“Oh, Mr. Shear, rock-band camp was so awesome. I met so many kids, it was incredible. They’re so talented and inspiring, and we’ve all stayed in touch, and we share info and try out new material on one another almost every day. We’re always sending snaps with little clips of us performing, and then we give one another advice. It’s been amazing. I have so many new friends from it!”

“Sierra, that’s wonderful!” said my dad. “That is probably the best you could ever hope for from a camp. I know Allie loves her camp friends as well, but they don’t really stay in touch as much during the year.”

I bristled. “We do too. We snap… sometimes. And we, like, send one another texts… now and then. It’s just… a lot of work to keep up with people you don’t see a lot.”

Sierra smiled at me kindly. “I know. If my campmates weren’t local or into the same stuff as I am, I probably wouldn’t be talking to them all the time either.”

Right.

She continued, “Plus, they’re nothing like the deep relationships you have with your camp friends after all these years, Allie. I mean, my new friends are fun, but they’re new. We don’t have years of history like you do.” She smiled again.

I felt a little better. “Exactly.”

My dad’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and he smiled encouragingly. “Old friends are the best friends.”

“Yes,” I agreed. I had a funny feeling that they were both trying to make me feel better about something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

Sierra and I hopped out of the car near the entrance to the food-truck park, and my dad gave me twenty dollars and told us to have a good time. I had my notebook and a pen to take notes with—I found it smoother to handwrite when I was researching something, rather than typing notes onto my tiny phone screen—and I was determined to get things just right for my first assignment.

It was a warm and clear night with a breeze, and the place was buzzing. All the fairy lights along the fence were twinkling, and the cooking smells of all the delicious foods mingled into one yummy feast for my nose. I sniffed deeply and happily and picked up my pace. Suddenly I was starving.

“Okay, it should be right along here on this side,” I said to Sierra.

“I’m game! I love trying new foods. Ooh, there are a lot of people here tonight, aren’t there? For a Tuesday?”

She was right. As we arrived at the Dirt Treats truck, we realized there was a long line.

“Bummer!” I said. There were probably twenty or thirty people in front of us.