I was lying in just such a way that Rob's face was only a couple of inches from mine. When he turned to look at me, our noses almost bumped into one another.
"Didn't your mother ever tell you," Rob asked, "that you're supposed to play hard to get?"
I looked at his lips. I probably don't need to tell you that they're really nice lips, kind of full and strong-looking. "What," I wanted to know, "is that going to get me?"
I swear to you, he was a second away from kissing me then.
I know he said he wasn't going to. But let's face it, he always says that, and then he always does—well, almost always, anyway. I swear that's why he avoids me half the time … because he knows that for all he says he isn't going to kiss me, he usually ends up doing it anyway. Who knows why? I'd like to think it's because I'm so damned irresistible, and because he's secretly in love with me, in spite of what it says in the Cosmo quiz.
But I wasn't destined to find out. Not just then, anyway. Because just as he was leaning over in the direction of my mouth, this unearthly siren started to wail …
… and we were both so startled, we wrenched apart.
I swear I thought a tornado alarm was going off. Rob said later he thought it was my dad, with one of those klaxon things old ladies set off when a mugger is attacking them.
But it wasn't either of those things. It was a Wawasee County police cruiser. And it whizzed by the campground we were parked at like a bullet. . . .
Only to be followed by another.
And another.
And then another.
Four squad cars, all headed at breakneck speed in the direction of Camp Wawasee.
I should have known, of course. I should have guessed what was wrong.
But my psychic abilities are limited to finding people, not predicting the future. All I knew was that something was definitely wrong back at the camp … and it wasn't my psychic powers telling me that, either. It was just plain common sense.
"What," Rob wanted to know, "have you done now?"
What had I done? I wasn't sure.
"I have," I said, "a very bad feeling about this."
"Come on." Rob sighed tiredly. "Let's go find out."
They didn't want to let us in at the gate, of course. Rob had no visitor's pass, and the security guard looked down his nose at my employee ID and went, "Only time counselors are allowed to leave the camp is Sunday afternoons."
I looked at him like he was crazy. "I know that," I said. "I snuck out. Now are you going to let me back in, or not?"
You could totally tell the guy, who couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty, had tried for the local police force and hadn't made it. So he'd opted to become a security guard, thinking that would give him the authority and respect he'd always yearned for. He sucked on his two overlarge front teeth and, peering at Rob and me, went, " 'Fraid not. There's a bit of a problem up at the camp, you know, and—"
I put down the face shield of my helmet and said to Rob, "Let's go."
Rob said to the security guard, "Nice talkin' to ya."
Then he gunned the engine, and we went around the red-and-white barrier arm, churning up quite a bit of dust and gravel as we did so. What did it matter? I couldn't get more fired than I already was.
The security guard came out of his little house and started yelling, but there wasn't much he could do to make us turn around. It wasn't like he had a gun, or anything.
Not that guns had ever stopped us before, of course.
As we drove up the long gravel road to the camp, I noticed how still and cool the woods were, especially with the coming rainstorm. The sky above us was clouding up more with every passing moment. You could smell the rain in the air, fresh and sweet.
Of course it wasn't until I was about to be kicked out of there that I'd finally begun to appreciate Camp Wawasee. It was too bad, really. I'd never even gotten a chance to float around the lake on an inner tube.
When we pulled up to the administrative offices, I was surprised at how many people were milling around. The squad cars were parked kind of haphazardly, and there was no sign of the cops who'd been driving them. They must, I figured, be inside, talking to Dr. Alistair, Pamela, and Ms. John Wayne.
But there were campers and counselors aplenty, which I thought was a little weird. If there'd been some sort of accident or crisis, you'd have thought they'd have tried to keep it from the kids. . . .
… And that's when I realized that they couldn't have kept it from the kids, even if they'd wanted to. It was five-thirty, and the kids and their counselors were streaming into the dining hall for supper. The dining staff prepared meals at exactly the same time every day, crisis or no crisis.
All of the kids were staring curiously at the squad cars. When they noticed Rob and me, they looked even more curious, and began whispering to one another. Oddly enough, I saw no members of Birch Tree Cottage in the crowds. . . .
But I saw a lot of other people I knew, including Ruth and Scott, who made no move whatsoever to approach me.
That's when I realized I still had my helmet on. Of course no one was saying hi. No one recognized me. As soon as I'd dragged the heavy thing off, Ruth came right over, and, as Rob pulled his helmet off as well, said, very sarcastically, "Well, I see you managed to find that ride you were looking for."
I shot her a warning look. Ruth can really be very snotty when she puts her mind to it.
"Ruth," I said. "I don't think I've ever formally introduced you to my friend, Rob. Ruth Abramowitz, this is Rob Wilkins. Rob, Ruth."
Rob nodded curtly to Ruth. "How you doing," he said.
Ruth smiled at him. It was not her best effort, by any means.
"I'm doing very well, thank you," she said primly. "And you?"
Rob, his eyebrows raised, said, "I'm good."
"Ruth." One of the residents of Tulip Tree Cottage pulled on Ruth's T-shirt. "I'm hungry. Can we go in now?"
Ruth turned and said to her campers, "You all go in now, and save a place for me. I'll be there in a minute."
The kids went away, with many glances not only at me and Rob, but at the squad cars. "What are the police doing here?" more than one of them asked loudly of no one in particular.
"Good question," I said to Ruth. "What are the police doing here?"
"I don't know." Ruth was still looking at Rob. She had seen him before, of course, back when he and I had had detention together. Ruth used to come pick me up, so my parents wouldn't find out about my somewhat checkered disciplinary record.
But I guess this was the first time she'd ever seen Rob from close up, and I could tell she was memorizing the details for later analysis. Ruth's like that.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" I demanded. "The place is crawling with cops, and you don't know why?"
Ruth finally wrenched her gaze from Rob and fastened it onto me instead.
"No," she said. "I don't know. All I know is, we were down at the lake, having free swim and all, and the lifeguard blew his whistle and made us all go back inside."
"We thought it was on account of the storm," Scott said, nodding toward the still-darkening sky above us.
It was at this point that Karen Sue Hanky strolled up to us. I could tell by the expression on her pointy rat face that she had something important to tell us … and by the unnatural glitter in her baby-blue eyes, I knew it was something I wasn't going to like.
"Oh," she said, pretending she had only just noticed me. "I see you've decided to join us again." She glanced flirtatiously at Rob. "And brought along a friend, I see."
Even though Karen Sue had gone to school with Rob, she didn't recognize him. Girls like Karen Sue simply don't notice guys like Rob. I suppose she thought he was just some random local I'd picked up off the highway and brought back to camp for some recreational groping.