Mother-Daughter Book Camp

  Becca and I take turns reading the entire chapter. We follow Elizabeth Ann as she arrives at the Putney Farm, discovers that her Vermont cousins aren’t as horrible as she’d been led to believe, and learns how to make butter.

  “I like Elizabeth Ann,” says Harper as Becca finally closes the book.

  “Me too,” says Kate Kwan, and the other girls all nod too.

  “I like the part where she gets a kitten,” says Amy softly.

  “Have I told you about when my parents surprised me with a kitten for my birthday?” I ask, and they all shake their heads.

  I’m in the middle of telling them about Coco’s arrival when I hear another splash outside. With a guilty start, I grab for the brownie tin and close it, then stuff it down inside my sleeping bag. Sergeant Marge must have a nose like a bloodhound. How on earth did she know?

  But it isn’t Sergeant Marge.

  “You might as well surrender,” says a low voice.

  I look out the window. Cassidy holds a flashlight under her chin, grinning.

  “We have you surrounded,” says Jess, and their campers all giggle.

  “With one canoe?” I scoff. “Liars!”

  “Shhhh! What are you guys doing out here?” Becca whispers. “If Sergeant Marge catches you, you’re dead!”

  “Rumor has it Gigi sent a care package,” Jess whispers back.

  Becca and I exchange a glance. Our campers have left their beds by now and are crowded around me, jockeying for position at the window.

  “She must have spotted the return address when she was picking up Twin Pines’s mail today,” Becca mutters.

  I decide to torture my friends a bit. “Maybe we ate everything that was in it.”

  “Maybe you want us to dump you in the water,” says Cassidy.

  Beside me, I feel Amy stiffen.

  “Fine,” I reply hastily. “We’ll share. Hang on a sec.”

  I wriggle out of my sleeping bag and pad across the cabin. Opening the door, I hold out the tin. Cassidy takes it. “You’ve gotta give some to Nest too, though,” I tell her.

  She snorts.

  “Fat chance,” adds Jess, and their campers all hoot with glee.

  Cassidy shushes them. “See you in the morning, suckers!” she says to us as her canoe turns back toward shore.

  “We’re popular tonight,” says Becca as I climb back into my sleeping bag.

  “No kidding. Good night, you guys.”

  “Good night,” everyone choruses.

  As Dreamboat rocks gently at anchor, I lie there listening to our campers’ even breathing. I close my eyes and feel myself drifting toward sleep when—

  “Megan?”

  I open one eye. It’s Amy. “Yeah?”

  “I have to go to the Biffy again.”

  “You went before we left!”

  “I know, but I have to go again.”

  I heave a sigh. “Fine. Hang on a sec, honey.”

  Wriggling out of my sleeping bag, I pull my sweatshirt back on, slip my feet into my flip-flops, and shuffle quietly out the door. Amy is right behind me. Outside, I buckle on a life vest. Amy’s already wearing hers. Not surprisingly, she opted to sleep in it.

  I lift her into the canoe, then climb in myself and pass her a flashlight.

  “Point it toward shore,” I tell her as I start paddling.

  Camp is deserted and silent. There are no lights visible in the Director’s Cottage or in Cabbage or anywhere else. There’s nothing but a sliver of moon overhead and the faint beam from Amy’s flashlight to light our way. Simon would love this place, I think, and am struck with a sudden pang of guilt.

  I’ve hardly thought of him in days. I haven’t had time to. As we approach shore, I remind myself to write him a letter during rest hour tomorrow.

  Rolling the legs of my pajamas up, I step out into the shallow water. I pull the canoe quietly up onto Boathouse Beach and lift Amy out, then take her hand and lead her up the path toward the Biffy. Is this what it’s like to have a little sister? I wonder, glancing down at her. Even though she’s kind of annoying sometimes, I can’t help but feel protective.

  After she’s done—I go again too, since we’re here anyway—we start back to our canoe. We’ve almost reached Boathouse Beach when I hear laughter.

  Male laughter.

  It’s coming from somewhere over by the Dining Hall.

