by Meg Cabot
And then another.
Four squad cars, all headed at breakneck speed in the direction of Camp Wawasee.
I should have known, of course. I should have guessed what was wrong.
But my psychic abilities are limited to finding people, not predicting the future. All I knew was that something was definitely wrong back at the camp … and it wasn’t my psychic powers telling me that, either. It was just plain common sense.
“What,” Rob wanted to know, “have you done now?”
What had I done? I wasn’t sure.
“I have,” I said, “a very bad feeling about this.”
“Come on.” Rob sighed tiredly. “Let’s go find out.”
They didn’t want to let us in at the gate, of course. Rob had no visitor’s pass, and the security guard looked down his nose at my employee ID and went, “Only time counselors are allowed to leave the camp is Sunday afternoons.”
I looked at him like he was crazy. “I know that,” I said. “I snuck out. Now are you going to let me back in, or not?”
You could totally tell the guy, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty, had tried for the local police force and hadn’t made it. So he’d opted to become a security guard, thinking that would give him the authority and respect he’d always yearned for. He sucked on his two overlarge front teeth and, peering at Rob and me, went, ” ‘Fraid not. There’s a bit of a problem up at the camp, you know, and—”
I put down the face shield of my helmet and said to Rob, “Let’s go.”
Rob said to the security guard, “Nice talkin’ to ya.”
Then he gunned the engine, and we went around the red-and-white barrier arm, churning up quite a bit of dust and gravel as we did so. What did it matter? I couldn’t get more fired than I already was.
The security guard came out of his little house and started yelling, but there wasn’t much he could do to make us turn around. It wasn’t like he had a gun, or anything.
Not that guns had ever stopped us before, of course.
As we drove up the long gravel road to the camp, I noticed how still and cool the woods were, especially with the coming rainstorm. The sky above us was clouding up more with every passing moment. You could smell the rain in the air, fresh and sweet.
Of course it wasn’t until I was about to be kicked out of there that I’d finally begun to appreciate Camp Wawasee. It was too bad, really. I’d never even gotten a chance to float around the lake on an inner tube.
When we pulled up to the administrative offices, I was surprised at how many people were milling around. The squad cars were parked kind of haphazardly, and there was no sign of the cops who’d been driving them. They must, I figured, be inside, talking to Dr. Alistair, Pamela, and Ms. John Wayne.
But there were campers and counselors aplenty, which I thought was a little weird. If there’d been some sort of accident or crisis, you’d have thought they’d have tried to keep it from the kids… .
… And that’s when I realized that they couldn’t have kept it from the kids, even if they’d wanted to. It was five-thirty, and the kids and their counselors were streaming into the dining hall for supper. The dining staff prepared meals at exactly the same time every day, crisis or no crisis.
All of the kids were staring curiously at the squad cars. When they noticed Rob and me, they looked even more curious, and began whispering to one another. Oddly enough, I saw no members of Birch Tree Cottage in the crowds… .
But I saw a lot of other people I knew, including Ruth and Scott, who made no move whatsoever to approach me.
That’s when I realized I still had my helmet on. Of course no one was saying hi. No one recognized me. As soon as I’d dragged the heavy thing off, Ruth came right over, and, as Rob pulled his helmet off as well, said, very sarcastically, “Well, I see you managed to find that ride you were looking for.”
I shot her a warning look. Ruth can really be very snotty when she puts her mind to it.
“Ruth,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever formally introduced you to my friend, Rob. Ruth Abramowitz, this is Rob Wilkins. Rob, Ruth.”
Rob nodded curtly to Ruth. “How you doing,” he said.
Ruth smiled at him. It was not her best effort, by any means.
“I’m doing very well, thank you,” she said primly. “And you?”
Rob, his eyebrows raised, said, “I’m good.”
“Ruth.” One of the residents of Tulip Tree Cottage pulled on Ruth’s T-shirt. “I’m hungry. Can we go in now?”
