Karen's Fishing Trip

  “Hi!” called Hannie. She and Mrs. Papadakis were crossing the street. Mrs. Papadakis carried Hannie’s suitcase. “I have already said good-bye to my daddy and to Linny and Sari,” Hannie told me. (Linny is Hannie’s brother. He is nine. Sari is her sister. She is a little bit younger than Emily Michelle.)

  Mrs. Papadakis put down Hannie’s suitcase and talked to Daddy about the trip.

  Two minutes later Nancy’s parents dropped her off with her suitcase. She kissed them good-bye. She kissed her baby brother, Danny, good-bye. Then Hannie kissed her mother good-bye. Then I kissed Sam, Charlie, and Nannie good-bye. (I did not kiss David Michael, but we shook hands.) After all that kissing, my lips felt tingly.

  Then the cars were loaded, and we were off!

  * * *

  First we drove through Stoneybrook. Then we drove through the rest of Connecticut. We crossed the state line into Massachusetts. (There is no real line that you can see. Just a sign that says, “Welcome to Massachusetts.”) Then we drove across Massachusetts till we reached Shadow Lake.

  Two hours is a long time, but it passed pretty quickly. First we sang all the songs we knew. Daddy listened to music from the radio. He turned it up loud.

  Then we played guessing games and I Spy and Aunt Agnes Went to Africa. Then we stopped at a rest stop and used the rest rooms and bought some peanut-butter crackers. After we had eaten our crackers and run around for five minutes, Daddy called us back to the van.

  We sang more songs. We talked about every single person in Ms. Colman’s class. Then Daddy said, “If you were stuck on a deserted island with only three other people from Ms. Colman’s class, who would you want them to be?” I chose Hannie, Nancy, and Sara Ford. Hannie chose me and Nancy and Audrey Green. Nancy chose me and Hannie and Omar Harris.

  Then Hannie and I teased Nancy for the rest of the trip about Omar being her boyfriend.

  Finally we turned off the main road onto a smaller road. We were surrounded by beautiful woods with pine trees and maples and sycamores and oaks.

  “There it is!” I said, pointing out the window. “I see the lodge!”

  Shadow Lake is very busy in the wintertime, because people go there to ski. So there is a big lodge with a restaurant and a gift shop and a game room and a library and just about anything you could want. Our house is down the road a little, on the other side of the lodge.

  “Hello, lodge!” said Hannie.

  “Good-bye, lodge!” said Nancy as we drove past it.

  That cracked me up.

  Then Daddy turned into our driveway, and I saw our house.

  The Three Musketeers cheered.

  “Please wait until I stop the car before you leap out,” said Daddy.

  As soon as he stopped, we flung open our doors and jumped out. The three of us ran up the stairs and raced up and down the shaded porch.

  “We are here! We are here!” I sang. Then I threw my arms wide. “Let our vacation begin!”

  The Three Musketeer Hotel

  Daddy calls his Shadow Lake house a cabin, but it is actually too big to be a cabin. It is a funny house. Inside is a huge living room. At one end is a long table with long benches, just like at home. The kitchen is at one end of the living room. So it is really the living-dining-kitchen room. There are two tiny bedrooms, barely big enough for beds and dressers. There are three little bathrooms. And there are also two huge bedrooms. Get this: Each of the two huge bedrooms has six bunk beds in it. So the house can hold a gigundoly lot of people.

  When we are not at Shadow Lake, a man named Mitch Conway takes care of our house. When we ran through the front door we found a small vase of wildflowers on the table, and a note from Mitch saying, “Welcome!” Our house was neat and clean, as usual, and the windows had been opened to let in fresh air.

  Hannie and Nancy had been here before, so they knew where everything was. The three of us ran to the girls’ bedroom right away. (Girls usually sleep in one of the huge bedrooms, and boys sleep in the other.)

  The bunk beds were lined up along the walls. There were three white dressers, and three little tables with lamps on them. A beautiful quilt was folded neatly at the bottom of each bed.

  “The first thing we should do is make our beds,” I said briskly. “I will get sheets from the linen closet.”

