by Julie Bowe
“It’s true,” I say.
Emillie tilts her head and looks at me. “What’s true?”
“There really is a Meadowlark Monster,” I reply. Then I glance at Nat. “Two, actually. I’m looking at them right now.”
Nat glares at me.
Emillie sneers.
Liz steps up and takes my hand. “Figaro,” she sings.
Emillie shifts her eyes to Liz. “Huh?”
“Figaro,” Liz sings again, louder. “It’s opera. Monsters hate it.”
Jenna grins. Grabs Liz’s other hand. “Figaro!”
Stacey, Randi, Meeka, and Jolene grab hands too. We tip our chins to the bright blue sky. And belt it out like divas.
“Figaro…Figaro…Figarooooooo!”
Nat shakes her head when we’re done. “Weirdos,” she says.
“Freaks,” Emillie chimes in.
“Takes one to know one,” Randi replies.
Then we sing the song again.
Louder.
All the way back to Chickadee.
We’re laughing and chattering like chipmunks when we get inside. But as soon as we see Brooke, we go quiet as sock monkeys.
She’s lying on her bottom bunk, sobbing into a pillow that has no pillowcase. Crumpled, like the clothes that are heaped around her. Empty, like the backpack that’s fallen to the floor.
She’s crying so hard no sound comes out. Her shoulders shake and the bunk creaks.
“This is bad,” Randi whispers.
“The baddest,” Stacey adds.
“What should we do?” Jolene asks.
No one has an answer. Not even Jenna. So we just stand there. Shuffling our feet. Glancing around. Letting Brooke cry. Because, sometimes, that’s all you can do for a friend.
Then something catches my eye.
A monkey tail dangling from my sleeping bag.
I run over.
Grab George.
Hold him out to Brooke.
She hauls him in.
Then Meeka darts to her bunk and pulls something out from her sleeping bag. A moment later, Brooke’s got a pink horse with a rainbow tail in the crook of her arm.
Jolene offers a plaid elephant.
Stacey, a teddy bear.
Randi, a frumpy tiger.
Liz, a floppy-eared dog that looks exactly like old Champ.
Even Jenna goes to her bunk and comes back with a bright green beanbag frog. A note is tied to its leg.
Get me a frog!
Love, Rachel
“I told you not to trust them,” Jenna says, setting the frog by Brooke. “If you had just listen—”
“Zip it, Jenna,” Randi cuts in. “What’s done is done.”
Jenna stops talking.
“If L-L-Liz had done her j-j-job,” Brooke stammers through her tears, “we wouldn’t have gotten c-c-caught. Then we could have found Nat and Emillie and n-n-none of this would have happened!”
Liz’s eyes go almost as wide as her glasses. “Don’t blame me! I didn’t make those losers steal your candy!”
Brooke shoots up from the bunk. Clothes fly. Stuffed animals tumble.
She glares at Liz, her hair matted and her face streaked with tears. “The only loser here is you, Lizbutt!”
“Brooke—!” we all shout. Trust me, our voices don’t sound one bit huggy-huggy.
Brooke’s eyes dart to each of us, like they’re looking for a safe place to land. “If she…if we…if I…”
We all cross our arms and do laser eyes at her.
Brooke’s lips start trembling again. Her eyes brighten with fresh tears.
She slumps back down. “I’m s-s-sorry,” she says. “Nat and Emillie aren’t my friends. You guys are.”
We huddle around her.
The camp bell rings.
“Weeding time,” Jenna says, checking her watch.
“Alex will be back any second,” Meeka adds, giving Brooke a sideways hug.
Randi looks around the room. So do I. Animals and clothes are scattered at our feet. Suitcases left open. Brooms dropped, crisscross-applesauce.
“Bye-bye Silver Paddle,” Randi says. “This place is a mess.”
“I’m a mess,” Brooke says, smoothing back her tangled hair.
“So what,” I say, slinging an arm around Brooke’s shoulders. “I’d rather have messy friends than a clean cabin any day.”
Everyone nods.
Brooke gives us a smile. Then she sees the empty backpack that’s lying on the floor. She sighs. “All that candy. Gone to waste.”
