by Laura Dower
How embarrassing.
She glanced around and realized that while she’d been in space, Will, Teeny, Ann, and the others had moved to the side of the boat. They were looking out over the water, pointing at different things on the shore, in the water, and up in the air.
Madison swallowed hard. “I think I’m okay,” she said, although she wasn’t really sure.
Leonard smiled and offered his hand. “Why don’t we join the rest of the group?” he said.
Madison stood up and shuffled over with Leonard to the crowd. There was no space near the other Egrets, so she slipped in between two Dolphins.
One of the kids who seemed about ten feet tall moved aside so Madison could see. He towered over Madison. She could hardly see his face; it was shaded by a red baseball cap.
“Hey,” the boy grunted. “We just saw a blue heron.”
“Oh,” Madison said softly.
“Yeah, take a look,” the boy said. “Over there.”
He pointed, and Madison looked across the stretch of river. Along the banks, she saw a blue heron sunning itself in a glade. Brown, green, and yellow grasses grew around the area, like a carpet. The bird stood still and then moved to a rock. It appeared to turn its body and stare in Madison’s direction—like a picture on a postcard.
“Look!” someone cried from the other side of the boat. Up in the sky, Madison saw what all the fuss was about. A pair of birds swooped around the tops of a tall, tall tree.
“Osprey!” Leonard announced. He gave everyone a quick tutorial about the birds and their feeding habits. Madison was glad to have the camp leader on her pontoon. She figured Leonard would be able to spot more wildlife on the water than anyone at the ELC.
The ospreys danced in the air. Madison had never seen anything like it; and yet she knew she must have seen ospreys before then. There was something about camp, something about this pontoon ride, that was helping Madison to see things more clearly. She was in awe of the birds’ flight pattern. Their wings stretched out so they could soar higher and higher.
And then without warning, one of the ospreys dived down to the shoreline and grabbed something.
“He got lunch!” someone cried. Madison recognized Teeny’s voice, and she giggled.
The osprey vanished into the trees.
The hot air smelled like fish and muck, but the occasional breeze, no matter how warm, brought some relief. Madison tilted her face back into the sunlight.
“Hey, Mad Dog! Where did you go?”
Madison blinked in the bright sunshine. Then Will’s face came into focus.
He’d come looking for her?
It wasn’t as if Will had had to walk far to find Madison, since there weren’t many people on their boat. But he’d looked for her—and that was all that mattered to Madison.
“There wasn’t enough room where you guys were standing …” Madison began.
Will started to say something in reply, but then he turned around; Ann was calling to him and the rest of the Egrets.
“Will! Madison! Logan! Suchita! Teeny! Come here!”
She sounded like a drill instructor, the way she called out each of their names. But everyone raced over to see what she was fussing about. After the preceding day, of rain and rattled nerves, this was a welcome change. It felt good to be outside sharing the sky and water with the birds and fish.
During the remainder of the ride, the kids saw other birds. Leonard gave some tips on bird-watching. Madison was amazed at how much she was learning on the trip.
“Here are some tricks to identify birds. First, check out the bird’s shape and its color. You should take a look at a bird’s behavior, too. Is it hunting for food quickly or wading slowly through the water? Listen for its voice. You can tell a lot about a bird’s temperament by its call.”
“This guy knows everything,” Teeny whispered to Madison.
Madison nodded, still listening.
Leonard continued. “The thing is, kids, that the ELC is located on what’s called the Eastern Continental Flyway. This is a major bird-migration corridor, where shorebirds, waterfowl, raptors, and passerines stop to feed and hang out. The folks at the state bird-watching organization have identified more than three hundred different species of birds in this area alone.”
Wow, Madison thought, as off in the distance a large trio of pelicans flapped by. She knew exactly what kind of birds they were. Already, she’d been able to take Leonard’s tips and turn them into something.
By the time the boats pulled back in to the docks almost two hours later, most of the campers were sad to disembark. Everyone wanted a second pontoon ride. That only made Leonard laugh.
“I’m glad to see that you kids are learning something,” he said. “You should get out and do your own bird-watches. Tell your friends. Do one in your own neighborhoods at home. Look up birds on the Internet.”
Madison made a mental note to do so. She knew it was exactly the kind of project her friends Egg and Drew would enjoy. Anything that involved online research was right up their alley.
