I could tell that none of my fellow campers were all that impressed with that idea, but I found myself cheering up a little bit. Picking up trash would’ve been boring (and gross), but helping fix up an old house? Making it pretty and shiny again? That did feel like doing something positive, and I could get behind that. Plus, I liked the idea of going through all the neat old things that might be in Live Oak House. Mom, Emma, and I always watched those shows on HGTV where people went to flea markets and fixed up old furniture, turning it into something interesting and beautiful, and Emma had even begged Mom to take us to a flea market back in the spring so she could find some stuff for her room. She’d ended up with a wicker chair she’d painted yellow, and a really weird lamp that looked like a guitar.
Would she have liked Camp Chrysalis after all? I wondered.Lee stepped back, and Mrs. Freely took his place. “Every day, we’ll be heading out to the house from here around this time. The camp will provide drinks and snacks, and we’ll be back by two. From two to three, you can work on your Responsibility Journal, and at three, you get to head home!”
Responsibility Journal? I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of it, and from the looks on my fellow campers’ faces, they didn’t, either. Susanna tucked her chin down, eyebrows drawing together, and from behind me, I thought I heard one of the boys I didn’t know mutter a bad word.
Mrs. Freely was still talking, mostly about how we’d be split into groups once we got to the house, and I tried to pay attention, keeping my eyes trained on her face, hoping my own face looked eager and interested, like it was beaming out, I didn’t actually do a bad thing! But I am here to learn! Mrs. Freely could feel all my exclamation points, right?
“Now, if everyone will come up here, we can start our day with song, then load up into the van.”
My face fell, and any I’m innocent! in my expression gave way to, Song? We slowly got up from the mat, all seven of us shuffling our feet, sneakers squeaking on the floor as we made a sort of loose circle, Mrs. Freely pointing at where we should each stand. Lee and Leigh were on either side of her, and she took their hands. I was on Lee’s other side, so I took his hand, and then looked over to see that Ruby Kaye was on my other side.
We stared at each other for a moment, and then with a sigh that ruffled her bangs, she took my hand.
CHAPTER 4
RUBY
We’re not talking about the song we sang.
It’s so embarrassing that to remember it now would cause me to spontaneously combust, but know that the word friends was repeated like a thousand times, and there might have been an attempt at swaying from Mrs. Freely and the Lee(igh)s.
Luckily, the van ride out to the house didn’t require any kind of musical performance. It was a smallish van with three bench seats, room for three people on each one. Lee drove, Mrs. Freely in the passenger seat next to him, and Garrett McNamara sat on the bench behind her.
Garrett, the boy that Emma had liked, the boy I very much did not like, no matter what she said. Would Olivia tell Emma that Garrett was in the camp, too?
Probably.
Sighing, I picked the very back bench with two of the boys, hoping that since they clearly knew each other, they wouldn’t talk to me.
I actually liked talking to people most of the time—I did it too much, probably—but I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. And it turned out to be a smart decision, sitting with them, because just as I’d thought, they ignored me and muttered to each other.
Olivia Willingham sat on the second bench next to the other girl and Leigh. I looked at the back of her blond head, wondering why on earth she was here. Emma? That I could totally see. I’d really liked Emma, and she’d probably been the closest thing to a best friend I’d had before our stupid fight, but this whole past year, she’d been really weird. Like she was trying to figure out who she wanted to be, and every time she changed her mind, she changed her friends. It had to have bugged Olivia, but it’s not like we’d ever talked about it, and the last time I’d seen her, she’d called me “weird” and said I was “going to get Emma into trouble.”
Of course, Emma and I had been trying to sneak out that night, daring each other to run from Emma and Olivia’s house to the front of their neighborhood where there was this little fountain set up by the big brick sign welcoming people to the Copper Ridge subdivision. It hadn’t been far. I remembered that we could actually see the glow from the up-lights focused on the sign from Emma’s window. We were just going to run to it, dip our fingers in the fountain, and run back. I can’t even really remember why now except that we were bored, and it seemed like fun.
We’d opened the window when Olivia had appeared in the door in her oversize T-shirt and pajama pants that had little hedgehogs on them, her blond hair tangled around her face.
She’d glared at us and said all that about being weird and trouble and whatever, and Emma had told her she was being a baby, and maybe I’d said something along the lines of, like, “Hi, if we wanted your input on this, we would have invited you,” and that had really been the last time I’d talked to Olivia.
Just a few months later, the Garrett Incident happened, and then both the Willingham twins were out of my life.
I really wouldn’t have minded if Emma had been here at Camp Chrysalis—I still thought there was a chance we could be friends again, maybe. But Olivia?
I snorted and settled back in my seat.
I spent most of the ride staring out the window, trying not to breathe in any Boy Smell. I’d begun to realize that not all boys smelled like socks, but these two definitely did, and I sighed, wishing we’d been allowed to bring our phones. But no, they were all stashed away in the lockers back at the rec center, along with the shirts we’d worn today and our dignity.
