“In passing.” She shook her pillow until the case slipped into her hands. She looked at me over her shoulder. “What’s the deal with you and the ghost? Are you testing the corporeality of his mouth yet?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
Her slanted front teeth peeked through her smile. “A few more protests, please.”
“We’re studying together,” I said, slowly and pointedly. “Last night’s Melee was a massacre. No one has time to think about anything other than these stupid binders. And when we do, it’ll be time to go home. I needed a study partner, and my new bestie wasn’t available.”
Her smile vanished. “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m not used to my hermiting getting in other people’s way. You probably don’t have to deal with being completely invisible, but it kind of becomes second nature to blend in.”
“You can go unnoticed while also being an Amazon.” I folded my arms over my chest. “But you aren’t invisible here. You don’t have to blend in. That was our deal, remember? You can hermit when you want to, but I’m here to kick it whenever you need to be seen.”
She wrung her hands in the hem of her shirt. “Have I told you recently how glad I am that I get to live with you this summer?”
I smiled. “No, but the feeling is mutual.”
Underneath the wardrobe on Leigh’s side of the room, there was a thump and a muffled roar. We both turned toward it.
“Um,” she said. “If that’s a possum, I am going to run.”
Another set of thumps—this time under my bed. I got down on the floor, gazing into the darkness under my bed frame. There weren’t even dust bunnies under there. But with my ear against the carpet, I could just barely make out the next shout.
Eee! Mmfer!
I glanced back at Leigh. “Who lives under us?”
“Teams are divided up based on room number. Under us is the boys’ floor. So it must be either Galen and Hunter or—”
The next thump landed right under my hand. I jolted back into a squat.
Leigh clapped her hands together and cackled. “G-g-g-ghost!”
“What do you think they want?” I asked, as two more knocks sounded under the wardrobe again. “We can’t go in their room and find out. We’ll all get disqualified. And I don’t have either of their phone numbers.”
“We don’t have to go to their room,” she said. She leaped into a pair of flip-flops and stashed her room key in her bra.
“Because you packed two cans and a piece of string?”
She bent down in front of her wardrobe and cupped her hands around her mouth. Lips dangerously close to the carpet, she yelled, “Hold on!”
“Wait,” I called to the back of her head as she rushed toward the door. “What about our laundry?”
She was already disappearing into the hallway, the door hanging open in her wake. I scrambled to my feet and charged after her. Thanks to my much longer stride, it was easy to catch up with her. The two of us power walked down the hall. When we hit the elevator, Leigh made a hard left, throwing open the door to the stairs. I stumbled behind her, listening to the echo of her sandals slapping her feet as we trotted down.
I jumped the last step, landing in front of the first-floor entrance. Leigh’s small, square fingers incrementally pushed in the touch bar handle until it gave a delicate click. The door inched open, revealing a long beige-carpeted hallway identical to our own, except for the handwriting on the chalkboard doors.
“Give me your shoe,” Leigh whispered. When I opened my mouth to argue, she tipped her head back to glare at me. “My flip-flop won’t fly far enough. It’s basic Newtonian physics.”
“Effing Newton didn’t pay a hundred bucks for Nikes,” I muttered, hopping out of one of my shoes. I handed it over, shying back toward the stairs as Leigh held the door open with her hip and chucked the shoe as hard as she could at the first door on the left. The shoe bounced off the door and rolled pathetically on the floor.
Leigh looked over her shoulder at me, her forehead crinkled.
I cleared my throat and did my best impression of my father trying to scare the neighborhood cats out of our flower beds, stomping and letting out a deep, “Hey!”
There was a breath-holding, sweat-forming silence before Jams darted into the hallway, Brandon, Galen, and Hunter behind him. The four of them bum rushed the door.
“My shoe!” I pointed at the lone Nike on the floor. Hunter grabbed it without slowing and tossed it to me, underhand.
“Upstairs, upstairs,” Jams puffed, rushing past us and swinging himself up onto the stairs by the railing. Leigh was at his heels, her sandals louder than ever.
