Camp Club Girls: Elizabeth

by Brumbaugh Green, Renae;

  Sydney and Bailey stopped giggling and looked at one another. “No,” they replied.

  “Whatever we heard was not small,” said Bailey. “And it wasn’t friendly.”

  “And it definitely came after us,” added Sydney.

  Dan Ger?

  “No! Make that noise go away!” Bailey groaned, pulling the covers over her head as a loud trumpet sounded reveille over the loudspeaker the next morning. “It’s still dark outside!”

  The wretched music continued. Apparently, the unknown trumpet player was committed to torturing the entire camp.

  Sydney threw back her covers. “I’m taking a shower before all the hot water is gone,” she told her roommates.

  “Good idea. I’m coming too,” called Kate. Alex sat up and stretched, while Elizabeth began making her bed. McKenzie remained a motionless lump.

  Alex tossed her dark curls, smiled, and began singing with an off-key voice. “It’s time to get up. Get out of bed. It’s time to get up, you sleepyheads!”

  A pillow flew at her from Bailey’s bed, but this only encouraged the perky brunette. She stood to her feet and stretched close to Bailey’s ear. “It’s time to get up. Get out of bed. It’s time to get up, you slee—”

  “Okay! Okay! Promise me you will never, ever sing again, and I’ll get up!” Bailey sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  Elizabeth, spotting McKenzie’s motionless form, laughed. “Alex, I think your services may be needed elsewhere.”

  The vivacious songbird stooped to McKenzie’s level. Just as she poised her mouth to sing, McKenzie’s eyes popped open. “Don’t even think about it!”

  They all laughed, and soon they headed toward the dining hall.

  “Food at last!” Kate exclaimed as they took their places in the long line. “I feel like I haven’t eaten for days!”

  “You look like it too!” announced a sneering voice. “What’s the matter? Don’t your parents feed you?”

  The whole group turned around. “And those glasses…Maybe if you’d eat a carrot once in a while you could get rid of those,” the very pretty, very mean-looking girl announced.

  Sydney stepped forward, towering inches over the girl. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s okay, Sydney. I can handle this.” Kate stepped forward, adjusted her glasses, and stared into the eyes of her unpleasant opponent. “It’s a common misconception that small people don’t eat much. However, the genealogical consequences of the high metabolic rates of both of my parents have resulted in similar metabolism in each of their offspring.”

  The girl stared at Kate, clearly baffled by her words. Kate triumphantly smiled.

  Ever the peacemaker, Elizabeth stepped forward. “Hi! Aren’t you Amberlie Crewelin? You were here last year. I’m Elizabeth, and these are my roommates, Sydney, Kate, McKenzie, Bailey, and Alex. It’s nice to see you again. Oh look! They’ve opened a new line. I guess we’ll see you later!” Elizabeth guided the group to the other line. “We probably want to steer clear of her,” she murmured to the others. “She has some…issues.”

  “Don’t let her get to you,” McKenzie added. “People like that are miserable, and they want to make everyone else miserable.”

  “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not hungry. All I can think about is that miniature golf course and those noises we heard last night!” Bailey announced.

  “Not hungry? Speak for yourself,” said Kate.

  Alex jumped up and down. “Let’s check it out after breakfast! If we hurry, we’ll have almost an hour before our first session begins. Oh! I just love a good mystery!”

  “And I just love a good meal,” Kate stated.

  The small band of detectives moved hastily through the line and chose foods they could eat quickly. Kate loaded her plate with five fluffy biscuits and five sausage patties, drawing amused stares from her roommates. She grabbed two cartons of chocolate milk, a carton of apple juice, and a banana. She started toward the table but paused again to add an orange to her tray.

  The girls settled at a table by the door and ate quickly. Kate was only half finished when the others began picking up their trays. “Hey! I’m not done yet!” she protested.

  “Bring it with you,” replied Elizabeth. “Here, wrap it in this napkin and stuff it in your pocket. The golf course is at the other end of the camp, so we need to hustle.”

  The group hurried past the chapel and around the stables on their way to the site of last night’s mystery noise.

