I asked Maya to watch the girls while I went to wake up Deborah and Miles.
I pounded on their front door for a few minutes. Finally I heard noise inside, and Deborah appeared in a terry-cloth bathrobe over a cotton nightgown. I wasn’t surprised to see her and not Miles.
“What’s up?” she asked.
I explained what had happened, and Deborah’s expression turned serious. “It only happened to your cabin?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She let out a deep sigh. “Do you think it’s related to the other things?”
I breathed in. “Yeah,” I said. “I think someone has figured out that I’m onto them.”
In the end, Sam the sports counselor was also woken up by the commotion and came over to help. It took all of us about an hour of mopping and pushing the water out the door to get the cabin dry enough to go back inside to sleep. In the morning, we were understandably a little cranky. Breakfast was quieter than usual, with us silently chewing our pancakes, many of us staring into space.
“Why would someone come after us?” Maya asked suddenly, her eyebrows raised in confusion. “Only us?”
I could tell that the prank had rattled my normally optimistic CIT, but I didn’t know how to comfort her. Who would target only us? Someone who knew I was getting closer. Maybe Bella? Or . . . Miles? But it was hard to imagine a grown man sneaking into our bunk to flood it. It just seemed . . . juvenile.
“We don’t really know what it was, Maya,” I said slowly, but I couldn’t help looking across the mess hall to the eleven-year-olds’ table, where Bella was laughing so hard she looked like she was snorting. “Don’t worry. Will you guys excuse me a minute? I’m going to talk to Deborah.”
I stood up and walked over to the table by the kitchen where Deborah was eating with Sam, Taylor, and Sandy. Deborah looked up as I approached. “Hi, Nancy,” she said, pulling out the empty seat next to her. “Come sit down.”
Sam looked up curiously. She was wearing her ever-present Yankees cap. “Oh, hey. Did your bunk all get back to sleep last night?”
I nodded. “Eventually,” I said.
Deborah quickly shoveled her last bite of pancakes into her mouth and touched my shoulder. “Can I speak to you privately for just a moment, Nancy?”
“Sure.”
I waved at the other counselors and the lifeguard, then waited while Deborah bused her tray and led me out the front door to the main clearing.
She took a deep breath. “I’m having trouble with something.”
“What’s that?” I asked. There already seemed to be plenty of trouble at the camp. . . . Was something even stranger going on that I didn’t know about?
Deborah looked pained. “The big end-of-camp campout is coming up,” she said. “You know, it’s supposed to be tomorrow night.”
I did know the campout was coming . . . but it surprised even me that it was only a night away. Where had the time gone? I felt like my campers and I were still getting to know one another.
“Wow,” I said, having a sense where she might be going with this. “And you’re . . .”
“I’m scared something else will happen,” Deborah said plainly. “Up until last night, I could explain everything away as pranks gone wrong. The sleeping bags in the lake, some kid playing silly games in the water. But last night was different. It could have caused major damage to the property. And . . . with the water element, it does all seem to lead back to the lake, and what happened to Lila.”
I nodded slowly. “And what happened to her happened at the campout,” I filled in.
“Exactly.” Deborah paused. “Even if these are just pranks . . . I feel like I can’t jeopardize my campers’ safety by putting them in a situation where someone might try something stupid.”
I raised my eyebrows. “But the campout is such a big deal to the campers. I know my bunk has been talking about it nonstop since they got here.”
Deborah sighed. “That’s the problem.” She looked me in the eye. “You know everything that’s happened so far, Nancy, and the whole history. Do you think I should cancel it?”
Before I could respond, the mess hall door opened and Bella stepped out. She glanced at us. “Oh, hi. I just realized I forgot my bug repellent this morning, and I’ve already got, like, a million mosquito bites. I was just running back to the cabin to get it. . . .” She trailed off, her eyes narrowing as she looked from me to Deborah. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Just a minor incident that happened last night,” Deborah said stiffly. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“Oh, you mean the flooding of Nancy’s bunk?” said Bella. “I heard all about it from her campers. That’s a real shame, Nancy. Gosh, it’s like something’s cursing this place this summer, huh?” She tossed her head and headed off toward her cabin, leaving her snarky words lingering in the air.
I watched her until she disappeared into the cabin, then turned back to Deborah. “Don’t cancel the campout yet,” I told her. “I have a lead.”