Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far) Read online

  B. Camp was fun even though Lexie was my CIT, and even though one of the Starlettes was Jill DiNunzio.

  I was having so much fun being a Starlette at Camp Merrimac that I had completely forgotten that the afternoon would bring a bad thing—the ball of boringness known as Lexie. The moment lunch was over, Lexie joined the Starlettes as our afternoon CIT.

  She started off trying to be all cool and grown-up, even though by next summer the eleven-year-old Starlettes would be old enough to be in the group Lexie was in now, which, FYI, the kids in my sister’s group had named themselves the Rock and Roll Girls, even though not one of them could sing, including Lexie, plus I don’t know too many rock-and-roll violinists.

  Lexie strode over to the Starlettes just as we were cleaning up our lunch stuff. “So, what’s on the docket for the afternoon?” she asked Lisa, clapping her hands together earnestly. She completely ignored Janie, since Janie was just the junior counselor, not the head counselor, and if there’s anything Lexie likes it’s people who are in charge, such as school principals, mayors, and orchestra conductors.

  Lisa looked a teensy bit surprised. “On the docket?” she repeated. “Oh, I see. Well, next is free time, followed by Sign-up Activities One and then Sign-up Activities Two. Each of the activities is an hour long. By then it will be four o’clock, and time for Camp Merrimac Cheering, which, as you know, all the campers and counselors participate in before the buses arrive.”

  “So,” said Lexie again, and she pulled a little notebook out of her shorts pocket, “what are your expectations for me?”

  I was glad that only about four of the Starlettes were listening to this conversation. I was also glad that we hadn’t written our last names on our tags. Maybe no one would realize Lexie was my sister.

  Jill snapped her gum in my ear. “Hey, how come your sister is our CIT?” she asked loudly. “Is it so she can help out in case, you know, you wet your pants?” She stared off into space then and began singing softly, “Tinkle, tinkle, little star…”

  “No,” I replied. “It’s so she can help out in case you start to barf and can’t make it to the bathroom. No one wants to see that again.” If that actually did happen, Jill would die from embarrassment, and Lexie would die from seeing barf. The Bra Girls were standing nearby. “Did you know,” I said to them, “that Jill and I go to the same school, and one time Jill had to barf and she didn’t—”

  Jill yanked me away just as Lisa announced, “Okay, everyone, free time! Your choices are hiking, softball, arts and crafts, and canoeing. Tell me where you’re going to be for the next hour.”

  “Canoeing!” I cried. Sadly, this was before Lisa assigned Lexie to the canoeing group.

  I stayed ten paces behind Lexie as she tried to walk through the woods and scribble in her CIT notebook at the same time. Lisa had told her that her only duties were to help out and to enforce the rules of the lake. This shouldn’t have taken very long to write down, which probably meant that Lexie was making up extra rules of her own.

  We tromped along a path, and I saw a couple of squirrels and a chipmunk, plus some bugs and a newt. When I saw the newt I knew we were near the water. I squinted ahead, and sure enough, there was the lake, shining in the sunlight.

  Behind me, Juwanna and Eliza started to run. They ran past me and onto the main dock, and the second their feet touched the wooden boards I heard someone shout, “No running on the docks!” which is the very first rule on the giant sign that’s posted on the back of the lifeguard stand.

  Of course the shouter was Lexie. She was pleased to be able to show off her CIT bossing skills.

  Juwanna and Eliza came to a screeching stop and Juwanna tripped over a little boy and Eliza started to cry.

  Lexie strode toward them. She looked confused when she realized that Juwanna was the one who had tripped, but Eliza was the one who was crying.

  I hopped onto the dock behind Lexie, tugged at her shirt, and whispered loudly, “You made Eliza cry!”

  “What?” Lexie whispered back, frowning.

  “You yelled at her. She cries at everything.”

  Lexie hesitated, but she couldn’t help herself. “You broke a rule,” she said to Eliza. Then she turned to Juwanna. “You, too…”—she peered at her name tag—“Juwanna.”

  “Sorry,” said Juwanna, who was already halfway down the dock, heading for the canoes.

  Eliza sniffled sadly and wiped at her tears. “I forgot,” she said. “I haven’t been here since last summer.”

