The Sign in the Smoke Read online

  Sam raised her hand, and so did Bella, after some hesitation.

  “Great,” said Deborah. “We’ll save you two for last, then, since it’s a more complicated test.”

  “Can I run to the ladies’ room then?” Sam asked. “Sorry—I should have gone back at the cabin.”

  “Sure, that’s fine,” Deborah said. “There’s an outhouse down a little path that leads off to the right, on your way back to the mess hall.”

  Sam turned and disappeared into the woods. But before Deborah could continue, Bella raised her hand.

  “Yes, Bella?” Deborah asked.

  “Can I go get a hoodie?” Bella asked. “I’m cold, and if we’re just going to be waiting for a while . . .”

  “Sure.” Deborah shrugged. “Run back to the cabin quickly and then come right back, okay?”

  “Okay.” Bella nodded and then scampered back up the path.

  “Now, let me demonstrate the basic test for you.” Deborah walked out to the end of the pier, pinched her nose, and jumped in with a huge SPLASH!

  “Ooh!” she shrieked when she came up for air. “That’s brisk! Anyway, I’m going to swim over to the float like so. . . .” She began paddling, kicking her legs out behind. The lake water splashed into crystals all around her. It was a couple of minutes before she reached the float. “Okay!” she yelled, struggling to make her voice carry over the yards that separated her from the pier. “Now I’m going to—aaugh!”

  In the blink of an eye, it looked like Deborah was suddenly yanked downward—into the lake! Where she’d floated a few seconds earlier, holding on to the float, was a little whirlpool of churning water.

  I looked uneasily at George. “What just happened?”

  George shook her head. “Do you think she’s okay? Should we—”

  But then the surface of the lake was broken again, and an extremely wet, slick-haired Deborah came up sputtering.

  “Are you okay?” Maddie yelled, cupping her hands over her mouth.

  Deborah held up one finger to say wait one minute. She pushed her hair back from her face, still blinking and gasping—clearly whatever had pulled her down had surprised her, too.

  “I’m okay,” she said after a few seconds. “That was the darnedest thing! It felt like someone . . .” She looked down into the water, biting her lip.

  “Someone did what?” Charla called, looking openly worried now.

  Deborah frowned, peering beneath the surface of the water. I turned to look at George again, and she returned my glance with a furrowed brow. Nobody was saying it—but I knew we were all thinking of the story Bella had told the night before. The camper who’d drowned in this very lake. The camper who supposedly haunted the camp.

  All at once, Deborah shook her head and turned back to us, smiling. “Nothing,” she said. “Just ignore me! I’m sorry, folks, there are some reeds and plants down there, and my foot must have gotten snagged on one of them. No big deal!”

  “What about us?” Charla murmured, too quietly for Deborah to hear. “I don’t want to get caught by any weed.”

  I swallowed hard. I wasn’t proud to admit it, but I was thinking the same thing. I wasn’t a terribly strong swimmer to begin with. The last thing I needed was some angry “weed” pulling me down.

  If it really is a weed.

  Deborah demonstrated the rest of the test: treading water for two minutes, then swimming back. Nothing else happened that would be considered out of the ordinary. When Deborah crested the ladder that led back up to the pier, she held out her arms for applause, and we all clapped politely.

  “Thank you,” said Deborah with a smile. “I deserve that, for being the first one to brave that cold water! Who’s next? Let’s see. . . .” She walked to the edge of the pier and picked up a clipboard. “Sam and Bella were interested in the lifeguard test, right? So let’s do the basic tests first. Alphabetical order?” Without waiting for us to answer, she squinted at the paper on her clipboard. “Benson, Charla?”

  Charla cringed, but nodded and bravely moved forward. In what seemed like no time, she’d jumped into the water and headed to the float. She passed her test with flying colors, and then Maddie took and passed hers. I was beginning to feel calm again when Deborah called out, “Drew, Nancy? I think you’re up!”

  Great. I raised my hand, trying to muster up a not-miserable expression.

