“I have friends,” I said, and Mom put an arm around me, giving me a little shake.
“Real friends, Rubes,” she said. “People who can come over to the house.”
Ugh. Like I needed a reminder that after Emma Willingham and I had stopped talking, my social life had been kind of limited. It’s not that I didn’t have friends—I totally did—just that I’d never really gotten all that close to anyone besides Emma. Between her and Grammy and, yes, the people I talked to online, I’d felt pretty complete on the friendship scale. But then Emma had gotten mad at me, Grammy had died, and all I was left with were DolphinWhisperer2005 and SailorMoonXX.
Stepping out of her embrace, I looked up at her. I wasn’t going to have to do that for much longer—I was only a couple of inches shorter than Mom now, and since my dad had been tall, I had high hopes of towering over Mom by eighth grade.
“Internet friends are real friends,” I replied, “and you do online dating.”
This is a thing with me, that sometimes I say things before I’ve really thought about what will happen when I say them.
But Mom just laughed, shaking her head and pulling her purse up higher on her shoulder. “Okay, fair point,” she said. “But I’m serious. You spend so much time yelling into that headset, and I’d like you to—”
“Yell at people in real life?” I offered.
Mom wrinkled her nose. “Not exactly. I just mean . . . Look, try to get some good out of this whole mess, okay? And Emma Willingham is here, see?” She nodded across the gym to the blond girl standing with her mom. “You and Emma used to be such good friends.”
“That’s not Emma,” I said. “That’s Olivia.”
It was so obvious to me that I was surprised Mom had made the mistake. Emma wouldn’t have been standing there with her head kind of down and her shoulders rolled forward, like she was trying to disappear into herself.
That was a total Olivia move.
I’d known the Willingham twins since I was really little, and used to be friends with both of them. Well, I always liked Emma more, but when we were younger, Olivia had been okay. It was only around fifth grade that she started to bug me, always seeming irritated when I was over at her house, glaring at me and Emma over the top of whatever book she was reading.
But then Emma and I had stopped hanging out last year, all because I said a certain boy who went to our school was cute.
Problem was, Emma liked that certain boy and apparently she thought me pointing out that he was cute meant that I liked him, which was not true. I was just . . . making an observation about the world around me.
So that had been the end of me and Emma hanging out, and now her sister was here, sentenced to the same summer punishment as me, which was maybe the weirdest thing ever. What on earth could Olivia Willingham have done to get sent to Camp Chrysalis? Forgotten to say please? Worn pink on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays? Mom blinked at Olivia, clearly trying to figure out why the good twin was here. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Then . . . maybe . . . you and Olivia could be friends again?”
I think that idea was even more horrifying than the pink T-shirt.
CHAPTER 3
OLIVIA
Walking up to the rec center may have reminded me just how much of a bummer my summer was going to be, but it was seeing Ruby Kaye standing there with her mom that brought home how Not Okay any of this was. I had enough trouble talking to strangers, but having to deal with someone I didn’t like all summer, too? Someone who might turn these new people against me the same way she’d turned Emma against me?
Ruby and Emma had been friends since first grade—best friends, really—although in the past year or so, they’d had some kind of falling-out. I wasn’t sure why, because Emma just sort of stopped talking about Ruby, and to be honest, I was so relieved she wouldn’t be hanging around anymore that I didn’t question it. All three of us were friends when we were littler, playing Barbies together, watching cartoons in our den. Ruby was always really good at coming up with stories for dress-up, I remembered. But then, around fifth grade, they tried to put my hand in warm water while I was sleeping that one time at Lindsey Green’s sleepover, and I’d felt like it was starting to be Ruby and Emma plus me instead of me and Emma plus Ruby.
It was always supposed to be me and Emma plus someone else. We were literally a matched set, after all, and I didn’t want to be the Plus Person.
Besides, Ruby was loud and always wore weird T-shirts. (The one she had on now was black with some kind of symbol on it that I didn’t recognize—probably a video game thing. Ruby was super into all that stuff.) And she made Emma laugh in a way that I’d never been able to. She made everybody laugh, really, but I’d always thought it was obnoxious, the way she had a joke for everything. I’d sat through more classes than I could count where Ruby had gotten the whole class giggling and then we’d ended up with extra work as a punishment.
