by Mary McCoy
The longer Verity spent with her cabinmates, the more she began to notice the little differences between them. Amber was the silliest. Alix was the sweetest. Back in the real world, Verity was fairly sure that Addison was the leader of their group, whether they acknowledged it or not. But Annika was quieter than the others, more serious and more thoughtful. They walked toward the mess hall without talking, and Verity wondered what Annika made of the strange things happening at Camp So-and-So. Still, when Annika finally spoke, her line of questioning caught Verity by surprise.
“What’s your soul mate like, Verity? You never said.”
Verity started to panic. Was Annika really asking or did she already know the truth? They’d all been so besotted with their own soul mates that Verity had not heard anyone compare notes. Now, Verity wondered about Annika’s soul mate, the shirtless boy with the slicked-back pompadour, doing pull-ups on a poplar branch. Was that what Annika saw when she looked at him?
“Um, really cute,” Verity stammered. “You know. You were there.”
Annika nodded gravely. “The one reading a book in the hammock, right?”
Verity nodded back.
Annika looked away, embarrassed, and said, “Promise you won’t take this the wrong way.”
“I won’t.”
“Is your soul mate a girl?”
“Oh,” Verity said, then fell silent.
“It’s okay if she is,” Annika said.
“I know it is.”
“I’m not saying anything about you.”
“I know you aren’t.”
“So, is she a girl?”
Verity felt as though she’d been lifted out of her own body, and now she was looking down, watching this conversation like it was happening to someone else. It made the next thing she said easier and more difficult at the same time.
“Yeah,” said Verity. “My soul mate’s a girl.”
Her cheeks felt hot and her hands were shaking and she felt a slight buzzing between her ears, but she had done it. She had told someone that she liked a girl. And while neither of them said much of anything as they fished through drawers in the nurse’s station, and while Annika seemed too embarrassed to even look at her, it hardly mattered. She had confessed the truth and lived.
Verity felt brave now, and bold enough to go wandering through the woods armed only with a flashlight to see the beautiful girl. She felt like she was worthy of seeing her now.
She wished she felt better about the situation with Addison, though. They found nothing useful in the nurse’s station—in fact, the whole place looked like it had been ransacked. They did scrounge some bottles of water from the mess hall, and Verity hoped that hydration and rest would be enough to fix whatever was wrong with her cabinmate.
The other girls seemed to share her worries. One moment, Addison would be writhing and shivering in her sleeping bag. Then, just when they were worried enough to call the whole thing off, she would hop up and run outside, her eyes sparkling, puzzled as to why they hadn’t already set off.
“Hey, wasn’t there another cabin here?” she asked, during one of her lucid moments, pointing to the high hedge of brambles that twisted and climbed forty feet in the air.
Verity did a double take. Had there been? She had a vague recollection of speaking to some unfriendly girls the day before, but surely they belonged to one of the three other cabins surrounding the fire pit. Not that she’d seen any of the occupants of those cabins this morning either. Once again, a little voice in Verity’s head spoke up to remind her that something was wrong, and only bound to get more wrong if she continued on this course, and once again, she ignored it.
“Are you sure you’re feeling well enough to go?” Verity asked. Addison rolled her eyes and kicked her legs up in a handstand to prove how healthy she was.
“I’m fine,” she said. “So, let’s go already.”
Verity didn’t quite believe her—none of them did—and yet, she seemed so sure.
“What if Pam comes back while we’re gone?” Verity asked.
None of them answered, because though they wouldn’t have admitted it to each other, or even to themselves, none of them really ever expected that she would.
CABIN 5
SURVIVAL
[SCENE: A cabin encircled by brambles]
Water.
Food.
Shelter.
Bathroom.
Escape.
After the forty-foot-high wall of brambles erupted from the ground and encircled their cabin, these were their immediate needs. Once the initial panic had settled, these were the things they worked at securing.
The girls from Cabin 5 realized they would have to work quickly if they were going to survive. As darkness fell, they laid out all the tarps and ponchos they’d brought with them to catch the inadequate but life-sustaining amount of dew that would fall through the top of the enclosure overnight.
They rose early the next morning and drank sparingly of the water they’d collected. Then they fell to the ground and licked the dew right off the blades of grass that grew around the cabin. The water from the tarps that they did not drink right away, they saved in water bottles for later.
Their food supply was perhaps an even greater concern than water. There had been no time for care packages to arrive, and very few of the girls had smuggled any food into camp. They’d piled what little they had by the fire pit and rationed it out to themselves in small quantities throughout the first full day. Half a cracker at dawn. One Twizzler in the mid-morning. A square of chocolate at dusk.
In an isolated area away from the fire pit and the cabin, they dug a latrine and strung up bedsheets around it for privacy. It wasn’t a permanent solution. Within a few days, the smell would start to become unbearable, but then again, within a few days, their food supply would be gone, and dehydration would have begun to catch up with them. If any of this went on longer than a few days, a smelly latrine would be the least of their worries.
They slept through the hottest part of the day, rising again around five so they could take advantage of the remaining daylight to plot their escape.