Ruth turned and said to her campers, “You all go in now, and save a place for me. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The kids went away, with many glances not only at me and Rob, but at the squad cars. “What are the police doing here?” more than one of them asked loudly of no one in particular.
“Good question,” I said to Ruth. “What are the police doing here?”
“I don’t know.” Ruth was still looking at Rob. She had seen him before, of course, back when he and I had had detention together. Ruth used to come pick me up, so my parents wouldn’t find out about my somewhat checkered disciplinary record.
But I guess this was the first time she’d ever seen Rob from close up, and I could tell she was memorizing the details for later analysis. Ruth’s like that.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I demanded. “The place is crawling with cops, and you don’t know why?”
Ruth finally wrenched her gaze from Rob and fastened it onto me instead.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know. All I know is, we were down at the lake, having free swim and all, and the lifeguard blew his whistle and made us all go back inside.”
“We thought it was on account of the storm,” Scott said, nodding toward the still-darkening sky above us.
It was at this point that Karen Sue Hanky strolled up to us. I could tell by the expression on her pointy rat face that she had something important to tell us … and by the unnatural glitter in her baby-blue eyes, I knew it was something I wasn’t going to like.
“Oh,” she said, pretending she had only just noticed me. “I see you’ve decided to join us again.” She glanced flirtatiously at Rob. “And brought along a friend, I see.”
Even though Karen Sue had gone to school with Rob, she didn’t recognize him. Girls like Karen Sue simply don’t notice guys like Rob. I suppose she thought he was just some random local I’d picked up off the highway and brought back to camp for some recreational groping.
“Karen Sue,” I said, “you better hurry and get into the dining hall. I heard a rumor they were running low on wheatgrass juice.”
She just smiled at me, which wasn’t a very good sign.
“Aren’t you funny,” Karen Sue said. “But then I suppose it’s very amusing to you, what’s going on. On account of it all being because of you telling that one little boy to hit that other little boy.” Karen Sue flicked some of her hair back over her shoulder and sighed. “Well, I guess it just goes to show, violence doesn’t pay.”
Overhead, the clouds had gotten so thick, the sun was blocked out almost entirely. Inside the dining hall, the lights had come on, though this usually didn’t happen until seven or eight o’clock, when the cleaning crew was at work. In the distance, thunder rumbled. The smell of ozone was heavy in the air.
I stepped forward until Karen Sue’s upturned nose was just an inch from mine, and she stumbled back a step, tripping over a root and nearly falling flat on her face.
When she straightened, I asked her just what the heck she was talking about.
Only I didn’t say heck.
Karen Sue started talking very quickly, and in a voice that was higher in pitch than usual.
“Well, I just went into the administrative offices for a second because I had to make sure the fax from Amber’s doctor had come—about how her chronic ear infections prevent her from taking part in the Polar Bear swim—and I just happened to overhear the police talking to Dr. Alistair about how
one of the boys from Birch Tree Cottage went to the lake, but no one saw him come out of it—”
I reached out and grabbed a handful of Karen Sue’s shirt, on account of how she was slowly backing farther and farther away from me.
“Who?” I demanded. Even though it was still about seventy-five degrees, in spite of the coming rainstorm, my skin was prickly with goose bumps. “Who went into the lake and didn’t come out of it?”
“That one you were always yelling at,” Karen Sue said. “Shane. Jessica, while you were gone”—she shook her head—“Shane drowned.”
C H A P T E R
13
Thunder rumbled again, much closer this time. Now the hair on my arms was standing up not because I was cold, but because of all the electricity in the air.
I grabbed hold of Karen Sue’s shirt with my other hand as well, and dragged her toward me. “What do you mean, drowned?”
“Just what I said.” Karen Sue’s voice was higher than ever. “Jess, he went into the lake and he never came out—”
“Bull,” I said. “That’s bull, Karen. Shane’s a good swimmer.”
“Well, when they blew the whistle for everyone to get out,” Karen Sue said, her tone starting to sound a little hysterical, “Shane never came onto shore.”
