Love and Pollywogs from Camp Calamity (13 page)

“Becca,” Georgia asked, “do you think your brother could win Outstanding Camper of the Week? He’s really smart, and hardly ever gets in trouble. Seems like he could be a winner.”

“He could,” Becca agreed. “He hasn’t said much about it, but he’s been studying a lot this last month about crops and the different soil in this area of Texas. I think that’s what his project will be on.”

“That sounds deadly boring,” Kayla said.

“You guys can’t let a boy win again this year,” Aurora said. “They won last year, and if they win two years in a row, we’ll never hear the end of it!”

“She’s right!” Georgia said. “C’mon, girls, we’ve got to pull this off!”

Mr. Jimenez and Chica were down at the campfire when we got there. Chica gave me a big grin and a wave when she saw me. She grabbed her cushion and hurried right over.

“Hi, Effie! Sign my sit-upon! All my best friends do!”

Hers was just like the ones we had made in class, but it was more worn-out. And it was covered front and back with signatures.

“Wow, Chica, you’ve got a lot of names on here,” I said.

“Those are all my best friends from camp. And you’re my new best friend!” She pulled a black marker from her jacket pocket. “I brought my special signing pen for you.”

I wrote my name as neat as I could, and added a heart and a star next to it.

Mary Peters and Mary Paul squealed when they saw me signing it. “Oh, that’s such a good idea!” Mary Peters said. “I want everyone to sign mine before camp is over.”

“Me too!” said Mary Paul.

Kayla came over to see what was going on. She put her hand out for the pen. “Hi, Chica! I’ll sign it for you too.”

“No thank you!” Chica said, putting her pen behind
her back. “It’s only for my
best
friends to sign. I like you, but not the best!”

I had to squeeze my lips tight not to laugh. Nit poked her finger in my side, trying to make me lose it.

“Well, it’s too dark anyway,” Kayla said, and tossed her hair. She grabbed Becca and drug her off, making a lot of noise about something important she had to tell her.

“I want to sit next to you, Effie!” Chica said.

“Sure! You pick us a good spot,” I said.

We all settled in together, shoulder to shoulder—me, Chica, Nit, Aurora, and Aurora’s basketball.

“Effie,” Nit said. “Give me your flashlight. Let me see if I can fix it.”

I handed it over and she unscrewed the bottom to get the batteries out.

She turned it to shake them out, but they were stuck.

“Hold my light over here so I can see,” she said. “I think there’s something wedged in here.”

“What is it?” I asked, curious.

She jimmied around another minute and then finally got hold of it and pulled on it carefully. “It’s a note or something! Wow! Effie, look! It has your name on it.”

“It’s a secret message!” Chica said.

“W
ho’s it from? What does it say, Effie!” Aurora asked.

I didn’t recognize the writing. It was in tiny printing and I had to hold it up very close to read it. It read:

“You absolutely can what?” Nit asked.

I lifted my shoulders. “I don’t know!” I turned it over, looking for more, or maybe a place where someone signed it.

“That’s weird!” Aurora said. “What do you think it means?”

I shook my head. “I really don’t have a clue!”

“It’s a very good clue,” Chica said.

Nit shoved the batteries back in my flashlight and
screwed the bottom on. She clicked the button and the light came right on. “Well, at least it works now!”

I completely missed Cricket’s instructions to us that came next about how to make Deluxe S’mores. I couldn’t stop looking at my note. Who would have put that in my flashlight? Mom? She would have signed it, though. And it wasn’t something Maxey would do. It could have been someone in my cabin, I supposed. My flashlight was on my dresser next to my bed, so anyone could have gotten to it. I kept reading it over and over.
Effie, you absolutely can. Effie, you absolutely can
. Can what? Learn to swim? Get out of swimming? Teach Chica how? Get over altitude sickness? What was it they thought I could do!

I folded it up carefully and put it in my pocket when Cricket started passing out sticks for roasting marshmallows.

“Excuse me, but did these sticks come off the
ground?”
Kayla asked.

“Yes! I picked them all out,” Chica said. “That’s always my job, right, Grandpa?”

“That’s right,” he said. “You always find the best ones.”

Aurora turned toward Kayla and whispered, “Don’t worry, Kayla. I licked yours clean.”

“Shut up, Triboni,” she said.

Phil passed out the marshmallows and we threaded our roasting sticks. I tried to be very careful not to torch my marshmallows, which happened to some of the girls who got too close to the fire.

“Uh-oh! Aurora! Quick! Blow!” I shouted.

“Yee-haw!” she said. “I like mine crispy!”

Once I had mine the perfect golden brown, I hurried over to the table. Not only was there the chocolate and graham crackers, but there was—

“Wow! Peaches! And strawberry slices,” Becca said. “I can have all this stuff,” she explained. I guess she’d been worried that s’mores came with beef slices or something.

“Nutella! Omigod, I love this stuff!” Drew said.

“And if you don’t want to use graham crackers, you can build it with two cookies. That was my idea,” Phil said, looking very proud. But not snotty or anything.

“Good idea!” Nit said.

I almost fell over dead at that. I had never heard Nit compliment her sister. The altitude must have been getting to her, too!

