Camp Boyfriend by J. K. Rock

his side. He was usually a quiet guy, but his warrior gear gave him serious swagger. Plus, I had to admire someone who didn’t change his look for anyone else. Julian liked a cape, so he wore a cape.
    He winked at Piper, and I was surprised to see her smile at him. Not wanting to get in the way of any flirting, my eyes accidentally gravitated toward Seth. He looked great in khakis and a pin-striped button-down. My heart sped up against my will. I needed to tell him what I’d decided about us…and Matt…but I didn’t want to do it with all our friends around. And hello? I shouldn’t be ogling him, let alone fantasizing about tripping the girl he’d hung out with this week as I watched him return her wave.
    I really needed to learn how to deal with seeing those two together because…I swallowed hard. The reason I couldn’t be with Seth was my fault. He had a right to be happy with someone else. Still, I stomped when I headed toward the lodge to find Matt.
    Emily followed, her fingers clutching my elbow and slowing me down as we walked into a transformed lodge. Silver stars hung from the pine rafters, and glitter coated the floor. A popular song blared from the speakers, and the dance floor was already full of junior campers getting their groove on. They got to arrive earlier than the senior campers, but they’d have to leave earlier too. Staying up late was a perk of being in the last two years of camp.
    “Wait up!” Emily called into my ear. Her short-sleeved, rhinestone-covered pink sweater dress was a serious throwback, but her pink boots were cute. “I forgot to tell you Matt will be late.”
    That got my attention.
    “He will?”
    Emily nodded, blond curls jiggling along with her dangly earrings. “I practically fell over him coming out of the arts building when I was on my way back from a counselors’ meeting about appropriate dress code. I mean, have you seen some of the trampy outfits around here?” She adjusted her butt-skimming hemline. “Anyway, I saw Matt, and he told me to tell you he’d be a half-hour late.”
    “Thanks,” I told her, wondering what he’d been doing in the arts building. He’d surprised me once by playing the piano in the music room, just fooling around after school. I thought it had sounded great, but he’d dismissed it as no big deal.
    I didn’t want to make things awkward for my friends by hanging around them when they were flirting with the guys in Seth’s cabin. Especially when the sight of Seth talking to that girl he’d befriended made me ready to draw blood. She looked prettier than ever with a jeweled headband I wanted to rip out of her waist-length, light-brown waves.
    “Lauren!” someone called before I could commit a felony.
    Turning, I saw Kayla and Hannah by the refreshments table, their cocktail-length dresses upping the sophistication factor of an Appalachian camp dance. They looked like a page out of Seventeen with Hannah’s perfect auburn updo and Kayla’s sleek blond layers caught in a glittery butterfly clip.
    Junior campers admired them from afar, whispering enviously behind their hands.
    “Hi,” I returned nervously, not sure what they’d want from me. Back home, I understood how to deal with the mean girls of the world, wearing the bitchy armor at all times, ready to do battle.
    But this was camp, and I didn’t act that way here. I’d spent weeks dreaming about ditching my inner bitch.
    “Come here.” Kayla waved me over, smiling.
    Was I really going to cross the lodge to the land of the camp’s most popular girls? It felt like a defection from my old crew, but I needed space. Anything was better than standing awkwardly in the middle of the dance with no one to talk to.
    “Great dresses,” I murmured as I scooped punch into a cup.
    “Thanks.” Hannah’s smile seemed genuine, but then she was so egotistical she probably took compliments as her due.
    “Our guys aren’t here yet so we thought you’d want to wait for them with us.”