Campfire Cookies (16 page)

I wanted like anything to stay in bed. I don't even believe in romance! Besides, I had done my share when I painted the cards
and
cast the love spell.

But the membership is the closest thing I have to sisters. Different as Grace, Olivia, and Emma are from me, I love them all.

So when Emma woke me that night, clattering and
bumping her way to the door, I knew I had to follow her.

I didn't know where my shoes were, but that didn't matter. My shower shoes were next to my bed. I slid them on, crossed the room, and slipped out the door.

The night of the cookie delivery, I slept badly.

There was the matter of the herd of rabbits stumbling through our cabin right after Grace's watch buzzed.

And then I started to worry that someone somewhere might need my help.

Was it Grace?

But I couldn't help her. I wasn't allowed. Emma didn't
want us all galumphing around Boys Camp carrying cookies. This much I knew for sure.

With the rabbits gone, it was quiet, and I rolled over only to hear a fearsome voice cry out: “Barbecue Princesses stay out of Boys Camp! No Barbecue Princess allowed!”

I knew that voice: Brianna Silverbug! How did she get in our cabin? Was she going to sabotage PFHL?

My eyelids snapped open. I would vanquish Brianna myself!

But all I saw around me was the dark. No Brianna at all.

It must have been a nightmare, I thought, and then I yawned.

Is Grace doing okay?
I wondered.
How come it's quieter than usual in here?

I rolled over again after that and must have fallen asleep.

Cookie delivery happened on a Monday. The Friday before I had gone to the camp office and asked Paula for a Moonlight Ranch registration packet. I said I needed it to give to a friend who might be interested in Moonlight Ranch. Paula wanted to know what friend. I thought fast, and I told her Shoshi Rubinstein and gave her Shoshi's address, too.

But this was a fib. The real reason I wanted the
packet was for the map of Boys Camp that's inside. I had never been to Boys Camp. No girl ever had. But by today, Monday, I had memorized the map and knew that Silver Spur Cabin was on the swimming-pool side.

I am a pretty fast runner and, based on my sprint times in PE class, I had estimated I could make it to Silver Spur Cabin in less than four minutes. If the sentries were after me, it would be faster than that.

I could never get over how many stars there were in the Arizona sky, or how brightly they shone. Until last summer, I had known about the Milky Way only from my science book and the candy bar. Now I could see it in real life, a white foggy streak against the black ink of the sky.

The moon had already set, but the skeleton shapes of the cottonwood trees stood out against the glowing stars. Along with the bats darting overhead and the hooting owls, they created a spooky atmosphere that seemed to stamp itself on my brain.

And all of it was amplified by the strangeness of what I was doing—breaking a rule! Anything seemed
possible. Anything seemed likely. Once I was done delivering cookies, I might grow wings and fly over the Grand Canyon.

There is no fence around Boys Camp, but there is a wooden gate blocking the path before you get there. It's not high enough to keep anybody out. It's more like a warning label: Beware of boys!

In one move, I vaulted the gate, which creaked under my weight. Against the rhythmic, regular night sounds of birds and insects, the noise was jarring. Would it attract sentries?

Better move faster!

The path through Boys Camp was smooth and unobstructed. From the gate to Silver Spur Cabin should have been a thirty-second dash, but I made it in twenty-five.

I saw no sign of sentries, but if they were as sneaky as everybody said, that didn't prove anything. I hoped Olivia's blue pajamas, baggy and long as they were, were doing their job as invisibility cloak. If they were, then nobody could catch me—right?

That's what I told myself.

The interiors of the cabins at Moonlight Ranch are all laid out the same way: bathroom on one side, front door on the other, one window on the far side of the wall with the door, the other on the perpendicular wall. The second window was behind the desk, which was going to create a landing platform for yours truly.

Each cabin had a nameplate on the side, the letters burned into the wood like the brand on a steer. As I passed, I read them: Y
UCCA
 . . . H
OBBLE
S
TRAP
 . . . C
ONCHO
 . . . B
LAZING
S
TAR
 . . . and finally S
ILVER
S
PUR
.

Counselors lock the doors overnight, but they leave the windows open and the screens down for ventilation. Emma, the boss, had made me practice climbing in through the window of Flowerpot Cabin. I hoped that practice would pay off now.

I set the plate of cookies on the ground, pressed the screen gently with my left hand, slipped my right palm under the bottom edge, and pushed up.