“Here, Chica,” I said. “Get in here.” She was smaller than most of us and was getting crowded out. I squeezed her in next to me at the small table with all the supplies.

“I love s’mores so much, Effie!”

“Do you ever get tired of them since you live at camp?” Aurora asked.

“Nooo,” Chica sighed, popping a piece of chocolate in her mouth. “And I’ve never had Deluxe before!”

Nit and I made ours the exact same, even though we didn’t plan it. We layered a graham cracker, Nutella, a peach slice, and chocolate. We laid our hot marshmallows on top of that and topped it off with the graham cracker lid. I squeezed mine together gently and took a big bite.

It was the most scrumptious mess that has ever entered my mouth. Everyone began moaning with happiness and talking with their mouths full. It’s a good thing that you eat s’mores outside at night, because our fingers and faces were covered with chocolate and marshmallow goo.

We ate until we were stuffed, and nobody cared how many we had. I loved that part the best!

As we all settled back on our sit-upons, Mr. Jimenez played “Buffalo Gals” for us. I’d heard it before, but it sounded a million times better when he played it. He and Chica sang it in English and then taught us the chorus in Spanish.

Then we sang “Weenie Man,” and during the song, if Chica pointed at you, you got to sing the last lines all by yourself—

She picked me twice.

Mr. Jimenez sang “The Yellow Rose of Texas” next, which is one of Mom’s favorites. It gave me a little ache of missing her, but with my best friends squeezed up tight next to me, it was okay.

We were all just beginning to settle down and feel a bit sleepy around the campfire when we heard a terrible screech from the trees behind us. Like one of those women on the Discovery Channel delivering a baby! We nearly jumped out of our skins, grabbing one another.

“What was
that?”
Aurora shouted.

Chica drew in her breath. “Grandpa, it’s the Weeping Widow!”

“I told you guys!” Drew said. “Remember in the cabin this afternoon?”

“Is she real?” Mary Peters asked, her voice quivery.

“She’s a very real legend,” Mr. Jimenez said. “Some believe, some don’t. What you heard just now could have been an animal, or the wind creating a noise.”

“But who is she?” Nit asked.

“The story goes,” Cricket said, “that she lived around
here with her husband and two daughters. Her husband went off to war, and like so many men, he never came back. She was inconsolable. He was her childhood sweetheart.”

“Oh, that’s
terrible!”
Naomi said.

“When she finally got her letter from the army that her husband had been declared dead, people say she took to her bed. She could hardly bring herself to eat, or take care of her little daughters, Meg and Katie. They were only seven and ten at the time, and so it fell upon them to do the household chores.”

Aurora interrupted at that. “I have to do all the household chores and my dad never went off to war.”

I patted her arm in sympathy.

“Shhh!” Phil said. “Let her finish!”

“One day, after it had been raining for weeks, Meg and Katie decided to take all the sheets down to the creek to wash them. They thought it would be faster than doing them one at a time in the basin, like their mother always had. Well, the creek was full from all the rain, and was flowing pretty hard. Little Meg was scrubbing one of the sheets, and it took off in the current. She leapt in to grab it, and lost her footing. The creek began to carry her away!”

We all drew in a big breath.

Oh, no! Meg! I prayed she had her Pollywog badge.

“Her big sister, Katie, jumped in right after her, and both of them were swept away.” Cricket paused and
looked around at all of us. “No one ever saw either of those little girls again!”

“That’s so tragic!” Mary Paul said.

Cricket nodded. “So ever since then, their mother, the Weeping Widow, is said to roam the forests looking for her daughters.”

“We just heard her!” Naomi said. “She sounds so sad!”

“Is it true, Sister?” Kimber asked.

We all turned to look. Sister put her hands up. “Don’t ask me. I’m new to these parts.”

“According to my big sister, there’s more to the story!” Drew said. “She said the Weeping Widow gets confused now and then, and tries to snatch up little girls, thinking they might be her Meg or Katie. And …” She hesitated a second. “If you’re seven or ten, you better be careful!”

“Thank God I turned eleven,” Kayla said, her voice breathless.

“Me too!” Missy said.

“I’m still
ten!”
I shouted.

I
overslept the next morning because I’d been up half the night thinking about poor Meg and Katie. And how there might not even be a Weeping Widow if those girls had learned to swim (or if they’d had a regular washer and dryer)! If I drowned in the lake, my mom would turn into a Weeping Mother someday. Least, I hoped she would! I hated to think she’d just go on regular-like.

Since I couldn’t fall asleep, I did get to help Georgia go to the biffy at 12:22, Missy at 1:48, and Naomi at 3:17. It was like my new part-time job. They were all freaked about going outside in the dark. But I had my new flashlight, which I really liked using, so I didn’t mind. I had decided I was more afraid of not knowing how to swim than of meeting up with Meg and Katie’s poor, heartbroken mom.

I slept right through the Blasted Annoying Bugle that blared through the intercom at six-thirty sharp. I think they should wake kids up with the quiet taps song they play at night, instead of the other way around. Reveille was hard on my nerves.

Aurora came over to my bunk and pulled the skinny covers off me. “Effie! Get
up
! Ms. Marshall will be here in about a half hour for inspection, and you have to sweep the cabin today.”