by Beth Vrabel
Sam arched an eyebrow at me. “What’s going on, Luc?”
April laughed. “Take a seat, Sam, and we’ll fill you in. It’s going to take a while.”
Sam’s smile stretched at April’s words. “April! Something’s different about you!”
“Let’s hope it’s not kleptomania,” Grandma quipped.
April and I told Sam what happened, and I mean everything, even the fights. I also spilled about lying to Jer that April liked him and how it ended with April getting a grapefruit concussion. Sam sighed out his nose, but didn’t walk away like I worried he might.
Grandma sat in a corner, pretending to ignore us, except for when we got to the part of Jessica turning on us. Then she called Jessica a word I’ve only heard on cable. “Yeah, such a jerk!” April said, but she didn’t use the word jerk. She used the other word. Grandma can be a bad influence.
We kept on talking, right up until our friends-again howl. Sam kicked in his dying-cat howl and we started up again. Grandma muttered, “Crazy kids.”
Again, a knock at the door interrupted our pack howl session.
Chapter Seventeen
This time, Ash stood in the doorway. “Mr. Bosserman wants to see you in the computer lab.”
My heart hammered. Why would he want to meet there? We followed Ash. Grandma and Sam trailed behind us. When we got to the lab, I was surprised to see Mr. Bosserman and another man standing next to a computer station. Sheldon and Amanda sat at the computer with identical enormous smiles. I think that might’ve been the first time I breathed since leaving the little office.
“Oh my goodness,” Sam whispered. “That’s Alan Bridgeway!”
Sure enough, the man beside Mr. Bosserman was his son. He had the same brown eyes, same wide stance, but luckily seemed to have dodged the hairy ears gene. “Irene,” Mr. Bosserman nodded to Grandma.
“This is the Irene I’ve heard so much about?” Mr. Bridgeway stretched out his hand to Grandma to shake.
“Good to meet you, Alan,” Grandma said. “Unless you’re about to accuse my granddaughter of stealing. She’s a lot of things. A thief isn’t one of them.”
Mr. Bridgeway smiled. “I can see why my dad likes you. He cuts to the chase, too.”
I could almost see a new wall of awkwardness being built between Mr. Bosserman and Grandma as his cheeks pinked and she shuffled her arms.
“What are we doing here?” Jessica stepped forward. “These girls should be sent home. The evidence is obvious.”
“Quit your rutching, onest,” Mr. Bosserman snapped. He gestured to Shemanda. “These two say they have something to show us.”
Sheldon bounced a little in his seat and flexed his fingers. “Right!” he said, almost as excited as when he found the trilobite. “It didn’t make sense to us that Lucy or April would steal things like sneakers and designer bags …”
“And they’d never take my necklace,” Amanda added. She held it up, oblivious to all of our shuddering.
“It was all high-end or expensive stuff. Things people could resell,” Sheldon continued. “So we went online to auction sites, looking for the things that were taken.”
“Sure enough, we found every single thing that was stolen listed!” Amanda finished.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Jessica stammered. “I’m sure there are tons of designer bags and sneakers on those sites.”
“But only one of these.” Again Amanda hoisted up the trilobite. At the same time, Sheldon clicked on a link, bringing up a picture of the necklace on the site, complete with the string threaded through the eye socket.
“Hmm,” Mr. Bridgeway said. “That proves that the thief wanted to sell the items, but it doesn’t prove who posted the items.”
“Right!” Sheldon bounced again. “Turns out the seller has sold a ton of things online.” Sheldon clicked on the seller information.
Up popped a picture of Jessica.
Amanda shot to her feet, fists clenched. “KUMBAYA!”
“That trilobite is worthless!” Jessica stormed. “Couldn’t even get a single bid on it!”
“Not to me, it isn’t,” Amanda said.
“Why’d you do it?” Mr. Bosserman asked.
Jessica crossed her arms. “Entitled rich kids don’t appreciate what they’ve got.”
“Luckily for you, I’m poor,” Sheldon snarled.
“Can’t believe I got busted by fifth-grade dorks.” Then Jessica mashed her lips together like she was fighting to keep her secret in.
