Pranked (3 page)

Finally the bell rang for dinner. Without that bell, we'd never know what to do. I was so glad I knew where our table was. Counselors went back and forth to the kitchen with dishes of food and pitchers of this drink everyone called “bug juice.”

The last girl from Side B was here—Brittany. She smiled all the time. That was a good sign, so I put her on the potential friend list. Was anyone else doing this too—looking around, checking out possible friends? I felt kind of pathetic. Nobody else looked lonely. But then, I probably didn't either. Little did they know.

Now our table had only one empty chair. Tis passed around plates of chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Rachel tried to get everybody talking. She was telling us about the hikes we could go on.

“Thursday we're going to Angelhair Falls. And there's rock climbing and . . .” All of a sudden, the dining hall's screen doors smacked against the wall so hard that everyone stopped and stared. In the doorway a girl stood looking around at everyone. She was kind of smiling, like she was glad she'd gotten everyone's attention. All I could think was, if that'd happened to me, I'd be having one of the most embarrassing moments of my life right now. But she wasn't the least bit embarrassed.

“Reb! Reb! Over here!” screamed Jennifer.

Wow. So this was Rebecca Callison, the missing Evil Twin.

At first I had the impression that everyone in the dining hall stopped and called out in perfect unison, “Reb is here!” like in those musicals, when everyone is acting semi-normal, and then all of a sudden they start singing a song together. I know it wasn't quite like that, but it did kind of seem that way.

Several people called out her name, and it took her a while to get to our table, because girls kept stopping her and hugging her. Fan club members, obviously. I chewed a bite of green beans, but I couldn't stop watching her move across the dining hall.

I thought Jennifer was going to jump up on the table and start tap dancing, she was so relieved. “Well, it's about time!” She and Reb shrieked and hugged. Were they old war buddies who'd saved each other's lives or something? Finally Reb sat down at our table, all flushed and excited.

Right away I could tell she was a tomboy. She had on a “Got Game?” T-shirt, and her blond hair was really short, like she couldn't be bothered by a brush. She was only a little taller than me, and she was just as flat-chested. She ran her hands through her hair, then looked at all of us and smiled.

“That was quite an entrance, Rebecca,” said Rachel, kind of teasing.

“Glad you liked it, Hoffstedder,” she answered in the exact same tone. “And if you call me Rebecca again, I'll be forced to flush your hiking boots down the toilet. With you in them. Hey, Tis. Are you our counselor too?”

“Rachel's your counselor, thank God. I'm on Side B. I came this close to drowning myself in the lake”—Tis held up her fingers to show how close—“when I found out the Evil Twins were in the same cabin with me.”

“Ah, that's so sweet!” said Reb. “Are we your worst nightmare?”

Rachel and Tis both laughed. “Absolutely.”

Tis gave Reb her plate, and Rachel introduced her to all the new campers. She seemed friendly. She asked us all where we were from. It was weird. Rachel had kind of been in charge of the conversation before, but now Reb took over that spot, because she was the one asking everyone questions. She talked to everyone at the table. Well, except Melissa. But then Melissa wasn't exactly the chatty type.

Reb looked right at me and said, “You're on Side A with us? Cool.” I felt a rush of warmth at the compliment.

“I figured I'd be the last one in the cabin to get here. You better have saved me a good bunk,” she said to Jennifer.

“Yes, Your Highness. You know I did.”

After dinner it was just after sunset, and everything was all shadowy and dim, but I watched Reb walking along with her elbow propped on Jennifer's shoulder. Girls were still coming up to her to say hi. She was laughing and talking, and I couldn't stop watching her. Now that I saw her, I got it. The fan club, all the people coming by—it all made sense. There was just something about her—like a magnet. People watched her and followed her and listened to everything she said. It was like we were all waiting for her to show us what to do.

When the other girls walked away, I heard her say to Jennifer, “Oh my God, this is the worst. I can't believe
she's
in our cabin!” Then they started whispering, so I couldn't hear anything else.

My heart pounded. Did she mean me? Did I have bad breath, body odor, a booger on the end of my nose?

Wait a second. She'd just met me. She couldn't mean me. But then who? I had a feeling she probably meant Melissa. But why? I looked around for Melissa, but I didn't see her in the crowd. I'd been too busy watching Reb and Jennifer.

After dinner we went to evening program and played a bunch of “get acquainted” games in the lodge, and then it was time for bed. Everyone crowded into Solitary to brush their teeth and go to the bathroom. A lot of girls were already in pajama pants and T-shirts. Camp seemed like it was going to be one long sleepover.

Back in the cabin, Jennifer groaned about climbing up to the top bunk. “I hope I don't get on your nerves too bad, climbing up all the time,” she said to me.

“Don't worry about it,” I told her. I was just glad I got to keep my bottom bunk.

Reb picked up Rachel's clipboard. “Do any of you sleepwalk, snore, wet the bed, or have night terrors? Let me know so I can stuff your mouths with socks, strap you down, and put rubber sheets on your mattress.” She stood there looking serious until Rachel walked up behind her and snatched the clipboard away.

“Melissa, any issues we should know about?” asked Reb with her arms crossed. She sounded like a teacher getting onto a student about something.

Melissa let out a nervous little laugh. She looked even paler than usual.

“Get in bed, sweet pea,” said Rachel.

