George brushed up against me as we crossed paths walking to our respective cabins. “Do you think the campout will happen tomorrow night?” she whispered.
I realized I hadn’t thought about it—but it was hard to imagine. “I doubt it,” I whispered back. “This seems like a pretty clear threat. But I didn’t hear that from Deborah, so I don’t know for sure.”
George nodded solemnly.
“Some of my little kids might be relieved,” she said, “but I imagine the rest of the camp will freak out.”
“I know,” I said, “but better a camp-wide freak-out than some other scary thing happening.”
George shrugged. “True. Anyway, have a good night, Nance.”
I squeezed her arm before she walked away, then was startled by a cool voice behind me.
“Too bad about Night Frisbee, isn’t it?”
I turned and looked into the darkly made-up eyes of Bella. In the dim light of dusk, her face was half-covered by shadow.
“It’s a shame,” I replied neutrally.
Bella moved closer. “What’s a shame is that you and your goody-two-shoes friends wouldn’t let me hold my séance before camp even started,” she hissed, too quietly for the campers around to hear. “If I’d been able to communicate with this angry spirit, maybe we could have avoided all this.”
As Bella tossed her hair and stalked off toward her cabin, I stood frozen and watched her, stunned. But not by the snotty comment. I was stunned by Bella’s smell.
When she’d moved in close to me, it was unmistakable: Bella reeked of smoke.
The next morning, about fifteen minutes after breakfast, I stood at the edge of the woods outside Walnut Cabin. Full of nervous energy, I peeked inside the window, but the lack of lights inside made it hard to see anything. Besides, I knew that no one should be in there. I’d seen Bella, Susie, and all six eleven-year-old campers on the soccer field just moments before. Deborah was letting the Night Frisbee play-offs happen this morning, and while the girls were disappointed that it was during daylight, they were all excited to play for the championship.
I’d asked Maya to keep an eye on the girls while I sneaked away “to the nurse for some aspirin” . . . but really, to get inside Walnut Cabin while Bella and her campers were gone.
I hadn’t run my suspicions by Deborah. She hadn’t canceled the campout yet, but she’d told me this morning that she planned to announce after lunch that it was canceled. It was just too risky, she said. There was no doubt now that someone was sabotaging the camp. And it scared her to bring campers to an unprotected location while that was going on.
I was hoping that I’d find something in Walnut Cabin to prove that my hunch about Bella was more than just a hunch. She’d been strangely obsessed with the “ghost” story since we showed up, and she was capable of pulling off all the attacks. If I could find something inside Walnut Cabin that connected her to the crime . . . then maybe the campout could go on as planned, and without the threat of more strange happenings.
I took a deep breath and darted around to the entrance, pushing open the heavy wooden door and slipping inside. The cabin was dim, and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust after being in the bright sunlight. When I could see again, I saw a cabin that looked a lot like ours, in terms of the general chaos and the items scattered around. Sleeping bags were spread out on each of the bunks, with pillows and sometimes extra blankets or stuffed animals. There were postcards and stationery stacked on one dresser, and a few dog-eared copies of the Hunger Games trilogy on another.
I stepped over to the bunk beds near the door, in the same location as the ones in our cabin where Maya and I slept. Traditionally, the counselors seemed to take the bunks closest to the door. I walked to the dresser at the foot of the bed and idly shuffled through some items on the top: a necklace with a pendant shaped like a key, a tube of cherry-red lip gloss. This looks like Bella’s stuff. Then I noticed a postcard peeking out from underneath a pair of sunglasses. I pulled it out and looked down. Hey, goofball . . . I skipped the message and looked down at the signature. Bingo.
It read Truly, Bella.
So I’d accomplished goal number one: locate Bella’s belongings. Now I just had to search them.
Casting a quick look out the cabin window—the clearing still looked deserted—I threw open the top drawer and started rifling through it. It was full of underwear and socks, and based on the size, they looked like Bella’s and not Susie’s. I was about to close the drawer and move on when my fingers brushed something small and hard in the rear corner of the drawer. Taking it in my hand—it was small enough to fit in my palm—I drew it out of the drawer and looked down.