by T. R. Burns
Abe and I step farther into the room to investigate. I’m standing on my tiptoes for a closer look when the room blows up.
Against the deafening roar, my palms hit my ears. My knees hit the floor. My eyes squeeze shut. My entire body shakes.
And then, just like that, the noise stops. The room, and my body, still.
I move my hands an inch away from my ears. Open my eyes one at a time.
“Lemon?” I ask, not sure I’m still alive or that he’s really standing in the living room doorway.
“Lemon!” Gabby leaps out of the beanbag, where she fell during the explosion, sprints across the room, and almost knocks him over when she hugs him.
“Are we dead?” Abe reaches one hand out from his hiding place under the coffee table. “Is this warm fuzzy thing a rug . . . or my insides smeared across the floor?”
“Ew.” Gabby grimaces. Then she skips to the coffee table, takes Abe’s hand, and helps him slide out. “Music can’t kill you, silly.”
“That was music?” he asks doubtfully.
Lemon holds up a short silver wand, then aims it at one of the gray ceiling spheres.
“That’s okay!” Abe jumps to his feet. “I don’t need another demo.”
Lemon tosses the remote onto the couch and drops his duffel bag to the floor. I’m so happy to see him I want to hug him too—but he doesn’t say hi. He doesn’t even look at me. All he does is cross his arms over his stomach and slowly tilt to one side until his left shoulder stops at the doorway wall.
“How was your ride?” I ask.
“Long,” he says.
“Were your parents so excited about Kamp Kilter?” Gabby asks.
He shrugs. “They’re here. So . . .”
“What about your little brother?” Abe asks.
“Oh my goodness, little kids love camp,” Gabby says. “A long time ago? When I was five? My parents sent me to Camp Songbird, this amazing camp for super talented musicians. And at first? I totally didn’t want to go. I was, like, crazy homesick. I cried myself to sleep and—”
A doorbell rings.
Gabby gasps. “Company!” She claps her hands and races out of the room.
Abe looks at me. “Now can we take out her batteries?”
I smile at him, then look at Lemon. Or at the empty space he occupied half a second ago. Lemon’s idea of hurrying is walking instead of shuffling, but his legs are about twice as long as mine are and can move fast when he wants them to. Before I can decide whether to go find him or give him space, Gabby bounds back into the room.
“Look who’s here!” she declares.
“Your old Camp Songbird counselor?” Abe asks. “To say there’s been a terrible mistake and that you should be there instead?”
I start to laugh—and then stop. Because I no longer remember what Abe just said. Or where we are. Or why. Or even what my name is.
Fortunately, Elinor does.
“Hi, Seamus.”
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“Hey, Elinor,” Abe says.
“Hi.” Her eyes—her warm, pretty eyes, which are the color of worn pennies—hold mine. When the cat refuses to return my tongue, they shift to my alliance mate. “Annika said I could stay with you guys. Is that okay?”
“Stay with us?” Gabby asks. “You mean live with us?”
Elinor nods.
“Yes!” Gabby grabs Elinor’s hand and drags her from the room. “Oh my goodness, we’re going to be roommates and best friends and stay up all night talking about trouble and boys and boys and trouble and . . .”
Her voice fades as they head down the hallway.
“She’s not in the alliance,” Abe says. “We have to be really careful not to—”
He’s cut off by a loud buzzing. The noise comes from our K-Paks. I take mine from my pocket and accept the video chat request. Abe does the same with his. Annika’s face appears on our computer screens.
“Hello, Troublemakers!” she says with a smile. “Welcome back to Kilter Academy. I know you didn’t expect to return so soon, but I hope you’re happy you did. I know I am! You must have many questions, and I promise to answer them all. We just have to take care of one item of business first. You might find it confusing, but please play along. Consider it your first troublemaking assignment of the summer!”
I feel a familiar wave of nervousness. It’s been almost a year, and I still feel bad about trying to get into trouble instead of trying to stay out of it.
“Please report aboveground immediately,” Annika says.
