Willows vs. Wolverines

by Alison Cherry

  “Ooh, hang on a second,” Val says. “I forgot something.” She gets up and pulls three fat candles in glass jars and a book of matches out of her bag. She arranges them in a triangle around us and lights them. “This always works better if it’s dark,” she explains.

  “Where did you get those?” asks Petra at the same time Summer says, “No offense, but aren’t candles against the rules?”

  “They’ve been sitting in the main office for, like, two years. I think someone gave them to one of the admin ladies as a gift, but she obviously doesn’t want them. And I promise I’ll take full responsibility if we burn down the cabin, Summer.” Val wrinkles her nose as an overwhelming smell of vanilla starts to fill the cabin. “Ugh, it smells like a Bath and Body Works threw up in here. But I guess it’s better than nothing.”

  “Turn off the lights,” Roo urges. Val does, and creepy flickering shadows fill the cabin. It makes the chemical cupcake smell totally worth it.

  “All right, now we can get down to business.” Val squishes back into her spot between Ava and Mei. “Hannah, are you sure you don’t want to join us? It’s really fun, I promise.”

  Hannah shrinks farther back into her bunk and shakes her head. She’s hugging a pillow to her stomach like she thinks it’ll help her ward off evil spirits. It’s weird how she likes creepy stuff like skulls and blood, but she can’t handle anything that’s remotely unpredictable or startling. I know I should probably feel bad for her, but I kind of want her to just deal with it for once. If she starts crying, Val will have to get up to comfort her and everything will be ruined.

  “So, we all put our fingers on the little plastic piece, right?” I ask, to start things off.

  “It’s called a planchette,” Summer says. Of course she would know that.

  We all reach out, and Val says, “Rest your fingers on it very lightly. Barely touch it. We need to give the spirits total control.”

  “Do you think there are actual ghosts at this camp?” Lexi asks. “Like, for real?”

  “What if there’s one inside the cabin right now?” asks Hope.

  “What if it’s a boy ghost and he’s been watching us change all summer?” says Petra.

  “Eew!”

  “Is everyone ready?” Val asks, and we nod. “Okay, all together now. Ouija, are you there?”

  “Ouija, are you there?” we chant. My heart starts beating faster as I wait for the planchette to move, but nothing happens.

  “Again,” Val says.

  “Ouija, are you there?” we repeat. Finally, on our fourth time, the planchette seems to tremble under our fingers, and then it swoops across the board to the word YES.

  Lexi shrieks and pulls her fingers back like she’s been burned. “This is freaky,” she says.

  “God, Lex, don’t be such a baby,” Roo says. Lexi bites her lip and reaches for the planchette again.

  “Who has a question for the spirits?” Val asks.

  “Hi, ghost,” I say. “What’s your name?”

  The planchette immediately starts moving, slowly but surely, toward the letter section of the board. We all say the letters aloud as the little plastic piece travels from place to place.

  “A-N-N-I-E.”

  “Phew, it’s a girl ghost,” Petra says.

  “Petra, you’re totally moving it,” Ava says.

  “I’m not! I’m barely touching it! I’m channeling. You’re touching it way more than I am.”

  “Are you kidding? My fingers are hardly on it at all!”

  “It wasn’t any of us, it was Annie,” Mei says.

  “This is dumb,” says Summer, but she doesn’t sound sure.

  “Annie, were you a camper at Camp Foxtail?” asks Hope. The planchette swoops over to the word NO.

  “Are you dead?” Lexi asks, and the planchette moves over to YES.

  “Um, obviously she’s dead,” Ava says. “She’s a ghost.”

  “I just meant—”

  “Annie, were you murdered?” I ask before Lexi and Ava can start fighting. The planchette moves over to NO.

  “Aw, man,” Roo says.

  “Seriously?” says Summer. “You’re disappointed someone wasn’t murdered at our camp?”

  “She wasn’t a camper! I bet she lived here when there were, like, log cabins and stuff. She was probably eaten by a bear or something.”

  “Annie, were you eaten by a bear?” asks Summer, and the planchette remains firmly on NO.

  “How did you die?” asks Val.

