Roll to Me

Chapter 4

Moriko flung herself behind a bush as a dodgeball came hurtling at her head with enough force to potentially give her a concussion. She made herself small, hiding behind the leaves. When Tomioka had declared war, Moriko had thought it was a figurative kind of announcement.

Now it was literal.

A campwide dodgeball game had pitted all of the cabins against each other in a massive battle spread out across the biggest field. Everyone was wearing their camp t-shirts with colored armbands to show which cabin they were a part of. Presumably, each cabin was out for blood. They had been at it for only five minutes, and three people were on the sidelines with the nurse at the small emergency station she had set up. Moriko was determined to not be the next in line.

There were manmade hiding spots, like the painted barrels and stacks of hay, and there were the natural ones, like the bush Moriko had chosen.

Something whizzed through the air nearby. There was loud plastic thump as it smacked into someone. A boy from Trout Cabin fell over, dust billowing up.

He rolled over, coughing. He blinked as he noticed her. "Run. She's coming."

Laughter, carefree to the point of being borderline sinister, erupted off to Moriko's left. "You're out, Aoki!"

"I think I'm going to bruise, Susamaru..."

"Walk it off!" the recreation counselor yelled. Another dodgeball pounded the ground next to the boy's head. "You're cluttering up the field. Get moving."

"Yes, ma'am." Aoki rolled back over and began crawling toward the nurse's station.

Moriko stayed quiet as Susamaru passed by, one dodgeball in hand while she had another shoved under one arm. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" the woman called.

Once Susamaru was far enough away, Moriko started moving, running from bush to bush and trying to stay as close to the sidelines as possible. She would be happy as long as she didn't catch Susamaru's attention. Across the field, someone shrieked, and the recreation counselor burst into renewed cackles. Moriko considered crossing out of bounds and putting herself out, but her cabin really wanted to win and she didn't want them to prank her out of revenge. Another girl in her cabin had recently annoyed the majority in some small way and found a frog in her bed.

Moriko would rather avoid amphibians in her pillow.

A ball slammed into the bush, nearly hitting her elbow. "You're out of bounds, Kochou."

Moriko darted away from the bush, spinning to confront Tomioka. "I'm not. I'm simply close to the bounds."

Tomioka rolled her eyes. "Fine. Are you just going to stay still while I get you out?" She walked toward the ball that was only five feet from Moriko.

Moriko frowned. "I'm not interested with some kind of rivalry with you. Or archenemy status."

Tomioka's eyebrows raised. "You're not my archenemy, Kochou. Not yet." She kept walking. "Did you want to be?"

"I just said I wasn't interested," Moriko said stiffly. She started walking toward the dodgeball as well. She was closer, after all, and she didn't want Tomioka to fling it at her very exposed head. Concussions were difficult to recover from. "You are the one who reacted so poorly when I tried to give you the plunger."

Tomioka's blue eyes flashed. "And you're the one who wouldn't take it back. And yesterday you made sure all the canoes were gone when my cabin got to the lake."

Moriko walked faster. "I was tired of you trying to splash everyone with the paddles."

"You could've just asked me not to."