Curse of Camp Evergreen Chapter 6

6 Up to No Good

     I picked this chapter title because, well, that day before the rest of the campers came, all of us were up to no good! Our counselors were up to no good because they were getting ready for the big capture-the-flag color-war thing that night, and us campers...well, we had our own no good to be up to, like in Harry Potter when they say they solemnly swear they are up to no good. Only when Harry used that crazy map he had to swear that to, he actually was up to something that wasn’t no good, but good, because he was after that snake-monster thing. Well, at least after he used it to go down to the village like he wasn’t supposed to do. It was sort of like that for us. But Harry got away with sneaking down to the village, and all we got out of it was to get tied to our beds!

     Yeah, about that. There’s kind of a story to how we ended up tied to our beds, and that’s part of that up to no good thing too. See, it all started that morning at breakfast, when Miss Serenity told us we would be mostly on our own because they all had to get ready for that night. We had to start calling the counselors Miss Whatever because the campers would all be there tomorrow, and the counselors get called that by the campers. I didn’t want to call Abbie Miss Abbie because, well, we’re each other’s little sister! But yeah, I had to anyway because those were the rules. Anyway, while we were eating our awful breakfast—I think it was oatmeal, but I’m not sure—Emma told us we should spend the day looking for the blue monster bobcat. I know, I said before that we thought it was a bad idea, but that was at night when things get really creepy anyway. Then it was morning, and it didn’t sound like as bad an idea as it did at night. At least it didn’t to me and Destiny and Clarice, especially Destiny and Clarice. And Emma too, because it was her idea! Celeste didn’t really have anything to do with it because she stayed with Miss Makayla, and Amalie didn’t really look like she wanted to go until Destiny sort of talked her into it. They were really turning into friends because Destiny could speak sign language to her! And Sophie really wanted to go out with us too, but she said she couldn’t. “Mom and Dad would give me heck if they found out I was running around the camp in the middle of the day,” she said like she wanted to go but couldn’t. “My birth defects and all.” Besides her big eyes and her cleft lip (which was why she had that scar), she ran out of breath real easy, and she had a whole lot of trouble with her heart valves or her heart that the doctors told her they might have to replace. You could tell she was feeling a little left out of things, but right then something happened that gave her something to do!

     See, Alyssa was going to be with us all day, but it turned out she was just supposed to be like a babysitter for us! While we were talking, she came up to our table, and she must have heard what we were talking about, because the very first thing she said to us was, “You know Miss Abbie and Miss Serenity told me you aren’t allowed to go out looking for that bobcat. They said it was too dangerous, and if they caught you out looking for it you’d all be in big trouble! They said I’m supposed to make sure you don’t go looking for trouble!” I was really mad at her for saying that. We’ve been friends ever since our first time at Camp Evergreen when we helped stop that crazy Ms. Grey bad guy who shot me. It didn’t matter that she’s two years older than me, we were just plain friends, at least until she got bossy about not letting us go look for the bobcat. It was like she was just another counselor instead of my friend! Emma tried to tell her that we wouldn’t actually try to catch it, and Destiny told her we would just try to find where it lived so somebody else could catch it, but all Alyssa said was that we weren’t allowed to go hunt for it and that was it. She tried to tell us we had to go back to Bluejay Cabin to get it ready for the rest of the campers the next day, but we all argued about it until Clarice and Destiny gave each other a sort of funny look, and Clarice sort of hung her head and said okay, you win, and that we should all go back up to the cabin.

