Lights Out! (12 page)

“I’m so glad you and Fiona are talking again,” Aimee said with a sigh.

“I hate fighting,” Madison said. “Even though what happened wasn’t really classified as a fight, I hated it.”

Fiona nodded. “Me too.”

“It’s warm today,” Aimee said, tugging off her fleece.

“Should we go to breakfast?” Fiona asked. She stood up and brushed off her pants. “We find out who won the talent show today. I can’t wait! I thought about it all last night. After the guys, of course.”

Aimee giggled. “What else is on our schedule?”

“Well, we have to pack,” Madison said. “Since we’re going home. It seems like we just got here.”

“Home? I’m not ready to go home until we have our award luncheon,” Fiona said, smiling. “We won something. I can feel it!”

“Everyone wins something,” Aimee said. “That’s how camp works. No one feels left out.”

“Don’t forget the Tower climb,” Fiona said.

Madison lowered her head. The Tower? With all the other excitement, she had nearly forgotten. Madison had a vision of herself swinging from ropes and vines like Tarzan, slamming into the side of the Tower with a bone-breaking thud.

That would make for a good photo on the school website.

“Maddie, what’s wrong? Aren’t you psyched for the Tower?” Aimee asked.

Madison flashed a grin. “Sure, I am,” she said, not believing a word.

As they walked to breakfast, they caught up with the boys, just as they had the morning before. Ben was with the boy group today, and Aimee wasted no time getting closer to him. He talked about sunlight, the properties of mud, and the direction of the wind. Not exactly romantic stuff, Madison thought, but Aimee looked smitten. Once again, Fiona and Egg walked as an item, too. It almost looked like they were touching hands.

Watching her friends paired off with boys was difficult for Madison, but she shrugged it off. She loped toward Hart, hoping he’d get in step with her, but that didn’t work. Hart walked ahead with Chet and Drew instead. Dan came up to Madison and gave her a little shove.

“Why so glum, chum?” Dan asked. “Hungry?”

Madison laughed. “Not really. But I’d be willing to guess that you are.”

Now Dan laughed. “Yeah, but I’m sick of this camp food. I’m ready to go home.”

“Me too,” Madison said. “And I don’t want to climb that Tower.”

“Me neither,” Dan admitted.

Madison was relieved that someone else was nervous about scaling the wooden monster. The two vowed to cheer each other on once the climbing started.

Inside the snack shack, the camp staffers had made a special breakfast for day three of the Jasper Woods field trip: hotcakes. Trays of silver-dollar cakes filled a long table that also held buckets of syrup, sliced bananas, berries, and crisp bacon.

Dan licked his lips. “Now,
this
is better than cereal,” he cried, getting on line for his own plate piled high with food.

“Hey, Finnster,” Hart said, finally acknowledging Madison on the breakfast line. “Way to go last night.”

“Yeah, Maddie,” Egg joined in. “You’re like the scare patrol or something.”

“Shh…don’t tell anyone,” Madison said. “If the teachers found out—”

“Your secret is safe…” Hart said. The corners of his mouth turned up. His hair was doing that cute “flop” thing over his brow.

Madison fiddled nervously with the tablecloth on the serving table. Without realizing it, she knocked over a bowl filled with little plastic containers of butter. They hit the floor and scattered.

“Here, let me help,” Hart said, bending over.

Madison got down to retrieve them, too. She was practically nose-to-nose with Hart.

“Thanks,” Madison mumbled, embarrassed.

“HART!” Ivy’s voice pierced the air. She continued to whine over Madison’s head. “Hart, I was looking for you. We saved you a seat over here. Come on. Come
on
!”

Hart glanced at Madison and stood up. He dumped the butters in his hand back into the bowl. “See ya,” Hart said, turning toward Ivy.

“Yeah,” Madison said. “See ya.”

By now Aimee, Ben, Fiona, and Egg were all on bended knee, helping Madison pick up the mess. Madison watched Hart follow Ivy over to a table with the drones. Ivy glanced back, snickering. She always gets what she wants: Madison thought—especially when it comes to boys.

As she looked down, Madison realized that her jeans were now dirty from the floor where she’d been kneeling. “Great,” Madison said aloud to herself. “Not only do I feel bad. Now I look bad.”

Madison’s bad luck with pants continued.

