Second Time's the Charm

by Melissa J Morgan

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Title Page

  chapter ONE

  chapter TWO

  chapter THREE

  chapter FOUR

  chapter FIVE

  chapter SIX

  chapter SEVEN

  chapter HIGHT

  chapter NINE

  chapter TEN

  chapter ELEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

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  Text copyright © 2006 by Grosset & Dunlap. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2005033180

  eISBN : 978-1-101-04301-1

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  chapter ONE

  Dear Hannah,

  I guess sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction, huh? I mean, if this time last year you had told me that I would be RETURNING to Camp Lake-puke—voluntarily, no less—I would have laughed in your face. And then run away crying.

  And yet. Here I am, crowded onto a smelly, oversized charter bus and surrounded by kids singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” at the top of their lungs. And even though they are only at eighty-seven bottles, and even though some of these kids couldn’t make the first cut of American Idol, I don’t have the vaguest impulse to scream. In fact, I’m feeling pretty zen. I even chimed in for a bar or two, somewhere back around ninety-one bottles or so.

  Pretty amazing, huh?

  Not only am I not hating the thought of coming back to camp, I’m even excited about it! Mom shipped me a survival kit of soy chips and PowerBars well in advance this time around. No more tuna surprises for me! And I am all stocked up on magazines. Alyssa’s here sitting next to me—she says “hi”—and Grace is somewhere up front, leading a small faction of non-singers in a rousing game of bus charades. It’s hilarious. And I can’t wait to see the rest of the girls: Jenna, Valerie, Sarah, Alex, and the other 3C-ers.

  And, um, a particular boy.

  Yes, Simon. He’s been awesome about writing and calling, as you know, but we’ve only seen each other once in person since the reunion. I’m going into serious withdrawal. I really, really hope he’s as excited to see me as I am to see him. But only time will tell, right? Right. I wish you were here to give me one of your patented pep talks.

  In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little nervous.

  Who am I kidding? Of course you’ve noticed—Simon’s all we ever talk about. Bless you, you’re a good friend ...

  Anyway, the natives are getting restless, which must mean that we’re almost there. That, and Alyssa just told me that we’re almost there. See how smart I am?

  I’d better sign off. Try not to miss me too much while you’re strolling along the Champs-Elysées, eating chocolate croissants and shopping till you drop. Feel free to send me some French chocolate whenever the spirit moves you.

  Write soon,

  Nat

  Natalie Goode capped her purple felt-tipped pen, folded her letter to her best friend, Hannah, into quarters, and tucked it into the front pouch of her backpack. She sighed contentedly. Hannah was spending the summer in France with her mother, a super-glamorous foreign ambassador. Hannah’s parents traveled a ton for work, and so over the summers they preferred to travel with their daughter, preferably to various exotic locales.

  Not Natalie’s parents, though. Natalie’s mother was an art buyer, and summers were her time to scout new talent. And Natalie’s father . . . well, he had a pretty offbeat career.

  Natalie’s father was Tad Maxwell, a hugely famous movie star who mostly appeared in big-time action movies. He lived in L.A. full-time but was on the road a lot, shooting on location and doing press junkets for his various movies and stuff. Natalie missed him of course, but her parents had gotten divorced when she was pretty young, and so by now she was used to the situation. Her dad loved her; she knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt, and she never took for granted the time they had together.

  In fact, for Natalie, the biggest thing about having a famous father was worrying what other kids would think of her. At her school, lots of kids had parents who were ultra-wealthy or had super-high-powered jobs and stuff. So they didn’t think anything of the fact that Natalie’s father was a movie star. But she never knew how other people—and, in particular, new people—would react. That was one of the reasons Natalie had been so nervous last summer when her mother had shipped her off to Camp Lakeview—or “Lake-puke,” as Nat had affectionately come to call it (the other reason had to do with a deathly aversion to “the Great Outdoors” that Nat had since gotten over—kind of.).

  When Natalie thought about how totally unenthusiastic she had been about camp last summer, she had to laugh. After all, she’d made some amazing friends at Lakeview, and learned a lot about herself in the process. Okay, sure, people were slightly weirded out when they found out the truth about her father, but her friends—her real friends—were mostly just disappointed that she hadn’t felt that she could confide in them. And, besides, that was all over now, anyway. Her secret was out in the open. Way out in the open. Natalie wondered if her friend Alex, a Lakeview legacy and soccer champ, had brought her Tad Maxwell poster back to camp this summer. Or maybe she even got a new one, Nat thought. Alex could be a little bit bossy sometimes, so she and Nat had had their share of friction now and then, but she was a dedicated camper and a supremely loyal friend. Natalie was psyched to be bunking with her again this summer.

  “I can’t wait to see Jenna,” Alyssa said, rousing Natalie from her internal monologue. “She told me she bought a book of practical jokes that she’s dying to try out.”

  “Jenna should know better than that,” Natalie quipped. Their fellow 3C-er was a noted prankster whose jokes had not gone without consequence the summer before. Of course, her good humor was so infectious that it was difficult to stay upset with her for too long.

