Lights Out! (5 page)

“Relax,” Aimee said. “We talked about this already. Just pick a song. We can do a song together.”

“That’s cool!” Fiona said. “And Lindsay, too.”

“Thanks,” Madison said, relieved.

Overhead, the sky still threatened rain with its thick gray cloud formations. The wind was picking up, too. Madison and her friends arrived at the lodge, grabbed cookies and orange slices, and gathered in the main room.

“We know that an overnight isn’t much time to prepare for our talent show,” Pam, the camp director, said. “But we do have items to help make the process a lot more fun.”

The camp staff brought out boxes of assorted costumes. They kept these handy for school visitors, who almost always held talent nights during their stay at the camp.

Madison beamed. The box was filled with silly hats, boas, scarves, and more. She had been worried for nothing! Here was a costume!

Aimee loaded the song “That’s What Friends Are For” for Madison, Lindsay, Fiona, and herself.

“What do you think? It’s perfect!” she said. “I’m not sure how it goes, but I think we can do it….”

Hart, Egg, Drew, Dan, and Chet walked over.

“Hey, Finnster!” Hart asked. “What are you guys doing for the talent show?”

Madison shrugged. “Who wants to know?”

“Maddie,” Egg said, whispering. “Can you come with us for a minute?”

Madison followed Egg and the other boys across the grass near a gate. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Fiona was watching her every move.

Egg quietly asked Madison to be a part of the boys’ routine.

“Me?” Madison asked. She wasn’t sure if she should…or if she even could. “Why me?”

“Because you’re my best friend who’s a girl,” Egg explained.

“Maybe you should ask someone else,” Madison hinted. “Like Fiona?”

“No way!” Chet interrupted, shaking his head. “I will not perform with my sister.”

“Come on, Maddie,” Egg pleaded. “All you have to do is stand there. We’ll do all the singing.”

Hart insisted. “Yeah, Finnster, why don’t you do it? It will be fun.”

Madison felt her cheeks blush when he said that. She turned. Aimee and Fiona were walking over. They pulled Madison away from the boys.

“Enough private conversation,” Aimee whispered. “What’s the big secret?”

“Yeah, Maddie, what’s the big secret?” Fiona said. Her arms were crossed tight.

Madison glanced back at Egg. “Nothing,” she said. “Egg wanted me to do the talent show with them…but I said no because I’m doing it with you.”

“Of course you’re doing it with us,” Aimee said. “What was he thinking?”

“We should practice before dinner,” Fiona said, looking relieved.

Madison knew Fiona was probably wondering why Egg didn’t ask
her.

“Sorry to ditch you,” Madison said as she walked back over to the boys. “But I can’t do it.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Egg said, making a face. He turned to Chet and the other guys. “Now what do we do?”

“What about Ivy Daly?” Drew suggested.

“Yeah, we can ask Ivy,” Hart said.

“She’ll do anything to be the center of attention,” Chet said.

“Good idea!” Egg said. “Easy come, easy go,” he said to Madison.

Madison stood there, stunned. They were going to replace her with the enemy?

And just like that, the boys disappeared back across the lawn toward Ivy and the drones.

Is every summer camp in the world like this? The bathrooms are outside, thank you very much!!! We have to walk all the way down this little hill to get there. I have already decided to stay dirty for the remainder of the trip because I am NO WAY taking a shower. It has spiderwebs as old as Gramma Helen.

Aimee says ballet camp is way different because you spend all this time in a dance studio rather than eating seeds and hiking in the woods. I wish I could e-mail Bigwheels right now and tell her what’s been going on. She’s been to camp and would have something to say for sure.

At least tonight we’ll have a campfire and marshmallows and all the stuff I’ve seen and heard about camp from the movies. Lindsay told me that a singdown is when everyone joins in songs together. Sounds okay even if I don’t know any of the songs
.

Kkkkkkkkrack!

Madison lifted her eyes from her notebook page.

“What was
that
?” she asked Aimee.

A breeze wafted through the cabin screens.

“Sounded like thunder,” Stacey said, pulling on her sweatshirt. The air had gotten a lot cooler, more like March than late April.

“Guess Ivy will have to change out of those shorts,” Aimee teased.

Madison giggled and shoved her notebook back into her duffel.

“Do you think it will rain out the bird walk?” Fiona asked aloud, poking her nose into one of the screens.