“Then he never went into the water in the first place,” I hissed from between gritted teeth.
“Maybe,” Karen Sue said. “And maybe if you’d been here, doing your job, and hadn’t gone off with your boyfriend”—she sneered in Rob’s direction— “you’d know.”
Everything, the trees, the cloudy sky, the path, everything, seemed to be spinning around. It was like that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up in the tornado. Except that I was the only thing standing still.
“I don’t believe you,” I said again. I shook Karen Sue hard enough to make her pink headband snap off and go flying through the air. “You’re lying. I ought to smash your face in, you—”
“All right.” Suddenly, the world stopped spinning, and Rob was there, prying my fingers off Karen Sue’s shirt. “All right, Mastriani, that’s enough.”
“You’re lying,” I said to Karen Sue. “You’re a liar, and everyone knows it.”
Karen Sue, white-faced and shaking, bent down, picked up her headband, and pushed it shakily back into place. There were some dead leaves stuck to it, but she apparently didn’t notice.
I really wanted to jump her, knock her to the ground, and grind her rat face into the dirt. Only I couldn’t get at her, because Rob had me around the waist, and wouldn’t let go, no matter how hard I struggled to get away. If Mr. Goodhart had been there, he’d have been way disappointed in me. I seemed to have forgotten all the anger-management skills he’d taught me.
“You know what else, Karen Sue?” I shouted. “You can’t play flute for squat! They weren’t even going to let you in here, with your lousy five out of ten on your performance score, except that Andrew Shippinger came down with mono, and they were desperate—”
“Okay,” Rob said, lifting me up off my feet. “That’s enough of that.”
“That was supposed to be my cabin,” I yelled at her, from over Rob’s shoulder. “The Frangipanis were supposed to be mine!”
Rob had turned me around so that I was facing Ruth. She took one look at me and went, “Jess. Cool it.”
I said fiercely, “He’s not dead. He’s not.”
Ruth blinked, then looked from me to Scott and back again. I looked at them, too, and realized from the way they were staring at me that something weird was going on with my face. I reached up to touch it, and felt wetness.
Great. I was crying. I was crying, and I hadn’t even noticed.
“She’s lying,” I said one last time, but not very loudly.
Rob must have decided the fight had gone out of me, since he put me down—though he kept one hand glued to the back of my neck—and said, “There’s one way to find out, isn’t there?”
He nodded toward the administrative offices. I wiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands and said, “Okay.”
Ruth insisted on following Rob and me, and Scott, to my surprise, insisted on coming with her. It sunk into my numbed consciousness that there was something going on there, but I was too worried about Shane to figure it out just then. I’d think about it later. When we stepped into the building, the John Wayne look-alike secretary stood up and said, “Kids, they still don’t know anything yet. I know you’re worried, but if you could just stay with your campers—”
“Shane is my camper,” I said.
The woman’s thick eyebrows went up. She stared at me, apparently uncertain as to how best to reply.
I helped her out.
“Where are they?” I demanded, striding past her and down the hall. “Dr. Alistair’s office?”
The secretary, scrambling out from behind her desk, went, “Oh, wait. You can’t go back there—”
But it was too late. I’d already turned the corner and reached the door marked “Camp Director.” I threw it open. Behind a wide desk sat the white-haired, red-faced Dr. Alistair. In various chairs and couches around his office sat Pamela, two state troopers, a sheriff’s deputy, and the sheriff of Wawasee County himself.
“Jess.” Pamela jumped to her feet. “There you are. Oh, thank God. We couldn’t find you anywhere. And Dr. Alistair said you didn’t show up for a meeting with him this afternoon—”
I looked at Pamela. What was she playing at? She, of all people, should have known where I was. Hadn’t Jonathan Herzberg called and told her all about my returning his daughter to him?
