Gifted by Beth Evangelista Page B

was blazing away when we got there. I looked past it at the flickering profile of my former friend, Anita, sitting a little way off in the sand, hugging her bent legs and staring out at the dark ocean. I wondered what she was thinking about, then answered my own question. She was thinking about me.
    That choked me up a little.
    â€œ
Anita New-Face,”
Drew Lewis exclaimed in a carrying voice, looking where I was looking. “She’s not your girlfriend still, is she?” I thought I saw Anita stiffen, but it was too hard to tell in the gloom.
    I turned around and got right in his face.
    â€œShe was
never
my girlfriend!” I said quietly. “And we’re not friends anymore.” I cast a surreptitious glance over my shoulder, but it was okay. Anita had left.
    â€œJust checking,” Drew laughed, and for some reason apparent only to him, he reached down, picked up a handful of sand, and threw it hard into the fire. I guess he liked seeing all the sparks fly out. Or maybe he just liked making the kids in front yelp and jump back. At any rate, he was quite the comedian.
    I passed the rest of the evening this way, watching the hilarious high jinks of my new friends, which consisted of pushing, shoving, laughing, spitting, and the occasional wedgie-ing, but somehow I couldn’t fully enjoy them. I was preoccupied. Thinking of
her
you see, and it was driving me crazy. I kept searching for that distinctive head of hair among the huddled masses, but it was useless. I saw not a single sign of Allison Picone. A major disappointment. I brooded about it for a long time, until I thought of a bigger problem to replace it.
    The shower situation. I was still way too self-conscious to consider baring myself in public, but I knew that parading around the boys’ shower in my swimming trunks would look even worse. Luckily, all was solved when I found myself first at the showers, and as the result of some rapid thinking, I saw that all I really needed to do was get my hair wet
fast
and then get the heck out of there, which was what I did, and nobody was the wiser.
    Afterward, as we readied for bed, Mr. Zimmerman made good on his threat to read us the Rules of the Cabin, and amazingly enough, not one of us heckled him. I think we’d decided to let the man hang on to whatever little dignity he possessed before the shaving cream would forever foam it away.
    And as I climbed up to my bunk to await zero hour, I felt the tension in the air. I have to confess I was more than a little nervous. I sent skyward my last heartfelt prayer of the day, as any soldier might before the ensuing battle. I prayed that the smearing would go off without a hitch of any kind and that none of us would suffer the consequences of his actions.
    Particularly not
me
.

Chapter 12
    It was unnaturally quiet for a room filled with eighth grade boys, and I was surprised Mr. Z didn’t smell a rat, considering that he was bunking with about six of them. It took a while, but eventually high-pitched snores hit the airwaves above his bed, and a minute later I heard the rustle of someone getting out of his bunk followed by the faint sound of a can being shaken. Then a hand tugged my sleeve and Jason Barton’s face appeared.
    â€œGeorge,” he whispered. “Go ahead.”
    I went ahead. I climbed down from my bunk with my heart thumping loudly in my chest and a loaded condiment in my hand. A single turn of the no-drip spout and,
click
, the safety was off.
    And I have to tell you that once I got started, I just couldn’t stop! It was
tremendous
. I was defacing school property, so to speak, and for the first time in my life I could appreciate how the other half lived. I heard a whispered “Go, George, go!” and, thus encouraged, begansquirting my Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard in random designs and concentric circles all over my target, concentrating mainly on the pillow area since my bottle was only half full. And when