“Yefinally,” I said, ducking my head a little. All the blood in my entire body stampeded to my face. “I mean definitely! Totally. Yes.”
Matt and Mark Hernandez were sixteen. They were tall. They played soccer and baseball and rode bikes and were very, very popular. And it was weird to say, seeing as I’d known them since forever, but they were getting to be seriously cute.
Especially, um, Matt.
“I guess it is you, then,” Matt said, holding Abby at arm’s length. “If Maggie says so then we’ll let you pass.”
“Do we get to hear all about your adventures at camp?” Mark asked, propping an elbow on his brother’s shoulder. Gah, they were adorable.
“Obviously,” said Abby, “at dinner. But right now Maggie and I have work to do.”
“Work?” said Matt, stepping back.
“During summer vacation?” said Mark, putting a hand over his heart.
“Work,” said Abby, her hands on her hips.
The twins screamed and dove back into their bedroom. Abby snorted, and we continued down the hall.
“Missed you!” called the twins.
“You too!” Abby called back.
In the Hernandezes’ musty, jam-packed garage we stripped the cushions off the old orange-plaid sofa, then hauled them back to Abby’s little bedroom.
“Ohhhh, there you are,” she said, dropping her armful of cushions in the doorway and throwing herself dramatically onto the bed. “Seriously, Mags,” she rumbled into the comforter, “if there was one thing I missed at camp, it was my perfect, wonderful mattress.” I coughed loudly. She looked up. “Oh, right. And you, I guess.”
I threw a cushion at her.
With no bulky sofa to build around, we had to improvise a rougher pillow fort than mine, but after three or four collapses we managed to construct a lopsided dome in the corner between the foot of Abby’s bed and her desk. It was super cozy, with just enough room for both of us to sit or one of us to stretch out, and once it was filled with pillows, blankets, sleeping bags, and Abby’s old stuffed animals, it became a big squashy nest of comfortable.
For finishing touches Abby brought in a spare desk lamp with a bright-pink shade, I hung the denim-and-gold-tassel scarf across the ceiling to match the patchwork one in mine, Abby pinned a sign saying Fort Comfy over the entrance, and her pillow fort was done.
And I had to admit, it was pretty great. I hadn’t planned on Abby having her own fort—that was supposed to be my thing—but this place could really come in handy once our games got going: spare food supply depot, cocoon for hatching Venomous Wolfbird eggs, emergency backup base in case our primary base got discovered by enemies or invaded by warrior jellyfish. There were so many options once Abby got tired of playing, ugh, summer camp.
“Okay,” Abby said as we snuggled in. “This is so perfect. You’ve got your cabin, I’ve got my cabin, now we need a name for the camp itself. By our cabins combined, we are Camp . . . Camp . . . hmm . . . Camp Bestie?”
“Really?” I said, although I couldn’t help smiling. “Even I think that’s silly. What if we combine our names: Camp Magabby? Camp Abbgie?”
“Ew, no. And I think the name should say more about what the camp is.”
“Fine. Camp . . . Spymaster, then?”
“This isn’t that kind of camp, Mags. We’re talking summer camp here. Maybe Camp Sofa Cabin?”
“What about Camp Pillow Pile? Or, oooh—!”
Abby sat up and our eyes locked.
“Camp Pillow Fort,” we said together. And I had to admit I liked it.
“Obviously,” said Abby. “Okay—” She glanced past my shoulder. “Hey! Samson, no!”
I turned to see my favorite cat in the world pushing through the brand-new entrance flap, a dead mouse clamped between his teeth.
“Aw, buddy,” said Abby. “Get that out of here!”
Samson blinked adoringly at her, then gently laid the mouse right on Creepy Frog, a gangly, googly-eyed stuffed monstrosity Abby had loved since forever.
I leaned in for a better look. “I think it’s a welcome-home present. Isn’t a mouse sort of like a dozen roses coming from a cat?”
“Yay, me,” said Abby. She squeezed Samson and kissed the top of his head. “Thanks, I guess, buddy. I’m happy to see you, too, but there were plenty of mice in my last cabin and I don’t want any in this one.” She picked the mouse up by its tail and crawled out of the fort.
“Hi again,” I said, grabbing Samson around the middle and burying my face in his fur. He nudged me briefly with his cheek, then slipped free and started exploring the new space, kneading happily through the piles of soft things. Well, half kneading, half getting stuck with his snagglepaw.
“All right,” said Abby, poking her head back into the fort. “Mouse returned to the great outdoors. But now it’s go time! I want to get this unpacking done before dinner.”
So, for what was left of the afternoon, Abby unpacked, and Abby talked, and I listened, stretched out in the entrance to the fort with my chin in my hands, Samson purring beside me.
Abby told me every single detail about life at Camp Cantaloupe. She told me about her splintery, wasp-infested cabin, the terrible food—“Cucumber casserole is not a thing!”—the embarrassing sing-alongs, the goofy counselors, and the unbelievable summer stars. She told me about the kids who’d been going to camp for years already, and about the kids like her who were there for the first time. She told me about all her new friends.
And it was awful. Sure, I’d wanted to go to Camp Cantaloupe once too, but I hadn’t; and there was only so long I could hear about things I’d never done, places I’d never seen, and kids I’d never met before I started to feel even more left behind than I had that morning.
So it came as a serious relief when we heard a loud knock and Alex’s head appeared around the door.
“Hi, you two,” he said, “dinner will be ready in— Ooo,