  Lexie patted her shoulder. “That’s okay. But maybe we should review the rules together,” she said, leading her toward the lifeguard stand. “You, too, Pearl.”

  “Me? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Rules are always helpful. Now, read with me.”

  In our dullest, most humiliated voices, Eliza and I read the list of rules aloud with Lexie. “No running on the docks. No one permitted on the docks unless a counselor is present. No swimming unless the lifeguard is present. No horseplay…”

  We read down to the final rule and Eliza and Lexie stopped speaking, but I continued, “No having fun. No naked swimming. No swimming if your sister is present. No—” I glanced at Eliza who was giggling, and at Lexie who was giving me the Evil Sister Eye.

  Then Lexie turned and stalked off to see if she could humiliate anyone else.

  At least Jill wasn’t around. She had decided to play softball, and I had decided that from now on I would always wait to see what Jill picked during free time and then I would pick something else.

  Lexie climbed into a canoe with poor Eliza and a junior counselor, and then I got in a canoe with Juwanna and some counselor I didn’t know and we paddled all around the lake and the counselor identified birdcalls while Juwanna told me she has a brother who goes to college and sends her funny animal photos in e-mail, which obviously means that Juwanna has her own personal computer. But she wasn’t snobby about it.

  When free time was over Lexie led Juwanna and Eliza and me back through the woods to meet up with the other Starlettes. We had reached the field and were walking by the softball diamond when we heard the crack of a bat and almost instantly we also heard someone shriek and then I saw Lena (the non-talking Starlette) grab her leg and fall on the ground. This didn’t look fake at all, and I realized that the kid who had just hit the ball had thrown the bat to the side, which it had accidentally whacked Lena on the shin.

  “Ow!” she wailed. “Ow, ow, ow!”

  My sister ran to Lena and took a look at her leg. I was right behind Lexie, and I could see a lump already forming on Lena’s shin.

  “Oh, it hurts,” Lena whispered, which was somehow more frightening than her shrieking. She hunched over her leg and started to cry quietly.

  “Move back!” Lexie said to the kids who had crowded around. “Give us some space. Can somebody please go get the nurse? Tell her to bring the ice pack. The stretcher, too, just in case.”

  I stared at my sister. Lexie looked completely calm and not scared, which was the opposite of how I felt.

  “I think it’s broken,” said Lena in that same small voice. “What if it’s broken?”

  “You’re going to be fine,” was Lexie’s reply, and she sat down next to Lena and let her rest against her shoulder. I remembered last Thanksgiving when I had eaten too much at dinner and had woken up during the night with a stomachache and Lexie had been very soothing and nice to me even though there was the danger of barf.

  “Are you sure it isn’t broken?” Lena asked again.

  “Stand her up,” suggested one of the junior counselors. “See if she can walk on it.”

  Lexie shook her head. “No. We should wait for the nurse,” she said firmly.

  The nurse came hurrying across the field then with a bag of supplies, followed by two junior counselors with a stretcher.

  It turned out that Lena’s leg was not broken, just badly bruised. She limped off the field, the nurse on one side of her, Lexie on the other. As they walked by me
I heard the nurse say, “Good job, Lexie. You did everything right,” and all my sister said was, “Thank you,” not “I know,” or “I’ve had training” (which she hadn’t), or anything stuck up.

  “Lexie is my sister!” I called after the nurse, who didn’t hear me. Lexie did, though, and she turned and gave me a smile.

  * * *

  When all the excitement had died down it was time for sign-up activities. I had signed up for a ceramics class and Sock Monkey Animals, which really could just have been called Sock Animals since monkeys are animals, but whatever. In ceramics we made some beads for jewelry and got introduced to the potter’s wheels we’d use later when we were more experienced. In Sock Monkey Animals I found out that you can make any kind of animal out of any kind of sock, not just monkeys out of the brown and red and white socks, so I started working on a blue-and-white-striped dog that I thought maybe I would give Dad to make him feel better.

  It was my kind of afternoon, with crafts galore, and I couldn’t wait for the next day of camp. Plus, I decided I didn’t need to switch out of the Starlettes after all. Having Lexie for my CIT wasn’t so bad, and I thought I could put up with Jill. I made the decision after the incident at the end of the day, which says a lot about how mature I’ve become.