     I knew right away that they’d had some kind of idea, but I didn’t know what it was. Then I saw Amalie giggling into her hands as she walked, and I remembered too that she and Destiny had been signing at each other while the rest of us argued with Alyssa, and it was after that that Destiny and Clarice gave each other that look. Anyway, we followed Alyssa up to the cabin, where she tried to boss us all around again about making our bunks. I was pretty mad at her and wanted to argue, but Destiny shook her head and me and flicked her eyes back to Clarice at her bunk. Clarice was working there, but reaching under the bunk, especially when Alyssa wasn’t watching. Then I saw what Clarice was doing—getting out that bag with all the ropes! So that was the plan—tie up Alyssa to keep her from stopping us! So anyway, I kind of glanced back at Alyssa and then Clarice. See, Alyssa was between us and Clarice on the other side of the cabin, so if Alyssa was watching us, she couldn’t watch Clarice. So I kind of winked at Destiny, and boy did I ever start arguing with Alyssa! “You think you’re so hot just because you’re twelve already and think you can boss us around, Alyssa Anthony! Well, you’re not so hot at all! You’re not a counselor yet, you’re just another camper just like we are, and who do you think you are bossing us around just because you’re bigger than us?” The more I yelled at her, the more fun it was, and the more mad Alyssa got at me, and most of all, the more she paid attention to me and not to anyone else! While she came back at me with stuff like how I was too little to understand what was good for me and that we were supposed to set a good example for the other kids when they got there, Destiny sneaked over to Clarice and grabbed a bunch of rope, and even gave some to Amalie and Emma. Everybody but Sophie and me had a bunch of rope, and that was more than enough to tie her up nice and tight when they all jumped her from behind at the same time!

     You should have seen it! Destiny and Emma just sort of tackled her from behind, and Clarice jumped on her back, and then Amalie jumped on her legs while Destiny and Emma grabbed at Alyssa’s arms, just like our practice for the skit! After a second, Alyssa started yelling like crazy, and we knew that if anyone heard her we’d be in like huge trouble. That’s when I remembered Emma’s socks from our skit practice, only I used my own socks and stuffed them in her mouth while she yelled at us to untie her or else we’d get in trouble. She tried to spit them out, and I realized I forgot to grab something to keep them in her mouth, but then Sophie grabbed some of that silver tape from Clarice’s bag and tore off a bunch of strips of the tape and put them over Alyssa’s mouth until she couldn’t talk or yell, and couldn’t get the socks out of her mouth at all! We had ourselves a prisoner!

     Destiny and Emma had got her hands behind her back and tied her wrists together, and Amalie and Clarice tied her legs together at her ankles and her knees so she couldn’t hardly move. She was still trying to yell, but with those socks taped in her mouth all she could do was make a little bit of noise. “What do we do with her now?” asked Emma, and Destiny thought for a second and came up with an idea.

    “Let’s put her up on her bunk and tie her feet to her hands! That way she won’t be able to even hop around, just lay there until we’re finished!” Amalie signed something at Destiny, and her face looked kind of worried, and Destiny’s face sort of fell. “Yeah...well...we’ll think of something by the time the counselors get back. She wouldn’t tell on Susie, would she? They’re like best friends!” The way Alyssa was throwing herself around on her bunk as Destiny and Clarice tied her hands to her feet, you could tell she would tell on me!

    “I know what to do!” said Emma. “You guys forget she’s my brother Colton’s girlfriend! If she tells on us, I’ll tell my mom about them doing dirty stuff and they’ll both get in trouble!” The way Alyssa tried to yell back at that, you could tell they hadn’t really done any dirty stuff, but that didn’t bother Emma! “Yeah, even if you didn’t, Mom’ll believe me, and boy will you get in trouble!” Boy, that sure shut up Alyssa! We had her just where we wanted her!

    “Well,” I said to Sophie, who was still kind of bothered about not being able to go out and look for the bobcat, “one thing you can do is keep an eye on Alyssa and make sure she doesn’t get herself untied before we come back.”

    “And if you guys split up to cover the whole campground, I can keep in touch with you with our phones. If something comes up, I can warn you!” It wasn’t perfect, but it did give Sophie something to do more than just sit around. It had to suck for her to not be able to run around like the rest of us! So, we all gave Sophie our numbers, and she gave us hers, and we went out to look for the bobcat! By the time we left, Alyssa just sort of laid there on her bunk like she knew she wasn’t going to get loose, not with Sophie there watching her.

    The big thing was figuring out where the bobcat would be in the daytime. The only times anybody had seen it, it was night out, which kind of made sense because that’s the best time to see a glowing blue monster bobcat! Amalie signed at Destiny. “You’re probably right, Amalie. Maybe the thing to do is to go look where people have already seen it.” Amalie nodded. “So where was it you saw it, Clarice? What do you call it—Deadman’s Cave?”

