Hide and Shriek #14

by Melissa J Morgan

  Jenna grabbed Alex’s wrist and checked the face of her watch, the one with the little soccer balls on the navy blue strap. “They are too late. They’re five whole minutes late.”

  “My watch is fast,” Alex said.

  “Her watch is fast,” Candace told Jenna.

  Alex found it oddly reassuring that Candace still had the habit of repeating the things people around her said. It was one of the few things that seemed intact from last summer.

  “Six minutes late,” Jenna said, still reading the time on Alex’s watch.

  “Will this torment never end?” Brynn cried, making a show of pulling out her dark red hair.

  Alex silently chuckled at Brynn’s theatrics. Brynn was still a major drama queen—which was good, since Brynn’s goal in life was to become an actress. She was already starring in plays at school, and she had actually considered skipping Camp Lakeview this summer to go to a drama camp instead.

  Alex was seriously glad Brynn had decided to come to Lakeview after all, because so many others hadn’t. She was bummed to find out that Sarah and Abby weren’t coming back. Neither were Karen and Jessie. And that was what was wrong with the fifth division—a startling number of girls Alex’s age had opted to spend their summer vacations somewhere else.

  At least most of my closest camp buds are here, Alex thought.

  Arriving throughout the day, Brynn, Alex, and Jenna had reunited in their new bunk and hugged and chatted while they waited for everyone else to show. Candace was there, too. No one had seen or spoken to her since last summer. Everyone already knew Clarissa, their CIT, because she’d been a camper last year. Blond and bouncy, she was an interesting cross between a girlie-girl and a jock.

  Their counselor, Belle, was new, and she was kind of . . . strange. She was very pale, and she had superblack hair, but she wasn’t a Goth. She was friendly enough, but she seemed awfully nervous. The four bunkmates had exchanged glances when she had greeted them and explained a few of her bunk policies—such as no calling top bunks until everyone had arrived. That was fairly standard, but when she told them, her pale cheeks reddened and she looked down at her clipboard like telling them was some huge deal.

  Now, in the parking lot, Alex heard a low, deep rumble, and for a moment she thought it was thunder. Then a ginormous red and white bus with CAMP LAKEVIEW CHARTER spelled out above the front windshield trundled from behind a stand of pine trees and rolled toward the girls.

  “It’s them!” Brynn tossed back her red hair as she arched backward and flung her arms toward the sky. “The long wait is over!”

  Beside Alex, Jenna bounced on her heels like Tigger and waved her arms like she was guiding a jet down the runway at an airport. Candace clapped her hands with excitement, straining to see the three girls they were all looking for—Tori, Natalie, and Alyssa.

  “Look! Natalie Goode! Dead ahead!” Jenna called, pointing with both forefingers at the approaching bus. “Yo, Nat!”

  Peering out through a grimy window above one of the bus’s large wheels, Natalie waved excitedly at the foursome in the parking lot. Tori and Alyssa crowded into the same window, and Alex felt her heart soar. She had missed those guys.

  The bus chugged onto the blacktop parking lot. Its air brakes squealed. Then the driver turned off the motor.

  “Natalia, mi amore! Tori! Lyss!” Brynn cried.

  She flung open her arms and raced toward the bus. Alex found herself running to catch up with Brynn. Sprinting along, Jenna and Candace crashed into each other, laughed, and hurried along, too.

  The bus door slammed open with a rush of air. Some other kids got off the bus, and then Natalie, Tori, and Alyssa hopped down the three stairs and raced for Alex and the others. Their feet had barely touched the blacktop before the hugging began.

  “You’re here!” Jenna cried.

  “We’re here!” Natalie high-fived her. “Tell us what bunks we’re in. Oh, God, if I’m not with at least some of you guys—”

  “We’re all together,” Alex told her.

  Natalie and Tori squealed, and Alyssa grinned.

  “That rocks!” Tori cried.

  “Who else is in our bunk? Anyone we know?” Natalie asked as she moved to collect her enormous duffel bag, which Alex recognized from summers past. It was as big as the upright piano in Alex’s living room—and weighed twice as much, no doubt.

