Mother-Daughter Book Camp

  “Are you enjoying being a counselor?” my mother asks, changing the subject.

  “Yeah.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I guess I am,” I tell her. “I didn’t think I’d like it this much.”

  “Maybe you should think about taking some education classes.”

  I’m silent for a moment. “Education? You mean teaching?”

  “You’ve heard of it, then?” She laughs again. “It’s a fine profession.”

  I’ve never, ever, not once in my life thought about being a teacher. It’s not even on my radar screen.

  “Um, maybe,” I reply cautiously. “We’ll see.” Which is borrowed mom-code for “not a chance.”

  Amy and Harper swoop by, both of them clutching the safety bar and shrieking—with delight, I think. Looking again, I’m not so sure.

  “Gotta go, Mom,” I tell her.

  “Love you!”

  “Love you, too.”

  The Ferris wheel whips around again, so fast it makes me slightly dizzy. Harper’s red braids are flying behind her, and she and Amy are clutching each other. Uh-oh. Not a good sign. Suddenly, just as my campers’ car reaches the very top, the wheel jerks to a stop. I stare up at the two girls, aghast, as their car swings wildly back and forth. They stare back down at me, equally aghast. Then they both burst into tears.

  “Oh no,” I say aloud to no one in particular. Of all the girls for this to happen to, why on earth did it have to happen to these two?

  I text Megan: COME QUICK! FERRIS WHEEL!

  She texts back: CAN’T! JUST GOT ON THUNDERCHICKEN!

  I’m on my own.

  Think, Becca, think! Maybe I can distract them? What if I pretend this is fun? I wave my arms over my head, grinning madly. This gets their attention. I give them two big thumbs-up, like this is the coolest thing ever, then start blowing kisses at them. They exchange a glance. Cautiously, Harper pries one hand loose from the safety bar and blows me a kiss back.

  Amy’s face is still white, though, and she’s still sobbing. No way is she letting go of that bar.

  Throwing caution to the wind, I do a little dance, right there in the middle of the fairgrounds. I shimmy and shake for all I’m worth to the tune on the nearby merry-go-round, wagging my bottom at my campers and grinning up at them.

  Both of Harper’s hands are free now, and she throws them up in the air, laughing as she uses her upper body to dance along with me.

  One down, one to go.

  “What on earth are you doing?” booms a voice behind me.

  I turn around. It’s Sergeant Marge.

  “Um,” I reply, and point wordlessly upward.

  Spotting the girls, she nods grimly. She doesn’t hesitate, and in an instant the two of us are dancing. As we proceed to make complete fools of ourselves, the gathered crowd begins to clap, urging us on.

  I glance up. Is that a glimmer of a smile on Amy’s face? I wave, and she briefly lets go of the safety bar and manages a quick wave back.

  By now the crowd has figured out what we’re trying to do, and a few others join in the dance. We have quite a flash mob going by the time the Ferris wheel finally begins to move again. One by one, the cars descend and the passengers get off. When it’s Amy and Harper’s turn, both girls come flying over and fling their arms around me.

  “You two were incredibly brave,” I tell them. “Wait until the rest of Balsam hears about this.”

  “And you were incredibly creative. Good work, sport.” Sergeant Marge gives me a pat on the back and walks off before I can reply.

  The rest of the day passes uneventfully, which is fine with me. I’ve had about all the excitement I can handle. I nap most of the way back to camp on the bus.

  As we’re climbing off the buses, dinner is announced by a mournful toot on Felicia’s sackbut.

  “What’s the deal with that?” asks Megan as we lead our campers to the Dining Hall. “Aren’t we using the bell anymore?”

  I shrug. “No idea.”

  Gwen and Sergeant Marge are standing on the porch, deep in conversation.

  “Our bell has gone missing,” I hear the head counselor say as we walk past. “It must have been Pinewood. They took it while we were at the fair. I’m going to call and give them a piece of my mind.”

  “Leave it for tonight, Marge,” Gwen tells her. “It’s been a long day, and you don’t want to say something you’ll regret. It’s just a prank.”