    “Yep,” Clarice said. “I’ll show it to you. Follow me!” She was all excited to go hunting for the monster bobcat, and boy, did she ever move fast, even on her artificial leg! Mr. Pickman must have really fixed it up better than perfect! I sort of remembered how to get there from my first camp when we went out on that whole Ms. Grey mystery, but Clarice took us right there. It’s way in the woods, on an old footpath that looked like it never ot used very much, and it was surrounded by trees all around. You could see why Miss Jessie would meet her boyfriend there, because it was really lonely out there!

    “Okay,” said Emma, “so what now? The bobcat ain’t here, so what do we do?”

    “We look for footprints,” said Destiny. “It might have left a path we can follow, so we could follow it to where it stays in the daytime.” We looked around, but the closest we saw to a track was some turned-up old leaves on the ground that might have been from somebody or something walking. We tried to follow it, but it went way deep in the woods and pretty soon we lost track of it. We were almost lost ourselves when Emma turned us around to go check another place. The other place was where Miss Bobbi and Miss Veronica saw it that night Clarice first told us about the story of the monster bobcat and Banaster Pickman and Rosabelle Hartley. We remembered it was on a path from the main hall to where our cabins are, so we would have to be careful to stay away from Miss Serenity and Abbie or any other of the counselors. We stayed in the woods so nobody could see us, but the problem was that we couldn't see anything there that even looked a little like a track! I was getting a little out of patience, and I wondered if we could ever find any clues about where the monster bobcat was. Well, Destiny’s not the smartest kid in our class for nothing, because she said we should find out where that old Mr. Buxton or whoever he was saw it. “It would have to live someplace close to where all three times happened,” she said. “Maybe if we find all those spots and look kind of in the middle, we’d see where the monster cat lives.”

    “But how do we find that out?” I asked her. None of knew that old man to ask him, you know.

    “That might have to wait until after lunch,” Clarice said, looking at her phone. “We could eat lunch, and when the counselors go get ready for their color war we can go meet up with Dr. Taylor so he could set it up for us. Maybe we could even call him and he could pick us all up!” Then she frowned. “At least if we could get a call out. I got no bars!”

    “Well,” said Emma, “we could go back and see if we can call from the cabin. And we could be nice to Alyssa and untie her for a bit, let her go to the bathroom, you know. It sucks when you’re tied up and have to pee. Colton does that to me all the time!” Yeah, her brother likes to tie her up a lot. I wonder if he likes to tie up Alyssa like that, too? Anyway, we all agreed that we should do that, so we sneaked the long way around the camp to our cabin so nobody could see us.

     And it all turned out to be for nothing! We hadn’t even got to Bluejay Cabin when we heard Alyssa yelling, and we were afraid that she had got loose in spite of Sophie watching her. We thought that if we could sneak in without Alyssa knowing, we could tie her up again, like we did the first time. At least we did until we got to the door, and found it all filled up with Miss Serenity! All our mouths fell open when we saw her in the door! “Well, look here, girls. Our campers showed back up!” She was smiling, but smiling in that kind of way that says you’re about to get killed.

     Destiny tried to talk us out of it. “Umm...I can explain why...how...umm...”

    “What do you think, Abbie? Think Destiny can do any better than Sophie?” Then she turned back to us. “You girls. Inside. Sit down in your bunk. Now!”

     When we got in the cabin, we all felt like about an inch high, and there was Sophie sitting in her bunk with her face red, looking down at her knees. And there was Alyssa standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed looking like she wanted to kill all of us! I understood because of how I felt the day before when they tied me up for our skit practice. “I tried to call you, but the phone wouldn’t connect,” said Sophie.

    “So now, Destiny, do you want to try to explain?” said Miss Serenity. Abbie looked disappointed in us, Miss Bobbi and Miss Veronica looked a little mad at us, but Miss Jessie looked like she was trying to be mad but was really about ready to bust out laughing. “No, forget it,” Miss Serenity said before Destiny could talk. “I don’t think you girls could top Sophie here. She swore it was all a game to practice for your skit!”