Mrs. Goode called the room to attention to announce the morning plans. But Madison wasn’t really listening that well. She couldn’t take her eyes off Hart and Ivy. Many of the kids were sitting in different seats than the day before. Cliques were mixed together now.

It was every camper for himself or herself.

“Before we get started,” Mrs. Goode said, “we have some business to attend to. Last night there were some reports of students in the woods after lights-out…reports that I am hesitant to acknowledge”

Chet giggled, and Mrs. Goode looked over at him quizzically.

“Something you wish to share, Mr. Waters?” she asked. He shook his head rapidly.

Aimee gave Madison a thumbs-up. Luckily, none of the boys or girls who had been at the ghost hunt would talk. This was one secret the seventh-grade boys and girls could share together—even Poison Ivy would keep a lid on it.

Mrs. Goode eyed the crowd as if some additional clues might mysteriously drop from the rafters or glow on kids’ foreheads—but none did.

“Lucky for everyone involved, the night stroll happened without incident,” Mrs. Goode continued. “And we will leave the matter at that. Am I understood?”

Aimee sat next to Madison on a snack shack bench. On the other side of Aimee, Ben explained how with one tiny
flick
, he could send a forkful of pancakes toward Mrs. Goode’s head at a 180-degree trajectory. Madison wanted to laugh—he sounded like such a smarty know-it-all. But Aimee looked genuinely happy to be sitting near him, listening to all he had to say.

After stuffing themselves, the kids lined up for the morning hike to the Tower. Everyone had on sneakers for climbing. Madison noticed Ivy was wearing a cool pair of blue ones with a white stripe that Madison had seen in the Boop-Dee-Doop catalog. Even at camp. Ivy always made a fashion statement.

After leaving breakfast, all 103 seventh graders marched across the lawn, into the woods, and over to the giant Tower. The sky had gotten cloudy all over again, and a light mist was falling. Madison hoped it would rain now because that meant no climbing.

But she had no luck in that department. The rain was only a sprinkle. The climb was on.

The Tower itself was nearly sixty feet high. Beneath it, camp staffers waited along with FHJH faculty members, each holding many-colored flags. Off to the left was an elaborate obstacle course with cones and ropes and pits filled with mud. There was mud to spare at this camp.

Kids were divided into blue, green, red, orange, and yellow teams of about twenty. Madison crossed her fingers so she’d get into the orange group. Unfortunately, she was put into green. But Lindsay was orange, so they switched. At least I have my favorite color going for me, Madison thought.

Pam, the camp director, explained that the groups would spend the majority of time getting kids up and down the Tower. In the meantime, those not climbing would run the obstacle course. Each student was timed for speed through the course. Best time meant a prize that day at lunch.

Madison leaned back and arched her neck to see what she was up against. Every level had wide beams and rope steps. Pam said there were twenty different ways to get up to the top. The camp staffers handed out helmets and harnesses to the first kids who wanted to climb. Madison was not among the first crop of climbers. She, along with everyone else, watched the adventure unfold on the ground.

Hart pulled on his helmet before anyone else. He bragged that he’d climbed a forty-foot tower once before, at a wilderness camp he visited two summers earlier. Madison swooned at the sight of him in his gear. He waved to the rest of the seventh grade and began his ascent.

“Go, Hart,” Drew said.

“Yay!” Madison said, cheering him on.

Everyone around them was clapping. Ivy had her hands high in the air. “You can do it!” Ivy shrieked so loud, kids plugged their ears.

After Hart, Egg, Chet, and Drew grabbed the ropes and shimmied, lifted, and climbed their way to the top. Dozens of kids jumped to the front of the line and celebrated their climbs.

But Madison was the leader for a group of “I can’t do it” seventh graders. Some felt self-conscious about the way they looked. Others had a fear of heights. Others felt too weak. Members included Ivy Daly, Rose Thorn, and Phony Joanie, whose brazen excuse was, “This tower is stupid.” Since the activity wasn’t for a grade or merit, no drone saw the point in climbing. As each girl was called for her “turn,” they each found some excuse.

“I don’t want to hurt myself,” Ivy told the camp staffer who was trying to get her into a harness to climb. “And I don’t want to break one of my nails. That would be even worse.”

Madison knew Ivy just wanted to hang out around James, the cute staff counselor, who was supervising the obstacle course.

