Sound Off! (5 page)

Mitchie groaned. “I don't imagine Caitlyn took that well.”

“Not really,” Ella said. “She went up to the kitchen with your mom, Peggy, and Dee to try to fix the balloons.”

Mitchie knew how hard Caitlyn had worked. She hoped this wasn't making her too crazy.

“So instead of the Rhythm and Balloons, we're going to have the Connect Three-Legged Race,” Lorraine added as she handed her the sign-up sheet.

“Okay,” Mitchie said, looking it over. “That takes three of us.” There weren't a lot of options, so she started to write in the names: Mitchie, Ella, and—she looked up and something made her smile—“Tess?”

The others turned to see that Tess had come back to join them. She was wearing her pink Vibe shirt.

“Did I miss anything?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Ella said.

“Nice shirt,” Mitchie commented.

“My other one's wet.” Tess said. She looked at Lorraine and added, “Besides, this one's too nice not to wear.”

Lorraine smiled, and for the first time all day, the group felt like a real team.

“You ready to make a fool of yourself?” Mitchie asked.

Tess smiled and nodded. “I wouldn't be here if I wasn't.”

“Great,” Mitchie said. “Then let's do this— together.”

They gathered with the other teams and watched carefully as Shane, Nate, and Jason demonstrated the proper technique for doing the Connect Three-Legged Race. Unfortunately for everyone, Jason was the one doing the explaining. He had a way of . . . complicating things.

“Don't think of it as a
Connect
. . . three-legged race,” he told them. “Think of it as a Connect Three . . . legged race. Do you understand the difference?”

The campers stared at him blankly.

“Why don't you let me try,” Shane said, much to everyone's relief.

“This was something we came up with back when we were at Camp Rock,” he began. “Instead of a normal three-legged race, which has two people tied together, this one actually uses three people.”

He demonstrated by standing between Nate and Jason and putting his arms around their shoulders so that the three of them were linked together.

Brown bent over and quickly tied one of Shane's legs to Jason's and the other to Nate's.

“You see,” Jason said, trying to jump back into the explanation, “Brown has connected
three
of us, so it's Connect Three.”

“I think they get it,” Nate said. “Why don't we show them how to walk?”

“Good idea!” Shane added. “It takes a little getting used to, so you should practice before the race begins.”

“This can't go well,” Mitchie said as she took the middle position. Tess was to her right and Ella to her left, and she had her arms around both of them. Lorraine tied their ankles together, making sure the bands were strong enough to hold, but not too tight.

The trio took a couple of practice steps— and promptly fell.

“Think dance class,” Mitchie joked.

Tess's eyes lit up. “You're right. That's exactly what we should do.”

Ella looked confused. “We should what?” she asked.

“We should act like this is dance class,” Tess explained. “We choose a song and sing it as we race. It will give us rhythm.”

“That's brilliant!” Mitchie said, getting it. “If we move on the beat, we'll keep in step perfectly. Just like when we're in dance class.”

Ella started nodding. “Okay, but what song should we pick?”

Unfortunately, the race was about to begin. They didn't have much time.

“On your marks,” Brown announced.

This only made them flustered. “What about one of your mother's songs?” Mitchie suggested.

“Which one?”

“How about ‘Bound by Love'?” Mitchie offered.

Tess shook her head. “It's too slow. We'd finish dead last.”

“Get set,” Brown announced.

Ella just blurted out the first song title she could think of. “How about ‘Jingle Bells'?”

“Go!” Brown shouted.

Every team took off except for the three girls from the Vibe Cabin. After a moment they all shared a look.

“‘Jingle Bells'!” they cried in unison, and they began singing.

As strange as it was for the three of them to be singing about sleigh rides and snow in the middle of summer, it was even stranger to see that their plan was working. They were rocking. Or at least caroling.

While the other teams struggled to keep in step, the Vibe team just sang “Jingle Bells” and rapidly moved through the crowd. Near the halfway point, they moved into first place. Back at the starting line, Lorraine was furiously cheering them on.

Not only was the song helping them all keep in step, it was also distracting the other teams, who couldn't quite figure out what the girls were doing.

The only problem came when they ran out of lyrics, about five yards short of the finish line. They stumbled a bit, but still finished well ahead of everyone else. Only when they were at the end did they collapse.

The first person to congratulate them at the finish line was Brown. After they untied their ankles, he helped them up and gave each one a high five. The last one up was Tess. “I'm glad your ankle's feeling better,” he said with a wink.

“So am I,” she replied, a huge smile on her face.

The team spirit that had worked so well in the Connect Three-Legged Race carried over into the next event, the much-delayed balloon toss.

Caitlyn and the others returned from the kitchen with coolers filled with Jell-O Balloons. And now the Jell-O was
inside
the balloons—where it was supposed to be.

Caitlyn was pretty stressed by the whole situation, but she did flash a big smile when she looked up at the scoreboard and saw that the Vibe team had won the last event.

“How did that happen?” she asked Mitchie when she caught up to her friend.

Mitchie shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Lorraine said firmly. “You should have seen the three of them. They were amazing!”

Unfortunately, while the team spirit carried over from one event to the next, the results weren't the same. The object of the Rhythm and Balloons Toss was for teammates to spread apart and toss balloons to each other—to the beat of a popular song. If two teammates succeeded in catching the balloon without its bursting open, they moved farther apart and tried again.