    “It was worth a try,” said Sophie.

    “Well then, girls, here’s what we’re trying. First of all, all you girls except for Celeste are going to go down to the dining cabin and sit at your own table with your heads down until supper. And then...”

     And then, like I said, we all ended up tied to our beds! We did like Miss Serenity told us, sitting with our heads down in the dining cabin until supper, each one of us except for Celeste at our own table so we couldn’t talk to anybody. As soon as supper was done, the counselors marched us to Bluejay Cabin where we had to get our pajamas, and get ready for bed with the sun still up! They had Abbie and Miss Bobbi and Miss Makayla take us to the shower cabin where they let us use the bathroom, and when we got in the cabin there was Miss Serenity and Miss Jessie and Miss Veronica with that whole bag of ropes in the middle of the room! They made all of us except for Celeste stand in front of our bunks and hold our hands together in front of us. Miss Serenity took some rope and tied our hands together in front of us, then Miss Jessie made us lay down in our bunks. She even made Clarice take off her leg! She pushed our hands up over our heads, then tied our hands to the bar on the top of our bunks so they were tied over our heads. Then Miss Veronica took a long rope and tied it around our middle so we couldn’t get up from the bunk, and when that was all done Alyssa came around with a big roll of that silver tape we used on her. She made us close our lips real tight, and then plastered a couple big strips of tape over our mouths. “That’s just to remind you you’re not allowed to talk,” said Miss Serenity after Alyssa got finished taping up all our mouths.  "Since you’re not getting up until morning, you kids might as well just go to sleep.” Celeste kind of raised her hand. “Except for you, Celeste. You behaved yourself. It’ll be lights out at nightfall, so if you want to read or go for a walk until then, that’s okay.” She nodded without saying anything, and I felt kind of mad at her for not being in trouble when the rest of us were. I wondered if she didn’t help Alyssa get us in trouble! “You don’t have to stay with Miss Makayla, she’ll be fine, and you’ll be fine too. It might be good for you to be on your own for a little while! Anyway, Miss Makayla will be busy at the color war tonight. You okay with that?” Celeste nodded again, looked real long at Miss Makayla, then went out of the cabin. “The rest of you, get to sleep right now!” And they all left.

    You know something? There’s nothing as boring as being tied to your bed with nothing to do while the sun goes down and you can’t even talk to anybody. I kind of thought a little about how unfair everything was and how maybe Celeste was who got us in trouble, but after a while, after the sun started setting through the windows, I sort of fell asleep. Sophie and Emma already were, and Amalie just sort of laid there watching the sun going down, and Destiny was kind of wiggling around still trying to get herself untied but not being able to. Then like I said, I was asleep, and in my dream I was following the monster bobcat into the woods. It was just going into the old secret entrance underneath Mr. Cornelius’s mansion when I felt something on my face and woke up. I was scared for just a moment, until I opened my eyes and saw that Celeste had her hand on my mouth! I wondered what she was up to, but she put her other pointer finger to her lips like to tell me to stay quiet. With the tape still on my mouth, I couldn’t talk anyway, so I kept quiet, and then she started untying my hands from the bunk! I looked around, and Amalie and Destiny were already wiggling up out of their bunks, with their hands loose and the tape off their mouths. Sophie and Clarice and Emma were still asleep, but then Destiny and Amalie went around to them and untied them like Celeste was untying me. “That was mean of them,” said Celeste, whispering in my ear, and it was the first thing I heard her say besides her lines in the skit. “It’s too scary to be all tied up like that. Anybody could do anything to you. Are you okay?” I said I was, and she nodded and almost smiled. Celeste never smiled! I reached for the lamp to turn it on, but Celeste stopped me. “No, don’t do that. Somebody will see the light and we’ll get in trouble. Let’s just all sit over where the moonlight is coming in the window and talk.” In a minute we all were untied, sitting around Celeste’s bunk where the moonlight was so bright! “I think I have a plan so you can go look for the bobcat,” Celeste said when we all sat down around her bunk. “I heard that the losing side in the color war has to sit in the other team’s prison camp all night! If the boys win, all the girl counselors have to go to the prison, and I heard that the boys want to tie them all up in the prison camp. I don’t like them being all tied up, but if we help the boys win, our counselors will be in the prison camp all night!”