  “Yes. We know all our bunkmates,” Alex replied. “No new girls at all.”

  “Wow,” Alyssa said, pausing for a moment as she slipped her arms through her backpack. “Really? No one new?”

  “There’s the seven of us,” Alex said, indicating the group in the lot. “And Priya. And Valerie.”

  “O-kay, that’s a total of nine,” Natalie said slowly. “Then Grace is coming late. That’s ten. And there’s usually eleven to a bunk.”

  There was a moment’s silence where no one asked the question that immediately sprang to mind. Alex answered it anyway.

  “They’re going to bump us up to twelve when Grace comes,” Alex said. “So we have two more.” She took a breath. “Chelsea is in our bunk. And Gaby. We haven’t seen them yet, but they’re on our roster.”

  The girls took it about as well as Alex would have expected, given their difficult past history with both girls. Chelsea could be really snarky and mean-spirited, and Gaby was superbossy. Ever since Chelsea had started coming to camp, way back when they were in the third division, Alex and her friends had tried really hard to get along with her. Gaby was no less challenging.

  “About that art trip to Asia,” Natalie muttered as she pulled the duffel bag upright, cocking her head and staring at the bag as if she had no idea how to carry it. Then she put her arms around the top end.

  “I’m sure we’ll all get along fine.”

  “Ya-huh, right,” Jenna muttered back. “Who hates us enough to give us Chelsea and Gaby?”

  “Yes, I’m happy to see you, too,” said a sour voice. Alex winced. It was a very familiar sour voice.

  Then Chelsea stepped into view with her duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She was still peaches-and-cream pretty, with her blond hair in a loose, attractive braid down her back. But the familiar deep scowl on her face detracted from her looks. It appeared that she had been coming toward them from the other side of the parking lot, hidden by the bulky charter bus.

  Without another word, she stomped away.

  Everyone stared after her, too numb with shock to speak.

  “That went well,” Jenna finally said.

  Everyone groaned in unison.

  A deep wave of hurt coursed through Chelsea as she hoisted her duffel bag over her shoulder and walked through the crowds of campers laughing and greeting one another like the long-lost friends they were.

  She knew she shouldn’t have come back to Camp Lakeview. She knew those girls would still be mean and petty. But she had dared to hope that maybe she could start over with them, and that this summer would be different. But it wasn’t going to be different, was it?

  She wished she could call her mom and ask her to take her home. But at this very moment, her father and mother were at a clinic in Washington, D.C., so her father could participate in a medical trial for a new kind of cancer drug. Her mother had had to quit her job to accompany him, and she was living in a special house provided by a charity organization so they wouldn’t have to go even further in debt to pay for her lodging. Chelsea’s older sister was staying with her best friend’s family back home, and Chelsea’s uncle had paid for Chelsea’s camp because she didn’t have a best friend whose family offered to keep her for the summer.

  So she couldn’t go home. She was at Camp Lakeview for the entire summer, whether she liked it or not. And so far, she didn’t like it at all.

  I wish . . . she thought. What did she wish?

  I wish those snotty girls would go away and never come back.

  Stumbling over a pinecone, she bit her lower lip to keep herself from bursting into tears as she tromped up the h
ill toward their bunk.

  chapter TWO

  Stricken, Nat started off across the parking lot after Chelsea, then stopped and flopped her arms down at her sides. She should probably wait for Chelsea to blow off some steam before she tried to apologize.

  Behind her, Alex sighed. “Talk about lousy timing.”

  “I’m sorry,you guys.” Natalie turned and faced the group. Shecaught her lower lip between her teeth and scrunched up her nose. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “Me too.” Jenna hung her head.

  “Me too.” Candace exhaledand laced her hands across her stomach.

  “You didn’t say anything at all,” Nat re Candace.

  “Yeah, but I was about to,” Candace replied eyes wide, bobbing her head.

  Brynn raised her hand. “Me four. Only my love of the dramatic pause stopped me in time.”

  “I need to learn to love the dramatic pause.” Nat looked over her shoulder at the receding figure. “We’ll have to figure out a way to make it up to her. We can’t start the summer off like this.”