  After dinner, we all head into Lower Lodge to watch a movie. Half of Lower Camp falls asleep as soon as it starts, thanks to too much Thunderchicken, too much Ferris wheel, and too much other excitement in the fairgrounds’ hot sun.

  “Did you hear about what happened to the bell?” Cassidy leans over a snoring Freddie.

  “Yeah,” Megan and I both reply. Jess and Emma nod too.

  “Enough is enough,” Cassidy mutters, shaking her head. “Pinewood’s not going to know what hit them.”

  “What are you planning to do?” Jess asks.

  But all Cassidy will say is, “It’s going to be epic.”

  A couple of hours later, I wake up needing to visit the Biffy. Pulling my hoodie on over my pajamas, I slip out the door of Balsam, shutting the screen door quietly behind me.

  “Chadwick!” someone whispers as I start down the path. I nearly jump out of my skin.

  “Who’s there?” I shine my flashlight toward Primporium. Cassidy is standing there, holding something in her arms.

  “Could you give me a hand?”

  “With what?” I ask suspiciously.

  “The trap.”

  I leap back about three feet. “The skunk trap?”

  “Shut up! It’s sleeping! Do you want to wake it?”

  I should be sleeping too, not standing here having to go to the bathroom and instead being asked to lend a hand with a skunk trap.

  “I know just the place where he’ll feel right at home,” Cassidy whispers, and I can hear the glee in her voice.

  My heart sinks. “Pinewood?”

  “Where else?”

  I was afraid she was going to say this. “How are you planning to get him over there? Without waking him up, I mean?”

  “It’s easy. I looked it up on the Internet in the Counselors’ Cabin.” Cassidy sounds pleased with herself. “You just throw a blanket over the trap—I already did that—and make sure the latch on the gate is secure. Which it is. So go ahead and grab your end.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” I tell her, but I take one end of the trap anyway. Cassidy has that effect on people.

  “And now we’ll carry it very gently to the canoe—”

  “The canoe?” My whisper goes up an octave.

  “Shhhhhh!”

  “I am not getting in a canoe with a skunk!” I whisper furiously.

  “Where’s your spirit of adventure?” Cassidy retorts. “They stole our bell, Becca. Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

  “Only that maybe we’ll finally get some peace and quiet around here!”

  Cassidy is quiet for a moment; then her shoulders droop in resignation. “How about you just help me take it to the minivan, then. I’ll find a wheelbarrow or something when I get to Pinewood.”

  “Oh, fine,” I snap. “We’ll take the canoe. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  Gingerly—very gingerly—we carry the blanketed trap toward the boathouse path. The skunk must be asleep, because he doesn’t make a peep. Or chirp, or bark, or whatever it is that skunks do.

  I start to giggle. “This really will be an epic prank.”

  Cassidy brightens. “I know, right?!”

  “Where are you going to let him loose?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know yet. Their shower house, maybe? I’ll figure that part out when we get to Pinewood. Wherever I can get the most bang for my buck.”

  “The most stink for your skunk, you mean?”

  Now we both dissolve in giggles.

  “Shhhh
h!” Cassidy shushes me as we approach Cabbage.

  And then it happens.

  “Hey, you guys!” someone calls out behind us in a loud whisper.

  Startled, I whirl around. It’s Jess. Before I can answer her, one of my hands starts to slip. I clutch frantically at the trap. Cassidy angles her knee underneath, trying to keep it upright.

  Too late.

  The trap slips to the ground with a loud crash, leaving me holding the blanket. Cassidy and I both stare at the gate. It’s been jolted ajar, and the cage’s furry occupant is trying to wriggle through. Jess lunges forward to try to help the panicked creature.

  Behind us, the door to Cabbage flies open with a bang. “What is going on out here?” demands Sergeant Marge, just as the skunk decides to do what skunks do when they’re startled or scared.

  Jess shrieks. Sergeant Marge flips on her cabin’s outside light and the skunk scuttles off into the darkness.

  Jess is standing rooted to the ground, a horrified look on her face. That’s not all that’s on her face, unfortunately. Thick yellow goo drips from her forehead to her chin—and onto her braid.

