by Tina Wells
“They’re all animals. They’re really no different from dogs…or that chipmunk over there.” She pointed into the woods. “Awwww! He’s so cute.”
Kathi huffed. “He is pretty cute, but my dog is a purebred cockapoo. We paid three thousand dollars for him. Chipmunks cost nothing, which means they’re worth nothing.”
“My mom says the best things in life are free,” Marcus put in.
“Your mother’s wrong,” Kathi said, curling her lip.
“Just trying to help,” Marcus mumbled.
“If we don’t start finding stuff soon, we’re going to fail,” Landon said, changing the subject.
“Landon’s right!” Zee agreed, a little too enthusiastically. “I mean…um…that’s what we’re here for. Uh…not that you didn’t know that.” She could feel her face turning red. “I’ll stop talking now.”
Everyone held a copy of the scavenger hunt list. Next to each item’s name was a photo of the plant or animal. Ally examined her sheet, then pointed to a picture of a tree with oblong leaves. “Let’s look for this.”
“Okay,” Zee agreed.
Leaves crunched and rustled under her feet as Zee explored the woods with the Beans. But she could hardly concentrate on her assignment. Her mind kept wandering to the talent show. If they were going to be ready to perform on Friday, they needed to start planning right away.
“I was thinking the Beans should perform ‘Forever Fabulous’ for the talent show,” Zee blurted out to the group.
“Is that the song you wrote?” Kathi asked.
Zee nodded. “Yeah.”
“That would be adorable!” Kathi told her.
“Great!”
“But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have a different idea,” Kathi explained. “I want to do a duet with Missy—kind of a dueling violins routine.”
A smile broke across Missy’s face. “That sounds like so much fun.”
“Doesn’t it?” Kathi said through gritted teeth.
Ohmylanta! Zee thought. Kathi doesn’t care about having fun. She just wants to beat Missy. And now thanks to Kathi, the Beans couldn’t perform together. Zee was really disappointed.
Ally put her arm over her best friend’s shoulder. “Cheer up!” she said, giving Zee a squeeze. “Now you don’t have to worry about Kathi ruining the show for you,” she whispered, then added, “Poor Missy. She doesn’t know what she’s in for.”
Marcus, Conrad, Jasper, and Landon broke from the huddle they were in. “We’re going to do a comedy sketch,” Conrad announced.
“We need a girl to be in it,” Marcus told the others.
Looking suspicious, Chloe shook her head. “Not me.”
Landon eagerly looked at Zee.
“I’ll do it!” Jen said.
Darn! Zee thought.
“If you take a girl, we should get a boy,” Ally said.
“We’re not trading cards,” Conrad pointed out.
“Don’t worry,” Ally said. “We’ll leave you with your friends.” Her eyes locked on Jasper.
“I suppose I could do it,” Jasper agreed.
“Good—because we’re going to give you a makeover,” Ally told him.
Jasper frowned. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Yeah, what are you gonna do?” Chloe sounded excited.
“You’ll be the lead singer and Zee, Chloe, and I will be your band,” Ally explained. “We’ll make you really hot—like Justin Timberlake.”
“Yes!” Zee cheered. “We can do choreography and sing.”
“I don’t think I know how to be hot,” Jasper protested.
“Take off your glasses,” Ally said.
Jasper did. “I can’t see,” he explained, squinting.
“You don’t have to see,” Ally told him. “You just have to sing—and look good.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Zee heard someone mumble behind her. She turned to see Landon standing nearby.
“What did you say?” Chloe asked him, placing a hand on her hip.
“Nothing,” Landon said. Then he turned around and pretended to look for someone behind him.
Ohmylanta! Zee thought. She didn’t know why Landon and Jasper had trouble getting along. But she liked both boys, and she didn’t want to have to choose between them.
Chloe looked at Zee as Landon walked away. “Why would he say something like that?”
