(I get straight A’s in school, did I tell you?)
And when I was sitting there frozen while those kids were stealing from the back of the truck, I remembered those words exactly. And I was like, Okay, Eleanor, whatever you say, but I’ll probably get my ass kicked.
I almost did, too. Well, not really. The bullies—they were your typical rich boys, with shiny hair and straight white teeth—they did something else, something I didn’t expect. They made fun of me for working on a bakery truck. And then they started shoving me around, saying, “How about a kiss?” And “I bet you can do more than kiss.”
The main boy—the one who was calling the shots—pushed me back against the truck and kept trying to kiss me. And here’s the thing: I think about kissing boys all the time. Me and all my friends. We even practice making out with our pillows. So it’s not like this was a big mystery to me.
Except it wasn’t nice or romantic or fun or anything like I imagined.
I would rather get my ass kicked.
I like to think I fought him off but that’s not exactly what happened. What happened was, I was rescued.
Can I just say, I hate being rescued?
It’s simply another form of being helpless. One minute I was helpless while El Creepo was trying to kiss me and feel me up. And then the next minute I was helpless while another kid swooped in and took on all three creeps. In about a half a minute, he had them all howling. And, me, I stood by during the fight like the stupidest girl in the stupidest movie ever made. Just stood there biting my knuckles. A total dork.
If I’d seen me in a movie I would have screamed, “Don’t just stand there, help him, already!”
I mean, how lame is that, standing there while the kid went berserk? It’s hard to describe but it was kind of mesmerizing, the way he fought. He pounded the biggest kid like the kid was a hunk of meat. I looked down and saw that dots of blood had spattered my feet and legs.
And finally, I unfroze enough to say something, one word: Stop. Then I said two more words: That’s enough.
It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. The wild kid raised his hands and got up and stepped away from the guy who tried to kiss me.
And all three boys ran away like a pack of scalded dogs.
I was still staring at the boy who had rescued me. I say rescued but did he really? I stood back, eyeing him like something that explodes when you touch it. He was sweating and his face was red but then, almost like magic, a kind of calm came over him. The blue of his eyes changed from hot to cool. The color of his red-flushed face subsided.
I just stared with my mouth moving like a trout out of water. Because now that he was standing completely still, I could see that this kid was not just your garden-variety camper. This kid was, like, incredibly cute. Like movie-star, magazine-cover cute. He seemed totally different from the maniac who had chased off the others.
He was staring right back at me. Into my eyes and I think maybe at my mouth. We both got embarrassed at the same time and shuffled our feet. And then I finally found my brains again and gave him the first-aid kit.
I learned his name is Rourke McKnight. He probably thinks I’ll never go back to Camp Kioga again on deliveries with Grandpa. He’s totally wrong. I’ll go back there every chance I get. Because here’s the thing. I wish you were here, Mom, because this is not the kind of thing I can discuss with Gram. I had a funny feeling, talking to this kid, like butterflies in my stomach—except that it was a good feeling. Maybe I would have talked to him some more and figured out why he made me feel that way, but then this other kid showed up. I was worried at first that he was another bully, but he turned out to be Joey Santini, Rourke’s best friend.
Okay, so now I’m looking at both of them and thinking, this can’t be happening. They’re both being really really nice but especially Joey, who has the biggest, brownest, softest eyes I ever saw. If he was a girl, those would be cover girl eyes. He kept trying to tell stories to impress me, which was kind of sweet. Now Rourke didn’t seem sweet at all, but for some reason, he’s the one who gave me the butterflies.
Anyway, I can’t wait to tell Nina. She will have a cow when she hears I just met the two cutest boys at Camp Kioga. Correction: the two cutest boys on the planet.
* * *
Jenny’s best friend was Nina Romano. They had met when they were in grade school. Nina was more than a year older than Jenny but they were in the same grade. Nina claimed her mom forgot to enroll her in kindergarten for a whole year on account of there being nine kids in Nina’s family. The fact was, Nina struggled in school, and being from a family that big meant she didn’t get a lot of help with her homework. Mrs. Romano used to show up at the bakery nearly every day, fifteen minutes before closing time. She knew exactly when the day-old bread went on sale for half price.
Jenny had looked into Nina’s friendly, inquisitive eyes and had seen a kindred spirit. They became the best of friends, migrating seamlessly from Jenny’s house on Maple Street to Nina’s on Elm. Nina loved the peace and quiet of Jenny’s house. She would stop right in the middle of playing Barbies to say “I can hear a clock ticking!” with a reverent sense of wonder.
Jenny, in turn, loved the noise and chaos of the Romano household. The older the kids got, the louder
