“Ribbon!” our kids yell back.
And finally:
“Mellow!”
“Yellow!”
“All teams!” Jill calls out. “Please make your way to the pool to find out who wins!”
“The pool?” I say to Gavin. “Why?”
He shakes his head. “That doesn’t sound good.”
The teams squeeze through the doors and we all head to the pool, laughing and giddy with nerves. We congregate on the pool lawn.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Danish says. She is using a megaphone. “The six captains are going to stand on the edge of the pool. Six members of the head staff will stand behind them. On the count of three, the two winning captains will be pushed into the pool!”
Seriously? Everyone except for the captains cheers.
“So if we win, we lose, and if we lose, we win?” I say to Gavin as we make our way toward the pool with the other captains. I glance down at my favorite jeans and my electric-blue sweater.
“Should we all take off our shoes just in case?” Ilana asks.
“We definitely should.”
The six of us kick off our shoes and socks.
“Maybe we should just all get completely naked,” Brody says.
“There’s no way that’s happening,” Audrey says.
“I would, but it’s really cold,” Gavin says.
“You think it’s going to be warm getting out of the pool all wet?” Brody asks.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Smokin’ Hot Benji tells him.
“Now I don’t even want to win,” I say.
“Yes we do,” Gavin says.
“Yes we do,” I agree.
“Let’s do this!” Priya says, her voice reverberating through the megaphone.
Everyone cheers.
“Step back, guys!” Jill says.
The six of us all stand by the deep end of the water.
Danish stands behind me.
Botts stands behind Gavin.
“Tell me somebody brought towels,” I say.
“That would have been smart,” Priya says. “Unfortunately, we did not.”
Botts takes the megaphone. “And the winner . . . of this year’s color war . . . is . . .”
My heart races. I have never been pushed into a pool! I want to be pushed into the pool! I want to win! I will be very disappointed if I don’t get pushed into the pool!
But I also don’t really want to get wet.
“. . . The BLUE TEAM!”
I feel Danish’s hands on my back and the next thing I know I’m falling face-first into the water. And it’s cold! Ah! Actually, it’s warm, but it’s still shocking. But this means I won! I won color war! I am the best captain ever!
I pop up from under the surface and hear the deafening cheers from my team outside and then Gavin is hugging me and screaming, “We won! We did it!”
“We did it!” I scream, trying not to be pulled under.
The other captains jump in too.
Gavin pulls me close and I feel the water on his skin, and his breath on my neck.
We hold on to each other way longer than we should.
Janelle brings me extra clothes, so after the kids go to a super late Milk and Cookies, the other captains, Gavin, and I take turns using the pool showers.
Gavin is in the one next to me.
On the other side of this curtain, Gavin is naked. Naked, naked, naked Gavin.
Naked, soapy Gavin.
Keep it professional.
Professional, naked, soapy Gavin.
“Can we get some food?” Audrey says afterward. “I’m starving.”
“Me too,” Gavin says.
“It’s already eleven,” Benji says.
“But Jill said no curfew for any of us tonight,” I remind them.
“I have the keys to the kitchen,” Botts says. “And I know where the good stuff is.”
“Booze?” Gavin asks.
He shakes his head. “Ice cream sandwiches.”
Brody and Ilana head back to their bunks, but the rest of us follow Botts through camp and to the kitchen. He unlocks the door, and then turns on the light. “I’ll show you where the snacks are kept.”
We go into the cupboard and find all the cookies and snacks.
“Yessssss,” I say. “I found the black and whites! These are the best.” I bite into one. Ah. Heavenly. “Do you think I can take a glass of milk?”
“I can do better than that. Take a glass of chocolate milk,” Botts says.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I say.
Audrey laughs.
“You want?” I ask Gavin.
“Sure,” he says.
I pour us both glasses. “To us!” I say.
He clinks with me. “To . . . us,” he says.
Our eyes lock.
My heart starts to race again.
One kiss wouldn’t be the end of the world. I can kiss him one time, and then I’ll say, we can’t do this, I have a boyfriend and you have a girlfriend, and he’ll pull away and agree with me, and then we’ll laugh and shake it off, and it will be five minutes of fun (hot, smoldering fun) and then it will be over. What happens at camp does not have to affect real life.
It’s not like I would ever even see him again! He goes to school in Maryland!
He puts his arm around my shoulder. “We did it.”
“We did,” I say. I put my head on his shoulder.
“Tomorrow is going to be so weird,” Audrey says. “I’ve been running a team for two days and now I go back to dealing with just my bunk. So boring.”
“Do you like your bunk?” I ask.
“They’re assholes,” Audrey says. “Hilarious assholes. But assholes. Girls get meaner as they get older. I should have asked for juniors, but . . . I don’t want lice.”
“My girls don’t have lice!”
“Yet.” She laughs and yawns. “I need to sleep.”
“I need to lock up,” Botts says, and we all follow him out of the kitchen.
The three of them wave as they head toward Upper Field.
“Are you tired?” Gavin asks.
I am, but I’m also not. And I think the question actually means, do you want the night to be over?
I don’t.
“No,” I say. “Wired, actually. Oh, that rhymes. When I say tired, you say wired! Tired!”
“Wired?”
“Tired!”
“Wired!”
I laugh. I am giddy. I am nervous. I am charged with electricity.
“I’m not tired either,” he says. “Winning was really fun. Losing would have been a bummer.”
“But we won!”
“You won,” he says. “You were a great captain.”
“Thank you!” I say. It’s nice to be appreciated. “So were you. You ran the whole relay!”
“We were a great team.”
“Yeah,” I say. “We were.”
We’re standing on the Dining Hall porch, facing each other. The light is on overhead. “Where should we go next?” I ask. “Should we break into the art room? Eat all the art supplies?”
“I’m not sure how tasty the paint will be.”
“I bet the clay is delicious.”
Since the A&C is underneath the Dining Hall, we are there in two seconds. I sit down on the bench on the porch. Below us is the waterfront, and we can see the moon reflecting in the lake.