I actually really like this camp, even though I miss Delilah and my friends from Sweetwater. I performed in a karaoke competition with three other girls yesterday, and we got second place. The other day at breakfast, the Porcupines caught their counselor with both his elbows on the table while we were eating, which meant he had to stand on a chair and kiss the taxidermy moose head right on the lips. He did it, and a little piece of the fur came off IN HIS MOUTH. It was sooooo hilarious.
Miss you! Let me know if you can send the coat. Val says she’ll let me check my e-mail again tomorrow.
Love,
Izzy
CHAPTER 12
I find Mackenzie in the mess hall after breakfast the next morning so we can walk to Archery together. “The Willows love the new prank idea,” I murmur to her as we head across the soccer field. “And they totally thought that letter was from Tomás. You did a really good job. I think that’s exactly what his handwriting would look like, if he existed.”
Mackenzie smiles. “Thanks. I spent a lot of time practicing.”
I pull a new letter out of my pocket and slip it to her. “They wrote this yesterday during Cabin Group,” I say. “I figure if you give me a reply on Monday or Tuesday, that’ll seem realistic. Sound okay to you?”
“Probably. I’ll try.”
“Lexi wrote this one, too. Sorry about the way she dots her i’s with little hearts. I know it drives you nuts when people do that.”
Mackenzie wrinkles her nose. “How are you friends with those girls?”
It’s weird that she’s getting on my case about people she doesn’t even know. It’s not like I’m giving her a hard time about Lauren. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“I just . . . it doesn’t seem like they have anything in common with us.”
“Of course they do. They like pranks and swimming and stuff. Plus, they’re nice. They like me.”
“They seem . . . a little selfish,” Mackenzie says.
“What? No they’re not. Why would you say that?”
“I mean, they basically forced you to participate in that dumb karaoke competition. They didn’t even ask if you wanted to do it.”
“I did want to,” I say. “It was fun. I’m glad they asked me.”
“All right, if you say so.”
Mackenzie’s probably jealous because making new friends is easier for me than it is for her, but I can’t exactly say that. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “You don’t have to be friends with them.”
“Yeah, I guess I don’t.” She shoves the letter I gave her into her back pocket. “Anyway, do you want to go swimming during Free Time today, now that you’re actually free again? They got a bunch of new inflatable rafts.”
“Um,” I say. “I do want to, but I kind of promised the Willows I’d start prepping for the new prank with them. We want to get back at the Wolverines as soon as possible.”
“Oh,” Mackenzie says. It’s weird how surprised she sounds; she’s the one who came up with this idea, and she of all people should know how much work it’s going to take.
“Maybe you could come to our cabin and help? There may not be much for you to do, but the Willows probably won’t mind if you’re there.”
Mackenzie toys with the earpiece of her glasses. “No, that’s okay. I really feel like swimming. I think I’ll see if Lauren wants to go with me.”
I’m pretty sure my best friend has never turned down an opportunity to hang out with me, and it stings a little, but I try not to let it show. “Oh, okay,” I say. “I guess you helping us might be kind of awkward, anyway.”
“Probably.”
A weird silence stretches between us for a few seconds, and then I say, “But you’ll still write a new letter from Tomás, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Mackenzie says. “Whatever you want.”
This whole conversation feels icky and wrong to me, and I’m relieved to see the archery range coming into view. “Your new prank is seriously amazing,” I say. “I wish I could tell everyone it’s yours, and I’m sorry we can’t do it together. But seeing the prank succeed is the good part, right? So it’ll all be worth it when the Wolverines totally freak out.”
“Right, yeah,” Mackenzie says.
She’s the one who said that in the first place, but it doesn’t seem like she believes it anymore.
* * *
As if to prove my point about how unselfish they are, Roo, Lexi, and Ava totally step back during the preparations for our new prank. None of them are that great at arts and crafts, and they suggest that Hannah, Bailey, and Petra take the lead. I want to be at the very center of the action again, but I try to follow Roo’s example, even if it means I probably won’t be the one who gets to wear the FOXY shirt this time. I comfort myself with the fact that I still get to walk from Sailing to the cabin with Val every afternoon, my tongue stained Popsicle-red.