Lindsay looked out of the window with her. “Nah, I checked before we left and the weather channel said it’s only supposed to shower after the weekend. Some storm front from Florida, I think.”

“You watch the weather channel?” Joan asked from across the cabin.

Lindsay nodded. “Yes,” she answered meekly. “Is there something wrong with that? I like to be informed.”

“There’s nothing wrong with
that
,” Joan snapped back, gagging a little. She turned to Rose and pretended to whisper even though she knew Lindsay was still listening. “But there’s something wrong with
you
,” she said.

Rose, Joan, and Poison Ivy all cracked up.

“I hope it rains through the roof over her bed,” Aimee said softly to Madison. “She’s acting like such a you-know-what on this trip.”

Madison nodded. She knew what.

“We should get down to the lakefront for dinner,” Fiona said.

The girls walked arm in arm through the woods to the waterfront. Everyone was there. Picnic tables had been set up with food and paper plates and utensils. Staffers stood at three huge grills cooking up hot dogs and burgers. They even had gluten-free buns. The entire grade was spread out as far as the eye could see.

Madison and her friends got in line for hot dogs. “This isn’t very vegetarian,” Aimee complained. Her parents were health food freaks and she was always on a diet of some kind, even though she was the skinniest girl in the seventh grade. She grabbed a paper plate and piled it high with tomatoes.

“Did you see Egg anywhere?” Fiona asked.

“You got me,” Madison said, grabbing a paper plate of her own.

“I figured you’d know since you two are spending so much time together,” Fiona said. “He’s always talking to you….”

Madison stopped in line. “What are you talking about, Fiona?”

Aimee twirled around, carefully holding her plate. “Let’s go sit over there,” she said, pointing to a giant tree trunk. “The ground looks dry.”

Madison glanced over and saw a group of boys sitting there. One of the boys was Ben Buckley, Aimee’s crush.

“Oh, I get it. You want to be near
him
, don’t you?” Madison asked with a smile.

“Who?” Aimee said, pretending not to know what Madison meant. But then she cracked a smile. “Yeah, I admit it. I haven’t talked to Ben this whole trip. And there’s space on the grass near him. Please?”

“Why don’t you just go over there by yourself?” Fiona asked. She was still looking around for Egg.

“Um…I don’t think so,” Aimee said. “Why can’t we go together?”

Madison stared down at the hot dog on her plate and sighed. She had been hoping to sit near Hart, of course. But now that plan was foiled.

Lucky for Madison, the seating opportunities for the evening had not ended. After dinner, camp staffers built a giant bonfire near the beach. All the kids were invited to sit nearby.

Fiona immediately made sure she got the seat next to Egg, although he was too distracted to really notice. Aimee and Ben sat together, too. Hart, Drew, and Chet were goofing around nearby.

Madison didn’t sit near Hart, however. She squished in between Dan and Lindsay.

The air smelled like smoke and Madison’s eyes burned a little. But it was getting cooler outside, so the fire’s heat felt good. The ground was damp, too, but she didn’t mind. Madison pulled her hands up into her sleeves and squeezed her knees in front.

“Did you feel that?” Lindsay asked. She leaned over so close, she nearly toppled into Madison. “I swear I felt a raindrop.”

Madison had felt it, too. But just one.

The low, steady hum of crickets was drowned out by the sound of voices echoing by the lakefront. Mrs. Goode clapped to start off the singdown.

“I’m a little hunk of tin, nobody knows where I have been…”
she sang loudly.

The crowd of seventh graders started to sing along with her. They reached full volume on the chorus, shaking their arms in the air and making other funny faces and hand gestures.

“Honk, honk, rattle, rattle, toot, toot, beep, beep…”

Madison sat there, squeezing her knees tightly. She had heard the song before, but not at camp. She definitely didn’t know the gestures.

Kids yelled out the names of their other favorite camp tunes.

“‘Dem Bones!’”

“‘On Top of Spaghetti!’”

“‘Fried Ham!’”

Aimee, Fiona, and Lindsay sang right along with everyone else. And anytime one of them glanced over at Madison, she opened her mouth to pretend like she was singing for real. Of course, “Blah, blah, blah,” was what Madison was
really
singing.

Plop.