  “Anyway, she told me that she would meet us at the great field, where the buses let out,” Alyssa continued. She pointed out the streaky, tinted window. “Can you see her?” she asked, cupping her eyes against the gl
ass and squinting outward. Their bus was, at present, rumbling to a halt along the field. Somehow, while Natalie had been lost in her daydream, they had arrived at camp!

  “Yeah, she’s . . .” Natalie’s voice trailed off as she broke out laughing. “She’s the one tap-dancing down the path. Minus the tap shoes.” She giggled again as their friend made her way into the melee of the great field, kicking up great clouds of dust as she moved forward.

  Their bus screeched to a halt, coughing exhaust fumes and sputtering as the engine died. The campers cried out, jumping out of their seats and moving eagerly toward the door. “One at a time,” their bus counselor, Pete, begged in vain. Pete was a member of the kitchen staff who was so good-natured that it was hard to hold his terrible cooking against him.

  “I call bottom bunk,” Natalie shouted, playfully shoving past Alyssa and bounding down the steps of the bus.

  “Hey, no fair calling the bunk before it’s in sight,” Alyssa protested, hot on Natalie’s heels.

  “Jenna!” Natalie shrieked, flinging her arms around her friend as though they hadn’t seen each other in ages. Which, come to think of it, we haven’t, Natalie realized. The last time their entire bunk had been together had been at the camp reunion—back in February! “Did you see our bunk yet? Is it nicer than last year’s bunk? Is there mold in the showers? Are the screen windows torn?” The perma-smile faded from Jenna’s face, prompting Natalie’s suspicion. “Oh, no. Is there mold in the showers?”

  Jenna shook her head slowly. She wasn’t tap-dancing anymore. Natalie had a feeling that whatever Jenna had to tell her, it was pretty serious. “Oh, no,” Natalie teased, trying to lighten the mood. “Are there spiders in the showers?”

  Jenna smiled, but it was a weak smile at best. This has got to be bad news, Natalie thought, a cold fist of dread settling into her stomach like a lead weight.

  Alyssa, always no-nonsense, adjusted her tote bag over her shoulder and stepped forward, hands on her hips like she meant business. “Come on, Jenna. Worse than spiders? Spill.”

  “It’s our bunk, 4A,” Jenna said, looking much more somber than Natalie could ever recall seeing her.

  “What, did we get, like, an awful counselor or something?” Natalie asked, growing increasingly worried. An awful counselor could really be a bad omen, as far as enjoyment of the summer was concerned.

  “Well, no. At least, as far as I know,” Jenna said nervously. Natalie raised an eyebrow quizzically. “It’s just—” Jenna finally blurted. “Our bunk!” she sputtered. “We’re not all together this summer.”

  “You mean—” Alyssa cut in anxiously.

  “Exactly,” Jenna said, shaking her head. “We’ve been split up!”

  chapter TWO

  Natalie took one look at Jenna’s woeful expression and burst out laughing. “Sure, yeah, whatever,” she giggled. “Good one, Jenna.” She slapped her friend lightly on the shoulder. “Weren’t you going to try to stay out of trouble this year?” she chided. “We haven’t even gotten to the bunk yet and you’re already making with the funny? Which, by the way, is so not that funny,” she added, mock-stern.

  When Jenna didn’t respond—and certainly not with anything resembling Natalie’s laugher—the sense of foreboding returned to Natalie’s insides and she revisited her original idea that perhaps the noted prankster was, for once in her life, being serious. Natalie raised an eyebrow, still half skeptical. “No kidding?”

  Jenna shook her head ruefully. “I wish. But not.”

  “How does that happen?” Alyssa asked. “I thought we all requested each other.”

  Jenna shrugged unhappily. “It’s not, like, a surefire system. I mean, they do the best that they can.” She sighed.

  “I guess we just have to deal,” Alyssa said, pragmatic as always. “Are Nat and I in the same bunk?”

  Jenna nodded, clearly happy to finally be delivering some good news. “Yeah, in 4A, with me. We’re with Karen and Jessie, too. And some new girls.”

  “That sounds cool,” Natalie said. “Wait—” she paused, realizing. “Did Chelsea come back?”

  “Yup,” Jenna confirmed. “She’s with us, too.”

  Natalie groaned. Chelsea was a difficult camper at best. Spoiled and petty, Chelsea loved to give her bunkmates the hardest time possible. They tried to reach out to her, but their efforts almost always back-fired. Meanwhile, over the winter, Chelsea’s father had been very sick. The girls of 3C had banded together during the weekend of the Lakeview reunion to show Chelsea how much they cared about her, but even that hadn’t gone off without a hitch. They’d gotten through to the prickly girl, but it wasn’t any sort of big, fuzzy lovefest. And there was no telling how Chelsea was going to behave now that they were back at camp.

  “Well, supposedly her dad’s doing much better,” Jenna said. “Which is awesome. And could go a long way toward improving her mood.”

