Tug-of-War (11 page)

“What's wrong? Are you mad?” asked Devon. Her stupid mouth was slightly open, and she had this ridiculous surprised look on her face.

All around us, girls were saying good-bye to the guys they'd danced with, and everyone was getting into the vans and trucks to go back to Pine Haven. I was shivering a little because my bare shoulders were cold. But my face felt red-hot from the fury that had been building up inside me all night.

“How could you spend all night talking to him?” I yelled. “You completely dominated the whole conversation! You think he wanted to sit there and listen to you flap your gums all night?”

I heard Maggie beside me, snickering at my comment,
but all my attention was focused on Devon, who was still staring stupidly at me.

“What are you talking about? I was
helping
you. I kept the conversation going! I was waiting for you to jump in anytime, but you just stood there like a zombie whose tongue had turned to dust. If you like a guy, Chris, you have to say more than hello to him.”

“You like
Jackson
?” asked Maggie, like Devon had just suggested I liked cold cream-of-mushroom soup. “Since when do you have a crush on my brother?”

I spun around and glared at Devon. “Oh, my secret's safe with you, huh? Thanks a lot! Why don't you go find Jackson and make your announcement to him, too?”

“Why didn't you ever tell me you had a thing for my brother?” Maggie asked.

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. “Maggie, stay out of this if you know what's good for you. Let me talk to Devon.”

Maggie knew all the warning signs of my volcanic temper. “Okeydokey. I'll see you in the van.” She disappeared, and now I was able to give Devon my undivided attention.

“I was doing you a favor by talking to him, Chris. If I hadn't been there, you two would've walked up, said hello, and then left. I happen to be a good conversationalist,
so I kept us near him all evening. It's not my fault you didn't say anything all night.”

“How could I, with you blabbing your head off! You practically threw yourself at him! Why didn't you just sit on his lap? When Maggie hugged him good-bye, you looked like you were waiting in line!”

We stood in the shadows under the lights outside Camp Crockett's dining hall. Moths were fluttering around just over our heads, and Devon held her hand up to swat away one that was dive-bombing her. Considering how much she'd opened her mouth all night, it was amazing she hadn't swallowed the poor insect.

Devon had this annoying smile on her face. “I did not throw myself at him. You're just jealous because he was talking to me all night instead of you.”

“He's not into you, Devon!” I yelled. “He's sixteen and you're only twelve. You think he's in love with you now or something because you used
audacity
in a sentence!”

Devon smirked at me. It was an actual smirk, and I wanted so badly to rub her face in the wet grass and wipe that smirk right off. “Well, he's not into
you
, either. At least I talked to the guy. I can't help it if I made more of an impression on him than you did.”

“You're a horrible friend! I can't believe you did that to me tonight.”

Devon crossed her arms. “Stop yelling,” she said, in a perfectly calm and rational voice that made me want to scream my lungs out. “You're making a fool of yourself.”

That comment actually took my breath away. “I—I'm making a fool of myself? Do you have any idea how stupid you looked?” I made a prissy face and put my hands on my hips. “Audacity!” I chirped in a high-pitched voice. “Look how smart I am, Jackson.”

Then I thought of something. A way to really embarrass Devon and get her to wipe that smirk off her face. A smile spread slowly across my face. “Devon, why didn't you speak Spanish to him? Why didn't you say
helado
and
sobacos
, huh? You think you're so cool, swearing in Spanish. Well, guess what?”

Devon sucked in her breath. She could tell I was up to something, and she was waiting to hear what. “All you've been saying is a bunch of random words. ‘Ice cream' and ‘armpits.' That's all. Why?
¡Porque tu no hablas español, gringa!
Yo soy bilingüe y tu no eres
. Go ahead—tell me what I just said. You can't, can you?”

Devon was absolutely silent, staring at me. Finally, in a small voice, she said, “That's mean.”

Out of the shadows, Betsy came running up to us. “There you are! Hey, come on. The whole van's waiting for you two. Wayward sent me to look for you.”

Devon pivoted on one foot and took off at a fast pace right behind Betsy. I followed a few steps behind them. Inside the pit of my stomach, I felt this white-hot coal still burning inside me. All the lava had spewed out and erupted, but deep inside I was still smoldering. My face felt sweaty with the cool breeze blowing on it.

The sliding doors of the van were open, and everyone's faces were lit up from the ceiling lights overhead. Maggie was on a bench by herself with two empty spots waiting.

Devon scooted in front of Betsy and climbed into the van first, taking a seat on the bench next to Kayla and Shelby. That meant Betsy and I would have to sit next to Maggie on the middle bench, which was absolutely fine by me.

I slammed the sliding door shut and slid back onto the bench. My arms gripped my stomach. Neither Devon nor I had said a word.

“Where were you?” asked Gloria. “Kissing your new boyfriends good night?”

“Yes, that's exactly what we were doing,” said Devon, as the van drove away.

“Isn't this great?” asked Maggie, looking over her shoulder at me from the bow of the canoe.

“Yeah, it sure is.” I tried to force some enthusiasm into my voice. We were on our river trip, and Maggie had been having a blast ever since we'd launched the canoes into the water. I was pretending to have a good time, but I wasn't succeeding.

