The Sign in the Smoke

  I shot Maya a grateful look. “That’s right,” I said. “My best friends are here at camp too—they’re counselors, Bess and George. You’ll meet them later, I’m sure. But anyway, we have nothing in common—except how much we like each other! You’ll see. Being alike isn’t what makes you friends. It’s appreciating what makes you different.”

  The girls all seemed to respond to that, and soon they were chatting and exchanging questions about the different hobbies they’d each mentioned during the get-to-know-you session.

  As we were munching on dessert, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, Katie looked over at Harper, who’d remained mostly silent through much of the conversation. “Hey, Harper,” she said, adjusting her position to face her quiet bunkmate. “You seem a little quiet, and that’s cool. But can I ask you a question?”

  Harper glanced up, looking surprised and even a little nervous. “Um—okay?”

  “What are those books you brought?” Katie went on. “Because I love to read, and I really like dragons, but I’ve never seen those books before. Are they any good?”

  Harper’s eyes lit up. “They really are!” she said, with more enthusiasm than I’d heard from her the whole morning. “They’re called the Dragon’s Eye Chronicles, and you might not have heard of them because they’re only published in Britain. My dad buys them for me when he goes to London for work.”

  Katie nodded. “That’s cool!” she said. “Can I look at them when we get back to the cabin? The art looked pretty.”

  “Me too?” asked Cece, raising her hand like we were in class. “I just read my first fantasy book, Seraphina, and I thought it was way cool.”

  Harper’s cheeks flushed pink. “Sure,” she said, crumpling up her trash with a shrug. “I’d be happy to show you . . . just make sure your hands are clean.”

  As we gathered up our trash and started heading back to the cabin, all complaints about being tired seemed to dissolve into the air, and the girls chatted happily about their favorite books, their favorite activities—all the things that made them different. If the girls noticed that Harper was still a little quiet and standoffish, they didn’t seem to care. They were talking like there were a million things to learn about one another and they couldn’t wait to learn them all.

  I fell into step beside Maya at the end of the line and shot her a wink. “Nice job there,” I whispered. “You might be a natural for this CIT stuff, Maya. You totally defused that fight!”

  She held up her hand so I could slap her five, and I did. “Same to you,” she said. “I think we’re going to make a great team, Nancy.”

  I smiled as I followed Maya and the rest of the girls down the path to the main camp.

  As nervous as I was this morning, I thought, camp is really starting to feel like home.

  “So how’s it going?” Bess whispered as she slid in between George and me. We were sitting on a log, getting ready for the first full-camp campfire of the week. George and I had just been catching up on what was going on in our bunks. To her surprise, George was loving working with the younger girls.

  “Marcie is amazing,” she’d told me. “It’s like she has this inner voice that tells her what each girl really needs. And the kids are soooo sweet. You know what’s crazy about seven-year-olds?”

  “What?” I asked with a smile. I’d already told her about my bunk, and the rocky start we’d had, leading into a pretty solid current situation.

  George shook her head. “They don’t argue with you!” she said. “They just . . . it’s all on their sleeve. If they feel happy, they act happy. If they feel sad, they cry and need a hug. It’s so easy! Man, if I could deal with only seven-year-olds for the rest of my life . . .”

  “You’d probably go crazy,” I filled in for her.

  “Maybe. Eventually,” George allowed. “But for a week? This is living, Nancy. This is my ideal camp situation.”

  Now George smiled as she turned to Bess. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she said, “but it’s awesome.”

  Bess widened her eyes. “George?” She reached out and put a hand on her cousin’s forehead. George groaned and dodged away.

  “I know,” she said, “embracing a bunch of seven-year-olds is maybe not expected for George Fayne. But it happened, and I’m not ashamed. I’m loving my bunk. How about you?” she asked Bess.

  Bess tilted her head from side to side. “So far, so good,” she said. “I love my campers. They’re great. It is kind of a challenge, dealing with the whole group dynamic. Like, we had this whole battle today between the kids who are still super into Frozen and the ones who think Frozen is for babies.”

