Clone Camp! Page 2

  “Exactly. Would you like to hear a speech on the vegan life?” He gave a wry smile. “I have it memorized. When I eat out, it has to be in places they will never find me.” He rubbed his belly. “I’m a carnivorous rebel.”

  That made me laugh again. I was almost willing to believe the journal wasn’t his. But then again, Noah had quite the secret life. Pranks and meat-eating. What else was he hiding? I put on my investigator’s cap (well, the camp baseball hat) and asked him to prove the journal wasn’t his.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” Noah turned back to the first page. “Someone put my name right here.” He pointed to the sentence.

  “Exactly. So that settles it,” I said. “It’s yours.” I narrowed my eyes. “What are you up to, Noah?”

  “I’m telling you, this isn’t mine.” He was frustrated. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Don’t mess with me,” I warned. “I’m still mad at you.” I touched the brim of my hat and stared at him.

  “I know what to do,” Noah said, his voice fast and a little desperate. “You like hard facts, so let me show you. This isn’t my handwriting.”

  I still hadn’t tossed my trash bag into the dump, so I grabbed it. I found one of the broken pencils I’d thrown away and passed the stub to Noah, wiping my hands on my jeans afterward. “Go ahead,” I said, nodding toward the journal. “Prove it.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  There was a smooth patch of ground under a tall tree a few feet from the dumpster. Noah sat down and balanced the journal on his thigh while I tied up my trash bag and stacked it in the bin. Then I sat next to him, leaning back on the tree trunk.

  In a bit of white space directly beneath Once upon a time, there was a boy named Noah, he scribbled:

  This is Noah’s handwriting.

  I looked at the handwriting and at the beginning of the story above it. “I’m no expert, but that looks the same to me.”

  Noah leaned in closer to the words. He squinted. “It does kind of look the same. Hmmm. Must be a coincidence. My handwriting isn’t usually so scratchy.”

  “It’s not a coincidence, since the book is yours,” I said, starting to rise. “We need to get back to the kitchen. So whatever joke you’re playing, stop it now.”

  “There’s no joke,” Noah insisted. “Let me try again.”

  He wrote:

  Once upon a time

  And then:

  This is not my book.

  “My handwriting looks a little different today. Must be the book’s thick paper, or your garbage pencil.” He turned the page to me so I could see how he lined up his letters beneath the original sentence. “Check it out, my o’s look nothing like the book’s o’s.”

  “You can’t fool me,” I said. “They’re the same.” I bent over his leg to get a closer look at the writing.

  Noah was determined to prove the book wasn’t his. He wrote:

  Whose book is this?

  I was comparing the k’s and t’s when suddenly words appeared underneath Noah’s question.

  It’s my book.

  I jumped back so fast I accidentally knocked the book off Noah’s lap and into the dirt.

  “So that’s your joke?” I said, standing up and dusting off my pants. “You have a book that writes back.” I knew he was up to something! “Ha-ha-ha.” I gave a sarcastic laugh. “Okay, so you had me scared for, like, a second.” I stared at him with hard eyes. “Now the prank’s revealed. So how’d you do that?”

  Noah was staring, mouth open, eyes wide, at the book lying in the dirt. When he didn’t move, I reached out to pick it up.

  “No! Kaitlin, no!” He grabbed my arm and pushed me back, as if to protect me. He stood between me and the journal. “It’s possessed!”

  “What are you talking about?” I shoved past Noah and snatched the book. “Enough fooling around, Noah. We gotta go. I don’t want to be late and get extra KP. Three days in the kitchen with you is bad enough.” I held out the journal. “Take it. Try your joke on someone else.”

  When he didn’t move, I turned to look at him. The expression on his face was one of terror. “Something is weird and wrong,” he said. “This isn’t a joke.” Noah took a finger and crossed his heart. “I promise.”

  “Impossible,” I said. “Books don’t write themselves.”

  “I know…” His voice was a whisper. Moving cautiously, Noah took the book from me. He held it at arm’s length, as if afraid to get too close to it. When he sat back down in the dirt, Noah motioned for me to sit with him.

  He rubbed the broken pencil on a nearby rock to sharpen the tip, then, with a shaking hand, wrote:

  Who are you?

  The book wrote back right away:

  The Scaremaster

  I looked to see if Noah had pressed a button or done some kind of magic trick. If so, it wasn’t obvious. And yet, I pointed at the top of the page where it said: Tales from the Scaremaster.

  “I’m not the Scaremaster, if that’s what you think,” Noah said, then wrote:

  What do you want?

  To tell you a story.

  “Uh, what if we don’t want to hear one?” Noah asked me. There was a tightness in his voice. He glanced at me and said, “This is kind of creepy, don’t you think?”

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, getting up and taking a few steps toward the dining hall. “The book isn’t talking to us on its own. That’s scientifically impossible. Everything can be explained,” I told him. “In fact…” Something important was nagging at the back of my mind.

  I looked around camp, and my brain started spinning.

  Beyond the dining hall, past the infirmary, was a thick woodsy area of camp, like a small forest on a hill. In the other direction were the lake and the crafts areas. Every building at camp looked like Abraham Lincoln had designed it out of logs, and everything was named after a tree.

