Here is the problem with being a Vance. We do not throw games.
I had planned to. I lay awake in Heron Cabin 2 most of Friday night, listening to the raccoon test the screen door, and made a plan. I would be bad at Field Day. Quietly, convincingly bad.
Team Heron would lose. Elliot would lose nothing. Grant would do dishes and cry about geese.
Then Ruth blew the whistle at nine on Saturday morning, and something ancient switched on in my spine.
The first event was the egg-and-spoon relay. I won my leg by eleven feet.
"I thought you were going to tank," I told myself, out loud, at the finish line.
"What?" said Marisol.
"Nothing. Good hustle."
The scoreboard was a chalkboard propped against the flagpole. Dez stood beside it in a camp-issued sun visor, updating odds after every event. He had brought a second notebook. The first one was full.
After the egg-and-spoon, he wrote: HERON 1, LOON 0. Heron to win: 3–2.
Ruth sat in a folding chair nearby with the crossword on her knee. She did not appear to be watching. She was watching everything.
"Five-letter word," she said to nobody, "for a person who knows something and won't say it."
"Is that a real clue?" I asked.
"Everything is a real clue." She filled in a square. "Quiet. Q-U-I-E-T."
"That's an adjective."
"It's a lifestyle," Ruth said.
The second event was a three-legged race, which Team Loon won because Elliot was tied to Dmitri. Dmitri was a disaster in a canoe, but on land he had the stride of a man who walked to work in all weather. Elliot matched him perfectly. They crossed the line without speaking, like two halves of a folding chair.
HERON 1, LOON 1. Even money.
The third event was camp trivia. Ruth read the questions. Team Heron won it on the final one: "What year was Camp Tamarack founded?"
I knew the answer because I had read the sign by the dining hall. Reading signs is a vice principal's whole job. Half of discipline is knowing which rules are actually posted.
HERON 2, LOON 1. Heron to win: 2–1.
I glanced at Elliot. He was standing apart from his team, eating something. A single almond. He chewed it slowly, looking at the lake.
The fourth event was the blindfolded tent pitch. One person wore the blindfold, and the others gave directions. Grant insisted on wearing ours, because he believed in "leading from the trenches."
He then pitched our tent upside down and inside out, with himself zipped inside it.
"I'm good!" came his voice from somewhere in the nylon. "I'm good! Is it up?"
"It's up," Marisol said. "Technically."
Team Loon pitched a perfect tent in four minutes. Elliot gave every direction in the calm voice he used for billion-dollar term sheets.
"Left pole. Six inches. Stop. Stake."
Dmitri, blindfolded, followed every word like scripture.
HERON 2, LOON 2. Final event: tug-of-war. Pick 'em.
There was a thirty-minute break before the final event. I went to the water fountain behind the boathouse, mostly to stop myself from stretching my hamstrings with intent.
Grant was already there. I was not surprised. Grant had the subtlety of a marching band.
"Hey, teammate," he said.
"Hey, Grant."
"So I talked to Marisol." He leaned against the boathouse wall and crossed his arms. "About the canoe. About where exactly she grabbed him."
I drank from the fountain. The water was very cold and tasted faintly of pennies.
"She thinks," Grant continued, "and this is just her theory, that he might be a little—" He wiggled his fingers in the air. "You know."
I said nothing. My brother had taught me that, too. Whoever speaks first loses.
Grant waited. Grant was not built for waiting. He lasted about four seconds.
"Look," he said. "If we win, it's happening anyway. He agreed in front of thirty people, so somebody's got to show the room."
He spread his hands. "Better it's someone who knows what they're doing. Quick, painless, everybody laughs, done. Just give me the word."
I knew what he meant. He meant the location, the method, the playbook. But all I could think about was the other word.
The real one. The one only two people alive had ever used.
"No," I said.
"No, he's not ticklish? Or no, you won't tell me?"
"No, I'm not your shortcut."
Grant studied me. For a moment, the football went out of his face. What was left looked older and more tired than I expected.
"I've worked across the hall from him for nine years," he said. "You know what I've never seen? Him having a good time. Not at a closing, not at a holiday party, not once."
He shrugged. "I figured this was my shot to see it. Maybe I was going about it wrong."
"You were going about it like a linebacker," I said.
"I was a tight end."
"I don't know what that means."
"Nobody does," Grant said sadly, and walked back toward the field.
My phone buzzed while I was walking back.
DID YOU WIN ANYTHING.
Trivia, I wrote.
THATS MY GIRL. IS YOUR BROTHER WINNING.
It's tied.
There was a pause. Then: HE HATES TIES. HE ONCE PLAYED CHECKERS WITH YOUR GRANDFATHER UNTIL 2 AM.
I remembered that. Elliot had been ten. Grandpa Leo had finally fallen asleep in his chair, and Elliot had declared that a forfeit.
Mom had disagreed. They negotiated it over breakfast. The result was a three-page document I believe is still in a shoebox somewhere.
The rope for the tug-of-war was thick, scratchy and older than most of us. Ruth laid it across a strip of mud in the middle of the field. She tied a red bandana to the center.
"Two minutes," she said. "Or until somebody ends up in the mud. Captains anchor."
Elliot took the anchor position for Team Loon. He wrapped the end of the rope once around his waist and planted his boots. Grant did the same for us, with considerably more grunting.
I was third from the front. Close enough to see my brother's face clearly over the heads of his team.
Thirty people gathered along the edges of the field. Dez stood on a picnic table to see better. He had stopped updating odds. He was simply holding his notebook against his chest, the way people hold a hymnal.
Ruth raised her whistle.
"Pull," she said, and blew it.
For the first minute, nothing moved. Both teams strained, and the rope groaned, and the red bandana twitched an inch one way, then an inch the other. Grant was yelling things that may have been encouragement or may have been plays.
Team Loon was silent. They pulled the way Elliot did everything, steadily and without complaint.
At the ninety-second mark, the bandana began to slide toward us.
Not because we were stronger. I could feel it in my palms. Team Loon was holding.
Their front line was holding. Dmitri was holding like a man who had something to prove after the canoe.
The rope was slipping at the back.
I looked past the heads of his team to the anchor. Elliot stood perfectly upright, boots planted, the rope wrapped around his waist. His face was calm. His face was always calm.
But his hands were open.
He wasn't pulling. He wasn't letting go, either. He was simply letting the rope slide, an inch at a time. These were the same fingers that had once written out the terms of peace at a kitchen table.
He was losing on purpose.
Nobody else saw it. They were too busy pulling, yelling, slipping. I was the only one watching his hands. I was the only one who knew what they looked like when he meant something.
The bandana crossed the line. Ruth blew the whistle. Team Loon toppled forward into the mud in a long, groaning heap. Team Heron toppled backward onto the grass in a long, cheering one.
Grant leaped up. "HERONS!" he roared. "HERONS, BABY!"
Dez, on the picnic table, slowly wrote one word in his notebook. Then he closed it and looked across the field at me with an expression I couldn't read.
Elliot stood up out of the mud. He brushed off his knees. He did not look at Grant, or at the cheering Herons. He did not look at the thirty people now turning to stare at him.
He looked at me.
Then he took out his phone, typed something, and put it back in his pocket. A second later, mine buzzed.
Dock. Seven o'clock. Bring the Accords.
Up next: The Pineapple Accords
Continue to Part 4 →