Chapter 4

"Rise and shine!" Macey's voice came echoing in through my room. "Cameron Ann Morgan! Get your butt out of bed right now! We have things to do!" She said in a sing-song voice. I smiled in spite of myself.

"Coming!" I managed to call back.

"Does that mean you can help me get Bex out of bed?" Liz's timid voice called from across the hall. I pulled myself out of my bed, too excited for the chance to shove her out of bed.

"Rebecca Baxter, you have exactly 3 seconds to get out of bed before I make you get out of bed." I received no response. "3...2...1" I pulled her arm hard so she landed on the floor at my feet. She lifted her head and glared at me and I gave her a smug smile "I'm going to shower!" I called to my friends.

"Oh no you don't!" Macey stopped me "You showered last night and that's good enough, hurry and get dressed, I have this great idea for your hair today."

I hurried to put something on. I decided to wear some high waisted cut off jean shorts with a short black shirt that just met the top of the shorts. After sliding on some converse I deemed myself ready. I headed into the bathroom and raised my eyebrows at Macey in a question.

Macey looked me over, turned back towards her room and handed me a large flannel shirt to go over the outfit. She nodded once I put it on and motioned for me to sit in the chair. She pulled the french braid out of my hair and it fell in pretty waves. She sprayed it with something unlabeled. Must be illegal I decided. she scrunched my hair in her hands and smiled.

"Perfect," was all she said and I have to admit, I kind of liked the way it looked. "Let's go see if Liz and Bex are ready."

We walked in the hall as Liz and Bex exited their bathroom.

"You guys ready?" I asked Liz nodded.

"Wait!" Bex yelled. She ran into her room and came out carrying a perfume bottle. She sprayed all of us. "Now we match" she said with a smile and we laughed. We clamored down the stairs and I went to go find my mom.

"You ready yet mom?" I called from the hallway and she emerged from her room with her purse in hand.

"As ready as I'll ever be!" She smiled at me "Come on, we'll find something to eat on the way to town."

"Shot gun!" I yelled as I ran past my roommates towards the car. I reached the car, jumped in and locked the door. Bex's face was pressed up against the car window and I made a silly face at her. She laughed then climbed into the backseat.

As soon as my mom turned on the car, I started surfing channels to find a good radio station. I finally found something that sounded somewhat modern, I turned around in my seat a little to see what the girls were talking about.

"Young Tom Cruise is definitely more attractive than a young George Clooney" Bex argued.

"You're insane!" Macey argued "George Clooney was way more attractive than Tom Cruise!"

"Emphasis on was" Bex added

"As entertaining as this is," I added in "I'm going to have to agree with Macey here." I said shooting a sorry look at Bex.

"What about you Liz?" Bex asked, no doubt looking for some support.

"Sorry Bex…" She said shyly.

"I can't believe this!"

"I'm with you Bex, Tom Cruise was always a cutie." My mom added in.

"At least someone in this car has some common sense" Bex said smugly. She folded her arms and gave us all a look.

"I hate to break it to you Bex, but my mom isn't exactly the best person in the world to have for back up unless you're in the field." I explained. Macey and Liz nodded their agreement.

"Alright, enough of this, where are we going first?" my mom asked

"We're shopping for food today then headed back to hang out at the beach. Other shopping will be done next week." Macey said my mom nodded in agreement.

"Sounds good," She said "but I feel like I should warn you, I can shop for hours and don't plan on stopping until I'm satisfied with all purchases."

Macey grinned "That, I can handle."

A few minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store in the closest town. My mom rattled off some items for each of us to find and we spilt up going up and down the aisles looking for our items. As we went our separate ways, I had a brilliant idea. I pulled Bex and Macey aside.

"CoveOps challenge: add something to someone's cart without them noticing." I whispered they smiled excitedly and hurried off to their aisles. I went into my own and almost immediately a way to complete my challenge. I grabbed a packet of soup mix off the shelf next to me and started towards the, admittedly cute, boy down the aisle.

As I walked up next to him, I looked intently at the jars in front of us. I 'accidentally' bumped into him and slipped the soup mix into his basket.

"Oh my gosh!" I exclaimed "I am so sorry!"

He smiled at me "It's no problem, no harm no foul right?" I grinned back at him. "I'm Jake, by the way" He held out his hand for me to shake.

"Cammie" I replied shaking his hand softly "I really am sorry, but I should go find my friends" I started backing away faux nervously.

"Okay, great meeting you Cammie"

"You too, Jake" I smiled at him one last time and gave a small wave.

Mission accomplished.

I hurried to find my items, and went to meet my mom and friends at the register. The cart was full of frozen items or things that could me made easily. It was clear my mom didn't plan to make anything from scratch. I was relieved, at least with frozen and boxed foods we could keep her from poisoning us.

"We were wondering when you would show up." Bex said smiling at me 'Mission accomplished?' she mouthed at me and I gave a small nod in response.

