Campfire Cookies (17 page)

I am not a fast runner. In fact, I am a slow runner, not to mention a little bit of a klutz, which you will know if you have been paying any attention at all.

Even Lucy knows I am a klutz.

By the time I got to the Boys Camp gate, I was convinced that getting out of bed had been a mistake. It was scary out here! The air was cool enough to give me goose bumps, or maybe I had goose bumps because
bats were flying all over the place, there were huge, scary big-eyed owls hooting, and the crickets were singing their hearts out.

As for tarantulas, snakes, lizards, and scorpions—they didn't come out at night, did they?

If they did, I wouldn't be able to see them on the path. What if I stepped on a huge, meaty Gila monster?

And those were just the dangers from nature. On top of them add Buck's sentries, who lurked somewhere, or everywhere. The sentries were silent and invisible, so the fact that I hadn't heard or seen any only proved they were nearby.

Besides that, where
was
Grace? She couldn't feel my moral support if she didn't know I was here for her. I thought of the famous question about the tree that falls in the forest. If nobody heard, did it actually fall?

The tree-in-the-forest question is abstract, theoretical, and philosophical. But what happened a few moments later was none of those things: I fell flat on the ground.

To be specific, I was climbing over the Boys Camp
gate and my right foot caught one of the crossbars, tripping me in midclimb, so that I flipped over the top and landed on my back with the wind knocked out of me.

If you have never had that experience, it is terrifying, like you're paralyzed and you'll never take another breath and that's it, you are done for.

I knew I wasn't done for.

One thing about being a little bit of a klutz, I have had my share of accidents, including having the wind knocked out of me. So, scary as it was, my brain expected I'd be able to breathe again if I just waited—and my brain was right. The real trouble was that my right ankle felt tingly and strange.

Then, a second later, after I'd managed to gulp the air needed to get my heart moving again, I realized I had another problem.

From somewhere not too far away,
I heard whispering!

But it was just Grace. Right?

No—it
couldn't
be Grace! She was on a solo mission. She had no one to whisper to.

The only explanation was sentries, sentries talking
about how best to catch me! I had to get back to Girls Camp, and I had to do it now!

I rolled over onto all fours, brought my knees up under me, and tried to stand but couldn't. With weight on it, my ankle crumpled, and now it wasn't numb anymore; it was throbbing. I couldn't even crawl to safety. There was no cover on either side of the path. There was nowhere to hide.

I closed my eyes like a little kid trying to disappear and waited forlornly to be hauled off to the camp office, and then to Phoenix, and then to the airport. I wondered if they'd let me put on clothes, or if I'd have to fly back home wearing my pajamas.

Grace is fast, but I am faster.

Or maybe that is true only when she is half barefoot.

We were still in Boys Camp when I caught up to her next to Yucca Cabin. I didn't want to yell and attract attention, so I reached forward and touched her shoulder, causing her to look back with wide and terrified eyes. Then she recognized me and took a breath and stopped running . . . and smiled.

I guess I was better than the other likely pursuers—a sentry, or a grizzly bear, or a zombie.

We stood there for a few seconds together, catching our breath, and then she noticed I was holding her shoe.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and took it.

“You're welcome,” I said, “and, Grace, I'm sorry I didn't do that favor you asked. I should have trusted you.”

Grace slid her foot into the shoe, then bent down and tugged the laces tight. “Apology accepted,” she said, and then she looked up at me.

You know something? Grace is sort of pretty.

August 12, Friday

Dear Mom and Dad,

How are you? I am fine.

Camp continues to be an excellent learning experience. Every day I become more accomplished at horsemanship (or maybe I should call it horseWOMANship—ha-ha!), and this week I am doing leatherwork as an activity. My favorite part is beveling. I will explain what that is when I see you.

I am enclosing with this letter the blue
ribbon I won for backstroke in the camp swim competition and the blue ribbon I won for playing “Streets of Laredo” on the piano in the talent show.

Flowerpot Cabin's Chore Score continues to be perfect. Even though we have had some setbacks, we are still hoping to win the award at the Farewell Campfire.

There has been some excitement here recently because some campers broke rules. First, some girls sneaked into Boys Camp. Then another camper got caught with an electronic device. Apparently this camper has had the electronic device all summer, but it was hidden in one of her trunks. I am only mentioning these things in case you got an e-mail about them from Paula in the office.