So I looked at her now across the gym and did my best not to scowl. She saw me looking and pushed her black hair behind her ears. There was a streak of blue in all the black now, just above one eye, and I wondered how she’d talked her mom into letting her do that.
“Oh, it’s Ruby,” Mom said faintly. Mom liked Ruby more than I did—that wasn’t hard to do—but sometimes I thought she was relieved Ruby and Em weren’t that close anymore, too. Chaos had a way of breaking out when Ruby was over.
“At least that’s someone you know!” Mom continued, and I shrugged, not wanting to talk about it.
But Mom waved at Ruby’s mom and started walking over that way.
“Beth!” she called, and Ruby’s mom smiled, her face brightening.
“Hi, Connie,” she said, reaching in for a quick hug. “Hey, Olivia.”
“Hi, Ms. Kaye,” I replied, and Ruby wiggled her fingers at my mom.
“Mrs. Willingham.”
“So this is . . . interesting,” Ruby’s mom said, and my mom took a deep breath, squeezing my shoulder.
“That’s one word for it,” she replied, and I looked up at her, wishing I could will her to stop talking with my mind.
Ruby was watching her mom with the same intensity, and I studied her for a second, remembering the last time I’d really talked to her.
Not that it was that hard. In a lot of ways, the argument I’d had with Ruby at the end of sixth grade had been the beginning of things getting weird with me and Emma.
But I didn’t want to think about that right then.
Luckily, at that moment, a guy and a girl walked over, both in the same bright pink T-shirt Mrs. Freely was wearing. The guy was blond, his hair sticking up in the front, while the girl had pretty red hair pulled up in a high ponytail, and they were both wearing name tags.
His said LEE. Hers said LEIGH. Mom laughed lightly and waved a hand at them. “Well, that might get confusing.”
But Lee and Leigh just kept smiling. “It’s easier to keep straight than you’d think!” Leigh said brightly, and Lee marked my name off his clipboard as Leigh handed me a shirt to match theirs.
As they walked off to greet another kid, Mom glanced down at me.
“You’ll be okay,” she told me, and I had that horrible soreness in my throat, my eyes stinging.
I was not going to cry. I was not.
Ruffling my hair, Mom leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to my temple. “See you at three,” she said, and I nodded, taking a deep breath.
Three. That wasn’t that far away. Just like a regular school day, and only three days a week.
I could do this.
There was a stack of gym mats on the floor, and I headed for those, sitting down with my new pink shirt clutched to my chest.
At least it was my favorite color? Even though that face on the front was creepy.
I unfolded the shirt, studying it. A smiley face was nothing new, but the smile was too wide, and smil
ey faces shouldn’t have teeth. That’s just disturbing.
Sighing, I put the shirt down.
Camp Chrysalis.
A place that everyone knew was for Bad Kids. I had never been a Bad Kid in my life. I was the one teachers always asked to watch the class when they had to step out of the room. I was the one whose clothespin was always on green when I was little. Even Emma had never really been a Bad Kid, and she’d still heard, “I wish you were more like your sister.” I wonder if that bugged her.
The whole rec center gym smelled like feet and floor polish, and the mat I was sitting on stuck to the back of my legs. Overhead, giant fans whirred on the ceiling, but they didn’t do much to cool the place down, and I thought of Emma, off at camp. Of how nice the camp looked, and of that big, shining lake we’d seen as we’d driven in. Was she swimming in that lake right now?
Ruby Kaye was still standing by the door, talking to her mom, and I could see her wrinkle her nose when she got her T-shirt. Mrs. Freely was with them, grinning just as big as the Camp Chrysalis smiley face, and she gave Ruby a pat on the shoulder, then turned, pointing at . . . me.
Please don’t sit here, please don’t sit here, I silently prayed, and from the narrowing of Ruby’s eyes, I had a feeling she could sense what I was thinking.
And apparently agreed, since she turned, hugged her mom quickly, and then went to the opposite side of the mat I was sitting on.
