by Meg Cabot
“Why do you let him come back?” I asked.
Pamela sighed. “I realize you wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Shane’s actually extremely gifted.”
”Shane is?”
My astonishment must have shown in my voice, since Pamela nodded vigorously as she said, “Oh, yes, it’s true. The boy is a musical genius. Perfect pitch, you know.”
I just shook my head. “Get out of town.”
“I’m serious. Not to mention the fact that … well, his parents are very … generous with their support.”
Well. That pretty much said it all, didn’t it?
I joined my fellow Birch Trees—and the rest of the camp—around the fire. The first night’s campfire was devoted almost entirely to staff introductions and acquainting the campers with Camp Wawasee’s many rules. All of the musical instructors were paraded out, along with the rest of the camp staff—the counselors, the administrators, the lifeguards, the handymen, the nurse, the cafeteria workers, and so on.
Then we went over the list of rules and regulations: no running; no littering; no one allowed out of the cottages after 10:00 P.M.; no cabin raids; no diving into the lake; no playing of musical instruments outside of the practice rooms (this was a crucial rule, because if everyone tried to practice outside of the soundproof rooms provided for that purpose, the camp would soon sound worse than a traffic jam at rush hour). We learned about how Camp Wawasee was smack in the middle of five hundred acres of federally protected forest, and how, if any one of us went wandering off into this forest, we should pretty much expect never to be heard from again.
On this encouraging note, we were reminded that the mandatory Polar Bear swim commenced at seven in the morning. Then, after a few rounds of Dona Nobis Pacem (hey, it was orchestra camp, after all), we were dismissed for the night.
Shane was at my side the minute I stood up.
“Hey,” he said, rugging on my shirt. “What happens if I get three strikes?”
“You’re out,” I informed him.
“But you can’t throw me out of the camp.” Shane’s freckles—he had quite a lot of them—stood out in the firelight. “You try to do that, my dad’ll sue you.”
See what I meant, about gifted kids’ parents being litigious?
“I’m not going to throw you out of camp,” I said. “But I might throw you out of the cabin.”
Shane glared at me. “Whadduya mean?”
“Make you sleep on the porch,” I said. “Without benefit of air-conditioning.”
Shane laughed. He actually laughed and went, “That’s my punishment? Sleep without air-conditioning?”
He cackled all the way back to the cottage, and accrued another strike when, along the way, he threw a rock—supposedly at a firefly, or so he claimed—which just happened to miss Lionel by only about an inch and ended up hitting Arthur—who took out his feelings on the matter with prompt assertiveness. I, relieved to see that at least one member of Birch Tree Cottage could defend himself against Shane, did nothing to stop the fight.
“Jeez,” Scott said. He and Dave, their own campers having obediently gone on ahead to their cabins—and probably brushed their teeth and tucked themselves in already—paused beside me to observe Shane and Arthur’s wrestling match, which was happening off the lighted path, and in what appeared to be a dense patch of poison ivy. “What’d you ever do to deserve that kid?”
Watching the fight, I shrugged. “Born under an unlucky star, I guess.”
“That kid,” Dave said, watching as Shane tried, unsuccessfully, to grind Arthur’s face into some tree roots, “is just destined to take an Uzi to his homeroom teacher someday.”’
“Maybe I should stop this—” Scott started to step off the path.
I grabbed his arm. “Oh, no,” I said. “Let’s let them get it out of their systems.” Arthur had just gotten the upper hand, and was seated on Shane’s chest.
“Say you’re sorry,” Arthur commanded Shane, “or I’ll bounce up and down until your ribs break.”
Scott and Dave and I, impressed by this threat, looked at one another with raised eyebrows.
“Jess!” Shane wailed.
“Shane,” I said, “if you’re going to throw rocks, you have to be prepared to pay the consequences.”
“But he’s going to kill me!”
“Just like you could have killed him with that rock.”
“He wouldn’t have died from that rock,” Shane howled. “It was a little itty-bitty rock.”