It’s pretty weird to see Bailey do anything without Hope glued to her side, but it turns out she’s a talented artist, and she builds most of the frame for the prop we need out of chicken wire and cotton batting. The moment we leave for dinner each night, BaileyAndHope snap back together like magnets, and I want to point them out to Mackenzie and say, See? People can do different things for a few hours and still be best friends.
A package arrives from my mom on Thursday. Summer’s doing mail call, and she brings it to me during Cabin Group. Inside is the beige faux-fur coat I asked for, a few more drawings from my sister, a striped shirt I forgot to pack, and a Ouija board with a card taped to it; I recognize my aunt Estella’s loopy script on the front. I’m about to pull out the shrink-wrapped box and show it off to everyone, but Mei shoves it back down into the package before I can.
“Don’t let Val see that,” she whispers. “There was an incident in Poplar last year, and now we’re not allowed to have them.”
“What kind of incident?”
“This girl cut off another girl’s hair in the middle of the night and blamed it on a ghost.”
“Oh, wow,” I say. “Okay. Thanks for the warning.”
She gives me a conspiratorial smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll totally still use it. We just have to keep it secret.”
As I’m covering the board with the shirt, a small envelope with my grandma’s spidery handwriting falls out of the sleeve. Inside, tucked into a flowery greeting card that says Una nieta es la rosa más dulce—a granddaughter is the sweetest rose—is a photo of the actor who plays Juan Carlos on her favorite telenovela. On the last episode we watched before I left, he ran into a burning building to save a man he thought was his brother, but it turned out to be his enemy in disguise. As I requested, the actor’s wearing normal clothes in the pictures. If I didn’t know any better, I might think he was a supercute regular person instead of a TV star. I pray nobody else in my cabin has ever seen Corazón de Hielo, Alma de Fuego, but I’m pretty sure I’m safe. Only my Mexican friends at home have even heard of it, and most of them aren’t allowed to watch it because it gets kind of racy sometimes.
Lexi comes up next to me and peers over my shoulder, and when she sees what I’m holding, she squeals like a tea kettle that’s about to explode. “Is that Tomás? Omigod, let me see!” She grabs the picture out of my hand, and her eyes get huge. “He looks like a movie star! How did you not tell us he was this cute?”
I squirm. “I don’t know. He looks normal to me.”
The girls all crowd around to study the photo. “This man is not normal,” Petra declares. “This man is superhuman.”
“These are really professional,” Roo says. “Is this, like, his headshot or something?”
“Yeah,” I say, glad for an excuse. “He’s been in a couple of commercials.”
Val leans over Lexi’s shoulder to look. “Oh, wow,” she says. “He is cute. He looks familiar. Did he do a Verizon commercial last year?”
“Yeah, I think that was one of them.” I really hope she doesn’t suggest we go to the main office and look it up.
&nb
sp; “Does he have a girlfriend?” Lexi breathes.
“He’s dating, like, six different girls,” I say. “He’s a total player.”
Lexi stares at the photo and sighs. I half expect her pupils to turn into cartoon hearts. “Can I keep this and hang it over my bunk?”
The idea of Lexi keeping the picture makes me nervous—for all I know, she might decide to carry it around to her activities, and someone else at camp might recognize the actor and bust me. “Eew, no,” I say. “He’s my brother. That’s disgusting.”
Lexi sticks out her lower lip. “It’s not! He’s not my brother.”
“I know. But it’s weird and gross to see you guys drooling over him. Just ask me if you want to see the picture again and I’ll show you, okay?”
“Fiiiiine.” Lexi gives the photo a dramatic kiss before she reluctantly hands it back, and everyone laughs. I tuck it into my drawer, and then I distract everyone by steering the conversation back to our prank.
Over the next two days, Hannah and Petra cut the fake-fur coat into pieces and sew it over the frame Bailey made like a skin. It’s amazing to watch them work; I can barely sew on a button. When the construction part is finally done, Bailey adds some details with paint, and then we all crowd around to look at the finished product.
