Tug-of-War (19 page)

If only I'd taken the pillowcase down to the lodge on Sunday evening. I would've gotten “further instructions” about where to find Melvin, and then this all would have been over.

If I'd done that Sunday night, then I wouldn't even be considering what I was about to do with this laundry bag.

But no. I'd had to drag it out for three days.

“Chris, just let me take the ransom items to the lodge for you,” Betsy had begged me Sunday night after supper. Even then, I couldn't make myself laugh at the joke. I was still so mad about everything. And so embarrassed about the way I'd acted.

“Just stay out of this, Betsy,” I'd warned her. “It's between Devon and me.”

I never should've accused Devon of being behind all the pranks. Not without any real proof. Everyone else seemed to think it was Boo, but why would Boo play such a complicated prank on me? It didn't make sense.

But that was just the kind of thing Devon would think of, something really elaborate. Maybe I didn't have any actual proof, but it had to be Devon. It just had to be.

And now she was mad because I refused to go along with it. Yesterday she'd confronted me. “I can't believe how immature you're being. If you apologize for that false accusation you made, I
might
forgive you.” Maggie stood beside her, not saying anything.

“Why don't you just give me my bear back? The joke's over,” I told her.

Devon walked away without answering. If she really
was behind the bearnapping, I was positive she'd told Maggie by now.

That still made me mad every time I thought about it. Now they were both in on it together. Why would my friends be so mean about this and refuse to give me my bear back? They knew how mad I was. I felt like they were both punishing me for being a bad sport.

And yeah, okay—I was a bad sport. I wished more than anything I'd gone along with the joke on Sunday. But I hadn't.

So now I'd figured out a way to end this, and I was going to have the last laugh.

I glanced at Wayward's clock on the shelf by her bed. It was a little past ten. Earlier this morning I'd left a note on Devon's bed:

I'm sick and tired of this stupid prank. I'm leaving the pillowcase on the back porch of Middler Lodge at 11:00 today. There better be “further instructions” waiting so I can get my bear back.

Devon had found the note after breakfast. “I do not have your bear, Chris,” she insisted, emphasizing each word.

“Whatever,” I answered, trying to sound as calm and rational as she always did.

“Attention, everyone,” Devon announced loudly to the whole cabin. “Chris, for whatever reason, suddenly decided this morning to finish what we started Sunday night. The time is eleven a.m., same location.”

“What's going on?” asked Gloria suspiciously.

“Nothing, everything's fine,” Betsy assured her.

I had plenty of time to carry out my plan. I was going to leave the ransom demands all right, but I was also going to play a prank of my own.

They have this coming to them,
I told myself.

I took the bag over to Devon's black trunk and opened it first. All of her clothes were folded neatly inside. I scooped up an armful of stuff and shoved it into the laundry bag. I was so nervous my hands were shaking, and I kept dropping her clothes on the floor, but I worked quickly.

It took only a few minutes before Devon's trunk was completely empty and all her clothes were jammed into the laundry bag. I punched her clothes down inside it with my fists to make room for the next load.

I had to admit, I did feel a little guilty about this part. I was mostly mad at Devon, but Maggie
had
to be
Devon's partner by now. I was almost positive about that. And neither one of them had talked to me for the past two days.

So I moved over to Maggie's trunk and opened it up. I had to laugh, because hers was the opposite of Devon's. Nothing was folded; all her clothes were a wrinkled, unorganized mess. I grabbed a couple of armfuls of her clothes and packed them in on top of Devon's.

Something tapped against the window screen, and I jumped. I looked up and inspected the screen. A bug had crashed into it, and now it was banging its wings frantically to get loose from the mesh of the screen. I went back to work. Pretty soon I'd totally emptied out Maggie's trunk too, so I closed the lid and pushed the laundry bag out of the way.

I let out a slow breath. Now came the hardest part: hiding the evidence of my crime. I went to the door and took a quick look around. The coast was clear.

I grabbed the laundry bag and hoisted it over my shoulder. It wasn't as heavy as I thought it was going to be, but it was awfully bulky and kind of hard to carry. I walked out the door, heading down Middler Line.

If I saw anyone, I'd act like nothing was up; I'd just keep walking. If anyone asked me what I was doing,
I'd say I was taking our bag full of clean laundry to the cabin. Hopefully, no one would notice I was walking
away
from the cabin instead of
toward
it.

But luckily, I didn't see anyone. I walked all the way to the end of Middler Line and then veered off the path into the thick growth of trees and brush nearby. It was so overgrown here that I stumbled as I pushed through the tangle of vines and brush. Tree branches hit my face and arms as I lumbered along, dragging the canvas bag behind me. Dead leaves crunched underneath the weight of the bag.

I stopped and looked around. This seemed like a good place to leave it, here between these two trees. I piled some leaves and fallen branches around it so the whiteness of the bag wouldn't be visible from the path. Then I crashed back through the brush. Once I was out of the woods, I noticed I had a long scratch on my upper arm, but it wasn't bleeding.

I heard the sound of a screen door and glanced quickly toward Cabin One. I waited for a few seconds to see if anyone was coming out the door. When no one did, I took a deep breath. So far, so good. Looking back through the trees, I couldn't see any sign of the bag.

Now it was time for the next step. I walked back to our cabin and got the pillowcase of ransom demands
from my duffel. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was now 10:35. Plenty of time to drop this stuff off at the lodge.

When I got to the back porch, I wasn't quite sure what to do. I sort of expected to see Melvin sitting on one of the wooden benches or something, but there wasn't any sign of him. I stood around for a few seconds. Was I just supposed to leave the stuff and walk away?

