“What happened? Are you okay? I mean, not to be nosy or anything. Did something die?”
Hannah sniffed back another sob, then smiled bravely. “You could say that. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not talk about it. I’m sorry I missed lunch. Oh, gosh”—she looked at her watch—“and there’s an equine orientation in the Black Barn in five minutes. Grace, tell me the truth. Do I look okay?”
No! Hannah did not look okay! Her eyes were red and puffy. There were tear streaks on her cheeks and snot streaks on her lips.
But if I said that, it might make her feel worse!
“Uh . . . ,” I stalled. “Okay for what purpose?”
Hannah smiled another brave smile, squinched her eyes to wring out the last tear, and tugged on her hair. “Okay. I get the message. And I guess I can be a couple of minutes late.”
Two doors lead out of the bunkroom of Flowerpot Cabin. One goes outside to the flagstone walkway and the other to the white tiled bathroom. Hannah ducked into the bathroom and, a second later, I heard the water gushing from the tap.
I stood rooted to the floor of the cabin, my thoughts in a whirl, till finally she emerged. “Better?” she asked me.
“Better.” I nodded.
“All right, then, Grace, my friend,” she said—and you almost would’ve thought she’ d never been crying at all. “I’ll be back right around the end of siesta, got that? Make sure the Flowerpot girls are on their best behavior before then. You’re supposed to get some rest—remember?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Grace
It wasn’t long after Hannah left that Emma, Lucy, and Olivia surged into Flowerpot Cabin. They must have run from the mess hall in a pack.
By this time, l had forgotten I was mad at Olivia, and I wasn’t thinking of Vivek.
I was thinking of one thing only: Hannah crying!
Bursting to tell someone, I blabbed the whole story the instant my bunkmates came through the door.
“Wait, Hannah was crying?” Olivia said.
“Yes!” I said.
“Like tears-coming-out-of-her-eyes, crying?” Emma said.
“I believe that is the definition of crying,” I said.
“Counselors aren’t allowed to cry, are they?” said Lucy.
“Whether they are or not, Hannah was,” I said. “When I came in here, she was looking down at the wastebasket, crying.”
“Hannah. Our counselor. Hannah,” said Emma. “Crying.”
“Why was she looking at the wastebasket?” Lucy asked. “Why was she crying?”
You can’t blame me for getting annoyed, right? Any sane person would have!
I decided to tell it one more time. I spoke slowly. I enunciated. “I came into Flowerpot Cabin. I heard sobbing sounds. I looked up. There was Hannah—”
“Wait,” said Emma. “Was she crying?”
And that’s when Olivia started to laugh. She has a great laugh, heartfelt, musical, and most of all, infectious. Emma caught the bug after that, and soon they were laughing so hard that they couldn’t stop. I’m not sure I could have told you why, but I started laughing too, and finally so did Lucy.
Laughing felt good—even if it did make my sides ache. I realized then that none of us liked being mad at each other.
Eventually, I recovered enough to say, “We shouldn’t be laughing. Hannah was so sad. . . .”
“So sad she was crying,” said Olivia.
“Who was crying?” said Emma.
“Hannah was crying,” said Olivia.
“Tears”—I giggled—“coming out”—I laughed—“of her eyes . . . crying.” I had to gasp the last word, and soon we were helpless again, until finally Lucy managed to ask, “But why are we laughing? It’s mean to laugh!”
“No, it’s not,” said Emma, who is never mean. “We’re not laughing at Hannah.”
“We’re laughing,” I tried to explain, “because I had to repeat three times what happened when I walked in to get Oreos.”
“Oreos?” Emma perked up.
“What Oreos?” Lucy asked.
Oh, shoot. I never meant to mention my Oreos. There is a secret stash hidden in a pocket of my suitcase. We’re not supposed to have food in our cabins in case it attracts pests, but Oreos don’t count as food exactly. Oreos are more like emergency rations.
“I missed lunch.” I shrugged. “I was hungry.”
