“Why did Mr. Parker want you?” I asked.
“He’s going to explain after the game,” he said.
After that I couldn’t concentrate on the game. It was supposed to help us learn everyone’s name. We got in a circle and went around saying our name and something we would bring to camp that started with the same letter. (“It doesn’t have to be something you really brought,” Skeeter said.) Then we repeated the names and items of everyone who went before. Fortunately I was next to the boys from Bromley, and I already knew them. Freddy brought a frying pan, Garrett brought a GPS (no surprise) and Coop brought a chicken, which I thought was clever of him.
My turn came too fast. “I’m Stella, and I brought …string,” It was the only thing I could come up with at the last minute.
After the game, Buckeye got out his guitar. A bunch of older kids, including Eugene and Cecily, stood beside him. “The counselors-in-training are going to help you learn our camp song,” Buckeye said with enthusiasm. Eugene stared straight ahead as though the last thing he wanted to do was sing in front of a bunch of first year campers, but Buckeye strummed his guitar and the CITs launched into the song we’d heard on the bus. It actually sounded better with only a few people singing. The words were easy—just “Camp Hawthorne, dear old camp” sung over and over. We joined in, and we sounded pretty good. I glanced over at Jayden, and he was singing—I had to know what Mr. Parker told him.
Mr. Parker stood in the back during the song but came forward now. “Gather round everyone. Time for a history lesson.” We sat on the floor while he stood in front of the wide fireplace with its mantle shelf of books. They had bindings in blue, green and red, and they gleamed like a row of jelly jars.
He paced back and forth in front of them. “Some of you have been asking questions about Camp Hawthorne, especially after your exciting bus ride here.”
There was a low murmur from the audience. Everyone else must have had ideas like Lindsey and me.
“Camp Hawthorne was founded years ago by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Some of you may have heard of him.” He took a book from the shelf with the title in large gold letters, and I caught the words Seven Gables. “He lived in the nineteenth century and wrote some of the best classics in American literature, but he had a secret. His great-great-grandfather was one of the judges at the Salem witch trials.”
The murmuring in the room abruptly stopped.
“He changed the spelling of his name so that no one would know they were related. You see, in Hawthorne’s day, people were beginning to learn a lot from science, and he realized that the phenomenon from the days of the Salem witch trials wasn’t witchcraft. It was a type of ESP or extra-sensory perception.”
He paused and the whispering started up again. “What does he mean?” hissed Ellen.
“Cool,” Freddy said.
Mr. Parker waved the book in his hand and waited for us to quiet down. “Nathaniel Hawthorne felt so much remorse at the part his family played in the Salem witch trials that he started this camp to protect those with ESP and help them develop their gifts. And that’s why you’re all here.”
He looked at us with an unblinking stare. No one wanted to look at each other. Was he serious? Or was this an elaborate joke for first year campers?
Ellen’s face was twisting in a funny way.
Lindsey cocked her head to one side as though listening for something far away. “I knew it,” she said softly. She leaned toward me across Ellen. “I’ve had this feeling for a while.”
Ellen shoved her back. “Quiet, I want to hear what he’s saying.”
“Your bus ride here was an example of teleportation. Our drivers have a kind of ESP that can transfer long distances through tunnels. We have students from every state including Alaska and Hawaii.” He beamed as though he was telling us there would be ice cream sundaes for everyone. I realized I was holding my breath, and I let it out slowly.
“We have prepared activities for you each day,” Mr. Parker continued. “Activities that we hope will expose your gifts.”
Buckeye bounded forward with his guitar. “Shall we have another rousing chorus of the camp song?” he asked with a crazy gleam in his eye.
Our second attempt wasn’t as good as our first try. Everyone must have been too bewildered by the news we’d just gotten. Part of me was crowing with delight that Ellen was wrong, and Lindsey and I were right. But then, where were we really? And could we trust Mr. Parker’s story? I didn’t feel like I had any unusual gift. A flicker of doubt leapt up inside me. What if my invitation was a mistake? My chest was so heavy it was hard to sing.
