Skirting the pack of friendly—a little too friendly, if you ask me; you had to shove them out of your way with your knees to escape their long, hot tongues—dogs that roamed freely around the camp, I headed back to Frangipani Cottage, where I began throwing my stuff into the duffel bag I'd brought it all in. It burned me up a little to think that Karen Sue Hanky was the one who was going to get to enjoy that excellent view of Lake Wawasee from what had been my bed. I'd known Karen Sue since kindergarten, and if anyone had ever suffered from a case of the I'm-So-Greats, it was Karen Sue. Seriously. The girl totally thought she was all that, just because her dad owned the biggest car dealership in town, she happened to be blonde, and she played fourth chair flute in our school orchestra.
And yeah, you had to audition to make the Symphonic Orchestra, and yeah, it had won all these awards and was mostly made up of only juniors and seniors, and Karen and I had both made it as sophomores, but please. I ask you, in the vast spectrum of things, is fourth chair in Symphonic Orchestra anything? Anything at all? Not. So not.
Not to Karen it wasn't, though. She would never rest until she was first chair. But to get there, she had to challenge and beat the person in third chair.
Yeah. Me.
And I can tell you, that was so not going to happen. Not in this world. I wouldn't call making third chair of Ernest Pyle High School's Symphonic Orchestra a world-class accomplishment, or anything, but it wasn't something I was going to let Karen Sue take away from me. No way.
Not like she was taking Frangipani Cottage away from me.
Well, frangipani, I decided, was a stupid plant, anyway. Smelly. A big smelly flower. Birch trees were way better.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
It wasn't until I actually got to Birch Tree Cottage that I changed my mind. Okay, first off, can I just tell you what a logistical nightmare it was going to be, supervising eight little boys? How was I even going to be able to take a shower without one of them barging in to use the John, or worse, spying on me, as young boys—and some not so young ones, as illustrated by my older brothers, who spend inordinate amounts of time gazing with binoculars at Claire Lippman, the girl next door—are wont to do?
Plus Birch Tree Cottage was the farthest cabin from everything—the pool, the amphitheater, the music building. It was practically in the woods. There was no lake view here. There was not even any light here, since the thickly leafed tree branches overhead let in not the slightest hint of sun. Everything was damp and smelled faintly of mildew. There was mildew in the showers.
Let me be the first to tell you: Birch Tree Cottage? Yeah, it sucked.
I missed Frangipani Cottage, and the little girls whose hair I could have been French braiding, already. If I knew how to French braid, that is.
Still, maybe they could have taught me. My little girl campers, I mean.
And when I'd stowed my stuff away and stepped outside the cabin and saw the first of my charges heading toward me, lugging their suitcases and instruments behind them, I missed Frangipani Cottage even more.
I'm serious. You never saw a scruffier, more sour-faced group of kids in your life. Ranging in age from ten to twelve years old, these were no mischievous-but-good-at-heart Harry Potters.
Oh, no.
Far from it.
These kids looked exactly like what they were: spoiled little music prodigies whose parents couldn't wait to take a six-week vacation from them.
The boys all stopped when they saw me and stood there, blinking through the lenses of their glasses, which were fogged up on account of the humidity. Their parents, who were helping them with their luggage, looked like they were longing to get as far from Camp Wawasee as they possibly could—preferably to a place where pitchers of margaritas were being served.
I hastened to say the speech I'd been taught at counselor training. I remembered to substitute the words birch tree for frangipani.
"Welcome to Birch Tree Cottage," I said. "I'm your counselor, Jess. We're going to have a lot of fun together."
The parents, you could tell, couldn't care less that I wasn't a boy. They seemed pleased by the fact that I clearly bathed regularly and could speak English.
The boys, however, looked shocked. Sullen and shocked.
One of them went, "Hey, you're a girl."
Another one wanted to know, "What's a girl counselor doing in a boys' cabin?"
A third one said, "She's not a girl. Look at her hair," which I found highly insulting, considering the fact that my hair isn't that short.
Finally, the most sullen-looking boy of them all, the one with the mullet cut and the weight problem, went, "She is, too, a girl. She's that girl from TV. The lightning girl."
And with that, my cover was blown.
C H A P T E R
2
That was me. Lightning Girl. The girl from TV.
Lucky me. Lucky, lucky, lucky me. Could there be a girl luckier than me? I don't think so. . . .
Oh, wait—I know. How about some girl who hadn't been struck by lightning and developed weird psychic powers overnight? Hey, yeah. That girl might be luckier than me. That girl might be way luckier than me. Don't you think?
I looked down at Mullet Head. Actually, not that much down, because he was about as tall as I was—which isn't saying much, understand.
Anyway, I looked down at him, and I went, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Just like that. Real smooth, you know? I'm telling you, I had it on.
But it didn't matter. It didn't matter at all.
One of the boys, a skinny one clutching a trumpet case, said, "Hey, yeah, you are that girl. I remember you. You're the one who got hit by lightning and got all those special powers!"
The other boys exchanged excited glances. The glances clearly said, Cool. Our counselor's a mutant.
One of them, however, a dark, delicate-looking boy who had no parents with him and spoke with a slight accent, asked shyly, "What special powers?"
The chubby boy with the unfortunate haircut—a mullet, short in front and long in back—who'd outed me in the first place smacked the little dark boy in the shoulder, hard. The chubby boy's mother, from whom it appeared he'd inherited his current gravitationally challenged condition, did not even tell him to knock it off.
"What do you mean, what special powers?" Mullet Head demanded. "Where have you been, retard? On the little bus?"
All of the other boys chuckled at this witticism. The dark little boy looked stricken.
"No," he said, clearly puzzled by the little bus reference. "I come from French Guiana."
"Guiana?" Mullet Head seemed to find this hilarious. "Is that anywhere near Gonorrhea?"
Mrs. Mullet Head, to my astonishment, laughed at this witticism.
That's right. Laughed.
Mullet Head, I could see, was going to be what Pamela had referred to during counselor training as a challenge.
"I'm sorry," I said sweetly to him. "I know I look like that girl who was on TV and all, but it wasn't me. Now, why don't you all go ahead and—"
Mullet Head interrupted me. "It was, too, you," he declared with a scowl.
Mrs. Mullet Head went, "Now, Shane," in this tone that showed she was proud of the fact that her son was no pushover. Which was true. Shane wasn't a pushover. What he was, clearly, was a huge pain in the—
"Um," another one of the parents said. "Hate to interrupt, but do you mind if we go ahead and go inside, miss? This tuba weighs a ton."
I stepped aside and allowed the boys and their parents to enter the cabin. Only one of them paused as he went by me, and that was the little French Guianese boy. He was lugging an enormous and very expensive-looking suitcase. I could see no sign of an instrument.