  The incident took place during Camp Merrimac Cheering. Cheering is fun because no one says, “Indoor voice, Pearl,” since you are expected to cheer at top volume. We were all chanting, “Cumila, cumila, cumila vista; oh, no no not la vista; Eenie-meeny docile-eeny; ooh, ah, walla-weenie…” which is my favorite chant because it gets faster and faster and then at the end you get to yell, “Yee-haw!”

  We were winding up for the yee-haw, when I glanced at Jill, who unfortunately was standing right next to me since the Bra Girls and most of the other Starlettes had no interest in her whatsoever, and I saw that she wasn’t chanting. Since she hadn’t been to Camp Merrimac before she didn’t know about eenie-meeny docile-eeny and probably felt on the outskirts of things like I used to feel at Emily Dickinson Elementary before I got JBIII for my best friend.

  So anyway Jill and I were standing shoulder to shoulder and I was shouting, “Ish biddly oten-doten; bo-bo and ditten-datten!” when I felt soft breath in my ear and realized Jill was saying something to me. Of course, I couldn’t hear her. I brushed her away like a fly. “Yee-haw!” I cried along with the rest of Camp Merrimac, and thought—just briefly—of cowboys shouting “Yee-haw!” as they rode by cactuses and buzzards in the deserts of the Wild West.

  I looked at Jill. “What did you say?”

  “Oh,” she replied, twisting her finger around a strand of hair, “I was just remembering a field trip we went on once.” She raised her voice so that the Bra Girls would be in hearing range. “It seems to me that something happened. What was it? Oh, yes. Someone in our grade got lost. Why … it was you! And instead of looking for your teacher you stood there and yelled, ‘Help, police!’”

  The Bra Girls began to laugh.

  I could tell that Jill was getting geared up to continue her story when, just like in fairy tales, a shadow suddenly fell across her face.

  It was Lexie’s shadow, and my sister was glaring at Jill with cool snake eyes.

  “Lexie, don’t—,” I started to say.

  But my sister ignored me. “You know, Jill. Maybe you could let go of that incident. It happened when you guys were in third grade. You seem pretty clever to me. I’m sure you could come up with a new insult now that you’re going into fifth grade.”

  “Hey!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean, a new insult?” But then I saw that the polka dots were reappearing on Jill’s cheeks. And that now the Bra Girls were laughing at her. She turned away and slithered into a group of tall kids, and I didn’t see her again until we climbed onto the bus. JBIII sat with me and Lexie plopped down next to Justine, who was right in back of me. I have to say that Justine had looked a little sad when she’d gotten on the bus and found JBIII already sitting next to me, but I forgot about that when Jill climbed aboard. This was because the second Jill saw Lexie, she and her polka dots hurried all the way to the back of the bus.

  “So,” I said to him, “do you like camp?” I had only seen him at lunch. I had tried to get him to go to Sock Monkey Animals, but instead he had signed up for a class called Write Right for kids who want to be authors, which is not me.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “It’s cool.”

  “I can teach you the chants,” I added, since I suddenly realized he must have been in the same boat as Jill during Camp Merrimac Cheering.

  JBIII and Justine and Lexie and I spent most of the ride chanting “Cumila, cumila” (which cheered Justine up) and not looking at the back of the bus, where Jill was sitting with a bunch of kids she didn’t know. When the driver finally pulled up at the corner of 6th Avenue and 14th Street, Lexie and JBIII and I rushed down the steps and onto the sidewalk, hoping to get a head start and avoid Jill.

  I crashed into someone. It was my father. He looked sort of tired, but he put on a big smile when he saw us.

  “Hi!” he said. “How was camp? I thought I’d walk you home.”

  “But Lexie is here,” I replied. The other kids at our stop were either walking home by themselves or being met by baby-sitters. Dad was the only fired parent who had shown up.

  Lexie glared at me and said, “Thanks, Dad,” which I guess she had forgotten the fit she had had in the morning when Dad walked us to the bus stop. No matter how mature I get, she is always maturer.