“I guess he just knows how uncomfortable Jasper is when he’s not wearing his own style,” Zee explained with a nervous giggle.
“Uh-huh,” Chloe said, but she didn’t look convinced.
Jasper put his glasses back on and looked at Landon. “On second thought,” he began, “I’m looking forward to being hot.”
That night all the seventh graders gathered around the campfire for a singalong.
“The other day,” the boys belted out.
“The other day,” the girls echoed, sitting on tree stumps.
“I met a bear,” the boys came back.
“I met a bear,” the girls repeated.
“Out in the woods.”
“Out in the woods.”
“A-way out there.”
“A-way out there.”
Then together the group sang, “The other day/I met a bear/out in the woods/a-way out there.”
At first, Zee joined in on every round of call and response. Then she felt a tightness in her belly, and her face twisted in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Ally asked.
“I don’t know,” Zee told her. “My stomach hurts.”
Ally looked concerned. “What do you think it is?”
The pain went away as quickly as it had come. “I’m fine,” Zee said. “It’s nothing.”
Zee started singing again. But she had to stop when another twist of pain made her double over. “Ohhhh,” she groaned, clutching her stomach.
“Omigosh!” Chloe said. “Maybe you should go to the camp nurse.”
“It’s just a stomachache—probably from that delicious ground beef medley they called dinner,” Zee said.
“But we all ate it,” Jasper pointed out.
“Except me,” said Chloe, who was a vegetarian and got the tofu medley instead.
“The point is,” Jasper continued, “that no one else is sick.”
“Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?” Ally asked.
“No,” Zee said. But what could make her stomach hurt this much all of a sudden?
Kathi leaned over. “Maybe you have a disease.”
Ally swung her head so that her brown hair whipped around like a horse’s tail. “She doesn’t have a disease. It’s just a little stomachache.”
“Kathi’s right,” Jen said. “I saw a show on TV about a girl who was really, really sick and—”
“She’s not ‘really, really’ sick!” Chloe said.
“Whatev,” Kathi said dismissively.
“You’re not really, really sick, are you?” Chloe whispered to Zee.
“Actually, I feel okay now,” Zee told her friends. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
As the campfire died down, some of the seventh graders in other classes went back to their cabins, but fifth period was having too much fun to go anywhere.
“Let’s tell ghost stories,” Conrad suggested.
“Okay,” Ally said.
“Don’t make them too scary,” Chloe pleaded.
“Just keep reminding yourself there’s no such thing as ghosts,” Ally told her.
“Maybe not,” Marcus said. “But there is such a thing as the Mountain Man.”
“You know about the Mountain Man?” Zee asked. Maybe Adam wasn’t lying after all.
Marcus nodded. “He tried to attack my older brother Jordan when he went on the science trip.”
Ally shook her head. “Yeah, right.”
“You don’t believe in him?” Chloe asked her.
“No,” Ally said. “Because he’s not real. Right, Zee?”
“Well…” Zee hesitated, looking from Ally to Chloe to Marcus. “Maybe if he’s just a really creepy guy who lives in the woods, he could exist. I mean, people are real.”
“I know he’s real,” Marcus said.
“How?” Zee asked.
Marcus’s eyes looked serious behind his dark-framed glasses. “Because of what happened to my brother.”
“Really?”
Marcus nodded. “A fog had settled on the mountain,” he began. “Jordan and his friends were on the trail, but the fog was so thick, they couldn’t see three feet in front of themselves.”
Zee leaned closer.
“Then, out of nowhere—” Marcus’s voice suddenly got loud, startling Zee. “He reached out and grabbed Jordan. He screamed, but everybody else just ran. No one stayed to help him. Just as the Mountain Man started to drag Jordan deeper into the woods, the Mountain Man grunted, ‘My leg! Something’s got my leg.’”
“Give me a break,” Ally said under her breath.
“What had his leg?” Chloe asked.