Madison felt another raindrop. A big, fat one had landed on her wrist. Obviously someone else felt the same drop, because all at once the teachers hurried together for a powwow—and decided to call off the remainder of the singdown. Everyone was ordered back to the cabins due to the weather. The breeze had picked up, too, so now the licks of flame on the bonfire seemed a little bit dangerous.

Everyone around Madison fussed and groaned at the news—but Madison breathed a sigh of relief. She thought sitting around a campfire would be different than this. This wasn’t like the camp movies she’d seen. It didn’t help matters that her BFFs were paired off and she wasn’t.

“Where are the marshmallows?” Aimee blurted as they walked back to their cabin. “What a gyp.”

When anyone spoke, whatever she said sounded ten times louder than it should thanks to the lakeside acoustics, so everyone started talking in whispers.

“What’s the deal with Ben?” Fiona teased. She was in a better-than-ever mood since she’d been next to Egg for half the night.

“I don’t know, Fiona,” Aimee said. “How’s Egg?”

Madison wished that her friends knew about Madison’s mad crush on Hart so they would ask her, “How’s Hart?” in that same funny, joking way.

But she kept her crush secret.

The darkness on the route back to the cabin was semi-dangerous. Fiona had a flashlight but kept aiming it up into the sky by mistake. Madison and some other classmates almost tripped over pinecones and roots. One girl nearly walked straight into a tree. Someone joked that she smelled a skunk, which sent a few hysterical girls running wildly into the woods. Of course there was no skunk. All Madison smelled was rain.

When they approached the cabin, Ivy was standing outside the door, shaking sand and pebbles out of her shoes. She winced when the flashlight shone in her eyes.

“Turn that thing off!” Ivy shrieked. She turned on her heel, flung open the door to the cabin, and let it slam before anyone else could get inside.

“She makes me want to scream!” Madison quietly confided to Lindsay.

“She makes everyone want to scream,” Lindsay replied matter-of-factly.

“I wonder what the boys are doing right now?” Fiona asked.

“You mean, ‘I wonder what Egg is doing,’” Aimee said.

“Well…” Fiona started to giggle. “Maybe…”

Screeeeeeek.

The girls opened the cabin’s screen door and entered the land of drones. Ivy, Rose, and Joan were sitting on the edge of their beds, unpacking items they needed to get ready for bed. Lights-out was only an hour or so away.

No sooner had Madison and her friends wandered inside than another strange voice echoed through the night air.

“Hey, girls!”

It was Mrs. Wing, who had been assigned to bunk duty. She circulated among the girls’ cabins before the camp shut down for the night.

Ever since the start of seventh grade, Mrs. Wing had been Madison’s favorite teacher. Having Mrs. Wing here in the middle of this strange setting made Madison feel more comfortable.

“Just popping in before lights-out,” Mrs. Wing said. “Has everyone got everything she needs?”

Kkkkkkkkrack!

All the girls—including the drones—jumped.

“I can’t believe there’s a storm coming!” Stacey said. She already had changed into her pajamas.

The wind was picking up. One of the shutters slammed shut.

“I think the weather is taking a turn for the worse,” Mrs. Wing explained. “In case of heavy rain, someone will be along to shut the wooden shutters on the outside windows. Don’t worry.”

A few girls asked Mrs. Wing questions about changes in the next day’s activities. The bird walk was probably going to be canceled, she said, but all events after breakfast were still a “go.”

“Where do the teachers sleep?” Ivy asked.

Mrs. Wing chuckled. “On the bus,” she joked. “No, there are cabins for the female and male staff. We have the same kinds of smelly mattresses and sleeping bags, too. No special privileges here.”

“Yeah, sure,” Joan whispered under her breath.

Madison heard her say it, but Mrs. Wing didn’t.

“Remember that it gets very cool at night here, girls,” Mrs. Wing said. “I know most of you have a sweater and an extra blanket, but with the rain we’re getting, you may need both. Be prepared.”

She walked over by Madison’s bunk and looked up.

“You’ve got quite a perch up there, Madison,” Mrs. Wing said. “Miss the computer now that you’re out here in the wilderness?” She winked.

Madison smiled. “Nah. I’ve been keeping a notebook, though,” she added, holding up her orange book.

Mrs. Wing smiled back and nodded. “I see. Well, take some notes for a write-up on the school website, will you? And sleep tight!”