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than thirty minutes had gone by. Finally, Valerie got out a wood plane—kind of like a big nail file—to sand the splinters off the freshly cut board. Alex used the tool to rub the rough edges until they became smooth, and it was just like filing her nails into the perfect short shape she liked to keep them in. Another twenty minutes later, the girls were almost done with the entire cutting board project. The new boys in the class were barely finished drawing theirs.
    â€œWhoa! What, are you two going to start your own carpentry class?” Adam’s friend Jack said to them.
    â€œMaybe we will!” Alex laughed. She never dreamed she’d actually enjoy woodworking. Not only that, she was pretty good at it. She was petite, but also very strong. That meant she could hold the wood against the noisy, gigantic saw that chopped it into usable pieces. Her arms didn’t get tired when she was sanding with the wood plane either—back and forth, back and forth, smoothing all the edges. Tomorrow, she was going to stain it a reddish brown color to go with her mother’s dishes. It wouldn’t look plain or boring at all when she was done with it. She was shocked at how excited she was to start making her next project.
    She was also excited because Valerie had been so much fun to partner with. Alex usually spent all of her free time with Brynn, and she realized that she might’ve been missing out on getting to know other cool girls. Valerie was so helpful, and she didn’t complain once. Nor did she ask Alex to do anything for her. She didn’t bring up the Adam thing anymore either—Val seemed to have that sixth sense of when to drop things. Alex thought that she and Val just got each other. They laughed at the same jokes, they never ran out of things to say, and neither one of them wanted to flirt with all the boys who kept teasing them. Yes, Alex was feeling much, much better about woodworking. The last two weeks of her time at Camp Lakeview might even be a whole lot better than she imagined.

chapter FOUR
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    The next day, Alex spotted Adam drinking orange juice at the table right behind her at breakfast. He kept poking Jenna, trying to tell her something. Alex couldn’t help but notice, now that Valerie had said something, that he did seem to be hanging around all the time. She’d seen him at meals in the rec room, in woodworking, and out on the soccer field. But Jenna had been eating and playing soccer with Alex, so Adam was probably just spending more time with his sister because part of what Valerie had said was totally true. Alyssa had been buddy-buddy with Simon’s friend Trevor a whole bunch of times. Alex figured Adam was probably upset about it. She imagined that no one, boy or girl, would enjoy getting dumped.
    It worked out really well for Alyssa—too well as far as Alex was concerned. She couldn’t help but think it: Alyssa got together with Trevor so she could spend a lot more time with Natalie and Simon. Simon was pretty much Natalie’s boyfriend. It was really weird how things worked out, and the whole incident just confirmed for Alex how strange her friends started acting once they became interested in boys. Alex thought camp (and school, for that matter) would be a lot more fun if the boys and girls just stayed friends and stopped flirting so much. Alex knew she sure wasn’t flirting with anyone. She thought she might even talk to her parents about going to an all-girl high school one day.
    â€œSo, I have this idea,” Valerie said, hopping onto her stool at their table later that day during woodworking. Valerie was always a few minutes late for class because she was a free spirit. Alex was used to it—no one she knew was as prompt as she was. When Valerie finally arrived, Adam scurried away from the girls’ table. Thankfully, Valerie didn’t say anything about the situation—surely, she thought Adam was flirting with