There was a boy on that side who I had seen at school before but whose name I couldn’t remember. He was probably older than us, and was certainly taller than the other boy already sitting on the mats. The tall boy’s blond hair flopped over his forehead, and his basketball shorts had a hole in the hem. He sat down next to Ruby, and for a second, I thought she looked a little surprised. Her eyes sort of went wide and she got really still all of a sudden before drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. I would’ve wondered what that was about, but then I reminded myself that I didn’t care what Ruby Kaye thought or did, so I turned to watch the front of the room again.
Two more kids trickled in, but I didn’t recognize either of them, and I guessed they must be from other towns, other counties, even. They were both boys, too, although just before nine, another girl came in. I watched her, kind of hoping she’d sit next to me—she was wearing a ribbon around her braid that matched her mint-green polo shirt, so clearly we could be friends—but she sat right in the middle, her shoulders hunched forward in a very clear “don’t talk to me” posture.
Mrs. Freely was still standing next to the door with her clipboard, her helpers next to her, and she checked her watch before giving a firm nod and walking over to stand in front of us.
“Good morning, campers!” she trilled, like we were at a real camp, not . . . whatever this was. I glanced around and saw that there were only seven of us: me, Ruby, that blond boy from school, the Black girl in green, the two boys who came in together, and Wesley. He had longish hair and was currently combing it over his face, hiding his eyes.
Great.
“I know you’re not used to being up this bright and early in the summertime,” Mrs. Freely went on, grinning, “but we like to get an early start here at Camp Chrysalis, don’t we, guys?!”
Her two helpers, Lee and Leigh, both responded with “Yeah!”—so in sync that it was clearly rehearsed—and from the other side of the mat, I heard Ruby snort.
Mrs. Freely heard it, too, and while her smile didn’t fade, her eyes seemed to go a bit harder as she looked at Ruby.
“It can take a while for attitudes to change,” she said, “but I promise, by the time you leave Camp Chrysalis, you’ll feel like a whole new person! You’re going to learn so much about yourselves this summer through the spirit of service. But first! I want to learn about you! Everybody on your feet!”
The blond boy next to Ruby dropped his forehead onto his folded arms, and the other girl rolled her eyes. I couldn’t see Wesley’s expression behind all his hair, but I could sense the other two boys fidgeting behind me.
I rose to my feet first, and then, slowly, everyone did the same. Ruby was the last to stand up, and as she did, Mrs. Freely gestured for us all to form a sort of semicircle. Then, still grinning, she pointed at herself. “I’m Mrs. Freely, and I’m friendly.”
Wait, we weren’t going to have to— “I’m Lee!” Lee enthused. “And I’m laid-back.” He punctuated that with a little wave of his thumb and pinky, like he was a surfer dude in some dumb movie, and I could feel my face getting hotter and hotter.
“I’m Leigh,” Leigh said, stepping forward and pushing her hair off her shoulders. “And I’m loquacious!”
We all stared at her for a second, and her smile dipped the littlest bit. “SAT prep,” she muttered. “It means ‘talkative’?”
“And it’s an excellent word, Leigh,” Mrs. Freely assured her. “Now, Olivia, your turn!”
Eyes turned to me, and I swallowed hard, my voice thin when I said, “I’m Olivia, and I’m . . . organized.”
I could hear smothered giggles from around the circle, but I kept my eyes on the tips of my shoes. This is exactly the kind of thing I’d wanted to avoid, why I didn’t want to go to camp with Em in the first place.
“I’m Ruby,” Ruby piped up from across the circle, even though the redheaded boy was next to me and technically should’ve gone next. “And I am rarin’ to get started!”
This time the giggles were louder, and when I looked up, I realized Ruby was doing the full finger-guns thing at Mrs. Freely.
Looked like Ruby hadn’t changed at all.
“I’m Susanna,” said the only other girl here, the one in green I’d noticed when she first came in. “And I’m super-bummed to be here.”
Mrs. Freely frowned. “Now, Susanna, that’s really not the attitude—”
“I’m Dalton,” the redheaded boy next to me chimed in. “And I’m dead inside.”
