The Sign in the Smoke

  “What?” Bella asked, scowling. “Who died and made you camp police, Nancy?” She leaned toward me, like she was going to grab for the candle.

  “Nobody,” I said, clutching the candle harder as I gestured around the circle at the CITs. “But these kids just got here. They’re here to help us, but it’s also our responsibility to take care of them. And tomorrow, busloads of kids are going to pull into the driveway, and it’ll be our responsibility to take care of them, too.”

  Bella glared at me. “I know that. Unlike you, remember, I’ve been to camp before.”

  “You need to let go of this ghost story,” I went on, trying to keep my voice even and low. “It’s not helping anybody, and you could seriously scare some of the kids. I don’t know what your deal is yet, exactly, but I don’t even think you believe it.”

  Bella kept glaring at me. Her eyes looked hard in the pale moonlight. “You don’t know what I believe,” she hissed finally.

  “Let it go, Bella,” George said, raising her voice to be heard from the path. “Everyone, come back to bed with us now. Or Nancy and I will wake up Deborah.”

  One by one, the remaining counselors and CITs began getting to their feet. Several of them looked relieved. Maddie still avoided my eyes and looked a little embarrassed. But her CIT, Frankie, eagerly strode toward the path. Bella was the last to stand, and when she did she moved very slowly, deliberately grabbing her bag and tossing the matchbook, which was still in her hand, inside.

  She took the few steps over to me, looking me right in the eye. “I’ll take the candle and Ouija board back, please,” she said icily.

  “I think I’ll hold on to them,” I said, not backing down.

  A flash of anger played across Bella’s face, and then her eyes hardened even more. She leaned in and whispered to me, “You’re a goody-goody and a tattletale. I thought this camp would be fun, but not with squares like you and your little nerdfighters screwing things up.” She held up one finger, and while I stared at it, wondering what she would do, she suddenly moved forward and poked me in the nose. “Were you looking to make an enemy tonight? ’Cause you’ve got one.”

  She backed up then, raising her voice so everyone else could hear, and pasted on a fake smile. “All right, séance postponed! Let’s all get some sleep, people.”

  She strutted up the path as though she were still in charge. Slowly, we all fell into step behind her.

  “Nice job, Steely-Eyed Nance,” George whispered, nudging me with her elbow. “You told her who was boss.”

  “But I definitely made an enemy,” I added, shooting George a concerned look. “I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite us later.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Making Friends

  “NANCY!” SAM SAID BRIGHTLY, HER baseball-capped head popping up in the open door of Juniper Cabin, “I’ve got another one for you! This is Kiki.”

  Sam backed away and a bright-eyed, smiling face appeared in the doorway, her braided hair held back by a colorful headband. “Hi! Is this my bunk?”

  It was nine thirty the next morning, and I felt like it should be about five o’clock in the afternoon. Whole lifetimes seemed to have passed since breakfast! Four of my six expected campers were already milling around the cabin, chatting eagerly, choosing bunks, unpacking their things. Maya and I helped as much as we could and tried to keep the conversation going, not that the girls needed much help in that area.

  “It sure is!” I said, jumping in front of Kiki with a smile. Ugh, I’m so sweaty! Too much running around in too short of a time! “Welcome, Kiki! It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Nancy, your counselor, and this is Maya, your CIT. We’re going to have so much fun this week!”

  Kiki grinned. “Awesome!” she said. She looked around the room and her face fell. “It’s just, I need a top bunk. I hate the idea of being boxed in. And is there a place I can plug in my phone?”

  “Um, how did you talk them into letting you keep your phone?” I asked. Phones were not allowed at camp. Not that we had any service out here, anyway.

  “I just pointed out to them that it doesn’t work,” Kiki said. “So I can’t really use it. But I just like to have it with me. It’s like a security blanket, plus my camera. And I intend to take a bunch of pictures and post them to Instagram as soon as I get back to civilization! No offense,” she added quickly, reaching out to touch my shoulder.

  It took me a minute to figure out what she meant. “Uh, none taken,” I said. “I don’t live here either, remember?”