Yes! Flowerpot Cabin's screen was sticky, but this
one slid easily. Soon it was open wide enough that I could pick up the plate and shove it through. Then I hopped up to shift my center of gravity over the sill and pushed my head and shoulders inside.

This was it, the last moment for changing my mind.

Why not simply leave the cookies on the desk and run? If I did, I'd be back in my own bed in four minutes and safe from the sentries forever.

But that wouldn't be PFHL.

According to PFHL, the cookies had to be placed on Lance's pillow to ensure maximum effectiveness both of flour power and Lucy's spell.

So I wriggled forward and pulled up my knees till I was crouching on top of the desk, then—silently—I twisted around and put my feet on the floor.

I was in Silver Spur Cabin! I had done it!

And, no offense to the boys of the world, but the whole place smelled like sweaty socks.

Now my job was to drop off the cookies and
go
, but can you blame me for stopping five seconds to enjoy my triumph?

I had done the baddest thing a camper at Moonlight Ranch could do, sneaked into an opposite-sex cabin in the middle of the night! I was like Eve biting the apple, the patriots throwing tea into Boston harbor, Rosa Parks sitting at the front of the bus.

Grace Xi, rebel at heart, sticking it to the man.

I pursed my lips to keep from giggling.

There was a faint patch of starlight shining on the desk behind me, but otherwise Silver Spur Cabin was so dark I might as well have been blind. Even so, my job should have been easy. I just had to leave the cookies and . . .

Wait a minute.

How did I know for sure which bunk was Lance's?

All that planning. All that thinking. All that spy work . . . and we, the membership, had never asked ourselves that question!

As I stood there paralyzed, my natural-born cowardice returned.

It didn't help that whoever was in the top bunk to my right picked that moment to roll over and mutter “rrm-rrm-rrmumble.”

My heart stopped. What if whoever it was really, truly woke up? What if he had to go to the bathroom? The time for thinking was past. I had to get moving
now.

Feeling my way, I sidestepped to the head of the only single bed, which I knew was to my right. Hannah slept in the single bed in Flowerpot Cabin. So that meant Lance also slept in the single—didn't it? It made sense, but we should have found out for sure. Anyway, the single bed was obviously occupied. I could hear the sleeper breathing. Without even exhaling, I set the plate of cookies down where I estimated the pillow had to be.

Phew!
I must have estimated right. If I had put the plate on someone's face, I'd definitely know it by now.

But—uh-oh!—just as I let go of the plate, the murmle-mumble boy in the top bunk made another noise.

And then . . .
OMG!

He sat up!

I couldn't see him in the dark, but I heard sheets rustle and suddenly felt like I was being watched. In
three fast moves I hopped up onto the desk, out the window, and put my feet down on the walkway.

There was only one problem, a problem I didn't notice till I was ten steps down the path.

My right foot was bare! In my hurry, I had left a shoe behind.

At first I felt sure the intruder who came through the window was a psycho intent on murdering us all.

But then I smelled the cookies.

Oatmeal cookies.

Whoever the intruder was, she lived in Flowerpot Cabin. So, yeah, she probably was a psycho, but a murderer? Unlikely.

I was going to say, “What are you doing?” Or, “Hi;
which one are you?” Or, “You know you will get in so much trouble if you are caught in Boys Camp, right?”

But then I realized that my speaking up would wake someone, and then she' d be sent home for sure.

So I didn't say anything. I just listened to her moving around in the dark. Best I could tell, she was over by Jamil's bed. She didn't seem to be anywhere near me.

Enough time passed that finally I couldn't stand the suspense, and I sat up, hoping to see her face.

No luck. But she must have seen me move, because she gasped and then—
bump-bump-bump—
I guess she stumbled or something.

Was it Emma?

But no. As the intruder departed, the star glow caught her hair, which was straight and black.

Grace.

That was when it came to me what she had been doing in Silver Spur Cabin—the same errand she had asked me to do!

I felt a terrible pang. To make a simple cookie delivery, Grace had risked being caught by the sentries in
Boys Camp. That's how important it had been to her!

If I had just said yes and done her a favor—if I had trusted her—she wouldn't have had to take the risk.

Staring after her, I saw that the screen was still open, so I dropped off my bunk to close it. Crossing the floor, I kicked something—Grace's shoe!

In her rush to get back out the window, she must have kicked it off.

Oh, great. Because of me, Grace was not only risking the sentries to get back to Girls Camp, but she was doing it with one foot bare!

I had to do something. I had let Grace down before, and I didn't want to do it again.