  The planchette does nothing for a second, and then it lurches back toward the letter section of the board. “T-R-E-E,” it spells out.

  “She was killed by a tree?” Roo asks.

  “Maybe it fell on her,” says Summer.

  “Or she fell out of it,” says Lexi. “Oh my god, Mei, you shouldn’t climb that tree outside our cabin anymore. What if it was that tree? It might be haunted. She might make it kill you, too.”

  “Ghosts don’t kill people,” Mei says.

  “But what if she’s lonely and she wants more dead people around?”

  There’s a sudden snapping sound outside, and everyone gasps. “What was that?” squeaks Bailey.

  “Probably a twig breaking,” says Val. “I bet there’s a raccoon or something.”

  “It’s the tree!” Lexi hisses. “It’s coming for us!”

  It doesn’t even make any sense, but I get goose bumps anyway, and a bunch of the girls squeal. “Lexi, shut up,” Ava says.

  “Does anyone have another question for Annie?” asks Val. “We’re running out of time. Spirits usually don’t hang around for long. The board makes it easier for them to talk to us, but it’s still pretty hard.”

  “Annie, can you go haunt the Wolverines for us?” I ask. A bunch of the girls laugh, but then we hear another sound outside, louder than the first. It sounds like a branch hitting the side of our cabin, but there aren’t any trees close enough to touch it.

  “Shh!” Summer hisses. “There’s definitely something out there.”

  Even Roo looks genuinely scared now. “We shouldn’t have asked Annie to do something for us. Ghosts don’t like that. Now she’s going to punish us.”

  “Is that true?” Ava asks. She’s looking up at Val, and for the first time, her perfectly put-together mask drops and she actually looks like a thirteen-year-old kid.

  “No, it’s not true,” Val says. “But it does sound like there’s something out there. Keep your fingers on the planchette while I check it out, okay?”

  Before she can get to her feet, there’s this horrible ghostly sound right outside the window near where my old bunk is. It’s halfway between a shriek and a howl, like how werewolves usually sound in movies. All the hair stands up on my arms.

  “Omigod, omigod, omigod,” whimpers Lexi.

  “It’s okay,” Val says. “Guys, you know the Ouija board’s not real, right? It’s only—”

  And then Hannah starts screaming like someone’s amputating her feet with a dull, rusty saw. She’s pretty far outside the circle of candlelight, but her eyes are so wide I can see the whites all the way around from here. She looks like she’s seen an actual ghost.

  And when I follow her trembling, pointing finger, I see the white specter glowing softly in the dark as it rises up from beneath the window ledge.

  We all shriek and scramble away from the board. Regardless of what Val says, it’s obvious the Ouija board is real, because we just summoned a spirit, and it’s right there.

  “Guys . . . ,” Val says. But we’re not listening anymore, because now there are glowing white shapes rising up in front of all the windows. The howling sound suddenly seems to be coming from everywhere at once, coupled with other ghostly noises: creaking doors, clanking chains, a faraway child crying. When I glance over at the tree closest to the cabin, there’s yet another ghost nestled in the branches, and that freaks me out more than anything. What if it’s Annie? What if she’s coming to get us after all?

  Petra’s foot
hits the board, and the planchette goes flying and skids under Roo’s bunk. Now that nobody’s touching it, I feel like the ghosts should disappear, but they don’t; they keep rising higher. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I vaguely recall my cousin telling me that if you don’t end a Ouija session by saying good-bye to the spirits you summon, they’ll haunt you forever. The specter in the tree suddenly swoops down, closer to the cabin, and my heart tries to leap straight out of my chest.

  “Guys!” Val shouts over our screams. “It’s okay!” She flips on the light, and we all go quiet as the white shapes come into focus.

  They’re not the spirits of dead people coming back to haunt us. They’re a bunch of ratty old bed sheets draped over the heads of mops and brooms and lit from below by flashlights. Some of them aren’t even white, now that I’m seeing them more clearly—one of the sheets is pale blue, and another has a pattern of tiny yellow butterflies.

  And crouched right outside our windows, holding up the ghosts and laughing so hard I can see their back teeth, are the Wolverines.