  “Hello, girls!” called a man from the stables.

  “Hello, Mr. Anzer,” Elizabeth called back. “You all will love him,” she told her friends. “He’s the camp grandpa.” Then, looking at her watch, she said, “We have forty-seven minutes. Last year a group was late to the first session, and the camp director made them clean the kitchen in their free time!”

  “Hmm. Did they get to eat the leftovers?” Kate asked.

  “Shhhhhh!” Alex hushed them as they neared their destination. “Listen! I think I hear something!”

  The young sleuths stopped in their tracks, afraid to move. Sure enough, they heard a distant howling noise.

  “Is that what you heard last night?” Alex asked.

  Sydney and Bailey both shook their heads. “No. What we heard was more…” Sydney searched for the correct word.

  “Creepy!” Bailey interjected. “What we heard was like creepy laughter.”

  “That noise sounded pretty creepy to me,” whispered McKenzie.

  “Well, I don’t know why we’re standing here. Nancy Drew would already be investigating!” Alex exclaimed.

  No one moved. “Okay. I’ll go first!” said Alex. The young investigator led the way, and the other detectives reluctantly followed.

  Elizabeth stopped the group as they reached the gate to the miniature golf course. “We need to stay together. We don’t know what we’ll find, and we’re a long way from the main camp.”

  The girls all nodded their heads. Bailey unlatched the gate, and it swung open with a low creak. The girls moved inside and slowly approached the howling noise, which was getting louder.

  “It sounds like a wounded animal,” said Sydney. “Not scary, just…sad.”

  As the girls tiptoed through the golf course, they noticed the worn attractions.

  “Wow! Look at this place! We don’t have anything like this back in Peoria.” Bailey said. “Look, there’s a windmill, and a clown, and a castle.…It’s not nearly as scary in the daylight. I’m going to come here every day to practice my Tiger Woods strokes.”

  Suddenly, a high-pitched, mechanical-sounding laugh came from the direction of the clown.

  The girls squealed and banded together more tightly. “Or maybe I won’t,” continued the group’s youngest member.

  “What was that?” asked McKenzie. “It sounded so…fake.”

  The howling turned to a whimper, and the group froze. “That doesn’t sound fake!” said Kate. Forgetting her promise to stay with her friends, she ran ahead. “Hey, get over here! Come look at this!”

  The girls ran to join Kate at the windmill. They found a skinny puppy caked in mud. His paw was caught in the golf hole, and he whimpered pitifully.

  Kate knelt to help the puppy. With the help of the others, he was soon free of the trap.

  “Here you go, little fellow! You’re okay now.” Kate held the small dog close, then at arm’s length. “Whoa! You stink!”

  “Awww, look at him! He’s hungry,” said Elizabeth. “Kate, where’s the rest of your breakfast?”

  Kate pulled a biscuit from her pocket, and the dog swallowed it in two bites. Then, tail wagging, he attacked his rescuer with puppy kisses, knocking her glasses askew. She offered him half of a sausage patty and another biscuit.

  “Look at that. He loves you, Kate! You’re his hero,” said McKenzie.

  “He sure ate those biscuits in a hurry. I think we should name him Biscuit!” suggested Bailey.

  Biscuit wagged his tail in agreement.
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  Suddenly, the girls were startled by a man’s voice.

  “Hey! What are you girls doing? Get away from that mutt!”

  An angry-looking man walked toward them. His green collared shirt showed that he was a Camp Discovery Lake staff member.

  McKenzie stepped forward. “Oh, we were just looking around, and we found him. His paw was stuck in a—”

  “You girls need to stay away from here. Give me that dog, and get to class!” He reached for Biscuit, but the small dog wiggled out of Kate’s arms and ran toward the woods.

  “But sir, he’s just a puppy! He was stuck, and hungry, and we had to help him,” Elizabeth told the man.

  He glared at her. “You girls aren’t here to rescue dogs or to poke around an old golf course. Stay away from here, you understand?” The girls backed away a few steps.

  “What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Get out of here!”

  The girls turned and ran through an open side gate, into the woods.

