It was quite effective. All the voices died down, and I saw a sea of faces turn toward the mess hall.
A woman was standing on a stool. “Welcome to Camp Arrowhead,” she announced. I was expecting a booming voice to go along with the bionic gong, but she had a pleasant sort of shout.
“I am Mrs. Wright, the director. I’m very pleased to see all of you here today.” She went on for a while about how this was the twenty-third year the camp had been in session and how many activities it had now and stuff. Then she said some things that were supposed to reassure the parents, like how all the counselors had taken Red Cross first aid and knew lifesaving, and how the nurse was a trained RN (I never heard of an untrained one), and how a local doctor was on call twenty-four hours a day.
Finally she announced that in about half an hour, when we’d had time to finish eating and clean up (hint, hint), each counselor would call out the names of her campers and we’d all go to our cabins and unpack.
Everyone clapped for Mrs. Wright. I looked around and saw a lot of parents leaving. Dad had finished eating.
“Well, I guess you might as well go now,” I said.
Dad looked a little uncertain. “All right…”
We both stood up and looked at each other. Finally I stuck out my hand. “See you,” I said.
“Oh, Kammy.” Dad didn’t take my hand. His voice was husky. “Kammy, I wish you’d give just a little. I can’t figure you out. I thought you needed to be apart from the family. Now I don’t know whether you’d be more miserable here or at home. Look, I’ll leave it up to you. If you want to come home now, that’s fine. Really.”
“No, no,” I said stiffly. “We have a compromise, right? I have to hold up my end of the bargain.” I crossed my arms and looked him straight in the eye.
“O.K.,” said Dad. He sounded tired. We’ll call you soon. The pamphlet says parents can call between seven and eight-thirty any night.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “O.K.”
“Good-bye, pumpkin,” said Dad.
“Bye.”
“Kate put stamps in your trunk. We’d love to get a letter.”
“O.K.”
“We’ll talk soon.”
“O.K.”
Finally he turned and joined the stream of parents who were walking back to the parking lot. I watched him stride away, head down, hands jammed in his pockets.
I sat down. I didn’t have the vaguest idea what to do with myself. I checked my watch. Twenty more minutes before the counselors were going to round us up.
I looked around. With the parents and families leaving, the crowd had thinned out considerably. I saw a lot of other kids sitting alone. Even so, I felt uncomfortable. Especially because there were several chatty groups of kids who already knew each other. They laughed and joked and did not pay attention to anyone but themselves. They had probably been born at Camp Arrowhead.
I kept my eye on the nearest group of girls until the gong sounded again.
One by one the counselors stood on Mrs. Wright’s stool and called out six names.
Nancy was the eighth counselor up.
“Jan Aronson,” she called out.
I watched a girl close to the mess hall stand up and trot over to Nancy.
“Susan Benson,” Nancy shouted. “Emily Marshall. Angela Phillips. Mary Rhodes. Kammy Whitlock.”
I am used to being last.
I joined Nancy and the other girls, and she shooed us off to a quiet spot. She ran through the names again. I knew I would forget them all by the time we reached the cabin. My memory is not always great, particularly with names.
Nancy led us along another gravel path. This one went up a small hill away from the front of the mess hall. As soon as our path started heading uphill, the woods began and the gravel ended. We passed a sign that said UPPER GIRLS.
Upper girls’ what? I wondered. I would have asked Nancy, but she was talking to a thin, curly-headed girl. Every piece of the girl’s clothing, including (no joke) her socks, had an alligator on it. I couldn’t remember her name. Emily? Susie? Ruth? Did we have a Ruth? The girl talked to Nancy like they were old friends. She was probably one of those campers who had grown up here.
The rest of us didn’t say much. At one point I heard a funny noise behind me. I turned around. The girl in back of me was sniffing and rubbing her eyes and trying to look like she wasn’t crying.
“Hey,” I said. I’m a sucker for tears. Unless they’re Muffin’s. “Hey, what’s the ma—?”