Did you happen to get an e-mail about them from Paula in the office? Did the e-mail have any details?

I was just wondering. There is NOTHING for you to worry about.

Pack Trip begins Sunday, and we are all looking forward to it.

I miss you very much.

Love sincerely, Grace

Dear Shoshi,

OMG, you will never believe all the stuff that has happened since the last time I wrote!

First, I'm sorry about all that mail you keep getting from the Moonlight Ranch office. It is my fault. I will explain when I see you.

Second, I have a boyfriend. His name is Vivek, and he is from Pennsylvania. I think I told you about him already because last
summer I thought maybe I liked him, but I didn't know if he liked me, and then at the beginning of camp I thought he liked someone else, but that was never true_he swears.

Besides that, Emma broke her ankle. She could have gone home, but she said she wanted to stay. She has to wear a cast and she can't ride her horse, so for Pack Trip she will go in the nurse's Jeep, which has AC, and the nurse lets them drink soda and eat Fritos, so part of me thinks she is actually so lucky!

How Emma broke her ankle is she was trying to help me carry out a secret middle-of-the-night cookie delivery to Boys Camp. When she got hurt, Vivek and I helped her, and while we were helping her, we made too much noise, and a counselor named Jack came out of his cabin and shined a flashlight on us exactly like a scene in a prison-escape movie.

I was so scared I thought I would die!

But Jack was nice (he is funny, too), and he sent Vivek back to bed and picked up Emma (who is not small, but Jack is strong) and carried her to Flowerpot Cabin, and Hannah gave her Tylenol because we thought her ankle was only twisted, till the next day, when it still hurt a lot and she had to go to town to get an X-ray.

Oh, and one other thing happened. On the way back to Flowerpot Cabin, a sentry almost caught us! We never saw him, but in just the kind of deep voice you'd expect a sentry to have, he yelled at us from Girls Camp: “Halt! Who goes there?”

Jack answered him: “ 'Tis only I, the tiniest Billy Goat Gruff! Please don't gobble me up!”

The sentry didn't bother us after that.

I couldn't sleep the rest of that night, worrying Jack would tell the camp director
I had sneaked into Boys Camp, but guess what? The next day he said if Olivia, Emma, Lucy, and I would make campfire cookies on Pack Trip, the cookies would give him amnesia and then he would have nothing to tell.

I said, “What's campfire cookies?”

Jack said, “Cookies you bake over a campfire_duh.”

I said, “How do you do that?”

Jack said, “Look it up.”

The other things that happened are that Jamil, who used to have a huge crush on Lucy, doesn't like her now and is acting really weird, Olivia got ten demerits for being caught with an iPad, and our big Plan to Fix Hannah's Life didn't work the way we thought_but I don't have time to add details because siesta is over and I have to mail this letter.

Love ya always, Grace

August 12, Friday

Dear Dad,

How are you?

I am fine.

I am having fun at camp. I hope you are having fun working really hard like you tell me you have to all the time.

Everything is usual here except for one strange thing that happened. Do you remember that girl Lucy
from California we saw on TV that time because she killed a wolf with her bare hands? I know her now! She is a camper at Moonlight Ranch Camp too. (Did I tell you that before?)

Lucy and I have horseback riding at the same time, and she is nice, and we were friends until she did this strange thing, which was, she sneaked into my cabin when I was asleep and put cookies and a note with a picture of balloons on my pillow!

Yuck!

I don't mean the cookies were yuck. They tasted pretty good even if they didn't have any chocolate chips in them, and by a big coincidence they are Lance's (my counselor) favorite kind of cookie.

But I don't want to be anybody's boyfriend, and I told Lucy so too, but I tried to be nice about it.

Okay, gotta go swimming now. It is hot here. Is it hot there?

Love, Jamil

August 12, Friday

Dearest Most Esteemed Mater and Pater,

Please, please, PLEASE, I beg you, do not be disappointed in your one and only daughter, Olivia, who loves you very much and is very grateful for all the kind and generous things you do for her!!!

Because, the truth is, I have SUFFERED enough.

You already know that Buck's rule about how campers have to give up electronics has
been really, really hard on me. Not only have all my friends back home ditched me (I am SURE!), but my spatial skills have deteriorated to the point that I will never pass geometry, and I have become EXPONENTIALLY more stupid without the ability to do research.