  “Right, right,” said Kiki, looking around at the girls milling all around us. “HEY, LADIES! Would anyone be a super sweetheart and trade me for a top bunk? I would totally pay you back with a pedicure. I do the best nail art, not to brag!”

  The other girls all circled around Kiki, peppering her with questions as Cece, a camper from Chicago, cheerfully led her to her top bunk. I looked at Maya and slowly shook my head, impressed. The campers had such confidence so far! I couldn’t imagine walking into a cabin full of strangers like that and commanding the room—but it was a nice quality to have.

  Maya moved closer. “Just one more,” she whispered.

  “That’s right.” I glanced out the door again but didn’t see anyone heading in the direction of our cabin. Outside was total pandemonium. Campers climbed off buses, which had brought them from bigger cities like Chicago, or emerged from cars, surrounded by concerned parents and siblings. They met Deborah or Miles, who looked up their assignments on their clipboards and then passed them on to Sam or Taylor to bring to their correct bunks. The next hour had been reserved for a “getting to know you/unpacking” period, followed by a special hike and picnic lunch, led by each bunk’s counselor and CIT. Maya and I had already looked over the camp map and planned a long hike to Mushroom Creek, way on the north border of the camp property.

  “How are you holding up?” I whispered to Maya. When we’d returned from the lake the night before, it had been clear to me that Maya was scared by all the ghost talk. She wouldn’t admit it, but she seemed pale and edgy, not her normal bubbly, excited self. We’d talked it over a little, and I’d explained to her again that I strongly felt that the story was not true. I tried to downplay my own incident in the lake too, repeating that I wasn’t sure what I had seen. But Maya still seemed a little nervous. She’d tossed and turned for a while before finally falling asleep.

  I shouldn’t have listened to Bella and gone to the stupid lake in the first place, I chastised myself now. Oh well. Next time I’ll know.

  Maya shrugged. “I’m okay. Everything seems different in the light of day.”

  I knew how she felt. Even though the past two nights had been filled with creepy, ice-cube-down-the-spine moments, it was hard to recall those feelings when the sun first shone into our cabin. Even more so now, when our cabin was full of giggling, smiling campers.

  A light knock on the cabin door turned my attention away. It was Taylor, smiling eagerly. “Last one, right?” she asked, holding up a clipboard.

  I nodded but looked around Taylor for the camper. Where was she?

  Then Taylor gently said, “Go ahead—don’t be nervous!” and nudged a small, blond-ponytailed girl into the doorway. She hugged a dark-green backpack and had large, tortoiseshell-frame glasses.

  “Hi,” I said warmly, sensing that she might be shy. “I’m Nancy, your counselor. Welcome!”

  The girl just nodded and looked at the floor.

  “What’s your name, honey?” Taylor prodded her.

  “Harper,” the girl whispered, without looking up.

  I glanced at Taylor. Okay—so she’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. “Come on in, Harper,” I said, moving closer and taking her backpack from her. “Whoa—what’s in here? It weighs a ton!” I added, smiling.

  She glanced up shyly. “It’s full of books,” she said. “My parents said I shouldn’t bring them all, but I didn’t want to leave them behind.”

  “I like books too,” I said, leading
her into the cabin. “I think you’re our final camper to arrive. Which means you’ll be bunking here, with . . .” I put Harper’s heavy bag down on a bottom bunk and looked at the girls, who stood around, watching us with openly curious looks. “Kiki?”

  Kiki tossed her hair and walked forward confidently, holding out her hand as if to shake. “Hi there, I’m Kiki Pendleton,” she said. “Who are you? Where are you from? Do you wear the glasses all the time? They’re kind of cool. Are you from the city?”

  Harper glanced from Kiki to me, then seemed to shrink into herself a little. She looked down at the floor and said softly, “Harper. Um, excuse me.”

  She walked around me to reach her bag and carefully unzipped it, pulling out a thick blue book with pictures of dragons on the cover. Then she pulled out another book, this one green, but clearly from the same series, with the same dragons zooming around the jacket.