“It could have put his eye out,” I said in my prissiest voice. Scott and Dave both had to turn away, lest the boys catch them laughing.
“When you break a rib,” Arthur informed his quarry, “you can’t breathe from your diaphragm. You know, when you play. Because it hurts so much. Don’t know how you’re going to sustain those whole notes when—”
“GET OFFA ME!” Shane roared.
Arthur scooped up a handful of dirt, apparently with the intention of shoveling it into Shane’s mouth.
“All right, all right,” Shane bellowed. “I’m sorry.”
Arthur let him up. Shane, following him back to the path, gave me a dirty look and said, “Wait until my dad finds out what a sucky counselor you are. He’ll get you fired for sure.”
“Gosh,” I said. “You mean I might have to leave here and never listen to your whining voice again? What a punishment.”
Furious, Shane stormed off toward Birch Tree Cottage. Arthur, chuckling, followed him.
“Jeez,” Scott said again. “You want help putting those guys to bed?”
I knit my brow. “What are you talking about? They’re almost twelve years old. They don’t need to be put to bed.”
He just shook his head.
About half an hour later, I realized what he’d been talking about. It was close to ten, but none of the residents of Birch Tree Cottage were in bed. None of them were even in their pajamas. In fact, they were doing everything but getting ready for bed. Some of them were jumping on the beds. Others were racing around the beds. A few had climbed under their beds, into the cubbies where they were supposed to stash their clothes.
But none of them were actually in the beds.
Somehow, I couldn’t see any of this happening in Frangipani Cottage. Karen Sue Hanky, I was willing to bet, was probably braiding somebody’s hair right now, while somebody else told ghost stories and they all enjoyed a big bowl of buttered popcorn from the utility kitchen.
Popcorn. My stomach rumbled at the thought. I hadn’t had any dinner. I was starving. I was starving, Birch Tree Cottage was out of control, and I still hadn’t had a chance to open that envelope Pamela had given to me to give to Ruth.
Except, of course, that what was inside the envelope was really for me.
It was the idea of the ghost stories that did it, I guess. I couldn’t shriek over the screaming, and I couldn’t catch any of the kids who were racing around, but I could make it a lot harder for them to see. I stalked over to the fuse box and, one by one, threw the switches.
The cottage was plunged into blackness. It’s amazing how dark things can get out in the country. They had switched off the lights along the paths through camp, since everyone was supposed to be in bed, so there wasn’t even any light from outdoors to creep in through the windows—especially since the area we were in was so thickly wooded, not even moonbeams could penetrate the canopy of leaves overhead. I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.
And the other residents of Birch Tree Cottage were suffering from a similar difficulty. I heard several thumps as the runners collided with pieces of furniture, and a number of people shrieked as the lights went out.
Then frightened voices began to call out my name.
“Oops,” I said. “Power outage. There must be a storm somewhere.”
More frightened whimpering.
“I guess,” I said, “we’ll all just have to go to sleep. Because we can’t do anything in the dark.”
It was Shan
e’s voice that rang out scathingly, “There’s no power outage. You turned out the lights.”
Little brat.
“I didn’t,” I said. “Come over here, and try the switch.” I illustrated for them, flicking the switch on and off. The sound was unmistakable. “I guess everybody better get into their pajamas and get into bed.”
There was a good deal of moaning and groaning about how were they supposed to find their pajamas in the dark. There was also some bickering about the fact that they couldn’t brush their teeth in the dark, and what if they got cavities, et cetera. I ignored it. I had found, in the utility kitchen, a flashlight, for use in the event of a real blackout, and I offered to escort whoever wanted to go to the bathroom.
Shane said, “Just give me the flashlight, and I’ll escort everyone,” but I wasn’t falling for that one.