“Ms. Finn.” Pam was reading from a list of names. “Can we get your gear on for the climb?”

Madison felt woozy. She was as scared as she’d been all morning.

“Um…”

Her throat felt parched. All around her was a hum of kids with climbing gear and fall leaves and…

“Okay,” Madison said, leaving her fear in the dirt and approaching the helmets. “Can I wear the orange helmet?” she asked.

Pam nodded. “Go right ahead,” she told Madison, winking.

Madison knew Mom and Dad would be proud of her accomplishments in forty-eight short hours. But it was Hart who Madison really wanted to impress. Had he finished his obstacle course yet? She almost wanted to climb aboard the Tower and scream, “HEY, HART! LOOK OVER HERE!”

The air still felt damp, but it didn’t make the Tower slippery, so the climbing continued. Madison’s climb was all systems
go.
Another six kids from class ascended at the same time. One of the climbers in Madison’s little group fell backward but dangled in his harness. Those watching from below gasped. The camp staffers waved. “It’s okay! Everyone’s okay!”

Madison climbed on. She put one foot at a time into rope ladder segments, onto blocks, and on top of large rough-hewn beams. If she was going to do this, then
she was going to do this.

She caught her breath on beam number five (she was counting) and pulled herself up on a rope. Her helmet squeezed hot on her head. All she could think was, Boy, am I going to have a bad hair afternoon, and, Please don’t let me fall off this next beam, as she groped and grabbed her way up the structure. The cheers from below continued, but Madison couldn’t tell if they were for her, for another kid on the Tower, or for the large percentage of classmates who were navigating the obstacle course.

She climbed on.

About ten feet from the top of the Tower, Madison felt a pang of fear. Her fingers ached a little. She wanted to quit. She wanted to let go and fall in that harness. But she did none of those things.

She climbed on.

“Go, Maddie!” Fiona and Aimee were squealing as loudly as they could from the bottom of the Tower. They had both made it to the top already. Madison aimed for clouds.

Madison grabbed at a large, dangling, knotted rope at the very top part of the Tower, but she couldn’t quite reach it. She rested for a deep breath, just a second. Then she moved on again.

She held on to a wooden ring and then a rope pulley, edging slowly upward. Her helmet itched. One step she took missed, but she didn’t come rappelling off the tower. She grabbed another wooden grip in time to save herself from dropping off. Whew. Her arms felt like noodles.

Up high, there in the sky, the air was chillier than down below. Air was damp from all the rain the sky had been delivering for the past few days. Madison gazed at where the sun should have been shining. It looked more like a white-gray glow from behind clouds. But in the middle of all that rainy sky, in a small patch of azure sky no bigger than a football field, Madison saw something that was most definitely not bad weather.

Madison saw a rainbow.

“Look at that!” she cried. No one down below heard her, but it didn’t matter. The rainbow’s arrival was perfectly timed. This was the sign she’d been waiting for the entire field trip. The sign that proved she could do it.

Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.

Madison reeled as she leaned over one rope to see where the noise was coming from. Down below, the seventh graders from the obstacle course had gathered anew under the Tower. Everyone was clapping. Was their applause for the rainbow? Or was it for Madison?

“Go, Ivy!” Hart cried. Madison heard his voice above all the others.

Go, Ivy?

Madison felt a knot in her throat. Her foot slipped a little, and she wondered if she should just give up and let go. What was the point of continuing when the only person Hart ever noticed was Poison Ivy?

But Madison stayed focused. She pulled herself up onto the very last beam. Taking a deep, cool breath, she sat on the top of the Tower and gazed up into the rainbow.

You can go, Ivy, Madison thought. Go
away.
I’m the new queen of the wilderness.

S
UNLIGHT POURED IN THROUGH
the cabin’s screened-in windows. Madison couldn’t help but laugh. The trip was over—and now the weather was nice?

She scratched her head and contemplated taking a shower before heading home but decided against it. Going to the bathroom outside the cabin had been hard enough. She didn’t feel like getting wet and cold with pine needles between her toes
now.
And who took a camp shower in the middle of the day? Instead, she changed out of the clothes she’d been wearing on the Tower. Madison pulled on her last clean orange T-shirt, cargo capri pants she borrowed from Fiona, and sneakers. After packing up everything else, she disappeared outside for a few moments to write in her orange notebook.