  Dear Tia Estella,

  Thank you so much the Ouija board. Please don’t be offended that I’m sending it back. It’s not because I don’t like it or because it doesn’t work—we tried it out last night, and we summoned the spirit of a girl named Annie who died when she fell out of a tree. (Or maybe a tree fell on her? We’re not positive.) The thing is, these boys played a prank on us while we were using it, and one of the girls in my cabin got so freaked out that she refused to come back inside while the Ouija board’s still here. I told her I’d get rid of it, but I’m not sure you’re supposed to throw out a Ouija board, and I’m scared to try in case something horrible happens. Maybe you’re supposed to bury it? Anyway, I figured you would know what to do. I hope the spirit we summoned doesn’t haunt YOU, but you’re probably safe, because how would she know where you live? Unless she reads the address on this package, I guess.

  Other than that, things are good here. I’ve made a bunch of new friends, and I learned to sail a Sunfish. My mom told me about the party you had to celebrate Tio Joaquin’s promotion at work—congratulate him for me, okay? Did you make the sweet tamales I like? Will you make them again when I get back?

  Hug Rosa and Julio for me, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

  Te amo,

  Izzy

  CHAPTER 15

  I desperately need to talk to Mackenzie the next day; none of us expected the Wolverines to retaliate so quickly, and I need another prank idea from her right away. Fortunately, I already asked her to have another letter ready by today or tomorrow, and she’s never failed to come through for me before. It would be great to have something new to present to the Willows during Cabin Group this afternoon. I feel a whole new level of responsibility now that I’m bunking with Lexi and Roo and Ava.

  The weird thing is that I can’t find Mackenzie anywhere. I don’t see her at breakfast or lunch—both of which Stuart spends waving white napkins in Val’s face while making ghostly howling sounds—and she’s not in any of my new activities, even though I thought we were supposed to have Nature together. I figure she’ll come find me during Free Time, but she doesn’t show up to ask if I want to go to the lake. I put on my swimsuit anyway and go over to Maple to look for her, but the only people there are three girls braiding each other’s hair, and none of them have seen her. (What is with the Maple girls and hair braiding?) She’s not at the dock or the archery range or under our favorite tree. I even check the infirmary, but the only person in there is a boy from Owl with poison ivy all over his face. What if something happened to Mackenzie and she had to go home or to the hospital, but nobody thought to tell me because I’m not in Maple?

  When she’s not at dinner, I start to get seriously worried, and Val promises we can find Doobie at the all-camp activity—a carnival in the Social Lodge—and ask if anything happened to her. But when we get there, I immediately spot Mackenzie across the room. She and Lauren are playing this game where you try to eat powdered-sugar doughnuts hanging from the ceiling on strings without using your hands, and she certainly doesn’t look sick or injured. I push through the crowd to get to her, past the flour blow and the sponge toss and the station where you throw darts at balloons. I almost get distracted by the dunk tank; Stuart’s sitting on the tiny seat above the water and belting out “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” at the top of his lungs. It’s hard to resist joining Val in line to lob baseballs at the lever that would make him fall in. But my aim is pretty bad, and I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of her.

  When I finally manage to get to Mackenzie, her cheeks are bulging with doughnut like a chipmunk, and she’s doing the silly victory dance we made up together last year when our team won the Sweetwater Olympics. It’s bizarre to see her doing it without me. Her face and shirt and the lenses of her glasses are all dusted in powdered sugar, and when a counselor hands over her prize—a plush elephant—she hugs it to her chest and smears it with sugar too.

  And then she sees me, and all the happiness seems to drain right out of her, which doesn’t make any sense at all.

  “Hey,” I say cheerfully. “Did you win?”

  “Yeah,” she says, but she doesn’t smile. She hugs the elephant tighter.

  “Awesome. Hey, did you check if those doughnuts are dairy-free? ’Cause sometimes—”

  “I checked, okay?” Mackenzie snaps. “God, you’re worse than my mom.”

  I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Mackenzie sound this fierce, including the time she caught Brian Scarponi cheating off her math test. Usually she seems to want me to take care of her. Usually she seems to need it.