  The lake was Walnut Lake. The crafts area was really just picnic tables and a small storage shed by the boathouse, glamorously called Pine Corner.

  All the names were cheesy, but I liked them—they fit the Redwood Vines theme.

  Noah and I were at the Dogwood Dining Hall. To the left there were eight cabins, four for boys and four for girls, all labeled by colors of leaves in fall. Noah lived in Cyan. I was in Ochre. There was Umber and Magenta. Cloud and Khaki. Spice and Plum. But we all called them normal names: Blue, Yellow, Brown, Pink, White, Beige, Orange, and Purple.

  More to the left were activity areas, like the gaga pit, ball fields, and the ropes course. That whole part of camp was called Oak Orchard, though it was neither oak nor an orchard. The only thing not cleverly named was the recreation center, which was the largest building at camp, and directly in front of us. The logs that formed the sides were huge. It was the called the Rec Center, or officially “the SRC”—no one knew what the S stood for. Last year, it was the Maple Leaf Rec Center. I knew that because they hadn’t changed the sign when they changed the name.

  Past all the buildings, around another small hill from the baseball field, the stables, and the maintenance shed, there was a fence. The fence separated camp from a grassy field that was rumored to have once been a cemetery. To me, it looked like any other field of grass.

  It was the cemetery and the whole “hauntedness” of it that drew my attention. I was sick of camp rumors. Whether it was about Spike’s time in prison, the haunted cemetery, or today’s whispered warning that kids who went into the infirmary would never come back again, I firmly believed what I told Noah, “Everything can be explained.”

  These were stories, passed down by the counselors year after year, meant to keep campers in line.

  Maybe that was what the Scaremaster’s journal was meant to do as well? Scare us into behaving. It would make sense, considering Noah’s reputation.

  I told Noah my theory.

  “You’re pretty good at figuring stuff out,” he said with an odd little grin. “I have to admit, I like playing pranks, not having them played
on me.” He turned the book around in his hands, staring at it inch by inch. “There must be some new kind of technology inside, but it looks like a regular journal to me.” He tapped his fingers on the cover. “Okay. Let’s read the story and find out what’s going on.”

  Once upon a time, there was a boy named Noah.

  Noah thought camp was boring, so he planned a few pranks to keep himself entertained. He didn’t mind getting in trouble. Noah was good at getting in trouble. It was worth it, for the fun.

  But then the Scaremaster took over.

  Noah was making mischief one trick at a time. A beginner’s way.

  Move over, Noah. Make room for a professional. I’ll show you real fun. You will learn from the master.

  Prepare for double the trouble.

  Two times the tricks.

  It is already set in motion.

  By sunset Sunday, it will be done.

  Camp will be mine. All mine forever more.

  This is the greatest prank yet.

  Monday morning, the story of what I have done here will spread across the globe. My name will strike terror into the heart of anyone who hears it.

  I am the Scaremaster.

  Noah raised his eyes to mine.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “Yep.” He shoved the text toward me.

  I read the story again to myself. “Where’s the rest?” I flipped page after page. They were blank.

  “Kaitlin,” Noah said. “I know you’re still mad about everything, but we have to figure out who is behind this book. I need your help.”

  I barely knew the guy, but when he was lying, it was so obvious. When he was telling the truth—that was obvious too.

  When he said he needed my help, I was certain Noah was telling the truth.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s like this book was left for us to find. I know you’re curious about who put it in the dumpster. I’m curious too. And you’re the best investigator I know.” He quickly added, “I mean, I’ve never been caught pulling a prank before. You caught me. That tells me you’re good.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Noah! Kaitlin!” A sharp voice rang out from the kitchen door. “Where are you? You have ten seconds to get back here. I never said you could take a break. There’s work to be done.”

  “We gotta hide the journal,” Noah said. “Somewhere no one else will look.”

  “We? I haven’t agreed to help you,” I reminded him.

  The cook was counting. “Ten… nine…”

  “Please,” he said. “Do you want me to beg?”

  “No,” I said. “But from here on out if I help you, you have to be truthful about everything.” I added, “And no more pranks.”

  “Done,” he said, a bit too quickly. Shouldn’t he have thought about the deal a little more? Especially the “no pranks” part? He didn’t even ask for how long. Did I mean the weekend? All of camp? Forever? Didn’t he want to know what my terms were?

  “Oh, fine.” I gave in. The part of me that was curious about the book was bigger than the part that was mad. I’d be careful. If it turned out Noah was behind it, I’d figure that out fast and immediately go back to being mad at him. We shook hands.

  Then I pointed to the dumpster. “No one else at camp is dumb enough to look in there. We will come get the book again after the kitchen closes.”

  “I’ll climb in next time. It’s my turn to stink.” Not worried about the organization of the bags, Noah hefted his trash bag into the dump, then tossed the book over my head, like he’d done with my hat. It clattered into the dumpster with a satisfying bang, and then we ran.

  “Two, one…”

  We made it back to the kitchen just in time.

  Chapter Three

  Dinner KP was a disaster.

