“Pull, Otters, pull!”
I squinted and puffed my cheeks. Weighing only about 98 pounds, I didn’t have much to offer my team besides determined-looking facial expressions. Plus, my hands were sore by now, and . . . .
“Harder, Talia, harder!”
Busted. My best friend, Bridget, was at the front of our team’s line (Bridget had been in front of every line I’d ever been in), but even with me standing behind her, she could tell my heart wasn’t in it. Tug-of-war was totally pointless.
But not to Bridget. Bridget was so competitive, she could turn a spelling bee into a contact sport. And tug-of-war against a team that included Meredith and Brynne? The rope may as well have been a red cape flashing in front of a bull. Bridget would own that rope, even if she had to pull five times as hard to compensate for her scrawny teammates (me being the scrawniest, and let’s face it, the least motivated). To Bridget, it was a matter of principle . . . of will power . . . of sheer determination. That, and since she was in the front of the line, she’d be the one to tumble into the creek if we lost.
Through my squints, I noticed Meredith and Brynne pulling on the opposite side of the creek bank. Even in the middle of tug-of-war, their ponytails looked bouncy and their lips glossy. What was it with those two? When had they morphed from scabby-kneed goofballs to dainty princesses? And why hadn’t Bridget and I received the morph memo?
“PULL HARDER, OTTERS!” Bridget bellowed, clutching the rope with one hand while she quickly wiped the sweat on her brow with the other.
Which is all it took for Meredith’s and Brynne’s team to give a final heave that knocked Bridget off her balance and sent her tumbling into the creek. My fellow Otters and I groaned gamely but didn’t exactly have rope burn on our hands.
Meredith and Brynne pointed at Bridget thrashing in the ankle-deep creek water and giggled into their fingertips. They dropped the rope and gave each other high fives, then turned to their teammates for more palm-slapping.
“Sea Turtles rule!” Meredith crowed, which, let’s face it, was the understatement of the millennium. If there had been any doubt at the beginning of the week that Sea Turtles ruled, by the last day of camp, we were all clear.