“Jordan never found out.” Marcus breathed a sigh of relief. “He managed to pull free and ran away as fast as he could.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Ally said.
“Adam told us the Mountain Man said something about his leg,” Zee reminded Ally.
“Since when do you believe Adam?”
Chloe wore a terrified expression. Zee was sure she believed the Mountain Man was real.
As Zee looked around to see if she could tell what the others were thinking, her eyes fell on Landon, who was looking right back at her. Somehow he made her even more nervous than the Mountain Man. Lately, he always seemed to be watching her.
Does Landon know I still have a crush on him? She would be humiliated if he did, since she was certain he liked her only as a friend.
Or maybe, Zee silently continued, Landon actually does have a crush on me, too. She shook the thought out of her head. It was too much to ask for. Zee nervously turned away from Landon.
5
Mountain Manhunt
* * *
Hi, Diary.
* * *
Zee stopped writing and thought. And thought. And thought. Nothing came. Even with everything that had happened that day, her mind was blank. Too exhausted to think anymore, she closed her diary. Whatever she had to say would just have to wait until she’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
Walking to the cabin from the bathhouse, Zee dragged her feet. Her body was achy and tired. Even the toothpaste and brush felt heavy. She couldn’t wait to collapse on her bunk and close her eyes.
“Hey, Zee!” Jen called behind her.
Ohmylanta! Zee thought. Talking to anyone—especially Jen—felt like torture at the moment. “What’s up?” she asked.
Jen hurried to catch up with Zee. “I saw the way Landon was looking at you over the campfire.” She made kissy noises.
“Really? What do you mean?” Zee asked.
“You two should totally go out!”
Zee shook her head. “We’re just friends.”
“I don’t know,” Jen said in a singsong voice. “I thought you had a big crush on him.”
“Well,” Zee responded. “Like I said, we’re just friends.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Jen said skeptically.
“What about Kathi?” Zee asked. In sixth grade, Kathi and Landon had been boyfriend and girlfriend for a while.
“Pfffft,” Jen muttered. “She so doesn’t care anymore. Seventh-grade boys do not interest her.” Then she walked off.
As Jen strode ahead, Zee couldn’t stop thinking about what she had said. Maybe Jen was right. Maybe Landon did feel the same way about her that she felt for him.
But Zee had told her parents that she wasn’t ready for a boyfriend. How could she go back on her word? Now she was really confused!
By the time Zee got back to the cabin, thoughts were bouncing all around her head. Thoughts about Landon. The other girls talked in the glow of their flashlights. Zee was glad to listen and be distracted from her thoughts.
“This cabin is so disgusting,” Kathi whined.
“Oh, I wouldn’t complain too much,” Missy said. “When my mom was with Doctors Without Borders, we saw how people in other parts of the world really live. There are tons of people who would be happy to live in a place as nice as this.”
Ally swung her head around to face Missy. “Your mom worked for Doctors Without Borders?”
“Do you know about them?” Missy asked.
“Yeah. In France we call it Médecins Sans Frontières,” Ally told her. “My parents wrote a story about the organization.”
“That’s so awesome!” Missy said.
“What country were you in?” Ally asked.
“Uganda, Kenya, and Zambia. We moved around Africa,” Missy explained.
Zee smiled. Ally fit right in with the new group. Even though it’s not something that Ally and Zee had in common, the fact that Ally lived in a different country actually meant she had more in common with Jasper and Missy.
Zee was so happy to be with her friends. Maybe her worries about Landon weren’t such a big deal after all.
Exhausted from the busy day, Zee floated off to sleep, but a pain in her side woke her up. When it happened again, she began to worry. As quietly as she could, Zee clicked on her flashlight, opened her diary, and continued with the entry she had started earlier.
* * *
I’m scared. My stomach hurts—and not like when I eat too much. This is totally different—like someone is squeezing my insides.
