You could totally tell the guy, who couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty, had tried for the local police force and hadn't made it. So he'd opted to become a security guard, thinking that would give him the authority and respect he'd always yearned for. He sucked on his two overlarge front teeth and, peering at Rob and me, went, " 'Fraid not. There's a bit of a problem up at the camp, you know, and—"

I put down the face shield of my helmet and said to Rob, "Let's go."

Rob said to the security guard, "Nice talkin' to ya."

Then he gunned the engine, and we went around the red-and-white barrier arm, churning up quite a bit of dust and gravel as we did so. What did it matter? I couldn't get more fired than I already was.

The security guard came out of his little house and started yelling, but there wasn't much he could do to make us turn around. It wasn't like he had a gun, or anything.

Not that guns had ever stopped us before, of course.

As we drove up the long gravel road to the camp, I noticed how still and cool the woods were, especially with the coming rainstorm. The sky above us was clouding up more with every passing moment. You could smell the rain in the air, fresh and sweet.

Of course it wasn't until I was about to be kicked out of there that I'd finally begun to appreciate Camp Wawasee. It was too bad, really. I'd never even gotten a chance to float around the lake on an inner tube.

When we pulled up to the administrative offices, I was surprised at how many people were milling around. The squad cars were parked kind of haphazardly, and there was no sign of the cops who'd been driving them. They must, I figured, be inside, talking to Dr. Alistair, Pamela, and Ms. John Wayne.

But there were campers and counselors aplenty, which I thought was a little weird. If there'd been some sort of accident or crisis, you'd have thought they'd have tried to keep it from the kids. . . .

… And that's when I realized that they couldn't have kept it from the kids, even if they'd wanted to. It was five-thirty, and the kids and their counselors were streaming into the dining hall for supper. The dining staff prepared meals at exactly the same time every day, crisis or no crisis.

All of the kids were staring curiously at the squad cars. When they noticed Rob and me, they looked even more curious, and began whispering to one another. Oddly enough, I saw no members of Birch Tree Cottage in the crowds. . . .

But I saw a lot of other people I knew, including Ruth and Scott, who made no move whatsoever to approach me.

That's when I realized I still had my helmet on. Of course no one was saying hi. No one recognized me. As soon as I'd dragged the heavy thing off, Ruth came right over, and, as Rob pulled his helmet off as well, said, very sarcastically, "Well, I see you managed to find that ride you were looking for."

I shot her a warning look. Ruth can really be very snotty when she puts her mind to it.

"Ruth," I said. "I don't think I've ever formally introduced you to my friend, Rob. Ruth Abramowitz, this is Rob Wilkins. Rob, Ruth."

Rob nodded curtly to Ruth. "How you doing," he said.

Ruth smiled at him. It was not her best effort, by any means.

"I'm doing very well, thank you," she said primly. "And you?"

Rob, his eyebrows raised, said, "I'm good."

"Ruth." One of the residents of Tulip Tree Cottage pulled on Ruth's T-shirt. "I'm hungry. Can we go in now?"

Ruth turned and said to her campers, "You all go in now, and save a place for me. I'll be there in a minute."

The kids went away, with many glances not only at me and Rob, but at the squad cars. "What are the police doing here?" more than one of them asked loudly of no one in particular.

"Good question," I said to Ruth. "What are the police doing here?"

"I don't know." Ruth was still looking at Rob. She had seen him before, of course, back when he and I had had detention together. Ruth used to come pick me up, so my parents wouldn't find out about my somewhat checkered disciplinary record.

But I guess this was the first time she'd ever seen Rob from close up, and I could tell she was memorizing the details for later analysis. Ruth's like that.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" I demanded. "The place is crawling with cops, and you don't know why?"

Ruth finally wrenched her gaze from Rob and fastened it onto me instead.

"No," she said. "I don't know. All I know is, we were down at the lake, having free swim and all, and the lifeguard blew his whistle and made us all go back inside."

"We thought it was on account of the storm," Scott said, nodding toward the still-darkening sky above us.

It was at this point that Karen Sue Hanky strolled up to us. I could tell by the expression on her pointy rat face that she had something important to tell us … and by the unnatural glitter in her baby-blue eyes, I knew it was something I wasn't going to like.

