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.