Mitchie paired up with Lorraine, but this time they were one of the first teams to be eliminated. When Mitchie tried to catch the balloon above her head, it burst open, covering her with giant globs of raspberry Jell-O.

Tess and Ella lasted a couple of rounds longer but were knocked out when Tess misjudged a balloon and it landed right on top of her. Jell-O filled her hair and began to drip down into her shirt. The others took a deep breath as they waited for her to explode in anger, but they were in for a pleasant surprise. She just laughed as she tried to shake off the Jell-O.

After four events, the Vibe team was having a great time. And much to their surprise, they were still doing pretty well in the competition. Placing third in the rock climb and first in the three-legged race had left them tied for fifth with just one more event left before lunch.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

A
ll the campers got together in front of the stage for the next competition. Although none of the girls from Mitchie's team were saying it out loud, the fact that they were in fifth place was foremost in their thoughts. Suddenly, their being one of the three teams on the plaque was a real possibility.

“We have one more event before we break for lunch,” Brown said, “and it's my favorite one. Other camps play capture the flag, which is cool. But here at Camp Rock, we play a game called Capture the Keys to the Tour Bus.”

Everybody laughed.

“It is a game that was inspired by a time when yours truly misplaced the keys to our bus while my band was on tour. Our manager gave me thirty minutes to find them before he was going to rent another bus and make me pay for it out of my own pocket. Luckily, my mates pitched in and we found those keys with three minutes to spare.

“Now you've got the same deal,” he went on. “I've hidden the keys to the Connect Three bus somewhere here at Camp Rock. If you find the keys, go to the bus and blast the horn. If you do it in less than thirty minutes, not only do you win the race, you also get to have a rock-star lunch in the bus with the band.”

This bit of information led to cheers and applause.

“We're even going to give you a clue,” Brown added with a twinkle in his eyes.

Shane walked out with an electric guitar, and the campers went wild again.

Lorraine stifled a squeal. Even though she had been at Camp Rock for a while now, she still couldn't get over the fact that they were privy to little concerts from
the
Shane Gray.

“Shane here is going to play a little something for you,” Brown said with a smile. “You've got to pay close attention, because it's the only clue you're going to get.”

Shane smiled and played four notes on the guitar.

Now Mitchie was really confused. “That's it?”

“What's the clue?” Lorraine asked, somewhat disappointed there had been no lyrics or signature dance moves.

Tess just shrugged.

Brown was delighting in the difficulty every one was having. “I told you to pay close attention,” he said. “All right, Shane, play it for them one more time.”

Shane nodded, got back into a serious rock-star pose—and played the same four notes.

Brown held up a stopwatch. “That's it. No more help. You have thirty minutes.”

The teams didn't need any more encouragement. Immediately, they ran off in every direction. They would turn the camp upside down if it meant finding those keys.

The Vibe team, however, stayed where they were. They weren't just going to run around like chickens with their heads cut off. They wanted to come up with a plan.

“So the music is the clue. Any ideas?” Mitchie asked.

The girls pondered silently. “Did it sound like the beginning of a song?” Ella finally asked.

“That could be it,” Lorraine said. “Maybe the title of the song is the clue.”

Tess hummed it out loud. “It sounds a little familiar,” she said, “but I can't quite place it.”

She hummed the notes again, and this time something about them caught her attention. “You know, they sound a little bit like the opening to that David Cook song.”

She sang the first notes of the song, and the others joined in. “I think you're right,” Ella said.

“What if the clue isn't the name of the song?” Lorraine asked. “What if it's the name of the singer:
Cook
.”

They all shared a look and smiled. “The kitchen.”

They tried to keep their excitement down. The other teams were running around in every direction, and the girls didn't want to attract too much attention as they headed toward the kitchen.

Slyly keeping an eye out for the others, they began walking toward the mess hall. Unfortunately, they noticed two of the guys from Rhythm Cabin, Colby and Mac, were headed in the same direction.

“Check it out,” Lorraine said, nodding toward them.

“Think they figured it out?” Ella asked.

As if in response, having just noticed the girls, the boys started sprinting toward the kitchen. The girls chased after them, resulting in a simultaneous dash to the mess hall.

“Look in the cupboard!” Mitchie told Ella as they burst through the door. “I'll check the pantry.”

Within moments, the kitchen was a whirlwind. While Tess and Lorraine were crawling around on their hands and knees looking under everything, Colby sifted through a bag of flour and Mac searched in the refrigerator.

When Connie Torres walked into her kitchen, she was stunned. “Everybody, stop!” she shouted, raising her voice not so much in anger as to be heard over all the noise. “What is going on here?”

“We're looking for the tour-bus keys!” Mitchie blurted out.

“There are no keys in what
was
my very clean kitchen,” Connie said.

“Are you sure?” Colby asked. “Because we're pretty sure it was that one David Cook song. And
Cook
led us here.”

“That's what we thought,” Tess said.

Having heard Connie's yell, Brown came rushing into the room.

“Okay,” he said, as he scanned the flour-covered kitchen.“Next time I should announce that the kitchen is off limits. Sorry about that, Connie.”

“That would be a good idea,” Connie said, nodding.

Tess slumped. “You mean the keys are
not
in here?”

“No!” Brown exclaimed. “They're not.”

Without missing a beat, the boys from Rhythm Cabin bolted outside and started searching again. Mitchie, though, felt bad and started to clean up. The rest of the girls from her team joined in to help.