Then out of the corner of my eye I could see the two guys from the Panthers rolling across their lane, running toward us. What? Could they do that? Noah and Santiago were laughing from the sidelines, and Noah was yelling, “New rules! New rules!”
Was this an attempt to steal—literally steal—the ball? Or in this case, the balloon? Nope, not today! Jocelyn took off so fast, I nearly got whiplash.
I hugged that balloon with both hands and hunched over it to make sure it didn’t decide to bounce away. Jocelyn managed to do a fancy twist, and we jetted off in the opposite direction.
Malik and Brock tried to do the same maneuver and ha! Malik’s chair got stuck in the thick sod! By the time they’d backed up and turned around, we could not be caught! I raised my right arm and waved goodbye, ’cause they were in our dust.
Cassie was laughing so hard she could hardly ding the bell for us to stop.
The rest of the competition was a blur. One guy from the Badgers scored four goals but had three other balloons captured by an amazingly quick Gazelle. The final whistle sounded. We all gathered at one end of the field—just a bunch of hot and sweaty kids in orange and purple and blue and green. It seemed that no one really had a clue who’d actually won! And it didn’t matter, at all. Balloons bobbed everywhere, and we started throwing them at one another—there must have been dozens left over that hadn’t been used.
“We oughta let them go free, free, free!” Athena suggested.
“Nope. Nope. Nope. Can’t do that!”
“How come?” Karyn asked.
“People have already put too much junk, junk, junk in the sky and the land and the water.” I beamed with pride at Jocelyn. I never even thought of the environmental aspect of this. Karyn, her face scrunched up with thought, finally said, “After my birthday party last year, we donated them—so these might be my balloons all over again!” She laughed.
“So let’s splat, squash, and store these for next year,” Athena suggested.
“Except for this one.” I touched the balloon on my lap. “She’s going home with me.”
And even if it wouldn’t work, a bunch of kids dumped out the rest of the balloons from the plastic bags and deflated them all, including Athena’s bag of perfect pink ones.
* * *
My balloon was sitting at the foot of my bunk now, slightly deflated, but proudly unpopped. Trinity sprayed it with hair spray when we went back to the cabin to shower. She said that might make it last longer. I was taking it home—I hoped it would last forever!
CHAPTER 34
“You ready for our flames tonight?” Trinity asked as we got ready after a quick dinner of red beans and rice that was almost as good my mom’s.
I smiled. I think I blushed. She knew the answer.
“By the way, you and Jocelyn did an awesome job on the field today.”
“Thanks! It’s a great game.”
“Hey, I’ve got some neon-orange nail polish in my bag—plus a bunch of other colors. You want me to do your nails before heading out?”
Even though I knew that orange fingernails would not make one teeny bit of difference to anybody else, I tapped, “Yes, please.” Mom hardly ever has time to do my nails—she has a ton of other stuff to do.
“You got it!” She dug down in her backpack and whipped out a plastic bag, which held at least twenty different-colored bottles of nail polish. Wow.
She asked me to choose. First I pointed to a bottle called Jungle Drama. Then I thought, Why not? And I typed out, “Let’s do one of each!”
Trinity loved that idea. In just a few minutes, the nails on my left hand were transformed from ordinary pale to carrot-colored orange, hot pink, soft peach, sunshine yellow, and fire-engine red. For my right hand I chose coral, lime, aqua, maroon, and navy blue.
“You like?” she asked when she finished the last layer of clear polish “to protect the colors from chipping.”
Yeah, I liked! “Thanks for doing this, Trinity.”
“Shake them to help them dry.”
Now that was funny! I was being asked to shake on purpose!
I looked away from my rainbow fingers, and there sat Karyn, Jocelyn, and Athena, pitiful looks on their faces.
“Can you do theirs, too?” I tapped.
“Just leave the tips on my table!” she teased. Jocelyn chose a deep blue. Karyn chose metallic gold and silver. When it was Athena’s turn, Trinity asked, “Which pink do you want?”
Athena looked at every single jar in Trinity’s bag. Then I heard her mumble, “Everybody thinks they know me,” and she picked out a deep golden apricot color. “Falcon Orange, please,” she said, as if she was at a fancy salon.
I smiled to myself—so sweet that our pink-loving Athena was choosing orange tonight. Soon we were the fanciest-fingernailed Fiery Falcons ever!
When our nails had finished drying, and we’d changed into… yep, another T-shirt, we were ready to head out into the night.
The guys were already there. I could hear them trash-talking and howling with laughter.
“Hello, Melody!” Jeremiah called out.
I lifted one arm. Hello back!
He said hi to all of us. Such a nice guy.
We found our usual spot and set up like we did every night, but somehow, it felt different.
Pine cones tossed into the fire? Check.
Flickering flames against the starlight? Check.
So what was different?
I think the difference was me. I was sitting around chilling with my friends—yep, my friends. How cool was that?
So it was perfect that one of the Gazelles’ counselors began the music tonight with show tunes from famous musicals. Mom and I sometimes have movie nights, just the two of us—and we binge our favorite productions and sing along with the music. She’s got a really good singing voice, and of course, in my head, I am Beyoncé!