  “Who won?” I asked. “I hope it was the over-it ones, or you’ll have to hear ‘Let It Go,’ like, two hundred times over the next six days.”

  Bess snorted. “Next six days?” she asked. “You’re so out of touch, over there in ten-year-old land. I’ve heard it five hundred times today alone. Luckily, I like the song.” She began belting out her own version, but George quickly shushed her.

  “How about you, Nancy?” Bess asked. I gave her an edited version of my adventures with the girls that day. Bess nodded. “Sounds like you and Maya are really gelling,” she said. “That’s great.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, glancing over to where Maya was sitting over on the other side of the circle with some other CITs. She was laughing and gesticulating wildly, clearly having a great time. “She’s terrific.”

  Just then Deborah stood up and rang a cowbell she was holding, calling the campfire to order. “Campers, welcome!” she called. “I’m so happy to have you all here. I know that most of the campers are too young to remember, but some of the counselors and CITs may recall that at Camp Larksong, we always used to light this torch to symbolize the beginning of camp. The torch will stay lit all week, until we put it out on the last morning.”

  She moved back so that we could all see a large, metal-based torch that sat up in a clear area several yards from the campfire.

  “Miles, are we ready to light it?” Deborah asked. Miles moved out of the shadows, igniting a long butane lighter, the kind you would use to light a grill. Everyone grew quiet as he walked over to the torch.

  Deborah closed her eyes and said, “With eager hearts and minds, we light this torch to symbolize all the good times, precious memories, and lifelong friends we will make over the next week at Camp Cedarbark. May this torch light our way to happiness!”

  “May this torch light our way to happiness!” the campers—and counselors—repeated.

  Miles touched the lighter to the torch, and it blazed into a huge flame. I gasped. It was surprising and beautiful. When I looked over at Bess, I saw that her eyes were wet. She glanced at me and gave me an embarrassed smile.

  “Oh, shush,” she whispered. “You know this camp means a lot to me.”

  I hope it’ll mean a lot to me after this week too, I thought. For the first time since we’d arrived, I felt really grateful to Bess for convincing us to come to Camp Cedarbark.

  As I was turning back to the fire, I caught a glimpse of Bella out of the corner of my eye. She was wiping her eye too, staring into the flame. And her cheeks were bright pink, like she’d just been running, or—crying?

  I wondered what was going on with her.

  The rest of the campfire passed in a haze of songs, games, and one “spooky” (but not really) story from Miles about a bear he claimed used to hang around “a camp just like this one!” It was more corny than scary, but still, the campers shrieked and giggled. I was glad they were having a good time.

  By the time the campfire ended and it was time to lead my campers back to Juniper Cabin, I felt ready to drop. I clicked on the flashlight I’d brought and slowly trooped up the path back to the main camp. Juniper Cabin was completely dark. I noticed footprints on the dirt path leading up to the door but figured we must have made them earlier, when we’d stopped by the cabin before the campfire.

  Inside, the campers flitted around, grabbi
ng their own flashlights from their dressers and flicking them on.

  “Who’s first in the bathroom?” Kiki called. “We have three sinks and three stalls, people. Who wants first shift?”

  “Me!” called Cece.

  “Me!” called Katie.

  But I noticed Nina standing in the middle of the room, shining her flashlight beam on each bunk. “Guys . . . ,” she said.

  I looked where she was gesturing. Something was missing, but what . . . ?

  “Oh my gosh!” I shrieked as it hit me. Maya and all the campers turned to me in alarm.

  “Guys!” I cried, pointing at the bare mattresses. “Our sleeping bags are gone! Somebody stole all our sleeping bags!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Sleepless Night

  “OH NO!”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “You cannot be serious right now. . . .”

  The campers all let out cries of disbelief as I swept my flashlight beam over all the bunks in the cabin. But there was no mistaking it: not a single mattress held the sleeping bags that each camper had brought with them and laid out on the beds just that morning.