Next to me, Ellen sat with her brow furrowed, her eyes darting back and forth across the row of books, like she was trying to read their contents. On her other side, Lindsey stared into space as she sang.
I needed to talk to someone. I looked for Jayden and found him edging toward the back. Perhaps he would have some answers.
“Dear Old Camp Hawthorne,” Buckeye sang with a final strum. “Assembly is dismissed.”
Jayden was almost out the door when I caught up with him. “Can we talk?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, but he didn’t give me his usual scowl. “Let’s get outside first, Stella. Too many people.”
I started with my questions before we even cleared the porch. “What did Mr. Parker say to you?”
“It was the dishes thing. He told me I have a gift for controlling objects.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
He frowned. “I thought he was crazy at first, but then he had me shoot some arrows and catch some stuff, and it was all easy.”
I had a picture of Jayden shooting baskets at the rickety old hoop in front of his house. “That’s why you’re so good at basketball,” I said.
He shrugged. “Grandma Charlotte used to say something like that, about a gift.”
I took a deep breath. I had to say it or I’d never have the guts to say it again. “What if there isn’t anything like that for me? Did Mr. Parker say what happens if someone doesn’t have a gift?”
“All I know is what he told us at the meeting.”
The others caught up with us and wanted to hear Jayden’s story again. Even the boys from Bromley wanted to hear, and they hadn’t known him that long. Jayden clammed up. “Stella can tell you,” he mumbled.
Lindsey was impressed hearing about his gift, but Ellen folded her arms and her eyes narrowed. “It’s probably a hoax,” she said.
“There’s an easy way to find out,” I said. “Freddy, you can tell us our coordinates on the GPS, and we can find a map to show us where we are.”
“It won’t work,” he said. “We took our starting location as a waypoint for our hike, but when we got back it changed. Garrett says someone is scrambling the signal in this area.” He pulled on the string around his neck and brought out his GPS.
“Wait, what do you mean by scrambling?” That was Lindsey. From the way she acted, you’d think GPS was more amazing than ESP.
“It’ a way to mix the signal in sensitive areas. The U.S. military developed it.” Freddy held the GPS receiver above his head. “Sometimes you get a better reading if you hold it up.”
Buckeye strolled up and fired a shiny smile at us. “Garrett, I was meaning to ask you—what you said in the game—you didn’t really bring a GPS, did you?”
Freddy flushed and held out the medallion.
“Sorry,” Buckeye said, “I should’ve thought of that since you’re a geo-caching team. But no cell phones or electronic devices allowed at camp. It’s for the protection of everyone here.”
Buckeye took the GPS like it was a deadly scorpion and buttoned it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll return it before you leave for home.” He moved on to chat with another group of campers.
“Did you see that?” Ellen said. “It’s like he didn’t want us to know.”
Chapter Eight
Dinner that night was New England clam chowder. I’d never tasted anything so deliciou
s. Every table had a basket of oyster crackers for sprinkling in the soup. It had a salty smell that reminded me of the time Grandma took me to the beach. I thought of the way Grandma looked when I told her about Mr. Parker’s comment to “expect the unexpected.” Did she guess there would be something like this? Perhaps she knew more about Camp Hawthorne than she told me. After all, her own daughter attended camp all those years ago.
Ellen was unusually quiet during the meal. I figured part of her wanted to believe, but she was too stubborn to admit it.
“I wonder what my gift will be,” Lindsey said.
Jayden was shoveling chowder in his mouth. “Maybe you have a gift for wearing crazy socks.”
She looked down at her feet—one turquoise sock and one orange sock. I’d stopped noticing things like that about her a long time ago.
“It is a gift,” Lindsey said, smiling happily as she dipped a cracker in her chowder and popped it in her mouth.
After dark we roasted marshmallows and stuck them together with chocolate and graham crackers. Ellen couldn’t believe I’d never heard of “s’mores.”