Live Oak House wasn’t all that far out, but it was far enough that the drive made me kind of sleepy, and by the time the van rattled up the turnoff for the house, I had to sort of shake myself to wake up.
“Isn’t it something?” Mrs. Freely said, turning in her seat to face us with that same creepy smile on her face.
It was indeed . . . something.
The van stopped on a dirt road at the base of a slight rise, and on the top of the rise was a house.
Okay, so calling that place a house is like calling a Ferrari a car or Halo a video game. Technically true, but it doesn’t really describe the thing.
Live Oak House was bigger than any house I’d ever seen. We have a lot of fake-plantation-looking houses in the South, but this was nothing like that. It was all steep roofs and sharp points, and my drowsy brain actually thought, Like a house with teeth.
Which was stupid.
But there was no getting around the fact that even in the bright daylight, under blue skies, the house seemed sinister and dark, making its own shadows across the lawn. Out front, there was one massive oak tree with wide leaves rustling in the slight breeze.
Behind the house, the hill sloped down again into a bunch of trees, but the mansion took up most of the space, looking sort of like an overgrown dollhouse. It had been painted cream at one point, with pretty maroon trim, but even from the van I could see that the paint was peeling, and there were patches of gray wood around the front door.
I moved closer to the window, looking up at the roof. There seemed to be another big tree really close to the house, but in the back, its leaves spreading out over the highest peak of the roof like an umbrella. Tilting my head, I tried to get a better look, wanting to figure out where that tree was because it really looked like it was coming out of the house.
“This place is creepy,” I muttered, and one of the boys next to me leaned over—ugh, maximum Boy Smell—to get closer to the window.
“For real,” he replied.
Lee turned off the van, and Mrs. Freely hopped out, opening the doors so we could all file onto the dirt road. There was no drive leading up to the house, s
o I guessed this was the only place to park, and we all stood there, blinking in the bright sunshine as Mrs. Freely moved to the back of the van, throwing the double doors wide.
There were the plastic caddies I’d seen earlier, each one stocked with identical cleaners and rags, a roll of brown paper towels, and a box of plastic gloves. And shoved into each one was a spiral-bound notebook, all the same shade of hot pink as our shirts.
“Grab your caddy!” she trilled, and after a pause, we all moved to the back to grab one.
The cleaning supplies bumped against my leg as I made my way up the hill toward the house, and I squinted, wishing I’d thought to bring sunglasses.
Mrs. Freely walked up to the narrow steps leading to the front porch, pausing on the first one. Lee and Leigh fell in next to her, clipboards at the ready.
“Now,” Mrs. Freely said, hands clasped in front of her like a general in hot pink, “I expect all of you to behave with respect once we’re inside. Lee, Leigh, and I will be supervising as you begin today, and if we see even a little bit of horseplay, you will find yourself with a much less pleasant duty this summer.”
I wondered what could possibly be less pleasant than dusting and making lists of old creepy stuff. Cleaning toilets at the rec center?
Studying Mrs. Freely’s stern expression, I suddenly realized that I couldn’t put toilet scrubbing past her. Yeah, no horseplay from me.
“Also,” she went on, “because this is such a large house, we’ll hardly be tackling all of it. Everything above the second floor is completely off-limits, and if you come to a closed door, do not open it. Lee, Leigh, and I have already been through, looking for places where we think you can all do the most good. Are you ready?”
I got the sense she wanted us to yell “READY!” all eager and excited, but no one said anything except for Olivia Willingham, and she kind of whispered, “Ready.” If Olivia Willingham couldn’t even pretend to get excited about this, Mrs. Freely was in some serious trouble.
Her smile barely faltered, though, and she turned to walk up the steps, Lee and Leigh close behind, the wood creaking slightly as they went. We all sort of lined up, and as Mrs. Freely stopped to unlock the front door, I turned to look back toward the lawn. The yard sloped down to the road where the van waited for us, the silver of the sunshade Lee had put in the windshield winking. I knew that only a few miles away was our town and the rec center, but standing there then, it was easy to believe we were in a whole different place. A whole different time, even. There was no sound from nearby traffic, no chatter of voices. Just our feet shuffling on the porch, the droning of bugs, and the occasional rustle of leaves.
The door opened with a loud creak, Mrs. Freely putting her shoulder to it to push it all the way open, and then she waved us inside, rings flashing.
“Come on, come on,” she urged. “Lots to do today!”
That didn’t really make me want to put a move on, but I followed everyone else inside and then almost immediately gasped.
It wasn’t the size of the house or even the massive tree trunk rising up inside the front hallway—although my eyes were trying to take that in—but the heat. Outside had been warm, sure. It was Tennessee in June. But inside, it was like a furnace, as though the house were cooking us, and for the first time, Mrs. Freely seemed to falter. “Oh, dear.”
We’d all funneled inside, stopping near the front door, and even though there were only ten of us and the room was huge, it was hard to find anywhere to stand where we wouldn’t bump into something. There were long tables shoved against the walls, covered in little figures and big glass bells that had flowers underneath them. I counted five fancy, old-fashioned sofas spread across the room, and just as many lamps, all turned off. And this wasn’t even an actual room, just the front hallway.