Mr. Bosserman shook his head. “Shame on you.”
“I hate kids! Hate them!” Jessica screamed, as my pack howled.
Chapter Eighteen
Even though April felt fine, she wasn’t allowed to go swimming the next day, Nurse Gabby’s orders. (“Swimming is dangerous for the recently concussed,” she’d said without looking up from her romance novel.) It was a perfect swimming day, too. Clear blue sky with just a few stretched-out-cotton-ball clouds. Nice and warm without being sizzling. A dozen ducks floated in the water, just out of reach of the swimmers. But out of solidarity, I also stayed dry. Plus, sitting on the shore made for great spying.
I know! I know! I promised to stop meddling. And I will. I mean, I have. But I could watch what was going on with other campers from our shore-side spot without actually interfering. It was all pretty interesting.
Mr. Bosserman and Grandma stood knee deep in the water, both of them scanning the crowd but also cracking each other up. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and probably wouldn’t have understood if I’d been close enough to hear the words, but I could see they were happy.
Grandma had moved into our A-frame when Jessica left. She didn’t seem at all upset to be giving up the hair net, but Kira complained nonstop about Grandma’s chainsaw snoring. I’d asked Grandma if she and Mr. Bosserman were going to stay in touch after camp. “We’ll see,” she murmured. “And there’s always next summer.”
“I’m not coming back here,” I vowed.
“We’ll see,” she had repeated.
Ash swam in broad strokes in the middle of the lake, heading toward a little island where Kira sat in the sun. I kept my eye on Megan, who was doggy paddling just behind Ash. Any time he turned around in the water, she’d ducked under like a very shy shark.
April watched them, too. “All this boyfriend/girlfriend stuff? Is it … necessary?” She flopped onto her stomach. “Ash asked me to go to the dance with him. I know it’s going to upset Megan.”
Every year, Camp Paleo held a dance, Mr. Bosserman had announced that morning. He said it’s a “waste of time since ain’t no one actually dancing. Just standing around awhile, smiling like fools.” Half the campers groaned. The other half cheered. I was in the groaning section.
April sighed. “Jer asked me, too, even though he knows you lied about me liking him. Why would anyone even ask someone to go with them? I mean, we all have to be there. It’s not like I could say no, or that by saying yes it really means anything.”
“Being popular is not all it’s cracked up to be.” I thought about when I felt pressured into kissing jerkface Tom last year.
“Ugh! I’ve heard like six people ask someone to go with them already this morning. Speaking of which …” She suddenly hopped to standing as Sam walked up the shore.
“Where are you going?” Sam headed toward me. Crap sandwich! What if he asked me to go to the dance? I sort of wanted him to ask me and at the same time didn’t. I was so confused you would’ve thought I was the one with the concussion.
“Bye,” April sing-songed and walked off toward a different group of girls.
“Hey.” Sam lay beside me, propping himself up on his elbow.
“Hey, yourself.”
“So I’ve been meaning to ask you …”
Lollipop farts!
“… have you seen these ducks? They’re terrifying.”
“Are you kidding? They’re adorbs!” I stood up and flapped my arms. “Here, ducky, ducky! Here duc
ky, ducky!”
A huge, shining green mallard waddled toward me. “Squawk!”
“Just kidding, duck. I don’t have anything.”
Sam whimpered behind me. “I hate ducks.”
The duck waddled closer. “Squawk!”
“Shoo!” I waved the duck away. Its beak was pretty long. I wondered if ducks have talons. The duck waddled abnormally fast toward us, its wings flapping and beak open.
“Squawk! Squawk! Squawk!”
“It’s attacking!” Sam yelped. He grabbed my wrist. “Run! I told you ducks were creepy!”
Sam never asked me to the dance, but we did spend the rest of the day running from mad ducks, skipping rocks, and being friends. And I was totally okay with that.
Even Grandma was in on this dance hysteria.