  “If she wants a top bunk, we should let her have one,” Candace ventured.

  “Chelsea’s mood can be changed with the addition of a little sugar,” Jenna announced. Her trademark impish smile brightened up her freckled face. “And my mom sent along two dozen of her killer chocolate-on-chocolate cupcakes.”

  Now it was Brynn’s turn to groan—or rather, moan—with sheer delight. “Your mom is a goddess!”

  Alex smiled like the other girls, but Nat knew that of course she couldn’t have one of the cupcakes. Alex had juvenile diabetes, and she had to monitor her sugar intake carefully. Two summers ago, after she had eaten too many Twinkies and skipped an insulin injection, she had gone into diabetic shock. Only the quick thinking of their counselor had kept it from getting any worse than that.

  “What about Gaby?” Candace asked. “Do you think Chelsea will tell her what we said?”

  “I hope not.” Nat shook her head. She couldn’t imagine an entire summer feuding with Chelsea and Gaby. She had hoped they were all old enough to figure out how to get along.

  That would include you, Goode, she reminded herself. Saying mean things about your bunkmates was pretty immature.

  The crowds were beginning to thin as the campers headed for their bunks—or to get to the cookout early so they could stake out their favorite picnic table and snag one of the first hot dogs or hamburgers off the grill. Bob the bus driver finished taking the luggage out of the storage area in the undercarriage of the bus and drove away.

  “Guys, we have to check in with our counselor,” Tori said as she reached for the extendable handle of an elegant black wheeled suitcase.

  “She’s at the bunk. We’ll lead the way,” Jenna announced, gesturing for the other girls to follow her. “We’re up the hill this year.”

  “I’ll carry this if the ground gets too rough,” Tori said.

  “I hope we’re not in trouble with Belle,” Candace murmured. “That’s our counselor’s name.”

  “In trouble for what, saying how we feel when we thought we had some privacy?” Jenna asked, but she looked a little worried, too. “Argh, why did she have to hear us?”

  They left the parking lot and walked past the infirmary and the mess hall. The American flag and the Camp Lakeview flag hung limply in the moist air. Then the Christmas-y scent of pine filled Natalie’s nose as they started up the path of hard-packed earth lined with small rocks on either side.

  Alex paused on the trail. “About Belle.” She smoothed her short dark hair and lowered her arm to her side, hesitating. “She’s a little . . .” She trailed off. “Never mind. Maybe it’s just me.”

  “It’s not just you,” Brynn said. “In a word? She’s . . . freaky.”

  “Freaky? How?” Tori asked, making a face as her suitcase wheels rattled over a scattering of small stones and dried pine needles.

  Alex looked at Brynn, who was staggering beneath the weight of Nat’s duffel. Brynn wiped her forehead.

  “She’s intense. Or maybe the word is ‘tense.’ ”

  “Tense works for me,” Jenna said. “Weirdly tense.”

  “Maybe it’s her first year as a counselor,” Nat suggested. “She’s new here, right? I’ve never heard of a counselor at Lakeview named Belle before.”

  “Yes, she’s new. She’s from Maine,” Brynn said. “And they must not get any sun up there in Maine, because she’s white as a ghost.”

  “Ghostly,” Candace said.

  “Maybe she is a ghost.” Tori wiggled her eyebrows.

  “Speaking of ghosts and changing the subject, Tori has a spooky story to share,” Nat announced with a little smile. She knew her friend was dying to tell it.

  “Oooh,” Candace murmured. “Is it very spooky?”

  “It’s not just spooky. It’s horrifying,” Tori assured them. “And it’s not just a story. It’s true. I’ll tell it tonight and scare the wits out of everyone!”

  “No way!” Brynn cried. “I’m still having nightmares about the ghost stories we heard last year.”

  “Me too.” Candace’s lower lip quivered. “Nightmares.”

  “I like to be scared,” Jenna insisted. “Adam and I watch horror movies all the time.” Nat ticked her attention to Alex. Adam was Jenna’s twin brother, and he and Alex were currently sweeties.