After everyone had done what he needed to do, ablution-wise, I reminded them all about the early morning Polar Bear swim, and that they had better get plenty of sleep, since their first music lessons would begin right after breakfast. The only time they wouldn’t be playing their instruments, in fact, would be at the Polar Bear swim, meals, and a two-hour period from three to five, when lake swims, tennis, baseball, and arts and crafts were allowed. There were nature walks, for those who were so inclined. There even used to be trips to Wolf Cave, a semi-famous cave near the lake—semi-famous because up so far north, caves are almost unheard of, the glaciers having flattened most of upstate Indiana. But of course some stupid camper had gotten himself whacked on the head by a falling stalactite, or something, so now spelunking was no longer listed as one of the activities allowed during the kids’ few short hours of free time.
It seemed to me that for kids, the campers at Lake Wawasee weren’t allowed a whole lot of time to be … well, just kids.
When they were all in their beds, and had sweetly sang out good night to me, I took the flashlight with me into my own room. No sense adjusting the fuse box so that my own light would turn on: they’d just see it, shining out from under the crack in the door, and know I’d lied to them about the power outage. I took off my counselor shirt and shorts, and, in a pair of boxers I’d stolen from Douglas and a tank top, I consumed most of a box of Fiddle Paddle while perusing, by flashlight beam, the contents of the envelope Pamela had given me to give to Ruth.
Dear jess,
I hope this finds you well. Your camp counselor job sounds like a lot of fun.
Yeah, right, I grunted to myself. Of course it sounded like fun … to people who’d never had the displeasure of meeting Shane, anyway. The very feminine cursive went on.
Enclosed please find a photo of Taylor Monroe.
I shined the beam from the flashlight into the envelope and found a color studio portrait—like the kind you would get at Sears, with Sesame Street in the background—of a curly-headed toddler in overalls. OshKosh B’gosh.
Taylor disappeared from a shopping mall two years ago, when he was three years old. His parents are desperate to get him back. The police have no suspects or leads.
Good. A neat and simple kidnapping. Rosemary had done a lot of homework to make sure of this. She only sent me the cases in which she was certain the kid in question actually wanted to be found. It was my only condition for finding the kids: that they really wanted to be found.
Well, that, and maintaining my anonymity, of course.
As always, call if you find him. You know the number.
The letter was signed, Love, Rosemary.
I studied the photo in the beam from my flashlight. Taylor Monroe, I said to myself. Taylor Monroe, where are you?
The door to my room banged open, and I dropped the photo—and the flashlight—in my surprise.
“Hey,” Shane said with interest. “What’s that stuff?”
“Jeez,” I said, scrambling to hide the photo and letter in my sheets. “Ever heard of knocking?”
“Who’s the kid?” Shane wanted to know.
“None of your business.” I found the flashlight and shined it on him. “What do you want?”
Shane’s eyes narrowed, but not just because there was a bright light shining into them. They narrowed with suspicion.
“Hey,” he said. “That’s a picture of a missing kid, isn’t it?”
Well, Pamela had been right about one thing, anyway. Shane was gifted. And not just musically, either, it appeared. The kid was sharp.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? Well, what are you hiding it for, then?”
“Shane.” I couldn’t believe this. “What do you want?”
Shane ignored my question, however.
“You lied,” he said, sounding indignant. “You totally lied. You do still have those powers.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Shane,” I said. “That’s why I’m working here at Camp Wawasee for five bucks an hour. I have psychic powers and all, and could be raking in the bucks finding missing people for the government, but I prefer to hang around here.”
Shane’s only response to my sarcasm was to blink a few times.
“Come off it,” I said sourly. “Okay? Now why are you out of bed?”
The look of dark suspicion didn’t leave Shane’s face, but he did manage to remember his fake excuse for barging in on me, undoubtedly in an effort to catch me sans apparel. He whined, “I want a drink of water.”
“So go get one,” I said, not very nicely.
“I can’t see my way to the bathroom,” he whined some more.
“You found your way here,” I pointed out to him.
“But—”
“Get out, Shane.”