Along with Madison, the boys were responsible for many of Far Hills Junior High School’s website downloads, photographs, and other site updates. Madison wondered if maybe the three of them could create links on the school site to environmental websites. She thought that maybe she’d speak to the science teacher, Mr. Danehy, about doing a special project. Her mind buzzed with ideas.
“Cool stuff, right?” Will said. He grinned, and Madison felt herself grin right back. The grin was contagious. They were on the same wavelength, there was no better feeling.
The Egrets walked back to the ELC together. Madison realized that she’d been so consumed by the fun on the pontoon boat that she had worried less about Ann that day. Ann seemed just as excited by the day’s events, and hadn’t talked as much as she usually did.
Sometimes, Madison thought, there were things that were bigger than the six of them. Sometimes it was better just to hang back and let things fly (literally) overhead before sinking in.
Lunch and the rest of the afternoon weren’t nearly as exciting as the morning boat trip, but Madison didn’t mind. By the time Stephanie and Dad came (together) to pick her up in front of the ELC at the end of the day, she was still beaming.
The ride back to the apartment was strangely quiet. Dad and Stephanie didn’t argue as they had the day before. But something was still stuck in the air between them.
Madison started to tell them about the ospreys and the king snake with its red skin. But for some reason, neither Dad nor Stephanie were listening as closely as they usually did.
So Madison stopped talking. She stared out the window. When she got back to the apartment, Madison thought, she would send a message to one of her BFFs. Aimee would “get it.” Or maybe Fiona would.
The apartment was icy cool. Madison stepped inside and realized just how hot it had been out there on the boat all morning. She decided to take a shower and then check her e-mailbox. She would do that and then blog.
Meanwhile, Dad and Stephanie remained as silent as before. Dad mentioned that he was planning to grill some marinated chicken fillets for dinner. Stephanie was making a tossed salad and steamed broccoli. They said nothing more, and Madison didn’t push it. She figured that after her experiences poking her nose into Dad and Stephanie’s fights, it was better to stay out of it. A hands-off approach was the right one for Madison, Dad, and Stephanie.
After a quick shower, Madison slathered herself in some cucumber-melon lotion that Mom had given her for the trip. It smelled very fresh. Madison’s skin was flushed from the sun, but the cream cooled her down.
She dressed in a pair of sweat shorts and a pink T-shirt. Then Madison sat down at her laptop and logged onto TweenBlurt.com. There were no e-mails in her e-mailbox.
Hart had not written.
He’d said he’d E Madison, but she knew he might not. It was a big step—to E each other long distance. They’d only just recently admitted their feelings of like.
Madison clicked NEW and decided that she would send him an e-mail. She began to type in the subject line.
Subject: Miss You!
Then Madison promptly deleted what she’d typed. That was way too much. She retyped.
Subject: Where R U?
No, Madison told herself. That sounded too desperate. She adjusted the subject line one last time, as generically as she could possibly get it without sounding too aloof. It had to be just right or she’d give Hart the wrong message—and that could be disastrous.
From: MadFinn
To: Sk8ingboy
Subject: Hello There
Date: Mon 16 Aug 5:34 PM
So I’ve been waiting for a letter from you. Remember we said we’d write? I know I could have e-mailed u b4 now but it’s been way busy here @ camp. How about you?
DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.
Madison typed and retyped her message but then discarded the note altogether.
She couldn’t send Hart an e-mail. Not like this.
She surfed around the site a little bit more. At one point, Madison’s computer went ding. Surprise! Fiona was logged on, too. How lucky, Madison thought, as she sent Fiona her first Florida message. The pair decided upon a private “room” where they could go to chat live.
Madison waited for Fiona to type in more information. But two minutes later, Fiona still had written nothing more.
Madison nearly fell off her chair when she read Fiona’s message.
Madison stopped typing and shook out her fingers. What was this? Fiona was writing all these things that Madison just did not want to read.
Moving to Los Gatos again? Leaving Far Hills?
When Fiona had talked about such things the week before it had seemed unlikely, but now, it seemed as if Madison’s worst fear might come true.
Would Fiona really be moving away?
They could hardly be BFFs across an entire country. Madison’s heart felt heavy. She had wanted to share many things with Fiona about the past week: the Egrets and the faraway look in Will’s green eyes and the way the water shimmered under the super-hot Florida sun. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell Fiona anything about any of that.
She could hardly bring herself to write a single word.
Chapter 15
THE BEACH ON TUESDAY was steamy hot, just as Monday had been.
