Why did I care?
I shouldn’t. But I do. I want to know the story the last nine years has written on his face.
“Fine. But you’re still calculating,” he grumbles, and when he sounds nasal, I glance over to find Juniper honking his nose.
“I’m not sure what you guys were up to, but I can’t believe you thought you’d get away with it. Did you forget who won the Prank Wars three out of three years here?” I would have won my fourth and final year too, but I hadn’t come back for the next summer because of the man Juniper currently has wrapped inside her chubby fingers.
“I told you both this wouldn’t work.” Natalie emerges from the bedroom in dry clothes, toweling her hair. “You guys are such idiots.”
“We probably should have guessed,” Ben mumbles to Sawyer. “How’d you pull this off?” he asks me.
“Nat, why don’t you open the bottle of wine you left for me and pour a glass for everyone? I’ll tell you the story while I work on the sauce.”
She fetches it from the fridge and takes down four wineglasses.
“Yesterday, I decided to explore the new trail behind the cabins, and guess who was sitting on his deck when I reached the end?”
“But I said not to use that one,” Natalie protests weakly.
“I told you it wouldn’t work. She was always a rule breaker,” Ben says.
“I prefer ‘innovator.’ And of course I was going to check it out,” I tell her. “It would have worked better if you hadn’t said anything about it at all. You’re a therapist. Shouldn’t you know that?”
“Probably.” She sighs.
“I had to ask myself, ‘Why are these three dummies going through so much trouble to keep Sawyer hidden when the plan is obviously to trot him out at some point?’ Right?” I fold in grated parmesan while I wait, but no one contradicts me. “We’ll get to that, I’m sure. But we all know the rule for prank wars.”
“Strike first, strike hard, no mercy,” Ben says.
“By the way, I figured out where these two stole that from,” Natalie says. “It’s from the old Karate Kid movies, but I figured it out when Ben dragged me through the series reboot.”
“You loved it,” he retorts.
“I loved it,” she agrees, “but all the seasons could have wrapped in three episodes if they all had a little counseling. Maybe a lot for that Johnny guy.”
“She says that about every show,” Ben says.
“Because it’s true.” She ruffles his hair.
“Anyway,” I say, “wherever it came from, the rule stands. So once I knew you were up to something, I figured it was important to remind you of the rules. While you guys were all snoozing this morning, I snuck over and poured the bubbles in Sawyer’s hot tub. I had to gamble he wouldn’t use it before tonight, then I put the rest of the plan in motion.”
I describe almost every detail, until I get to drilling a couple of holes in their canoe, which would cause it to leak so slowly, they wouldn’t notice until they were too far from shore to do anything about it.
“The Great Sinking, Year Three,” Ben said. “That was the year we realized one of the canoes had a leak and sent you and Nat out in it.”
“Did we ever pay you back for that?” Nat delivers a light smack to his chest, then reaches over and rubs it absent-mindedly.
“Tabby Cat just did,” Ben says.
“ThenIshouldn’t have been sunk too,” she says, almost pouting.
“There’s another canoe on order for you, by the way,” I say. “It’ll be here before your campers are. And when I snuck into the office to order it on your office computer today, I logged into your email and sent a message to Sawyer asking him to warm up the hot tub for you around six.”
“I knew as soon as the bubbles started pouring over the sides it was you,” he says. “The Great Foam Disaster of Year Two.”
The liquid in the dishwasher year. “Yeah, it’s funny now I’ve paid you back for it.”
Sawyer and Ben exchange a look, and Sawyer shakes his head. “She’s scary.”
