Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [4]
She means Dave, who bends over backwards for Troo, same as me, so against my better judgment, which I don’t hardly have much left of anymore, I end up telling him that night out on the backyard bench that both of us want to go to Camp Towering Pines in the worst possible way. I didn’t want to, but I had to lie to him. I know my sister. She’d figure out some way to go to that camp without me. There’s no telling what kind of trouble she could get into if I wasn’t there to stop her. And I made that promise to Daddy that I’ll never break. Even if my life depends on it.
Chapter Two
All I keep thinking about on the six-hour bus ride up to Rhinelander is how hard it is to keep my sister under my thumb in the neighborhood. In a new and different place she could slip through my fingers so easy. This is not even counting that she could drown, get shot through the heart by an archery arrow or, worst of all, the counselors could do something when she least expects it. I asked Dave about them after he pulled some strings to get us into Camp Towering Pines. He told me not to worry, that there would be only girl counselors and, “Maybe getting away for a while will do you some good, kiddo.”
At the start of the trip, Troo was by my side counting license plates and singing along with the rest of the kids the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall song, but I didn’t open my mouth. I was afraid I might toss my cookies again. I already did once and my sister’s mad at me for “stinkin’ up the joint,” so that’s why she moved to the seat behind me and is telling everybody that we got on at different stops.
When the bus pulls into the campground, I turn to tell Troo, “I . . . I changed my mind . . . I’m sorry . . . we gotta go back home right away. I can’t . . .” but she’s already gone. She rushed right past me outta the bus. Through the window, I can see her bouncing and smiling, looking the happiest I’ve seen her in over a year.
What choice do I have?
Once the counselors get me and Troo and the rest of the girls lined up in front of the main wigwam, they hold up their palms to each and every one of us, saying “How” over and over and over again when they stick feathers in our hair that still have part of the bird left on ’em. After that, they hand out our Indian maiden names that we are to be known by for the rest of the week. They call me Minihaha. (Mother made me get a haircut from our eight-years-older-than-me half sister, Nell, who, even though she is a graduate of Yvonne’s School of Beauty, made my bangs too short because she’s a basket case, so even I gotta admit, I look a little funny.
Troo is to be known as Lovely Princess Floating Gently Down the Stream of Unending Happiness Beneath a Rainbow.
Every day is torture. Every night couldn’t be worse.
In the morning, we’re supposed to swim in Lake Freezing Cold but I can barely do the dead man’s float. When the triangle bell rings at noon, we have to go to the mess hall and eat a lunch of beans and wienies and drink the juice of bugs. After that, we gotta do crafts. Forced to make leather coin purses. There’s skeeters the size of dragonflies, an outhouse that anybody could fall into and once the sun sets, those counselors always got a grisly story all warmed up. Their favorite is this one about an escaped lunatic with a hook who goes after couples who are watching the submarine races on Lovers’ Lane. After they douse the campfire, one of the counselors always reminds us to pretend we’re not kids from the city sleeping in bunk beds in a cabin in the woods of Wisconsin, but real Indian children curled up in teepees on a wide open plain. But even me, who has no problem imagining just about anything, can’t feature that. What I can picture so clearly is that lunatic with the hook deciding that a pretty little redheaded girl is right up his alley so he rows one-handed from the other side of the lake after midnight, crawls into our cabin, snatches my sister and runs off with her into the woods. The next morning, Lovely Princess would no longer be Floating