“Well” — she was back behind her hair again, but it wasn’t doing her any good. She could feel the other girls’ eyes burning into her like lasers — “my parents want me to be more outgoing.”
“Nothing brings you out of your shell like singing,” Mary Catherine enthused. “And I know a solo in the Showdown that’s just perfect for you!”
“A solo?” Melissa was horrified. “I can’t sing!”
“That’s what rehearsal’s for,” the Ta-da! captain assured her. “We start tomorrow!”
Great, Melissa thought miserably. Now the loudest, pushiest girl in the whole camp had set her sights on turning her into a singer.
That’s what I get for sticking up for Logan. . . .
Life was simpler back before she’d had friends. Lonelier, but simpler.
It was after midnight by the time all the girls were asleep. Melissa took stock of the steady breathing of her cabinmates, paying special attention to Desiree, the counselor, who was snoring softly. The coast was clear.
Careful not to make a sound, she crept out of the cabin. Sneaking around in the dead of night definitely scared her, but not as much as it used to. If you wanted to be in on Griffin’s plans, sneaking was a must-have skill.
Logan was already at the meeting place — hidden behind the low fence that extended from the side door of the performance center. He turned on his flashlight, the beam momentarily blinding her. “What took you so long?” he hissed. “I’ve been waiting forever!”
“The other girls wouldn’t go to sleep,” she explained. “Mary Catherine wants me to do a solo in the Showdown. I don’t know how to sing!”
Logan was bitter. “I can’t get elected team captain when I’m a professional actor, but you get your own solo!”
“I don’t want a solo!” Melissa exclaimed, showing as much temper as Logan had ever seen from her. “Mary Catherine’s going to make me do one!”
Logan couldn’t see past the fact that Mary Catherine was running things and he wasn’t. “Who puts a Klingon in charge of a drama team? This place is just like the Golden Globes — it’s all fixed.”
Melissa reached into her pocket and pulled out a napkin that concealed three salami slices and a half-crushed cupcake. “It was all I could save from dinner. What did you bring?”
Logan looked bewildered. “I’m not hungry.”
“Not for you,” Melissa explained patiently. “For Luthor.”
He shrugged. “It’s not my dog.”
“That’s the whole point. Neither of us is Savannah, so we have to bribe him if we expect him to do what we want. If he won’t go for a walk, it’s going to get messy up there.”
They took the stairs up to the loft. When they got to the top, they were greeted by an unfriendly growl . . . and a large white Doberman.
“Hey,” Logan whispered. “Did somebody switch dogs on us?”
Melissa trained her flashlight on the ghostly creature before them. It was the real Luthor, all right, covered in the white fluffy stuffing that had once been inside the sleeping bag they’d laid down for his comfort. Savannah’s “sweetie” had passed the hours by tearing it to pieces. The big Doberman had also made a mess of the blankets and comforters they’d strewn across the floor to muffle the sound of dog toenails.
Logan took a step back from the ferocious glare he was receiving. “Give him the food — quick.”
It was gone in a millionth of a second, and Luthor was advancing on them menacingly.
Melissa had been prepared for this possibility. She had learned from Griffin that a good plan allows for all contingencies. Her phone was already set to the Skype app, and the call was going through to Savannah.
It was so dark under the covers that the girl was barely visible. “Have you lost your minds? It’s the middle of the night? I’m surrounded by sleeping girls!”
Melissa did not mince words. “Talk to Luthor!” She held the device in front of the big dog’s angry dark eyes.
The change in the Doberman was instant and total. His raised hackles suddenly lay flat as if by magic, and his growl became a delicate whimper. He sat obediently before the screen, drinking in the beloved face and listening to the beloved voice.
“Oh, Luthor, I’ve been so worried about you. . . .”
“Worry about us,” Logan put in dramatically. “We’re the ones who are about to be ripped to shreds.”
“Tell him he needs to go for a walk,” Melissa instructed urgently.