I didn’t think this was an appropriate time to bring that up, however. I said, “I was unavoidably detained. Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Dr. Alistair stood up. He didn’t look like a world-famous conductor anymore, or even a camp director. Instead, he looked like a frail old man, though he couldn’t have been more than sixty years old.
“What’s going on?” he echoed. “What’s going on? You mean to say you don’t know? Aren’t you the famous psychic? How could you not know, with your special, magic powers? Hmm, Miss Mastriani?”
I glanced from Dr. Alistair to Pamela and back again. Had she told him? I supposed she must have.
But the astonished look on her face implied that she had not.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on, young lady,” Dr. Alistair said, “since your psychic powers seem to be failing you at the moment. One of our campers is missing. Not just any camper, but one of the boys assigned to your care. Ostensibly, he’s drowned. For the first time in our fifty-year history, we’ve had a death here at the camp.”
I flinched as if he’d hit me. Not because of what he’d said, though that was bad enough. No, it was what he hadn’t said, the thing that was implied in his tone:
That it was all my fault.
“But I’m surprised you didn’t know that already.” Dr. Alistair’s tone was mocking. “Lightning Girl.”
“Now, Hal,” the sheriff said in a gruff voice. “Why don’t we just calm down here? We don’t know that for sure. We don’t have a body yet.”
“The last time anyone saw him alive, he was on the way to the lake with the rest of his cabin. He isn’t anywhere on the campgrounds. The boy’s dead, I tell you. And it’s entirely our fault! If his counselor had been there to keep an eye on him, it wouldn’t have happened.”
My throat was dry. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. Outside, lightning flashed, followed almost immediately by a long roll of thunder.
Then the heavens unloosed. Rain beat against the windows behind Dr. Alistair’s desk. One of the state troopers, looking out at the downpour, said, in a morose voice, “Gonna be hard to drag that lake now.”
Drag the lake? Drag the lake?
“Wasn’t there a lifeguard?”
Rob. Rob was trying to help. Rob was trying to deflect some of the blame from me. Sweet of him, of course, but a useless effort. It was my fault. If I’d
been there, Shane never would have drowned. I wouldn’t have let him.
“It seems to me,” Rob said reasonably, “if the kid was swimming, there ought to have been a lifeguard. Wouldn’t the lifeguard have noticed someone drowning on his watch?”
Dr. Alistair squinted at him through the lenses of his bifocals. “Who,” he demanded, “are you?” Then he spied Ruth and Scott in the doorway. “What is this?” he demanded. “Who are you people? This is my private office. Get out.”
None of them moved, although Ruth looked like she really wanted to run somewhere far away. Somewhere where there weren’t any sheriff deputies or angry camp directors. It was just like the time her brother Skip had been stung by the bee, only instead of someone going into anaphylactic shock, someone—namely me—was dying a slower death … of guilt.
“Well,” Rob said. “Wasn’t there a lifeguard?”
The sheriff said, “There was. He didn’t notice anything unusual.”
“That’s because,” I said, more to myself than anyone else, “Shane never went into the water.” It wasn’t something I knew with any certainty. Just something I suspected.
But that didn’t stop Dr. Alistair from looking at me from behind his wire-rimmed glasses and demanding, “And I suppose, since you weren’t there, you’re able to tell that using your special powers?”
It was at this point that Rob took a step toward Dr. Alistair’s desk. The sheriff put out a hand, however, and said, “Easy, son.” Then, to Dr. Alistair, he said, “Just what are you talking about, Hal?”
“Oh, you don’t recognize her?” Dr. Alistair looked prim. I wondered if maybe losing a camper had sent him around the bend. He’d never been one of the most stable people, anyway, if his erratic behavior during all-camp rehearsal had been any indication: Dr. Alistair frequently became so enraged with the horn section, he threw his conducting baton at them, only missing because they’d learned to duck.
“Jessica Mastriani,” he went on, “the girl with the psychic power to find missing people. Of course it’s a little late for her help now, isn’t it? Considering the fact that the boy’s already dead.”