Second Time's the Charm (10 page)

Alyssa's typically porcelain skin flamed crimson. “What do you mean?” she stammered.

Now it was Natalie's turn to falter. She had Alyssa's attention, all right—she just didn't know what to do with it. “I, uh, don't know how to describe it exactly, but it feels like it's a little, I guess . . . tense? Like there's something you're upset about that you're not sharing with me?” She took a deep breath. “I mean, if there is something, Lyss . . . you know you can tell me anything.”

She paused, waiting for Alyssa to respond. For one excruciating beat, all Natalie could hear was the sound of both of their breathing and the scrape of their shoes along the dirt path. She thought she might crawl out of her skin if Alyssa didn't have a reaction, and soon. She tilted her head back toward her friend. “Please. Say. Something?” she begged.

Alyssa swallowed hard and took a deep breath through her nose. She looked for all the world as though she were gearing up to say something Important.
Thank goodness,
Natalie thought.
We so need to get to the bottom of this!

“Here's the thing—” Alyssa began, her voice hushed and low.

“Natalie!”

Natalie looked up to see Simon sprinting toward her. Her heart leaped at the same time as it plummeted into her stomach. Was that even possible, biologically speaking?

“I've been looking all over for you!” he called, jogging over and breaking into stride with the girls. “You, like, just snuck out of dinner.”

Perfect timing, Simon,
Natalie thought. The last thing she wanted to do was to ask him—however politely—to go away. But, really, he couldn't have come by at a more inopportune moment.
You need to talk to Alyssa
, Natalie reminded herself firmly.
Don't let yourself be distracted by the cuteness of his . . . everything.
“Yeah, Alyssa and I were ducking out for some . . . QT,” she managed tactfully. “Quality time.
Girl
time,” she emphasized.

“Oh, hey, I get it,” Simon said, so apologetic that Natalie felt instantly guilty. “No worries. I'll catch up with you at evening activity.” He gestured to where two freckle-faced boys were hanging back, looking bored. “I think Ben and Gabe are ready to give up on me, anyway. They think I'm way too hooked on you.” He blushed.

“I'm okay with that,” Natalie said, thrilled beyond measure that he was being so easygoing about this.

“You know what?” Alyssa cut in.

Natalie's thrill began to shrink down from the size of a hot-air balloon to a teeny-tiny, shriveled raisin. “What?” she asked dully, having a pretty good idea of what.

“You guys talk. I don't mind. I'll go . . . find Tori, I guess,” Alyssa said. “I promised I would do her left hand with ‘passion pink' before evening activity, since she's a lefty.”

“Are you sure?” Simon asked, looking very pleased with this turn of events. “I mean, who cares what Ben and Gabe think?”

“Right. I'm totally sure. It's not a big deal,” she said. She looked at Natalie. “I promise.” She turned and ran off without another look back.

Maybe it's not a big deal to Alyssa
, Nat thought wildly.
Maybe.

But she had a feeling that, at this point, she was fooling herself more than anything else.

chapter
HIGHT

Natalie pushed aside the letter she had written to Hannah and sighed heavily. She knew she had managed to sound upbeat and cheerful in her note. Of course, she had left out the fact that she and Alyssa were in the middle of some awkward not-fight, and that Tori and Simon were somehow involved. She didn't want to say anything to Hannah just yet. Acknowledging the situation out loud would only make it more . . . real . . . and for the most part, Alyssa and Natalie were tiptoeing around each other, pretending everything was a-okay. Which it
so
wasn't. For her part, Nat was sort of miserable about the whole thing—but she had no idea what to do about it.

“Okay, so fifty-two percent of readers think that Tara Reid looked better in this dress, while forty-eight percent think that Paris Hilton rocked it harder. I'd say that's a really close call,” Tori said, smiling and holding up a trashy magazine for reference. “Let's have a little 4A poll.”

“Paris Hilton is gross,” Chelsea said, barely looking up from the book she was reading on her bed.

“I agree,” Karen said quietly. She did still have a habit of occasionally agreeing with Chelsea; old habits died hard, after all.

“I can't vote with the pictures so far away,” Jessie complained, jumping off of her bed and scampering across the floor of the bunk to where Tori, Alyssa, and Jenna sat, Indian-style, on the floor. Jenna was munching away contentedly on cherry licorice twists.

“Paris Hilton
is
icky,” Tori agreed. “I saw her at the Oscars last year and let's just say that she gets a
lot
of help in her paparazzi shots.” She leaned in as if revealing a secret. “Airbrush,” she stage-whispered.

