Nightmare (2 page)

Panic grew like a tight knot, threatening to close Emily’s throat. She’d wanted nothing to do with this educational center. She didn’t know why. She’d only
realized that she had to fight whatever her parents were planning. She’d interrupted her mother: “Nobody asked me if I wanted to go to this camp. Don’t I have a choice?”

Emily’s father had spoken firmly, probably the way he spoke to reluctant patients who balked at getting their shots, Emily guessed. “No,” he said. “You don’t.”

“But, Dad, I don’t need—”

“Emily,” he had countered, “you
do
need.”

“I can’t.”

“You will. If your mother and your guidance counselor think it’s for the best, then it’s for the best. There will be no more discussion about it.”

Emily knew it would be futile to try to change her parents’ minds, so she hadn’t.

The car swung around a curve, and Emily’s memories were broken by her mother’s sudden exclamation of surprise. “This doesn’t look like any summer camp I’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Wood said. “It’s beautiful. The pictures in the brochure don’t do it justice.”

“You told me the property once operated as a resort.” Dr. Wood said. Then he mumbled under his breath, “It costs more than any resort,” but Emily heard.

She glanced out at the low, gleaming two-story stucco buildings that formed a parenthesis around a wide expanse of neatly trimmed lawn. White gravel pathways, bordered with orange and yellow splashes of summer marigolds, connected the buildings. Through the open gap beyond the cozy circle lay the deep blue waters of a lake. The view was attractive. But Emily shuddered, and again she was puzzled by her fear.

Dr. Wood parked in an empty slot near the main entrance of the building on the left. “You made sure
your suitcases had yellow tags on them, didn’t you, Emily?”

“Yes, Dad,” she answered. Why did he have to ask?

“Okay,” he said. “Instructions were to stack all luggage behind the car where it could be picked up and delivered to the rooms.” He climbed out of the car, carefully shutting the door behind him.

Before she left the car, Mrs. Wood reached back and gripped Emily’s arm. “Darling,” she said, “don’t look so desperate. Everything here is going to be wonderful.”

As Emily tried to relax and make her expression blank so that her mother couldn’t read it, Mrs. Wood continued. “We’ll be right here this afternoon for parent orientation. Right here with you, Emily.” Her voice went up a cheerful notch. “And by the time we leave you won’t even miss us because you’ll have made some lovely new friends.”

“And we can all go out and play,” Emily muttered, even though she knew she wasn’t being fair to her mother, who was only trying to help.

Sighing, Mrs. Wood left the car and Emily—knees wobbling—managed to climb out.
What is the matter with me?
she wondered as she leaned against the open door.
Why should I be so afraid?

Trying to steady herself, Emily stood quietly, eyes closed, breathing in the sharp, acrid scents of sunbaked pine, marigolds, and newly cut grass.

“Come, Emily,” she heard her father say. “The office is this way.”

They entered a large, bright room that must have once been the lobby of the former hotel. It still looked like a hotel lobby, with groupings of sofas, tables, and high-backed chairs, and Emily wondered if the hotel furniture had been part of the sale.

The lobby was filled with teenagers and adults. The parents looked hopeful and somewhat intimidated, and they hovered near their offspring like hens with their chicks. The staff members were dressed in matching red polo shirts and khaki slacks or skirts, all so obviously brand new they looked like costumes in a play instead of leisure clothes. Smiles beaming and right hands extended, they greeted Emily and Dr. and Mrs. Wood, pulling them into the crowd.

After she had murmured countless hellos to faces she’d never seen before, and heard names immediately forgotten, Emily moved back against a wall. Leaving her parents to chat with some of the staff, she quietly studied the people in the room who were her own age.

They mostly looked like the kids in her high school in Houston, except for one tall guy whose shoulders curled down in a slouch and who wore a way-out-of-season wool knit cap pulled over his ears, and a girl whose long hair, gelled and sprayed into spikes, was dyed billboard yellow with a touch of pink. Her eyes were ringed with heavy mascara, and her lips were a slash of deep magenta.

Emily guessed that in the room there were at least a hundred high school kids and nearly double that in parents.

Before long, however, the parents were shepherded off somewhere for an orientation lecture. As soon as they’d left, a muscular guy wearing a snug T-shirt leaped up onto one of the tables and grinned at the kids.