In fact, I felt sick.

I was still mad about a lot of things, and it was all raging around inside of me like a runaway virus. Part of me just wanted to stay in the cabin and lie in bed with all the blankets pulled up over my head.

But I couldn't do that. I'd risk seeing Devon if I did.
So here I was with Maggie on the river, trying to enjoy myself.

This morning the six of us who were going on the river trip had loaded up in the white truck, with a trailer hitched to the back that held the canoes. It was me, Maggie, Meredith Orr, Patty Nguyen, Abby Harper, and Boo, along with Michelle, and Steve, the river guide. He was a tall, skinny guy with long hair and a scruffy goatee—not exactly crush material, but he seemed to know a lot about canoeing and kayaking.

As our canoes drifted along in single file, I tried to get into the spirit of the adventure. The sunlight sparkled on the surface of the river, and the sound of the paddles dipping in and out of the water was nice and calming.

I watched the way the current rippled over the smooth brown rocks in the shallows along the shoreline. Birds were singing in the trees that lined the banks. But no matter how great my surroundings were, I was still in a rotten mood.

“Hey, Chris—look!” Maggie pointed with her paddle at a water snake darting past us. Its thin green body wriggled in S curves just below the surface, but it kept its head above water as it swam.

“Yeah, that's cool.”

Maggie twisted around and looked at me from the bow. “Come on, Chris, cheer up already.”

“What do you mean, cheer up? I'm having a great time,” I told her.

“Hey, this is your best friend you're talking to. I can tell when something's bothering you. Is it because of Ghosty Girl?”

I dipped my paddle in and out of the water for several strokes before I answered. “Sort of. I don't really want to talk about it.”

Some people could get mad and get over it pretty fast. But not me. When I got mad, it was like catching a cold—it wasn't something I was going to get over right away. I was going to be tired of it and want it to be over
days
before it actually went away.

I couldn't help the way I felt. In the past, people have told me, “Don't be mad anymore. Just get over it.”

To me, that was like telling someone with a cold, “Just don't cough anymore.”

“Maybe I can cheer you up,” Maggie said. She turned completely around so that she was facing me and started strumming her paddle like a guitar. “Home, home on the river . . . where the fish and the snakes like to . . . slither . . . .”

“Maggie, watch it!” I yelled. We were coming up to some rippling shallows, and we needed to paddle out to deeper water.

She swung around fast and did a quick draw to pull the bow starboard.

“Stop goofing off,” I warned her. I adjusted the life vest I was wearing a little bit so it wouldn't rub against my neck.

“Okay, just don't get mad at me. You don't want to be mad at me and Palechild at the same time.”

I didn't answer. I had gotten a little mad at Maggie after the dance when she kept bringing up my crush on Jackson. I finally had to admit to her that I did think he was cute, but she'd better never tell him that or embarrass me in front of him.

Luckily, Maggie was very sympathetic about my fight with Devon. Every time I thought about the way she had taken over at the dance and left me standing there, speechless, while she did all the talking, I felt that hot, burning feeling in my stomach again. It really did feel like I'd been walking around for the past two days with an old piece of smoldering charcoal in my stomach. Most of the time, it was all white around the edges, but when I'd think about Devon saying,
I love how soft their T-shirts feel
or
Oh, can I see your license?
that lump of
charcoal in the pit of my stomach would flare up red-hot again.

“This river's pretty tame, don't you think?” Maggie commented. “When are we going to see some real rapids? It's not that different from being on the lake.”

“Just pay attention, okay? I don't think we're ready for real rapids,” I told her.

I breathed in the river smell all around us. It was a little fishy, but I still liked it. This really was fun. If only I could get Devon completely out of my mind.

Maybe it wasn't all her fault. Maybe she really had been trying to help me out by talking to Jackson.

But she should've noticed she was totally dominating the conversation and leaving me standing there, saying nothing. She could be a real flirt sometimes. I never should've confided in her in the first place. What was I thinking—telling my
best friend
a secret like that?

“So you like being in the stern okay? We could switch places on the next trip, and you could paddle bow, if you want,” Maggie said.

“It doesn't matter. Stern's fine with me for now.”

And how come Devon had to be so completely comfortable talking to Jackson? I mean, really! She took one look at him and immediately had an entire phone book full of things to say to him.

If I'd planned it for a week, I never could've come up with that many things to talk about. Driver's ed classes, prom, Hollister shirts, guitars. Had she taken a class on how to talk to sixteen-year-old boys and not mentioned it to me?

I could still see her standing in front of me.
I happen to be a good conversationalist.
GRRRRRR!!!

I dug my paddle down as deep as I could and thrust it through the water with all my might.

“I'm glad you and I never fight, Windsoroni,” I said suddenly. She gave me a quick grin and then turned back to paddle past a fallen tree branch sticking up out of the water.

The lump of charcoal was feeling hotter and hotter. I wasn't just mad at Devon. There was something else.

Okay, yeah . . . Devon had made me mad, really mad. But she hadn't tried to hurt me on purpose. She didn't even know she was making me mad.

But . . . but then there was the stuff I'd said. I called her a horrible friend.
Yo soy bilingüe y tu no eres.
I'm bilingual and you're not.