by Will Taylor
Dedication
For Amber and Lindsey
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
One: Maggie
Two: Abby
Three: Maggie
Four: Maggie
Five: Maggie
Six: Abby
Seven: Abby
Eight: Abby
Nine: Abby
Ten: Abby
Eleven: Abby
Twelve: Abby
Thirteen: Maggie
Fourteen: Maggie
Fifteen: Maggie
Sixteen: Abby
Seventeen: Abby
Eighteen: Abby
Nineteen: Maggie
Twenty: Maggie
Twenty-One: Abby
Twenty-Two: Abby
Twenty-Three: Abby
Twenty-Four: Maggie
Twenty-Five: Maggie
Twenty-Six: Maggie
Twenty-Seven: Abby
Twenty-Eight: Abby
Twenty-Nine: Maggie
Thirty: Abby
Thirty-One: Maggie
Thirty-Two: Maggie
Thirty-Three: Maggie
Thirty-Four: Abby
Thirty-Five: Maggie
Thirty-Six: Abby
Thirty-Seven: Maggie
Thirty-Eight: Abby
Thirty-Nine: Abby
Forty: Abby
Forty-One: Maggie
Epilogue: Abby
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Will Taylor
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
Maggie
There’s no silence in the world like the silence of two hundred super-excited summer campers who’ve just been told to hand over their cantaloupes.
I whipped my head around as the sea of yellow-T-shirt-wearing, cross-legged kids surrounding me broke into whispered protests.
“—can’t do that!”
“Who says we have to—”
“So unfair!”
The whispers became murmurs, then a roar as the sprawling semicircle of Camp Cantaloupers—from eight-year-old first-timers right up to twelve-year-old seniors like Abby and me—started letting the white-mustached man standing on the porch of the mess hall clutching a megaphone know exactly what they thought of his announcement.
“Can you believe this?” said Abby, whapping me on the arm. I looked over and tried not to grin at her expression. Just one week before, we’d both been groomsmaids at the wedding for her dad—Alex and Tamal were married!—and Abby still had salon-quality eyebrows and waves in her dark hair from the world’s most beautiful braids. Not to mention an early-summer tan, which for me always meant turning grapefruit-juice pink but for Abby meant gliding from her usual warm brown to deep brown, which only made her smile look that much brighter.
Only Abby wasn’t smiling now. Right now Abby looked like someone was trying to force-feed her turtle-poop soup with a ladle.
“They absolutely cannot do this!” she said, glaring at the grown-ups up on the porch. “The cantaloupe tradition is in the literal name of the camp! And what about all the first-timer kids? There go their chances of ever seeing the moose!”
“You don’t have to have a cantaloupe to see the moose, do you?”
“I’ve never heard of anyone seeing it without one.”
“Except us.”
“Right!” Abby gave me a flash of a grin. “Except us.”
And that was true. Abby and I had met the famous ghost moose of Camp Cantaloupe the summer before, when we were lost in the middle of the night in a desolate patch of subarctic Alaskan tundra. I wasn’t technically a summer camper back then, and we weren’t anywhere near Orcas Island and Camp Cantaloupe, but Abby and I had still managed to summon the moose, get my uncle Joe to the hospital, and save the complete entire day. By our powers combined.
That should have made us extra cool, because seeing the ghost moose was the thing every Camp Cantalouper wanted to do. From what Abby had told me after her stay here last year, moose spotters were pretty much guaranteed a permanent spot in camp legend. The problem was, Abby had made me promise not to tell anyone we’d already seen it. I could see her point about not having any actual proof, and not wanting to draw too much attention to ourselves, since we were here on a totally different mission. But hey, it would have been nice to get at least a little recognition.
The crowd was getting seriously noisy now, so noisy the teenage counselors were wading in, waving their hands and shouting for us all to settle. Up on the porch, a freckly middle-aged lady wearing fluorescent-purple overalls, a peacock-pattern flowy shirt, and a rose tucked into her hair took the megaphone from the mustache man. He scowled. I could see the angry V of his eyebrows from across the field.