    “But how do we do that?” asked Sophie. “How do you know about what the boys want to do to the girls?”

    “My best friend is over in the boys’ camp,” she said with a sort of secret smile. She took out her phone and showed us a picture of a boy about her age that looked so much like Celeste! “He’s my brother, and he’s a special camper too. He told me what they were planning. He’s in Bear Cabin with Mister Jaden and Mister Joey, and he said there’s a plan to capture Miss Abbie and Miss Serenity first of all because they’re the most dangerous girl counselors. A couple others too, like Miss Taylor and Miss Devan over in Sparrow Cabin and Miss Allie and Miss Leslie in Robin Cabin. They figure that once they have them, the rest will be easy. We can help them capture the other ones because they don’t expect us campers to be out tonight. What do you think?”

    “All night to look for the bobcat,” said Emma. “Cool!”

    “Maybe even I could go out too!” said Sophie, and she was real excited about it! “It’s cooler out, and I might be able to help!”

    “How?” I asked.

    “Like this!” And she made a sound like an old owl hooting, and it was so real I couldn’t believe it! “I can do a bunch of animal sounds! Like a wolf, and maybe even a bobcat! If you scare the counselors, it’ll be easier for the boys to capture them! They’ll get all nervous and start running, and the boys should be able to capture them all easy!

    “I’d still like to know where that old man Mr. Buxton saw the bobcat,” said Destiny.

    “But the bobcat comes out at night, so we could just follow him to wherever!” said Emma, and Clarice nodded while she put her leg back on.

    “But he could show up anywhere!” said Destiny. “We might even miss him if we’re not in the right place!”

     Clarice finished putting on her leg. “But how could we figure that out anyway? We don’t know where Mr. Buxton saw the bobcat, so it could show up anywhere anyway!”

     I had an idea! “You know what the old legend says, about how the bobcat would appear and destroy the Pickmans and ruin all their lands so no one can live on them?” They were all looking at me, and I started hoping my idea wasn’t stupid. Destiny and Amalie and Sophie are all so much smarter then me, you know! “Well...if the monster is supposed to destroy the Pickman family and its lands, it would show up on land that belonged to the Pickmans, wouldn’t it? So what around here belonged to the Pickmans?”

    Clarice thought hard. “Well, besides the old mansion, you heard Dr. Taylor. A lot of the old village is under the lake, and that’s where his henchmen lived. But you remember the old story about Horatio, don’t you? How he lost almost all his lands, and his ghost stalks his old property to get revenge on the people who took it away from him? Well, that’s where the camp was built, right on the old Horatio Pickman lands! We’re already where the bobcat would show up!”

    “Well, then,” said Destiny, “if we’re going to look around so big a place, we better help the boys capture our counselors! What do we do next?”

     And this time, Celeste really smiled! “I’m just letting my brother know,” she said as she typed on her phone. “We’ll all get together and help the boys win the color war!”

     I thought it was nice that she had her brother, and I really liked that her brother was her best friend! “He looks nice,” I said when I looked at his picture. He looked almost exactly like her, maybe a little darker-skinned but not much, and a cute little smile. “What’s his name?”

     She smiled at his picture, then she put her phone away. “Jaden.” I couldn’t believe it! We both had brothers named Jaden!

    “Like mine! My brother is Jaden in charge of Bear Cabin!”

    “I know. My brother thinks it’s funny he has the same name as his cabin leader! It’s kind of like we...I don’t know, sort of share something. Like we’re kind of connected, Susie.”

    I smiled at her. We did have something in common! All of a sudden I felt like I knew quiet little Celeste so much better! “So...we better go help our brothers Jaden!” She smiled so big, bigger than I even thought she could! She was so excited! It was like I’d just made a new friend! A friend that was helping us help the boys win, so yeah, we really were up to no good!