  “Stay here,” I whisper to Amy, setting her in the canoe. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  Following the muffled snickers, I sneak back across camp. I peek around the corner of the kayak shed and spot a pair of dark silhouettes down by the water. The two figures climb into a waiting canoe and push off, laughing softly. I stand there and watch as they paddle away and disappear into the darkness.

  Something is clearly up.

  I chew my lip, wondering if I should sound the alarm or wake Sergeant Marge. I could go get Cassidy—she’d know what to do. I don’t dare leave Amy any longer, though. She’s probably already convinced I’ve been devoured by wolves.

  Sure enough, back at the canoe I find Amy clutching her paddle and sniffling. “You left me!” she says, swiping at her eyes. “I was worried I’d float away.”

  “Amy, the canoe is sitting on the sand,” I reply in exasperation. “It isn’t going anywhere.”

  Whatever the two mysterious figures were doing can wait until morning, I decide. I’ve had enough for one night. I paddle back to Dreamboat, where I dry Amy’s tears and make her blow her nose and tuck her into bed again. Then I crawl into my sleeping bag, where I finally fall asleep, still wondering what the intruders were up to.

  No good, that’s for sure.

  Emma

  “Aunt Harriet never meant to say any of this when Elizabeth Ann could hear, but the little girl’s ears were as sharp as little girls’ ears always are. . . .”

  —Understood Betsy

  “Is that my underwear?”

  I gape at the flagpole in shock. My favorite pair of red-and-white polka-dot underpants are pinned to the rope, fluttering proudly in the early-morning breeze alongside a bunch of other people’s lingerie.

  “Forever in peace may you wave,” sings Jess, coming up beside me. A group of campers and counselors gather behind us, pointing and laughing.

  “Someone must have raided the cubies,” says Melissa Yee, the counselor from Meadow.

  “I heard somebody on camp property last night, but I couldn’t tell what they were up to,” Megan tells us. “It was two guys, I think. They got away in their canoe before I could get a closer look.”

  Cassidy shakes her head in disgust. “It’s gotta be Pinewood.”

  Felicia darts across the grove and starts hauling down the parade of underwear. Her face turns as red as my underpants when she gets to a leopard-print pair. She plucks them from the rope and quickly stuffs them into the pocket of her shorts.

  Becca slings an arm around my shoulders, grinning broadly. “Didn’t know your co-counselor had it in her!”

  “Your mother must have sent them to her,” Cassidy tells her. “From the ‘It’s a whole new me’ drawer.”

  “Shut up!” But Becca can’t help laughing.

  Sergeant Marge joins Felicia at the flagpole. “Go on in to breakfast, girls,” she tells the rest of us. “We’ll put everything in a laundry basket on the porch, and you can retrieve whatever’s yours on the way out.”

  “Something’s different about Sergeant Marge’s face,” Jess whispers.

  We all turn around to look.

  Jess is right. There’s definitely something different about the head counselor. It takes me a minute to realize that she’s smiling.

  “Marge the Barge has a sense of humor!” Cassidy exclaims, pretending to be in shock.

  The Dining Hall is abuzz with speculation as to the identity of the pranksters, and there’s a lot of teasing about whose underwear was on display and whose wasn’t.

  “All right now, girls,” says Gwen when it’s time for announcements
. “Settle down. It’s just the boys’ camp having a bit of fun. Nothing to get stirred up about. We’ve had this happen before, right, Marge? In fact, I distinctly recall one time back when we were campers that someone took your—”

  “How about we go over the schedule?” Marge says hastily, fumbling with her clipboard. “As you all know, we’ve got a double-header in store with Parents’ Weekend, and then our Council Fire on Sunday night.”

  She drones on for a while before Gwen circles back to the underwear.

  “I just want to emphasize that this was a harmless prank,” she tells us. “Let’s not get carried away plotting payback, okay?”

  My eyes slide over to where Cassidy is sitting. Too late! I can tell by the smirk on her face that she’s already got a scheme in mind.