  “Then tonight is your lucky night,” Tori promised. She winked at Brynn and Candace. “I’ll be sure to tell it when you two aren’t around.”

  Brynn made a face. “Hmmm. I’ll probably weaken and listen to every gory detail. I’m like that. Can’t stand to miss good drama.”

  “This is seriously good drama,” Tori assured her.

  They walked on for a little while. The hill was awfully steep. Tori gave up and carried her suitcase.

  “What is in this thing?” Brynn asked, reshifting her half of Nat’s duffel in her arms.

  “A summer’s supply of makeup, nail polish, and the June and July issues of all our favorite magazines,” Nat replied breezily, trying to lighten the mood. “By the way, I checked everyone’s horoscopes before I left this morning.” She rolled her eyes. “My horoscope said that I should exercise caution when expressing myself.”

  “And yet you chose to ignore it,” Brynn said.

  “Good to know,” Candace put in.

  “Yeah, well.” Nat grimaced. “I still feel totally awful that Chelsea heard me. She’s been through so much.”

  The others nodded. Chelsea’s father had been battling cancer on and off for several years. That was a horrible enough situation for anyone to be in, but it seemed worse for Chelsea because she had so much trouble making and keeping friends—at least at camp. Nat tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Chelsea could be awfully snarky and mean. It was incredible bad luck that Chelsea had overheard the girls—okay, me and Jenna—talking about her.

  Nat stopped, fished in her daypack, and pulled on the pair of Italian sunglasses her father had bought for her on a location shoot of his latest film. She looked up at the hill. “I wish I didn’t have to face Chelsea again so soon.”

  “The cookout’s going to start in less than an hour,” Alex pointed out. “Maybe we can try to make up there, on neutral territory.”

  “Remember how Chelsea weaseled the last hot dog out of Karen?” Jenna asked. “Maybe Karen didn’t come back because she was tired of putting up with Chelsea.”

  “Karen was starting to stand up to Chelsea,” Natalie said. “It was so nice to see her becoming more self-confident.”

  “Now Karen’s gone and we get to keep Chelsea,” Brynn muttered. Then she said, “I did not just say that. I am through with gossiping about anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Tell us about our horoscopes,” Alex suggested, moving the conversation along.

  Nat pointed a manicured finger at her more simply-dressed friend. Alex favored khaki and navy blue, and her nails were plain and short. “Your horoscope said to be flexi
ble because big changes are on their way!”

  “I’m tired of changes,” Alex grumped as she turned around and walked backward up the slope. “Nothing ever stays the same.”

  “That’s what makes life so exciting,” Brynn retorted.

  “I like my excitement on the soccer field.” Alex’s nickname was Mia Hamm, and she lived up to it. The shelves in her room glittered with rows of soccer trophies.

  Huffing, the girls reached a wood-burned sign shaped like an arrow. It read FIFTH DIVISION CABINS, and the path forked to the right.

  “Well, my story is beyond exciting,” Tori promised them. She slapped at a mosquito. “And filled with blood, just like this fiend of nature!”

  “Did you see Jordan yet?” Nat asked Brynn, who went all girlfriendy-blushy.

  “No, not yet,” Brynn answered. “And Priya’s not here yet, either. Priya’s father is driving them in together.”

  “Valerie has yet to show, too,” Alex said.

  “Simon is with Adam,” Jenna told Nat. “They went on down to the lake.”

  “It’ll be nice to see him again.” Nat smiled, happy but not super-ultra-happy. She and cutie Simon had tried out being boyfriend and girlfriend, but they had decided having a long-distance romance was too awkward.

  They continued up the hill. Nat half-expected to run into Chelsea, but she must have punched the turbo to put some distance between herself and them.

  “I wonder if she’s complaining to Belle about us,” Candace said. It was obvious she couldn’t stop worrying about it.

  “This summer is already a bummer,” Jenna said. “And the subject of bad poetry on top of it.”

  “C’mon, guys,” Nat urged, “let’s hit reset. Let’s promise one another that this will be the best summer yet. We’ve got a great bunk and we can have lots of fun, right?” She raised her hand. “High five!”

  “Right!” the gang cried, high-fiving her.