  “That’d be nice,” Alyssa said absently. “Let’s get our stuff and go over and find out the bunk assignments. Jenna can fill us in on the way. Look, Nat, there’s your duffel.” She pointed off toward the side of the bus, where, indeed, Natalie’s enormous pink oversized bag was being tossed out from the bus’s underneath storage compartment. “Um, did you pack, like, your entire bedroom? I mean, most of our stuff was supposed to be shipped here separately a week ago. And that looks like more than ‘most’ to me.” She smiled to show that she was semi-teasing, but Natalie wouldn’t have been offended, anyway.

  “Maybe half my bedroom,” Natalie admitted. “I mean, you never know what you’re going to need.”

  “Or who you’re going to see,” Jenna teased. “Like, maybe someone whose name rhymes with lymon.”

  “Ha-ha,” Natalie said, ignoring her friend but still not exactly disagreeing with her, either. She was dying to see Simon, and there was no attempting to hide that from her friends. “Anyway, I get the hint, Alyssa. Let’s grab our bags and head over to the bunk. I mean, we should make the best of this situation. It’s not the end of the world for us all to be separated. It’ll be fun to meet new people this summer.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Alyssa said, clapping Natalie on the back. “And you know what else will be fun?”

  “What?” Natalie asked.

  “Watching you carry that bag all by yourself,” Alyssa cracked.

  At that, Natalie could do little more than giggle. And grit her teeth as she prepared to hoist The Bag That Ate New York all the way from the bus to the bunk area.

  “And then Alex, Brynn, Valerie, Sarah, Grace, and Candace are in 4C,” Jenna explained as the girls made their way up the front steps of their home for the summer. “With, um, you know that girl Gaby from bunk 3A last year?” She wrinkled her nose. Gaby was known for being sort of a bully, and she and Grace had had kind of a falling-out the summer before.

  “I’m sure Grace is super-thrilled,” Natalie said, slightly sarcastically.

  “Well, Grace always gets it together to be cheery and make the best of a situation,” Alyssa said.

  “That’s the understatement of the year,” Natalie replied, thinking of Grace’s endless good humor and wacky, dramatic flair. “Yeah, if anyone will be fine dealing with Gaby, it’ll be Grace. Anyway”—she squared her shoulders, taking in the slightly saggy front porch of the bunk—“this cabin’s not half as rundown as 3C was.”

  “I will reserve judgment until I see the showers,” Alyssa quipped.

  “Good call,” Natalie agreed. “Ugh. I’m dying. Can we please go inside so that I can put this bag down once and for all?”

  Alyssa nodded. “But let that be a lesson to you,” she said, waving grandiosely toward her own smaller, wheeled, and overall much-more-practical duffel.

  Natalie shook her head and followed her friends into Bunk 4A.

  The upshot to being a fourth-division camper was easily apparent. For starters, as Natalie had noticed, the building itself was in moderately better condition. Nothing to write home about, but still. There weren’t any
visible holes in the window screens or anything like that, which was a step up, to be sure. Second of all, each of the girls got double the cubby space that she’d had last summer. This was great news, particularly in light of the size of Natalie’s duffel bag. Nat would have liked it if, like the fifth-division campers, they could have been allotted more single beds, but since she knew Alyssa would take the top bunk, anyway, it really wasn’t an issue. The top bunk was fun to hang out on, but Natalie had a deathly—if irrational—fear of falling out of bed in the middle of the night. She didn’t know what would happen if one were to fall out of the top bunk, but she also wasn’t in any rush to find out anytime soon.

  “Wanna go check out the bathrooms?” Alyssa asked, prodding Natalie in the side and breaking her reverie.

  Natalie shook her head no. “It’s bound to be bad news, and I’d rather prolong the inevitable. Ignorance is bliss.”

  “Smart move. I learned the hard way about daddy longlegs with their own zip code.”

  Natalie looked up to see a stunning blonde standing before her, holding up a lip gloss palate that Natalie knew for a fact had just been released from Sephora online the day before. “Where did you get that?” she asked, willing herself not to drool. “Barneys isn’t taking advance orders for another week.” This girl obviously had connections. Highly not fair.

  “Fred Segal,” the girl said, shrugging somewhat apologetically. “I’m from Los Angeles.” She pointed at her tank top, which was baby blue and indeed read “LA SURF SHOP” right across the chest in white stenciling.

  “Oh,” Natalie said, mildly disappointed, both about the lip gloss and about her sure-to-be-new-friend’s origins. “I thought you totally had to be another New Yorker. So the lip gloss hit the West Coast before the East?” Big-time not fair.

  “Not really,” the girl explained, smiling. “I mean, you were right when you said it wasn’t out yet. My mom is a beauty editor for an online magazine out in California. She gets to test everything out in advance. I mean, everything. So I’ve got lots and lots of junk lying around. You’re welcome to borrow it,” she said, as though it were no big deal. Which, to her, it probably isn’t, Natalie thought incredulously. To have access to any beauty product you wanted—even in advance of the rest of the world? To Natalie, that would be heaven. She only hoped this girl—whose name was still a mystery—had some idea of how lucky she was.