The screens go blank. Abe books it to the elevator. I follow him, trying not to worry about the pending mission, Lemon’s weird behavior, my parents . . . Elinor living in our house.
Abe gets there first, but the elevator doesn’t arrive right away. By the time it does, Lemon, Gabby, Elinor, and I are standing behind him. While we wait, I sneak peeks at Elinor’s reflection in the shiny glass. Her skin’s still the same color as creamy vanilla ice cream. Freckles are still scattered across her nose and cheeks like pink sprinkles. Her long dark-red hair is still pulled back in a braid, which is still tied in a green satin ribbon.
She’s still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.
The elevator arrives. The door swishes open.
“Let’s do this,” Abe says, and lunges inside.
Gabby and Lemon join him. I step aside to let Elinor in first, and she does the same for me. We pause. Our eyes meet. She gives me a shy smile and steps inside. When I follow, Abe gives me a look. Then he pushes the up button, the door swishes shut, and we take off like a rocket.
“I have a question,” Gabby announces after liftoff. “Annika invited our families to Kamp Kilter after Seamus told her about what was happening with our parents.”
“What was happening with your parents?” Elinor asks.
“I’ll fill you in on everything later,” Gabby says. “But back to my question—do you think Annika had already planned to invite our families to Kamp Kilter, just later in the summer?”
“No,” Abe says.
“Did any of you ever hear her or our teachers say anything about the camp while we were at school?” Gabby asks.
“No,” Abe, Elinor, and I say.
“So do you think Annika created Kamp Kilter overnight?”
I look at Elinor. “Did your mom know anything about this?” Annika and Nadia Kilter, Elinor’s mom, are sisters. They’re not close, probably because Nadia runs IncrimiNation, a rival troublemaking school (if you can call it that), but maybe she’d talked about Kilter’s programs in the past.
“No,” Elinor says. “And I could tell it was the first she’d heard of it. When I showed her the invitation, her eyes got big and her face turned red, and then she stormed out of the house. She slammed the door so hard it fell off its hinges. That was the last time I saw her before the helicopter came.”
“What helicopter?” Abe asks.
“Annika’s. She knew Mom wouldn’t bring me, so sent a Good Samaritan to pick me up.”
Abe huffs. I try to read Elinor’s expression to see if talking about her mom, who’s even harder to figure out than my mom is, makes her sad, mad, or something else. I’m still trying to decide when Gabby continues.
“So then does that mean Annika built all of this . . .”—she motions around the elevator, points down then up—“in less than twenty-four hours?”
“Guess so,” Abe says.
“But how?” Gabby asks.
He shrugs. “She’s Annika.”
The elevator stops. The door swishes open. We file out of the chute and through the raggedy tarp tent.
“Troublemakers!” a low voice booms. “Are you ready . . . to meet . . . your DOOM?”
Chapter 7
DEMERITS: 430
GOLD STARS: 150
It’s just for show. . . . It’s just for show. . . . It’s just for show. . . .
This reminder skips through my head like a scratched part on one of Dad’s old Frank Sinatr
a records. But it doesn’t make the scene outside any less intimidating.
“What are you waiting for?” a low voice roars into a megaphone. “Start digging!”
Dozens of my classmates are on the beach. At Annika’s command, they scatter and sprint to rusty metal shovels standing upright in the sand.
“Did you really think you’d get three months off?” she demands. “Did you really believe that you deserved to do whatever you wanted after doing countless things nobody wanted you to?”
“Hurry up, Hinkle!” Abe hisses. He’s already claimed a shovel a few feet away from our tarp tent. I head for one a few yards away.
“Good kids go to camp!” Annika continues. “They get to swim! Hike! Build bonfires! Toast marshmallows! Do arts and crafts!”
I lift the heavy shovel, aim it at the sand.
“You are not good kids! You have not earned these privileges!”
I scoop up sand, toss it to the side.
“You want to swim? Then find your own water!”