"Oh," she said, pretending she had only just noticed me. "I see you've decided to join us again." She glanced flirtatiously at Rob. "And brought along a friend, I see."

Even though Karen Sue had gone to school with Rob, she didn't recognize him. Girls like Karen Sue simply don't notice guys like Rob. I suppose she thought he was just some random local I'd picked up off the highway and brought back to camp for some recreational groping.

"Karen Sue," I said, "you better hurry and get into the dining hall. I heard a rumor they were running low on wheatgrass juice."

She just smiled at me, which wasn't a very good sign.

"Aren't you funny," Karen Sue said. "But then I suppose it's very amusing to you, what's going on. On account of it all being because of you telling that one little boy to hit that other little boy." Karen Sue flicked some of her hair back over her shoulder and sighed. "Well, I guess it just goes to show, violence doesn't pay."

Overhead, the clouds had gotten so thick, the sun was blocked out almost entirely. Inside the dining hall, the lights had come on, though this usually didn't happen until seven or eight o'clock, when the cleaning crew was at work. In the distance, thunder rumbled. The smell of ozone was heavy in the air.

I stepped forward until Karen Sue's upturned nose was just an inch from mine, and she stumbled back a step, tripping over a root and nearly falling flat on her face.

When she straightened, I asked her just what the heck she was talking about.

Only I didn't say heck.

Karen Sue started talking very quickly, and in a voice that was higher in pitch than usual.

"Well, I just went into the administrative offices for a second because I had to make sure the fax from Amber's doctor had come—about how her chronic ear infections prevent her from taking part in the Polar Bear swim—and I just happened to overhear the police talking to Dr. Alistair about how one of the boys from Birch Tree Cottage went to the lake, but no one saw him come out of it—"

I reached out and grabbed a handful of Karen Sue's shirt, on account of how she was slowly backing farther and farther away from me.

"Who?" I demanded. Even though it was still about seventy-five degrees, in spite of the coming rainstorm, my skin was prickly with goose bumps. "Who went into the lake and didn't come out of it?"

"That one you were always yelling at," Karen Sue said. "Shane. Jessica, while you were gone"—she shook her head—"Shane drowned."

C H A P T E R

13

Thunder rumbled again, much closer this time. Now the hair on my arms was standing up not because I was cold, but because of all the electricity in the air.

I grabbed hold of Karen Sue's shirt with my other hand as well, and dragged her toward me. "What do you mean, drowned?"

"Just what I said." Karen Sue's voice was higher than ever. "Jess, he went into the lake and he never came out—"

"Bull," I said. "That's bull, Karen. Shane's a good swimmer."

"Well, when they blew the whistle for everyone to get out," Karen Sue said, her tone starting to sound a little hysterical, "Shane never came onto shore."

"Then he never went into the water in the first place," I hissed from between gritted teeth.

"Maybe," Karen Sue said. "And maybe if you'd been here, doing your job, and hadn't gone off with your boyfriend"—she sneered in Rob's direction— "you'd know."

Everything, the trees, the cloudy sky, the path, everything, seemed to be spinning around. It was like that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up in the tornado. Except that I was the only thing standing still.

"I don't believe you," I said again. I shook Karen Sue hard enough to make her pink headband snap off and go flying through the air. "You're lying. I ought to smash your face in, you—"

"All right." Suddenly, the world stopped spinning, and Rob was there, prying my fingers off Karen Sue's shirt. "All right, Mastriani, that's enough."

"You're lying," I said to Karen Sue. "You're a liar, and everyone knows it."

Karen Sue, white-faced and shaking, bent down, picked up her headband, and pushed it shakily back into place. There were some dead leaves stuck to it, but she apparently didn't notice.

I really wanted to jump her, knock her to the ground, and grind her rat face into the dirt. Only I couldn't get at her, because Rob had me around the waist, and wouldn't let go, no matter how hard I struggled to get away. If Mr. Goodhart had been there, he'd have been way disappointed in me. I seemed to have forgotten all the anger-management skills he'd taught me.

"You know what else, Karen Sue?" I shouted. "You can't play flute for squat! They weren't even going to let you in here, with your lousy five out of ten on your performance score, except that Andrew Shippinger came down with mono, and they were desperate—"