  But before we did that, Elizabeth’s car pulled up and she honked the horn. We all ran outside to welcome the rest of our all-girl party.

  “Hello! Hello!” I called as Elizabeth, Emily Michelle, Kristy, and Mary Anne got out of the station wagon.

  “Hello!” said Elizabeth. She set Emily down, and my little sister started climbing the steps up to the porch.

  We helped them unload everything. Inside, Kristy and Mary Anne headed for the girls’ room, but then stopped in the middle of the living room.

  “I forgot,” said Kristy. “There are no boys here. We can have the other bedroom. All right!”

  “That’s true,” said Elizabeth. “You guys can really spread out.”

  Kristy and Mary Anne headed for the room where the boys usually sleep. Which meant …

  “Come on!” I said to Hannie and Nancy. We ran back to our bedroom. “This room is all ours!” I twirled around on the middle of a braided rug. “I have never been here before when I did not have to share this room with nineteen million other people. But it is just us three here. This is our private room!”

  Hannie and Nancy smiled.

  “It is like having a hotel room all to ourselves,” said Nancy. “The Three Musketeer Hotel.”

  “We can stay up late and whisper and play with our flashlights,” said Hannie. “Kristy will not be here to remind us to go to sleep.”

  The three of us looked at each other. I felt so excited, I could not stand it. Our vacation was getting better and better all the time!

  “There are twelve different beds,” said Nancy. “I cannot choose which one I want. We could all sleep in top bunks. Or all sleep in bottom bunks.”

  “I know!” I said. I had just gotten a great idea. “We can each have a new bed every night. We will switch around.”

  “Yes!” said Hannie.

  “Top bunks first!” said Nancy.

  So we each picked out a top bunk and made it up with fresh sheets. We were all set.

  “Girls?” called Elizabeth. “I am going to the grocery store in town. Would you like to come with me, to help me shop?”

  “Yes!” we said, and scrambled off our bunks. Outside we piled into Elizabeth’s car. The air smelled like pine trees. The sun was shining. I felt very, very happy.

  Keegan (A Boy)

  The Shadow Lake grocery store is not a gigundo supermarket, like the one back in Stoneybrook. It is more like a small general store, with many fascinating things, such as fishing poles and lures, bait, water toys, tin buckets for picking blueberries, and homemade pies and jams.

  While Elizabeth filled her basket with milk, bread, cereal, cheese, and other food we would need, Hannie and Nancy and I looked at all the things on the shelves.

  “This says gooseberry jam,” Nancy said. “What’s a gooseberry?”

  Hannie and I did not know. I pictured a berry shaped like a goose, or maybe just a berry that geese like to eat. I was thinking about this when I heard someone call my name.

  “Karen! Karen Brewer!”

  I turned around and saw a boy standing in the next aisle.

  “Keegan!” I said happily. I had met Keegan at Shadow Lake one time when my family had come to snow-ski. I had not liked skiing very much, and neither had Keegan. We had hung out at the lodge together.

  “Hannie, Nancy!” I said. “This is my friend Keegan. Keegan, meet Hannie and Nancy, my two best friends.”

  “Hi,” said Hannie. She gave a tiny smile.

  “Hi,” said Nancy. She did not smile at all.

  I wondered what was going on.

  “Are you going to be here long?” Keegan asked.

  “Uh-huh. Until the Monday after Father’s Day,” I s
aid. “We are going to fish in the fishing contest. What about you?”

  “I will be here for another week,” said Keegan. “We have been here a week already.”

  “Great,” I said. “Then we will have lots of time to do stuff together. Remember when we played video games at the lodge?”

  “Yeah,” said Keegan. “And we had that great snowball fight.”

  “Karen, girls, I am ready to leave,” said Elizabeth.

  “We have to go now. But we can play together soon,” I told Keegan.

  “Okay. See you later!” he said.

  Nancy and Hannie did not say a thing.

