Twelve by Lauren Myracle Page B

main lodge.”
    â€œWhat about the fire?” Jaden asked.
    â€œI need one person to stay behind and help me put it out,” Amy said. She scanned the group. I thought she was going to pick me, as punishment or reward or some sort of peace treaty, but she didn’t. She picked Jessica, a tall girl with red hair pulled back in a ponytail. The rest of us were free to go.
    That night, in my new-to-me bunk bed that squeaked when I moved, I felt strange in my own skin. I was so far away from Mom and Dad—that was one weird thing. I was basically sleeping outside—that was another. Yes, we were in a cabin, but the walls were thin and there weren’t real windows, just screens. And no electricity, of course. Or running water. To wash up before bed, we’d used the one girls’ bathroom at the top of the hill. If I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night—which I wouldn’t, because no way was I going up there alone—I’d be in deep doo-doo.
    Deep doo-doo . Ha. Too bad everybody was asleep, or I’d have had another good one for them.
    And that was the weirdest thing: this new barrel of laughs I’d somehow become. At home I was funny, sure, but in spurts like everyone else. Or more often, funny to myself but not funny to, say, Sandra. Here, I started out being funny because of nervousness and hyperness, and it had stuck. It had been only one day, but I could feel, because of how camp was, that this wasn’t a role I’d be able to shrug off. Even if I wanted to.
    I wished I hadn’t farted, though. That hadn’t been on purpose. Who could fart on purpose, anyway?
    Never mind. Half the boys from my class, that’s who.
    But not me. I wished I could go back and make it so that moment never happened. Not said the bit about bursting into flames, so that Amy wouldn’t have put the spotlight on me. Or maybe, if I’d felt the fart coming, I could have fallen backward off the log at the same time, which would have covered the sound and still given people something to laugh at.
    Well, what was done was done. If I really was the person I was pretending to be—and who’s to say I wasn’t? Who’s to say that this me wasn’t the real me, and the back-home me the fake? But if I was that person, the jokey confident one, then I’d laugh over the fart and move on. So that’s what I tried to do, as cicadas chirped and darkness wrapped around me and rustlings came from the woods that could have been bears, but probably weren’t.
    A week into camp, a horse stepped on my foot and wouldn’t get off. The horse’s name was Pudding Treat, and perhaps this was the reason. Because who names a horse “Pudding Treat”? Good ol’ Lightning , now that had a noble ring. But good ol’ Pudding Treat ? He was fat and lazy and flies were always buzzing around him. He was as far from my fantasy horse as a horse could be without, in actuality, being a cow.
    And he was standing on my foot. And it hurt.
    â€œUm, excuse me?” I said, trying to get the instructor’s attention. At the same time, I pushed hard against Pudding Treat’s massive side. He didn’t budge.
    The instructor, whose name was Leigh-Ann, kept talking about whatever she was talking about.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said louder. Leigh-Ann was out in the middle of the riding ring, and all of us who were taking horseback riding were circled around her with our horses beside us. Or on us, in my case. “Excuse me, but I’ve got a problem!”
    Leigh-Ann broke off. She shielded her eyes from the sun. “Yes, Winnie?”
    I fought back tears. “He’s on my foot! He’s standing on my foot!”
    â€œOh my God!” Leigh-Ann cried. She dropped everything and ran over. “Move,” she said to Pudding Treat, shoving on his foreleg in a way that made his knee buckle. My foot slipped free.
    â€œLet’s get that shoe