  After breakfast, Felicia and I lead our campers back to Cubbyhole to get ready for our morning activities. I swear I’m starting to feel like a mother duck—wherever I go these days, I’m trailing girls.

  Meri follows me into my cubie.

  “Aren’t you going to get ready for first period?” I ask her.

  She nods, but continues to stand there.

  “Is something the matter?”

  Her lower lip starts to tremble. “My parents aren’t coming this weekend.”

  “Oh, sweetie!” I put my arms around her. “It’ll be okay, I promise. Tell you what, how about I share my family with you?”

  My parents finally called a couple of days ago to let me know they’d arrived home safely from their trip to England. They said they sent me a bunch of postcards, but I haven’t gotten any yet. In fact, I haven’t gotten a single piece of mail so far this summer. I think it’s some kind of a camp record. Everybody feels sorry for me.

  My mom and dad are planning to caravan up with the rest of the group from Concord. All of our parents are coming except the Delaneys, who can’t get away. Summer is a busy time at Half Moon Farm. My brother’s coming too, as a surprise for Jess. She’s going to flip when she sees him. I’ve almost spilled the beans about a zillion times already.

  I reach for a picture in a heart-shaped frame that’s sitting on my dressing table and hand it to Meri. “This is my dog,” I tell her. “His name is Pip and my parents promised they’d bring him along this weekend. You’ll love him. And I know he’ll love you.”

  Meri stares at the picture, then nods. “Okay.”

  I hand her a tissue and help her dry her eyes and blow her nose, then send her off to her cubie to change into her swimsuit. Putting the picture back on my dressing table, I give a rueful sigh. My friends all have pictures of their boyfriends on display; I have one of my dog. How pathetic is that?

  What’s even more pathetic is that I still have a picture of Stewart. It’s in my trunk. I try not to look at it too often, because it just makes me sad.

  And mad, too, if I’m honest.

  Stewart and I managed to stay together all through his freshman year in college—my junior year in high school—and three-quarters of the way through this past year. And then, at spring break, he came home and asked if we could talk.

  “I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me!” I’d said after he told me he thought we should both date other people. Which meant that he wanted to date other people, of course. And probably already was.

  He was nice about it—he is Stewart, after all—and in a way, I suppose I was half expecting this to happen. My mother warned me a long time ago that most high school relationships don’t last through college. But I guess I thought that Stewart and I would. Afterward, he’d hugged me and told me I’d always have a special place in his heart, which wasn’t exactly comforting. If I was so special, why was he breaking up with me?

  And then I went and did the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I turned down two perfectly good colleges in Massachusetts and chose one in Canada instead. Not just anywhere in Canada either, but in British Columbia, which is practically on the other side of the world. What was I thinking?

  My parents have promised that they’ll come to visit me at least once a year, and I’ll be able to fly home for Christmas and spring break, of course, but it’s not like my brother, Darcy, who’s just a couple of hours away at Dartmouth and who can come home whenever he wants. And even though I have grandparents in Seattle and will be able to see them more often now, that doesn’t make up for the fact that I’ve stupidly decided to go to college so far away from my best friend.

  “Emma, I checked, and you can hop on a bus in South Hadley or Northampton and be in New York City in four hours,” Jess had informed me happily after I got accepted at Mount Holyoke and Smith and was trying to choose between them. “Or I can come visit you. Or Megan and I can meet you in Boston for one of Cassidy’s games. This is going to be so much fun!”

  And even more fun, since my good friend Bailey Jacobs from Wyoming got accepted at Mount Holyoke as well. I’d been leaning toward going there, and we were talking about maybe being roommates. So why did I go and ruin it all?

  Now, the closer we get to September, the more terrified I feel. Jess is not just my best friend, she’s my security blanket. It’s not like the year we were apart when my family lived in England, either. That was different. This is college. It’s four whole years we’re talking about.

  Lately, I’ve started thinking that maybe it’s not too late. I’m really hoping that Stewart will come with his parents this weekend, and that we’ll have a chance to talk. We haven’t really talked since spring break. It was too awkward when he came home earlier this summer, so I just avoided him. Which was stupid and childish, because I’m convinced now that if we could just spend some time together, he’ll realize he’s made a mistake.

