Campfire Cookies (9 page)

Just as she promised, Paula distributed the mail at lunch each day. At first no one got much, and I didn't get anything. But by the end of the first week of camp, all of us in Flowerpot Cabin had received letters.

Mine was a fat brown envelope that came on Friday. I looked it over while sitting on my bunk after lunch. Emma was there, but the siesta bell hadn't rung yet, and no one else was back.

“Who's it from?” Emma asked.

“The triplets I babysit and their mom, Kendall,” I explained. “Here. You can see if you want.”

Dear Lucy,

Your camp can't possibly be eight weeks long, can it? Did you know there are 1,344 hours in eight weeks? I used the calculator on my phone.

I have hired another girl to come over to wrangle the triplets starting tomorrow. Meanwhile, to preserve the collective sanity, Arlo, Mia, and Levi are watching a lot of SpongeBob.

Anyway, cross your fingers about this other girl. As you know, my darlings can be a handful.

They have drawn some pictures for you, which are enclosed.

Have fun at camp!

Love,

Kendall

P.S. Seventy-two hours down. Only 1,272 to go.

“Wow—I think she really misses you,” Emma said.

I giggled. “I know. And look at the pictures the kids sent.”

The first one showed what looked like an openmouthed brown animal with big teeth. It was standing on its hind legs and leaning over a tiny human stick figure with a yellow blob on his head. The blob might've been hair. A speech bubble like the ones in cartoons said, “Hep!!!!”

“Is that supposed to be Arlo?” Emma asked.

I nodded. “That's the way he draws. And I think the letters are supposed to say, ‘help.' ”

“Oh, I get it,” Emma said. “He wants you to save him from another wolf.”

I studied the picture again. “Or possibly a bear?”

“Either way, he definitely sees you as fierce,” Emma said.

I handed her the next picture. It reminded me of Olivia's flag—only don't ever tell her I said that, okay? The drawing took up the whole page—a giant face with red lips, blue eyes, black lashes, and pink dots for nostrils. From the eyes to the bottom of the page there were lines of little circles in every color.

“Tears?” Emma guessed.

“Mia can be kind of a drama queen,” I said.

The last one was from Levi. Instead of drawing his message, he had written it in red crayon: “Com bak rit now!”

Emma laughed. “Do you miss them, too?”

“Kind of,” I said. “But when I'm busy here, I don't think of them that much.”

“Are you going to write back?”

“Sure,” I said. “But I bet this is the last letter I get from them. When the new babysitter comes, they'll forget all about me.”

Only I turned out to be wrong.

The Fourth of July was the next week, and on the day after that I got another fat envelope. There was no letter from Kendall this time, but there were two drawings that I think were supposed to be fireworks, along with another note from Levi. This one said: “Plis com back rit now!”

I wondered if the added “plis” showed the new babysitter's influence. Maybe she was teaching them good manners.

Before dinner that night, I wrote a reply.

Dear Arlo, Mia, and Levi,

Thank you for the beautiful drawings. I have tacked them up above my bunk bed so I can admire them every day. Levi, I am afraid I can't come back yet because camp isn't over. I am glad you miss me, though, because I miss you, too.

Yesterday was Fourth of July. Buck,
the camp director, does not believe in fireworks because (he says) they spook the cattle. So instead of fireworks we had a barbecue outside. But guess what? Nature decided there were going to be fireworks whether Buck wanted them or not, and she provided a huge storm.

It was really pretty looking across the desert into the sunset and seeing chains of lightning as tall as the sky. The loud cracks scared some kids but not me. In the end, the rain part lasted only a few minutes, but we still had to move the picnic inside.

Boo-hoo.

How do you like the new babysitter? I am sure she is really nice and makes good snacks and plays good games. Even so, please don't forget me.

Tell your mom and dad hello. Remember too much SpongeBob turns tender brains to mush.

Love,

Lucy

Camp sessions are eight weeks long. Every two weeks, you change out activities—like from archery to silk screening, or pottery to jazz dance—but even so the days start to blur together. Our letters home were due every Sunday. If you missed a Sunday, you got demerits, so none of us in Flowerpot Cabin would ever have dared to miss.

What if you were the person who kept us from winning Top Cabin?

How bad would that make you feel?

The first Sunday, I had written to my parents, so on the second one I decided to write to Jenny and Ralph. They have lived with our family and helped us out since before I was even born. Jenny cooks and supervises the housecleaners, the gardeners, and the pool guy (and sometimes my mom and dad, too); Ralph works in the yard and repairs whatever needs repairing.

I told Jenny once that this division of labor of theirs was sexist. (We were doing a social studies unit on sexism at the time.) And Jenny told me she and Ralph were only doing what they were best at. She said biscuits baked by Ralph would poison us, and if she fixed the AC, it would blow up.

