“Yes!” Gregory and I shot fists into the air with smiles of victory. Matt and Josh trudged through the water to us, Matt holding the prized flag.
“Way to go, guys,” Gregory congratulated them, clapping their hands, as did I. Tyler and his boys smiled good naturedly.
“Good game!” Shawn shouted with agreements from the others.
We waited for the other boys from both sides to come to the border after the ending call was signaled and rang through the forest. When they were all gathered, Matt spoke.
“We won this game, so your team gets to steal one of our players, but we choose to save Josh,” he explained to Tyler’s team from the other side of the water. The captain could also not be stolen, which left Tyler four boys to choose from, including me.
“We choose Dawson,” he announced, after a quick consultation with his teammates.
Dawson was a tall, muscled boy with dark brown hair and a valued player. He sprang across the tree bridge when his name was called, and the game was to begin again.
We played a few more games of Flag and then all of us headed back to the camp as a group of a dozen, talking loudly on our way. We crossed the camp, greeting the adults working busily with chores. We would help, but they usually would just yell at us for doing the work wrong. But they have the older girls to help them who are better at chores than us boys. We climbed the oaks on the other side of camp, testing who could get the highest. I may not be the fastest out of the rest, but I was the best climber. I nimbly hauled myself up again and again, reaching farther than the others dared until I was looking down at them all with a mischievous grin on my face and some looked up and chuckled at my smug humor.
It was past midday and we were getting hungry, so we made our way to the kitchen pavilion, where the women would have already made food for the whole camp. When we got there, a few people sat at various tables that were set out with benches and a few of the girls were doing dishes.
“Hey, Thomas,” Adam cooed behind me in a mocking voice. I was hoping they wouldn’t see. “Look who’s at the dish trough.”
Of course, they all looked. What did I expect?
“Ooo, it’s Evvadine!” Tyler teased while Dawson made kissing faces and noises and Charlie and Lou were patting my shoulder, snickering with everyone else. I felt my cheeks go hot and pink and knew they would see that too. The boys knew I liked her a lot and often teased me about it because they knew I didn’t mind too much. We all knew that she was also completely oblivious, even though the others had almost let it slip a couple times.
“Alright, alright, be quiet!” I tried to shut them up because Evvadine had looked over her shoulder at us from where she was scrubbing pots clean. The boys continued to chortle and then Matt came up and put an arm over my shoulder casually.
“Thomas, my boy,” he said in an important voice. “If you don’t kiss her, I will.”
That sent the others laughing harder.
“Aw, stop it!” I told them, even though I was laughing too.
“Well? Go talk to her!” Gregory urged me on with words of encouragement from everyone. After a lot of this, I had no choice.