Reb just ignored her. “Kelly, I want to formally welcome you to Camp Pine Haven. Let me know if I can do anything to make your stay more pleasant. Camp is truly a swell learning experience for us all.”

I couldn't help smiling. “Thanks.” I knew she was just showing off, but I was glad she welcomed me. And she remembered my name.

Rachel picked up Reb's pillow off her newly made bed and smacked her with it. “I'm having a night terror. I need to stuff a sock in Reb's mouth so it'll stop.”

“Ouch! Camper abuse! Tisdale, help me! Rachel's killing me over here!”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Reb, give me a break. It's only the first night.”

Outside someone yelled, “Lights out!” so Rachel turned off the lights.

What a long day. Had it been only this morning when my parents dropped me off? I turned my face into my pillow, and my sheets still smelled like home. All of a sudden that walnut popped back into my throat. Last night my cat, Cheshire, had slept at the foot of my bed like he always did. Now it felt weird to move my feet around without feeling his warm weight.

Cheshire was probably sleeping in my empty bed right now. And here I was, in this strange bed, hundreds of miles from home, surrounded by two counselors and seven strange girls—two of them potentially evil.

I'd never felt so lonely in my whole life.

“Which activity do you want to go to?” I asked Melissa.

“I don't care. Which activity would
you
like to go to?”

I looked at the list of choices on the paper stapled to the wall by the cabin door. “Well, I could do tennis or canoeing. I wouldn't mind crafts, either. Do you have a preference?”

“Not really. Why don't you pick?” said Melissa.

“How about canoeing?” I asked.

“Well, okay. But I'm not very good at it.”

“Then would you rather play tennis or go to crafts?”

“No. Canoeing's fine. Tennis is fine. Or crafts. I really don't care.”

I nodded, trying hard not to grab Melissa around the neck and choke her. Melissa was nice—actually too nice. I just wanted her to grow a backbone and pick an activity for a change. But she always let me choose.

Everyone in our cabin had turned out to be okay. Rachel tried really hard to make sure we were all getting used to camp. “Everyone having a good time?” she kept asking. But Tis was hardly ever in our cabin. She mostly hung out with all the other CAs.

Molly and Jordan were best friends. Molly, the one who looked like a fire hydrant, was outgoing and friendly. On the second day she'd held up three books and said, “I've got all these to read this summer. I can't wait!” The weird thing was, they were all about the Titanic, which she was totally obsessed with. Jordan, the pretty one, always seemed stressed about something. She worried about being able to do a jump on her horse this summer.

Erin was serious. She wasn't unfriendly; she just seemed older than the rest of us, like she'd seen and done all this before. Brittany, who was always all smiles, had immediately made friends with a lot of people, even from other cabins.

Then there were the Evil Twins. Every chance I got, I watched them. I still hadn't figured out where their nickname came from. But if anything, they seemed more fun-loving than evil. They were always joking around. I'd thought they were going to be snobs, but they weren't like that at all.

When we had to go to activities for the first time, I watched to see where everyone was going. I wanted to follow Reb and Jennifer, but I lost them in the crowd on the first morning. Melissa was following me and asked if I wanted to go to riflery. Since then we'd kind of been hanging out. It was better than being alone.

On the way to the lake Melissa and I didn't say much. I tried to make conversation at first, but after a while, I got tired of doing all the work. It was a relief to get to the lake and have something to do. Michelle Burns, one of the canoeing counselors, demonstrated a few strokes to all of us standing around the lake edge, and then she let us get into the canoes and try them out. Melissa and I paddled around, but we kept going in circles.

“Use the J stroke!” yelled Michelle. She'd told us that stroke would help us go straight, and the girl in the stern was supposed to do it. That was Melissa.

“I don't think I'm doing this right,” she said. Obviously not. I watched a couple of other girls, Chris and Maggie, moving straight as an arrow across the lake. They smiled as they passed us.

“Here, like this.” I showed Melissa. “Remember how Michelle said to turn the paddle so it's like you're writing a
J
in the water?”

“Okay.”

But she still couldn't get it right.

“Maybe we should switch places,” I suggested.

“Okay. If you think so.” Melissa stood up, but that just made the canoe wobble, which made her grab the sides, which made her drop her paddle in the water. She sat down really quickly and leaned over the side to grab her paddle, but that made the canoe tilt over, and she came very close to falling headfirst into the lake.

“Hang on a second. I think I can reach it.” With my paddle, I managed to steer us over to where her paddle was floating, and I leaned out and grabbed it. “Here ya go.”

“Thanks. I'm sorry I'm so much trouble.”

“Don't worry about it.”

We spent the rest of the morning spinning around in circles. We almost ran over a couple of swimmers in the middle of a class. I made a mental note to get in the stern next time. Melissa kept apologizing, and I kept telling her it was okay.

I was so glad when morning activities ended. Walking back to the cabin, we ran into Reb and Jennifer leaving the tennis courts. As soon as I saw them, I wished we'd gone to tennis.

“Hi, guys.”

“Hi, Kelly,” said Jennifer.

“What's up, Kel?” asked Reb. So far they'd both been friendly to me, but they had a way of never acknowledging Melissa's existence. I could tell they didn't like her, but I wasn't sure why. I kind of wished they hadn't seen me with her.