“What’s in there?” Athena asked, peering forward.
“Friendship bracelets!” I paused. “Something for my friends!” I grinned huge.
“Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!” Jocelyn said, squatting down in front of me.
Karyn murmured a happy, “Wow!”
“Open the baggie!” I insisted.
Jocelyn pulled the drawstring, then emptied the bag onto my tray. The four braided bracelets tumbled out. How did Mrs. V know?
One was red. One was intense pink. One was orange. And one was yellow and gold.
“Pick the one you like,” I told them.
Athena, of course, chose the pink one. Jocelyn said she liked the red. Karyn chose the one that was woven with both yellow and gold. I was glad the orange one would be mine—orange for Fiery Falcons. Orange for my friends. Athena helped me put it on.
“When Trinity comes back, I’m asking her to take a picture of us all with these on!” Karyn said, holding her hand out to admire her bracelet.
Jocelyn, twirling hers around and around on her wrist, said, “That’s a perfect idea.”
I couldn’t agree more.
* * *
The rain had finally stopped. I could hear nighttime creatures peeping and whispering outside. The counselors eased back in, armed with jugs of warm milk and cocoa for us all. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” we said, again and again, as we were tucked into bed, beds that had felt so strange when we first got there. We thanked them for the cocoa, but also for everything else they’d done for us that evening.
“We take it you Falcons had a good time?” Lulu asked. We broke into giggles and held up our arms. That pretty much said it all.
CHAPTER 43
This morning I woke up excited, but with a pebble of sadness in my stomach. It was our last day. How had zip lines and boats and skunks and swimming and runaway horses and six thousand different ways to serve pasta slip by in a blink? Mom will be amazed when I tell her.
Today we had our last swimming class. Mrs. V would be so proud to see me kick and roll and move myself with my arms. Okay, fine, Trinity was always holding me, but I finally let myself float on the surface of the water, knowing that she would not let me sink. I’d never do the butterfly like an Olympic swimmer, but I was officially no longer a “sinker”!
As I did my last set of kicks and rolls, Karyn, Athena, and Jocelyn sat on the sidelines, full of jokes and useless advice.
Karyn: “You couldn’t drown if you wanted to. There’s a foam shortage in the state because you’re wearing it all!”
Jocelyn: “Lookin’ good, good, good, girlfriend! Orange foam is your color!”
And Athena, who had just received her Level One Swimming Certificate and didn’t hesitate to tell every person she passed by about it, assured me that if I needed her, she could jump in and save me.
I was thinking that maybe when I got home, I’d ask Mom about swimming—and horseback riding lessons too! Lessons for both me and Penny. Classes for kids like me had to be around somewhere—it just never occurred to us to ask! And I got excited about thinking about horseback for Penny, giggling just at the thought of her riding a small brown pony. I’m gonnna ask Mrs. V and Mom to help me with those searches. I’m determined!
After we dried off and ate a quick lunch (funny—lunches kept getting shorter and shorter because we kept wanting to get to our next activity, instead of sitting around munching), we had our last art class as well.
Classical music played over a speaker as we donned our designer garbage bags. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony came on and we all improv chanted to it: “Who’s at the door? DUM-dum-dum-DUM!” I imagined a scraggly robber covered in maroon rags, yet wearing velvet gloves as he pounded on the door of a medieval castle. So that was what I painted—dark gray swirls with red splotches to match the rhythm of the music.
Next was “Morning Mood” by a composer named Grieg, Kim informed us. It was filled with flutes and violins and yep, when I heard it, I could see yellow daisies blooming in Mom’s garden, and the sun coming up over the trees like it had every morning here at camp. Trinity rinsed the grays and reds off my hands and I plunged them deep into the yellow, and then the orange. I could actually hear birds singing as the music played. My painting became swirls of sunshine.
Ooh! I already knew the next song she played—Moonlight Sonata, also by that Beethoven guy. It sounded sad and mysterious, and suddenly, maybe because I’d just been thinking about it yesterday, the music brought back that time I got ditched at the airport by the Whiz Kids team, kids who I thought were my friends. And maybe because of what the girls had told me yesterday, too… I chose dark purple and royal blue for that song. Trinity looked at it pensively.
“Hmm, I can really see what you’re feeling. Sorrow?”
I nodded.
“Anger?”
Yep!
And as I swirled those purples and blues together, I thought about what those kids had done to me, taking off without me, not letting me know the flight had been changed, despite how much I’d practiced for that competition, and how much I helped the team.
The colors under my hands began to blend into one giant bruise. I shoved at the paint harder and harder. Who cared if I ripped the paper? And as the paints blurred, becoming indistinguishable from one another, I hesitated. The colors had become a whole new color. A night sky color, like the color of the sky here—at the campfire!
And an odd calm kind of feeling came over me. Those Whiz Kids, they weren’t part of our Green Glades night sky. They weren’t part of here!
I made a grunt to get Trinity’s attention, pointed to the bottle full of orange. She went to squirt it onto the dish, but I shook my head no and reached out. She pressed the bottle into my hand, and shakily, shakily, I squeezed. Just me. All by myself. One drop. One more drop, and then another and another fell on the paper. Then one last one.