by Annie Bryant
“Where are Mr. and Mrs. Moooore sleeping?” mooed Avery. She had become quite fond of the crazy cow man and his adoring wife.
“Oh, Ave.” Charlotte explained, “Since there was no room here, Mr. and Mrs. Moore are staying at a breakfast-and-bed inn near here.”
“What?” Charlotte stared at her friends, wondering why the BSG were looking at her like she was from another planet.
Finally, Katani took pity on her. “Char. It’s bed and breakfast.”
“Isn’t that what I said?” she asked in confusion.
“Ahh, no, Char. You did not,” Avery said with a devilish twinkle in her eye. “You said breakfast-and-bed. Therefore, I’m sorry to say, you must be punished.” With that, Avery, pillow in hand, jumped off her bed like a flying squirrel and began to chase a shrieking Charlotte around the room. As Charlotte ducked in and around the screaming BSG, Avery pretended to stalk her like a marauding ninja.
“Go, Avery, go, Avery,” rocked Maeve.
“Go, Charlotte, go, Charlotte.” Isabel and Katani chanted as they stomped around the room in unison.
When Charlotte ran behind the cheerleaders, Avery, with a devilish gleam in her eyes, charged through and tried to bonk Charlotte with the pillow. For once Charlotte was the quick one and ran to her bed for her own pillow. But when she turned around, Avery was nowhere to be seen.
“What’s going on here?” Charlotte asked. Her heart pounded as she tried to control her breathing. “Where is that little imp?” she demanded of wide-eyed Isabel, Maeve, and Katani, who stood before her, their arms locked, innocent expressions plastered on their faces.
Suddenly Avery burst through from behind the girls and began pelting a hysterically laughing Charlotte with her pillow. Charlotte unsuccessfully tried to dodge the pillow-mashing as Avery shouted, “Take that you wordmasher.”
While Charlotte shrieked and the BSG screamed uproariously, Maeve began to sing, “Girls just wanna have pillow fights.”
Their antics were abruptly interrupted by a loud bang from the stairs. “Elephants, please be quiet or there will be trouble,” shouted an obviously tired Ms. O’Reilly.
Giggling, the girls collapsed on the beds.
“You know, guys,” Charlotte said when she could talk, “this really is a safe place, except for the presence of a certain person who has been sighted for repeated pillow-mashing. Here…listen up.”
Charlotte began reading from a pamphlet she had pulled from her backpack. “‘NEED stands for National Park Service residential environmental education program. The goal of the program is to provide a safe place for school groups to stay and learn about the environment while visiting the Cape.’ So except for the danger presented by the notorious Brookline pillow-masher, known as Avery Koh Madden, I don’t think we have to worry.” A grinning Charlotte propped herself up on one elbow and directed, “On to the showers, campers!”
Comforted, the BSG took turns showering. Afterward, Maeve put on her fuzziest of flannel nightgowns and, climbing into her sleeping bag, declared, “I feel like a million bucks!” The rest of the BSG agreed. “There’s nothing like a hot, soapy shower after a day pedaling around Cape Cod on bikes to make one ready to snuggle up and head for the land of Nod,” announced Charlotte as she stood by her bunk.
Or playing on the beach, Avery thought secretly.
Or sweating in polyester costumes, Maeve also thought secretly.
Once Avery, Maeve, Isabel, and Katani were all zipped up in their sleeping bags, Charlotte produced a flashlight from her backpack, turned it on, and placed it on the floor. It sent a dim light to the ceiling, breaking the absolute blackness. After Charlotte climbed up to the bunk above Katani and squeezed the drips out of her wet braids, she asked, “So what was the best thing that happened to you guys today?”
There was dead silence.
This is getting too weird. Charlotte lay back on the pillow.
Maeve longed to share how exhilarating her experience on the film set was, and how adorable Orlando Plume was in real life, but she knew that letting her team’s secret slip would be a horrible mistake. So she just said as nonchalantly as she could manage, “Nothing too exciting. Except it looks like old Danny Pellegrino’s in love again….”
Charlotte sat up again. “Oh, that’s terrible. Has he been annoying you all day, Iz?”
“No,” Isabel confessed. “It’s Betsy that Danny has his eye on now.”