Since the heat and high humidity were not going anywhere, Leonard and the camp staff organized an afternoon trip across one of the ponds, along a path, and across the main road toward the ocean. The ELC maintained about 500 yards of oceanfront. There was a breeze blowing off the water.
The campers were thrilled to see the nesting sites of the loggerhead turtles for the first time. Each site was marked and identified as a nest by county officials, who had placed little orange flags on wooden sticks in the sand to show where the nesting areas were.
Leonard explained to everyone about the Habitat Conservation Plan, an agreement to limit the building of seawalls in coastal Florida.
“Everywhere you go in Florida,” Leonard sighed, “you have to watch out for the natural boundaries established by the turtles. We can’t just come in and wreak havoc on the beach. This is an important law meant to protect turtles from people like us.”
“Whoa,” Will muttered. “Who would want to hurt a turtle?”
“My dad volunteers for that group, the conservation group,” Teeny said. “There are a lot of people who live here who care what happens to the water and the beach and rivers.”
“That’s so great,” Madison said, impressed.
After a few more words from Leonard, the kids spread out across the beach. The different groups intermingled as they checked out the turtle nesting sites. Sometimes the nesting site was a deep hole; at other times, it was just a pile of sand where the turtle had been.
The campers seemed happy to check out the beach. Of course, they were also psyched to slather on a little sunblock and hang out—even just for a little while.
Unfortunately, Madison wasn’t psyched—not at all. And after a half hour or so on the beach, she began to experience some real discomfort. Madison realized that she should have brought a hat; her skin was starting to prickle. She could see her arm from the shoulder to the elbow turning pink right before her very eyes—and it wasn’t pretty.
Madison looked for someone to commiserate with, but she didn’t find one among the Egrets. The boys could not have cared less. As for the girls, Suchita’s skin appeared super tanned already, and Ann didn’t have to worry about the sun, she bragged, because not only had she brought along some sunblock but her skin never, ever burned anyway. As much as Madison hated being pale, even worse was being alone in her paleness.
Lindsay and Aimee would have related to paleness. They could all have hidden from the sun together. At that exact moment, Madison missed her BFFs more than ever.
Thankfully, the ongoing hunt for turtle nests and other beach artifacts made Madison forget all about the tanning dilemma. With Ann and Suchita she teamed up to make notes about their beach observations, while the boys teamed up to take their own notes. Madison was momentarily wistful about not being paired with Will in any way (at least for a little while), but she didn’t dwell on it. Hanging with the girls was an opportunity for better bonding with them. It was like having temporary substitutes for Aimee and Fiona—almost.
Leonard and his staff strolled around. They aske
d the campers to look for shells, to identify insects, and to seek out the small holes where crabs hid. They wanted everyone to pay attention to the things on the beach, from seashells to seaweed. The campers needed to learn all they could about that habitat so that they could knowledgeably observe the turtles laying their eggs during hatchling night.
The big event was only a few days away. It was the defining moment of Camp Sunshine. In just a few nights, all of the campers—from Alligators to Flounders—would band together on that very beach to observe the loggerhead turtles in the darkness as they crawled up the beach to lay their eggs. Of course, there was the chance that there might not be many turtles on the beach that particular night; but there was also a chance that there would be dozens of them.
Madison had her fingers crossed. She wanted to see as many turtles as possible. She had a vision of a beach filled with so many turtles that there was no sand visible, nowhere to walk: a blanket of turtles creeping up from the ocean’s edge.
Now, that would be cool.
Ann found a large piece of driftwood shaped like antlers, and after singing a rousing “only-126-days-until-Christmas” chorus of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” she buried the wood in the sand.
Madison laughed. “That was funny,” she said. With all of Ann’s quirks, had Madison simply missed her sense of humor? Maybe Ann wasn’t so annoying after all. Maybe she was just trying hard to get everyone to like her.
That was a feeling Madison understood only too well.
Suchita continued her search for a bottle or some shards of beach glass. She wanted her own meaningful souvenir of this place and these people. Madison told Ann and Suchita about the note in a bottle that Madison had found the week before. Everyone agreed that finding a mysterious note in a bottle had to be good luck, somehow.
Madison wondered what the good luck would bring. Did it mean that she and Will would continue to make some kind of connection?
Then she chased that idea right out of her head.
What was she thinking? What about Hart?
Just then, the boys from the Egrets came over to the three Egret girls. The boys’ hands were filled with shells of all colors, including beige, lavender, coral, and gray.
