I swallowed hard, letting my mind lead me on. Could she have an ax to grind with Deborah?
I walked over to my campers and greeted them, listening to their cheerful stories about the day, and their banter with one another. I put my arm around Harper, who was bringing up the rear and seemed to be off in her own little world. But in reality, my mind was spinning on its own, a million miles away.
Bella could have dived back into the lake after she went to get her hoodie the day of our swimming tests, I realized. She could have snuck away from the campfire the night the sleeping bags went missing. But how would she have gotten away from her own bunk to come harass mine while we were swimming?
There was the matter of the silvery-blond hair, too. If Bella was at camp the year Lila nearly drowned, she might know her hair color, or she could have seen a picture in the news. But would she go so far as to wear a wig underwater to freak everyone out?
“Nancy,” Harper said suddenly, tugging on my sleeve, “you seem sad.”
I looked down at her, startled. “I do?” I asked. “I’m sorry, Harper. I don’t feel sad. I’m just trying to figure something out in my mind.”
“Oh,” she said, looking away. “Well, I hope you figure it out soon.”
Me too, I thought, patting Harper on the back. Me too, kid.
I was at a campfire, and Bess and George were sitting across the fire on different logs, but I couldn’t get to them. There was a terrible wailing in the woods, like a young girl crying. It went on and on. Then, suddenly, the smoke from the campfire grew tendrils that formed arms and legs and a horrible smoke-bearded face! The smoke creature lunged toward me, snagging me in its long, spindly arms. I screamed, but no sound came out, and nobody noticed. I felt panic welling up in my chest as it lifted me up, carrying me away from the campfire, into the woods, where the wailing was getting louder and louder. Just as I was finally able to get my voice out—and let out a real scream—the smoke monster suddenly tossed me in the air, and I was spinning through the darkness, falling and falling, until with a SPLASH I was submerged in the icy lake. . . .
“Nancy!” Something grabbed my arm and shook it, and I shot straight up in bed, the shock of the icy water still making my heart pound.
“What?” I cried, startled. “What is it? What?”
Kiki, who’d been shaking me awake, jumped back, startled.
“I’m sorry,” I said, waving for her to come close again. “I was just having this awful dream. . . .”
“Nancy, you have to get up,” she replied, all business. “The cabin is flooding!”
CHAPTER TEN
An Unexpected Clue
I SAT UP IN BED and looked down, and that was when I noticed the other girls, shouting and splashing through the foot or so of water that covered the floor. Maya opened the front door, and all at once the water level decreased as a stream of water escaped.
“Oh my gosh! What happened??” I asked, jumping down from my bed. I hit the floor with an icy splash and shrieked. The water was freezing!
“Someone turned on all the showers and sinks,” Maya replied. She was soaking wet from the waist down. “Cece got up to use the bathroom, and she found it.”
“Did someone turn everything off?” I asked, sloshing through the water to the bathroom.
“Yup,” Winnie replied. “Maya did it. Then she came to wake all of us up, but you were sleeping pretty hard.”
Sleeping pretty hard. I remembered my nightmare and sighed. Clearly the whole situation at Camp Cedarbark was stressing me out. And now this—was this one more weird event to add to the list?
“All right,” I said, taking stock of the situation. All the girls in the bunk were up, standing before me in various states of soaking-ness. “Let’s get out of the cabin, then. We need to tell Deborah what happened.”
“We do?” asked Cece. “What if this was just a prank?”
“It’s a pretty destructive prank,” I replied. “Flooding the cabin could cause a lot of damage, not to mention that someone could have gotten hurt if they slipped or something. No, I think this is bigger than a prank.” I paused, watching Harper carefully arrange all her books on Kiki’s top bunk. “Harper? Come on. Your books will be okay.”
Harper glanced at me, clearly not convinced. “I don’t want them to fall into the water,” she said. “They’re first editions.”
“They’ll be fine,” I said, suppressing a frustrated sigh. “Come on, guys. Let’s get Deborah and start cleaning all this up.”
I half expected to see a commotion when we got out of the cabin—water spilling out of the other cabin, other counselors and campers lining up in the clearing—but we were met with dead silence. It looked like this “prank” was aimed at Juniper Cabin. Could I have been the target?