There on the floor sits the back half of a mountain lion, exactly like Mackenzie and I pictured. The coat is the perfect color for the fur, and the bone structure and pads on the feet are so realistic that I almost expect the end of its bottlebrush tail to twitch. It’s absolutely perfect.
“Wow,” I say. “This is fifty times better than anything I could’ve made. You guys did such a great job.”
Bailey smiles and blushes. “Thanks,” she says. “It was a really great idea.”
Hannah lets out one of her evil giggles. “The Wolverines are going to pee their pants,” she says quietly, and everyone cracks up.
“So, who wants to be in charge of putting it in place later tonight during the campfire?” Val asks. She looks at Bailey, Petra, and Hannah. “You girls made it. You want to do the honors?”
Hannah shakes her head violently, and Bailey says, “I don’t really want to miss the campfire, if that’s okay.”
“Me neither,” says Petra.
“Izzy and I can do it,” Roo says.
I feel like I should be annoyed that she’s volunteering me without asking, but I do really want to put the mountain lion in place, and now I don’t have to look greedy by volunteering myself. “Yeah, I’m happy to do it,” I say.
“Perfect,” Val says. “You girls are seriously the fiercest, most talented group. I’m not saying Tomás hasn’t been a huge help, but you could definitely win this prank war without him.”
“Down with Public Enemy Number One!” I shout, and everyone cheers.
We hide our creation on the back porch under a paint-spattered tarp we swiped from the Arts and Crafts lodge, and then we head to dinner. I detour past the Maple table on the way to ours and sidle up to Mackenzie, who’s chattering away with Lauren.
“The crow flies at midnight,” I say quietly.
Mackenzie glances up at me. “Cool, okay.”
She’s smiling and everything, but she doesn’t look particularly excited, and I wonder if maybe she didn’t hear me. “You know what that means, right?”
Her smile fades, and a crease appears between her eyebrows. “Yeah, of course.”
“Oh, okay. I wasn’t sure if . . . okay.” I can’t really bring up anything more specific in front of Lauren, so I just say, “I’ll see you later, then.”
“Good luck,” she says, and then she turns right back to her new friend.
“Good luck with what?” I hear Lauren ask as I head back to the Willow table.
“Nothing,” Mackenzie answers. At least she’s not letting Lauren in on our secrets. Yet.
The campfire starts as the sun begins to go down, and all two hundred of us gather and sit on the huge concentric circles of logs arranged around the fire pit. Roo and I sit in the outermost ring so it’ll be easy to slip away. As we planned, we wait until it’s completely dark, and then we get up and tell Val we’re “going to the bathroom.” Weirdly, she’s sitting next to Stuart, who’s holding a guitar by its neck like it’s a strangled chicken—he hasn’t actually played it all night, and I wonder if he even knows how. Maybe he thinks holding it makes him look cool. For a second I can’t figure out why Val would get this close to him on purpose, but when she winks at me, I realize she’s trying to keep him distracted while we execute our plan. I try to wink back, but I’m not very good at it, so it’s more like a blink.
Roo and I jog across the soccer field by the light of a small flashlight, slip into Willow Lodge, and free the mountain lion butt from its tarp. Once we’ve got it, it’s too risky to turn on our light again, so we carry it across the field in the dark. Roo does a perimeter check around the Wolverines’ cabin, and when we’re positive we’re alone, we shove our creation under the three wooden steps that lead up to the door. In the pale light of the moon it totally looks like a real, live animal is sleeping under there. Roo and I quietly high-five, and then we return to the campfire, where everyone is in the middle of a rousing rendition of “Alice the Camel Has Ten Humps.” It’s hard to keep the goofy, excited smile off my face.
The campfire ends half an hour later, and flashlight beams crisscross the dark field as everyone heads back to their cabins. I walk with Roo and Lexi and Val, and we make an effort to stay right behind Stuart and the boys. I want to look for Mackenzie, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself by craning my neck all around, so I just have to trust that she’s watching.