I stuffed my foot back into my shoe and followed the stampede of my teammates.
“We have to keep an eye on the time,” Hunter said, propelling himself off of the cement wall and onto the next flight. “If we miss checkin, we’re screwed.”
“I set the alarm on my phone,” Galen said.
“Go get Kate and meet us on the top floor,” Brandon called to Leigh.
“In the pumpkin lounge!” Jams added.
“I’m on it!” she said, running ahead and flinging herself back onto our floor.
I caught up to Jams and Brandon, the untied laces of my tossed shoe bouncing against my ankles. “What the shit is going on? Are we under attack? Are we being hunted?”
“Not yet,” Jams wheezed.
“No one is going to hunt us,” Brandon said quickly. “But we have to talk in private.”
We all paused on the top landing. Jams pushed open the door, revealing pitch darkness. He, Hunter, and Galen dug into their pockets and pulled out their cell phones, holding them aloft like dim flashlights. Huddled together, we made our way toward the lounge.
I flipped on the lights as we entered the pumpkin. Jams dove for the switches, slapping them off again, leaving us with only the hazy light from the two skinny windows.
“We should stay away from the windows, too,” Brandon said, pressing himself against one of the orange walls and crossing his arms. “They face into the quad.”
Galen threw himself down on one of the armless lounge chairs. He tipped his face up at me. “You’re going to want to sit down, Ever. This. Is. Big.”
“Oh my God, can you guys stop talking like you’re in a bad spy movie?” I asked. I felt my hands on my hips. I was one foot tap away from turning into Beth. Or one eye roll from turning into my mom. “For real. What’s going on?”
Jams shook his head, making himself comfortable on the floor next to Hunter. “Not until we’re all together.”
With a growl, I threw myself onto one of the squat padded stools. It would have been too easy to kick all of them until they stopped playing games, but it wouldn’t have been great for my social life. I tugged at my hair, snapping small snarls between my index and middle finger.
Finally, footsteps thundered down the hall again. All heads turned to see Leigh and Kate appear in the doorway.
“Great,” Jams said. He lifted his butt to reach into his back pocket. He tossed a folded mass of goldenrod papers onto the center of the floor. “This changes everything.”
“Don’t mind them,” I told Leigh and Kate, getting down onto the carpet to pick up the papers. “They’ve gone all Bourne Identity in the last ten minutes.”
The wad unfolded into six pieces of paper. I smoothed them over my knee before holding them up to read in the dim light.
“You found the kitchen schedule?” Kate asked, reading over my shoulder. “I don’t think being able to anticipate what the food could taste like will help. I’m happier when I don’t know what they’re trying to make.”
Leigh shuddered. “Those tacos. So cold. So wet. Why were they so wet?”
“Past that,” Jams said, motioning for me to look at the pages.
I dropped the first page and found more of the food schedule. Past that was a kitchen cleaning roster. And then a page that was handwritten. The writing was neat and rounded.
June 24: Amoeb
a tag—fire drill all call
June 25: The Breakfast Club reenactment—breakfast
June 26: Arboretum climb—afternoon checkin
June 29: Rubik’s cube—timed in first period
July 01: Campus run—post lunch
July 02: Hula hoops—lunch clean up
July 03: Dagobah crawl and lightsabers—team meeting on Mud Trail
July 04: Patriotic talent show—after dinner
July 06: Extreme Hokey Pokey—before dinner
July 08: Playground day—after skirmishes
July 09: Treasure hunt—all day
“Where did you get this?” Leigh breathed.
“It was in one of the forts in Fort Farm,” Jams said.
The page was starting to sweat between my fingers. All of the Cheeseman trial events, through to the last week of camp. It was overwhelming. I let it drift back to the carpet. Kate snatched it up and held it close to her face.
“What is extreme hokey pokey?” she asked.