“Quiet! Quiet, please, young people!” Flowy Shirt Lady called into the megaphone. “Remember your better selves!”
Abby leaned in. “That’s Ms. Sabine,” she whispered, “the art teacher. She’s kinda weird, but she’s nice. I think you’ll really like her.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I whispered back. The noise slowly died away as everyone remembered their sweater elves or whatever. A girl three down from Abby with a blond bob was aggressively shushing some younger kids in front of her. They hushed, and she folded her hands in her lap and sat up straight. I rolled my eyes back to the porch.
“Thank you, young people,” Ms. Sabine said. “Now, I do understand why Director Haggis’s announcement might have been, um, alarming. This is Director Haggis’s first year here, and he’s bringing lots of new ideas, and one of those new ideas is that maybe having cantaloupes lying around to attract the ghost moose isn’t the safest thing. But I assure you he has no intention of taking your cantaloupes away forever. He understands that our camp traditions—”
The megaphone shrieked and crackled as Mr. Haggis yanked it from Ms. Sabine’s hands. The crowd gasped.
“I understand that your camp traditions are in serious need of a shakeup!” Mr. Haggis hollered into the mouthpiece. His face was going red around his mustache. “And I have every intention of taking away your cantaloupes forever. It’s ridiculous letting children keep produce lying around camp. That’s how you get rats! Plus I’ve already tripped over three this morning! It’s a wonder I can still walk!” He held up his right foot and waggled it angrily.
The crowd was silent. No one seemed to know how to react. This was like a bad dream. Abby had been mildly curious when the precamp orientation letter mentioned the old director retiring, but we had never imagined his replacement would be someone like this.
“I want a volunteer,” Mr. Haggis continued, “to coordinate the cantaloupe collection. I want them all gathered up today, before bedtime! Teachers?” He looked around at all the other adults on the porch. None of them stepped forward. “I see. Counselors?” He looked out over the field, his eyes popping. I glanced behind me. All the teenagers had crossed their arms and were staring back in defiance. Director Haggis exhaled hard through his nose, right into the megaphone.
“Okay, then. Older children?” he shouted.
I almost laughed. Like any kids sitting here would help this guy spoil a classic camp tradition. Like any camper would be willing to—
The girl I’d seen shushing the younger kids threw her hand in the air, reaching right up for the perfect blue sky.
“Thank you!” said Director Haggis. “We have a volunteer. Come meet me after the final announcements, young lady, and we’ll get you set up.” Every head turned. Kids in the front were craning their necks, twisting around to
see who’d volunteered to crush all their moose-meeting dreams. I’d have hidden my face in my arms if it had been me, but bob-cut girl just sat there, smiling calmly, looking smug.
“Whoa, that’s Charlene Thieson,” Abby whispered. “She’s our age. We hung out last year. She was always helping the teachers with camp stuff and keeping little kids in line. She’s okay, though.” Abby frowned. “At least I thought she was.”
Oof. Not the most awesome start to my very first—and very last—summer at Camp Cantaloupe. Horrible new director? Treasured traditions being scrapped? This was rough. Good thing it wouldn’t really impact me, seeing as my real reason for being here wasn’t cantaloupes, and it wasn’t the moose, it was the Shipwreck Treehouse. Or, more specifically, the trapdoor of the Shipwreck Treehouse.
Or, super specifically, the lock on the trapdoor of the Shipwreck Treehouse.
When Abby had gotten back from Camp Cantaloupe the summer before, things had been kind of weird between us. But we got over that quick when things around us got actually weird and we found ourselves tangled in the world of linked-up, possibly magical, pillow fort networks. Basically an avalanche of utterly unbelievable amazingness happened, including the rescue mission that got us stranded in the middle of the night up in Alaska, and when it was all over Abby and I were left standing in the ruins of my pillow fort with nothing but a pair of silver sunglasses, some fresh scratches from Abby’s snagglepawed cat, Samson, and a three-hundred-year-old key.
