Nick McStandish was often referred to by Emily as her “best guy friend.” She met him the summer before their freshman year through her boyfriend at the time, Ely Narcy. They became better acquainted at band week and quickly became good friends. During their freshman year, Nick and Emily were virtually inseparable, and had either of them been bold enough, a romance may have developed.

 However, as time passed, they developed different friendships and separated. Emily fell in with a bad crowd; Nick became wildly popular among the younger band girls; and neither one cared to talk to the other for two years. Like Emily, Nick was rather rebellious, but never to the degree that Emily was. He was stubborn--it was “his way or the highway”--and daring. He had been brought up in a religious home and went to a Lutheran school. He was bright, but often took it to the extreme and liked to think he knew everything. He was only as handsome as Emily was pretty. He had thick, curly brown hair, laughing brown eyes, a brown face and a quick, flashy smile that one was lucky to catch. He had a good sense of humor, and was generally good-natured and gentle with an occasional temper-tantrum.

 And it was not until senior year that Emily realized that she and Nick were perfectly compatible. With her current boyfriend, Steve Magruder, on her hands, and reliable old Tim Casey in prospect, Emily had no idea what to do. She decided to put everything off until after band camp.

 Willow Creek Camp was a peaceful, quiet place, primarily used as a retreat for the elderly in nursing homes during the summer months or as a camp for church kids. The dorms sat by a small lake where kids were seen swimming, jumping on the water trampoline, using the “blob” or canoeing. Serene paths wound through the trees between the buildings. There was a ropes and obstacle course challenging enough for the very bold, but simple enough for even the most timid; and there was a baseball field, volleyball court, and basketball courts. At the end of August, Willow Creek was home for a week to the Farmingville Marching Band--and they used that baseball field as a marching field.
 
Emily had already settled into her lakeside dorm room. She sorted through the clothes in her suitcase and found her swimsuit. She looked at it, questioning whether or not she would take her swimming test. Someday, she knew, she would have to overcome her fear of water.

 “But not today,” Emily said to herself, putting the swimsuit away. She left the camp dorm, joined the other band members on the bank of the lake, and received a purple band on her wrist when she told the camp counselor that she would not take her swimming test. She and Michelle Lewis admired their purple bands.

 “Hey, at least it’s a nice color,” said Emily. “Not like the ugly yellow ones that the swimmers have to wear. Why didn’t you take your swimming test, Michelle?”

 “I just didn’t want to. Howcome you didn’t? You didn’t have a problem with it last year.”

 “Well... I just don’t like water that much.” Emily did not want to explain. The year before, she had a nightmare that frightened her away from water. She dreamed that her ex-boyfriend, Anthony Russell, had drowned her in the school pool. When she awakened, she had to gasp for air, as though she really had been drowning. Since that day, Emily’s greatest fear was death by drowning--therefore, she avoided deep water, where she had a chance of drowning. She was a poor swimmer--she could “doggy-paddle,” at best--and wasn’t sure she would be able to save herself if something happened in the water.

 Emily was surprised to learn that there would be a second mellophone player that year. Mr. Gutierrez quickly introduced Emily to a pretty, but tough-looking, blonde-haired girl before moving on to his other duties at the start of the first rehearsal.

 “My name’s Emily Collins,” Emily said cheerfully, extending her hand and hoping to get a smile on the girl’s face.

 “Amanda Strittman,” she said quietly, shaking Emily’s hand and still not smiling.

 “You’re kind of a surprise,” said Emily. “I thought I was gonna be all alone this year. What grade are you in?”

 “Tenth. I know I’m a surprise to you--I just moved here a little while ago, from Hillsdale.”

 “Really? I know some people from Hillsdale. They’re all mean.”

 “Like who?”

 “The only one whose name I actually remember is Nate Wallace. He’s my ex-boyfriend. I went out with him when I was in tenth grade. He must be a junior now. I remember his two friends’ names were Derrick and Brandon, but I never learned their last names.”

 “Derrick Cass and Brandon Greenwald.”

 “You knew them?”

 “Yeah.”

 “It’s been a couple years since I talked to any of them.”

 “How long have you been playing horn?”

 Emily, sensing that Amanda wanted to change the subject, replied, “Almost five years. I started out on trumpet, and I switched in eighth grade.”

 “My teacher begged me to switch in seventh grade. We desperately needed horns.”

 “Well, let’s see how good you are,” Emily smiled as Mr. Gutierrez handed them their music. And the rehearsal began.

 
 There was a new band director that year. Mr. Hallenbeck, the fun-loving young teacher, had taken up an empty teaching position in Weissham, the school he had graduated from. The band was disappointed at Mr. Hallenbeck’s departure but hoped the new band director would work out. Mr. Minuzo was quiet and punctual and rarely seen during the campers’ free time, when they spent their time swimming and canoeing and playing volleyball. Emily sometimes wondered where he kept himself holed up, but dismissed the matter. What he did was his business. He was a little older than Mr. Hallenbeck, but looked younger; he was a bachelor and had no children; and he was short and rather stout, with jet-black hair and eyes that showed his Asian heritage somewhat. Emily thought him rather handsome, but he was a teacher, after all. At the moment, she had Steve and Tim to worry about.