“I’ve seen one of the counselors in Fort Farm,” I said, remembering the Perfect Nerd Girl standing in her pajamas earlier in the week. “I think she might be sleeping out there. Were there any forts covered in sheets when you went there?”
Hunter shook his head. It could have been a trick of the light, but his face seemed pinker.
“What are the chances that this is a test too?” Kate asked, the list of events still hovering under her nose. “Like the movie night. What if we’re supposed to turn this into Meg and Hari?”
“We’re not giving this back,” Jams said. “A gold bar dropped into our laps. You’d have to be off your freaking trolley to give it away. Do you guys know what we could do with this?”
The possibility that we had a list of the rest of the Cheeseman events buzzed around my brain like a swarm of overly hopeful bees. It was like finding a treasure map. If we could prepare for the Cheeseman as well as we prepared for the Melee, the chances of going home empty-handed went down to almost zero.
“We could win five scholarships,” Galen said.
“Which is great, but there are seven of us,” I said.
“Technically there are eight of us,” Brandon said, kicking the carpet.
Leigh’s fingers folded together, knuckles popping. “I know we didn’t tell Perla about the mock Melee, but this is more serious, right? It’d be wrong not to tell her.”
“And if she tells her friends on Team Six?” Hunter asked. “Or if she lets it slip to a counselor?”
Jams scoffed. “And also, do any of us want her to win?”
“Is that our place to decide?” I asked. I had no warm and fuzzy feelings for Perla, and I definitely thought she would spill our team secrets to anyone who would listen, but having her fate in my hands made me nervous. Sure, she was unpleasant and rude and generally awful to be around …
Wait, what was my point again?
“What do you think, Kate?” Leigh asked.
“Yeah,” Galen said. “You have to live with her. If you don’t want to keep this from her, we’ll track her down and tell her what’s going on.”
Kate shook her head slowly back and forth. “I-I don’t think she needs to know. Not because she’s mean or because she took down my decorations or because her Starbucks order is pretentious. This is between us as friends. You guys are sharing this with us because we are your friends. And she’s not our friend. She made it very clear that she did not want that.”
“I’m on board with that,” Hunter said.
“Pinky swears all around?” Leigh asked, holding up her hands.
I locked my pinky with hers and held my other hand out to Brandon, who only hesitated for a second before curving his pinky around mine. One by one, we formed a circle of connected pinkies around the kitchen roster, the lunch menus, and the list of Cheeseman events.
And Galen’s cell phone alarm went off, announcing the next checkin.
21
“Checkin has been moved to the arboretum,” Hunter reported, striding back across the lobby from the empty table where a counselor should have been waiting for us.
“Six twenty-nine, arboretum climb,” Leigh recited, excitedly stretching the hem of her T-shirt. “The page foretold this moment.”
“Does anyone know how to get to the arboretum?” Galen asked.
“I’ve run through it a couple of times,” I said. “I can get us there.”
The quad was empty as we left the residence hall behind. A lone soccer ball sat in the middle of the green, with the Team Five flag from the first day planted nearby, a remnant of the field day that the other teams had been enjoying.
“Keep your eyes out,” I said to my lagging teammates. “Brandon swears that there are tree houses hidden around campus.”
“You say that like they’re fairy rings or something,” Brandon said, slouching beside me. When the team was around, it was as though he was trying to hide his entire body in his bowl cut. “It’s a real thing. It’s on the Wikipedia page and everything.”
“Oh, well, if it’s on Wikipedia, it’s no bullshit.” I laughed, nudging him with my elbow. His smile crept out from under his hair.
“That could be what we’re doing in the arboretum,” Leigh said. “Building tree houses.”
“The administration wouldn’t allow that. It’s not safe,” Kate said.
“How much of the Cheeseman trials do you think the administration actually knows about?” Galen asked.
“They are named after one of their deans,” Leigh said.
“But it’s not a compliment,” Hunter said. “His name is Cheeseman. It’s a built-in joke.”