  It started out okay. When Noah and I got back to the kitchen, the cook asked us if everything had gone “according to plan” at the dumpster.

  “Uh, yes?” I said, more like a question than an answer. This woman was so strange! I definitely hoped Spike would be back soon.

  “Very good,” she said, those bizarre colored eyes twinkling, and then she repeated, “Very good,” before assigning me to cut veggies for salad while Noah stacked trays and made sure there were enough napkins in the dispensers.

  When the campers arrived, our task was to walk around refilling drinks and being generally helpful.

  I felt lucky to have the best counselors in the whole place. Everyone said so. Samantha and Sydney were in college. They were blond twins from the Midwest and the nicest people I’d ever met.

  When we first arrived at camp, they had decorated the cabin with Welcome banners. That same afternoon, they helped us set up our beds. Then, that night, they gave us all matching flashlights with our names bedazzled on them as presents.

  Their niceness made me want to be extra nice back. Since I had kitchen access, I went to my cabin’s long table and asked them if they wanted seconds on anything or extra dessert.

  I didn’t expect what happened next.

  Sydney pinned me with one green eye and shouted, “Fire!” to my entire cabin. The girls, who a minute earlier had been my friends, started throwing stuff at me. Not just napkins, but cups, bowls, plates. I even dodged a knife.

  “That was a good one,” Samantha said to the girl who’d nearly turned me into Vincent van Gogh. Okay, so it wasn’t that close, it was plastic, and I can dodge pretty much anything, but still, it was a KNIFE!

  “Try the fork,” Samantha said, passing a clean one down the table to Josie Garcia, my upper bunkmate.

  “Josie!” I shouted from behind one of the thick wooden pillars that held up the mess hall roof. “What are you doing? Stop!”

  The fork sped toward the pillar like a four-pronged arrow, then bounced to the floor.

  Noah had been in the kitchen getting extra dessert for his own cabin when the attack began. “Kaitlin!” He set the tray he was carrying on the closest table and boldly rushed through the onslaught to my side. We were near an empty table where the director usually sat. Director Dave wasn’t there, so Noah tipped the table on its side and we ducked behind it like a shield.

  “What is going on?” I asked him. My counselors were now encouraging other counselors to throw stuff around the dining hall. Broccoli, bits of chicken, and that salad I’d made were sticking everywhere from the floor to the rafters. I saw a tomato smash against the window, red juice and slippery seeds sliding down toward the floor.

  And then the chanting began. “Clean up, Kaitlin.…” It was like a loud cheer, repeated over and over again.

  Noah peeked out from behind our table barricade. His counselors were taking videos on their phones. Kids weren’t allowed phones at camp, but the counselors had theirs. If my parents saw this on the camp website, I’d be home faster than I could inhale a breath.

  “Why are they picking on me?” I asked Noah. “I swear, if you already broke our agreement…”

  “I didn’t,” he promised. “I don’t get it.” He pressed my head down behind our safe barrier as a tray soared like a Frisbee over our heads. “I’m on your team.” He stood. “I’m going to stop this.”

  I would have expected Noah to rush out and join the fun, but instead, he marched through what was now a multi-cabin food fight, straight up to Samantha and Sydney. “Stop it,” he said, hands on his hips. “This is bad and dangerous.”

  I nearly choked. He sounded like me! So serious and concerned.

  But then Noah added, “Someone could slip on Jell-O and die!” He showed what that might look like: first sliding on Jell-O and imitating what it would be like to hit his head, and then choking and faking a heart attack. It was a grand death performance that ended with him slumping down to the mess-covered floor.

  Samantha swooped back her long hair and leaned over Noah, as if she was going to say something, but then she burped. Loud and smelly, right in his face. Her sister started laughing so hard that she fell
backward off the bench.

  Throughout the room, kids started burping at each other. It seemed like everyone was playing along.

  Everyone, that is, except a few kids who had scattered to the farthest edge of the dining hall, away from the chaos. They were pressed up against the wall, leaning into a mural of the lake, as if it was a portal and leaning hard enough would make them disappear through.

  Just as I saw them, Sydney did too. “Hey,” she called out to them. I quickly counted six kids: three boys, three girls. “What’s the matter?” she screeched. “Don’t you want to leave a bigger mess for Kaitlin to clean up?” She moved fast, sliding on a tray across the floor to face them.

  Shouts of “Clean up, Kaitlin!” intensified with more trash tossing.

  The youngest kids at camp were in third grade. A shy boy from that cabin, wearing glasses and a nerdy superhero T-shirt said in a weak voice, “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble,” Sydney said. “This is fun!” She grabbed a cup off a nearby table and dumped the water on the floor. “See? Fun!” She grabbed another cup, filled with red juice, and held it out to him. “You dump this one. Spill it for Katy to clean up.”

  No one ever called me that. I cringed.

  The boy shook his head strongly back and forth. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “You don’t want to play?” Sydney asked, her voice softening. I thought maybe she realized she was scaring him and was going to back away. Instead, she put her hand on the boy’s forehead. “If you don’t want to have fun at camp, you must be sick!” She eyed the other five kids, all mixed ages. There was even a girl from my cabin there against the wall.