Tug-of-War (6 page)

Devon flinched a little when the water drops hit her, but she didn't turn around. “If I feel another drop of water on me, you'll be flossing your teeth with that paddle,” she said coolly.

“Oh, yeah?” Maggie yelled. “How about I feed your magazine to the fishies?”

I clutched my head between my palms, and a low rumbling sound came out of my throat, kind of like the one my cat Gitana would make just before coughing up a hair ball. It was a warning sound that meant some bad eruption was about to happen.

“
¡Me vuelvo loca!
I mean it! You two are this close to driving me completely insane!”

“Hey, Chris—you know what we forgot to do? A dunk test!” Maggie yelled.

She scooted beside me in the middle and was getting into position to flip the canoe over. Her hands gripped the gunwales of the starboard side while her feet pushed down with a huge thrust on the port side. The whole canoe tipped dangerously sideways.

Hey!
Was water coming in?
She was going to . . .

“Maggie, don't—”

I grabbed the starboard gunwales to keep from falling, but I was losing my balance and felt myself falling backward. I sucked in air just before I hit the water. My ears were muffled, my eyes shut instinctively, and the icy, wet chill flooding over me made every muscle in my body tense. A tidal wave came crashing over my head as the canoe flipped. I
coughed and sputtered, trying to catch my breath.

At the same second I'd hit the water, I'd felt two giant splashes on either side of me. My confused brain registered that Devon and Maggie had just gone under too.

As soon as my head was above water I opened my eyes. “Grab”—I coughed, trying to catch my breath—“grab the canoe!” My hair hung in my eyes and I pushed it out of the way, then lunged forward till I reached the overturned canoe.

“I didn't mean to! I swear! I didn't mean to!” Maggie was yelling to the right of me. A wet form on my left was pawing at the overturned canoe, trying to find a place to hold on.

The sides of a canoe are curved, so it's not exactly the easiest object to grab onto when you've just been dumped unexpectedly out of it. But I managed to get my upper body out of the water enough so that I could cling to the edge. Then I was able to hang on and look around.

Devon was on my left, Maggie on my right, both of them clinging to the overturned canoe like I was. All of us were still gasping for breath. Devon's face was hidden by a black mask of wet hair. Maggie held on to the canoe with one arm and reached for her
Camp Crockett cap floating nearby with the other.

“I'm so sorry! It was a total accident! I just . . .,” Maggie said in a choked voice.

“Forget about it! We've got to flip this over!” I shouted.

I could hear Michelle calling out instructions to us, but I couldn't tell what she was saying. “Need any help?” asked Meredith and Patty, approaching us in their canoe.

“I think we're okay!” I called back to them.

At least Maggie and I had done a dunk test last summer, so we knew the only way to turn the canoe over would be to flip it toward us.

“Devon, help! We've got to grab it this way!” I told her. When she saw what Maggie and I were doing, she grabbed the edge of the canoe, and after a few minutes of desperate splashing, the three of us managed to flip it upright again. Then we all had to try to climb into it without tipping it over again.

Once we were back in, I saw that one paddle had stayed in the canoe, tucked under the seat, and the other was floating a few feet away. Meredith reached out and grabbed it, then paddled close enough to hand it to us.

The canoe was about half-full of water but still floating,
so we started paddling. Meredith and Patty backed out of our way.

“I honestly didn't mean to dunk us!” Maggie wailed. “I was just playing around. All I wanted to do was rock the boat a little, but then . . . I don't know what happened!”

“Let's just get to the shore,” I told her. Devon hadn't said a word.

I remembered turning around to see what Maggie was up to and losing my balance. When I'd grabbed the gunwales, I might have actually helped Maggie flip us. It probably
had
been an accident. And from the way her voice sounded, I could tell she was really upset. The joke had backfired on her, and we'd all paid the price.

When we'd made it to shallow water, Maggie jumped out and pulled our waterlogged canoe in the rest of the way. Then Devon and I climbed out.

“I never said we were doing dunk tests today,” said Michelle, a hint of annoyance in her voice. She waded out to help Maggie pull the canoe in. “But now that you've dunked it, help me empty the water out.”

The dunk test actually was a skill we'd have to learn at some point—take the canoe out, intentionally flip it, and then get back in and paddle to shore, usually with
a boatful of water. If you wanted to go on a river trip, you had to demonstrate to the canoeing staff that you could handle an emergency situation.

“I guess we passed this progression at least, right?” Maggie asked with an embarrassed smile.

Maggie and I helped Michelle lift the canoe up and over enough so that the water started pouring out over the gunwales. Devon stood dripping on the bank and watched us silently.

Meredith and Patty paddled up in their canoe. They'd managed to grab Devon's magazine, which had stayed afloat on the surface of the water during our whole capsizing adventure.

Maggie took the soggy mass of wet paper from Patty's outstretched hand. She walked up to Devon and handed her the ruined magazine. “Devon . . . what can I say? I'm an idiot sometimes. I swear on a stack of Bibles ten feet high—I didn't mean to turn us over out there.”

Devon's black hair was plastered around her face. She dropped the magazine on the ground and stood with her arms crossed, shivering slightly in her wet clothes. Then she looked directly at me. “I think you have a decision to make.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, twisting my wet hair to wring some of the water out of it. Next to
me, Maggie was shaking herself like a dog who'd just escaped from an unexpected bath.

“I refuse to spend another second with this ape you call a friend. You can be her best friend or you can be my best friend, but not both.” Devon leveled her eyes at me.

“Make your decision.”

“You can't do this to me! You can't make me choose between you!”