Kate’s face reddened. “That’s not why they’d name it after him. It’s just because he’s in charge.”
“Look,” Galen said, pointing up ahead. “LeRoy Hall. Like Louis Leroy, who…”
“Was the critic credited with naming the impressionist movement,” Kate answered automatically.
“It’s our day of rest,” Jams complained. “We’re supposed to be resting our brains.”
“You can rest your brain. I want to win,” Leigh said, bouncing ahead and turning to face us like a tiny kangaroo drill sergeant. Skipping backwards, she barked, “The term groupthink was coined by which research psychologist? Ever!”
“Irving Janis,” I said quickly. “From Yale.”
Leigh punched the air. “What’s the product of frequency and wavelength, Galen?”
“The speed the wave moves through space, ma’am!” Galen shouted.
Pogoing with more ease than should have been possible in flip-flops, Leigh kept lobbing questions at us until we came to the curve in the sidewalk that led under the tall trees that tangled together, blocking out the light.
“No one else is shocked that there’s a random forest on campus?” Galen asked, craning his head to look at the ceiling of branches and leaves.
“We were out here earlier today,” Jams said, nodding toward Hunter. “Fort Farm is on the other side.”
“And there are pictures of it on the website,” Kate said.
Galen hung his head. “I need to leave the dorm more.”
The path tipped downhill, revealing the fork in the road. In front of the directions sign sat a checkin table identical to the one we had left in the residence hall. The counselor from MIT sat behind it, his gym rat bulk dwarfing the metal folding chair under him. He aimed a pen at us as we approached.
“Team number?”
“Team One,” Leigh said. “All of us. We’re missing Perla Loya, though.”
MIT scratched the answer onto the checkin paper and waved us toward the right side of the fork. “Your counselors are waiting for you that way.”
“Why?” Hunter asked.
MIT’s eyebrows went up, highlighting how Cro-Magnon-like his forehead was. “Because we’re in charge of you?”
“Peter,” Brandon said, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders rounded. “Is this another trial or what?”
MI
T—Peter—narrowed his eyes to periwinkle slits. “You guys are like ten steps away. Just go before you get me in trouble.”
“Got it,” Brandon said, smothering a smile at the corner of his mouth.
We shuffled toward the right fork in the road, seven rigid spines and held breaths going deeper into the belly of the arboretum. Peter faded out of sight behind us as the voices of the rest of the campers rose out of the trees. Off the path, clusters of teams and counselors stood together around a single thick-trunked tree with a bushy canopy of pointed green leaves. Nestled on one of the pale branches was a pallet, the kind used to populate Fort Farm. With four posts built into the sides and a wrinkled blue tarp stretched over the top, it was more of a tree shanty than a tree house.
“Inside of the tree house is a bell,” Bryn Mawr was saying to the congregated campers as we stepped through the tall grass. “Each competitor will scale the tree and ring the bell, one at a time. The camper who makes the best time wins this challenge.”
“It’s real,” Kate whispered into her hands as she struggled to hold her face on her skull. “The list is real.”
“See?” Brandon said to me, his face igniting into a grin as wide as a church door. “Tree house.”
*
The line of competitors curved all the way back onto the paved trail. Our team had split up in the shuffle. Hunter and Jams were close to the front with Kate. Galen and Brandon had opted to sit on the sidelines. I noticed Perla standing in the grass not far away from them, her cool girls at her side, none of them looking impressed by another physical challenge.
The counselors stood closest to the tree trunk, phones out to keep time. Lumberjack Beard’s bullhorn was back. The Perfect Nerd Girl seemed to be attempting to wrestle it away from him as he fussed with the volume over her head. I wished she tried this hard to keep him from serving us lukewarm slop for dinner.
“Ever!” I saw a brown hand waving high in the air, cutting through the crowd like a shark’s fin. Isaiah’s dreads were pulled back into a ponytail as big around as my fist, leaving his greasy forehead on full display. I had to stumble out of the way as he slid into line in front of me.
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