“Hi,” he said. “By this time I think I’ve said hello to each and every one of you personally, but in case you’ve forgotten my name, I’m Coach Ricky Jinks. You can call me Coach Jinks or Coach or Ricky Jinks or Ricky or anything you like. Just don’t call me late for dinner.”

No one laughed, but Coach Jinks’s pep continued to bubble up and out as though he’d received a standing ovation. “During the next two days I’m going to sign you up for swim team and canoeing and volleyball and you-name-it, but right now they’ve given me the job of assigning you to your rooms and seeing that you get there in one piece.” He eagerly looked around. “Any questions?”

No one responded.

“Okay, then,” Coach Jinks said, his cheerfulness not lapsing for even a second. “I’ll call out names, and you’ll come up here and get your room keys. You’ll be in the building across the courtyard. Your luggage should be in your rooms, so unpack and take a little time to get acquainted with each other, but be back here by five-thirty for dinner. Cook’s barbecuing something—probably whatever roadkill he ran across while driving here. I hope nobody in this crowd is choosy.”

As he jumped down from the table and began calling out names, Emily couldn’t help making a face of disgust. Next to her a short girl snickered. “Six weeks of this?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Those are the kind of jokes my stepfather likes.”

Emily took a good look at the girl. Her sleek, dark hair was long and cut straight across, and her eyes were a deep, intense blue. At odds with her neatly ironed, conservative white blouse and shorts, she wore dangly crystal earrings, a row of narrow silver bracelets on each arm, and an odd rocklike pendant on a silver chain around her neck.

The yellow-pink blonde Emily had noticed earlier moved a little closer. “He told me I belonged on his basketball team,” she said quietly. “I hate basketball even more than I hate his jokes.”

“Taylor Farris,” the coach called, and the girl left, weaving her way to the front of the room.

The short girl rolled her eyes again and nudged Emily. “Can you believe that hair?” she whispered. “She is a decided hazard to what’s left of the world’s ozone layer.”

“Haley Griffin,” Coach Jinks called.

“That’s me,” the short girl said. She smiled at Emily. “See you later.”

It took a few minutes to get to the last letters of the alphabet, but Emily waited patiently. She had nothing else to do. In a way it was satisfying to just stand back against the wall, unnoticed, and watch the others.

She jumped when she heard Coach loudly call, “Emily Wood.”

Stumbling, she hurried to where he was stationed and waited while he checked off her name on his clipboard and handed her a plastic card. A hole was punched in one end, a cord through the hole. “You’re in room 101,” he said, studying Emily’s face as if he were trying to memorize it. “Hang your key around your neck. That way you won’t lose it.”

He abruptly turned back to the clipboard and shouted, “Arthur Zimmerman!”

Emily hurried down one of the paths that led to the other building. She walked inside and followed the wall sign that listed the room numbers. Doors were open, talk and laughter pouring out, but Emily kept her head down, scurrying all the way to room 101, hoping no one would stop her or speak to her.

It didn’t occur to Emily that she wouldn’t have a room of her own until she stepped inside the open door of room 101 and saw a heap of clothes on one of the matching twin beds.

“This closet is definitely not big enough,” a muffled voice complained just before Haley Griffin poked her head around the edge of the door.

“Hi,” she said to Emily. “I guess we’re going to be roommates. Your name’s Emily Wood. Am I right?”

“Uh, r-right,” Emily stammered, taken by surprise.

“Well, hang on until I get all my stuff into the closet,” Haley said. She disappeared for a moment, then leaned back to look pleadingly at Emily. “I hope you don’t need too much space. My mother got me all this stuff she claimed were the proper clothes for camp, but I brought some of the things I like to wear, too, like for when I meditate. You know.”

Emily shook her head. “That’s all right. I brought mostly T-shirts, shorts, and jeans. I can keep them in the chest of drawers.”

“Actually, I think I filled up most of the drawers,” Haley said. “You can have the bottom two. Okay?”

“Okay,” Emily said quietly. She had never met anyone like Haley, but since she had to share a room with her for the next six weeks, she’d search for some quiet places around this camp where she could get away by herself.

Haley grinned at her. “There’s just one more thing I have to do before we settle in.”

“What’s that?” Emily asked.

“Find out if there’s anything interesting about you, Em,” Haley answered.