Savannah soothed Luthor as Melissa clipped the leash on to his collar. The Doberman balked, however, when they tried to lead him back to the ladderlike steps.
“It’s too steep,” Savannah explained. “He can go up that kind of staircase, but down scares him. He thinks he’ll fall.”
In the end, they had to lower Luthor and themselves via the electric hoist platform, praying that no one would notice the power humming in the otherwise silent woods.
At that point, Savannah’s Ebony Lake counselor came to investigate the mumbling, so the dog whisperer had to hang up and pretend to be talking in her sleep. Luckily, though, Luthor was so excited at the prospect of escaping his imprisonment in the attic that he bounded out of the barn, dragging Melissa at the end of the leash. Logan stayed behind to raise the platform before scrambling to catch up.
They watched the Doberman run and play in the moonlight, awestruck by his raw boundless energy. Luthor raced around the quadrangle at Thoroughbred speed, as if circling some imaginary triple-crown track. If any bleary-eyed camper happened to stagger out of one of the cabins, the poor kid would be flattened.
“Too bad the Klingon can’t see this,” Logan said wanly. “Nobody messes with you when you’ve got a killer dog on your side.”
“He’s not on our side,” Melissa reminded him nervously. “He’s on Savannah’s, and she can’t stay on Skype for three weeks straight. We’re going to have to learn to handle him.”
“I’m an actor, not a lion tamer.”
“You think I am?” It was the closest Melissa ever came to a challenging tone. “I’d rather take on the world’s most complicated computer virus.”
Luthor leaped to snap at a low-flying moth, sailing four feet off the ground.
“Maybe we should try to reach Savannah again,” Logan put in uneasily.
The Doberman continued to frolic in the compound, his breakneck speed slackening as he burned off the pent-up energy of his confinement. Eventually, he trotted over and rejoined them. He wasn’t friendly, exactly. But he allowed Melissa to clip the leash back on to his collar. It was time to go for a walk.
For secrecy’s sake, they sought the cover of the woods. Logan mumbled uneasily as they strolled, rehearsing lines from the many commercials he’d auditioned for:
“. . . the cereal guaranteed to stay crunchy in milk . . . clinically proven to kill bad breath germs on contact . . . does your taco sauce give you heartburn? . . .”
Luthor stopped in his tracks so suddenly that Melissa rear-ended him.
Logan was surprised. “What — ?”
Then they spotted the flashlight beam, creating the illusion of moving shadows in the dense foliage.
“The counselors?” Logan whispered fearfully.
“Shhh!” Melissa hissed.
The two campers hunkered down beside the dog and watched as the newcomer approached them. They could just make out his face in the glow of his own flashlight — a man, probably a little past middle age, with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. Not a counselor, for sure, Melissa thought.
As the man grew close, she dared to reach out a hand and cover Luthor’s snout, hoping the Doberman would take the hint and stay silent — instead of swallowing her arm halfway to the elbow. Some part of Luthor’s show-dog training must have kicked in, because he froze and made no sound.
The man passed no more than ten feet from their hiding place and continued in the direction of the camp. No one spoke until the rustling of his footsteps faded out.
“Who’s
that?” Logan breathed.
“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” Melissa replied. “Let’s see if we can find out what he’s up to.”
“Are you crazy?” Logan rasped. “We’re out way past curfew with a fugitive dog! If we get caught, we’ll be kicked out of the Showdown, and then the Klingon will take over the whole enterprise!”
“Griffin told us to watch out for suspicious strangers,” she reminded him. “This guy could be working for Swindle. If they tracked Luthor to Ebony Lake, because of Savannah and Griffin, they could probably find us. Swindle knows all the kids on the team.”
They followed the bearded man by the glow of his flashlight. He went all the way to Camp Ta-da!, crossing the compound as if certain of his destination.
Melissa, Logan, and Luthor held up at the edge of the clearing. To Melissa’s amazement, the man headed straight for the performance center.
“Did someone tip him off about Luthor and where we’re hiding him?” Logan managed, shocked.