One pine tree grew inside the perimeter of the wall, so close, in fact, that several of its branches had been sheared off when the brambles sprang from the ground. The girls took turns climbing the tree as high as they dared, then leaping onto the wall in an attempt to go over the top. It was a dangerous job. Only one girl managed to get a grip on the brambles at all, and she wished she hadn’t because the thorns sank into her arms and legs and tore at her skin, and within a few seconds she was plummeting toward the ground, where her cabinmates waited with a sleeping bag stretched out tight to catch her.
Soon, they gave up trying to go over the top and began to dig under. Unfortunately, their digging implements were less than ideal. They had only one flimsy fire shovel meant for poking at hot coals and campfire ash, not for burrowing through hard-packed earth. They loosened the dirt with anything they could find, then scooped it out with the shovel. They only had some sharp sticks and a few shingles they’d pried off the roof, so it was slow going. And yet, they dug tirelessly, shoveling scoop after scoop, shingle after shingle of dirt away.
The girls also devoted a small amount of time to a third, more experimental strategy: the hope that if they could not go over the wall or under it, perhaps they could go through. These were not ordinary brambles—that much was clear—but perhaps there was some item packed in their duffel bags that would bring them down. They tried rubbing alcohol, sunscreen, and contact lens solution. One bold girl rubbed two fleece blankets together until she’d worked up a heady electrical charge, and ran straight into it. Sadly, the only effect was that, in addition to giving herself a tremendous shock, she sustained dozens of scratches and cuts, many of them quite deep and close to important veins and arteries.
Sometimes they talked, but it was always purposeful. They rarely smiled and never laughed. Everything they did was functional.
They looked as
though at any time they might snap, crack, and pop straight out of their skins, like if this went on much longer, all of them might rub blankets together and throw themselves into the brambles at once.
Dear Cressida,
If you get this letter, then you know why that should be impossible.
I need your help. I don’t know how you’re supposed to do that. I don’t even know if these letters are getting through to you.
I suppose there’s a chance you haven’t even noticed anything is different, but I like to think you know me better than that. And if you hadn’t noticed, I’m telling you now. Whatever they sent back in my place, IT’S NOT ME.
They’re holding me prisoner here. If you can figure out a way to get here and rescue me, that would be awesome. If you can’t, well, at least somebody knows where I really am, and I guess that makes me feel better, too.
Love,
E
P.S. You were right about the Isis Archimedes books. Have read the first one three times now. That is partly because it is excellent, and partly because it is the only book I have. If you decide you’re up for a rescue mission, don’t even think about coming to Camp So-and-So without the rest of them.
CABIN 1
THE ALL-CAMP SPORT & FOLLIES
[SCENE: Shortly before the equestrian event of the All-Camp Sport & Follies, the Camp So-and-So stables are deserted, except for CRESSIDA.]
If Cressida was going to be forced to participate in the All-Camp Sport & Follies, at least everything so far had gone the way she hoped it would. They’d played the game the way the Inge F. Yancey campers wanted them to—the way they expected them to—and now, their guard was down. Even the fact that they’d won the rowing event had turned out to be a stroke of luck that would make it that much easier to carry out her plan.
She’d scoured every inch of Camp So-and-So searching for her friend, and now, to continue her mission, she needed to get to the other side of the lake, to the belly of the beast, to the Inge F. Yancey Young Executives Leadership Camp itself. Tania had made it clear that she didn’t want the Camp So-and-So girls anywhere near their camp, but what if they didn’t have a choice? What if for some reason, Cressida schemed, the horsemanship event could not take place at Camp So-and-So?
While her cabinmates sat at the campfire pavilion triumphantly eating their lunch of apples and peanut butter crackers after the rowing victory, Cressida claimed to have a stomachache and sneaked away in the direction of the stables.
Her plan was to let the horses out of their stalls and turn them loose in the woods before the Inge F. Yancey campers arrived for the equestrian event; however, when Cressida reached the stables, she found that someone had beaten her to it.
A Note from the Narrator: The horses having been taken, of course, the night before by the girls from Cabin 2.
She circled the stables looking for some trace of them. Maybe they were grazing in a pasture or penned up in a nearby corral? Had they gotten loose? Cressida crouched in the dirt, looking for hoofprints.
Then she heard footsteps coming up behind her, so quiet and stealthy that she only noticed when they were practically on top of her. Cressida didn’t have time to stand up, but looked over her shoulder to see Kadie looming over her.
Kadie didn’t speak at first. She inspected the pasture, the corral, the stalls, and only when she saw they were all empty did she glare down at Cressida and ask, “What did you do with the horses?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Why are you following me?” Cressida got to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at Kadie.
“I’m following you because I don’t trust you,” Kadie said, pushing Cressida’s outstretched hand away. “You’re always sneaking around. Snooping. Lurking. I’ve seen you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cressida said, taking a step back. She knew Kadie was suspicious of her, but was startled by her intensity.
“Then where did you go this morning before everyone else woke up? Why was the equipment shed already unlocked when I got there? And why are you out here by the stables when you said you were sick to your stomach?”