I stopped. The girl behind the girl who was crying was waving her arms and pointing at her eyes and shaking her head.
What? What did that mean? The crying girl had an eye problem? The crying girl was crazy?
“What’s your name?” I asked instead. “I’m really bad at names. I’ve already forgotten everyone’s. Mine’s Kammy.” When I am nervous, I babble.
“Mary,” said the girl. Her voice shook. “Mary Rhodes.”
“I’ve never been to camp before,” I said.
“Neither have I,” whispered Mary.
“This is my fourth summer here,” said the girl who had waved her arms. “A lot of new kids are here this year. Don’t worry,” she added. “You’ll have fun. You’ll make friends fast.”
I could not remember her name either. I decided I would not embarrass myself by asking again.
Ahead of us Nancy had stopped. She was opening the door to a cabin off the right side of the path. A sign over the door said MISTY MOUNTAINS. Cute.
“Home sweet home,” Nancy announced, grinning.
We all walked in. It was rustic and woodsy. It looked uncomfortable.
I have never been partial to bunks. But there they were. Three sets of them, built into the walls. Our trunks had been placed by them.
The room was L-shaped. The end part had a cot and a bureau and a chair and could be closed off with a curtain. Nancy’s room probably.
The girl who had waved her arms turned out to be Emily. And she and I ended up as bunkies. This was because after a lot of whispering between Nancy and the curly-headed alligator girl (Susie), Susie asked Mary to be her bunkie. I think Nancy wanted Mary paired up with an old-timer. Then Jan and Angela immediately chose each other. They were friends from last year. So that left Emily and me.
The first thing we were supposed to do was get organized. I got organized in a hurry. I hate getting organized.
I sat on my bed and dangled my legs over the side. I had the top bunk. Emily said we should switch after four weeks.
Emily got organized pretty fast herself. She climbed up the ladder to my bed and sat down next to me.
“Here,” she said. She pulled a pack of Juicy Fruit out of her shorts pocket and handed me a piece.
“Thanks.”
“Have you ever been away from home before?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Do you think you’ll be homesick?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to come here. My father and stepmother sent me here. To get me out of the way.”
“Oh.”
Emily’s solemn brown eyes were studying me carefully.
“They just got married,” I added. “And Kate has these two little kids and they moved into our house and I didn’t fit in with them.”
“I just have my parents and one big brother,” said Emily. “My brother is sixteen. His name is Mason. He eats like a horse.”
I giggled.
“How come you let your parents make you come here?” she asked.
“It’s sort of a long story,” I said. “Actually, after we’d gotten here, Dad said I could come home. But I didn’t want him to think I’m a chicken, so I said no.”
Emily nodded thoughtfully.
I decided to leave out the part about how I might go home in two weeks.
“Hey,” I said, lowering my voice. I checked around to make sure no one was listening to us. Nancy was behind the curtain, and the other four were still getting orga
nized. (Susie was getting the most organized of all. There must be some camp tricks I do not know about. She had been rearranging her trunk for fifteen minutes.)
“What?” whispered Emily.
“What were you trying to tell me when I started to talk to Mary before?”
“I just didn’t want you to say anything about crying. You should have seen her when her parents left. I was right next to them. Mary was crying so hard she couldn’t stop. It took her forever to get calmed down. I didn’t want her to start up again. I hope she’s going to be all right this summer.”
“She’s here for the whole summer?”
“Mm-hm. I asked her.”
“What about Susie?” I whispered after awhile. “Do you know her from before?”
“Yes, and she is one huge pest. This is about her sixth summer here. She thinks she knows everything. She is Little Miss Perfect—in good with all the counselors and Mrs. Wright, never makes a mistake, and does things like regularly volunteering for trash detail. You will grow to hate her.”
“Yuck,” I said.
“Definitely,” agreed Emily.
“And what about Jan and Angela?”