On the night of the dance, as usual, Grandma wore sandals, but she painted her toenails electric blue. Her ankle-skimming, blue tie-dye dress rounded at her hips. Hmm. Grandma had lost weight recently. She usually sort of looked like a refrigerator box, but now I could definitely see that she had a waist. Come to think of it, I had seen a bunch of yoga DVDs at her house last time I slept over. Grandma’s lips shimmered with lip gloss. When did Grandma wear lip gloss? I wondered if she borrowed it from Kira, who was granting lip gloss to everyone now that her makeup bag was back. Grandma’s curly hair, usually a wild mop around her head, was smoothed into soft waves around her face, like you’d see movie stars wearing their hair in vintage movie posters.
“Wow, Grandma,” I said. “You look …”
“Real pretty.” Mr. Bosserman stood at the entrance of the A-frame. He wore a button-down checked shirt and gray pants. “Alan picked this outfit. I wanted to wear my usual camp attire but he—”
Grandma interrupted him. “You look wonderful, Harold.”
Mr. Bosserman’s chest puffed up. “Shall we?” He held out a hand and Grandma slipped hers into it. But before she left, she leaned toward me. “Maybe put on a dress. Do something with your hair?”
I shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” Grandma said as she left.
But I did let April play around with my hair when she asked. She said she wanted to try it out on my head before attempting it for herself. April made a ton of little braids, twisting them around into a pile on top of my head. I reached for the mirror, sure it looked like the time I touched one of those crazy blue electricity balls at the science museum.
Kira batted the mirror away. “Stop!” She dumped her makeup bag onto the cot. “Let me do a few things first.” Now I knew they were playing a joke on me. Kira hated me. She ran brushes along my cheeks, smeared something onto my lips, and curled my lashes. “This doesn’t mean we’re friends,” she said as she handed me the mirror. “But now we’re even for you finding my bag before Jessica made off with it.”
The girl in the mirror—she was me, but not me.
This girl’s hair was wicked cool. Blonde streaks wove through the braids. Guess I spent more time in the sun than I thought. The mirror girl’s eyes were wide and lashes long. Her skin shimmered. She was …
“Real pretty.” Amanda stood just behind me.
“Thanks.” I smiled. “You look great, too.”
And she did. I didn’t even know Amanda owned a dress, but she stood there in a blue sundress, her hair pulled back in a bun, her trilobite hanging from her neck. Sheldon was going to swoon.
“Aren’t you going to do your braids?” I asked April.
“I changed my mind.”
Kira immediately began tugging at her braids. I didn’t roll my eyes, but just barely.
We left the A-frame and ran almost right into Sam. “Hey!” he said. “You look great.”
“You look surprised.”
“It’s just, you don’t normally have a shiny mouth.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
More bricks stacked up on our wall of awkwardness.
Mr. Bosserman was right that most people didn’t dance at the annual dance. Maybe it had something to do with the music, which blasted from the Fanilow eMagine camper’s iPad.
But Sheldon and Amanda boogied away in the middle of the room, arms flailing and legs kicking. Jer bounced a little beside them. When a slow song played, Sheldon and Amanda kept on with their upright seizure dancing. A few couples went out to the dance floor, sort of drifting side to side together, arms stretched out as far as they could go in order to reach the others’ shoulders.
Sam and I sat to the side, watching everyone but talking about Sascha and Ralph. Sam said he’d email Mr. Able for an update when we got home. “So do you want to?” he asked as another slow song came on.
“Uh—”
“Go visit the wolves this summer, I mean? Mom said she’d take us again.” Sam took a drink of punch. “I think she liked it as much as we did last time.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’d love that, actually.”
Across the dance floor, Megan trailed behind Ash, who filled up two cups with punch. Please let one be for Megan. I crossed my fingers for my shy friend. But when Ash whipped around, Megan stood so close to him that he quickly backed up and some of the red juice splattered onto his white shirt. She reached out for one of the cups anyway. “Thanks!” I heard her say. “Want to dance?”
“Wait! What?” He flicked some of the punch off his hands.
Megan’s lips shook. “Want to dance?” she squeaked.
Ash looked at her like she had a trilobite for a face. “No.” He took the cup back out of Megan’s hand and called April’s name.
In a second, Sam was on his feet. “What are you doing?” I hissed, but he ignored me. Instead, he walked straight to Megan.
