondack chair to the edge of the caution tape and sat down with his Thermos full of coffee, winking at Jo, who was already toeing the line, peering through a set of binoculars to try to see signs of the guys’ base camp.

Capture the flag had always been Emma’s least favorite camp activity, a full day of running around in the woods trying not to get tagged out by fellow campers on the opposing team. It took speed, strategic thinking, and a lot of paranoia, so it had always been intimidating—but the reunion game set even higher stakes. It was girls versus boys, for starters. And of course it was still the JEMS versus . . . each other.

Jo’s speech had been hard to say no to, but Emma, Maddie, and Skylar still weren’t really speaking. They all had the same expression of anger and skepticism mixed with abject fear. And they were the least visually coordinated group: Maddie was in her blue tank top, grungy Keds, and white capri pants—which had taken a beating over the past two days and were covered in dusky dirt splotches that looked like bruises and welts; Skylar was wearing a forest green romper that seemed to have been made from old sweatpants (somehow she was still pulling it off, though, which just added insult to injury as far as Emma was concerned) with Converse high-tops; and Emma had on the workout clothes she’d packed but never used: a pair of black running shorts and an old T-shirt of her dad’s that read NEW YORK CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION. Jo had asked Emma to bring her watermelon backpack, but Emma would sooner have run the course completely nude, so Jo carried it. The combination of the infantile backpack and the Lara Croft–style wardrobe made Jo look like she belonged in a mental institution.
Which she kind of does
, Emma thought with a smirk.

“Okay!” Mack yelled. “The game starts in a few minutes and everyone needs to go back to their base, but I just want to go over the rules, for those of you who may have forgotten or who may be trying to circumvent them. . . .” He looked right at Jo when he said it.

“This yellow line marks the border between the two sides of camp. Each team will start back at their bunks, and on my signal you’ll be free to travel anywhere on camp grounds in pursuit of the other team’s flag. Rule number one is that you must cross this line going back and forth—and while the Green will be a battlefield of sorts I want to take a moment to stress that these are
not
the Hunger Games, so please, don’t get carried away. Which leads me to rule number two: no tackling.” A group of boys booed.

“That’s right,” Mack repeated. “No tackling. If someone relieves you of your bandana, you’re out, and when you get tagged out, you stay where you are until you hear my whistle that signals the end of the game—no sneaking off. And no inappropriate touching. You’re grabbing the bandana, not the person. The body may be a wonderland, as John Mayer says, but for our purposes today it is
off limits
.”

Emma bit her lip to keep from laughing, and out of habit looked over at Skylar. But Skylar had her headphones in and hadn’t even heard. Overhead, the clouds were looking ominously gray.

“Ready?” Jo asked. They were clustered back on the girls’ side, standing around a dead pine stump. Emma sighed and put her hands on her knees. She had never felt less ready for anything. She had a headache from drinking too much coffee, and the thought of sprinting made her stomach flip.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Emma said.

Jo looked down at her watch. “Do it now,” she said. “We only have twenty seconds.”

“You’re not getting out that easy,” Skylar said, stretching her calves.

I’m not the one who’s easy
, Emma thought, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew she had lost it during the fight and had said some things she didn’t mean. She wanted to talk to Skylar more about it, but first she needed to hear a real apology, not just a series of excuses. She couldn’t believe that Skylar had made it seem like the betrayal was somehow her fault.

“No more sniping,” Jo said. “Today is a new day. We’re in this together.”

“Whatever,” Maddie sighed. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Okay, on my count,” Jo said, lowering herself into a runner’s stance.
Three
 . . . Jo mouthed.
Two . . . ONE!
At the sound of Mack’s whistle, girls broke off from the cabins in all directions. The older girls in pink jogged off toward the woods that led back behind the barn, while Sunny, Aileen, Jess, and Kerry hung back to “defend” the flaccid red flag Jo had planted in the dirt behind a picnic table, staring uninterestedly at their cell phones. But per Jo’s instructions, Emma started down the main path toward the Green, bringing up the rear of their disjointed team. She watched Maddie’s red ponytail swing back and forth as she focused on her breathing and tried to ignore the burning sensation in her lungs, which were exhausted from all the crying and screaming and did not seem at all amused that Emma had chosen this particular moment to rediscover physical fitness.

Jo’s preferred route, which she had outlined to Emma, Maddie, and Skylar in a series of e-mails dating back to April—and reviewed again that morning—was fairly simple: they would head straight for the border line, wasting as little time as possible, and then divide and conquer to make it across the Green, around the well, and over to the woods on the northern border of the boys’ side without being tagged out. Then they would regroup and lay low, edging together around the boys’ bunks through the thick, almost impassable woods on the eastern side and ambush them from behind. It was an ambitious strategy even under the best of circumstances, but with their communication hovering somewhere between stony silence and open hostility, Emma knew they didn’t have a chance. She half hoped that one of the boys would tag her right away and put her out of her misery.