  A frown played across Kiki’s face, and she looked from me to the other girls, who still stood in a cluster around her. “Um . . . cool. You must like books, huh? So where are you from?”

  Harper lifted two more books out of her bag and then piled them all into a stack. She carefully lifted them and carried them around the bed to the dresser at the end.

  “Um, I put my stuff in the three bottom drawers there,” Kiki said. “There’s only four dressers for eight people, so we’ll have to share. There’s some closets near the bathroom, though. Is that okay?”

  Harper didn’t even look up. She hefted the books on top of the dresser. Then she shrugged—the only sign she’d heard Kiki—and began carefully arranging the books, lining them up along the dresser’s top edge. When she had them carefully placed, she tapped her lip and then switched the two on the outer edges. Then she nodded to herself, went back to her bunk, and began pulling out her clothes.

  Kiki looked a little taken aback. I could tell she was trying to be friendly, but she seemed to have reached the end of her patience. “Oookay,” she said quietly. “I guess we’ll get to know each other later. Um, anyway”—she turned back to the others—“have you guys ever seen that show Camp Confessional  ? It’s, like, my favorite!”

  “Oh yeah!” one of the other campers, Winnie, cried. Winnie was Asian, with gorgeous glossy black braids, and had arrived with a curly-haired brunette named Katie. The two seemed to be BFFs. “Katie and I, like, totally binge-watched that on Netflix last weekend! We wanted to prepare. This is our first time at summer camp.”

  As the girls chatted, Harper finished arranging her clothes in the dresser and carefully closed the top drawer. She folded her backpack with military precision and tucked it between the dresser and the wall.

  I walked over to her. “Did you have a long drive to get here?” I asked. I knew it was a lame question, but I was desperate to get this girl talking.

  Harper shrugged again.

  “An hour? Less?” I prodded.

  “About an hour.” She twisted her lips to the side, then looked away from me, back at the line of books. “Is it okay if I read until lunch?”

  I struggled not to look too disappointed. I knew we’d just met, but I so wanted this girl to open up! The other girls were already chattering away like they’d known one another their whole lives.

  “This is, um, sort of a ‘get to know you’ hour,” I said, gently putting a hand on Harper’s back and guiding her over to the rest of the girls. “Girls, why don’t we all have a seat on the beds and get to know one another? We have an hour before our hike and picnic lunch.”

  “Oh, cool!” cried Katie, twisting some curls behind her ear. “Can we play Truth or Dare?”

  I cringed. “No,” I said, “but we can definitely ask each other some get-to-know-you questions!”

  Maya ran over, clutching a book and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “Nancy, here’s that book I told you about,” she said, holding up a small paperback titled 100 Great Questions. “Maybe we can use some of the questions in here, and go around the bunk?”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said, smiling. Maya, who was a total extrovert, had told me the day before about a book she’d brought full of icebreaking questions to help the campers—and the two of us—get to know one another. I knew I was lucky to have such an enthusiastic CIT.

  But as we all settled down on the bunks, I noticed that Harper sat cross-legged on the floor rather than sit on a bed close to Cece. And she wore a distant expression as we all chatted eagerly, like she’d rather be someplace else. When someone asked her a question directly, she answered politely but rarely used more than a few words. As soon as she’d finished speaking, she turned her attention back to the floor in front of her or out the window.

  I could understand being a bit of an introvert. Crowds sometimes made me uncomfortable, and I always loved returning to the quiet of my room at the end of the day. But this seemed a little more extreme.

  How am I going to draw Harper out of her shell?

  “Are we there yet?” Cece asked for the twenty-seventh (or at least, that’s how it felt) time, and the rest of the campers cracked up over what had become a running joke.

  “Almost,” I replied, just as I had every other time she’d asked the question so far. “But really this time. It’s just”—I unfolded my map and stared at the upper right corner—“right over this hill.”

  “Didn’t you say that half an hour ago?” Winnie whined.

  Nina, a tall, skinny girl with freckles and short blond hair, scoffed, “We’ve only been hiking for, like, forty minutes, guys. Toughen up!”