  I don’t need to ask what it is.

  I know by the smell.

  Things have gone terribly, horribly wrong.

  Cassidy’s epic prank just backfired—literally.

  AUGUST

  “What would Cousin Ann do if she were here? She would think of something.”

  —Understood Betsy

  Jess

  “That was herself she was looking at! How changed she was! How very, very different she looked from the last time she had seen herself in a big mirror.”

  —Understood Betsy

  I am so mad at Cassidy and Becca, I could just spit!

  I still can’t believe they would do such a boneheaded thing. That poor skunk! The thing is, if they’d only thought to ask me first, I might have been able to help. I know a lot about transporting trapped animals, from my volunteer work.

  And forget about the skunk—poor me!

  My hair looks awful and smells worse.

  In the end, there was no saving it. Not even after Artie doused me with his special “plum guaranteed to de-stink the stink” potion, as he put it. Maybe it works on dogs, but I could still smell skunk even after I shampooed three times. There was nothing to be done for it: my hair had to come off.

  Megan did the honors. She has some experience, thanks to a prank that was played on us once during a sleepover at Colonial Academy, when Cassidy got homemade taffy stuck in her hair. Megan managed to salvage things then, and I was hopeful that she might be able to repair the damage this time, too. Whether it was the fact that I woke her up in the middle of the night or the quality of the scissors that she used on me down at the Art Studio, the end result is that I’ll be going off to college in a few weeks looking like a little boy.

  And it’s all Cassidy and Becca’s fault.

  It’s been two days, and I’m still not speaking to either one of them. Sergeant Marge is beside herself over the whole thing, and ready to string Cassidy up by her thumbs, which would be fine by me. Cabbage stinks to high heaven. Someone stuck a sign on the cabin door that said SKUNK CABBAGE, but the head counselor didn’t find that funny at all, and the sign quickly disappeared.

  I gaze at myself morosely in my teeny cubie mirror. There’s no way my hair is going to grow back before I go to Juilliard. And I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to tell Darcy. He loved my braid.

  There’s a loud bleat from the Grove, and the cubie house starts to empty out. Ever since the camp bell disappeared, Felicia and her sackbut have been doing their part to keep us on schedule. Making one last face at myself, I turn the mirror to the wall. There’s no point torturing myself any longer.

  Of course this would have to happen just in time for the stupid all-camp photograph. I’m about to be immortalized forever looking like one of my little brothers. For the next zillion years, every time I visit camp I’ll have to see the picture on the wall of the Dining Hall and be reminded of the time two of my closest friends ruined my life.

  I slouch outside, wondering if the photographer will let me wear a hat.

  “Jess!” Emma trots over to join me. “I’ve been thinking about our book club meeting tonight.”

  “What about it?” My voice sounds cranky, even to my ears.

  She frowns. “What are you so grumpy about?”

  I point at my head. “Look at me, Ems! I don’t have time to think about book club—I have to go get my picture taken looking like this! I’m practically bald!”

  She laughs. “First of all, you’re not bald,” she says, linking her arm through mine. “And second of all, it’s been two days. Get over yourself already. I told you, I actually like your hair better this way. You look adorable.”

  “I don’t want to look adorable!” I burst out. “I want to look like me! Besides, I’ve always worn it long. It feels like I’m missing a limb or something.”

  “I get it, I understand, really I do,” she replies. “The braid was your security blanket. But maybe you don’t need it anymore. You’re grown-up Jess now, sophisticated Jess, about-to-move-to-New-York-City-and-go-to-Juilliard Jess! Plus, Darcy’s going to love the new look, I promise.”

  Emma keeps telling me this, but I’m not convinced. I finger Darcy’s necklace, which I haven’t taken off since I opened the box it was in. “You go ahead,” I grumble, trying to untangle my arm. “I need to get something from my cabin.”

  Emma grips me more firmly, steering me away from Twin Pines. “You are not going to run off and hide, Jessica Joy Delaney, you are going to hold your chin up and march over to where your campers are waiting. Then you are going to line up alongside Cassidy and Becca, who may be idiots but who still love you to pieces and who would never do anything deliberately to hurt you, and you’re going to smile for the camera.”