“Um, there’s water right there?” points out Carter Montgomery. After me, he’s the shortest kid in our class. “Like, a lot of it? Right behind you?”
He’s right. Annika, wearing the same uniform she was when we arrived, stands with several other people dressed the same way in front of the huge, glittering lake featured in her photo slideshow.
Of course, Annika knows this. That’s why she charges at Carter, presses the megaphone to his ear, and says, “Dig, little man. Dig!”
He digs. So do Abe and Gabby. Elinor does too, which is surprising because she’s famous for being Kilter’s worst Troublemaker, a position that’s made her repeat first-year classes multiple times.
Of the dozens of students scattered across the beach, only one doesn’t follow our director’s instructions.
Lemon. Normally, he’d do as he was asked at his own leisurely pace. This wouldn’t make Annika happy, but it wouldn’t get him kicked out, either. But now he does nothing. He simply stands by a shovel, rests one elbow on its handle, and stares across the lake.
When I follow his gaze, one of the guys standing with Annika catches my eye. He smiles, and I realize he’s Houdini, our teenage math teacher. I give him a quick wave, then check out the other people he’s standing with. They’re all wearing green cargo shirts, button-down shirts, black boots, and aviator sunglasses, but I still recognize Fern, our gym teacher; Wyatt, our art teacher; Samara, our biology teacher; Devin, our music teacher; and Lizzie, our language arts teacher. Mystery, our history teacher, wears all black and stands apart from the group, reading a book.
“See a pretty bird, Hinkle?” Annika barks.
I pick up the pace.
“Hey.” Alison Parker, another Troublemaker in my class, stands up straight. She shields her eyes from the sun with one hand and looks out across the lake. “Is that my dad? Jumping on a trampoline?”
Every Troublemaker stops digging and looks toward the beach on the other side of the water.
“Nice cabins,” Gabby says.
“More like lodges,” says Chris Fisher, another soon-to-be second-year Troublemaker.
He’s right. Instead of the small rustic houses I’ve seen in movies about kids at sleepaway camp, Kamp Kilter cabins are enormous. Even from here, at least half a mile away, I can see that most are two-stories tall with wraparound porches and multiple chimneys. Some even have balconies and decks off the upper floors.
“Is that where our families are staying?” Abe asks.
Striding around holes, Annika groans into the megaphone. “If you must know, yes. While you’re fighting for protection from the elements, blood-sucking insects, and carnivorous wildlife in these makeshift tents, your families will be enjoying air-conditioning by day, the warmth of cozy fireplaces at night, gourmet dining, and countless other amenities in their luxurious ten-star accommodations.”
“But . . . why?” Chris asks.
Annika freezes. Then she spins around, brings the megaphone to her mouth, and yells, “Because that’s what they deserve for putting up with you!”
Shoveling sand in eighty-five degree weather is no joke, so I’m already sweating. But at Annika’s declaration, goose bumps spread across my arms and legs.
“Um, is my dad waving at me?” Alison asks, raising one hand to return the gesture. “Can he hear me?” She pauses. “Now he’s nodding.”
“Your families deserve a carefree summer vacation,” Annika bellows. “We’re going to give them that. We’re also going to give them the comfort of knowing that your Kilter training will not stop until your transformation from terrible to model children is complete! So yes, microphones have been installed on this side of the lake and speakers on that side. Whatever you say inside and outside your tents will be broadcast live for them to hear inside and outside their new summer homes.”
“What if they don’t want to listen to us,” Carter asks, “because they want peace and quiet instead?”
“Their grounds have speaker-free sections,” Annika says. “They can also mute you when they’re indoors. But I’m sure most of them will enjoy knowing exactly what you’re up to most of the time!”
“I guess so,” Alison says. “Dad just gave me a thumbs-up.”
“Here is what your days will consist of!” Annika barks. “You’ll rise before dawn and have ten minutes to forage for breakfast. Your options will include whatever Mother Nature provides on any given day—berries, twigs, bugs, fish, anything you can find or catch. After that, you’ll travel across the lake and perform a variety of chores for our visiting families. After you’ve completed your chores to the satisfaction of your instructors, you will return to the regular Kilter campus for five hours of class time! If you’re still standing after that, you’ll forage for dinner as you hike back through the deep, dark woods.”
