“Go get Kate and meet us on the top floor,” Brandon called to Leigh.
“In the pumpkin lounge!” Jams added.
“I’m on it!” she said, running ahead and flinging herself back onto our floor.
I caught up to Jams and Brandon, the untied laces of my tossed shoe bouncing against my ankles. “What the shit is going on? Are we under attack? Are we being hunted?”
“Not yet,” Jams wheezed.
“No one is going to hunt us,” Brandon said quickly. “But we have to talk in private.”
We all paused on the top landing. Jams pushed open the door, revealing pitch darkness. He, Hunter, and Galen dug into their pockets and pulled out their cell phones, holding them aloft like dim flashlights. Huddled together, we made our way toward the lounge.
I flipped on the lights as we entered the pumpkin. Jams dove for the switches, slapping them off again, leaving us with only the hazy light from the two skinny windows.
“We should stay away from the windows, too,” Brandon said, pressing himself against one of the orange walls and crossing his arms. “They face into the quad.”
Galen threw himself down on one of the armless lounge chairs. He tipped his face up at me. “You’re going to want to sit down, Ever. This. Is. Big.”
“Oh my God, can you guys stop talking like you’re in a bad spy movie?” I asked. I felt my hands on my hips. I was one foot tap away from turning into Beth. Or one eye roll from turning into my mom. “For real. What’s going on?”
Jams shook his head, making himself comfortable on the floor next to Hunter. “Not until we’re all together.”
With a growl, I threw myself onto one of the squat padded stools. It would have been too easy to kick all of them until they stopped playing games, but it wouldn’t have been great for my social life. I tugged at my hair, snapping small snarls between my index and middle finger.
Finally, footsteps thundered down the hall again. All heads turned to see Leigh and Kate appear in the doorway.
“Great,” Jams said. He lifted his butt to reach into his back pocket. He tossed a folded mass of goldenrod papers onto the center of the floor. “This changes everything.”
“Don’t mind them,” I told Leigh and Kate, getting down onto the carpet to pick up the papers. “They’ve gone all Bourne Identity in the last ten minutes.”
The wad unfolded into six pieces of paper. I smoothed them over my knee before holding them up to read in the dim light.
“You found the kitchen schedule?” Kate asked, reading over my shoulder. “I don’t think being able to anticipate what the food could taste like will help. I’m happier when I don’t know what they’re trying to make.”
Leigh shuddered. “Those tacos. So cold. So wet. Why were they so wet?”
“Past that,” Jams said, motioning for me to look at the pages.
I dropped the first page and found more of the food schedule. Past that was a kitchen cleaning roster. And then a page that was handwritten. The writing was neat and rounded.
June 24: Amoeba tag—fire drill all call
June 25: The Breakfast Club reenactment—breakfast
June 26: Arboretum climb—afternoon check-in
June 29: Rubik’s cube—timed in first period
July 01: Campus run—post lunch
July 02: Hula hoops—lunch clean up
July 03: Dagobah crawl and lightsabers—team meeting on Mud Trail
July 04: Patriotic talent show—after dinner
July 06: Extreme Hokey Pokey—before dinner
July 08: Playground day—after skirmishes
July 09: Treasure hunt—all day
“Where did you get this?” Leigh breathed.
“It was in one of the forts in Fort Farm,” Jams said.
The page was starting to sweat between my fingers. All of the Cheeseman trial events, through to the last week of camp. It was overwhelming. I let it drift back to the carpet. Kate snatched it up and held it close to her face.
“What is extreme hokey pokey?” she asked.
“I’ve seen one of the counselors in Fort Farm,” I said, remembering the Perfect Nerd Girl standing in her pajamas earlier in the week. “I think she might be sleeping out there. Were there any forts covered in sheets when you went there?”
Hunter shook his head. It could have been a trick of the light, but his face seemed pinker.
“What are the chances that this is a test too?” Kate asked, the list of events still hovering under her nose. “Like the movie night. What if we’re supposed to turn this into Meg and Hari?”
“We’re not giving this back,” Jams said. “A gold bar dropped into our laps. You’d have to be off your freaking trolley to give it away. Do you guys know what we could do with this?”
The possibility that we had a list of the rest of the Cheeseman events buzzed around my brain like a swarm of overly hopeful bees. It was like finding a treasure map. If we could prepare for the Cheeseman as well as we prepared for the Melee, the chances of going home empty-handed went down to almost zero.
“We could win five scholarships,” Galen said.
“Which is great, but there are seven of us,” I said.
“Technically there are eight of us,” Brandon said, kicking the carpet.
Leigh’s fingers folded together, knuckles popping. “I know we didn’t tell Perla about the mock Melee, but this is more serious, right? It’d be wrong not to tell her.”
“And if she tells her friends on Team Six?” Hunter asked. “Or if she lets it slip to a counselor?”
Jams scoffed. “And also, do any of us want her to win?”
“Is that our place to decide?” I asked. I had no warm and fuzzy feelings for Perla, and I definitely thought she would spill our team secrets to anyone who would listen, but having her fate in my hands made me nervous. Sure, she was unpleasant and rude and generally awful to be around …
Wait, what was my point again?
“What do you think, Kate?” Leigh asked.
“Yeah,” Galen said. “You have to live with her. If you don’t want to keep this from her, we’ll track her down and tell her what’s going on.”
Kate shook her head slowly back and forth. “I-I don’t think she needs to know. Not because she’s mean or because she took down my decorations or because her Starbucks order is pretentious. This is between us as friends. You guys are sharing this with us because we are your friends. And she’s not our friend. She made it very clear that she did not want that.”
“I’m on board with that,” Hunter said.
“Pinky swears all around?” Leigh asked, holding up her hands.
I locked my pinky with hers and held my other hand out to Brandon, who only hesitated for a second before curving his pinky around mine. One by one, we formed a circle of connected pinkies around the kitchen roster, the lunch menus, and the list of Cheeseman events.
And Galen’s cell phone alarm went off, announcing the next check-in.
21
“Check-in has been moved to the arboretum,” Hunter reported, striding back across the lobby from the empty table where a counselor should have been waiting for us.
“Six twenty-nine, arboretum climb,” Leigh recited, excitedly stretching the hem of her T-shirt. “The page foretold this moment.”