"Alright girlies, I want to go to the beach so let's get these suckers into the car and head on home!" Liz exclaimed

The drive home was full of lots of laughing and many punches. We made up a game, whenever we saw someone driving distracted, we got to punch the person next to us. I sat next to Bex and Macey in the back with Liz in the front, we didn't want to get bruised too bad. Don't let her size fool you, Liz can throw a mean punch.

By the time we reached the house, we all had bruises on our arms and legs but we laughed the whole way in the house.

"You girls go change, I'll put the groceries away" my mom said after we had finished carrying in the bags.

"You sure?" Macey asked

"Definitely, go have fun" my mom waved us off with a smile.

We ran to go change, I slipped into my borrowed bikini and left my hair down. I grabbed my bag and went out into the hall the girls were all there waiting, except for macey. She came out about 30 seconds later with her sunglasses on her head and her iPod dock in hand.

"Let's go have fun!" Liz screamed and we raced out to the backyard.

The first thing we did was plug in Macey's iPod dock. After our summer playlist was blaring across the pool, we put on a combination of tanning oil and sunscreen.

I was the first to finish coating myself in the mixture, so I started dancing around goofily, waiting for the girls. Bex was next and she joined me in hopping around like an idiot.

"Do you guys remember that dance we made up in 7th grade?" Liz asked us

"I haven't thought about that in years!" Bex exclaimed

"Me either" I admitted as I smiled "Hey Mace, do you have 'Evacuate the Dancefloor' by Cascada on your iPod?"

She shrugged "Maybe, will you teach me the dance?"

"Of course!"

"Duh!"

"Why wouldn't we?" We exclaimed, She smiled at us.

"I think I still have it."

And 'have it' she did. We spent the next couple of hours on the sand trying to remember the dance we made up in 7th grade and modifying it to more modern moves. We laughed (Mostly Bex), tripped (Mostly Liz), replayed the song (Mostly Macey) and danced ridiculously (Mostly me). After about 2 and a half hours, we finally had the dance down. It was awesome.

"Food!" my mom called and we ran inside for lunch. We were met with plates of sandwiches and chips. We shoved food into our mouths for a while, then we went back outside.

"As much fun as dancing is," Liz began "can we go swimming now?" she pleaded I looked at Bex.

"Absolutely Lizzie" Bex said sweetly and Liz smiled, then as if by some invisible que, Bex and I picked liz up and threw her into the pool with smiles on our faces

"I should've known something was up!" She exclaimed as she made her way to the side of the pool "You never call me 'Lizzie' unless you're about to prank me!" Bex and I stood by the edge of the pool laughing. In the end, the joke was on us. Macey came up behind us and shoved us forward. Thanks to our spy-like reflexes, we managed to grab her arms and pull her in with us. When we came up for air, we burst out laughing.

We played in the water for hours. We played games like Marco, Polo and Sharks and Minnows but stopped when Liz ran into the side of the pool and got a bloody nose.

"How about we try surfing?" Macey suggested "I saw some boogie boards and surfboards by the side of the house earlier."

"Sure!" Liz exclaimed

"I like a challenge" Bex decided

"What were you doing on the side of the house?" I asked waggling my eyebrows at her. We laughed again and went to find the surfboards. We found half a dozen surfboards and just as many boogie boards. Macey, Bex, and I all grabbed a surfboard but Liz decided to stick with a boogie board. We rinsed the boards off as well as we could with the hose and headed out towards the water.

We quickly discovered a few things. First, we discovered that Bex couldn't stay on a surfboard for longer than 5 seconds at a time. Then we discovered that Macey and I weren't bad at surfing, at least we picked it up pretty quickly. Lastly, we discovered that Liz was better at surfing then all of us combined. She quickly exchanged her boogie board for a surfboard and we spent the rest of the afternoon getting the hang of staying up on the boards.

After a while, my mom called us in for dinner.

"You girls have been out there all afternoon!" my mother exclaimed as we sat down to eat frozen pizza.

"Why is that so surprising?" Macey asked between bites of food.

My mom shrugged "I didn't think it would be this easy to entertain you" she said honestly Bex laughed and I rolled my eyes "I think I'm going to try my hand at surfing with you after dinner" she said thoughtfully. We shrugged indifferently, we just wanted to get back in the water.

"How about we watch a movie tonight?" I asked, after being outside all day I was a little exhausted.

"How about we have a marathon tomorrow?" Bex asked "We could have the first of many lazy days to come" she added with a smile. It sounded amazing

"Sounds good to me" I said

"I could paint everyone's nails!" Macey exclaimed

"Awesome!" Liz said and the plans were set.

After hurriedly washing the dishes, we ran back outside, this time with my mom with us. We showed her where the surfboards were. We grabbed our boards and headed out to the ocean. It was still light out, but the sun had started going down.
We surfed until the sun was at the end of it's journey. Not surprisingly my mom was amazing at surfing and rivaled even our little Lizzie. As the sun set on an amazing day, my mom went back to shore as we sat holding hands on our boards to keep us close as we watched the colors light up the sky. The silence was comfortable and as I looked to my right and left I knew that these were the best friends I was ever going to have. I squeezed Bex and Macey's hands and they smiled at me. I couldn't wait for the days to come throughout the summer.