“I don’t see how. . . .” Yet the evidence was right there in front of them — the stranger striding purposefully toward the converted barn. She turned to Logan. “You raised the platform, right?”
“Of course,” Logan replied. “But if he knows where to look . . .”
In trepidation, they listened for the hum of the lift coming down. Nothing.
“Maybe he took the stairs,” Melissa whispered.
But a moment later, the flashlight beam reappeared, and the stranger left the barn. Melissa, Logan, and Luthor scrambled to get out of his path, watching as he reentered the woods and moved off in the direction he’d come from. After a few minutes, his footsteps could no longer be heard. Eventually, the light vanished as well.
Melissa was white as a sheet. “Griffin was right! Swindle sent a new spy!”
“Now we have to find another hiding place for Luthor,” Logan mourned. “I haven’t got that kind of time, you know. It’s going to be hard enough to put together a decent show with the Klingon bossing everybody around.”
“It seems to me that the safest place in camp is the spot where the guy just looked,” Melissa argued. “Now that he’s ruled it out, he’ll search somewhere else next time.”
“That doesn’t mean we can relax,” Logan argued. “He could be back.”
She nodded. “In fact, I think we can count on it.”
The afternoon was hot — but not half as hot as it was inside the warthog costume. It was raining lightly, and every drop made the fur wet and heavy. The effort required to raise his arm was almost more than Logan could muster.
“Mary Catherine —”
The captain of the Showdown team didn’t hear him. She bustled about, barking orders as she assembled her cast for the next number — “Hakuna Matata,” from The Lion King.
“Mary Catherine!” Logan shouted to project his voice beyond the cocoon.
She peered in his eye-holes. “Yes, Logan?”
“Well . . .” How could he explain it? Here he was, a professional actor, who had been in real TV commercials. And how had she cast him? In an outfit where no one could see if he was acting or not, portraying a neckless swine. “It’s just that — well, anybody could play this part.”
“I know you’ll rock it.”
“But I don’t want to rock a warthog!” he wailed. “I want to play a meaty character!”
She lowered her eyes to the warthog’s big stomach. “No one’s meatier than Pumbaa.”
“Not that kind of meaty! I want multiple dimensions, complicated emotions, inner pain!”
“Pumbaa has lots of inner pain,” she reasoned. “He has gas!”
She moved on to Bobby Delancey, who played Timon, leaving Logan seething and sweating. The Klingon was doing this on purpose. She knew that if Wendy saw him acting in a halfway decent role, she’d kick Mary Catherine out and make him captain of the Showdown team!
They were all in their places when there was a thunderclap, and pelting rain had them scrambling for cover. By the time Logan lurched into the performance center, the warthog suit had soaked up at least twenty extra pounds of water.
Mary Catherine looked down her nose at him. “Logan, you’re going to have to take better care of your costume than that. If it’s ruined, your parents get charged, you know.”
Logan was too exhausted to argue with her. “Let’s just do the number and get it over with.”
“This stage is too small for ‘Hakuna Matata,’ ” she decided. “Take off your head, and we’ll work on Melissa’s solo.”
Even through the dense wet fur, Logan heard the whimpered protest from his shy friend.
“I’ve picked the perfect song,” Mary Catherine went on. “‘Memory’ from the musical Cats. It’s one of the most famous songs in the history of Broadway, so the audience will be expecting great things.”
“I can’t —” Melissa stammered. “I mean I don’t — I mean I never —”
“This is your part,” Mary Catherine said firmly.
Something snapped inside Logan and he threw off the top half of his costume. It would have been very dramatic if he could have tossed it clear in a single swashbuckling motion instead of tunneling out like an escaping prisoner, but true actors had to be able to improvise.
“You don’t want her to sing ‘Memory’ in the Showdown,” he accused the Ta-da! captain. “You want her to sing it here so you can make fun of her, and then cut her from the performance.”