  “Where are we going to sleep?” asked Maya, her usually cheerful expression crinkled up into a frown. “Nancy, do you think this is a prank?”

  A prank. I remembered what Bella had said when she’d led us all outside to scare us the first night of training: It was just a prank. Bess had agreed that pranks seemed to be a normal part of life at camp. But would someone steal all our sleeping bags as part of a prank?

  There was only one way to find out. “Maya, keep an eye on the bunk for a minute. . . . I’m going to check some things out.”

  Maya scarcely had time to reply with an “okay” before I’d turned around and walked back out of the cabin. The footprints! I shone my light down onto the dusty path leading into the cabin. There they were: They looked like Converse sneaker tracks—a pretty common shoe wherever lots of young people congregated. They led away from the main camp, I realized now—toward the path to the lake. Could someone have . . . ?

  “Nancy! Did it happen to you guys too?”

  A voice came from behind me, and I swung my flashlight around to see Maddie, who had the nine-year-old bunk, standing in the doorway of Acorn Cabin.

  “Did what happen to us?” I asked. Old sleuthing trick: never give away what’s going on. Make them say it first.

  Maddie sighed and shook her head. “Our sleeping bags are all missing!” she said. “Do you think it’s some kind of prank?”

  “It happened to us too,” I called, as another voice chimed in from the darkness:

  “Me too! I mean, us too!”

  It was George, I realized, and swung my flashlight around to find her at the doorway of her cabin.

  “Who would do this?” George asked, frowning. “Is this, like, a normal camp thing? Because I have a bunkful of exhausted kids here.”

  I heard someone running across the grass and quickly zoomed my flashlight around to catch Bella, coming from her cabin. She looked upset. “Are you guys missing your sleeping bags?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Do you know anything about it?”

  Bella stopped short and glared at me. “Oh, because I pranked you once, I’m responsible for everything that goes wrong at camp this year? Thanks for the warning!”

  I shook my head and tried to make my voice less accusatory. “I’m just asking,” I said. “You’ve been to camp before. You know what the normal pranks are.”

  Bella sighed. “Well, this might be a normal prank if it happened to one bunk. But it looks like it happened to all of us.”

  “Who would steal every sleeping bag out of every bunk?” Maddie asked from close behind me, making me jump. She must have walked across the clearing while I was talking to George and Bella. “How would you even do it? I mean, you would have to make several trips.”

  “If you were working alone,” George pointed out. She had walked over to join the group too. “Maybe it was several people working together.”

  “Or maybe it wasn’t human at all,” Bella muttered, looking off toward the lake.

  We all fell silent, staring at her.

  “What?” she asked. “It’s not like we have an angry spirit on the loose here or anything.”

  “You’d better keep your voice down,” George whispered fiercely. “If my campers hear a word of this . . .”

  Bella shook her head. “We could have taken care of all this last night,” she murmured sulkily. “If you’d just let me have my séance.”

  I frowned, but turned my face so she couldn’t see. Why is Bella so obsessed with her séance and the supposed ghost? What did she know? It was all very weird.

  “Guys, there are footprints right here,” I said, shining my light on the Converse tracks. “And unless ghosts commonly wear Chuck Taylors, I think our suspect is fully human—and it looks like she took several trips toward the path.”

  “She or he,” a familiar voice piped up behind George. I glanced over to see Bess joining our little disgruntled circle. “Let’s not be sexist. We’re all missing sleeping bags, I’m guessing?”

  “Yup.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We all nodded.

  Bess sighed. “Well, great. This was a lovely welcome for all the campers. I went to Deborah and Miles’s house and let them know what’s happening. Deborah was already in her pj’s, but she was going to throw on clothes and come over.”

  “We already found footprints,” I said, shining my light on the Converse tracks again. “Let’s follow them. Maybe if we hurry, we can catch the thief in action. Deborah will find us.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Bess agreed.