Avery, Katani, and Charlotte gasped in unison. “No way!”
Maeve assured them in a higher-pitched voice than usual. “It’s true! You should have seen them today. Seriously, Char, Danny was mesmerized by Betsy’s encyclopedia-like pirate facts!”
“Pirates?” Charlotte held her pillow tightly against her chest. What was Maeve talking about? Maeve tried to regroup, but the excitement of the long day was making it impossible to keep everything in. “Oh, you know Betsy, she knew absolutely everything about Cape Cod, and anachronisms, and wetus…wetus!” Maeve fell back on her bed suddenly exhausted.
“Yeah!” Isabel jumped in, nervous that Maeve was really close to getting their team in big trouble. “You wouldn’t believe the Betsy Fitzgerald Book of Facts About Everything.”
Charlotte peered down at a loopy, giggling Maeve. “You Cranberry Bogger ladies need to spill. What’s going on with this Betsy–Danny thing?”
“Yeah!” Avery piped up, glad no one had asked her about her favorite part of the day, which was obviously surfing.
“Well, it’s not really a romance thing,” pronounced. Maeve, who thought herself somewhat of an authority on the subject. “It’s more like someone is finally paying attention to all those braggy comments Betsy’s always making and they’re both loving it.”
“Like how?” probed Charlotte, feeling somewhere in her foggy, sleepy mind that she was still missing something here.
“You know, like when Betsy got that special job as the director’s consultant—”
Isabel threw a coughing fit to get Maeve’s attention. A totally sleepy Maeve was spilling all right—their big secret everywhere.
“What special job?” asked Katani.
Isabel listened, baffled, with no idea how to stop the madness, as Maeve continued on, completely oblivious to Charlotte and Katani’s growing suspicion.
“She got everyone to make wetus! And they had to be his-tor-i-cal-ly ac-cur-ate.” Maeve enunciated every syllable separately in her best academic voice. “Can you believe it? They’re just like these round tent-house things that people lived in a long time ago….”
“Maeve!” Isabel admonished, then realized Charlotte was grinning.
“Oh! Like yurts. We saw those too…the first clue, right?”
“Yes!” Isabel agreed. She didn’t know what had just happened, and she never got a chance to find out how yurts and wetus were related, because at that moment their door burst open and three shadowy figures in white stood in the frame. “Thank goodness, you’re up!” It was Kiki along with Chelsea and Betsy. They were wearing long white T-shirts and shaking like leaves.
“Come on in!” beckoned Avery. “What’s wrong with you crazy cats?”
Betsy gulped as she and the other two timorously sat down on the lower bunks. “Nothing is wrong. I’m convinced there is a logical explanation….”
Chelsea shook her head vehemently as she sat on Maeve’s bed. “No! You guys, something really weird happened.”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t totally creeped out,” Kiki asserted.
“It’s okay,” Maeve wrapped her arm around Chelsea’s shoulder. “Tell Auntie Maeve.”
Kiki began, “Well, on my way back from the shower, I overheard the boys talking in the game room and then these girls just happened by….”
“Ahem,” Chelsea said loudly, giving Betsy and Kiki an accusatory look.
“Okay, we were sort of kind of spying on them,” Betsy admitted.
The Beacon Street Girls were speechless. “Betsy Fitzgerald misbehaving? This
is one for the history books,” a surprised Charlotte finally blurted out.
“What?” asked Betsy. “It was only a joke….”
The BSG had no problem with spying on boys, especially Maeve, who was feeling a little jealous that she hadn’t thought of it first. It was just that the thought of Chelsea Briggs, Betsy Fitzgerald, and Kiki Underwood crouching outside the game room and up to mischief like the best of friends was almost too crazy to imagine.
“Well, I wish I’d never done it!” Chelsea declared. “Now all I can think about is that terrible story….”
Betsy explained, “We heard Danny Pellegrino telling the other boys that, like, ten years ago a kid about our age”—her voice became so quiet the girls could barely hear her—“died here.”
Isabel covered her mouth. “No way! Ew, that’s so creepy,” she shuddered as her foot began to shake.
Chelsea was pale. “It gets worse. Apparently he went night swimming with his friends and disappeared…. He must have drowned or something. Then they had to close the building down afterward.”