“I’m Garrett.” That was the tall blond boy I’d seen sit next to Ruby. “I’m going to throw up.”
By now, Mrs. Freely had both hands on her hips and was glaring around the semicircle, so the other boy I didn’t recognize, the dark-haired one, hurriedly said, “I’m Michael. I’m . . . mostly okay with being here?”
We all looked at Wesley, the last kid not to have said anything, and he just stood there, his face still covered by his hair. He might have muttered something, but it was hard to tell, and I think Mrs. Freely was ready to move on at this point.
Gesturing for us to sit, she said, “Well, now at least we all know each other’s names, and . . . some of the challenges we’ll be facing this summer. And speaking of this summer! Let’s tell y’all about what we’ll be doing, because it’s pretty special!”
Leigh stepped forward, her smile as bright as Mrs. Freely’s, if slightly less clenched. “Camp Chrysalis is all about helping to better our community,” she started. “Sometimes that means picking up trash at Kensley Park, or planting flowers downtown. But this year, we have a project that is going to blow. Y’all. Away.”
She said it so dramatically, her hands outspread, her blue eyes wide, that I felt bad that we were all staring at her, so I sat up a little straighter, putting myself in the best position to be blown away.
Leigh cleared her throat as it became clear that my fellow campers were definitely not excited. Ruby was picking at the toe of her shoe, Garrett was making that hole in the hem of his shorts bigger, and Wesley . . . well, he was still hiding behind his hair, so who knew what he was doing? Susanna was watching Leigh, at least, but her eyes seemed about a million miles away.
Leigh soldiered on. “How many of you have ever heard of Live Oak House?”
I raised my hand and saw Ruby’s hand go up, too, along with Wesley’s and Garrett’s. Dalton raised his hand, too, if sort of flopping it up for a second could be called raising his hand. I was actually surprised
anyone outside of Chester’s Gap had heard of the place. It was a big house on the edge of town, abandoned for ages, and there were all sorts of weird rumors about it. The guy who had lived there had kept to himself, never getting married or having kids, and hardly ever coming into town. I hadn’t really paid attention to the house because I’d never had any reason to go past it, and scary stuff wasn’t really my thing anyway.
“Well,” Leigh went on, “then you may know that Live Oak House is one of the oldest houses in Chester’s Gap, and certainly the biggest. It’s been in the Wrexhall family since it was built in 1903, but sadly, the last Wrexhall, Mr. Matthew, died earlier this year.”
I remembered that. It had been a big deal because Mr. Matthew (that’s what everyone called him) had been over a hundred, but still living in that big old house on the edge of town, all by himself.
“Mr. Matthew never married,” Leigh went on, “and his father, the man who built Live Oak House, Felix Wrexhall, hadn’t had any other close family—” She paused, looking back over her shoulder at Mrs. Freely. “You were a cousin, right?”
Mrs. Freely waved that off. “So distant I couldn’t even track it, but apparently so.”
Leigh turned back to us. “Anyway, in his will, Mr. Matthew left the house to the town of Chester’s Gap. And the town council has decided to restore Live Oak House to its former glory so that it can be a museum or maybe an event space. Once y’all see it, I think you’ll understand what a special place it is, and why people would want to hold weddings there, or fancy parties. It is really something. And!” She paused for effect, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. “That’s going to start with you!”
That expectant look again, with the spread hands and the big eyes, and honestly, I was starting to feel a little sorry for her.
She glanced over at Lee, and he stepped forward, clapping his hands so loudly, we all kind of jumped.
“This is a unique opportunity for you to contribute to this town,” he said, fixing us with that same bright smile Leigh and Mrs. Freely employed. I wondered if that was part of their training, learning to do that smile. “Now of course, they’ll be bringing in professionals to do the big stuff, but the journey to a restored Live Oak House starts with us! Every day, we’ll be going up to the house and cleaning some of the stuff inside. You’ll even be responsible for cataloging some of the really unique pieces the Wrexhall family accumulated over the years. And once the house is all fixed up, every time you go to a wedding or a party out there, you’ll be able to say, ‘I helped make this happen!’”