Mary Catherine skewered him with laser eyes. “Well, she can’t just do nothing. It’s a group revue. Everyone’s supposed to take part. Those are the rules, you know.”
“I can work on set design,” Melissa offered.
At that moment, a loud yelp resounded directly above them.
“The performance center ghost!” exclaimed Athena with an anxious laugh.
“No, that’s not it,” Logan put in quickly. “A falling branch must have hit the roof.”
The campers regarded one another nervously. None of them had ever heard a tree branch bark before.
* * *
The Showdown was always held outdoors. The stage was at the base of a large hill, which served as a natural grandstand for the audience. Each year the host camp was in charge of building a set and a lighting arc on the existing platform.
Dozens of upturned eyes watched in amazement as the chandelier rolled over the top of the array and came hurtling down to the stage. A crash of shattering glass blasted from the speakers.
The campers all gasped — and then applauded. Hunched behind her laptop on a tree stump, Melissa took a small bow. Behind her hair, her face flushed as it always did when she received any kind of attention.
“Wow!” Logan exclaimed, goggle-eyed. He’d always known his friend was a genius, but he’d never imagined that her tech skills could be applied to the theatre!
“Not bad.” Mary Catherine didn’t look too pleased at the idea of credit going to anyone except herself. But this special effect — for their Phantom of the Opera number — couldn’t be ignored. “Definitely pretty good.”
Melissa pounded the keyboard and the “chandelier” rose on its system of ropes and pulleys and disappeared behind the arc lights, poised for its next fall.
“How did you make it sound so real?” asked Athena breathlessly. “I mean, the chandelier’s just a wooden scenery board! I could have sworn it was glass breaking into a million pieces!”
“I downloaded the clip from the Internet,” Melissa replied in a voice so soft that everyone had to strain to hear. “I also got jungle sounds for The Lion King, a helicopter rotor for Miss Saigon, and a tornado for The Wizard of Oz.”
During break time, Logan and Melissa walked along Ta-da!’s “Main Street,” which featured the mess hall, pool, and camp offices.
“The Klingon gave me my part for the Charlie Brown skit,” Logan said savagely. “I’m Snoopy.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Melissa. “Snoopy’s one of the main characters.”
/> “No lines!” Logan complained. “I don’t even bark. I just crawl around on my hands and knees wearing aviator’s goggles. First the warthog and now this. What’s next? Mary Poppins? I can play the umbrella.”
So wrapped up was he in his complaints that he failed to notice the bearded man chatting with Wendy Demerest.
“Look!” Melissa took Logan’s wrist and pulled him around the corner of the wash station. “It’s that guy — the one we saw in the woods! Swindle’s spy.”
Logan peered around the building, frowning. “If he’s a spy, how come he knows Wendy?”
Melissa was not fooled. “Remember what Griffin told us about Malachi Moore? The first thing he did was make friends with all the counselors at Ebony Lake.”
“Did he have a beard?” Logan whispered.
“There are a dozen fake beards in the wardrobe cabin,” she pointed out. “But I don’t think this is the same person. Griffin said Malachi was young. This guy’s older than my dad.”
Another counselor joined Wendy and the stranger, and soon the group was laughing over a joke the two campers could not make out.
“What can we do?” asked Logan. “Walk up and accuse him of being a dognapper? What if somebody asks us how we know? The last thing we want is for the counselors to find out about Luthor.”
“Good point.” Melissa frowned. What would Griffin do? There’s always a plan, he was fond of saying. If you look hard enough, you’ll see it.
“Well, if we can’t prove he’s working for Swindle,” she mused, “maybe we can put him off Luthor’s scent.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“It’s not going to be easy,” she admitted. “It’ll take skill — acting skill.”
Logan was instantly on board.
The fish came from out of nowhere, catching the man full in the face across his short-clipped beard.
“What the — ?” He staggered back, stunned, staring at the boy in the Camp Ta-da! T-shirt who stood like a sentry, a ten-inch perch dangling from the end of his rod and reel.