  We followed the trail—trails, in some places—of footprints across the main camp and into the woods, down the path that led to the lake. The cool breeze off the water made me shiver as we got closer to the beach. While I was starting to believe I’d hallucinated the figure I’d seen—or at least, I really wanted to believe that—the beach still gave me the heebie-jeebies. I’d have to try not to show it when my campers had swimming.

  “Oh no,” Maddie moaned as we followed the tracks to the beach. “Please tell me they didn’t . . .”

  But they had. The tracks left off just before the water’s edge . . .

  . . . And a soggy pile of sleeping bags was visible just beyond the waist-deep water.

  “What happened?” Deborah’s voice suddenly came from the path, and when we turned, she sprang out of the woods and onto the beach, her feet clad in bedroom slippers. “Did you find them?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said George, gesturing at the sodden pile of nylon and fleece that bobbed up and down with each ripple in the lake.

  Deborah looked at the lake and seemed to take in what had happened. “Oh no,” she murmured, shaking her head as she stepped closer. “Who would have done this? Did anyone skip the campfire tonight?”

  We were all silent. No one had skipped it, that I’d known of—all the counselors and campers were present and accounted for. But it had been dark, and everyone’s attention had been focused on Deborah, Miles, or whoever was leading the singing or storytelling. It wouldn’t have been hard for someone to sneak away.

  I remembered Bella’s flushed cheeks. Did she . . . ? And then I thought of the other counselors who had also been missing when I’d been pulled under in the lake. Sam . . . or Taylor? Could one of them have snuck away from the campfire, too?

  “Maybe it wasn’t a person,” Bella suddenly said. While her voice was quiet, it seemed to echo in the silence.

  Deborah looked at her, nonplussed. “What does that mean?” she asked.

  Bella shrugged, not meeting Deborah’s eye. “Something in the lake just seems to be really angry,” she said. “What with the thing that pulled you down into the water, the thing that pulled Nancy down, the figure she saw. Maybe something’s going on that’s bigger than just some kid playing a prank.”

  Bella looked Deborah
in the eye then, and something washed over Deborah’s face. Recognition, or anger, or some kind of unwelcome realization that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Deborah met Bella’s stare with her own intense one, and then the moment was over. She looked out over the lake and sighed, like she was accepting something.

  “Miles and I will remove the sleeping bags from the lake and have them all washed and dried,” she said in a low voice. “But I’m afraid there’s no way we can have them ready for the campers to sleep in tonight. I’m very sorry, but you’ll all have to sleep on the mattresses provided, and bundle up in your clothes. Tell the campers they’ll definitely get their bags back tomorrow.”

  I glanced at Bess and George. It wasn’t a surprise that the sleeping bags wouldn’t be returned tonight, really—I’d suspected as much once we’d found them in the lake. But I wasn’t sure how our campers would take the news. And I was more concerned about Deborah’s reaction.

  “If anyone knows anything about how these bags got in the lake,” Deborah went on, “I would ask you to please come and talk to me or Miles, so that we can prevent it from happening again. I understand that some pranking is normal at camp, but a prank on this scale is unacceptable. Got it? Good. Off to bed, everyone.”

  She folded her arms and stared into the lake, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to say any more. I looked around at my fellow counselors, and slowly we made our way back to the path and toward our cabins.

  Bess poked my arm as we walked along. “What do you think, Nancy?”

  I was silent for a minute. I was trying really hard not to think about it. “I don’t know anything you don’t, Bess,” I said finally.

  Back at the cabins, we said our good nights quietly, then split up to head back to our respective bunks. I told my wide-eyed crew that the sleeping bags had been taken to the lake—“It looks like someone’s messed-up idea of a prank”—and that we, sadly, would have to make do with the mattresses for now.

  “Who would do it?” Cece asked, once we had the lights out and were all lying on our mattresses, trying to snuggle with sweatshirts and jeans. “Who would think that was funny?”