  “Oh,” I say. “Okay. Sorry. Where were you all day? I looked everywhere for you.”

  Mackenzie tries to cross her arms, but the elephant makes it awkward, so she drops her hands to her sides. “My counselor’s in charge of the carnival,” she says. “Lauren and I helped her set up.”

  “I thought something happened to you. I was really worried. I even went to the infirmary to see if you were there.”

  Her eyes narrow behind her glasses. “Why? Do you need something from me?”

  “What? No. I just wanted to hang out. That reminds me, though, I did want to talk to you about something. Can we go outside for a minute? It’s kind of important.”

  Mackenzie looks over her shoulder at Lauren, and I assume she’s going to tell her she’ll be right back. But then she turns to me and says, “Actually, not right now. Lauren and I were about to go play the basket-shooting game.”

  “It’ll be quick,” I say. “We can shoot baskets after. It’s just . . .” I’m pretty sure it’s loud enough that nobody can hear us, but I lean in and lower my voice anyway. “Did you hear what the Wolverines did last night? We were using the Ouija board my aunt Estella sent me, and those little jerks put sheets on brooms and raised them up outside the windows—”

  Mackenzie cuts me off. “You know what, Izzy? I don’t really care what the Wolverines did.”

  “It was so scary, though! It really looked like there were ghosts, and we were totally freaking out, and—”

  “Just stop!” she shouts. “All you ever talk about is your stupid prank war!”

  I feel like I’ve been slapped. Mackenzie has definitely been acting a little weird toward me lately, but I had no idea she was this angry. I didn’t know she was capable of getting this angry.

  “The prank war’s not stupid,” I say. “You don’t think that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I think,” she snaps.

  I hold up my hands in surrender. “Okay! Calm down. What’s with you tonight? Are you mad we did the Ouija board without you? I didn’t think you were interested in it, and anyway it was a cabin activity, so you couldn’t have—”

  “It’s not about the Ouija board!” Mackenzie’s full-out yelling now, and everyone lined up for the doughnut game is looking at us. “Can you seriously not think of anything else you were supposed to do yesterday?”

/>   I think back through my day. Breakfast, Archery, Horseback Riding, lunch, Sailing, Popsicles with Val, Cabin Group, swimming with Mackenzie, dinner, egg drop, Ouija board, bed. I can’t think of anything I missed. We didn’t have any prank preparations to do, and I don’t remember Mackenzie asking me for any favors I forgot.

  “Can you please tell me?” I beg. “I’m really sorry for whatever it is, but I don’t know what I did.”

  Mackenzie’s face scrunches up, and I realize with horror that she’s trying not to cry. “Yesterday was my birthday,” she says, and her voice wobbles. “Lauren remembered, and she’s only known me two weeks.” She looks down at her wrist, and I notice for the first time that she’s wearing a bracelet I’ve never seen before. It’s made of intertwined strings of turquoise and purple beads, Mackenzie’s favorite colors. A birthday present. From Lauren.

  I am officially the worst person ever. Of course that’s why Mackenzie was acting so weird yesterday; she was waiting for me to wish her happy birthday and do my traditional birthday prank. I should’ve covered the grass in front of her cabin with plastic lawn flamingos wearing party hats. Or decorated the horses with blankets that spelled out a birthday message and made the counselors parade them around in a circle when she got to Horseback Riding. Or even just had Val’s friend in the kitchen make her a special ChocoNanaFlufferNutter Delight covered in candles and made everyone in the mess hall sing to her.

  “Oh my god, Mackenzie, I’m so sorry,” I say. “I got mixed up about what day it was, and there was all this other stuff on my mind . . .”

  “Yeah, superimportant stuff like your Ouija board and your stupid rivalry with some boy. I thought you were supposed to be my best friend, but it’s obvious what actually matters to you.”

  How does she not get that the prank war is a big deal, a time-honored tradition that goes way, way back? It’s not just a rivalry with some boy. Nine other girls and Val are all counting on me to take the Wolverines down. But that’s not the most important part of this argument, so I say, “That’s ridiculous. Of course you matter to me.”