“Not all of it,” Liz says, reaching into her hoodie pocket. She pulls out the sucker Brooke gave her last night.
Brooke sniffles. “One sucker, eight girls?”
Liz smiles. “One is plenty.” She unwraps the sucker and takes a lick. “Mmm…blue. My favorite flavor.”
She offers the sucker to Brooke.
Brooke sniffles again. “You’re joking, right?”
Liz shakes her head. “I never joke about blue suckers.”
Brooke hesitates. But then she takes the sucker and licks it too.
Then Stacey.
Then Randi.
Then Meeka and Jolene.
Then me.
I hold it out to Jenna.
She wrinkles her nose. “This is totally unsanitary.”
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” I reply.
“Right,” Randi says, nodding. “Voluntary licking.”
Jenna studies the sucker. Looks at all of us.
Then she takes it.
Squeezes her eyes shut.
And sticks it in her mouth.
We applaud.
And pass the sucker around again.
And again.
And again.
Until we all have matching blue smiles.
The door creaks open. Alex steps in.
Liz snatches the sucker, wraps it up, and tucks it back in her pocket.
We hide our lips.
“Ready for weeding?” Alex asks.
“Mmm-hmm,” we all reply.
No one is in a hurry to get to the garden. We’re not big fans of weeding. Alex already went ahead to the crafts cottage. Pete is going to supervise our work.
“Hey, Chickadees! Wait up!” someone shouts from behind us as we head down the path past the girls’ cabins.
We look back.
Nat and Emillie wave.
We keep walking.
“Give us a chance to explain,” Nat says, falling into step with us a moment later. “We were just joking around earlier.”
“That’s right,” Emillie says, draping her long, tan arm around Brooke’s shoulders like they’re old pals. “We still have your candy. In fact, if you have more, we could meet up tonight and have a real party!”
Nat nods excitedly. “That would be a total blast!” She twirls a curl and gives us her sweetest smile. “Do you? Have more candy?”
Brooke squirms out from under Emillie’s arm. She plants her purple sandals and punches her fists into her hips. “If we did have more, we wouldn’t share it with you.”
Emillie makes her face go all shocked. “But Babs, I thought we were friends.”
Brooke crosses her arms. “So did I.”
Liz nudges in. “Wait, Brooke. Don’t be such a meanie. We did save some candy…remember?”
Liz reaches into her pocket and pulls out the blue sucker.
Our eyes go wide. We suck in our lips.
Brooke studies the sucker for a moment. Then she makes her face go very smooth and flicks back her messy hair.
“Silly me,” she says, turning to Nat and Emillie. “I forgot. Liz saved some. Help yourself.”
Liz holds the sucker out to Emillie.
Emillie eyes it suspiciously.
We all wait anxiously.
Then, just when I’m sure she won’t fall for it, Emillie takes the sucker.
“That’s more like it,” she says, tossing the wrapper aside. She pops the sucker
into her mouth and rolls it around with her tongue. “Mmm, I love this flavor.”
I nod. “Us too.”
Nat budges in. “Hey, what about me?” She eyes Liz’s hoodie. “I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
Liz pats her empty pockets. “I’m soooo sorry, Nat,” she says. “That was the last sucker we licked.”
Nat blinks.
So does Emillie. She yanks the sucker out of her mouth. “You didn’t,” she says.
Liz smiles.
And sticks out her blue tongue.
We all do.
Emillie throws the sucker onto the path and pokes Liz in the chest. “You little toad.”
I step up and plant my sneakers next to Liz’s cowboy boots. “That’s tadpole to you.”
Randi snorts a laugh.
So do the others.
Emillie storms down the path.
Nat scurries after her.
But they can’t get in our way.
We fly right past them.
Sometimes friendship gives you wings.
Chapter
17
Weeding isn’t as bad as we thought it would be. We get to wear gardening gloves and, for a boy, Pete has lots of good colors. Pink. Purple. Orange. Blue. Green. Plus, every time a creepy bug crawls anywhere near us, Pete flicks it away before we hardly have time to scream our heads off.
