“We’ll still visit you in the camper all the time,” Delaney said loudly to Aunt Jane. “And you are welcome to visit us in our tent anytime. I mean, it’s only fair, you spending money on the rent-a-tent.”
“Actually, because it was an old, retired tent, she loaned it to us at no cost. So it’s a lent-a-tent.”
Delaney laughed.
Aunt Jane stood behind Delaney and mussed up her hair. “Tell you what,” she said. “How about you three set up the tent and then come visit for a game of cards, deal? Ha! No pun intended.”
“In tent-ed?” Delaney said.
The two of them guffawed, and Darby chuckled a little, too. I rolled my eyes.
“All right. You’re on your own. I’m gone,” Aunt Jane said, and headed back into the trailer.
Now it was just me, Darby, Delaney, and a big bag of tent. It lay there, still tied up in a drawstring cover, looking like a big blue-gray sausage.
“Hey, I know,” Delaney said, hopping up from the table. “Maybe we can invite over Nelson, Jay, and Robbie for the card game?”
“Why would we do that?” I snapped. Sometimes, just when I really need Delaney to focus, she comes up with the most outlandish ideas.
“Because …” Delaney’s eyes searched the sky as she stretched out the word. “No reason, really. I just thought it would be nice.”
“It would be nice,” Darby said.
I stood up from the table and put my hands on my hips. “I shouldn’t have to remind you this, but those rogues are our opponents. Plus, they rented the last tent and didn’t tell us. Lousy cheats.”
“Maybe they didn’t realize it was the last one,” Darby said. “Besides, the game isn’t all day and all night. Once we set up the tent, we’ll be done until the judging.”
I shook my head. “Still a bad idea. Fraternizing with the enemy would give them a chance to gather intel and possibly sabotage our efforts. Now let’s get to work setting this thing up.”
Dusk was coming on, and it was getting hard to see. But we still had the light of the stars, the half-moon, and the glow from the inside of the camper — plus a flashlight. I figured that should be enough for us to assemble the tent.
The first thing we decided to do was empty the bag and lay out the different pieces of equipment to make sure we had all the parts. I snatched up a faded paper with instructions and tried to figure out what was what.
“Jiminy, this thing is old,” Delaney said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Davy Crockett slept in this tent.”
We were used to newer, spring-loaded-type tents that had the poles sewn into the fabric already. This one had all kinds of extra stuff we hadn’t seen before. Plus, it was all dirty and musty smelling, and there were a couple of cobwebs stuck to things.
“What do the directions say, Dawn?” Darby asked me.
I scanned the rumpled document in the yellow glow of the flashlight. “No idea. What’s a ferrule?”
Darby and Delaney shrugged.
“Dang instructions!” I stamped my foot in frustration. “They don’t make any sense. Like this one part where it says we need to put a fly on the tent. Isn’t the whole point of having a tent so you can be away from flies and mosquitos and mountain lions?”
The three of us conferred again and, in a unanimous vote, decided that asking Aunt Jane to identify the equipment we couldn’t recognize would not be a violation of the challenge. So we gathered up the stuff and knocked on the door of the trailer.
Aunt Jane undid the latch and peered out. “Well, lookee here. It’s the Brewster triplets. What have you three been up to lately?” she joked.
“Trying to understand written directions that go against all rules of logic and grammar,” I grumbled as I stepped inside with Darby and Delaney. “Will you please help us?”
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
As we laid out or held up the different pieces, Aunt Jane explained that the big plastic-looking sheet was the ground cover, one was the actual tent, and one was a rain cover that went over the tent — otherwise known as a “fly.” Next she told us that the poles had to be connected together and then pushed through holes in the tent. Once we had it raised up, we had to stake it into the ground at the corners using the big nail-looking things.
“You’re much better than the instructions at explaining things,” Delaney said as we packed everything back up.
“Why, thank you,” Aunt Jane said. As we headed back outside she said, “Door’s open. Come see me anytime!”