  “And don’t come back!” the angry man yelled.

  They ran frantically, not stopping until they were deep in the woods. Finally, out of breath, they halted.

  “Why was…he so angry?…We weren’t…doing anything wrong,” said Sydney, catching her breath.

  “He seems like a…very unhappy…person to me,” replied McKenzie.

  Alex sank to her knees, while Bailey propped herself against a tree. Gradually, their breathing slowed, and they began to look at their surroundings.

  Elizabeth leaned toward Bailey. “You okay, Bales? Got your inhaler?”

  “It’s in my pocket. Umm, does anybody know where we are?” asked Bailey.

  “Does anybody know where Biscuit is?” asked Kate, her voice shaking.

  “Biscuit! We’ve got to find him!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “If we don’t, that horrible man will probably send him to the pound!”

  The girls started yelling, “Biscuit! Come here, Biscuit!”

  “Wait!” Elizabeth stopped them. “We have to stay together. The last thing we need is for one of us to get even more lost!”

  “Yes, Mother,” teased Bailey.

  All of a sudden, a bloodcurdling scream pierced the air, followed by a rustling sound in the trees above them. The girls shrieked and huddled together.

  “Wh–wh–what was that?” whispered Bailey.

  “I don’t know, and I d–don’t want to find out!” McKenzie responded.

  Elizabeth craned her neck, trying to determine the source of the alarming sound. “It sounded like a woman. A terrified woman!”

  “It sounded like a cougar,” said Sydney. “We studied them in my Wilderness Girls class.”

  “A cougar! Yikes! Let’s scram!” exclaimed Alex.

  “We do need to stay together,” Sydney continued. “Cougars probably won’t attack a group, but they sometimes attack individuals. I think we scared it.”

  “But Sydney, what about Biscuit?” asked Kate.

  A worried silence fell over the group. Then they began calling for the lost puppy again. Just a few minutes later, they heard the rustling of dead leaves, followed by a whimper.

  “Biscuit!” Kate followed the sound and pulled the bedraggled puppy from a pile of leaves. “I’m so glad you’re safe!”

  The girls surrounded their wiggly, smelly treasure and took turns holding him. Then the cougar screamed again in the distance.

  “Let’s get out of here,” McKenzie urged, wide-eyed. “We may have scared that cougar, but it scared me too!”

  “You and me both,” agreed Alex. “But we have a problem. I have no idea where we are or how we got here!”

  The frightened young campers all looked to Elizabeth, the oldest. “Don’t look at me!” she told them. “I’m directionally disabled.”

  “I have a compass,” Kate told the group as she struggled with her wiggling bundle. They all looked at her hopefully until she added, “In my backpack. Back at the room.”

  “We can figure this out,” asserted Sydney. “Let’s think about this. The golf course is south of the main camp. We came into the woods from the right, which would be east. So, we were heading west.”

  “Maybe so, but we’ve turned around so many times, I don’t remember which way is which,” said McKenzie.

  Five pairs of eyes remained glued to Sydney’s face as she continued to work things out in her mind. She muttered under her breath, reminding herself of things she had learned in her nature studies. The others listened, not wanting to interrupt the girl who seemed to be their only hope for escape from these dark, menacing woods.

  Sydney walked around trees, examining the bark, scrutinizing the branches. Her beaded braids jangled as she moved from tree to tree. Finally, she addressed her fellow campers. “To get back to the golf course, we need to head east. Look for moss growing at the base of the trees, and that will be north. Also look for spiderwebs, which are often found on the south sides of trees.”

  The group began to examine the details of their surroundings.

  “This is fun,” said Bailey. “It’s sort of like a treasure hunt!”

  Elizabeth stopped her search and looked thoughtful. “That reminds me of something in the Bible. Several times in Deuteronomy, God said His people are His treasured possession.”

  Just then, the girls heard the screaming once more in the distance. “Will you hurry up, already?” Bailey urged Sydney. The other girls tried to remain calm.

  “You sure know a lot of Bible verses,” McKenzie said to Elizabeth. “Let me guess…I’ll bet your dad is a preacher!”

