The Sign in the Smoke (Nancy Drew Diaries Book 12) (17 page)

Bella let out a rueful laugh. She looked so angry and tense, I was ready for her to explode.

“Do you know why I have matches?” she asked. “And why I smelled like smoke last night? God, Nancy Drew, what kind of detective are you?’

I stared at her. “Because you . . . started the fire?” I asked, thinking it was pretty obvious.

“
Nooooo!
” Bella lifted her finger into the air and waved it in my face. “I’ve been burning sage to purify our cabin and keep the angry spirits out.” She turned to Deborah, her expression changing from furious to hopeful. “That’s what I was doing last night, when the fire must have been lit! I know it’s not really allowed, so I try to do it when no one else is there. I went back to the cabin as soon as I finished dinner and burned some sage. That’s why my clothes smelled like smoke later. But I didn’t see anything, I swear.”

Deborah looked unconvinced. “That doesn’t explain the wig, Bella. Or the sneakers.”

Bella sighed. “The
wig
. I brought the wig for the same reason I brought the sparkly dress. I was going to get all dressed up for the end-of-camp party,” she said.

Deborah raised her eyebrows. “End-of-camp party?”

“Don’t you remember?” Bella asked. “The kids at Camp Larksong always talked about this big costume party the counselors had after the kids left at the end of the week. I figured, since it was a Camp Larksong tradition, we’d be doing the same at Camp Cedarbark.”

Deborah closed her eyes. “I remember,” she said. “But the end-of-camp dance was called off the last year of Camp Larksong because . . . well, because. I didn’t plan to keep the tradition going here. I’m not sure why you would just assume we’d be having the dance.”

“I
told
you,” Bella said. “Because I thought Camp Cedarbark would be the same as Camp Larksong. And I wanted to be prepared.”

“Why
silver
?” I asked, not bothering to try to hide my skepticism. “You just happened to bring a silver wig and not, say, pink or blue or any color
not
worn by a fake ghost in the lake?”

Bella looked at me like she was almost afraid. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “I wore that wig for my Halloween costume two years ago. I thought it looked really cute on me. That’s all.”

“What about the sneakers?” I pressed.

Bella looked at me with disdain. “You mean the same Converse sneakers every other teenager in America wears? Yeah, that’s some real incriminating evidence there.”

I glanced at Deborah, wondering whether she was buying this. Her expression told me she wasn’t. “I’m sorry, Bella,” she said after a few seconds. “But I just don’t believe you. I’m not going to press charges, but I want you to leave this camp immediately. Call your parents from this phone to pick you up, and I’ll escort you over to pack your things. I can’t put my campers at further risk. I
can’t
. And if you try anything to further sabotage this camp, I will call the police.”

Bella shook her head like she couldn’t believe this. “You have no proof!” she cried. “I’ll sue you! We’ll sue!”

Deborah looked tired. “If you want to sue me over losing one day of your summer job, Bella, have at it. But I’m afraid you still have to leave.” She began walking toward the door, and I stepped aside to let her pass. She took Bella’s arm as she passed her and said, “Come on.”

Bella glared at her, then turned her ferocious stare on me. “I won’t forget this, Nancy,” she said in a low voice. “If our paths ever cross again . . . Mark my words, you’ve made a lifelong enemy!”

With that, she whirled around and followed Deborah out of the cabin. I watched them walk across the clearing, past the burnt
GO HOME
message in the grass, and toward Bella’s cabin.

Well,
I thought, straightening up as the words
lifelong enemy
replayed in my mind,
you certainly won’t be the first.

“ARE WE ALMOST THERE YET?”
Kiki asked, grabbing my arm and walking up beside me. “Just kidding! Ha-ha! Remember the first day when we hiked to the creek, what wusses we were?
This
feels like nothing now.”