Now that we knew what was what, we had to find a good location for the tent. After some debate, we decided to set it up under an oak tree, not far from the picnic table. It encroached slightly on the grassy area where we did Morning Cartwheels, but not too much. From there we’d be able to see the camper from the doorway and the boys’ campsite from the tent’s back window — allowing us to detect a possible invasion before it happened.
Once we knew where the tent would go, I held up a flashlight while Darby and Delaney scoured the ground and tossed rocks and other pointy things into the bushes. Then Darby and Delaney took turns holding the light while we spread out the tarp and the tent on the ground, fastened the poles together, poked them through the right holes, and raised the whole structure.
Finally, it was done. If you can call slightly misshapen and leaning toward the left done. At least it was standing and seemed likely to stay that way for a while.
“We’re going to lose,” I said, looking over our handiwork.
“You don’t know that,” Delaney said. “The boys’ tent might be falling down all the time. Or full of holes. Or … or … haunted!”
“Face it, team,” I said with a sigh. “We did our best, but thanks to their underhandedness, it’s impossible for us to win this challenge.”
Darby peered at me. “Do you want to pull out of the competition?”
I scowled again at our lopsided, mildew-stained, sickly green-colored dwelling. Now both Darby and Delaney were staring at me anxiously. They were probably worried I’d pitch another fit.
“No,” I said finally. “Brewsters don’t quit. We might make mistakes and, um, might have an occasional outburst, but we don’t give up.”
“Good!” Delaney said, and clapped her hands.
“Besides,” Darby said, passing the flashlight beam over the tent. “I like it. It has character — like it’s been through lots of adventures.”
We called Aunt Jane outside to see our handiwork and she pronounced it a fine-looking tent.
“You girls sure are bulldogged. It makes me proud,” Aunt Jane said. “So! Y’all ready for a game of Spite and Malice?”
“Yes!” we all shouted.
We followed her into the trailer and sat around the slanted table. Aunt Jane dealt the cards as we sipped cartons of fruit punch and snacked on raisin-free trail mix. Although we started out all fired up, we faded quickly. Darby kept yawning and making mistakes. At one point I nudged Delaney’s shoulder when she was taking a long time to make a move, and saw that behind her raised cards, her eyes were closed.
That’s when we decided it was time for bed.
Aunt Jane stood in the camper doorway and watched as we stumbled out toward our freshly assembled tent. We crawled inside, zipped up the flap of the doorway, and stretched out on our sleeping bags with me in the middle.
“Good night,” I said. “I’m sorry I was a fussbucket today.”
“That’s okay,” Darby said.
“Poodle,” Delaney mumbled in her sleep.
The last thing I remember hearing is Aunt Jane calling out, “Sweet dreams, triplets.” I closed my eyes and that was all.
I like camping for lots of reasons. I like to lie on the bunk inside our camper and just listen. Back home, most of the outdoorsy sounds are drowned out by people sounds, but here it’s the other way around. You hear the gurgling of the nearby creek and the rustle of trees and the heavy sighing of the wind. Plus there are birds. Lots and lots of birds that twitter and chi
rp and caw and shriek.
I can close my eyes and pretend that I live outdoors — that I’m a wild beast and this is my home. Only just when I start to really believe it and forget myself, I’ll hear Delaney start jabbering or Dawn start fussing or Aunt Jane would turn on the portable radio she likes to camp with … and I go back to feeling like regular old me.
I figured staying in a tent instead of a camper would make my dreams about being in the wild even more vivid, but last night I could barely sleep. I turned every which way — as much as I could in the cramped space — only nothing helped. It was as if I were lying on top of a boulder. It made it impossible to relax and drift off. Eventually, though, I must have.
“Knock, knock,” called out Aunt Jane. “You three at home?”
My heavy eyelids opened a crack and I saw that our tent was bright with daylight. I felt a squeeze in my chest, as if my heart was wailing in protest. How could it be morning already?
“We’re here!” cried Delaney. She sat up, spun around, and unzipped the door so that Aunt Jane could poke her head in.