Olivia said, “This whole thing is totally my fault. I never, ever should have teased you about Vivek. I am really, really sorry.”
Wait—was Olivia actually apologizing? This added an extra dose of surprise to my already-mixed-up emotions. Trying to unscramble them, I breathed in and out. “It’s okay. My dad says I have a volatile temper.”
“ ’Volatile’ is a good word,” said Lucy. “So the reason we’re laughing is that you had to repeat yourself. I get it. Ha-ha-ha.”
“It’s not just that I had to repeat myself,” I said. “It’s that I had to repeat myself three times.”
Emma looked at Lucy and explained, “It’s the three times that makes it funny.”
“I said ‘ha-ha-ha,’ ” said Lucy. “Didn’t I?”
“I see Lucy’s point,” Olivia said. “Put that way, it doesn’t sound funny.”
“I guess you had to be there,” said Emma.
“I was there,” said Lucy.
“We know!” said Olivia, Emma, and I, and after that, we couldn’t help it, we busted up laughing again . . . Lucy, too.
Here is something I learned that day. After a while, a person is all laughed out. When this finally happened, Emma made an announcement. “It is now one thirty-seven. Siesta is over at two fifteen.”
“We have to hurry,” Olivia said.
“Hurry with what?” asked Lucy.
“Isn’t it so totally obvious?” said Olivia. “It is up to us, the members of the Secret Cookie Club, to fix Hannah’s life!”
“Step one,” said Emma. “Find out what’s in the wastebasket.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Grace
Before I could stop her, Olivia picked up the wastebasket and flipped it over.
“Did you have to do that?” I asked.
“Do you want to help Hannah or not?” she said.
“Anyway, it’s done,” said Emma, nudging the pile of trash with her toe. “So let’s see what we’ve got.”
The wastebasket had been less than half full. Nothing in it was gross. Most of the contents were pieces of colored construction paper from when we made the flags. Other than that, there was an envelope, some camp-store receipts, and some torn-up scraps of printer paper with typing on one side. I picked up a printer-paper scrap and read it out loud: “ ‘. . . greatest girls I ever . . .’ ”
Emma said, “That sounds like a letter, a letter to Hannah, and I bet it’s what we’re looking for. She tore it up because it was bad news, and then she started to cry.”
“Wow,” said Lucy. “How do you know that?”
“I read a lot of Nancy Drew,” said Emma.
Olivia’s eyes were shining. “This is all really, really dramatic!”
I said, “Let’s get to work.”
Emma separated the pieces from the rest of the trash. I studied the shapes and the words on each piece, then handed it to Lucy. She glued the pieces onto a leftover sheet of construction paper we had found on top of the desk.
Meanwhile, Olivia, who is not the most patient person in the world, lay down on her bunk.
Treating the assembly job like a jigsaw puzzle, I handed Lucy the pieces that had straight sides first, because those must be edges. Then I started looking at the words to see if I could arrange them in sentences and paragraphs.
“I think Emma is right—it’s a letter,” I said shortly, “because here’s the salutation—‘Dear Hannah’—and here’s the date, ‘June twenty-third.’ ”
“Sometimes I forget to put dates on letters,” said Lucy, studying a scrap to see if it was the right shape to fit
beneath the one that read “June.”
“I always put the date on,” I said.
Emma said, “Aha! A clue! The writer is someone more like Grace than like Lucy.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Are you saying I’m the kind of person who would make Hannah cry?”
Emma shrugged. “Are you?”
“No!” I said. But in the meantime I’d had another thought, an attack of conscience. “Should we even be doing this? It is Hannah’s personal correspondence.”
“And Hannah is our personal counselor,” said Olivia from over on her bunk.
“She needs us,” Emma agreed.
“Besides, I am dying to know what the letter says!” said Olivia. “Hurry it up over there, can you? Who’s it from? Can you tell yet?”
“You could come and help us,” Emma said.
