“Told me what?” asked Janie, her frown growing as she looked around the circle.
“Nothing,” George said, standing too. “There’s nothing to tell. Just some dumb ghost story that Bella made up.”
Bella scowled. “You wish I made it up, George,” she said, picking up the matchbook. “You guys, why would I make up a story like that? You remember I’m from around here, right? And Maddie knows it too. Right, Mad?”
George let out a sigh as Maddie looked uncomfortably at her feet.
“I told you I’ve heard something like that, yeah,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I know it’s true, but . . .”
“Know what’s true?” Marcie suddenly cut in. “You guys, come on. We’re not babies. Whatever this story is, you can tell us.”
Bess, realizing that no one else was about to leave right now, groaned and sat down again. So did George, but she didn’t look happy about it either. I shifted uncomfortably in the sand as Maya shot me a curious look. You’ll see, I mouthed.
Bella grinned smugly, sitting up straight. “It’s about Camp Larksong,” she said. “The real reason why it closed.”
Maya furrowed her eyebrows. “I thought they just ran out of money or something,” she said. “I mean, I assumed.”
“No,” said Bella. “That wasn’t why. Something happened here.”
She let those words hang in the air for a moment.
“Right by this lake, in fact,” she added after a few seconds of silence. “It happened during the big end-of-camp campout. You Camp Larksong people, you must remember it. Everyone cooks dinner over the fire and then sleeps in tents on Hemlock Hill. . . .”
“I remember,” Maya said, her voice tense. “What happened?”
“Well, one year,” Bella said, “the last year the camp was open . . . The rumor is, one of the counselors went nuts. She was having mental health issues or something, but nobody knew. And she kind of lost it during the middle of the night of the campout.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how mental illness works,” George muttered, but her voice was so low, nobody seemed to hear her.
“She took one of her campers down to the lake,” Bella went on, “and convinced her to go swimming. Then, after kind of frolicking around with her for a few minutes, she suddenly grabbed her by the hair and held her under.” Bella shook her head, like she couldn’t believe it herself. “They say the camper had really long hair. The counselor just grabbed a hank of it and . . .” Bella mimed grabbing a bunch of hair in her fist, then slamming it downward. The motion was so violent, we all jumped.
Bess cleared her throat. “That, um, that story had a lot more details than it did the last time you told it,” she pointed out.
Bella’s eyes cut over to Bess. “What does that mean?”
“She means you could be adding details,” George said. “Because you’re making it up. Guys, seriously . . .” She looked around at the CITs, who all looked frozen in shock. “She’s making it up. There was no news coverage of this story, ever.” Bess suddenly cleared her throat, and George glanced at her. “No news coverage of a counselor drowning a kid,” George added. “Which there totally would be, if a murder was committed at this camp.”
“Unless they were trying to cover it up,” a voice suddenly piped up from the circle. We all turned, with surprise, to Maddie.
“I just think it sort of makes sense there’d be no stories out there,” she said with an embarrassed shrug. “If Deborah and Miles paid a lot of money to buy this camp and restore it . . . I wouldn’t want that information out there either.”
George shook her head. “Okay, but . . . Deborah and Miles don’t control the media,” she said. “Do you really think you can just snap your fingers and remove a news story from the Internet? It’s, like . . .”
“Impossible,” Janie finished for her.
George shot her a grateful look. “Thank you, Min—I mean, Janie.”
Bella shifted in the sand and put her hands on her hips. “We’re spending a lot of time talking about this, but we’re not proving anything,” she said. “The fact is, there are all kinds of rumors in Potterville that this camp is haunted. And at least one of us has seen the ghost.”
I startled as she turned her gaze on me.
“G-ghost?” I sputtered. “Hold on there. That’s kind of an overstatement.”
Bella rolled her eyes, then went on in an absurdly patient tone, like she was dealing with a moron. “What did you see, then?” she asked, turning back quickly to the others to explain. “Nancy was pulled under the water during swim tests yesterday. She could have drowned.” She then turned back to me, looking expectant.