With each question, Kadie advanced on Cressida, backing her into a fence. When she could retreat no farther, Cressida stood her ground. She didn’t want a fight. She didn’t have time for a fight. Tania and the rest of the Inge F. Yancey campers would be there any minute, and they needed a cover story.
“What if I’m looking for them?” she asked in her paper-shredder voice. “Care to help, or are you just going to stand around and blame me for losing the All-Camp Sport & Follies?”
Kadie started to argue, but thought better of it and followed Cressida around the back of the stables instead. Losing the All-Camp Sport & Follies was not at the forefront of her concerns at that moment. She had much larger ones.
She thought back to the day before, when Tania had levitated Dora three feet off the ground. She thought about the witchy girls who had knitted a sleeping bag in an hour and wondered what the Inge F. Yancey campers had done to her cabin’s canoe to make it disintegrate in water. If Cressida was a spy (and Kadie was beginning to suspect that she was—she knew far too much about Camp So-and-So for a first-year camper), she might not just be out to sabotage Cabin 1’s chances. She might actually be dangerous.
The two girls followed the pony trail into the woods to the spot where it forked before turning back. The equestrian event was due to begin, the Inge F. Yancey campers would be there any minute, and there was still no sign of the horses.
Just as they emerged from the woods, Vivian and Kimber arrived. They’d stopped by the cabin to freshen up—Vivian’s black hair was teased into a glam-looking bouffant and Kimber was wearing false eyelashes. Both wore their high black boots over their painted-on jeans, equestrian-style. Kadie and Cressida looked at their own mosquito-bitten legs and ratty sweatshirts and, for a moment, felt slightly homely next to their glamorous cabinmates.
“Where are the horses?” Vivian asked.
Just as Kadie was about to open her mouth and lay the blame on Cressida, they heard a thundering of hooves, and five lathered, wild-eyed horses galloped out of the woods.
Some frothed at the mouth; others snorted and stamped their hooves in the dirt as they paced frantically in front of the stables. Kadie gave Cressida an accusing stare, but there was more pressing work at hand.
“We have to take care of them,” Kadie told her. “Go find Dora. She said she knows something about horses.”
A Note from the Narrator: This was rather an overstatement, Dora’s knowledge of horses being limited to a handful of riding lessons and trail rides she’d done in the fifth grade. However, it was enough to qualify her as Cabin 1’s designated rider for the equestrian event and resident horse expert.
Cressida set off down the trail from the stables without arguing. Meanwhile, Kadie began filling buckets from the pump and pouring them into the horses’ troughs. She didn’t know enough about horses to know what attention they required now, but she could tell just by looking at them that water was a priority. They drank as fast as she poured, and by the time Cressida returned with Dora in tow, Kadie’s arms ached from operating the pump and filling the troughs.
Dora came running as soon as she saw the horses. “You poor things!” she cried. “Let’s get those saddles off you.”
Saddles, thought Kadie. Of course.
Dora showed the others how to loosen the horses’ girths and remove the saddles and blankets. Once they had managed that, they searched the stables for sponges and towels, and wiped the lather, dirt, and sweat from the horses’ coats and mouths. Cressida tried to help, despite her allergies, but her horse rolled its eyes and flicked its tail in warning whenever she approached. Kadie’s horse was an aged mare that had spent many summers dealing with inexperienced riders and was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt; however, Kadie was so tentative and jumpy that the horse began to neigh impatiently as
she brushed it. Finally, Vivian and Kimber helped them walk the horses back to their stalls, where they plied them with oats and hay and pieces of carrot.
No sooner had they finished tending to the horses when a pack of the Inge F. Yancey campers strode into the stables. Judging from their pinched facial expressions, they considered the facilities to be beyond primitive and beneath contempt.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Ron said, flashing his reptile smile. “Are you ready to ride?”
It was Dora, of all people, who came forward to speak.
“Nobody’s riding these horses today. Just look at them!” she said, stepping protectively between Ron and the stalls.
A slow smile spread across Tania’s face. “Then you’re saying you can’t compete. Is that right?”
“No,” Kadie said, looking Tania square in the eye. “What we’re saying is that these horses are currently unavailable. We can postpone this portion of the competition until they’re rested.”
Suddenly, Cressida was standing by Kadie’s side, chiming in.
“Or we can go across the lake and use the horses at your camp,” she said, adding snottily, “You do have horses, right?”
“Of course we have horses,” Tania snapped.
The Inge F. Yancey campers whispered among themselves for a few minutes before Ron emerged from the pack, smiling as though he’d already beaten them.
“We propose this,” he said. “We will compete today. We will compete using our horses. But we’ll compete on our course, not here. Either you agree to those conditions, or you forfeit. ’Kay?”
It was exactly what Cressida had been hoping for, but she knew Kadie still didn’t trust her. It wouldn’t help her chances to look too eager about it.
“It’s your call,” Cressida whispered to Kadie. “What do you want to do?”
Kadie’s guard was up. What was Cressida playing at? she wondered. If she was a spy or a saboteur from the Inge F. Yancey camp, why was she letting Kadie make the decision here? Then again, if Cressida was a spy, she would know that Kadie would never forfeit. She would be counting on that. And having already established her horse aversion, Cressida would know that she would not be the one to ride.