Devon was lying on her bottom bunk, propped up on her pillow, dry now, with a copy of
Brave New World
in front of her face. Apparently, she'd brought enough reading material to last her through another six or seven canoeing accidents.

Maggie sat on her top bunk, her legs dangling over the side. She was wearing her black gorilla socks. The water had been freezing cold, and we had all wanted to get warm and dry as fast as we could.

Our wet clothes were hanging up to dry. Devon's new shoes were next to my clear high-tops and Maggie's Crocs. They'd dry out eventually, but they'd
probably never have that bright white look again.

It hadn't been much fun for me to fall out of a canoe, but I really felt awful about Devon getting dunked. I knew how she hated doing outdoorsy things. Now she'd fallen into the “swamp,” ruined her magazine, and waterlogged her brand-new shoes. She had every right to be furious with Maggie.

Maggie kicked her legs against the bunk rail. “Hey, Devon, this is really stressing Chris out. You and I should try to get along.”

I think that might've been the first time I'd ever heard Maggie actually call Devon by her real name. But Devon wouldn't look up from her book. She was an ice princess when she got mad—absolutely cold. And very calm. I was just the opposite. In some ways, I kind of wished I could stay calm like that when I got mad instead of spewing out hot lava like Mount Kilauea.

Maggie picked up her pillow and punched it with her fist. “I'm really, really sorry. I swear, though, I was just fooling around. I just meant to rock the canoe and shake you up a bit to get a few laughs.”

Devon didn't even bat an eyelash.

“But it's hard to laugh with your lungs full of lake water. I take full responsibility for this whole mess.”

I had to admire the way Maggie admitted it was her fault. I hated admitting I was wrong about anything. I don't know why—I've just never been very good at apologizing to people or taking the blame for stuff.

I believed Maggie when she said she hadn't meant to dump us all out. All the way back to the cabin, I'd yelled at her for pulling such a stupid stunt. She walked along with her shoulders slumped and her rusty curls hanging in limp little ringlets all over her head. “I'm an idiot! I'm sorry!” she kept saying. I think it really was an accident.

Clutching her pillow, Maggie climbed down from her top bunk and went over to Devon. “Here, beat me over the head with this a few times. I deserve it, and it'll make you feel better.” She bent her head down to make it an easy target.

Devon lowered her book and looked past Maggie at me. “I refuse to spend another minute with this creature. It's absolutely impossible that the two of us could ever be friends.”

“Don't you think ‘impossible' is a pretty strong word? I'm not asking you two to become best friends, but can't you . . . maybe try to put up with each other?” I asked.

“It's not going to happen,” Devon said coolly.

“Why? You're both still getting to know each other. And . . . maybe you're both a little jealous of each other,” I suggested.

Devon flipped her eyes upward. Her hair was still wet, and the ends were curling up. I bet it was driving her crazy, not being able to use her straightener on it. “Me jealous? Of Gorilla Feet there? How could I possibly be jealous of her? She's stupid and annoying.”

“Hey, stop! That's harsh. You don't have to get mean about it,” I told her.

Devon tossed her book aside and sat up. “She's an absolute
calcetines
.”

I kept a straight face and made a mental note to tell Maggie later that Devon had called her a pair of socks.

Usually Maggie would've had some funny comeback for an insult like that, but she kept quiet. She dropped her pillow and slouched over to her trunk, where she sat down with her chin in her hands, looking pretty depressed.

“Devon, Maggie is not stupid. You two just have completely different personalities.”

“Exactly. Which is why we can never be friends.”

“Well, I'm not going to choose between you, so you can forget that!” I informed her.

Maybe I had been wrong to think that the two of
them could get along. They
were
so completely different. Devon had been a total pain from the moment we got on the bus to come here, but I still couldn't dump her. It wasn't all her fault for hating camp so much, and I could see how someone like Maggie could get on her nerves. Irish setters usually did rub black cats the wrong way.

But I wasn't about to give up what could be a fun summer with Maggie just because Devon hated every single thing about Pine Haven. If I could have it my way, I'd spend all my time at activities with Maggie, and then come back at the end of the day and hang out with Devon in the cabin and talk.

“Okay, I can see how maybe this won't work—the three of us spending all our time together,” I said slowly, trying to figure out what I was going to say next. “But both of you are still my two best friends.”

Devon sat on her bunk without moving a muscle, and Maggie stared absently at the wooden floor. Neither one of them said anything.

“So instead of the three of us doing everything together . . . maybe I could split my time evenly between both of you.”

“That doesn't seem fair to you,” said Maggie.

“Well, I don't know what else to do.” Once again, I was wishing for a coin to toss so I could make a fair
decision. Glancing around the cabin for something, I noticed Melvin propped up on my pillow and went over and grabbed him by his furry foot.

“Okay, tomorrow morning for activities, I'll go with one of you. Then in the afternoon, I'll go with the other. If Melvin lands faceup, I'll go with Devon in the morning. Facedown, I'll go with Maggie.”

“I would get the butt end of the deal,” Maggie observed.

I tossed Melvin in the air as high as the rafters and he came down, landing on the floor at my feet. But he was lying on his side.

I huffed in exasperation. “That didn't count. I'll do it again.”

“Don't bother,” said Devon, snatching up Melvin by the paw before I could reach him. She smashed his bear face into the floor. The three of us sat there, looking at Melvin lying on his stomach, his furry tail sticking out of the slit of his red flannel pajama bottoms.

“There,” said Devon firmly. “The decision's been made. You can spend all day tomorrow with Beefaroni for all I care.”