“Why are you always screaming the word ‘vagina’?”
It was Kyle’s voice. I whipped around. Him, Russ and Whinnie stood in the doorway – looking equally perplexed and amused.
“Oh my God, guys. I’m…erm…I’m online speaking to my friends back home.”
Lottie’s face was immediately right up on the screen.
“LET ME MEET YOU, AMERICAN ONES,” she yelled.
I beckoned them in. “Come on, they’re umm…a bit excited. We’re having a meeting.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “A meeting?”
“A VAGINA MEETING,” Lottie cackled.
“Lottie, shut up!” I stage-whispered.
The Americans stepped nervously into the sitting room, looking around. I guessed it was weird for them, being in their bosses’ house.
“HELLO, HANDSOME,” Lottie’s voice boomed from the speakers. She’d clocked both Russ and Kyle as they stepped into view of the camera.
I covered the camera with my hand. “Ignore her…she’s… erm…drunk…”
“I’M NOT DRUNK.”
“Girls,” I hissed into the computer’s ancient microphone. “I need to go do camp stuff.”
“Noooooo,” I heard Lottie yell, but I waved bye and turned off the computer as quickly as I could.
“They your friends?” Kyle nodded towards the now-blank screen.
“Yeah, we were just…umm…what are you guys doing here, anyway?”
Russ was already picking stuff up off the table, reading Mum’s Mind and Spirit magazine upside-down and pulling a face.
Whinnie answered.
“You’re in our group. For the welcome show tonight. We all have to put on a little performance for everyone.”
I closed my eyes slowly. Performing… I hated performing.
“Really? Do I have to?”
Kyle smiled as he nodded. “We all have to.” He didn’t look bothered at all. “Now, are you going to explain why your computer was yelling rude words?”
I sighed, cursing Lottie.
“Let me get my stuff, then I’ll fill you in.”
I put on some flip-flops, and rubbed more suncream in, then followed Kyle and Russ into the forest. They said there was a clearing outside their cabins which would make a good place to practise.
“Practise what?” Whinnie asked. “We don’t know what we’re going to do yet.”
“How about a silent protest?” I suggested. They ignored me.
I still wasn’t used to the heat and just the walk there was tough. I could feel my hair expanding to three times its normal volume.
“So when you going to explain to us, Amber?” Kyle teased.
I shot him a look. “My friends and I back home, we…well… We have this like women’s rights group. And we were having a meeting using modern technology.”
I pushed past some ferns and scratched my leg.
“You’re in a women’s rights group?” Russ asked.
“Yes. It’s awesome. You should join one.”
“I think I’m okay, thanks.”
“What was your meeting about?” Whinnie walked right beside me, and she seemed genuinely interested rather than taking the piss.
“We were chatting about America actually. They wanted us to argue over who has the best women’s rights – England, or you guys.”
“Are you kidding?” Whinnie’s eyes went all big behind her glasses. “It’s totally your country. Do you, like, know what they’re doing with abortion law over here?”
I shook my head. “Not good?”
She shook her head. “Muchly not good.”
“Well, I’ll let them know. And, jeez, I’m sorry.”
She gave me a huge grin. “It’s okay. We’re protesting about it on college campus. We won’t let them win.”
I found myself high-fiving her – America was already rubbing off on me.
“You all right, Kyle?” I asked. He’d gone all quiet on the walk.
“Yeah…fine…” He trailed off. I hoped he wasn’t a secret chauvinist.
We stepped out into a clearing framed by two cabins. They were both so sweet, it looked like a scene out of a fairy tale.
“Welcome to Casa Awesome,” Russ said.
Whinnie and I shared a look, and I knew we both had the same idea at the same time. We ran into the sunshine, past a circle of stones, and flung open one of the doors.
“Stop them,” Russ yelled, but it was too late.
“Eww,” Whinnie said, as she stood next to me in the doorway.
“That. Is. Disgusting,” I agreed.
The inside was a mess. Smelly boy clothes were flung all over the empty bunks, a half-eaten packet of crisps (or potato chips) was scattered over the sheets. It stank of stale boy stench…
“Oi,” Russ said, catching up with us. “It’s not fair that you’re snooping.”
I turned to face him. “Russ? Seriously? You’ve only been here a few days! How is it so gross? And how are you going to tidy it before the children get here?”
He looked suitably ashamed of himself.
“Kyle said he’s going to help me.”
Kyle arrived at the door. “Well, that’s not true, is it? I said I’d keep you company while you tidy.”
Russ’s face darkened. “Well, some of us aren’t anally neat like you.”
“Kyle’s…tidy?” I asked.
Whinnie caught my eye and we shared another thought in unison.
“Let’s see!” she yelled, and we both ran into the other cabin – the boys flinging themselves after us.
We burst through the door of the other cabin, just as Kyle caught me by pulling on the back of my T-shirt.
I stopped in my tracks.
“Wow, your cabin is like crazy tidy,” I said. “What the hell happened to make you so neat?”
Kyle had made up all the beds to military precision. His belongings were aligned in perfect angles around his bunk. There was even a plastic cup filled with flowers on the window sill. It was almost as tidy as Evie’s room back home – though Evie’s tidiness didn’t have much to do with her OCD. She was just neat, and thought I was a slob…
He tried not to look embarrassed but his blush gave him away.
“Duuuude,” Russ said. “My mum would want to adopt you. How do you keep it so clean?”
He shrugged. “I have a lot of siblings. If we were all messy back home, we’d live in utter squalor.”
I walked further into the cabin, liking how it smelled. All clean and fresh with an underhint of mint. From Kyle’s bodywash, I guessed.
“How are you going to cope when the kids turn up and trash the place?” Whinnie asked.
“I’m trying not to think about that.”
A thick biography of Vincent van Gogh caught my attention – laid out adorably on Kyle’s pillow. My heart lurched and I picked up the book. I opened the pages, fanning them out, turning to the section of the book that showed all the colour photos and paintings.
“You like Van Gogh?”
Kyle exuded a shrug. “I’m really into reading biographies, and I’m only halfway through that one. But I’m liking it so far. Van Gogh seems like a dude…”
A dude…
One of the greatest painters and visionaries to ever grace this fair planet…a dude.
“Isn’t that the guy who cut his own ear off?” Whinnie asked.
I withheld a sigh. “He did do that yes, but…”
But he did so much more. With his oils, with his lines, with the mood he could create using only an easel, paints and his fingers…but that was art stuff, and only I seemed interested.
Russ stretched his arms up, bored. “Can you stop poking around our stuff so we can discuss what the hell we’re doing this evening?”
We left Kyle’s tidy cabin and stepped into the harsh sunlight of the clearing. I sat on a log and fanned my face. It was even hotter, if possible. The air was so dry, like someone had sucked all the moistness out with a Hoover. I remembered Mum telling me I’d miss the fog of San Francisco. She was right.
Sometimes she was right.
Sometimes…
My arms were already crossed just thinking about the upcoming evening. I hated people looking at me. A lifetime of being too tall meant I was too used to it.