“Let’s see … one, two, three,” Aunt Jane said pointing at each of us. “Good. All present and accounted for. Y’all ready for some grub?”
“Yes!” Delaney exclaimed.
“Good. Come out when you’re ready.” Aunt Jane’s head disappeared from the tent opening.
I wondered if we should offer to make breakfast again, but after our results the other day, I wasn’t sure it was really helpful. Besides, I was too tired to even open my mouth and suggest it.
Dawn and Delaney were crawling all around, rolling up their sleeping bags and jostling me every few seconds.
“Get moving, Darby,” Dawn said. “We need to get this place ready for judging.”
I tried to say “all right,” but it came out sounding like “awwwruh.” Luckily, Dawn was bustling around so much, she didn’t even hear it. Plus, Delaney was humming the 1812 Overture for some reason, complete with explosion sounds.
“I’m going to get the small broom and dust pan. You guys keep picking up the place.” Dawn scrambled out of the tent.
I tried to kick my sleeping bag off me, but it just kept getting tangled up in my legs. After the third try, I finally got free of it and sat up. My head was foggy and my eyelids felt like they each weighed ten pounds. The best I could manage was to open my right eye halfway.
Delaney stopped humming and frowned at me. “You okay? You look kind of feeble.”
I shook my head. “I’m a wreck. I just couldn’t get comfortable on the ground. It feels like my back is all black-and-blue.”
“What are you? The Princess and the Pea?” Delaney laughed at her own joke. Then she looked at me and stopped. “Sorry. You really do look run-down. Maybe you should go back to sleep.”
“I can’t rest here. And if I go sleep in the camper, Dawn will spit fire.”
Just then Dawn crawled in and stood on her knees at the front of the tent. “Hey! What are you two doing just sitting around jabbering? We don’t have much time!”
“See?” I said, low enough so that only Delaney could hear.
I folded over my sleeping bag and was about to roll it up, when I noticed something.
“Look! There’s a big rock here, right where I was lying,” I said, pointing toward a raised lump in the tent floor. It was oval and slightly bigger than my fist. “No wonder I could barely sleep last night!”
“Holy moly! That’s huge!” Delaney exclaimed.
“Jiminy!” Dawn peered over Delaney’s shoulder. “You slept on that?”
“Yep,” I said. “And now I’m all beat up.”
Dawn patted my back. “Sorry. But it’s your own fault. You two were in charge of clearing the area. I just provided light.”
“But we did a good job. I don’t know how we could have missed something so big.” I poked the mound again, and suddenly, it wiggled. “Yipes!” I cried out in surprise. “The rock is moving!”
Sure enough it was heading toward the edge of the tent. I watched in wonder as the roundish shape inched itself along beneath the ground cover.
“Come on!” Delaney said. She scrambled out of the tent, followed by Dawn. By the time I caught up with them, they were crouched down outside the back of our tent.
“Hey, look. It’s a little tortoise,” Dawn said. She cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted, “Aunt Jane! Come see!” The volume of her voice hurt my sleepy head.
Aunt Jane came jogging over and stood with her hands resting on her knees. “Well, lookee there,” she said. “Where’d he come from?”
“Darby was sleeping on him,” Dawn said.
“You poor thing!” Delaney exclaimed.
At first I thought Delaney was worried about me. Then I noticed that she was talking to the tortoise. She’d scooped him up in her hands and was patting him gently on his shell — which was the only part of him we could see now.
“Come on out, little guy. We won’t hurt you,” she crooned at the end of the shell where his head was hiding. “Let’s see … what should we name you?”
“Delaney, you aren’t seriously thinking about keeping him, are you?” Dawn asked.
“Why not?” Delaney said. “I can keep him in one of our empty boxes. I’ll make sure he gets lots of food and water.”
“That’s a lousy idea. Just look at him. He’s already hiding from us,” Dawn said.
Delaney stroked the top of his shell. “He’s just uncomfortable.”
“He certainly is,” I mumbled, rubbing a sore spot on my back.
