Carin broke the news to me in the van five miles out of Millers Creek. She held up a magazine and talked quietly to me from behind it so my parents couldn’t hear what she was saying.

“This week at camp, I think we should go on an important mission,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. You can’t really leave camp except to go to Mount Spirit, and that’s with the counselors. I don’t know what kind of mission Car thought we could go on.

She looked over the magazine at my mom and dad. My parents had taken a couple of days vacation to bring us to camp and visit Aunt Carrie, who lives about a half an hour away from camp. Mom already had the summer off because she’s a teacher, but Dad is a pastor, so he had to take a special vacation since it was Sunday and all.

Dad was singing off-key and tapping on the steering wheel in time to the Steven Curtis Chapman song that played on the radio. Mom was reading a book. I don’t know how she could concentrate on what she was reading with my dad singing so badly next to her.

Car ducked back behind the magazine. “We need to find out about boys this week.”

“What?” I exclaimed.

Dad looked at us in the mirror.

“Shh,” Carin hissed.

“But, Car,” I whispered. “I don’t want to know about boys. I just started liking them last year.”

“We are going to be in sixth grade in a few months,” she said. “In sixth grade there are dances. I think we need to know about boys before we go to any dances.”

“How are we supposed to find out about boys at camp?” I asked. “It’s church camp, not dating camp.”

“You know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Camp romances? Camp has lots of those. We can watch all the people who have camp romances.”

“But there aren’t very many camp romances at elementary camp,” I pointed out.

Carin sighed and stopped smiling. I think I was ruining her excitement about camp and boys.

“Then we’ll ask the counselors about boys,” she said.

“Why don’t we just ask my sister?” I asked. “Or Robin?”

“We can’t ask them!” Car whisper-shouted.

“Why not?”

“We don’t want anybody we know to know we are finding out about boys. It’s embarrassing.”

“But we know the people at camp,” I said.

“It’s not the same. It’s different knowing someone at camp and knowing someone at home. We might need to practice what we learn on the boys at camp. Like one thing I think we should learn about this week is how to flirt, and then we should practice flirting with the boys at camp. I think that would be easier than learning how to flirt with the boys at school.”

I don’t know why, but I agreed with her. I guess if we had to find out about boys, I’d rather do it at camp than at home. At home, there was always a chance that someone from your class at school could see or hear you.

At least at camp if we made fools out of ourselves learning about boys, nobody from Millers Creek would know about it unless someone from camp moved to Millers Creek, but that would never happen. It is very rare to see someone from camp in the real world. Once we saw Blaine Adams at a fast food restaurant in Escanaba, and at first I didn’t even recognize him. I’d only ever known him as a counselor at junior high camp. It was weird to see him ordering a burger and fries.

“Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s an okay idea.”

“Okay?” she said. “Okay? It’s a fabulous, wonderful, perfect idea!”

I didn’t know about that. Car is outgoing, but I’m usually shy. The idea of flirting with boys did not sound so good to me. But Car had a point. It would be a lot easier to flirt with boys at camp than at school. If I had to learn about boys sometime, I guess this was the best week to do that.

The rest of the ride to camp, I felt queasy. I’ve never been carsick before, so it couldn’t have been that. Camp is a safe, fun place. But not if you have to flirt with boys there. That made me nervous.

Last year I was worried on the ride to camp because I thought I wouldn’t know anybody, like maybe all my friends wouldn’t come back. I wasn’t worried about not knowing anybody this year. I felt like I was going to puke because I was scared of having to learn about boys.