Campfire Cookies (7 page)

We hadn't even done anything bad yet!

Maybe there was something dead in the wastebasket. One time last year there was a mouse running around Flowerpot Cabin. Could it be a dead mouse in the wastebasket? Would a dead mouse be enough to make Hannah sad?

Or what about a tarantula—like the ones on the flags? Except I am not sure that a dead tarantula would be that sad. Speaking for myself, I'd be more likely to scream if I found a dead tarantula.

As these thoughts raced through my head, I stood paralyzed in the doorway. Hannah hadn't even noticed me yet. Maybe I could turn around quickly and get away before she did.

But what if she needed help?

I wished it was Emma who had found Hannah like this. Emma would have known what to do. Emma would have given Hannah a hug, or said just the right thing.

At last, Hannah looked up. “Oh, hi, Grace.” She wiped the snot trail under her nose and sniffled. “Oh, sorry.”

My face must've looked as surprised as I felt because Hannah laughed at me through her tears. “It's not that bad, honey. I'll live.”

“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?”

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.”

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.”