  I’ve got the whole thing planned out in my mind. While his parents are busy with Becca, I’ll offer to show him around camp. We’ll end up in the Gazebo, and then we’ll talk. Really talk. And he’ll look at me with those serious gray eyes of his, and tell me that he blew it big-time, and that I’m the only one he cares about. And then he’ll kiss me and the two of us will be back together again, and I’ll withdraw from UBC and see if Mount Holyoke still has room for me.

  I smile dreamily, imagining our romantic reunion.

  The bell for first period clangs and I jump up with a start, wiggling into my bathing suit—still a bit cold and clammy from yesterday—and throwing a hoodie over it. Stuffing my feet into flip-flops, I grab my whistle and clipboard and dash out of the deserted cubie house.

  “Hey, Hawthorne, we were about to send out a search party!”

  It’s Brianna, who’s the Waterfront Head this summer.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. “I got sidetracked.”

  She jerks her chin toward a cluster of shivering seven-year-olds. “Your Guppies are all checked in and ready to go.”

  It’s overcast and cool this morning, not exactly the kind of weather that makes a person want to jump in the lake. But that’s just what I have to do with my first-period swimmers.

  “Okay, everybody!” I chirp, trying to sound as enthusiastic as possible. “Are you ready to have fun?”

  They nod, clutching their towels around them. Pippa’s and Meri’s lips are already turning slightly blue.

  “Pippa, did you remember to put your glasses in their case?” They almost got stepped on yesterday, and I recall only too well the trouble I got into when I was her age and broke my glasses. She nods vigorously.

  “Take your buddy’s hand, then, and let’s go!”

  We wade out into the shallow, protected water of the inner H dock. It’s actually fairly warm, thank goodness, and it doesn’t take much coaxing to get everyone in up to their shoulders.

  “Today we’re going to work on our flutter kick,” I tell them. I’ve spent the past few weeks helping them over the initial hurdles—putting their faces in the water, blowing bubbles, floating on their backs, that sort of thing. Now we’re ready to tackle actual strokes.

  It’s funny, a few years ago I never could have imagined my
self teaching swimming. I’ve always loved the water, but I never wanted to be on a swim team or anything like that. Working at the rink with Cassidy and her Chicks with Sticks, though, gave me the confidence to think about going for it when this summer job came up. I’m really glad I did, because I’m having a blast. At least one thing in my life is going right.

  Handing out kickboards, I wade to the far side of the dock and coax the girls to swim to me, one by one.

  “Good job, Pippa!” I call, watching her little feet churn the water behind her. When she reaches me, I slap her a high five and she smiles her gap-toothed smile at me.

  “My thithter ith on a thwim team,” she says. Pippa tells me this every day.

  “I know,” I reply, just like I always do. “That’s so cool. If you keep up the good work, I’ll bet you could be on a swim team too.”

  When second period arrives, I move over into the deep water on the other side of the H dock to work with the Dolphins. Most of Balsam is in this class. They’re enthusiastic swimmers, and eager to please. The hour passes quickly, and before I know it, the bell rings to signal the end of class.

  “Good job, everyone!” I tell the girls. “Tomorrow we’ll work on arm strokes.”

  Felicia emerges from Lower Lodge as I’m heading back to my cubie to change for lunch.

  “Hey, Emma!” she calls, and I pause reluctantly to wait for her. It took a while to resign myself to the fact that the two of us are co-counselors. That first week, I kept hoping for a miracle that would somehow reunite Jess and me. And things were a little awkward at first, especially after the whole book club kickoff fiasco. Felicia and I are getting along a little better now, although she’ll never be my favorite person on the planet. “Nest is hosting the book club meeting tonight, right?”

  I nod.

  “I’ve been thinking maybe you could have the girls analyze and discuss the theme of transformation.”

  I stare at her. “Felicia, our campers are in elementary school, not college.”