  “Easy for you to say,” Kiki said with a sigh. “You’re, like, some kind of amazing basketball player or whatever. But I’m just a regular girl!”

  “What does that mean?” Nina asked, frowning. “Athletes are regular girls too!”

  I glanced at Maya and sighed. We’d been hiking longer than I’d thought we would—we might have been a little overambitious in choosing Mushroom Creek as our destination—and the girls were getting cranky. All the getting-to-know-you good vibes seemed to have dissipated, and the girls were focusing now on how much they didn’t have in common.

  “All I mean,” said Kiki, turning to Nina with exaggerated patience, “is you’re, like, conditioned to do this. At home, the most I walk is around the mall with my sister!”

  Nina cocked an eyebrow. “Have you ever thought that might make you the abnormal one?” she asked. “Maybe you should get more hobbies.”

  Kiki whirled around, clearly ready to give Nina a piece of her mind. But before I could figure out what to say to defuse the situation, Katie suddenly pointed ahead of us and shouted.

  “OMG, you guys!” We all turned in the direction she was pointing. “Is that the creek?”

  I checked my map. Oh, thank heavens, yes. “It is!” I said happily. “See, I told you! We were almost there.”

  “Thank goodness,” Cece said. “I’m hungry enough to eat my sneakers. I was too excited to eat much breakfast this morning.”

  “Me too,” Winnie added.

  “Me too,” said Nina with a smile.

  I glanced back at Harper, all the way in the back, but she remained silent, looking into the woods around us. She hadn’t said a word the whole hike, except one “excuse me” when she bumped into Cece.

  “So guys,” I said when we’d reached the edge of the burbling creek, “let’s spread out our blanket and settle down here. This looks like a good place for lunch.”

  “Any place would look like a good place for lunch right now,” Maya pointed out, holding out the bag that held our sandwiches. “Nancy, shall we lay everything out buffet-style and we can all serve ourselves?”

  “Good plan,” I agreed.

  Once we had the food all laid out and had each grabbed a plate, everyone tore into their sandwiches and chips. Things grew silent for a few minutes, except for the babbling of the creek and the sound of chewing. Then, suddenly, Nina spoke up.

  “Are we going to do everything together?” she asked, lo
oking pensively into the water. “Like, our bunk? Or are we going to be in different groups for different activities?”

  I paused and put down my sandwich. “We’ll be together for most activities,” I said, thinking. “You’ll mix with some other bunks for some things, like swimming or sports. But for the most part, we’ll all be together.”

  “Oh.” Nina crumpled her sandwich wrapper in her hand, not looking entirely happy.

  “Why are you asking?” asked Cece. She’d been watching our exchange curiously, and now her voice held an edge of annoyance. “Are we not, like, what you were looking for in a bunk?”

  I shook my head. “Let’s not make assumptions, guys,” I said. “Why do you ask, Nina? Did you want to mix more with the other bunks?”

  Nina pursed her lips, fiddling with the balled-up sandwich wrapper in front of her. “Not exactly,” she said. “I mean, you guys all seem nice. I just thought . . . well, this is a Best of All Worlds camp. So I guess I thought there would be a few more sporty people in my bunk.”

  Winnie put down her sandwich and tilted her head in Nina’s direction. “How do you know we’re not sporty?” she asked. “I happen to play tennis on, like, a competitive level.”

  Nina’s eyes widened. “Really?” she asked.

  Winnie nodded. “I don’t talk about it a lot. It’s just something I’ve always done,” she said. She smiled. “I kind of stink at other sports, though,” she added. “Just so you don’t get your hopes up.”

  Nina chuckled.

  “You guys,” said Maya, waving her hands in front of her as she often did, “one of the best parts of coming to camp is getting to hang out with people you never would have met back home! When I was at Camp Larksong—you know, that’s what this camp used to be called years ago—my best friend ended up being this girl named Lucy, who was super quiet and into drawing. At the end of camp she drew this amazing graphic novel about all the fun we’d had! We’re still friends now, and I still have a copy of her book.”