“They’re O.K. They’re best friends from last summer. I bet their parents had to sign them up in January to get them in the same cabin. Sometimes they act like there’s no one at camp except themselves. Jan can be really nice, though. She’s a good rider and she’ll help you with the horses if you ever need it. And Angela is good at arts and crafts. If she paid as much attention to her projects as she does to her nails, she’d do terrific work.”
I checked Angela’s nails. They were fuchsia.
The curtain across Nancy’s part of the room was suddenly flung over to one side.
“O.K., girls,” said Nancy. “It’s a free-for-all this afternoon. You can do whatever you want: swim, ride the horses, play softball, take the canoes out. It will give you a chance to find out where everything is—or to refresh your memory,” she added hastily, glancing at Susie, who had been about to protest. “Just be at the mess hall at six o’clock.”
I sighed. I did not want to leave the cabin. I do not like lakes or boats or softball. I wanted to read. And I did not want to be a leech on Emily.
“Come on,” said Emily, scrambling down the ladder. “Time for the fun to begin.”
I wanted to crawl into my sleeping bag and zipper myself in.
I cleared my throat. “I am really not too good at any of those things,” I said. I could feel tears starting. I hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself by crying.
“It doesn’t matter,” smiled Emily. “I’ll just show you around, then. You might be surprised.”
“O.K.” I took a Kleenex out of my pocket, quickly swiped at my eyes, and stuffed it away again. I climbed down the ladder, and Emily and I walked out of the cabin together.
Chapter 6
Trouble
ON MONDAY MORNING I woke up with the birds. To be more exact, I woke up because of the birds. They started singing around four-thirty and were very hard to ignore. Of course, we have birds at home, but not as many. This is understandable since we do not live in a forest.
Hundreds, possibly thousands of birds had all settled down around Misty Mountains to roost for the night. I thought of a scary movie I saw on TV once called The Birds. In the movie these huge flocks of gulls and things turn nasty. Then they run amok and attack the people in a little sea town.
I shivered and sat up in bed. I checked out the window for psychotic birds. Then I checked my watch. It was only five o’clock. The last time I was awake at five was in January when I had the stomach flu and had to throw up.
I lay back down and tried to get comfortable. This was not easy. I may have mentioned that I am not partial to bunk beds. Or sleeping bags. Or windows without shades.
I thought about yesterday. It had not been quite so bad after all. At least until the night. Emily was really nice. And fun. She walked me all over camp and showed me everything and introduced me to a few girls she knew from other years.
The arts and crafts cabin was really neat. It had more equipment than I had ever seen under one roof: two kilns, four pottery wheels, and best of all, rows of cupboards overflowing with materials. I was in heaven. I could have spent all afternoon just standing there smelling the clay and paint and wood and glue. It was a damp, friendly smell. Even if I hated everything else about Camp Arrowhead, I knew I would love that cabin. Despite the fact it was named Sunny Skies.
I was not too thrilled with the tennis courts. Or the lake or the boathouse. But I liked the stable. (It was called Haven, which I thought was sort of strange. Why not Horse Haven or something? Maybe part of the sign had fallen off.)
Anyway, the horses were wonderful. Jan and Angela were there plodding around the muddy ring on two beautiful ones named Mr. Chips and Sky High. Jan said if you signed up for horseback riding, you got to go riding in the woods. And you could canter and gallop if you were good enough. It sounded fine to me.
Dinner was not terrific. I was not happy about it. For starters, the counselors sat at their own tables. Everyone else was assigned to a table full of strangers. You could not eat with your bunkies. This was supposed to encourage you to get to know more people. But I did not talk to anyone during the entire meal, except when the girl next to me dropped a tomato slice in my lap and apologized as she picked it off my shorts.
“That’s O.K.,” I said through clenched teeth.
I was embarrassed. I put my fork down and stared at my plate. Then I looked over at the next table. Mary was sitting very still. Her hands were in her lap and tears were running down her cheeks and dripping onto the table. The girl across from her whispered something to the girl on her right. They glanced at Mary and snickered. I wished I still owned my slingshot.