The key was an artifact from a secret room in the palace of Versailles, in France—a room only kids in the pillow fort networks could get into. The big mystery, though, was that the key didn’t work on the room’s only door, and none of them knew what lock it was supposed to fit. The pillow fort kids thought it was super important because it was so mysterious, and Miesha—NAFAFA Council Member and Queen of the United Southern Gulf-Pacific Fortresses—gave it to Abby and me to keep safe. Five minutes later we got unexpectedly cut off from the NAFAFA networks, and bam, there we were with the mysterious key: stuck.
Only right then, when everything looked like it was lost, and the magic or whatever was over and done, Abby had recognized the swirling oak leaves and shining sun carved into the handle of the key. She recognized them because the exact same markings were—according to Abby—carved on the lock of the trapdoor. The trapdoor of the Shipwreck Treehouse. Here at Camp Cantaloupe.
So now, ten months older, ten months wiser, with our first year of middle school under our belts and more expert-level planning from me than the world had ever seen, we were here too. With the key. Waiting for our chance to try it out.
“Now that the hazardous melon business is settled,” barked Director Haggis, yanking my attention back to the sunny field, “I have a few more safety announcements. I took a tour of the campgrounds earlier this week, and in my opinion this whole place is one giant hazard. So, to start with, the rope swing over the lake has been taken down.” Everyone groaned, and some of the teenage counselors booed. “A five-foot barrier has been erected around the fire pit, which means dangerous marshmallow roasting is out.” Boos from all sides now, so loud they echoed off the trees surrounding the field.
“And, finally . . .” Director Haggis paused, letting the noise die away, and despite the sweating sunshine I felt a sudden chill prickle the back of my neck. “That pile of driftwood you call a treehouse looks like an utter death trap, so I’m declaring it off-limits until it can be professionally inspected. I repeat,” he yelled, the megaphone making his voice crackle and hiss into the second shocked silence of the morning, “absolutely no campers will be allowed in, on, or anywhere near the Shipwreck Treehouse at Camp Cantaloupe this year!”
Two
Abby
“Shh! Mags!” I said. “Not so loud.” Maggie was a massive fan of hushed plotting and whispered secret plans, but the truth was she had one of those voices that carry. Especially when she got excited.
Maggie stopped midsentence. She looked theatrically up and down the lunch table at the rows of yammering kids still venting about Director Haggis and his horrible changes. It was all anyone had been talking about from the minute orientation ended, through our cabin assignments—Mags and I were sharing a bunk bed, so yay! But Charlene was in our cabin, so less yay—and now into lunch in the clamoring mess hall.
“Who’s gonna hear me?” she pretend-yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth.
I threw a crouton at her, but she had a point. My friends from the summer before had waved for us to join their table, but Maggie had that look in her eye, so I’d found us a spot on our own. I knew from experience you couldn’t hold Mags back when she wanted to talk plans.
“Fine,” I sighed as Maggie tossed the crouton into her mouth. “But that doesn’t mean you need to shout, ‘We’ll have to sneak out tonight!’ at me.”
Maggie stopped midcrunch, her eyes going wide at something over my shoulder. I swiveled around to find Charlene standing right behind me, carrying a plastic tray and wearing a big yellow sash that said SAFETY MONITOR, decorated with an aggressively shiny badge reading LITTER PATROL.
“Oh, hey, Charlene,” I said. Shoot. She’d totally heard me. “We were just talking about, um, a dream Maggie had.” Maggie nodded vigorously, but Charlene gave us two slow double blinks. She wasn’t buying it.
“So, you’re collecting all the cantaloupes,” I tried. Redirect! Distract! “How’s that looking?”
The kids sitting closest to us had all stopped their conversations to glare at Charlene, but she didn’t seem bothered. She pursed her lips like she was deciding something, then smiled.