  * * *

  Our house at Shadow Lake has its own dock that reaches out over the water. I am not allowed to play on the dock unless Kristy or a grown-up is with me. That afternoon, Hannie and Nancy and I were all sitting on the dock. We were dangling our bare feet over the water. Kristy and Mary Anne sat at the other end of the dock with Emily Michelle. Emily Michelle had a pocketful of pebbles. She was dropping them into the lake one by one. Daddy and Elizabeth were making barbecue for dinner. Yum!

  “Daddy says he has three fishing poles he can lend us,” I said. “We can use them in the fishing contest.”

  “We should practice fishing,” Hannie said. “I am not very good at it.”

  “Let’s practice every single day,” said Nancy. “For at least an hour.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “We can start tomorrow. I bet we will be good fishers by the end of the week. I would like to win a prize in the fishing contest. Maybe for the biggest fish.”

  “Or the most beautiful fish,” said Nancy.

  “Maybe tomorrow we can go swimming,” said Hannie. “After we practice fishing.”

  “We can go swimming, or play in our secret house, or take a walk through the woods, or go to the lodge,” I said. “I know! We should write down all our choices, and then schedule them. I will run to the house and get a piece of paper —”

  “No, Karen,” said Hannie. She was laughing. “No schedules. We will just decide to do things when we feel like it.”

  “What if we forget to do something fun?” I asked.

  “We will not forget,” said Nancy. “Trust me.”

  “Okaaaay.” I sat down again. So they won. “We have to remember to call Keegan tomorrow,” I said. “He is very nice. He could come over and practice fishing with us.”

  “Um,” said Hannie. She looked at Nancy. Nancy looked at Hannie.

  “What,” I said.

  “Well, Karen,” said Nancy. “Keegan is a boy. This is a no-boys week, remember?”

  Then I realized why Hannie and Nancy had not been very friendly to Keegan in the grocery store.

  “After all,” said Hannie. “I thought this would be a special Three Musketeers week. Not a Three Musketeers and a boy week.”

  For just a second, I felt a tiny bit angry at Hannie and Nancy. Keegan was a friend of mine. I did not want to be mean to him. I thought Hannie and Nancy were being selfish. But I remembered something Nannie had told me once: If you are angry, count to twenty before you speak. So I did. You know what? It worked. I was not so angry anymore.

  “I understand,” I said. “But I do not want to hurt Keegan’s feelings. Would it be okay if this is a mostly all-girls week with just a little bit of boy?”

  Hannie and Nancy thought about it.

  Finally they nodded. “Okay,” said Hannie. “Just a little bit of boy. I do not want you to hurt Keegan’s feelings.”

  “But he cannot come to our secret house,” replied Nancy. “That is still for girls only.”

  I smiled. “Thank you,” I said to my best friends. “No boys in the secret house.”

  The Secret House

  We started practicing our fishing the very next morning after breakfast. Daddy came with us to the dock. Kristy and Mary Anne set off on a walk. Elizabeth took Emily Michelle to play on the tiny strip of sandy beach nearby.

  Daddy showed us how to put little pieces of raw shrimp on our hooks without poking our fingers. Then we dropped our lines in the water and waited. When our bobbers bobbed in the water, we knew fish were nibbling our bait. We yanked up our lines, but again and again nothing was there.

  “Those pesky fish are eating our bait without getting caught,” I said.

  “They are very smart fish,” Nancy grumbled.

  After an hour of not catching anything, we decided practice was over. We had given about a million fish a nice breakfast.

  “Just you wait,” I said, shaking my fist at the water. “I will catch one of you yet.”

  After practice the Three Musketeers headed into the woods to our little secret house.

  “Go only to your house, no farther,” said Daddy. “I want to be able to see you right away.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” I said.

  We had found the secret house the last time we were here. It is really just an abandoned shed, but it makes a great playhouse. On our last vacation here, we had cleaned it up and put curtains in the windows.

  “Ew. It is all dusty again,” said Hannie.

  “We can pretend that we just woke up after sleeping for a hundred years,” I said. “Like Sleeping Beauty. There is a hundred years’ worth of dust all over everything. So we have to clean it up.”

  “My name is Princess Aurora,” said Nancy. She brushed her long hair back over her shoulder. “Oh, I am all stiff and sore after sleeping for so long.”

