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it came to Ashley. I let her have her digs, but I never came back at her. I was terrible at arguments and my skills hadn’t improved much at camp.
    “She’s right, Sam,” Meg said. “You should finish up in the kitchen and we’ll save you some breakfast.”
    “Not,” I heard Gabby say.
    Finish up in the kitchen? Oh God. Work! I left Cole in there with the batter and I still had all that OJ to bring to the tables. “I’ve got to go,” I told the girls.
    “Wednesday,” Court mouthed to me as I backed away toward the kitchen and plowed right into Hunter.
    “Cute PJs, champ,” he said with a wink.
    I walked quickly past him with my head down and rushed into the kitchen to collect more OJ, but it was all gone. Gulp.
    “Hey,” Cole said, coming up behind me. “I finished the batter — and told Beaver you did it. And I hope you don’t mind, but you still had a lot of OJ to deliver, so I took all of it out for you. You just have one pitcher for your peeps left.”
    I was so grateful, I threw my arms around Cole’s neck. “Thank you!” I gushed. Then I realized what I was doing. My arms were around Cole’s neck. His neck that smelled deliciously like soap. I could have breathed in that aroma all day. I felt Cole’s hands tighten around my waist and I tensed up. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about hugging Cole, but that was B.C. Before I liked Cole. Now… what was I doing? Cole wasn’t just my friend anymore, he was the guy I liked, and I was
thisclose
to him. I backed away and I could see Cole was blushing.
    “Good thing Hunter didn’t see that,” Cole said, not looking me in the eye.
    “I don’t like Hunter,” I said quickly and firmly and Cole looked up at me curiously. “I told you already. You were right about him.”
    “Nice to hear you’re thinking clearly,” he said and sort of smiled. My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest and my mouth felt unusually dry. “So I was going to ask you, does this mean…”
    “Lovebirds,” Beaver interrupted, yelling from the edge of the stove, where he was flipping more pancakes. I jumped, hitting my knee on the wood table next to me. Ouch.
    “Yeah, I mean you two,” Beaver said. “You’re off-duty. You can join your bunks.”
    Nooooooo! What was Cole about to say to me? But it was too late. Cole and I looked at each other awkwardly. Then we looked around. The other CITs and counselors were already at their tables. We kind of mumbled good-bye to each other and then turned toward the door, knocking into each other. I remembered I still had to bring Alexis’s bunk their OJ so I grabbed the pitcher on the way out.
    “Sam, there you are,” Alexis said when I got to the table. Our peeps could be kind of wild, but Alexis always looked calm. “I was beginning to think you forgot about us.”
    “Sorry, Alexis,” I apologized.
    “It’s okay,” Alexis told me and nudged me in the side. “I always moved slower during kitchen duty too. I hated it.”
    My eyes widened. Alexis hated something about camp? I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to hear about this one. “Really?” But before I could ask Alexis our whole table started to shake. The jelly jar started bouncing toward me, the pancakes were popping off the plates and the syrup was sloshing over the table.
    “EARTHQUAKE!” A few of the peeps screamed at the top of their lungs. They were holding the edges of the table and shaking it for all it was worth. I tried to steady my side, but I was no match for eight little girls.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, alarmed, when they finally stopped shaking the table and burst out laughing. Alexis was laughing too. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”
    “It’s called earthquake,” Mackenzie said proudly. “We saw the pez do it.”
    “Classic camp mess hall game,” Alexis told me in confidence. “I was a master at it. I could shake the whole table by myself and never knock over a single glass.”
    “Good morning, Whispering