Rumors (6 page)

So I was glad we weren't all starving right now and living off tree bark. And even though I didn't really like these strange girls who weren't my friends, they didn't deserve to be turned into a bear family's picnic lunch. So thinking about that helped me to enjoy this nice little hike through the woods, where I was absolutely positive that no one was going to get eaten. At least 99 percent positive. I concentrated on listening to the birds singing and tried not to think about that other 1 percent.

“How much farther to the falls?” a girl near the front of the line asked Rachel.

Rachel suggested that we all try to be the first one to hear the water, and whoever heard it first would get a prize.

“Oh, hi!” the girl behind me said suddenly. I'd stopped to hold a stray branch back so she wouldn't get hit with it. “You're Kayla, right?” She sped up a little so she could walk beside me on the path.

“Yes,” I answered. It made me nervous that she
seemed so excited to be talking to me all of a sudden. Just a minute ago, she'd been chatting away with Nicole and Darcy.

“I've heard about you! It's really nice to meet you. I'm Brittany.” She was Asian, with short black hair, and she was acting really friendly, like she already knew me.

“Heard about me?” I asked. “What have you heard?”

Something about the way I said that wiped the smile right off Brittany's face. “Oh, just … you're from California, right?” She glanced at me nervously. She seemed to realize she'd just said something that upset me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I'm not from California.”

“Oh, I guess—maybe I've got you mixed up with someone else. I'm new this year, so I'm just starting to meet people.”

Was that stupid states game from the first night coming back to haunt me again? At least she hadn't asked me if I was from Tennessee.

“Is this your first year too?” asked Brittany. “How do you like it so far?” I could tell she was trying to change the subject. She really did seem nice, and I felt bad for snapping at her. So we talked for a few minutes about our first impressions of Pine Haven. I acted like I was enjoying myself, because like I said, it could be worse.

The girls in front of us had slowed down a little, and we could hear Rachel at the front of the line calling out to the rest of us. “We're getting close to the falls now. Everyone keep your ears open. Whoever hears the sound of the falls first will get the prize. And it's going to be delicious!”

“Oh, cool. Let's listen for it,” said Brittany excitedly. “I hope it's chocolate.”

Then I noticed something. A girl named Erin who had been at the front of the line with Rachel had now moved toward the back. She was whispering something to Darcy and Nicole. When they noticed I was watching them, they smiled at me all innocently.

Now what? Were these girls talking about me too? Was everyone in camp talking about me, spreading more rumors? I swatted a branch out of my way and sped up a little to get away from all these gossipy girls.

“Getting closer. Keep listening for the sound of the waterfall,” Rachel reminded us. So everyone got quiet and listened. That was the most wonderful sound I'd heard all day. The sound of girls not gabbing. It was amazing that these Pine Haven girls didn't go around with their tongues in slings. You'd think they'd sprain them all the time, considering they gave them constant workouts.

And then I heard it. Or I was pretty sure I did. The sound of the waterfall. No one else said anything, so at first I thought I was imagining it. But then I was sure of it.

“Wait. I think I can hear running water,” I said to Rachel. I was surprised that I was actually the first to mention it. Couldn't they all hear it by now?

“Kayla gets the prize, since she was the first one to hear it,” Rachel said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Brittany came up to me and flashed a friendly smile. “I was just about to say something too! But that's cool you heard it first.”

I wasn't feeling quite so mad now. “If it's candy, I'll give it to my little sister.” Samantha would love that. Come to think of it, Samantha would love any kind of prize, so I'd give her whatever it was.

Rachel led us through the woods until the falls came into view. It wasn't the big, huge waterfall I'd been expecting, but it was still really beautiful. Rachel explained that it was called Angelhair Falls because of the way the rushing water poured across the rocks in little streams.

We were at the base of the falls where the water was churning into a pool of white foam. Now the sound of the rushing water was really loud, and we had to raise
our voices as we talked. Standing at the edge of the creek, I could see how shallow the water was and how it rippled over all the smooth brown rocks lying in the bed of the creek. The air smelled damp and clean here next to the waterfall, and the temperature was several degrees cooler.

I turned around to face Rachel. “Okay. What's my prize?”

Rachel's eyes got wide when she looked at me. “We throw you in!” she yelled. And then the next thing I knew, she and three of the girls ran up and grabbed me. Erin and Rachel had me by the feet, Darcy and Nicole had me by the hands, and they were dragging me to the creek.

I couldn't help it. I screamed, because now they were swinging me back and forth! Were they really going to throw me in? “One … two … three!” Rachel yelled. I held my breath and braced myself for the cold splash.

But they just set me down. Right at the edge of the creek. I could hear everyone around me laughing, but I sat there paralyzed. My heart wouldn't stop pounding. Rachel winked at me. “You okay?”

I nodded. The only thing I could say was, “Now I'm wet,” because even though they hadn't thrown me in,
they'd put me down in some soft moss, and I could feel the dampness seeping through my shorts.

All the other girls had kicked off their shoes and socks and were wading into the rushing water of the stream. Rachel took off her backpack and pulled out a glass jar that had a bright orange salamander inside it. She told us about how she'd caught it yesterday to use in the skit for evening program last night, but now it was time to let it go.

I hadn't moved from my spot. Erin walked over and sat down beside me. “We'd never throw you in. That trick gets played on a new girl every year. Now you know. So next year, you'll have to come back on this hike, and then you can be in on the joke,” she explained.