“How far is campus from here?” Gabby asks.
“So far you may be eating dinner when everyone else is eating breakfast the next day!”
I picture the freezer full of fish sticks back home. When I was hungry all I had to do was go downstairs, dump my snack on a plate, and toss it into the microwave. Was alerting Annika and coming here a mistake?
It can’t be. Because the fish sticks were thrown out. Something was wrong. It is wrong. We wouldn’t have been called here so suddenly otherwise.
Plus, this itinerary is all part of Annika’s show for our listening parents . . . isn’t it?
“Upon your return you’ll do a final cleanup of Kamp Kilter grounds!” Annika continues. “Then you will have five minutes of free time before lights out. At which point you’ll retire to your makeshift tents and do your best to sleep on the cold hard ground!”
Several yards away, Carter Montgomery raises his hand.
“What?” Annika squawks.
“Um, where do we . . . ? That is, how do we . . . ? What I mean is—”
“Where are your restroom facilities?” Annika finishes.
Carter nods. Annika lunges at him, making him stumble backward. Then she stops abruptly and thrusts her pointer finger toward the ground.
“You want us to go . . . in a hole?” Alison asks.
Annika doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t move either.
“Nope,” Alison says. “No way. Not going to happen. I’d rather hold it in until—”
“Ali,” Gabby says, “chill. Didn’t you see the amazing bathrooms with marble Jacuzzis and velvet towels down in our—”
She stops. Or is stopped—by a piece of silver duct tape gluing her lips together. Gabby drops her shovel and claps both hands to her covered mouth.
“Gabby,” Abe groans. “Annika just said we need to play along so that—”
He’s stopped too. This time I glimpse the silencer as it flies toward him. It starts out in a small roll, then unwinds as it shoots through the air. When it lands squarely over Abe’s mouth, it’s an even six-inch-long piece of tape.
The other Troublemakers look around the beach for the tape’s sour
ce. Most check out our teachers, who stand motionless by the lake.
I don’t. Maybe it’s because of my marksman training, or maybe it’s because we’ve spent so much time together. Whatever the reason, I know that Ike, my troublemaking tutor, fired the shots. This hunch is confirmed when I spot him hanging from the branches of a tall pine tree at the edge of the beach. He’s holding a silver tape dispenser, like the kind Dad has in his office back home, only Ike’s version has a handle and a trigger. When he sees that I see him, he smiles and waves. I do the same, then go back to digging before Annika catches me slacking.
“To answer your question,” she says, aiming the megaphone at Carter, “yes, you will use holes in the ground to take care of your various biological needs. I’m not completely cruel, however, so the holes you use needn’t be these. If you have enough strength to dig others in the privacy of the woods, by all means do so. As for bathing, you’re very fortunate to have the beautiful Lake Kilter for your personal tub. Be advised that many sharp-toothed fish call this side of the water home—and they defend it fiercely. Also, bathing is considered a privilege and will be done only during your five free minutes at the end of the day.”
Annika relays this information so convincingly, my stomach turns. Judging by the way my fellow Troublemakers squirm and frown, theirs do too.
“All that said, your families and their happiness are my top priority. I’ll be very busy making sure their every need is tended to—starting now. Are there any other questions before I go?”
Annika’s severe tone implies that there better not be. So I’m surprised—and nervous—when Alison raises her hand again.
“Sorry,” she says, looking out across the lake. “But my dad’s jumping around and waving his hands like crazy . . . so I think he has one?”
Annika turns to our teachers. “Samara? Would you please ask Mr. Parker what we can do for him?”
I now notice that all of the teachers are wearing small earpieces. Our biology instructor speaks quietly, then listens and addresses Annika.
“Mr. Parker would like to know if the families will get to spend time with Kilter students, ma’am.”