“I didn’t know about them either,” Lindsey said. “Until my little sister fell in love with s’mores cereal.”
Jayden was pulling his marshmallow off the stick. “They put this stuff in cereal? That’s even weirder than ESP.”
My marshmallow burned, and I slipped off the blackened crust. The gooey part melted the chocolate bar and got all over my fingers, but it was lovely. Had my parents eaten s’mores like this? I breathed in the wood smoke and listened to the pulsing chorus of frogs. My parents must’ve heard the same sounds. I thought of the strange warning in the white envelope and realized I had no intentions of taking the advice. Camp Hawthorne was bringing me closer to my parents than I’d ever been in my life. If there was a way to find out more about them, I was going to do it.
We sat on the outer ring of logs around the campfire under the brightest stars I’d ever seen. I felt as though I’d been transported to a different planet in a different galaxy. Even Jayden seemed different out here under the stars—more relaxed, like before he got so quiet.
Ellen peered up at the sky. “Hey Jayden, weren’t you telling me about the Big Dipper?”
He tossed his basketball skyward and caught it again. “It’s right there.” He pointed above our heads to a trail of seven stars.
Buckeye was leading the rest of the campers in a rowdy chorus of some song we hadn’t learned yet. “O they built the ship Titanic, to sail the ocean blue…” I didn’t even mind that we were new and didn’t know how things were done at camp.
“Jayden, do you know any more constellations?” I asked.
He showed us how to find Venus, which looked like a bright star near the horizon, even though it was really a planet.
“Your name means star,” he added.
“I didn’t think regular old names had meanings,” I said.
“Everything has meaning.” He tilted back his head to gaze at the stars.
If everything had meaning, maybe there was a reason we were here. Even Ellen.
Lindsey and I made our way back to Hawthorne House by the glow of her flashlight. A cool breeze sprang up, rustling the branches of the Hawthorne elm. Feeling full of marshmallows and chocolate, I climbed the stairs behind her.
I was following her into our room when she stopped with a gasp. Her light flickered over our bunk, which looked like an explosion site. Everything I’d packed for camp was scattered on the floor and over our beds—T-shirts, socks, jeans, even my paper and stamps to write home. She found the light switch and turned it on. My clothesline hung from the bunk like an abandoned spider web and the butterfly net had a gaping hole torn in it.
Tears smarted in my eyes as I stooped to pick it up.
“Who would do this?” Lindsey said, scooping up clothes by the armful.
I glanced over at Joanne’s bed, smugly neat, her designer jeans stacked in bins. “I bet I know.” I crammed everything back in my suitcase, not even caring if they were folded or not.
Lindsey found my toothbrush under the bunk. “I’ll wash off the dust for you.”
I picked up the picture of my parents, but the frame was empty. Waves of tiredness washed over me, and my arms felt too heavy to move. “Never mind, we can find the rest of the stuff tomorrow.”
It was too much effort to put the sheets back on my bed. I draped them over me with my sleeping bag at my feet, and turned my face toward the wall.
I wasn’t even at camp a full day, and already I had an enemy. I squeezed my eyes tight to keep the tears from leaking through. I thought camp would be all about fun and making new friends, but it was turning out to be something very different. I’d been holding my breath, and I let it out in a shaky sigh. Grandma used to say “tomorrow is another day.” I hoped she was right.
Chapter Nine
The next morning I woke up to the sound of a creaky bugle sounding a few feet from my ear. The sun shone through the windows, casting hazy shadows on my wall. The bugle stopped and several girls groaned.
“Special K!” It was Joanne’s voice, sharp and shrill. A thump and a clatter followed. I rolled over and saw a skinny girl in jeans and a blue T-shirt lifting a bugle from the floor.
“And give me my pillow back,” Joanne shouted.
The girl picked up the pillow and put it on Joanne’s bed. “I thought I was a member of the band,” she said softly.