“I know there are men who cook and women who maintain machinery,” Jenny explained. “But those men and women don't happen to be Ralph and me.”

The next day I raised my hand and explained this to my teacher, Mr. Driscoll, and he said Jenny had made an excellent point. Then he said, “Thank you for your input, Olivia. And now you may sit down.”

I wrote my letter to Jenny and Ralph while lying on my bunk during siesta. I propped the paper against a book on my knees. I used a purple gel pen. I was surprised how hard it was to form letters one by one instead of typing them on a keyboard. It seemed like I could hardly remember how! But I wrote slowly and carefully, and in the end, this is the letter I wrote:

Dear Jenny and Ralph,

Camp is super fun!!!

It is super hot here!!!

I am super fine!!! (LOL)

My horse's name is Shorty. He is not so super. He is lazy. He is white and—guess what—SHORT!! In watercolor activity on Friday, I painted a picture of Shorty. It doesn't look that much like him because how is a person supposed to paint white on a white piece of watercolor paper???

I made him brown instead. I told him this
the next afternoon while I currycombed him, and he said it was okay, he forgave me. At least I think that is what he said. Sometimes it is hard to understand four-legged language. LOL.

Probably you are wondering about the other members of the Secret Cookie Club (shhhh!) so I will tell you. Grace's birthday was last week. Do you remember that last year we made cookies to celebrate?

That is not what we did this year. This year her parents sent a cake all the way from Massachusetts! It was packed in dry ice and puffy silver foil. It was pink with roses and a little smooshed, but you know what? That didn't hurt the taste one bit! In the mess hall, everybody sang, and Grace blushed, which was so, so, so cute!

Besides normal camp activities, the Cookie Club membership has its own special project to mend our counselor's life, which was almost
annihilated by her evil and clueless boyfriend—EX-boyfriend—Travis.

How we are going to mend her life is to ENGINEER A ROMANCE between her and the hunkiest counselor at Moonlight Ranch, Lance. I am sticking on some heart stickers sent by Mom to show you how dreamy he is:

So far we have not found time to make a detailed plan because we are SO BUSY simply being at camp and participating in so many healthy activities!

But we will find time!

And when I see you at the end of summer , I will tell you how it all turned out.

Don't worry. We won't do anything very bad. Also, don't tell my parents.

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of love,

Your very, very, very favorite, one and only OLIVIA

P.S. How are you? Is it super hot there? Are my parents fine? If you run into them, please tell them hello from their only daughter.

Can I be brutally honest here?

No one could possibly adore or admire the other members of the Secret Cookie Club any more than I do . . . but without
my
verve,
my
energy, and
my
compelling personality, our counselor Hannah's life might have remained
forever in the toilet!

As it was, the membership came up with a complex and comprehensive Plan to Fix Hannah's Life, which
we then named PFHL, which is pronounced “piffle.”

In my estimation, carrying out PFHL should have taken no more than two weeks max. The way it turned out, though, it actually required most of the summer!

The first challenge was finding a hole in our crazy-supervised camp schedule when we could talk over our ideas and agree on what Mr. Driscoll would call our “implementation timeline.” It didn't help that Hannah, sad and mopey over the loss of that rat Travis, spent way too much time frowning in Flowerpot Cabin and way too much time sticking like glue to the four of us. Little did she know her dedication to her campers was working against her happiness!

I thought of trying to explain this to her, but in the end I rejected the idea. Officially, the membership didn't know a person called Travis had ever existed. She had never told us about him, and she never found out we had reconstructed his letter. Also, it was possible she wouldn't like the idea of four eleven-year-olds running her love life. As our housekeeper, Jenny, likes to say, people don't always know what's good for them.

It wasn't till the third Thursday of camp that an announcement signaled we were about to get the time for planning. We were at lunch, and Buck rose from his table to say he was calling a counselors' meeting for that night. No emergency, just paperwork issues. The meeting time was nine forty-five, fifteen minutes after lights-out.

That day I was eating with Haley from Purple Sage and McKenzie, from Manzanita, a twelve-to-thirteen cabin. We are all in the same swim group. As soon as Buck finished speaking, I looked everywhere in the mess hall and one by one found Emma, Grace, and Lucy—each one at a different table, each one smiling, each one with the same thought as me:
Tonight!

•  •  •

“All right, girls. I'm going,” Hannah said on her way out the door. “Don't stay up too late whispering, okay? I hope I'm back soon.”

“Good night, Hannah!” we chorused.

When the door clicked shut, I counted to ten. “I hope it's not too soon,” I said.

“But just in case, we should talk fast,” Grace said. “Who is in charge of this meeting, anyway? You, Emma?”

“Not me,” Emma said.