“I’m afraid I agree with Dawn,” Aunt Jane said. “We should let the tortoise go free — like Mo. Think how much happier that donkey is wandering around rather than being penned up.”
Delaney looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Fine,” she said finally. Then she set the tortoise down on the ground. After a moment, his head and legs reappeared and he started moving again. We watched him trudge into the bushes, slow and steady, as if he didn’t have any bossy sisters telling him to hurry up.
“Bye, little guy!” Delaney called out. “See you around!”
“Sorry if I squished you!” I called out.
Aunt Jane stood up straight and clapped her hands together. “Well, I’m off to make those pancakes.”
“Can I help?” Delaney asked.
“Why sure,” Aunt Jane said.
“Yay!” Delaney said, doing a celebratory dance. “The great thing about making pancakes outside is there’s no ceiling to mess up!”
They started to walk toward the picnic table, when suddenly Delaney came to a halt.
“Wait!” she said. “We should go do our Morning Cartwheels before we eat.”
Aunt Jane grinned. “That’s an excellent idea.” She walked to the end of the grassy space. “All right now. Make room.”
We stepped aside so that we wouldn’t be in the way — and also to get a better view. Aunt Jane wheeled around almost perfectly this time. Her legs were straighter and she only wobbled a little. As we clapped, she took a little bow and then jogged off down the path.
Dawn went next, followed by Delaney.
Then it was my turn.
“I don’t know about this,” I said. “I don’t feel all that great this morning.”
“What are you talking about, Darby?” Delaney said. “You do cartwheels better than any of us. And I do them all the time.”
“Yeah. You could probably do them in your sleep,” Dawn said.
Since I was only about half asleep, I figured they were right. I walked over to the grassy area, lifted my arms, and whirled around.
Everything started okay, but midway through the “wheel” part, something went wrong. I heard my sisters yelling and everything went topsy-turvy. The sky whizzed past, then some trees, and finally I landed on my back. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt at all. In fact, it was kind of smooth and springy.
That’s when I realized I had landed on the tent.
Hmmm …” Mr. Bartholomew s
quinted so hard at the boys’ tent, his eyes seemed to disappear under his bushy eyebrows. Since his mouth was already hidden beneath his big gray mustache, his face looked like a nose surrounded by hair.
He certainly seemed to be taking his role as official tent judge very seriously — which was a good thing since we couldn’t find anyone else. And even though the morning had been nutso, I was glad we were able to rebuild our tent in time and didn’t have to forfeit.
I thought the boys’ tent looked nice. Instead of triangular-shaped, it was a big dome with a little roof over the entrance. Their flag was pinned over their tent door like a banner and the flaps were wide open to show how tidy it was inside. It was so tall, you didn’t have to hunch over to stand inside it. Plus, it smelled new instead of old and didn’t have any blotchy stains. It looked solid and livable — cozy even. Meanwhile, ours might have already been blown into the thicket by a strong wind.
We were going to lose.
Mr. Bartholomew slowly circled the tent, peering at it all over and even patting its bouncy nylon side. Meanwhile, Jay, Robbie, and Nelson stood in a line looking really pleased and proud. They also seemed to know they were going to win.
On one side of me stood Dawn with her chin raised up high. Her eyes kept scanning the clouds as if she were bored, but I wondered if maybe she just couldn’t bear gazing at the boys’ big, sturdy tent. Even though she looked puffed up with pride, I knew our mad scramble to rebuild our tent had taken some of the fire out of her. Dawn hates losing and, thanks to Mr. Bartholomew, it was clear this would be a long, drawn-out defeat.
On the other side of me stood Darby. Or leaned Darby, actually. She kept slouching over onto my shoulder because she was sleepy. Then again, it could be she was just trying to stay out of Dawn’s line of sight. She’d felt so guilty after crashing into our tent and knocking it flat.
“Fine job. Fine job. Fine job,” Mr. Bartholomew said to each of the boys. “Now where is this other tent you wanted me to look at?” He glanced all around as if he expected a second tent to hop out from behind a sage bush.
Revenge of the Happy Campers Page 9