“That'll be fun,” I said, since she was being so friendly. But I couldn't help thinking that for me, there wasn't going to be a next year.

Being almost thrown in the creek was bad enough. Then on the hike back, we had to sing.

And we didn't just sing a regular song. No, Rachel thought it would be fun to do a round. So she made us sing a song I remembered from my days as a Brownie.

“Make new friends, but keep the old—one is silver and the other gold.”

We had to keep singing that over and over with some of us starting it off, and then another bunch coming in midway through, and the last bunch coming in at the end.

“Make new friends, but keep the old—one is silver and the other gold. Make new
friends, but keep the old—one is silver and the other gold. Make new friends, but keep the old—one is silver and the other gold.”

The problem with singing a round was that it wasn't like a regular song that had an end to it. You kept singing it again and again, and nobody was ever sure when it was okay to stop.

And I really wasn't in the mood to listen to a song like that at the moment, much less sing it. My shorts were wet, I wasn't interested in making any new friends, and I didn't like being reminded to keep my old friends when I was about to move hundreds of miles away from them. Finally we all just sort of tapered off and stopped singing.

“Hey, everyone see this?” asked Rachel, pointing to a plant growing by the side of the path. “Three leaves. You know what that means.”

“Poison ivy,” said Erin.

“Yep, stay away from that stuff,” Rachel warned.

Was that the next trick they were going to play? Grab the new girl and throw her into some poison ivy? But as we walked on past, no one rushed me, so I relaxed a little bit.

“Are you sure you're okay?” asked Brittany, catching up with me on the path.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” I said. I felt like I had to put on a
semi-happy face so people didn't think I was upset about almost being thrown in. The last thing I wanted was for this group to go back to camp and start talking about me too. If they weren't already.

“Honestly, I was this close to being the one to say I could hear the waterfall. Then it would've been me instead of you.” She glanced at me. “They didn't hurt you or anything, did they?”

“No, it just surprised me.”

“Me too!” said Brittany. “I was so sure they were going to throw you in! I think Erin was planning it with Darcy and Nicole. They were being all secretive right before we got to the waterfall. Erin talked me into coming on this hike.” She laughed. “I think she was hoping it was going to be me!”

“Really?” I asked. “I thought they were talking about me.” I felt a little nervous admitting that to Brittany, but she seemed nice. And she'd obviously heard something about me before she met me. “I get the feeling that lots of people are talking about me,” I added softly.

Brittany was quiet for a minute. We came to a spot in the trail where we had to climb over a fallen tree. “What makes you think that?” she asked, once we'd both scrambled over it.

Nicole and Darcy were behind us, but they weren't
talking very much now. Ahead of us were Erin and Isabel, the girl who'd failed the swim test on the first day. She seemed really shy, so it was probably good that she hadn't been the victim like me.

“Well, I heard some girls in my cabin talking about me the other day. I know it was me because I heard them say my name.” I couldn't believe I'd just told Brittany that, but there was something about her that made me think I could trust her.

Brittany didn't say anything, but she had this look on her face like she knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Do you mind if I ask you what you've heard about me?” I said finally.

“Well … ,” she started off. “I heard you were from Hollywood. Your mom's a movie star, and you answer all her fan mail.”

If Brittany had broken a branch off a nearby tree and clubbed me over the head with it, I couldn't have been more stunned.

“What?” I yelled. “Who told you that?”

“Oh, and you're also trying to keep your identity a secret because you're pretending to be from Tennessee or something?” Her voice rose up like a question.

“That's crazy! My mom works at a TV station, but she's not a movie star. At all. I've never even been to
Hollywood, but some friends of mine just took a trip there and sent me some postcards.”

It made me mad to hear what kinds of crazy rumors were going around, but in some ways it was a relief to finally know what people were saying about me.

Brittany let out a little embarrassed laugh. “I know. It sounds unbelievable now that I'm telling you about it.” She ducked under a low-hanging tree branch. “Watch out for that,” she warned.

“Who told you all this stuff?” I asked. “None of it's true, by the way.”

“I heard some girls talking about it before evening program the other night,” said Brittany.

“Which girls?” I asked. “What did they look like?”

“Hmm. I'm not really sure. I don't know too many names yet.”

“Was one of them chubby? With blond hair and glasses?”

“I don't think so,” she answered, but her voice didn't sound all that convincing.

“Well, just don't believe everything you hear, all right?” I warned her.

Brittany laughed. “I won't. Trust me!” She gave me a quick look. “You're not mad, are you?”

“No, I'm actually glad I found out. Thanks for telling me.”

I tried to remind myself that it could've been a much worse rumor, something really embarrassing. Like the rumor that was going around my school last year that William Takashi and Kelsey Vandamere had been kissing under the bleachers during a basketball game and their braces had locked together.

The story was that they'd tried to scream, but no one could hear them over the noise of the game, and then everyone had gone home and they'd gotten locked inside the gym and a janitor had found them later. He'd called the fire department and it took two hours to get them separated. They both denied it, but they both did have braces, and they did like each other. I was never sure what to believe.

When we got back into camp, Erin came over to talk to me. “Hey, thanks for being a good sport. Sorry we got your shorts dirty.” She glanced at my backside. “They look new. Next time, you should probably wear old clothes on a hike,” she suggested.