We sing the Camp Meadowlark theme song while we work. And when Rusty, Joey, Quinn, and Tom walk by on their way back from playing kickball, and plug their ears like our singing is poison to their brains, and razz us about getting into trouble, Pete pretends not to notice when we pitch a few rotten tomatoes at them.
“You throw like a girl!” Rusty sings like an opera star, dodging tomatoes.
“Your faces make me hurl!” Joey chimes in.
“Missed me by a mile,” Tom adds, snickering.
“Couldn’t hit a crocodile!” Quinn bellows, dancing.
“We should sic the Meadowlark Monster on them,” Randi grumbles as the boys gallop away, laughing and singing.
“Definitely,” Stacey agrees.
“We’d have to lure him in,” Meeka offers.
“With what?” Brooke asks. “Rat and Enemmie took all the candy.”
“That kind of monster eats campers, not candy,” Jolene says.
“Don’t ask me to volunteer,” Randi puts in. “I’m not gonna be monster bait.”
“We don’t need volunteers,” I say. “We don’t even need a real monster.”
Everyone looks at me.
Stacey’s eyes go all curious. “What do you mean?”
I pause, thinking. Then my mouth curls into a sneaky grin.
“I have a plan,” I say.
“You?” Brooke says back.
“Yes,” I reply. “Me. Ida May. And it’s a good one.”
Liz scoots in. “Spill it.”
Everyone else huddles up too.
“We’ll need some supplies—” I start to say.
“Wait,” Jenna interrupts. She yanks off her gardening gloves and pulls a scrap of paper and a stubby pencil from her jeans pocket. “Okay, go.”
“A rope…” I say.
Jenna starts writing.
“A bucket of slime…”
Randi’s eyes brighten.
“And…” I look across the garden to where Pete is picking beans. “The help of a friend.”
Everyone turns and looks at Pete too.
A moment later, he glances up.
“Will you?” I call to him. “Help us trick the boys?”
Pete sits back on his heels.
Wiggles his caterpillar eyebrows.
“At your service, Chickadees.”
It turns out you don’t need a rope to be a fake monster.
But you do need two clothespins. And eight imaginative friends.
Randi makes the slime on Thursday afternoon. Cornstarch. Water. Green food coloring. Glitter. She tells Alex about our plan and mixes it up in the crafts cottage.
Stacey goes with her and paints one spooky glow-in-the-dark eye on Liz’s frog face mask.
Meanwhile, Meeka and Jolene weave a crown out of sticks and weeds and Brooke’s purple pageant sash. We decided our monster should be a girl with royal blood.
Pete lets me and Liz borrow a big brown blanket from the lost-and-found box. It looks like it got lost a long time ago, probably in a grave. It smells like the boys after kickball.
We trample the blanket with grass and leaves.
Brooke helps by supervising and thinking up a name for our plan. The Super-Cool Ultra Monster Mash. “S-C-U-M-M scum for short!” she tells us. “In honor of the boys.” She laughs at her own funniness. As usual.
Jenna makes a schedule.
“I’m sleeping in the woods tonight, George,” I say, rolling up my sleeping bag as George watches from my bare pillow. “Do you want to come along, or stay here with the others?”
George looks longingly at Brooke’s bottom bunk. She donated it to all our stuffed animals so they could have a campout too.
Meeka’s rainbow horse.
Jolene’s plaid elephant.
Stacey’s teddy bear.
Randi’s frumpy tiger.
Liz’s floppy-eared dog.
We made them sleeping bags out of our pillowcases. And a fake campfire out of rocks and twigs and orange tissue paper. We even saved the mini marshmallows from the trail mix we had for our afternoon snack so they could pretend to toast them.
Jenna had a fit when we brought the marshmallows into the cabin. But Alex looked the other way.
I carry George over to the bunk and set him in his circle of friends.
Then I turn to Liz. She’s stuffing her frog face mask and flippers into Brooke’s empty backpack to give to Pete. He’s bringing the rest of our costume too.
“Front or butt?” I ask her, looking at the face mask and flippers.
She glances up. “Huh?”
