“Does anyone know how to get to the arboretum?” Galen asked.
“I’ve run through it a couple of times,” I said. “I can get us there.”
The quad was empty as we left the residence hall behind. A lone soccer ball sat in the middle of the green, with the Team Five flag from the first day planted nearby, a remnant of the field day that the other teams had been enjoying.
“Keep your eyes out,” I said to my lagging teammates. “Brandon swears that there are tree houses hidden around campus.”
“You say that like they’re fairy rings or something,” Brandon said, slouching beside me. When the team was around, it was as though he was trying to hide his entire body in his bowl cut. “It’s a real thing. It’s on the Wikipedia page and everything.”
“Oh, well, if it’s on Wikipedia, it’s no bullshit.” I laughed, nudging him with my elbow. His smile crept out from under his hair.
“That could be what we’re doing in the arboretum,” Leigh said. “Building tree houses.”
“The administration wouldn’t allow that. It’s not safe,” Kate said.
“How much of the Cheeseman trials do you think the administration actually knows about?” Galen asked.
“They are named after one of their deans,” Leigh said.
“But it’s not a compliment,” Hunter said. “His name is Cheeseman. It’s a built-in joke.”
Kate’s face reddened. “That’s not why they’d name it after him. It’s just because he’s in charge.”
“Look,” Galen said, pointing up ahead. “LeRoy Hall. Like Louis Leroy, who…”
“Was the critic credited with naming the impressionist movement,” Kate answered automatically.
“It’s our day of rest,” Jams complained. “We’re supposed to be resting our brains.”
“You can rest your brain. I want to win,” Leigh said, bouncing ahead and turning to face us like a tiny kangaroo drill sergeant. Skipping backwards, she barked, “The term groupthink was coined by which research psychologist? Ever!”
“Irving Janis,” I said quickly. “From Yale.”
Leigh punched the air. “What’s the product of frequency and wavelength, Galen?”
“The speed the wave moves through space, ma’am!” Galen shouted.
Pogoing with more ease than should have been possible in flip-flops, Leigh kept lobbing questions at us until we came to the curve in the sidewalk that led under the tall trees that tangled together, blocking out the light.
“No one else is shocked that there’s a random forest on campus?” Galen asked, craning his head to look at the ceiling of branches and leaves.
“We were out here earlier today,” Jams said, nodding toward Hunter. “Fort Farm is on the other side.”
“And there are pictures of it on the website,” Kate said.
Galen hung his head. “I need to leave the dorm more.”
The path tipped downhill, revealing the fork in the road. In front of the directions sign sat a check-in table identical to the one we had left in the residence hall. The counselor from MIT sat behind it, his gym rat bulk dwarfing the metal folding chair under him. He aimed a pen at us as we approached.
“Team number?”
“Team One,” Leigh said. “All of us. We’re missing Perla Loya, though.”
MIT scratched the answer onto the check-in paper and waved us toward the right side of the fork. “Your counselors are waiting for you that way.”
“Why?” Hunter asked.
MIT’s eyebrows went up, highlighting how Cro-Magnon-like his forehead was. “Because we’re in charge of you?”
“Peter,” Brandon said, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders rounded. “Is this another trial or what?”
MIT—Peter—narrowed his eyes to periwinkle slits. “You guys are like ten steps away. Just go before you get me in trouble.”
“Got it,” Brandon said, smothering a smile at the corner of his mouth.
We shuffled toward the right fork in the road, seven rigid spines and held breaths going deeper into the belly of the arboretum. Peter faded out of sight behind us as the voices of the rest of the campers rose out of the trees. Off the path, clusters of teams and counselors stood together around a single thick-trunked tree with a bushy canopy of pointed green leaves. Nestled on one of the pale branches was a pallet, the kind used to populate Fort Farm. With four posts built into the sides and a wrinkled blue tarp stretched over the top, it was more of a tree shanty than a tree house.
“Inside of the tree house is a bell,” Bryn Mawr was saying to the congregated campers as we stepped through the tall grass. “Each competitor will scale the tree and ring the bell, one at a time. The camper who makes the best time wins this challenge.”
“It’s real,” Kate whispered into her hands as she struggled to hold her face on her skull. “The list is real.”
“See?” Brandon said to me, his face igniting into a grin as wide as a church door. “Tree house.”
*
The line of competitors curved all the way back onto the paved trail. Our team had split up in the shuffle. Hunter and Jams were close to the front with Kate. Galen and Brandon had opted to sit on the sidelines. I noticed Perla standing in the grass not far away from them, her cool girls at her side, none of them looking impressed by another physical challenge.
The counselors stood closest to the tree trunk, phones out to keep time. Lumberjack Beard’s bullhorn was back. The Perfect Nerd Girl seemed to be attempting to wrestle it away from him as he fussed with the volume over her head. I wished she tried this hard to keep him from serving us lukewarm slop for dinner.
“Ever!” I saw a brown hand waving high in the air, cutting through the crowd like a shark’s fin. Isaiah’s dreads were pulled back into a ponytail as big around as my fist, leaving his greasy forehead on full display. I had to stumble out of the way as he slid into line in front of me.
“Excuse you,” I said.
“You’re excused,” he said, barely giving me a passing glance before leaning forward to invade Leigh’s personal space. “Hey, Leigh.”
“Hi, Zay,” she said.
“Zay?” I echoed.
He turned back to me, his lips pressed together so tight they had a slope of zero. “Yes, Ev?”
Oh, wonderful. We had twin nicknames now.
“Did you find your phone yet?” I asked him.
“I’m working on it.” He shrugged. “It probably fell out of my pocket when you tossed me around Mudders Meadow. Good thing they’re only letting us up the tree one person at a time.”
“Yes,” I said. “Who would come get you if you got hurt? Dad is so busy.”
Translation: Your dad is deployed right now and if you break a bone up here the camp is going to have to call Aunt Bobbie to come get you. So don’t mess with me right now because I will snap your arm in half.
I hoped he got all of that from my tone.