Emily winced. “My name’s
Emily
. Nobody’s ever called me Em. And there’s nothing interesting about me to tell.”

“I’ll decide that,” Haley said. “Your father’s a doctor, and your mother’s a successful attorney.”

“Wait a minute,” Emily said. “How did you find—”

“Enrollment cards. In plain sight on Dr. Anderson’s desk. But if they weren’t, I’d find out anyway. I find out everything I need to know, and I’m going to find out all about you. And lucky you, you’ll get to hear all about me.”

“There’s really nothing—,” Emily tried again, but Haley interrupted.

“You probably want to be here just as much as I do, so lighten up. They may think they’re going to get us to conform and study, study, study, but I have news for them. We’re going to get together with some of the other kids and have fun.”

Haley swung the door shut, then flopped cross-legged onto the nearest bed. A wooden box, almost the size of a shoe box, slid out from under what was left of the pile of clothes next to her. Something inside it rattled.

“What’s that?” Emily asked.

Haley’s smile was smug as she motioned to Emily to join her on the bed. “My runes,” she said, and hugged the box to her chest. “I wouldn’t go anywhere without my runes.”

Emily perched gingerly on the edge of the bed, fighting the urge to run from the room. She didn’t want Haley for a roommate. She didn’t want
anyone
for a roommate. She didn’t want to be here in the first place. But, as her father had declared, she didn’t have a choice.

“You didn’t ask,” Haley said.

“Ask what?”

“About my runes. Do you know what they are?”

Emily sighed. “No, I don’t. Okay. What are runes?”

“They’re my guide. My truth seeker. My power.” Haley, still clinging to the box, slowly closed her eyes.

“You haven’t really told me anything,” Emily complained. “I still don’t know what they are.”

Leaning forward, Haley held out the pendant she was wearing. “This is a rune charm,” she said. “It’s not made out of rock, like the real rune stones. It’s pewter, but it’s enchanted for empowerment. The symbol on it is Feoh, which stands for wealth and good fortune.”

To Emily the black symbol drawn on the charm looked like nothing more than a lopsided tree, bare of leaves, but she silently watched as Haley carefully laid the box between them and slowly opened the lid. Inside the box were small stones—about three dozen, Emily guessed. On each stone strange-looking symbols had been artistically drawn with black paint.

“Runes are part of a primitive alphabet that was developed by the Vikings well over two thousand years ago,” Haley explained. “Somebody, I don’t know who, found these alphabet symbols in caves throughout Scandinavia and discovered they had magic insight into the future.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping as though she were imparting secret information. “Runes are probably the most powerful way of all to foretell the future.”

Emily reached out to pick up one of the stones, wanting to examine it, but Haley gasped and pushed her hand away. “Not yet,” she said. “We have to meditate.”

“I just wanted to—”

Haley shook her head. “If you want to do this right, you
have
to meditate cross-legged for at least three minutes. You absolutely must sit cross-legged.”

“But I—”

“Go on. Cross your legs,” Haley insisted.

Emily sighed and did what she had been told.

“Now, close your eyes. Meditate.”

“About what?”

Haley sighed impatiently. “About whatever people
meditate about. Life, your aspirations, your hopes, your childhood. Okay?”

“I’ve never meditated before,” Emily said. “I don’t even know what meditation is all about.” She knew it would be easier to just go along with whatever Haley said, but she was beginning to balk at being constantly told what to do.

Haley rolled her eyes again, then slipped on a look of exaggerated patience. “Meditation helps us withdraw from the stress around us and frees the brain to fully use its energy potential. Now, close your eyes.”

“Tell me first, what has meditation got to do with your runes?”

Haley thought a moment, frowning and twisting her lips. Suddenly she sighed again. “Don’t make this so difficult. It’s just what I said. Meditation frees your brain so the runes can pick up the messages they need. Okay?”

Emily decided to give up, since it was clear that Haley never would. “Okay,” Emily said, and closed her eyes. She decided to meditate on the subject of why some people thought a bunch of little stones with drawings on them could possibly foretell the future. She wished she were home. She wished she were lying on the floor, one arm wrapped around her cat, Twizzles, as afternoon sun spilled through the window, creating a deep yellow patch across the floor. Twizzles purring in the soft silence, drowsy, sleepy …