Tori's been to the Oscars?
Natalie thought. No way. No fair. She bit at a fingernail, gnawing furiously. Nat normally didn't think of herself as the jealous type, but for some reason, when it came to Tori, all bets were off.

“You were at the
Oscars
?” Perry shrieked, echoing Natalie's thoughts.

“Yeah, my dad takes me every year,” Tori said. “Well, almost every year. He can usually get tickets from one client or another.”

“So what?” Chelsea snapped. “I'm sure Princess Natalie has gone to the Oscars dozens of times.”

“Oooh, have you, Nat?” Tori asked eagerly. “Don't you
love
all the fancy stuff they put in the bathroom? I get seriously overexcited about, you know, lip balm and stuff like that.”

“I, ah, haven't ever been to the Oscars,” Natalie had to admit reluctantly. Most frustrating, more frustrating even than the jealousy, was how genuine Tori sounded—she honestly wanted to chat about the thrill of attending the Oscars. Not rub it in Natalie's face or anything. Ugh. “Just the Golden Globes, once, when I was, like, five. I barely remember it. I'm not sure if they had any lip balm in the bathrooms. Those were my pre-balm days.” She was trying to joke, but she didn't feel very joke-y on the inside.

“Oh, well . . .” Tori trailed off, obviously not really sure what to say. Clearly she felt desperately sorry for non-Hollywood Natalie, whose movie-star father's connections were somewhat . . . limited. “Well, I mean, you're not missing anything. Just a lot of stars with double-sided tape on their boobs.”

“Right,” Natalie said. Stars with taped-up boobs sounded pretty fun, actually.

“Nat!” Tori called, startling her and pulling her out of her little internal pity party. “If you keep biting your nails you're going to wreck them.”

“What? Oh,” Nat replied, looking down at where she was indeed chewing furiously on the nail of her index finger. Gross. Natalie didn't bite her nails. What was going on?

How gracious of Tori to have my back
, Natalie thought, a tad bitterly. She held out her hands, examined the damage, then silently turned back to her letter.

Saturday didn't turn out the way Natalie had planned, at all. Simon had come by after the whole Oscar debacle, and he and Natalie hung out on the porch for a while. It was nice—Nat always loved to spend time with him—but she had really wanted to hang with Alyssa at least for a little bit, to try to get things back to normal between them. She thought maybe they could catch up during free swim, but Alyssa had gone swimming with Tori, which was happening more and more lately. “It's really hot out,” she explained.

During dinner, Lauren cornered Natalie for advice about a guy she was crushing on, and Nat could hardly turn her back on a friend in need. Evening activity was rained out. Indoor dodgeball. Highly conducive to a big-time heart-to-heart. Not.

Nat lay in her bed, tossing and turning, mentally running through the events of the day again and again. The flimsy mattress wasn't exactly the height of luxury, but tonight it was her thoughts keeping her awake more than any issue of comfort. Half the reason that she had come to camp was so that she could hang with Alyssa. She had to get things back on track between them. And Tori was . . . well, Tori was getting in the way.

Natalie felt horribly guilty to be as irked by Tori as she was. The girl was friendly, open, and outgoing, and other than her tiny faux pas on day one, when she'd ogled Simon, she certainly wasn't trying to offer Natalie any competition (and really, who could blame her for checking him out? He was way too cute!). But as similar as she and Tori were, it was kind of hard not to compare.

Natalie fumed silently, recalling how she had offered up her best
YM
s for lights-out, assuming that, as usual, her bunkmates would want to hear the trauma-rama column, and then their horoscopes. It was practically tradition, at this point—at least among the former 3C-ers! But just as everyone was settling in and warming to the evening ritual, Tori chimed in. “Wait,” she said, perky as ever. “Why don't we do something different?” She pulled out a magazine of her own. “They've got numerology in here,” she said. “It's like astrology, but with numbers. Kind of cool, you know?”

And just like that, all of Natalie's bunkmates jumped on the numerology bandwagon, murmuring excitedly about how “awesome” it was to try something new. Like “new” was such a big deal. Whatever.

Mia and Andie had gone out after lights-out to a staff meeting at the rec hall. It was just down the path, halfway between the cluster of bunks and the mess hall. So it wasn't a big deal for them to leave the girls alone for an hour or so. “Just as long as you behave,” Andie had warned as they headed off, the flimsy door banging shut behind them.

Natalie was contemplating taking out her flashlight and reading a little bit of the romance novel that Josie had sent. Would anyone notice? Chelsea might tell on her. Then again, with Chelsea, you never knew. She might be cool about it if it meant that she herself got away with staying up past lights-out. Natalie was weighing the pros and cons when suddenly—