Between Camp and a Hard Place

At summer camp, counselor Connie Kendall has shaken up the usual partner assignments, and nobody is thrilled. Olivia Parker, who has teamed with her friend Zoe for years, has been paired with Scarlett Henry, a prickly newcomer obsessed with a wilderness survival TV show and disappointed that camp involves games instead of surviving on her wits. Zoe has been paired with cheerful Elise Reed, who wants to try every event despite being terrible at all of them. Meanwhile, camper Wyatt Perkins, whose phone has been taken away, has been keeping counselor Wooton Bassett up past two in the morning, and Scarlett has just fallen off an air conditioner while trying to sneak Wi-Fi from the camp office.

The story picks up in the nurse's office, where Scarlett turns out to be fine and is mostly annoyed that she barely got to use her first-aid skills. "What's a person gotta do to get a compound fracture around here?" she grumbles. She admits to Olivia that she has been a lousy partner, but perks up when she hears about the Camper Hunt, a giant game of hide-and-seek in the woods, and promises to actually try. That night, Zoe finds her bed full of sand with her team's humiliating volleyball score written in it, a prank from the Marcys, the smug team that always wins everything. Outside on the porch, sleepless Wyatt peppers Wooton with late-night questions about the Holy Spirit, and Wooton promises to help him practice for the games. The next morning, a groggy, energy-drink-jittery Wooton times Wyatt in a practice sack race, and to everyone's shock Wyatt breaks the camp record.

During the Camper Hunt, Scarlett drags Olivia across a creek and up a tree, brushing off the boundary lines because, as she declares, "There are no rules in the wild, Olivia." Hidden nearby, Zoe suggests that she and Elise skip the cross-country race since neither of them is a runner, but Elise refuses. She explains that she has a foster sister with cerebral palsy and a brother who will be on an oxygen tank for the rest of his life, and that she tries things precisely because they are difficult. "I do hard things because I can," she says. Up in the tree, hours of hiding wear Olivia down, and when she snaps that Scarlett makes it hard to be her friend, Scarlett fires back that they were never friends, that they come from completely different worlds, and that they will never speak again after camp. Right then the horn sounds: they have won the Camper Hunt.

Scarlett has discovered cell service at the top of that tree, and she talks Wyatt into climbing up with her to watch funny videos even though his big sack race is coming. When it is time to leave, a raccoon parked at the bottom of the tree traps them. Wyatt, spouting nervous statistics about rabies, finds an article saying to play dead, so he smears Scarlett's face with ketchup packets and sends her down, where the raccoon promptly chases them off. Wyatt sprints out of the woods and reaches the starting line just in time, but he is so worn out that he collapses at the whistle, too tired to get up, and the exhausted, crashing Wooton lies down on the field beside him. In the cross-country race, Zoe chooses to run alongside Elise instead of chasing the leaders, and when the two finish 17th and 18th out of 23, Elise gleefully chants that they are not the worst.

At the finish line, Olivia confesses to Connie that she thinks she has failed, assuming she was paired with Scarlett to befriend a girl who has had a hard life. Connie surprises her: Olivia is one of the camp's leaders, but she tends to stick to Zoe and the competition, and leaders have to stretch. She made the switch to help Olivia, not Scarlett. Taking that to heart, Olivia marches up to Scarlett with pen and paper and demands her phone number, announcing that she is done doing the easy thing and is inviting Scarlett to her birthday party, even though it is eight months away, and even promising her favorite pecan praline ice cream. Scarlett, impressed, tells her, "You're not as soft as I thought," and asks for Olivia's number in return, since her own birthday comes sooner.

That night, Wyatt admits to Wooton that he lied about why he cannot sleep. His father is overseas in the military, and a month earlier Wyatt overheard a midnight video call interrupted by an explosion, followed by two terrifying hours of silence. Ever since, he lies awake from midnight to two, using the internet to keep from thinking about it. Wooton gently reminds him of their talk about the Holy Spirit, who comforts us and reminds us that God protects us, and prays that Wyatt will feel God's arms around him and finally sleep. By the time the prayer ends, Wyatt has drifted off. At the closing awards, the Marcys win the overall competition as usual, and Scarlett muses about coming back next year to actually try, which delights Olivia. But the Camper of the Week award goes to Elise Reed, the girl who inspired everyone by tackling hard things she knew she was bad at. Elise, who has never won anything before, celebrates by joyfully and very badly singing "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart" while the whole camp cheers.