“I am helping. I’m the lookout,” said Olivia. “If I see anybody out the window, I’ll sound the alarm. What do you think—‘ding-ding-ding-ding-ding’? Or ‘squaw-aw-aw-awk’? Or maybe a siren, like—”
“Olivia!” I said. “You’re giving me a headache!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, you’re giving me a complex,” said Olivia.
“No signature yet,” said Emma, ignoring us.
“What about the envelope?” I asked.
“Here it is—and it’s in one piece.” Emma pulled it out for inspection. “No return address, but the postmark is New York, New York.”
Olivia sat up, raised her arms, and began to sing: “ ‘A heckuva town! The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down! The people ride in a hole in the ground—New York, New York, it’s a—!’ ”
“Olivia!” Emma and I interrupted. Even Lucy had stopped working.
“What was that even about?” I asked.
“It’s from the musical On the Town!” said Olivia. “Duh—don’t you guys know anything?”
“I know The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast,” Emma said.
“I know Wicked,” I said.
“Wicked?” Olivia’s face lit up, she opened her mouth, and some telepathy told me she was going to sing “Popular.” No way could this be allowed to happen. “Olivia,” I said, “we are trying to work over here!”
“Oh, fine.” Olivia lay back down on her bunk.
The edges of the paper were in place by this time. Piecing together the middle was trickier. You had to look at both the logic of the words and the outlines of the shapes.
“It’s from someone named Travis,” Emma said.
“He signed it ‘Love always,’ ” I added.
“Which is pretty funny,” said Emma, “because look at this.”
All along we had been working fast in case Hannah came back. Now that we saw how personal the letter was, we worked even faster. We knew our counselor wouldn’t like us snooping. But it was for her own good.
“Here.” I handed Lucy the beginning of a paragraph, then I asked Olivia if she saw any sign of Hannah outside. Olivia didn’t answer, and I tried again: “O-liv-i-ah!”
Again no answer.
Emma got up on her knees and swiveled to see Olivia’s face. “Wake up!” She tugged one of Olivia’s toes, causing Olivia jump. “What? Is she coming?”
“How would we know? You’re supposed to be watching,” said Emma.
“Well, sor-ree!” Olivia rubbed her eyes. “I can’t help it if we have to get up before dawn around here. I wasn’t cut out for guard duty.”
“Done,” Lucy announced.
Emma leaned over her to look. “OMG! You can hardly tell this paper ever used to be torn. You did a great job, Lucy.”
“I know,” said Lucy.
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Enough with the lovefest over there. What does the letter say?”
I returned the wastebasket to its spot. Lucy laid the paper on the desk. Emma studied it a moment and then read out loud:
Dear Hannah,
I hope your flight to Nevada was smooth and that you arrived okay at Camp Moonrise. How are your girls? I hope they are getting along.
Hannah, I have something difficult to write, and there is no point in procrastinating further. I want to break up with you. I hope that wasn’t too mean of a way to say it, but we said we would always be honest. Didn’t we?
You are a great girl, one of the greatest girls I ever met. It has been really cool being your boyfriend. Any other boyfriend you find will be really lucky to have you as a girlfriend. If he doesn’t realize this, or if he doesn’t treat you good, then you can have him call me, and I will set him straight.
LOL. I hope you don’t mind my little joke. Just trying to cheer you up a little.
Maybe by now you have already met a good-looking guy counselor who is less of a jerk than me. If so, that would be great because then I wouldn’t feel so terrible about breaking up with you.
Except maybe I would feel jealous, and how crazy is that? LOL.
From this you can see I still care very much.
The reason I am breaking up with you is I met another girl who is also great. I didn’t mean to meet her. It just happened. Her name is Jennica, if you care. It is okay if you don’t.
Have a good summer with your girls. I hope it is not too hot there, but I bet it is. It’s the desert, right? LOL.
Love always, your friend,
Travis Spooner
P.S. Say hi to your parents for me.
Nevada?
Hello-o-o!? The camp was in Arizona!
Not to mention he got the camp’s name wrong!
Not to mention, who signs a breakup letter “Love always, your friend”?
