Camp Confidential 09 - Best (Boy)friend Ever by Melissa J. Morgan Read Free Book Online Page B

here,” Priya said. She hoped that by the time Simon wanted his seat back, the seat next to Jordan would be filled. Then she could sit—anywhere that wasn’t near Jordan. “Sorry,” she mouthed to Natalie as Jordan walked away.
    “So, did you give him any kind of indicator of how you felt?” Natalie asked when Jordan was out of earshot.
    “I don’t know.” Priya frowned. “I tried not to give him any indicators of anything.”
    “Head count complete,” Becky called.
    “Let’s roll,” Evan, the counselor for Bunk 4D, told the bus driver.
    The front door of the bus wheezed shut. It sounded like the bus was giving a huge sigh, the kind of sigh Priya felt like she had trapped inside her. “So what am I supposed to do now?” she urged Natalie.
    “You’ve got to tell him the deal. Flat out. No hinting,” Natalie answered firmly. “Jordan’s your friend. You owe him that. Don’t let him suffer.”
    Priya stood up. She realized she hadn’t needed a self-help book. Or Dr. Phil. Or Natalie. She’d known what the right thing to do was all along. She just didn’t want to do it. It was too hard.
    But she would. Like Nat said, she owed Jordan the truth.
    “So you’ll do it, right?” Natalie looked Priya in the eye.
    “Yes. Definitely. Just not on the bus. It’s a conversation where you gotta have some privacy,” Priya explained.
    And a conversation where you needed some time to figure out exactly what to say. And even more time to find the guts to say it.
    She shot a super-fast glance at the back of the bus. No open seats next to Jordan. Yes!
    Priya spotted an empty place next to a cooler full of drinks. Perfect. She didn’t want to talk right now. To anyone.

    “Don’t you think it’s weird that they call it a mall?” Priya asked Jordan as they pedaled their mountain bikes down the trail that ran beside the Potomac River. “I don’t see one Cinnabon place or a multiplex or anything.”
    She knew she shouldn’t be rambling about proper word usage or whatever. But she didn’t think she should tell Jordan that she didn’t like him like him while he was on a moving bike. He might crash. He was wearing a helmet. Everyone on the Sites on Bikes tour had to wear a helmet. But still . . .
    “Yeah. Mall. That’s weird,” Jordan answered, without looking at her. Not like you usually looked at the person you were talking to when you were riding bikes. But he hadn’t looked at her when they were picking out the bikes and putting on the safety gear, either. He’d mostly talked to the ground.
    Priya and Jordan pedaled in silence for a few moments. She wished they’d stop somewhere, so she could just tell him and get it over with. This was worse than waiting to get a cavity filled.
    “Three points if you sit on Lincoln’s lap when we get to the memorial,” Jordan burst out.
    Hey! That was so the old Jordan. Even though the boy on the mountain bike next to her looked like the new Jordan. Well, except for the shoes. He was wearing his old sneakers for the bike ride, although they looked a lot cleaner than usual. Priya thought he might have actually used shoe polish on the white parts. Shoe polish. On sneakers. That was so wrong.
    Priya shook her head. “Can’t. Becky would probably lock me in the bus until it was time to go back to camp if I tried scaling Lincoln.”
    “First stop, coming up,” their tour guide, Amber, called out. “Park your bikes in front of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.” Sophie and Kenny, the counselors chaperoning the trip, repeated the info until they were sure all the campers who’d signed up for the tour heard it.
    “We won’t be able to get off our bikes at every monument and memorial in the Mall,” Amber said when she had the group gathered around her, “but you need to pay a visit to Mr. Lincoln. Let me tell you a little bit about the memorial before you go up.”
    Amber swept her arm out, grinning proudly, like she had sculpted the marble statue of the president