I hated this! Why did Devon have to make my prank so complicated? I never would've gotten so mad if I'd had a simple prank played on me like everyone else.

But it didn't matter. She and Maggie had a little surprise of their own coming to them. If they didn't give Melvin back now that I'd gone through with the ransom demands, then they definitely deserved what I'd just done to them.

And if they did give me Melvin back . . . well, I'd tell them where their clothes were. Their missing clothes served as my insurance policy.

I dropped the pillowcase onto the wooden boards of the porch and sat down on a bench. Should I wait around?

Then I noticed a folded piece of paper stuck under the foot of the bench next to me. I pulled it out and read the printed message.

LEAVE THE ITEMS UNDER THIS BENCH. MELVIN IS WAITING FOR YOU ON THE ANGELHAIR FALLS TRAIL.

I shoved the pillowcase under the bench and took off at a run. The trail to Angelhair Falls started behind the camp office. I jogged the whole way. He'd better be in good shape, not all dirty or anything. Had he been left there since Saturday night? Nobody went on that trail unless there was a group taking a hike to the falls.

I passed the office and turned onto the path that led through the woods. Where was he exactly? In a tree? In the brush somewhere? I saw a flash of blue and ran faster. It was a person!

“Hey!” I yelled.

Blond hair, blue shirt, crashing through the trees off the side of the path. Trying to get away!

“Hey, stop! I can see you!”

She stopped running and turned slowly. A familiar face.

“Betsy?”

Betsy's face was flaming red. She clutched a pants-less Melvin against her chest.

“Uh . . . hi, Chris.” She stared at me, and I saw her swallow hard. “You're—you're early.”

“You're the bearnapper?”

Betsy took three steps backward and almost tripped over a fallen log. “I'm so sorry! It was just a joke. I didn't know what to do. You were so upset, and I didn't know all this was going to happen! I didn't mean to make you mad!”

I stared at her with my mouth hanging open.
Betsy.
I couldn't believe it.

“You wrote the ransom note?” I asked her.

Betsy's head bobbed up and down. Her eyes had a look of sheer terror in them. “I wrote the ransom note. I sewed the socks to Maggie's jersey, I constructed Devon's body, I switched out Wayward's hats. I even played a prank on myself.” She took a few more steps backward. “I'm sorry. Don't be mad at me, okay?”

She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “You swear that Devon didn't have anything to do with this?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Devon didn't have a
thing
to do with this. Nothing! It was all me. All by myself.”

I sat down on the path and clutched my head in my hands. Then I couldn't help it. I started to giggle. “You're the secret prankster!” I looked up at her. “How'd you pull all of that off?”

Betsy shrugged, and her shoulders relaxed a little. “Are you mad at me?”

“No. Just tell me how you did it!” The more I thought about how she'd fooled us all, the funnier it seemed. I covered my mouth because I couldn't stop giggling about it.

Betsy let out a slow breath. She seemed relieved that I wasn't going to blow up at her. For whatever reason, instead of making me mad, it was totally cracking me up to think that Betsy had been behind all this and we'd never once suspected her.

Betsy stepped through the brush so that she was on the path with me and handed me Melvin. He looked absolutely fine, except for the fact that he had no pants on.

“It just . . . happened. I never set out to play a prank on everyone in the cabin. One thing led to another.”

Once Betsy got over her fear that she was going to be the latest target of my temper, she started talking. And boy, did she have a story to tell.

She told me that from the very first day, she'd felt left out because she was new and Maggie, Devon, and I already knew each other. “Everybody had a nickname but me,” she complained.

On the day she'd played the first prank on Devon, it was raining, and she'd been all by herself in the cabin. She'd been thinking about how much Devon hated camp, so she'd written out “Devon's Top Ten Reasons for Hating Camp” to entertain herself.

“Then I thought I'd leave it on Devon's bed. But that seemed pretty boring by itself.” So she'd gotten the idea for Devon's body from a skit that some people had done at her school with pillowcase faces.

“I was a little worried that Devon would get mad, but she didn't. And then everybody thought it was really funny, and nobody ever suspected me.”

She hadn't planned on getting Maggie next, but she'd happened to be the first one to find the clean laundry that day, and when she saw Maggie's socks stuck to someone's shirt from the static cling, she'd come up with the idea for that prank.

“I made those goofy lips at crafts one day, and I was playing around with them when I noticed my retainer case on the shelf and . . . I don't know why I thought of it. I figured nobody would ever play a prank on me, so I played one on myself.”

I couldn't stop laughing. “And by then, it was a huge mystery!”

“I know! And everybody thought the pranks were funny. Till the bear thing.”

I sighed. “No, that was funny too. I just didn't have a sense of humor about it. And I was absolutely convinced it was Devon.”

“I'm really sorry, Chris. I didn't mean to make you mad, and then . . . I didn't know what to do! Give the bear back? Leave another note? Confess?”

Betsy paced back and forth on the path in front of me, running her hands through her short hair. “I was going to give you Melvin back on Saturday night after you got mad, but I was scared to death you'd catch me returning him. It got out of control!”

“Oh my God!” I looked up at Betsy. “I just remembered! Betsy, you've got to help me! Something else is about to get out of control!”

“What? What's wrong?” Betsy asked me when I jumped to my feet and took off running down the path.

“I did something—something mean to Devon and Maggie because I thought they were the ones who'd kidnapped Melvin,” I told her as she raced to catch up with me. “I emptied everything from both their trunks into the laundry bag earlier and hid it in the woods!”