“Yeah, when we have band practice. Not at sunrise.” Joanne grabbed her pillow and stuffed it over her head.
I noticed a small cluster of things I hadn’t found last night arranged in a circle at the foot of my bed. The skinny girl picked up a stray sock and added it to the collection. “Some of your stuff was flung around,” she said.
“Thanks.” For a moment the misery of last evening rushed back.
“And look, I fixed your butterfly net.” She swished it back and forth.
I had to swallow before I could speak. The net looked even better than when Grandma first found it for me. “How’d you do that?”
“Simple telekinesis,” she said.
“Is that why they call you Special K?”
“No, that’s only Joanne. I’m Karen.” She leaned the butterfly net by the cot. “Cecily sent me to wake up the girls’ dorm.” She glanced at Joanne and giggled. “I have a plan for the ones who don’t wake up the first time.”
I wondered if this was a normal occurrence at camp. “I better wake up Lindsey and Ellen. We’re first year campers.”
“I know.” Karen drifted toward the hallway. “You’ll want to get your friends and get dressed before it happens.”
I gave Lindsey a shake, knowing it would take her a few tries to wake up. Ellen was curled up in a ball, but sat up when I said her name. “We have to get out before something happens,” I said.
She looked at me strangely before reaching for her shoes.
I kept calling Lindsey’s name while I pulled on my clothes, and she finally opened her eyes.
“Morning already?”
Karen popped her head around the doorway. “Time to get out—now!” Something in her tone made us scramble. Lindsey hopped off the bunk, and we ran for the door. Karen closed it firmly and led us to the shower room. “You’ll be safe in here.”
Ellen shook her head. “What is this…” she began, when an explosion of noise broke out in the dormitory. A bass drum boomed, a bugle sounded, and girls screamed. The metal bunks clanked back and forth as a dozen feet pounded across the floor. The door banged open, and I heard something like fireworks. Joanne shouted, “Special K—”
“Better go,” Karen whispered. She opened a door to a set of back stairs and raced down to a room where a huge brick fireplace took up one wall.
Lindsey was already wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“You slept in your clothes?” I asked, as we dashed out the door and past the giant elm.
“It makes things faster in the morning.”
“I’d call it dangerous,” Ellen said, her arms folded.
Karen wiped tears from her eyes. “No, it was only a special Karen multi-media presentation. Fireworks, bass drums, the works.”
“How’d you do it?” I asked.
She flashed a mysterious smirk. “Trade secret. But let that be a lesson to everyone to get up on the first bugle call. Now it’s time for breakfast.”
The boys joined us in the dining hall a few minutes later. “Did you hear the explosion?” Jayden asked.
“Eugene told us to come here while he checked it out,” said Freddy, whose hair was sticking up. I suspected he didn’t have time to comb it before he left. “Do you know what it was?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Karen interrupted. “It must have been a welcome-to-camp thing,” she said airily. “You’ll notice that everyone from Hawthorne House arrived for breakfast on time.”
It was true. Joanne and the other girls from our dorm were straggling in, rubbing their ears and staring angrily in our direction. Karen ducked behind a box of cereal. “Let me know when they’re safely seated,” she muttered.
The girls sat at another table, and Joanne turned her back to us. “It’s safe now,” I said.
She sat up again with a satisfied smile. “That will give us ten points for Hawthorne House—”
“Ten points?” I asked.
Karen was passing cereal bowls around the table as though nothing remarkable had just happened. “The dorms compete for points, which you get for good inspections and being on time.”
“Or for winning the daily challenge,” added Eugene. He had an amazing ability to sneak up on us. He was wearing all-black again today.
Sitting in the remaining chair, he poured himself a bowl of cereal. “Good work, Karen. Hawthorne House is in the lead.” His flat voice held a tinge of energy as he motioned to a poster next to the fireplace. Buckeye was adding a star in the row marked “Thornes.”
The Pandora Device Page 4