Charlotte frowned. “I don’t remember reading anything about that. Chelsea, do you?”
Chelsea shook her head. “No, but I don’t think that that’s something they’d put in the brochure, you know?”
“I suppose not,” Charlotte mumbled.
“Tell them the rest,” Kiki demanded.
“There’s more of this Creepopalooza!?” Avery didn’t know how much more she could handle before bedtime. Let alone how much more Isabel could handle—she was starting to look really weirded out.
“We think…we think we saw something,” Chelsea uttered finally. “Out…out by the beach.”
“What did you see?” asked Maeve, awestruck.
“It looked like”—Betsy pursed her lips and whispered—“a little boy.”
Isabel, Charlotte, and Maeve gasped, but Katani just rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You guys are crazy if you think you actually saw a ghost out there.”
Isabel looked relieved. “You don’t believe in ghosts?” she asked Katani in a timid voice.
“No way!” Katani shook her head. “My dad, who is really smart, said there is no scientific proof of ghosts, spirits, or anything like that. It’s just people’s crazy imaginations.”
Kiki folded her arms. “If you think I’d make up something like that then you’re the one who’s crazy.”
“Ahem!” Avery said, sounding like a lawyer. “She does have a point, Katani.”
Charlotte pulled her journal and pen out of her bag. “Okay, can you describe to me exactly what you saw?” She didn’t want to miss out on the description a real ghost, if there was one.
Betsy, not surprisingly, was the first to volunteer. “He was a small boy, younger than us, I think. He was dressed in—well, I couldn’t really tell because it’s so dark out—but it looked like he was crying.”
Charlotte was intrigued. “Crying, like how?”
Betsy bent over and placed her head in her hands and Chelsea, very cautiously, began to tiptoe over to the window. Isabel grabbed her arm to stop, but it was like Chelsea was in a trance. When she got to the window she let out a yelp and cried, “He’s here! He’s here! Come see for yourselves!”
The girls leaped up and rushed over to the window. Sure enough, there was a tiny person kneeling by the dune. At once, all eight girls let out a hair-raising, bloodcurdling scream. And the screaming didn’t stop until Ms. O’Reilly and all three chaperones appeared at their doorway. Ben’s eyes were still half shut and Fabiana hovered in the doorway behind Patrice, but Ms. O’Reilly strode right into the room.
“What’s going on in here?” she asked, genuinely concerned.
“G-g-g-ghost!” was all anyone could blubber. Even Katani looked a little shaken.
When Chelsea and Isabel burst into tears, Ben Briggs snapped into action.
He stormed up to the window, huge hands locked on his hips. “That’s no ghost!” he growled. He jiggled the lock on the window, effortlessly pushed it open, and stuck out his head. “HENRY YURT! YOU GET YOUR FUZZY-HEADED SHORT SELF IN HERE!”
Then he turned to Chelsea and gave her a giant bear hug. “It’s okay. I’ll teach those boys not to pick on my sister and her friends!”
The “crying” person stood up and started running at lightning speed back to the house. Suddenly, from out of the bushes, four more runners appeared. “Looks like we had more than one ghost haunting the beach,” Ben grumbled. “Don’t worry, Ms. O’Reilly. I got this one.”
“Are you sure?” asked Ms. O’Reilly.
“Oh, yeah. There’s only one thing scarier than a ghost in the middle of the night…. ME!”
Ben stomped down the creaky stairs to greet the merry pranksters upon their return. The girls scampered behind him, at once furious and dying of curiosity. Maeve couldn’t help admiring how dashing and debonair Ben seemed, defending the honor of the ladies of the house. How positively heroic, she thought fondly.
Isabel sniffed up the last of her tears and felt her horror washing away. Now that she knew it was all a joke, she almost felt sorry for the boys.
“Nick, Dillon, Riley, Danny…and look who it is…our little ghostly friend, Yurtmeister!” Ben crouched down to look Yurt in the eye. “I just have one question for you punks: WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS SANE WERE YOU THINKING?”
The boys hung their heads, as the girls stole secret glances of smug satisfaction. The boys all looked so guilty and ashamed of themselves. This is awesome, thought Avery, who couldn’t wait to tease them tomorrow.