 The ropes course groups were assigned, and Emily was placed with seniors Dan Ward and Simon Mitchell, sophomore Rini Salva, and two new freshmen. She learned the freshman girl’s name--Kelly Benson--but the freshman boy was very shy and rarely talked to anyone. From hearing Kelly and the freshman boy talk, however, Emily learned that his name was Rick Anderson.

 One of the ropes courses was called the “Broken Rope.” The setup was simple--a heavy cable was tied between two trees, and above it were two halves of a rope, one half tied to each tree. The object was to walk on the cable from one tree to the other holding the rope, and halfway through, the person on the cable would be handed the other half of the rope by someone else and continue on his way. Emily, a two-year Willow Creek veteran, knew this was much more difficult than it seemed. The key was to move quickly and to let go of the rope if you fell off.

 Mr. Gutierrez, one of the camp advisors and father of Emily’s good friend and colleague Alisa, told the group how to go across the course and warned them to let go of the rope if they fell, or else they would be in a crash course with a tree. Dan, who was lithe and agile, made it across easily. Rini refused to try, but Simon did. He fell the first time, but made it across on his second attempt. With help, Kelly got across, and Emily made it across the first time she tried.

 Then it was Rick’s turn. He put on his helmet, climbed onto the wire, and clung to the rope. Emily, Rini and Kelly were on one side, while Dan and Simon were on the other. The wire shook horribly beneath Rick’s feet, and he crept across slowly.

 “Come on, Rick,” Rini said encouragingly. “You can do it.”

 Rick got to the end of one rope, and Mr. Gutierrez handed the other rope to him. He tried to hold onto both ropes, but lost his grip on the one that Mr. Gutierrez had given him. Suddenly, he slipped off the wire and clung for life to the rope, despite Mr. Gutierrez’s warning. Rini and Kelly jumped out of the way, leaving only Emily to save Rick from crashing into the tree. Before she had time to think, Emily put her hands out to stop Rick.

 Rick flew into Emily and knocked her over. They both slid on the ground, safely out of the course of the tree.

 Emily sat up and shook her head. Rick quickly stood up, not wanting to stay on top of Emily any longer than he had to.

 “You okay?” Emily asked as Rick stood up.

 “Yeah,” Rick replied.

 “Let’s give a big hand to this guy and the girl who saved his life!” said Mr. Gutierrez.

 Emily cracked a smile as she stood up. Then she had Simon help brush the debris from her back, and they continued on to the next course.

 Emily and Rick became better friends throughout the week. Their friendship helped Emily get along better with the other freshmen, and her goal was to make them feel as welcome as she could. She got along quite well with everyone else as well, and found it easy to talk to anyone she liked. The year before, in the beginning stages of her rebel stage, she hadn’t talked to anyone. She decided that she liked being able to talk to anyone and thought that she had made a great improvement from the year before.

 During her free time one day, Emily was leaning over the railing of the “lookout tower”-an open deck built above the storage building which was actually dug into the side of a hill--looking down at the sidewalk below. Nick was walking below, with a crowd of freshman and sophomore girls. The only other guy with him was “the other Nick,” Nick Ross, who had fallen in love with pretty little Amber Fisher and followed her everywhere, although Amber liked to follow Nick McStandish around.

 Rini joined her on the lookout tower, hobbling on crutches. She had sprained her ankle earlier that day, and Emily had waited with her in camp office for the nurse to return from some errands.

 “Wouldn’t it be funny if I spit on them?” asked Emily.

 “Yeah!” said Rini. “I dare you to do it.”

 “No, I wouldn’t do that to Nick. The other Nick, yeah.”

 “And Amber and Kelly. I heard they’re whores.”

 “They look like it.” Emily caught some of her rebellious attitude returning, but she and Rini were right. Amber and Kelly looked more like jocks or popular, brainless girls--not anyone that belonged in band. And Nick Ross followed Amber around like a lost puppy.

 Rini left to go back to her dorm. Nick’s crowd had gathered directly underneath the lookout tower, where there was a pop machine. Emily pondered whether she should warn them about the nearby garbage can where wasps were known to swarm, and decided to keep her presence anonymous. She frowned, wondering why Nick drew such a large crowd of pretty, brainless young girls. Could it be his good looks? His stellar intelligence? His friendly, outgoing personality? Already she knew that Nick’s stubbornness would cause trouble between him and Mr. Minuzo, later in the year if not right away.

 Nick looked up and saw Emily. He waved to her, then headed to the auditorium with his group close behind. Emily looked at the sky. Through the trees, she could see a storm cloud lurking in the west. She heard a faint rumble of thunder, and the sun disappeared behind the clouds. She shivered and went back to her dorm. She suddenly felt very cold, and she decided to wait out the storm in her room, reading a good book.

 The rain pounded outside, but Emily was warm inside, curled up in her blanket and reading Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone. Suddenly, a creepy feeling came over her. She looked up at the window, and swore she saw the shadow of Mr. Minuzo as he disappeared. She bit her lip and wondered if he had been looking in the window at her.

 “It’s all in my head,” Emily thought, checking the time and marking her place in her book. “He was just walking by, that’s all.” She quickly made her bed, left her dorm, and dodged through the rain to the cafeteria for dinner.