What if Kathi is right and I have a horrible disease? I read an article once in Flip magazine about a girl who got really, really sick because she didn’t wash her hands. Then she got a bad infection and went into a coma. After the doctors saved her, she wrote a book about it. Maybe I should have read the book. Then I wouldn’t be sick right now.
I think I’ll go wash my hands.
Zee
* * *
Zee tiptoed across the cabin toward the door. As she reached for the handle, she heard grunting. Ooog ooog. Then a horrible scraping sound. Screech screech screech. The Mountain Man!
Zee was so afraid, she froze. Nothing moved, except for her trembling hand. Without thinking about it, she rushed over to Ally, reached up to the top bunk, and shook her best friend. “Ally!” she whispered. “Wake up!”
Ally’s eyes barely opened. “What is it?” she grumbled.
“I think the Mountain Man is outside.”
“We can check it out in the morning,” Ally told her, rolling over in her sleeping bag. “I just want to sleep.”
Zee looked around in the dark, then moved toward Chloe. “Psst. Chloe,” Zee barked in a whisper.
Chloe’s eye popped open. “What’s going on?” she asked, worried.
“I think the Mountain Man is outside,” Zee told her.
“Let’s find out!” Chloe grabbed her flashlight. Zee followed as Chloe raced toward the door.
“Wait for me,” Ally said, carefully climbing down the ladder in the dark.
“I thought you were too tired,” Zee pointed out.
“I changed my mind. I don’t believe in ghosts and monsters,” Ally said, “but it might be fun to look.”
6
Period? Exclamation Point!
Snap. A twig broke under Zee’s feet.
“Shhh,” Ally said, leaves crackling as she stepped.
“It’s impossible to be quiet out here,” Chloe whispered. “There’s so much stuff on the ground.”
“We just need to watch where we walk,” Ally told the other girls.
“I can’t see anything,” Chloe said in her softest voice. “Can you?” Her flashlight’s beam danced from tree to tree.
“I guess we should have brought more than one flashlight,” Zee said.
Chloe’s beam settled on a huge figure in the distance.
“Aaaaaaa!” Chloe screamed.
“Shh!” Ally put her finger
to her lips.
“Did you see him?” Zee asked Chloe.
“Him?” Ally asked. “It was probably a tree or a boulder or something.”
“That was the Mountain Man! Trees and boulders don’t move,” Chloe said.
“How do you know it moved?” Ally asked. “You had your flashlight on it for, like, a second.”
“Yeah, ’cause he moved.”
“Ooow!” Zee cried out as pain twisted her stomach.
“Shh!” Chloe said softly.
“Sorry,” Zee apologized. “My stomach hurts.”
It was too late. The male chaperones’ cabin squeaked open.
Mr. P stepped outside. “It’s midnight. What are you girls doing out here?” He didn’t sound happy.
“Ummm…” Ally paused for a second. “Zee’s stomach hurts. We were just helping her to the bathhouse.”
“In case she throws up,” Chloe added. “Are you all right, Mackenzie?” Mr. P asked seriously.
“Yes, it’s just a little stomachache,”
Zee assured him. She felt horrible but not because of her stomach. The girls had just lied to Zee’s favorite teacher. But what could they do? Even though Zee didn’t mind talking about the mysterious creature with her friends, she wasn’t quite ready to tell her teacher. Not until she had more evidence that the Mountain Man existed.
Back in the cabin, the other girls went right back to sleep, but Zee tossed and turned. Between her stomachache, the Mountain Man, and telling Mr. P a half-truth, her mind wouldn’t stop whirring. There was only one thing to do. She pulled out her diary.
* * *
Hi, Diary,
It’s me again. This must be a record—three times in one night!
I thought I’d be okay with my friends here, but it’s definitely weird being out in the middle of nowhere without my parents. Who will protect me from the Mountain Man?
* * *
Shuffle. Shuffle. Squeak. Footsteps passed by Zee’s cabin and entered another one.