And then there were all those stupid “LOLs” like he was some kind of second grader!
Emma shook her head. “It’s Jennica I feel sorry for.”
“Me too,” said Olivia. “Hannah is lucky to be done with this loser.”
“How could a counselor have been so dumb?” I asked.
“Love is dumb,” said Lucy.
“Don’t say that!” said Olivia. “And anyway, Travis Spooner does have one good idea.”
Emma looked up at her. “What’s that?”
Olivia’s lips had formed a tiny secret smile. “That part about a good-looking counselor?” she said.
“Hmmm,” I said, and I realized I was smiling too.
But before we could even share what we were thinking, there were footfalls outside, the door creaked, and Hannah’s voice behind us said, “What is it you girls are looking at, anyway? You’re supposed to be resting!”
“Nothing!” all four of us said at the same time.
Meanwhile, my heart went bump. We were busted for sure! The letter was right there on the desk, and Hannah would see it the second she looked down.
Only . . . she didn’t. Because when I looked back at the desk, the letter had disappeared, and the only evidence of what we’d been doing was the yogurty smell of wet glue lingering in the air.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lucy
The instant I heard Hannah outside, I whisked the letter from the desk into the wastebasket.
Now the only worry was if Hannah happened to glance inside it and see the letter in one piece again. Would she believe the explanation was miraculous intervention from God?
Probably not.
“Well, whatever you girls were doing,” Hannah said, “siesta is over, and it’s time to get a move on. Emma and Olivia, you’re coming with me to North Corral, right? Meet-Your-Horse?”
Emma and Olivia nodded and went for their hats and water. At the same time, their eyes kept darting to the wastebasket, like they feared the letter might leap out and give us away.
Grace, meanwhile, was making a lot of noise opening and closing the drawers of her bureau. “Lucy and I have the swim test,” she said. “Uh . . . but I . . . uh, I can’t find my bathing suit.”
“Oh, dear,” said Hannah. “Are you sure you packed it?”
“It’s here somewhere.” Grace shoved a drawer shut. “It’s just going to take me a coupl
e more minutes. You guys should get going, though, Hannah. It’s a long way to North Corral. Lucy will wait for me—won’t you, Lucy?”
“Sure,” I said.
Truthfully, I was kind of liking it that Grace couldn’t find her bathing suit. Usually she is the most organized person on the planet. Was it possible that for once she had messed up and lost something?
No. It wasn’t.
The moment Hannah, Emma, and Olivia walked out the door, Grace hurried to the wastebasket and pulled out Travis’s letter, then tore it into a thousand pieces.
“Now if Hannah looks, at least it won’t be obvious,” Grace said. “Tomorrow during chores, we can empty the trash.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “So I guess you knew where your suit was all along?”
“Of course.” Grace displayed the rolled-up beach towel she’ d pulled from her top drawer. “It’s in here with my goggles. Let’s go.”
The Moonlight Ranch swimming pool is on the other side of Boys Camp. Since obviously a girl can’t go through Boys Camp, we had to skirt the fence and then walk past the camp office.
We talked about Hannah and Travis and what four campers could possibly do to help her feel better. Then, just where the Boys Camp fence turned one way and we turned the other, Grace said, “So, Lucy, I have a question.” She was trying hard to sound casual, and she was failing.
“Ask it,” I said.
“Why was Vivek late getting here? You said he told you, right?”
“He did tell me,” I said, “but it’s private.”
Grace spun around, eyes flashing. “What do you mean it’s private?”
I stopped walking. “Grace, are you going to go ballistic again? Because if you are, I want to be ready.”
Grace snapped, “I will if I want,” but once the words were spoken, her anger was gone, and she kicked a toe in the dust. “Look, Lucy. Here’s the thing. There’s this person deep inside me I don’t like very much. I call her Snot-Nosed Grace. Sometimes she comes out, and it’s like I can’t help it.”
“Snot-Nosed Grace,” I repeated. “That’s funny. I guess maybe there’s snot-nosed versions of most people.”
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