I smiled, but I couldn’t quite agree with her. We were making the long hike up Hemlock Hill to the site of the camp-wide campout, and my legs were burning. Of course, some of my tiredness might just have been from the fact that it had been a long day for me. After Bella’s parents came to pick her up—
they
hadn’t seemed terribly thrilled by Deborah’s decision either—I’d had lunch with my bunk and a session of serious friendship bracelet-making. It was only about five o’clock, but I felt ready to climb into my sleeping bag and say good night to this day.

“I think we
are
almost there now,” I said, “but yeah, point taken, Kiki.”

“You guys are
so much stronger
than you were!” cried Maya excitedly. “You’ve grown so much this week! I can’t believe you’re all going home tomorrow. We have to keep in touch.”

Harper rolled her eyes. “Don’t get all sappy, Maya,” she said. “We still have tonight.”

At that moment, I caught a snippet of conversation from the eleven-year-old group in front of me. Sam, who’d taken over Bella’s position as of lunchtime, was patiently repeating the story she’d told about fifty times since Bella’s departure. “She just urgently had to go home,” Sam said. “I told you guys, everything’s fine, but it was unavoidable. She wanted to say good-bye, but she couldn’t. Don’t worry, though—we’ll still have fun.”

“Why do you always wear that baseball cap?” one of Bella’s campers, a redhead named Haley, asked.

Sam grinned, touching her fingers to the brim. “Because it keeps the sun out of my eyes,” she replied. “Plus, it looks so darn good on me. Yankee blue is my color, don’t you think?”

About ten minutes later we finally came upon the clearing on a rocky ledge above the lake where we’d be camping that night. Each bunk was given thirty minutes to set up their tent and lay out their sleeping bags inside. I’d been worried that it would take longer than that to set up, but actually, with all eight of us working together, setting up the tent was a breeze. It made me realize what a great team the eight of us had become, and that made me smile.

Once our bags and sleeping bags were laid out inside, we headed over to where Deborah and Miles were setting up a campfire. While Miles used a flint to get the campfire started—a cool trick he’d tried to teach the campers—Deborah asked the counselors to line up the insulated bags of food we’d brought. I plunked down the bag I’d gotten from the mess hall, which included hot dogs, buns, potatoes for roasting, and apples. Soon each of the kids was holding a hot dog on a pointy stick over the roaring campfire, and we’d all wrapped potatoes in aluminum foil to roast in the fire.

I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I began to smell the hot dogs cooking, and then my stomach rumbled angrily.

“Hungry much?” George asked, sidling up beside me.

I smiled. “I guess so,” I admitted. “Things were still so crazy at lunch, I don’t think I ate a lot.”

I’d filled George and Bess in on the Bella incident during free period.

George patted my back. “Don’t feel bad about it, Nance. You got a crazy person out of here! You saved the campout! Look at all these happy faces that would have been sad, watching another DVD in the mess hall or something.”

I looked around at the happy campers, trying to feel the truth in George’s words. But something just wasn’t sitting right.

“What if she
didn’t
do it?” I asked.

George turned to me, her eyes flashing. “Nancy, come on. You can’t be serious. Bella was acting weird since the moment we all got to camp.”

I sighed. “On the hike up here, I was noticing how many people wear Chuck Taylors,” I said. “Sam has them. Maddie too.
Deborah
even has a pair. What if I—”

“Don’t doubt yourself,” George insisted. “Except about your hot dog, because that thing is about to burn to a crisp. Come on, put her there.”

George picked up a paper plate with a bun on it and held it out to me. I pulled my hot dog in from the fire—it
did
look a bit well-done, now that I inspected it—and dropped it on the bun. George handed me the plate, then gestured to a row of condiments that had been set up by a tree.

“You had plenty of reasons to blame Bella. Maybe one or two of them could be explained in other ways—but all of them? No. So eat something,” she encouraged me. “Enjoy yourself! You solved the case! Now you can relax and enjoy a freshly roasted hot dog with a stellar view.”