  That night I sat at my desk, found a piece of deep blue paper the color of the lake at camp, and wrote (keeping in mind that Mom and Dad would probably want to look through my scrapbook at the end of the summer): First day of camp it was fun, even what with Jill DiNunzio. Am making a sock dog! (I figured that by the time Dad saw the scrapbook he would already be the owner of the sock dog.) Lexie is my afternoon CIT and very skilled at first aid. Can’t wait for tomorrow. I thought for a moment, then added: Thank you, Mom and Dad.

  I glued the paper onto a scrapbook page and decorated the edges of the page with drawings of roses, leaves, newts, and Lena getting whacked by the bat.

  8

  II. I went to Camp Merrimac, which is a day camp.

  A. Lexie was a CIT for my troop.

  B. Camp was fun even though Lexie was my CIT, and even though one of the Starlettes was Jill DiNunzio.

  C. JBIII and I starred in a talent show.

  The rest of the first week of camp was mostly good, with only a few unfortunate things thrown in:

  I thought I had Jill under control, but I guess I didn’t. No matter how many times I stared at her with the cool snake eyes that Lexie had perfected, Jill would not leave JBIII alone. She kept trying to talk to him. She would be all, “Jamie”—that’s what she called him—“what are you doing for free time this afternoon?” and “Oh, Jamie, I love your Write Right story,” and “Here, have half my sandwich, Jamie.” Once when we were getting on the bus at the end of the day, Justine slid in next to me and Jill tried to slide in next to JBIII, but he swiveled his head around like an owl and looked at me with hysteria eyes that called “Save me!” so I rescued him by shoving Justine onto the seat across the aisle and saying, “JBThree, come help me with this,” even though I was just sitting there and didn’t need help with anything. Justine looked wounded, and I whispered, “Sorry, sorry. I’ll explain later,” which was pointless because one thing Justine doesn’t understand is what it’s like to be ten.

  Then JBIII scrambled over Jill’s knees, whooshed down next to me, and rolled his eyes. I think Jill saw this, but even so, she said, “Want to play tennis tomorrow, Jamie?” and then JBIII was just like, “No,” so finally Jill faced forward.

  The next day I caught Jill watching JBIII and me on the bus. Then I saw her looking at JBIII in his swimming trunks while he was canoeing. When I realized that she was eavesdropping on us during lunch I said to JBIII, “Hey, I think there’s a spider crawling up Jill’s—”


  I hadn’t even finished the sentence before Jill scrambled to her feet and began hopping up and down, shaking her shirt out, brushing at her legs (which, sorry for being gross, are on the hairy side), and whiffling her hands through her ponytails. “Where is it? Where is it?” she shrieked.

  “Where’s what?” asked Cat, who was wearing the Kit-Tea shirt again.

  “The spider!”

  “I don’t see any spider.” Cat got to her feet and turned Jill around a few times like she was a display rack at BuyMore-PayLess.

  “There’s a spider?” screamed Vonna, and then she was on her feet, too. Vonna likes spiders even less than ants, and she really doesn’t belong at an outdoor day camp, if you ask me.

  “Are you sure there’s no spider?” Jill said to Cat. She was breathing heavily and her polka dots had returned and her hair looked like a bird’s nest and all in all she wasn’t very attractive to boys or anyone else at that particular second.

  “Positive,” Cat replied, but since by then she had sat down and was pawing through her lunch again, Jill didn’t believe her. She kept holding her arms out and turning them over, and peering down the backs of her legs, and finally she borrowed someone’s comb and ran it through her ponytails and shook her head like Bitey shakes his when he has ear mites.

  So then I said to JBIII, “I wonder if young girls can get ear mites,” and Jill glared at me and I felt satisfied.

  This was on Friday, and it was one of the good things that happened that week, but the very best thing happened a few hours later at Camp Cheering. We had just finished chanting “X Marks the Spot” and giving each other the shivers when Edward, who’s the counselor in charge of drama, stood up in front of the whole camp and said, “Here’s something fun to think about over the weekend: Next Friday—that’s a week from today—we’re going to have a talent showcase in the afternoon. Anyone can sign up for it, and any kind of talent is welcome. Just let me know by the end of the day on Monday if you want to participate.”

  Jill launched her hand in the air like a rocket. “Will there be prizes?” she asked, which I’m sure she was picturing herself being awarded a gold trophy even though her talent is limited to Hair Styling.