“Now I think you owe these young ladies an apology. Before me and the guys on the football team start owing one to you!”
“Sorry,” the boys all mumbled. Charlotte noticed that a chagrined Nick was making eye contact with only her, as if to say, “Yeah, that was really stupid,” and she gave him a smile to show her forgiveness. It was impossible to stay angry at him. Besides, no one really got hurt or anything and…it was kind of funny. She’d have to write up the whole story in her journal later. Maybe she’d even share it with Nick.
Dillon and Riley seemed to be seeking Maeve’s approval, but Maeve was completely immersed in her role as the wounded damsel in distress. She just flounced the skirt of her nightgown, gave a little high-pitched, “Hmph!” and marched back up the stairs.
“You know we were totally kidding,” Danny confided to Betsy as she passed. “I’m real sorry.”
Betsy gave him burning snake-eyes. “You are not forgiven,” she sniffled.
“Poor Danny,” Isabel said to her as they climbed the stairs. She knew there was nothing Betsy detested more than being wrong, and she had definitely been wrong about the ghost in the yard. But it was obvious that Danny felt absolutely terrible about what happened. He had kept trying to get Betsy’s attention, but she had refused to look at him.
“Betsy,” said Isabel, who believed in the power of forgiveness to solve problems. “He said he’s sorry.”
“Ha! He deserves no sympathy, trust me,” an indignant Betsy charged.
“Wow, Betsy, isn’t that a little cold? I mean, wasn’t it just a joke and all?” Avery asked, then ducked into the BSG’s room, leaving Betsy and Isabel alone in the hallway.
Betsy squinted in confusion. “What is she talking about, Isabel? You were really scared! And that trick was obviously his idea. He was the one telling the stupid ghost story.”
Isabel smiled. She was no expert in boys, but she knew Betsy had a lot to learn. “That trick was the idea of all of them. Haven’t you heard that expression, ‘boys will be boys’?”
Betsy harrumphed. “I doubt it. Danny’s the only one of that bunch capable of coming up with something so deviously clever!”
“You think he’s smart?” asked Isabel. She was surprised Betsy was willing to call anyone else clever. Even in her anger, it sounded almost like Betsy was impressed!
Betsy shrugged. “Not as smart as”—she bit her tongue—“other people. But yeah, I guess he�
��s pretty smart.”
“Well, Danny obviously thinks pretty highly of you,” Isabel said as they stood outside the door of Betsy’s room. “He was practically drooling on the movie set today,” she added in a hushed voice.
“No!” Betsy objected, but she looked interested.
Isabel nodded. “Yes. And I bet he feels pretty terrible after how angry you were.”
Betsy swallowed. “I’m not really that angry, I guess.”
“Me neither,” Isabel confided. “You know, Danny’s a sweet guy. You guys could be friends. Maybe think about being a little extra nice to him tomorrow.”
Betsy smiled. “Okay. I’ll think about that.”
Isabel and Betsy said good night. As Isabel made her way to her bunk, it occurred to her that this scavenger hunt wasn’t just about having fun with her best friends and going on an adventure; it was bringing people together in all kinds of new ways.
CHAPTER
14
The Cods and the Compass
Charlotte woke up the next morning feeling peachy fine. She’d dreamed that the Salty Cods had found 1,000 clues, including a humpback whale living in the Underwood’s swimming pool, and somebody from the Guinness Book of World Records had called! After a big cat stretch, she squinted at the lovely sunlight streaming into their little room through the open window.
“Yum.” She breathed in the dewy, salty scent of the sea air. The fresh smell reminded her why she loved writing, traveling, and daydreaming.
She looked down from the top bunk at a sleeping Isabel and Maeve, then across at Avery, who had one arm hanging down the side of her bunk. Little chortling snores came from Maeve’s sleeping bag. Charlotte thought it was kind of cute, but she knew Maeve would just die if she ever knew she was a bit of a snorer. Charlotte got up and headed to the bathroom, where she found Katani already dressed and brushing her teeth.
“I just talked to Patrice,” Katani informed her. “And here’s the plan. Nick and Dillon are already awake. They’re playing soccer in the backyard. Patrice says if we hit the road now we’ll have, like, an hour edge over the other teams.”