  It was a great game. I was Princess Marigold. Hannie was Princess Annamaria. We were Sleeping Beauties until lunchtime.

  * * *

  After a delicious lunch of hot dogs, Kristy asked us if we wanted to walk to the lodge.

  “Mary Anne and I are going to the game room,” she said.

  “Count us in!” I said.

  The lodge is like a big hotel, but with no bedrooms. First we looked in the gift store. We saw magazines and candy and gum and sunscreen lotion and even paperback books. We bought postcards to send to people in Stoneybrook.

  “I will send this one to my daddy,” said Hannie. “I am a little sad that I will not see him on Father’s Day.”

  “Me too,” said Nancy. “I will send my daddy this one.”

  I felt bad that my friends were sad about their daddies. “Hey!” I said. “I think we should go to the game room and find Kristy and Mary Anne.” I wanted Hannie and Nancy to think of something besides Father’s Day.

  In the game room, some older kids were playing pool. I do not know how to play pool. I think I am too short. Some kids were playing video games. Kristy and Mary Anne had started a game of Monopoly with some other kids. I knew Kristy would cream them.

  For awhile Nancy and Hannie and I played Parcheesi. Then we played video games. Then the Ping-Pong table was free, so we ran to it. We each picked up a paddle.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “There are only three of us. That is two against one. That is not fair.”

  “We could take turns,” said Nancy. “One of us could wait, and then play the winner.”

  “That could take forever,” said Hannie.

  Then I spotted Keegan standing by a video game.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “We could ask Keegan to play with us. Then we will be two against two. Is that okay?”

  Hannie and Nancy decided it was okay. Keegan was happy to play with us. We played until dinnertime.

  “You are right,” said Hannie as we walked home with Kristy and Mary Anne. “Keegan is a nice boy.”

  “I am glad you think so,” I said.

  The Monster of Shadow Lake

  That night Hannie and Nancy and I decided to sleep in three bottom bunks close to our window. Unmaking beds and making new beds was kind of a pain, but it was fun switching where we slept each night. And it was sooo much fun having the room to ourselves. We could stay up very late, talking, as long as we were pretty quiet.

  After we had taken our turns in the shower, we put on our pajamas and sat on our beds. We were all untangling our hair.
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  “At home my mommy untangles my hair,” said Hannie. “I think I am a little bit homesick. Not that I am not having a good time,” she said quickly. “I am having a great time. And I am happy to be with you and Nancy. But I also like being at home with Mommy and Daddy. And even Linny and Sari.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “It is weird. Sometimes when I am at the big house, I miss the little house. And when I am at the little house, I miss the big house. I cannot help it.”

  “We should not think about anything sad,” said Nancy. “We are together now, all for one and one for all. We can have a good time.”

  “You are right,” I said. I was so glad they were here with me. It is great to be able to share all your feelings — even sad ones — with your best friends.

  “Hey, I smell …” I sniffed the air.

  “Popcorn!” we all said at once. We jumped up and ran out into the living room.

  Daddy was popping corn over our fireplace, which had a real fire in it. (Even during the summer, sometimes it can be a little chilly at night at Shadow Lake. That is because it is in the mountains.)

  “You are just in time,” said Kristy. “Watson is going to tell us stories about when he was little and he came here to Shadow Lake.”

  “Goody!” I said. I pulled some cushions off the couch, and Hannie and Nancy and I curled up on them. We made sure we were within reach of the popcorn bowl.

  Elizabeth came out of one of the tiny bedrooms. “Emily is finally asleep, thank goodness. I think all this fresh air is giving her more energy than usual.” Elizabeth collapsed into an armchair and smiled at Daddy.

  Daddy told us many funny stories about when he was a little boy. He told us about learning to fish with his uncle. He told us about some of the people he had met here during the summers. And he told us about … the Shadow Lake Monster!

  I had found out about the Lake Monster the first time I was here. Some people say (and I think I believe them) that there is a sea monster in Shadow Lake. Like the Loch Ness Monster. Maybe it is one last dinosaur that never died out. I do not know.