The other bad thing about dinner was the food. It left a lot to be desired. First we got salad. It was sitting on the tables when we entered the mess hall. I suspected it had been there for several hours. The edges of the lettuce were brown. And little black specks were all over everything. They may have been part of the dressing, but I couldn’t be sure. I skipped the salad.
When the rest of our table finished theirs (and I noticed a lot left over), the person at the head took the salad bowl out to the kitchen and brought back a big tray with the main course. Emily had explained that everyone had to be at the head of the table and serve sometimes. You rotated one place to the right at each meal. I counted and realized I would be at the head in five meals—lunch on Tuesday. I planned to have a stomach ache at lunchtime on Tuesday.
The main course was hamburgers and french fries and corn on the cob. Pretty good, Mrs. Wright, I thought. But just to make sure the meat was O.K., I took it out of the bun and cut through the middle. It was pink inside. Just as I had suspected. Pink meat always reminds me of newborn mice. I carefully trimmed around the middle of the hamburger and ate the safe edges.
Dessert was Popsicles. Not the good ice-cream kind, but the slippery, drippy kind that runs down the stick and turns your fingers red and blue. I was very relieved when the meal finally ended and everyone scrambled out the door. I found Emily waiting for me. She had a blue tongue.
We walked together to a clearing where we were going to have this bonfire and roast marshmallows and sing songs. Honestly. I could do that at home, and Dad and Kate wouldn’t have to spend an arm and a leg for it.
At dinner Mrs. Wright had announced that this activity was just something for the Upper Girls. The Lower Girls were going to hear a storyteller.
“Em, what are the Upper Girls, anyway?” I asked, trudging along through the underbrush.
“The older girls,” she said. “The girls who are ten to fourteen. The Lower Girls are the six- to nine-year-olds.”
“Why don’t they just call them older and younger girls? ‘Lower Girls’ sounds like undeveloped plant life.”
Emily giggled and shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just always been that way, I guess.”
> The sing-a-long took an hour and a half. It would have ended sooner, but somebody wanted to sing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Nancy suggested we start at ten.
We started at fifty.
Afterward we somehow found our way back to Misty Mountains. It was pitch-black. Nobody had a flashlight. After you’ve been at Camp Arrowhead awhile, you must develop bat’s radar.
We undressed in the dark since the cabins were not equipped with electricity. I crawled into my sleeping bag, zipped it up, and fell asleep instantly.
I woke up at two A.M. and had to go to the bathroom. Very badly. I recalled that we had had hot chocolate at the song fest. And that I had drunk not only mine but Emily’s, since she’s allergic to chocolate.
Bright, Kammy, I said to myself.
I grabbed my flashlight, dashed outside, and stopped short.
I could not remember how to get to the bathrooms.
I knew there was some sort of path to follow, but I couldn’t find it. My flashlight was rather weak. Thanks a lot, Kate. I stuck it in my pocket.
I stood among the trees, surrounded by blackness and silence. It was so dark I could not even see the trees, just sense them.
A stick cracked. I whirled around. Nothing.
I shivered, took a few steps forward, and tripped gracelessly over a tree root. I sat there shaking for a few minutes, then stood up stiffly and groped in front of me. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes, which did not improve my vision any.
By now I had to go to the bathroom so badly my stomach hurt.
“Darn you, Mrs. Wright,” I said aloud. And then louder, “Darn you.” Who ever heard of a bathroom that was miles away from where you lived?
There was nothing else to do. I lifted my nightgown and squatted right where I was. I could feel myself blushing. I had not had to do this since I was two. Even Muffin had not had an accident in all the time I’d known her.
And then the Worst Thing in the World happened.
I heard a door bang. And I heard someone scuffling along toward me. I was nowhere near finished and I could only hope I wasn’t making too much noise.