Mrs. Freely glanced around, then gestured at Lee to open the windows. “Let some air in here. And where are those fans? We had fans, I thought.”
Leigh was looking around, the corners of her mouth turned down, and for one horrifying second, I thought she might start crying.
I was not prepared to deal with adults crying, even if Leigh was only kind of an adult.
“There were!” she said. “I set them up this morning like you asked. Before I came to the rec center. I set my alarm for five, and—”
Mrs. Freely held up one hand. “It’s all right, honey,” she said. “I’m sure you did, and maybe you forgot to lock the door behind you.”
“I didn’t.”
Okay, now Leigh was totally going to cry, and this was officially the worst day and maybe the worst summer ever.
Olivia was standing close to me, and for a moment our eyes met, and I could see that same “ugh, crying” fear on her face. The boys were still looking around the house, but Susanna looked as worried as Olivia did that there might be tears.
But Mrs. Freely saved the day, walking over and patting Leigh’s arm. “I’m sure it was an accident, sweetie, don’t worry about it. We’ll just look around and see if we can find those fans, and as soon as we get ’em all set up, we’ll be right as rain.”
Lee had moved over to the windows on the other side of the house, and as he went to open one, he leaned closer to the glass. “They’re out in the backyard,” he said, but there was a note in his voice like he was asking a question.
Mrs. Freely walked over to the window, and the whole group kind of shuffled along behind her, wanting to see, too. And sure enough, out the back window, we could see a pile of box fans sitting on the grass.
“Kids,” Mrs. Freely sighed, but Leigh was standing back, shaking her head.
“I swear I locked the door behind me,” Leigh said. “I know I did.”
Straightening, Mrs. Freely shooed us all away from the window, telling Lee to go out and get the fans. “We’ll get this place cooled off again in no time,” she said, “and make sure things are locked up this afternoon.”
Leigh was still frowning, arms folded tightly over her chest, but at least she didn’t look weepy anymore.
The girl who’d sat with Olivia raised her hand, and Mrs. Freely, who’d just taken a deep breath to launch into another spiel about the house, looked irritated. “Yes, Susanna?”
“If someone got in and tossed the fans, how did they lock the door behind them?”
Mrs. Freely blinked. “Well—” she started, but Susanna wasn’t done.
“And if they came in some other way, shouldn’t we check the house before we start working? What if there are people hidden or something?”
That got everyone’s attention, mine included, and I looked up toward the second floor. “Yeah, it might not be safe,” I said, and Mrs. Freely went from a little irritated to full-blown irked.
“I will have Lee and Leigh check the rooms while I tell y’all a little bit about the house,” she said.
Garrett stepped forward, flicking his hair out of his eyes. “But Lee has to set up the fans.”
Mrs. Freely’s neck was turning the same color as her shirt, but her smile stayed in place, even if it seemed more like she was baring her teeth at us than smiling. “Lee is going to set up the fans, Leigh will check the rooms real quick—”
“I should probably check the rooms,” Lee offered, “and Leigh can set up the fans.”
“That’s sexist,” I offered, both because it kind of was and also to see if I could actually make Mrs. Freely’s head explode.
It didn’t, but I thought it was coming close when she bit out, “Lee, go check the rooms. Leigh, go set up the fans. I will tell you about the house, and if anyone gets snatched, scream, okay?”
We all stood there, blinking at her, until Lee finally said, “So . . . you meant me as the Lee who should check—”
“YES, LEE, I MEANT YOU,” Mrs. Freely nearly shouted, and I looked down really fast to keep from laughing. Still not an exploding head, but it seemed like Lee had
definitely come the closest.
Taking a deep breath, Mrs. Freely closed her eyes, then tilted her head up to the ceiling like she’d find patience or the will not to kill us all there, and then she lowered her gaze back to us. “All right,” she said, the word sighing out of her mouth. “Are y’all ready to learn a little bit about Live Oak House?”
CHAPTER 5
OLIVIA
The day already seemed to be something of a loss, as far as I was concerned. It was hot, we were stuck out . . . wherever this was, and Mrs. Freely was clearly losing control of the situation.
But then she clapped again—I was beginning to realize that was a signal she, Lee, and Leigh used when they could feel things were not going well—and gave us her best smile.
“Obviously we don’t want to overload y’all on the first day, so today, we’re going to take a little tour of Live Oak House, give you the lay of the land and all that. I think you’re going to find a lot to enjoy here.”
One of the unfamiliar boys, the dark-haired one, raised his hand. “What’s with the tree?” he asked before Mrs. Freely even called on him, and I swear her entire face brightened.
“Isn’t it something?” she said, walking down a few steps and resting her hand against the weathered trunk. “This is the tree the entire house was built around.”
We all craned our necks to look up at where the tree met the roof. A hole had been cut up there, then sort of sealed around the trunk, allowing the top of the tree out of the house.