  “Close,” Elizabeth said, smiling at the insightful redhead. “My grandpa’s a preacher. My dad teaches Bible at the local seminary.”

  “This way!” Sydney called, and the group anxiously followed her. “I see the windmill up ahead!”

  Moments later, they approached the now-abandoned golf course.

  “Any sign of Oscar the Grouch?” asked Bailey.

  The group chuckled, and McKenzie stood on her tiptoes and scanned the area. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “Probably couldn’t find a job anywhere else,” muttered Sydney. “But look—someone has been digging over there, by the castle!”

  The amateur sleuths walked to the fresh pile of dirt.

  “It had to be the Grouch! Why would he dig here?” Alex knelt for a closer look.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll have to figure it out another time. We’ll be late for our first session,” Elizabeth informed them, looking at her watch.

  “What can we do with Biscuit?” asked Kate.

  “If we hurry, we can take him back to the room. We’ll hide him there for right now,” Elizabeth told her.

  As the group headed out the gate, Alex and McKenzie lagged behind.

  “I have a feeling there’s more to the Grouch than meets the eye,” McKenzie told her friend.

  The two began to follow the others until Alex spotted a small piece of paper near the pile of dirt.

  “Oh my!” she exclaimed as she read it. She held it out to McKenzie.

  The torn paper issued a warning: “Dan Ger”.

  The girls looked at each other, then took off running, full speed ahead.

  Keep Out!

  The two girls caught up with their friends in no time.

  “Look what we found. By that pile of dirt,” Alex panted. She passed around the wrinkled piece of paper.

  Then they all spoke at once.

  “What does this mean?”

  “Who is this for?”

  “Do you think this was meant for us?”

  “I wonder if the Grouch had anything to do with this.”

  Sydney paced back and forth, hand to her chin. “Why do you think he was so mad at us? We weren’t doing anything. That was our free time. We haven’t been told to stay away from the golf course.”

  Elizabeth jumped in. “Speaking of free time, we may not have any if we’re late. We can talk about this later. Let’s go! Kate, I’ll go with you to take Bi
scuit back to the cabin, and the rest of you get to class.”

  The small group of sleuths scattered.

  In the cabin, Kate laid Biscuit gently on her bed. He licked her hand, curled into a ball, and promptly went to sleep. “Poor little fellow,” she said. “He’s had a rough morning.”

  “Let’s just hope he stays asleep while we’re gone,” said Elizabeth. She grabbed Kate by the arm and led her out the door. “I’ll meet you back here as soon as this first session ends.”

  The two girls hurried to their classes and scooted into their seats without a moment to spare.

  A while later, Elizabeth sat in the end chair in the back row, trying to focus on the camp counselor’s words. Her mind was crowded with thoughts of puppies and cougars and cryptic warnings.

  “My name is Miss Rebecca. For the next two weeks of camp, you will compete with your other five roommates as a team. Each group needs to create a team name, and whoever has the best name will receive points. You will also earn points for cleanliness, punctuality, and attitude. These points will be given at the discretion of the counselors.

  “Your team will also compete in various categories in a camp-wide competition. The categories are scripture memory, nature studies, horseback riding, rowing, and a few others we’ll tell you about in the next few days. On the last day of camp, the team with the most points wins the title Team Discovery Lake. Each girl on the winning team will receive a blue ribbon and a partial scholarship to next year’s camp.”

  Elizabeth looked around at the other girls. There, in the front row, smiling sweetly at the counselor, was Amberlie.

  Now that girl is trouble! Elizabeth had never gotten to know her very well, but she knew enough. All sugar and spice and everything nice around the counselors. But the minute she was away from adults, her sugar and spice turned to vinegar.

  Amberlie’s hand shot high into the air. “Will there be daily winners?” she asked.

  “Good question, and yes. Each day, the team with the most points earned on the previous day will be first in all meal lines. Teams will receive daily points for attitude and for the cleanest rooms.”

  This announcement was followed by an enthusiastic buzz from the campers. First at mealtime—now that was worth competing for.