“It’s looking great, thanks! Director Haggis is gonna have one of the counselors drive me around in the golf cart. They’re putting a rolly bin from the laundry on the back. I get to start collecting cantaloupes right after dinner!”
She sounded so proud of herself. Seriously, what was wrong with her? From what I’d seen last summer, she loved it here. She was awesome at archery, a decent swimmer, and an okay joke and ghost-story teller, and before this it had seemed like enough people liked her. Was this really how she wanted to spend her final summer? With everyone angry at her and no one making room for her to sit next to them at lunch?
“That sounds great,” Maggie said loudly. “Bye.”
She and Charlene locked eyes. Chance of them getting along this summer? Zero point zero. Charlene broke the stare first, gave me a very knowing smile, and walked away.
Oh, I hoped she wasn’t going to be a problem.
Maggie leaned forward over the table. “So anyway,” she said, “back to Operation You Can’t Stop Us. We definitely are going to have to sneak out tonight to get to the treehouse. Let’s go over the steps again.”
“Do we have to? We’ve been going over them for months and months.”
“And I don’t want to mess anything up now that we’re so close to putting them into action! Besides”—she peered suspiciously over at Charlene—“circumstances have shifted!”
I tsk-sighed. “Fine. Step one: plan out steps. Check. And I still don’t know why we needed that one.”
“You should always start a list with something you can cross off right away,” said Maggie. “It builds momentum. Step two: equip supply packs for all possibilities. Check.”
“Step three: get to Camp Cantaloupe. Check.”
“Step four: figure how to get alone time in the Shipwreck Treehouse. Check, I guess, since we’re doing that right now.”
“Step five: unlock trapdoor of treehouse with Oak Key. Pending.”
“Step six: go through trapdoor and have the world’s most spectacular adventures on the other side.” Maggie’s eyes were shining as she finished.
I looked at her. “So you’re not secretly worrying we’re gonna go through that door and disappear into a slug-infested dungeon or locked cellar or impossible labyrinth or something?” Worst-case scenarios were a regular feature in Maggie’s made-up games, and usually part of her plans in the real w
orld, too.
“Oh, it might. But, Abs”—Maggie grabbed my hand, apparently not caring that her arm was now in my lunch—“wherever it leads, we are gonna drop through that trapdoor into the most magical, amazing, epic summer ever! We are gonna leave this camp behind!” She rolled her eyes around the room. “And whatever we find, you and I are going to rule. It’ll be so epic I’ll bet we blow right past steps seven and eight without even knowing it!”
“Wait, step seven? What was that one again?”
“Step seven: uncover the origins of the First Sofa! Solve the mystery of how the linkable pillow forts work, and all that. Remember the prophecy Ben was so obsessed with? It said whoever used the Oak Key and unlocked the door of le Petit Salon in Versailles would uncover everything. And start a new golden age for the global pillow fort networks. That’s gonna be us.”
“But we aren’t unlocking that door in Versailles,” I pointed out. “We’re opening a different lock on the other side of the world.”
“The Oak Key doesn’t go to the le Petit Salon door anyway,” Maggie said. “Ben’s been trying for years and years. We can figure that part out later. I bet using the key in the right lock on the trapdoor will be the thing that counts. Ben is gonna be so annoyed we beat him to it!”
Ben was Maggie’s nine-year-old nemesis from last summer. He was also the only person I’d ever met who was even more into organization and planning than she was.
“I guess, if he ever finds out,” I said. “What’s step eight, then? I don’t remember that being a thing.”
“Step eight,” said Maggie, leaning in closer to whisper dramatically, “is the step that even I don’t know yet. It’s the mystery step. The step we’ll only know about when it’s already happened!”
She looked so hopeful. So excited. So ready.
So different from how I felt.
I knew Maggie couldn’t care less about Camp Cantaloupe. She was here for the Shipwreck Treehouse, and the grand adventure she hoped it would send us on, and that was it. But I honestly loved this place, and with everything going on back home, I really needed the camp time just to get myself set.