He left, still whining. I fished out Taylor’s photo and Rosemary’s letter. I didn’t feel bad about lying to Shane. Not at all. I’d done it as much to protect Rosemary as myself. After my run-in last spring with the U.S. government, whose ideas about the best way to use my psychic ability had sort of differed from mine, Rosemary, a receptionist who worked at a foundation that helped find missing children, had very generously agreed to help me … um, well, privatize. And we had been working together, undiscovered, ever since.
And I wanted things to stay that way between us: undiscovered. I would not risk revealing our secret even to a whiny almost-twelve-year-old musical genius like Shane.
To be on the safe side, I put away Rosemary’s letter and picked up a copy of Cosmo Ruth had lent me. “10 Ways to Tell He Thinks of You as More Than Just a Friend.” Ooh. Good stuff. I read eagerly, wondering if I’d realize, just from reading this article, that Rob really did like me, only I had simply been too stupid to read the signs.
1. He cooks you dinner on your birthday.
Well, Rob certainly hadn’t done that. But my birthday was in April. He and I hadn’t really started … well, whatever it was we were doing … until May. So that one was no good.
2. He makes an attempt to get along with your girlfriends.
I only have one real friend, and that’s Ruth. She’s barely even met Rob. Well, not really. See, Rob’s from what you might call the wrong side of the tracks. Ruth isn’t a snob … at least, not really … but she definitely wouldn’t approve of me going out with someone who didn’t have college and a career as a professional in his sights.
So much for Number 2.
3. He listens to you when—
I was interrupted by a thump. It was followed immediately by a wail.
Gripping my flashlight, I stalked out of my room.
“All right,” I said, shining the flashlight into one face after another—all of which were very much awake. “What gives?”
When the light from my flashlight reached Lionel’s face, it picked up the tear tracks down his cheeks.
“Why are you crying?” I demanded. But I knew. That thump I heard. Shane was in his bed, some feet away, but his face looked too sweetly innocent for him to not be guilty of something.
But all Lionel would say was, “I am not crying.”
I was sick of it. I
really was. All I wanted to do was read my magazine and go to bed, so I could find Taylor Monroe. Was that so much to ask, after such a long day?
“Fine,” I said, sitting down on the floor, my flashlight shining against the ceiling.
Arthur went, “Uh, Jess? What are you doing?”
“I am going to sit here,” I said, “until you all fall asleep.”
This caused some excited giggling. Don’t ask me why.
There was silence for maybe ten seconds. Then Doo Sun went, “Jess? Do you have any brothers?”
Guardedly, I replied in the affirmative.
“I thought so,” Doo Sun said.
Instantly suspicious, I asked, “Why?”
“You’re wearing boys’ underpants,” Paul pointed out.
I looked down. I’d forgotten about Douglas’s boxers.
“So I am,” I said.
“Jess,” Shane said, in a voice so sugary, I knew he was up to no good.
“What,” I said flatly.
“Are you a lesbian?”
I closed my eyes. I counted to ten. I tried to ignore the giggling from the other beds.
I opened my eyes and said, “No, I am not a lesbian. As a matter of fact, I have a boyfriend.”
“Who?” Arthur wanted to know. “One of those guys I saw you with on the path? One of those other counselors?”
This caused a certain amount of suggestive hooting. I said, “No. My boyfriend would never do anything as geeky as be a camp counselor. My boyfriend rides a Harley and is a car mechanic.”
This caused some appreciative murmuring. Eleven-year-old boys are much more impressed by car mechanics than people like … well, my best friend, Ruth, for instance.
Then … don’t ask me why—maybe I was still thinking about Karen Sue over there in Frangipani Cottage. But suddenly, I launched into this story about Rob, and about how once this guy had brought a car into Wilkins’s Auto that turned out to have a skeleton in the trunk.
It was, of course, a complete fabrication. As I went on about Rob and this car, which turned out to be haunted, on account of the woman who’d been left to suffocate in its trunk, I borrowed liberally from Stephen King, incorporating aspects from both Maximum Overdrive and Christine. These kids were too young, of course, to have read the books, and I doubted their parents had ever let them see the movies.