Oh. No.
I pictured my binoculars sitting peacefully with my thermos at the boathouse before I procured them yesterday.
I rubbed at the marks and looked at my fingers, seeing the residue spread all over them. Apparently, that had only made it worse. I went to use my T-shirt to wipe when Liza stopped me.
“That’ll probably stain,” she warned with a pitying look. “You’ll need makeup remover or probably an oil to take it off. I have some back in my cabin.”
Celeste pulled out her phone camera to show me the damage that had been done. Yep, I’d walked around camp with literal black circles rimming my eyes, transforming me into a raccoon that watched birds. And I instantly knew who the culprit was.
I put my sunglasses on and hoped that time wouldn’t make things worse. Luckily, I had this boat trip around the lake to plot my revenge.
“We could put their staplers in Jell-O?” Celeste suggested.
Camille gently shut that down. “Nat doesn’t seem like she has a pressing need for a stapler. And I don’t think campers bring staplers to camp.”
Darek looked pensive. “We don’t want to go after one person. We have to take out all of Andromeda.” The fervent way he said this made me realize that maybe I wasn’t the only one with a camp vendetta. Maybe this went beyond pod loyalty.
“Okay, how about we cover their picnic table in sticky notes?” Liza mused. “I did it at work to a colleague once.”
“Oh my gosh. That was you?” Celeste looked betrayed and then burst into a loud belly laugh. We all joined in as we drifted along the lake.
Autumn would have a conniption if I stole her sticky notes to prank Nat back.
“How about something that’s not as stationary-focused?” I suggested.
Darek scratched his beard. “Well, if not office supplies, how about food?”
Turned out, there were a lot of different food-related pranks we could choose from. As a group, we considered and debated the best options. We settled on an easy one that we could pull off flawlessly, each with our own parts to play.
The following morning, I stood in front of a beautifully decorated wicker basket of revenge eclairs. Delicious looking, perfect ovals of light pastry, iced with chocolate. If they expected them to be filled with Boston cream, they were in for a surprise.
Instead, they were getting what they deserved… Well, what Nat deserved.
Did I feel bad for Nat’s other campers caught in the crosshairs? No. Being at camp sometimes meant you got pranked, and that was that. They were unlucky enough to be in a venomous snake’s pod.
It hadn’t taken long for the five of us to plot our revenge mission. Darek found a random basket in the craft room. Camille snagged the relish and filled the eclair shells, courtesy of Azalea, with Celeste and Liza. When it was all together, I put the final touch on a perfect ganache topping, after taking my critiques from the bake-off to heart.
I was so proud of us. They were diabolical.
I carried the Trojan Horse over in the early hours of the next morning with utter delight and placed them on Nat’s pod’s picnic table. The basket looked innocent and welcoming, with a note that said,
Happy eating!
Love, Azalea.
She’d forgive me for that later.
My boat conspirators all tucked behind trees in the forest, far from the view of Nat’s pod, with clean binoculars at the ready.
Nat started every morning with a cheery greeting, checking in to see how people in Andromeda slept. I knew this because I’d witnessed her playing music from her speaker, not so loud it’d wake the couple that might sleep in but loud enough to energize the newly woken campers. She played the randomest songs, from Hamilton to Huntrix to some indie music I’d never heard of before, and her campers seemed to love it.
From our position in the trees, I saw three of Nat’s newest batch of campers, Russell, Curtis, and Drew, sluggishly emerge from their cabins. It took a minute for the tired-looking campers to see the trick eclairs, perking up as they each reached for one. They took their bites in tandem until the moment things went awry.
Russell was the most boisterous in his vehemence, upset after a significant bite. He spat it out and kept spitting while a couple of my podmates snickered at his reaction.
Did I feel a little bad? Yes. Did it make it that much funnier when he started using his fingers to wipe the relish flavor from his tongue? Absolutely.
Curtis spat his out with little flair and mouthed, “What the hell?”
