“Harper,” the girl whispered, without looking up.
I glanced at Taylor. Okay—so she’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. “Come on in, Harper,” I said, moving closer and taking her backpack from her. “Whoa—what’s in here? It weighs a ton!” I added, smiling.
She glanced up shyly. “It’s full of books,” she said. “My parents said I shouldn’t bring them all, but I didn’t want to leave them behind.”
“I like books too,” I said, leading her into the cabin. “I think you’re our final camper to arrive. Which means you’ll be bunking here, with . . .” I put Harper’s heavy bag down on a bottom bunk and looked at the girls, who stood around, watching us with openly curious looks. “Kiki?”
Kiki tossed her hair and walked forward confidently, holding out her hand as if to shake. “Hi there, I’m Kiki Pendleton,” she said. “Who are you? Where are you from? Do you wear the glasses all the time? They’re kind of cool. Are you from the city?”
Harper glanced from Kiki to me, then seemed to shrink into herself a little. She looked down at the floor and said softly, “Harper. Um, excuse me.”
She walked around me to reach her bag and carefully unzipped it, pulling out a thick blue book with pictures of dragons on the cover. Then she pulled out another book, this one green, but clearly from the same series, with the same dragons zooming around the jacket.
A frown played across Kiki’s face, and she looked from me to the other girls, who still stood in a cluster around her. “Um . . . cool. You must like books, huh? So where are you from?”
Harper lifted two more books out of her bag and then piled them all into a stack. She carefully lifted them and carried them around the bed to the dresser at the end.
“Um, I put my stuff in the three bottom drawers there,” Kiki said. “There’s only four dressers for eight people, so we’ll have to share. There’s some closets near the bathroom, though. Is that okay?”
Harper didn’t even look up. She hefted the books on top of the dresser. Then she shrugged—the only sign she’d heard Kiki—and began carefully arranging the books, lining them up along the dresser’s top edge. When she had them carefully placed, she tapped her lip and then switched the two on the outer edges. Then she nodded to herself, went back to her bunk, and began pulling out her clothes.
Kiki looked a little taken aback. I could tell she was trying to be friendly, but she seemed to have reached the end of her patience. “Oookay,” she said quietly. “I guess we’ll get to know each other later. Um, anyway”—she turned back to the others—“have you guys ever seen that show Camp Confessional??? It’s, like, my favorite!”
“Oh yeah!” one of the other campers, Winnie, cried. Winnie was Asian, with gorgeous glossy black braids, and had arrived with a curly-haired brunette named Katie. The two seemed to be BFFs. “Katie and I, like, totally binge-watched that on Netflix last weekend! We wanted to prepare. This is our first time at summer camp.”
As the girls chatted, Harper finished arranging her clothes in the dresser and carefully closed the top drawer. She folded her backpack with military precision and tucked it between the dresser and the wall.
I walked over to her. “Did you have a long drive to get here?” I asked. I knew it was a lame question, but I was desperate to get this girl talking.
Harper shrugged again.
“An hour? Less?” I prodded.
“About an hour.” She twisted her lips to the side, then looked away from me, back at the line of books. “Is it okay if I read until lunch?”
I struggled not to look too disappointed. I knew we’d just met, but I so wanted this girl to open up! The other girls were already chattering away like they’d known one another their whole lives.
“This is, um, sort of a ‘get to know you’ hour,” I said, gently putting a hand on Harper’s back and guiding her over to the rest of the girls. “Girls, why don’t we all have a seat on the beds and get to know one another? We have an hour before our hike and picnic lunch.”
“Oh, cool!” cried Katie, twisting some curls behind her ear. “Can we play Truth or Dare?”
I cringed. “No,” I said, “but we can definitely ask each other some get-to-know-you questions!”
Maya ran over, clutching a book and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “Nancy, here’s that book I told you about,” she said, holding up a small paperback titled 100 Great Questions. “Maybe we can use some of the questions in here, and go around the bunk?”