When they got within sight of the border, she panicked even more. The boys playing “guard” were exactly the ones she’d hoped to avoid until later in the game, when, hopefully, she would already be unconscious from dehydration. There were the usual suspects: the twins, in matching sports jerseys; Bowen, looking unconvincingly thuggish in heavy beige hiking boots; Zeke, whose hair was still hanging in his eyes like a mop; Nate, who waved limply to Jo as she reached the Green, as if unaware that he was supposed to look intimidating; and Adam, who had opted to change out of his syrup-covered breakfast wardrobe and had a look on his face, as he saw first Skylar and then Emma, like he was about to be run over by a bus.

“Play fair, everybody!” Mack yelled from the sideline as he saw the teams begin to face off. The boys, on defense, adopted crab-like wrestling stances. Emma looked frantically for a hole in their lineup, but the slowest person—or, at least, most exhausted—was probably Adam, and she really didn’t want to get anywhere near him if she could avoid it.

A few yards ahead, Jo sprung forward and sprinted across the caution tape, easily passing between Bowen and Matt Slotkin, who stumbled forward with the grace of two garbage trucks. Emma saw Jo double back to pluck Zeke’s bandana out of his back pocket as she bounded away.

“That’s for Skylar,” she yelled, holding it over her head.

It
would
feel pretty good to beat them, Emma realized, feeling a sudden rush of adrenaline. But she had to get past them first. She took advantage of the fact that the others had reached the border line before she did—Nate had run after Jo, the Slotkin twins were fumbling for Maddie, who darted back and forth in a double helix pattern around the gazebo, and Bowen was following Skylar toward the well, slowed considerably by his choice of footwear. Adam, however, had hung back. He stretched his arms out as Emma approached.

“You have to listen to me,” he said.

“No,” she panted, breaking left and narrowly dodging his reach. “I don’t.” She sprinted as fast as her legs would carry her, hearing his footfalls right behind.

“You can’t outrun me,” he yelled.

“You’re probably right,” she called back over her shoulder, tasting bile. “No one runs away faster than you do.” She felt his fingers brush the back of her shirt and she stopped abruptly and turned around. Adam barreled into her at full speed and they both fell clumsily to the ground.

“Hey!” she heard Mack yell. “No tackling!”

“Don’t you dare tag me out,” she panted, rolling back onto her knees and standing over Adam, who was examining a scrape on his palm. “Please, just leave me alone.”

He looked up at her. “I can’t.”

“Clearly, you can.” She glared at him. “I waited for you all night last night.”

Adam looked pained. “I just didn’t know what to say,” he said. “I didn’t want things to change between us.”

Emma looked out at the woods, knowing that every second she stayed behind was widening the gap between her and her friends. Plus, the other boys could be waiting for her under the trees, where she was even less sure-footed. She looked down at Adam and shook her head.

“It’s too late,” she said, and sprinted all the way to the trees without glancing back.

Once she’d survived ten minutes without running into anyone or breaking her ankle, Emma started to think that there must be a patron saint of girls with no sense of direction watching over her. She wandered skittishly, jumping at every rattling branch and chirping bird, wishing she had brought her cell phone just in case she needed to call the sheriff’s department to airlift her out. Luckily, she occasionally caught glimpses of the lake to her left through the trees, so she knew she was heading in more or less the direction that Jo had mapped out. Emma just hoped she found the others before she got too far and crossed over the invisible Camp Nedoba property line into the neighboring farmland.

She finally came upon them after about a quarter mile. They were sitting on a fallen tree, Jo in the center and Skylar and Maddie on either side, facing in opposite directions. The open watermelon backpack was wedged between Jo’s boots.

“There you are,” Jo said, zipping it up. “I thought they might have tagged you.”

“Not yet.” She snatched the backpack away from Jo.

“Relax, I didn’t take anything.” Jo got up and fished a compass out of her pocket. “By the way,” she said, tossing it to Emma. “Use this next time.”

“Did you get Adam’s bandana at least?” Maddie asked. Emma shook her head, and Skylar laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Emma tossed the compass on the ground, and its dial spun wildly in the dirt.

“You two need to
stop
,” Maddie yelled. “If I hear his name again, I’m going to explode!” As if on cue, thunder cracked above them.

“Great,” Jo said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Sorry, I also forgot to tell you, I control the weather,” Maddie said, rolling her eyes. A light rain started to fall, and Emma turned her face up to the sky. On the bright side, maybe this meant the game would be canceled.

“Okay, new plan,” Jo said, retrieving the compass.

“We go back and stop playing?” Emma asked hopefully.

“I second that,” Maddie said.

“No,” Jo said. “We look for shelter and wait out the storm.” The rain was already getting heavy, slapping the ground with rapid-fire smacks that quickly turned the rust-colored dirt into slick mud.

“Where are we supposed to wait?” Emma asked.

“There’s the treehouse,” Skylar said, flicking wet hair off her shoulders.

“No way.” Emma remembered the rickety box, built on the sagging limbs of a thick oak tree, that had been a favorite hideout of theirs until a camper fell and broke his arm the year they were twelve, and Mack declared it unsafe.