“Would you please dance with me?” he asked, and grabbed her hand.
The two of them went to the dance floor, Megan’s smile outshining the tears in her eyes.
Chapter Nineteen
Megan whispered my name in the dark.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Can I ask you something?”
She didn’t have to. I knew what she was going to say. I could tell the minute Sam had taken her hand. Just as quick as she had fallen for Jer, then Ash, now she was head over heels for Sam. “Do you think I should ask Sam for his email? So we can stay in touch?”
“Sure,” I said. “Go for it.” But I sort of wanted to punch her in the face. I’m not sure why. I rolled onto my other side.
“You seem mad,” Megan whispered a minute later.
“I’m not mad,” I hissed back.
“Well, you seem mad.”
“Of course she’s mad,” Kira snapped from above Megan. “Duh. She and Sam are a thing, even if neither wants to admit it. Back off, Megan. Latch onto someone else.”
“That’s not true!” I sat up in bed, whapping my head on April’s bunk.
Amanda groaned next to us. “Yes, it is!”
April’s head popped down over her bunk. “If you’re not ready to admit it, that’s fine. But if you’re not okay with Megan getting closer to him, you should admit that.”
“Fine,” Megan said. “I think I like Jer more anyway. We sort of hit it off thanks to April’s grapefruit concussion.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Go. To. Sleep,” Grandma said. I knew why she was so sleepy. Halfway through the dance, I’d noticed that she and Mr. Bosserman were missing. Sam and I sneaked down the path to the caboose. Sure enough, the old farts were dancing under the twinkling lights.
On our last night at Camp Paleo, we had another campfire dinner. The sky was clear and black, peppered with stars. I crossed my fingers that we’d get to have mountain pies, this time cooked. But instead, Mr. Bosserman asked us all to bring out the can of soup we had been asked to pack. I looked for my can of bean with bacon soup and wondered how Mr. Bosserman was going to manage to find twenty pots so each of us could cook our dinners. Oops. Twenty-one pots, counting Sam.
“You’re awfully happy about stone soup,” Grandma said
as I unearthed my can from the bottom of my duffel bag.
“Stone soup?” I asked. Grandma just laughed.
At the campfire, Kira held up her minestrone soup. “It’s just like April’s!” she gushed. “We have excellent taste.”
Jer kind of hid his split pea and ham soup behind his back, only showing it when Mr. Bosserman made everyone go around the circle and say what they brought. “It’s pretty green,” he said.
Megan, sitting beside him, held out her own can of split pea. They smiled at each other. “Green’s my favorite color,” she squeaked.
“I set them up,” I whispered to Sam.
“I thought you set him up with April?” He scanned the circle. “And didn’t you say you tried to put Megan with Ash?”
“Yes, but the grapefruit concussion I caused brought them together.”
“And you totally planned that, right?”
He smiled, and I grinned back. But when we didn’t break eye contact that wall began to rebuild, awkward brick by awkward brick. It only broke apart when April handed me a can opener. “Mr. Bosserman said we need to open all of our cans.”
“Every one of you brought something to this camp. Special skills, talents, whatnot. All of them came together like a big vat of soup, making a brand new flavor.” I did not like where I thought this was headed. My grip on my beans and bacon tightened. “So on this last day of camp, we’re each going to add our own flavor soup to dinner.” He hoisted a gigantic cauldron over the flames. “We’re making stone soup, bringing together everything we’ve got.”
Minestrone, tomato, split pea, bean and bacon, ham and cheese, chicken noodle, beef barley, and Italian wedding soups make a terrible analogy. I liked Mr. Bosserman’s little speech; we did all come together in the end. But even Dad would be disgusted by this concoction. “I know where Grandma keeps some cookies,” I whispered to Sam as our soup got cold.
We backed away from the campfire, quiet as ninjas, and snuck back to the A-frame. I know, I know, I’d promised no more sneaking off. But if I was sneaking with someone else, then it wasn’t really sneaking off by myself. Right? Whatever. Sam waited outside while I grabbed Grandma’s secret stash.