  Deborah smiled encouragingly. “Okay. A little advice from someone who’s been there: jump in from the end of the pier. Rip off the Band-Aid, you know? You get used to the water faster that way.”

  I took a breath and glanced at Bess. You. This was your idea. But she just smiled like we were all having a great time. I strolled to the edge of the pier and bent my toes over. The water looked deep green up close, and I couldn’t see much beyond the surface.

  A shrill whistle sounded behind me. I cringed and turned around.

  Deborah was holding up a whistle she’d looped around her neck and grinning. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just, we have a lot of swim tests to get through. Maybe we should hur—”

  She was right, I realized before she even finished. So I jumped.

  Splash!

  The water wasn’t too cold. It just felt like I was being pelted with ice cubes by a bunch of angry polar bears. It made every part of my body want to shrivel, and I gasped so hard I had to remind myself to paddle and stay afloat.

  Immediately my teeth started chattering. Br-r-r-r-r-r-r. Br-r-r-r-r-r.

  All right, I thought, let’s get this over with!

  Deborah looked down at me from the pier and raised a stopwatch from her pocket. “Okay, start swimming for the raft!” she called.

  I turned around, located the raft, and made a beeline there. Moving was good. Moving was better than being still, because the tiny bit of exercise warmed me a little.

  By the time I reached the raft, I was feeling a little more confident. I slapped the side and turned around.

  “Almost done!” Deborah shouted. “Now push off just a little ways—there! Good! Okay, I’m starting the timer. You tread water there until I tell you to stop!”

  I moved my arms and legs, trying to do the minimum I needed to keep myself afloat. This was the part of the test I’d been dreading. Treading water always made me nervous. I was so aware of how tired I was getting, how my breath was becoming more labored. How long can I really keep this up? I’d never timed myself. I just hoped I had two minutes in me.

  “One minute down!” Deborah shouted after what felt like forever. “One to go!”

  I kept moving. Treading, treading, treading . . . I glanced at the shore and, at that moment, remembered that neither Sam nor Bella had returned to the lake from the bathroom or the cabin. Hasn’t it been long enough? How long had Deborah’s test taken, anyway? Surely it didn’t take that long to—

  “AAAAUUGH!”

  Suddenly my head plunged under the surface and my eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears filled with lake water. My throat burned and, in my shock, I gasped, letting the air out of my lungs. Something had grabbed my foot and yanked it down! I began choking and gagging, reflexively trying to pull my foot away from whatever held it, but it was no use. I tried to shimmy around, working up enough force to pry my foot away from whatever—whoever?—held it. After a few seconds, my eyes adjusted and I could see a few inches in front of me in the green, murky water. Deborah had been right—the floor of the lake was covered with long green plants. But that didn’t feel like what had my foot.

  I looked down at my leg and pulled again. What I saw made me gasp, which only made me swallow more lake water, gagging more. . . .

  It looks like a human figure.

  The water was too murky to make out much more than a shadow. But I could clearly see arms, legs, a head. This was no reed!

  Terrified, I yanked one more time on my foot.

  This time, it came free.

  I didn’t hesitate. I paddled my arms toward the surface, kicking behind me as hard as I could.

/>   It was probably only a second or two before my head broke the surface of the water, but it felt like days. I gasped in a huge mouthful of air, which just pushed more water down my throat, making me gag again. But the air felt heavenly. I pushed my hair back from my forehead and blinked rapidly, trying to see.

  When my vision returned, I saw Deborah watching me curiously from the pier. “Nancy, are you all right? That’s exactly where I went down. There must be a reed. . . .”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t a reed!” I called.

  Deborah looked surprised. “No?” she asked. “Well, you probably can’t be sure. Did you see—”

  “It was a person!” I yelled. “I saw a figure underwater! It looked like a person!”

  Deborah looked at me for a moment, confused, and then her expression hardened to a frown. Meanwhile, the other counselors behind her tittered and began whispering to one another. Bess and George exchanged a concerned glance and then both looked back at me, as if to say, Really?