Beans is the first to reach Wolverine Lodge, and when he spots the mountain lion legs, he gasps and bolts back toward Stuart. I’m actually pretty impressed; I think I would have screamed.
“There’s something under the stairs,” he hisses. “An animal. It’s huge.”
“You’re a huge animal,” Stuart retorts.
“No, dude, I’m serious. There’s something under there.” Behind his glasses, Beans’s eyes are enormous.
Stuart’s smirk falters a little. “What kind of animal?”
“It has a tail like a cat. A mountain lion, maybe?”
“I don’t think there are mountain lions in Michigan anymore,” Stuart says.
“Um, I’m pretty sure there are. Can you just come look at it?”
“Fine.” Stuart approaches the cabin quietly, holding his flashlight high, and when the light hits the legs and tail, he freezes. For a second, I think he’s figured out the mountain lion isn’t real, but then he backs away.
“Counselors,” he calls, and for once it doesn’t sound like he’s making a goofy joke. “We have a large wildlife alert. Get your campers away from Wolverine Lodge and inside your cabins with the doors shut immediately.”
The counselors start herding terrified-excited kids toward the safety of their cabins, and Stuart turns to Val. “Can you take my boys to the Social Lodge? I need to call Animal Control and find Doobie.”
Val nods seriously. “Of course. Willows, get inside and shut the door, quick quick quick. Wolverines, follow me.”
We skitter into our cabin, and the second the door closes behind us, we all start laughing and talking at once. Lexi throws her arms around me. “This is going perfectly! Tomás is going to be so impressed! I can’t wait to write him another letter tomorrow!”
Poor Mackenzie; she’s going to have so much mail to answer.
The window by Lexi’s and Petra’s bunks has the best view of Wolverine Lodge across the field, and we all squeeze onto the beds and press our noses against the screens. But nothing interesting happens for a really long time, and eventually everyone starts to get antsy. BaileyAndHope move onto the floor and start a card game, and Petra picks up a magazine. I want take charge of the group, to keep this moment magical and exciting, but I don’t know what to say to make that happen. Val would know. I wish so badly that she w
ere here with us right now instead of in the Social Lodge with the stupid Wolverines.
Finally, after what feels like forever, Lexi hisses, “Someone’s there!” and we all pile onto the beds again. Stuart’s back, and in the light spilling from the windows of the boys’ cabin, we can see that he’s with Doobie (who’s in pajamas) and two guys in uniforms. Both of them have guns, and seeing them sends a shiver up my spine.
“Are those cops?” asks Summer. “Are we going to get in trouble?”
“Those are forest ranger uniforms,” Petra says. “My uncle’s a ranger.”
“So they can’t get us in trouble?”
“Shh,” Roo hisses. “I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
Everyone shuts up, but we’re too far away to hear more than an indistinct murmur of voices. Stuart points at the steps, and the rangers gesture for him and Doobie to back up. Then one of them raises his gun.
“Are they going to shoot it?” gasps Lexi.
“It’s probably a tranquilizer dart,” says Petra. “They wouldn’t want to kill the mountain lion. I think they’re endangered.”
The ranger shoots his dart gun twice. Then he pauses for a minute, and when the mountain lion doesn’t move (obviously), he approaches the cabin. He squats down in front of the stairs with his flashlight, then gestures for his partner to come over and look. The other guy checks out the situation and starts laughing.
“Oh man,” I whisper. This is going to be so good.
The rangers stand up, and one of them reaches under the stairs and drags our creation out into the open. As he picks it up by its tail and holds it out for Doobie and Stuart to inspect, some of the stitches pop free, and the tail separates from the body. The way the legs and butt bounce when they hit the ground makes all ten of us scream with laughter, and I’m pretty sure Stuart hears us, because he looks straight across the field at our cabin. Then he shouts a whole stream of words I’m not allowed to say, which only makes us laugh harder. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many curse words in a row, including when my dad dropped a printer on his bare foot and broke two of his toes.
Willows vs. Wolverines Page 10