“Well, maybe not all of them,” Lulu responded. “But for sure we’re gonna look like we mean business.”
As the scissors snipped, I laughed to myself, thinking of how Mom would have heart failure seeing us “ruin” perfectly good shirts! And there were still dozens of them stacked in that box. We were prepared for any T-shirt emergency—that was for sure.
Done with redesigning T-shirts, Trinity created a playlist of songs with the word orange in the title with a few clicks on her phone and cranked the volume up real loud. Most of them I’d never heard of, but they got us even more hyped up.
Trinity side-whispered, “You up for this?”
I tapped back, “How fast can you run?”
She laughed out loud. “Just you wait and see!”
Next we painted four cardboard boxes, one each of blue, green, purple, and of course orange—those would be the goals.
Turns out Athena had a hidden talent that came in pretty handy—she was crazy good at blowing up balloons with a hand pump. Apparently we needed about a bazillion balloons for Balloon Ball. She grabbed the pump from Kim, and soon she’d filled two extra-large garbage bags with orange balloons.
Kim then gave her a bag of pink balloons. “These are just for you!” Athena hugged her and happily blew up two dozen of those as well.
Jocelyn took crepe-paper streamers—orange, of course—and wove them through the spokes of the wheels on Karyn’s and my chairs. She taped shorter streamers to the handles on the back as well, so if we went fast enough, they would fly out behind us. I felt like a parade float. Karyn did whirlies in her chair, checking out the streamy-ness of the streamers. They streamed perfectly.
“Thank you!” she called out as they floated behind her. We were so busy prepping that we didn’t want to stop for lunch. But the counselors made us go eat, and good thing, because it was what my mom called “hamburger beanie-weenie.” It was almost as yummy as hers—squished-up hamburger meat, mixed with baked beans, and swirled with maple syrup. It was probably not served to any diabetics at the camp, but I had doubles. Plus, for the first time since I’d been here, they served fries! They were better than McDonald’s. I’m not kidding.
The Panthers and the Badgers began our competition early by starting a fry-eating contest. A Badger boy named Xavier won, and then he won again for the loudest burp! Once they started talking about a fart contest, the counselors said it was time to clear our tables and get going.
We hurried back to the cabin and changed into our sleeveless T-shirts, and we were ready.
Let the games begin!
CHAPTER 32
The event took place on that fenced-in grassy field behind the boys’ cabins. Some of the counselors had already divided it into four lanes, each labeled with a team’s initials, using lawn paint. Cassie passed out cans of the paint, getting us psyched up.
“Paint?” Jocelyn asked.
“You can paint grass?” Karyn added.
I took a quick minute to look it up on Elvira. I’d never heard of that either! I had the answer in seconds. “Grass paint comes in lots of colors! It does not hurt the grass or animals. It washes away with rain.”
Huh, maybe that was how they marked up football or soccer fields. I never thought about it before.
“Thanks, Melody,” Athena said. “You and Elvira are so smart!”
“Yeah,” Karyn said. “I wish I had an Elvira or a Melody around all the time.”
I gotta admit—that made me feel pretty good.
The Green Gazelles were already at the field. Since their color was green, the GG in their section had been painted neon yellow. They’d had the same streamer idea we’d had, but they stepped it up—mixing silver metallic wrapping ribbon with their streamers, so they glittered in the afternoon sun. AND, they’d painted their faces GREEN! Why didn’t we think of that? Totally cool. A minute later the Blue Badger guys showed up. They’d gone the streamer route too—blue metallic—plus banners.
Only the Purple Panthers hadn’t arrived, and yeah, I felt a twinge of worry. I’d really hoped Noah would be there. While we waited, the counselors ran up and down the field, setting up the goal boxes and the flags. Then, wait, what was that? We heard music, BLARING music—the theme from… Chariots of Fire? Whaaaaaaaaa?
I looked at my cabinmates—I think we all rolled our eyes at the same time! Devin, in his awesome purple chair, rolled into sight first, Charles wearing a huge pair of purple shades, right behind him. Devin carried their still-wet banner, decorated with what I guess was a panther. Not that I would say anything, but it pretty much looked like a kitten.
Santiago rolled in next. He and Harley wore hats they’d made out of purple pool noodles, and they carried bags of what looked like purple confetti.
When Malik rolled in with Brock, I couldn’t believe it—not only did he have purple streamers flying from the back of his chair, but his hair was purple!
Athena was thunderstruck. “How’d he do that?”
“Red and blue food coloring from the kitchen, probably,” Sage said, sounding impressed.
Totally awesome!
With a purple-striped bath towel wrapped around his neck like a superhero cape, Noah strutted forward on his walker. I wondered if he had actually packed that. Probably. Since he’d been here last year, he’d have known about the cabin colors. Unfair advantage!
Jeremiah brought up the rear, toting a massive plastic bag of purple balloons.
“The Purple Panthers are in the house!” he announced through a megaphone. So extra!
Cassie then pulled out her own megaphone and said, “Welcome, Panthers! What’s your color again?” Everybody laughed. “Now we can begin our event, even though we have no idea what we’re doing!”
Jeremiah hollered back, “We never know what we’re doing!” to which Noah said, “True that!”