  That’s when I realized how insane it sounded.

  How would a person be able to breathe underwater? Where had he or she come from? What possible motive could he or she have to attack me—or maybe Deborah and me—under the water?

  But as I remembered those terrible few seconds underwater, I was sure of it. I could see the curve of the figure’s shoulder, feel its fingers on my ankle. They were fingers on my ankle. Not leaves or reeds. I was positive.

  Wasn’t I?

  “We’re having someone come out to trim the reeds at the bottom of the lake,” Deborah announced at dinner that night. “We think this should address any problems we had during swim tests today.” She glanced at me, and I looked down at my chicken nuggets.

  No one believes me. I’m not sure I believe myself.

  Deborah cleared her throat. “This means we won’t be having any swimming tomorrow, when the CITs arrive, which means we’ll have to conduct their swim tests at the same time as the campers’—but that’s probably all right. Better safe than sorry, I always say.”

  She put down the microphone and went to sit down at her table to finish dinner.

  George took a sip of bug juice and then put down her cup, studying me across the table. “Could it have been your shadow you saw?” she asked, not even bothering to introduce the subject. We’d been talking about it on and off all afternoon.

  I shrugged, picking up a french fry. “I don’t think so,” I said. “It looked like another person.”

  “But just . . . how?” Bess asked, chewing thoughtfully on a french fry herself.

  I couldn’t answer her question. I hadn’t been able to answer it all day. What would another person be doing underwater? How could they breathe? What about—

  Bella cleared her throat. “I think we all know how,” she said in a low voice.

  All eyes turned to her.

  “Oh, come on, Bella,” Taylor chided. She’d started feeling better after lunch and had been in training with us since then. “Not that old story again. We know that’s something you just made up to scare us.”

  Bella scowled. “No, that’s not what you know. That’s what you decided to make yourselves feel better.”

  George tilted her head. “So it’s just a coincidence?” she asked. “You told us this scary legend about the camp and then planned this awesome prank to freak us all out on the first night? I doubt it.”

  Bella glared at George and then turned to look at Maddie. “Maddie’s heard it too,” she pointed out. “Didn’t you, Mad? You said that last night. You heard the story about the drowning too.”

  Maddie brought a forkful of carrots to her mouth and chewed deliberately, looking down at her tray. “I heard something happened here,” she corrected.

  “Something involving a drowning,” Bella prodded.

  “Something involving a camper,” Maddie said, nodding. “And . . . the lake.”

  Everyone was silent for a minute. I felt Bella’s eyes on me and looked up.

  “Maybe what you saw in the lake,” Bella said, standing up, “wasn’t alive at all.”

  With that, she picked up her tray and stalked off.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Standoff at the Lake

  THE NEXT MORNING THE CITS began arriving at nine a.m., just after breakfast. As soon as the first car pulled up and the first grinning face emerged into the sunlight, the mood at the camp changed. We’d all been tense the night before, arguing about what had happened at the lake, whether I could be believed in the first place, what the figure could have been. By the time we went to sleep, long after lights-out, Taylor and Maddie seemed close to siding with Bella and believing that something supernatural was going on at the camp. George, unsurprisingly, flat-out refused to believe this, and Bess, Charla, Sam, and I were skeptics too. Still, I couldn’t deny a little flutter of fear that went through me every time I remembered that shadow in the water.

  It looked human. But how could it be?

  You would think after solving so many cases in which “ghosts” ended up being, well, “not ghosts,” I wouldn’t believe in them.

  But sometimes it’s hard not to.

  We all settled on a bench in front of the camp office to wait for our CITs. The first to arrive was assigned to Bess, and her name was Janie. She had a small, heart-shaped face and dark hair cut close to her jawline. She was smiley and enthusiastic about being at camp, but when it came time for her mom to leave, she was super reluctant to give up her smartphone.