I nodded, slathering my hot dog with mustard and ketchup and moving over to where my bunk had gathered on an overturned log. Soon the happy chatter and jokes of my campers took my mind off Bella, and any of the other crazy events of the week.
George is right,
I thought as I enjoyed my dinner.
The hard part is over—now I can enjoy the little time I have left!
The sun setting over the lake
was
beautiful. And it was hard to ignore what a good time all the campers seemed to be having.
They really would have been disappointed if this had been called off,
I realized.

But the night wasn’t going to be
totally
perfect. We’d just finished up our dinner and started roasting marshmallows for s’mores when the sky suddenly darkened, and a huge crash of thunder sounded.

I looked to Deborah, who turned to the sky just as the heavens seemed to open up and rain came pouring down in a gush.

“
Auuuuughhh!
” half the campers screamed.

“Everyone run to your tents!” Deborah shouted. “Take cover! I’ll put out the fire!”

“You heard her, guys! Come on!” I corralled my campers into a clump and navigated them back toward our tent. Once we got the zippered flap open, we all tumbled in with a groan and scooted over to our respective sleeping bags.

“I can’t believe it,” Maya said, shaking her head. “Was it even supposed to rain tonight?”

“Who knows?” I asked with a shrug. “I haven’t seen a weather report in a week.”

For a few minutes, we just sat in the darkness listening to the rain pounding the roof. The tent seemed to be waterproof, thank goodness, so except for a few small puddles where there were leaks, we stayed dry.

After a few minutes we brought out our flashlights and made a circle in the middle of the tent. Thunder was still crashing every few minutes outside, and lightning would light up the sky.

“It’s so cool,” Cece whispered. “Like nature is having a big argument.”

Harper bit her lips. “I think it’s a little scary,” she whispered.

Maya scooched over and put her arm around Harper. “Don’t be scared,” she said. “We’re all here together, and nothing’s going to hurt us. We should enjoy the show!”

“We should tell
ghost stories
!” Kiki said suddenly, and several of the girls spoke up to agree.

I glanced at Harper. “Maybe we’re not all in the mood for ghost stories,” I suggested. “Actually, I brought a deck of cards. We could play—”

Harper shook her head and sat up straight. “No, Kiki’s right,” she said. “The atmosphere is
perfect
for ghost stories.”

Kiki beamed. I glanced at Maya, who shrugged.

“Okay?” I said. “Are we all sure, though?”

All the girls grunted their assent. When I looked Harper right in the eye, she nodded.

“Okay,” I said finally. “Who wants to start?”

“I do!” Nina raised her hand. “This is a ghost story I heard here, actually. It’s perfect because it’s about
this camp
.”

I sat stock-still as Nina began telling the others about the last year Camp Larksong was in business. How everyone went on the end-of-year campout, right here, at Hemlock Hill. But one of the counselors was acting a little weird. . . .

“Guys!” I said, holding up my hand. “Hold it right there, Nina. I just want you all to know . . . this story
isn’t true
. Okay?”

Nina looked at me, slightly annoyed. “How do you know that?” she asked.

“Because I know,” I said, hearing that I sounded like a frustrated parent, but not sure how to avoid it. “I . . . looked into it. None of this is true, guys.”

I’d expected that to dampen the campers’ enthusiasm for the tale, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Fourteen eyes widened as seven faces turned curiously in my direction.

“You
looked into it
?” Katie echoed. “That sounds kind of serious.”

I shook my head, but Cece was already chiming in, “Yeah, I thought this was just a made-up story! But if Nancy heard it and did some research, there must be
some
truth to it, right?”

The girls’ voices all began to drown one another out, and I looked desperately at Maya. But even as I did, I realized that
she
didn’t know the whole story either. I’d given her a brief synopsis of Bella’s tale the night she arrived at camp, and told her it wasn’t true. But she didn’t know that I’d found out what really happened to Lila. She didn’t know that someone actually
had
nearly drowned on this night five years before—but it was an accident.