“Do you want to be the front end of the monster,” I explain, “or do you want to be the back end?” We all voted on who should be the monster. Me and Liz won, 8–0.
Liz thinks for a moment. Then she does that sly grin. “You be the front,” she replies. “I’ll be the Lizbutt.”
We do a giggle duet.
“Oh my, look at the time,” Brooke says, later, Thursday night, at our campsite in the woods. We’re toasting marshmallows over the fire Alex and Connor built halfway between the girls’ tents and the boys’. “Chop, chop! Time for our night hike. Remember, ladies first, then you boys. And no flashlights or we won’t be able to see the lovely stars.”
Brooke doesn’t really care about stars, unless she gets to be one on stage. But that’s the secret signal we decided to use when it was time to put our SCUMM plan into action.
“I’ve only had five marshmallows so far,” Joey says, leaning back against a log, patting his stomach. “I’m usually good for ten.”
“And what about s’mores?” Quinn adds. “I can eat three of those, easy.”
“Yeah, Brooke, why the rush?” Rusty asks, licking his sticky fingers. “Can’t wait for the Meadowlark Monster to get you?” He gives her a spooky grin.
Brooke gives Rusty an I-know-something-you-don’t-know smirk. “No monster is going to get me.”
Pete stands up and stretches. Alex and Connor invited him to stay for supper and s’mores. “I’ll get you guys more firewood,” he offers. “I could use some help. Any volunteers?”
Right away, me and Liz raise our hands. Not because we’re big fans of hauling firewood. But this is part of our plan too.
Pete gives us a wink, then turns to Alex. “We’ll catch up with you on the hike,” he says.
“At the trust fall platform…right?” Alex asks.
“Right,” Pete replies.
“Got it,” Connor puts in.
They do a three-way smile.
Me and Liz take off with Pete.
Our costume is sitting on the trust fall platform when we get th
ere a few minutes later.
I put on the face mask and pull up the black hood on my extra-large sweatshirt. Randi let me borrow it, compliments of her brother. I snug the hood around my face so mostly just my spooky glowing eye is showing.
Pete smudges a little dirt on my cheeks. Then he dips Liz’s green flippers into the slime bucket and slips them on my hands.
I accidentally on purpose flick some slime at Liz.
She squeals and dodges behind me, leaning forward while Pete drapes the big brown blanket over her and around my shoulders so that only our feet are showing. He uses a couple of clothespins to snug the blanket under my chin.
Then he sets the weedy crown on my head.
“Let’s hear what you’ve got,” he says, stepping back.
Me and Liz howl like we’re the queen of the jungle.
Pete unplugs his ears. “That will do,” he says. Then he slimes my flippers again and ducks into the shadows.
“What’s it like back there?” I ask Liz a minute later while we wait for the others to find us.
“Sweaty,” comes her muffled reply. “Stinky too. Next Halloween, let’s not be the Meadowlark Monster.”
I smile to myself, realizing Liz will be around for holidays now.
For regular days too.
Swimming with us at the pool.
Biking to the Purdee Good Café for giant cookies.
Climbing on our new playground equipment.
Acting goofy.
Spilling secrets.
Who knows? I might even tell her I’m going to start liking Quinn again, as soon as he takes a bath. I might tell all my friends.
Voices trickle through the trees.
“They’re coming,” I say. “Ready?”
“For anything,” Liz says back.
“This way!” I hear Jenna shout. “Follow me!”
“Yessss, sir!” Randi shouts back.
Feet trample.
Sticks snap.
Leaves rustle.
Branches shake.
A moment later, Jenna leads everyone into the clearing.
Me and Liz shuffle out from the shadows.
Brooke points at us and does a fake gasp. “What is that? It looks like—oh no!—the Meadowlark Monster!” She screams so loud I swear the trees shake. Brooke Morgan is a very good actress.
Me and Liz stamp our feet. Flick slime. Pump out our best howls ever.
All the girls fake freak out.
All the boys freak out for real.
They duck behind Connor. “Mommy!” Joey cries.
But Tom peeks out. Gives us the once-over. Switches on a smile.