  “Oh man,” she murmured. “I knew this was coming. . . . It’s just . . . I’ve never been away from technology for a whole week!”

  George smiled. “I know how you feel.”

  “I have a blog,” Janie went on, “where I talk about new technological innovations and review some games and programs. I put up a post saying there’d be no updates for a week . . . but it’s going to feel really weird!”

  George poked Bess and whispered, “I like this girl. Want to trade?”

  Bess shoved her away. “Mini-George is mine,” she hissed. “You haven’t even met yours yet.”

  Bess took Mini-George—Janie—over to the cabin Deborah assigned them to, Maple Shade Cabin, then moved her own things there from Pine Cabin. When the campers arrived tomorrow, they’d be presiding over a bunkful of eight-year-olds.

  Next to arrive was Frankie, Maddie’s curly-brown-haired CIT, and then Susie, who had silky dark hair and a serious expression. She was assigned to Bella.

  “I hope I get someone good,” George whispered to me as we continued to wait. “I liked that Janie.”

  “Remember what Mrs. Collins said in kindergarten, George,” I said. “You get what you get and you don’t get upset. I’m sure we’ll both get great CITs. And I’m personally going to need mine! I’ve never been alone in a room with six kids before.”

  “Hear, hear,” George agreed, as a classic Mustang convertible pulled up.

  The girl who climbed out of the passenger seat looked like she could have walked out of a movie from the 1960s. She wore a floral scarf knotted around her hair and big, round sunglasses. Once she’d taken out her duffel bag and placed it on the ground, she smiled and pulled off the scarf, revealing a cascade of wavy blond hair. “I’m Maya?” she asked. “Maya Beaumont? I’m going to be a CIT? I’m so excited! I came to this camp when I was teeny tiny!”

  Deborah walked up and introduced herself, then looked at her clipboard. Just then a silver SUV pulled up, and out climbed a preppily dressed redhead with cool blue eyes. A single silver barrette held back her bangs, and she carried a Moleskine notebook, which looked well-loved.

  “Excuse me,” she said, as a middle-aged woman climbed out of the driver’s side and popped the trunk. “I’m Marcie Polk? I’m supposed to be a CIT here.”

  George looked at me with raised eyebrows. But before I could respond, Maya the blonde came running over and threw her arms around me.

  “I’m so, so, so excited!” she said. “Is your name Nancy? My name’s Maya. I
’m going to be your CIT and we’re going to be in the Juniper Cabin with a bunkful of ten-year-olds! Isn’t that perfect? Couldn’t you just die? We’re going to have so much fun! Have I mentioned I came to this camp when I was little?”

  I smiled and introduced myself to Maya, saying that yes, that sounded pretty great, and that I was sure we were going to have a lot of fun. “I’m sure I’ll need your help,” I added. “I’ve never been a counselor before—I’ve never even been to camp! So you can show me the ropes.”

  Maya nodded eagerly. “Sure thing!”

  As Maya grabbed her bag and explained which cabin was Juniper Cabin, at least as Deborah had explained it to her, George glanced at me and winked. “Have fun with Mini-Bess,” she whispered.

  At that moment Marcie walked up and opened her notebook. “Are you George?” she asked. “I’m Marcie. I’m going to be your CIT. Deborah says we’ll be staying in Pine Cabin with the seven-year-olds?”

  George looked a little panicked. “Hoo, boy,” she said. “The youngest campers. That will be a challenge. I’m going to need your help, kid.”

  Marcie just nodded, seeming to take that in stride. She began flipping through her notebook. “I talked to my old Brownie troop leader to get some tips on dealing with kids of different ages,” she said. “Do you want to go over what she said about seven-year-olds?”

  As George raised her eyebrows, Maya turned around and whistled. “Wow, you’re organized!” she said. When Marcie looked at her in surprise, Maya smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Maya. Sorry. I should introduce myself. I’m so excited to be here! I’m sure we’re going to be great friends! Anyway, do you always carry that notebook?”