  I hate it when Emma gets bossy like this. The thing is, though, she’s right, and I know it. I just don’t want to admit it yet.

  “Fine,” I mutter, and grudgingly allow myself to be towed down the path to the steps of Lower Lodge, where the photographer is waiting.

  “Don’t forget to smile,” Emma whispers, shoving me in line between Freddie and Nica.

  After the group picture, it’s time for cabin pictures. Cassidy lobbied for the Gazebo, and we head on down the Point to pose. We’re just finishing up when a loud Blaaaaaaaaaaat!—much louder than Felicia’s sackbut, almost like an air horn—brings everyone scurrying to the Dining Hall to find out the source of the commotion.

  A pair of Hawaiian shirts are waiting on the porch. One of them contains Cassidy’s friend Jake, from Pinewood. His buddy Chase is wearing the other one, blowing on a conch shell.

  Blaaaaaaaaaaat!

  “Aloha!” Jake calls out when the sound dies away.

  “Aloha!” a bunch of campers and counselors call back.

  “Triton’s trumpet summons the wahinis of Camp Lovejoy to join the Pinewood brahs for the annual luau across the waters!” Jake ceremoniously unfurls the scroll he’s carrying to reveal the image of a giant tiki head.

  Beside me, Cassidy scowls. “Pinewood better give us our bell back, or I’m going to stick Triton’s trumpet in someone’s ear.”

  We shush her.

  “Camp Lovejoy gratefully accepts your kind invitation,” says Gwen, striding up the steps and taking the scroll from Jake.

  He bows, and Chase blows on the conch again. Then the two boys turn to leave.

  “We want our bell back,” Cassidy tells them as they pass by.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake replies smugly. He saunters off across the lawn toward the parking lot, then looks back over his shoulder at us, grinning.

  “Just don’t, okay?” I tell Cassidy, grabbing her arm to keep her from following him. “Whatever it is you’re planning—don’t.”

  “Even if I promise it won’t involve skunks?”

  I manage a smile.


  She gives me a hopeful look. “So are we good again?”

  “Yeah, we’re good.” And it’s true. Maybe it’s the talking-to that Emma gave me earlier, but suddenly I’m not mad at her anymore.

  My day continues to improve too, because I have two letters and a postcard waiting for me at mail call.

  “Savannah and Frankie and Madison?” Cassidy reads the return addresses over my shoulder. “Lucky you.” She sighs. “All I got is another bridal magazine from my mother.”

  Cassidy’s mom is in high gear with preparations for Courtney’s Thanksgiving wedding. She’s been sending Cassidy clippings from magazines, fabric samples, reception menu ideas, and other updates all summer long. I know it will be a fabulous event—and perfect in every detail, since Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid is in charge—but wedding planning is not exactly Cassidy’s cup of tea.

  I open Savannah Sinclair’s letter first, which is postmarked Washington, DC. Savannah is the daughter of a U.S. senator, and a former roommate of mine from Colonial Academy. We got off to a rocky start in the beginning, but she was my closest friend at school by the time we graduated. She’s working for one of the Supreme Court justices this summer, and I can’t wait to hear how it’s going. I quickly scan her greeting and dive into the meat of the letter:

  I’m just a gopher—even my father couldn’t pull enough strings to get me an internship, so I’ll have to wait until after college to try for one of those. I’m doing mostly boring stuff like making photocopies, but overall, it’s still really interesting, and the people I’m working with are supersmart and really funny.

  She goes on to tell me that last weekend Darcy gave her a tour of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he’s working this summer.

  We had so much fun! He’s such an awesome guy, Jess.

  I feel a teeny stab of jealousy, but then I read the next paragraph:

  And guess what? I brought my shiny new boyfriend along! His name is Henry, and he’s working for his congressman this summer. His mother catered this big party my parents were hosting, and he was helping her out and that’s how we met. You’ll like him. He’s a sophomore at Georgetown, so now I REALLY can’t wait until September!