Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power (4 page)

Abby knew that her family didn't have a ton of money. She looked out at the sunshine sparkling on the town pool, watched some kid jumping off the diving board, and prepared herself for the bad news.

“Good heavens! How could anyone afford to go to a camp this expensive?” she imagined her mom saying.

But that's not what her mom actually said.

“Good heavens! This is the cheapest camp I've ever
heard
of!”

Abby turned to see her mom studying the white paper.

“This camp costs less than Ryan's camp—and his isn't a sleep-away camp!”

“I wanna go to Abby's camp, too!” said Ryan, sounding exactly like an eight-year-old.

“But you're already signed up for Camp Makonoweea,” said his mom.

Mrs. Carnelia almost slipped and called it Camp Economeea, which is what she and her husband called it as a joke. (It was not a very fancy camp.)

“Ryan, you'll have a great time at your own camp,” said Abby. “All your friends are going! Besides, I'll call you every once in a while.”

“No, I don't think you'll be doing that,” said her mother, reading one of the documents. “They have a no–cell phones rule. But they do have e-mail, so you can write to us.”

Abby blinked at her. “No cell phones?”

Her mother shrugged. “I guess they want you to focus on the natural setting, the meaningful friendships, all that sort of thing.”

Ryan was suddenly a lot happier.

Abby's parents had given her a sweet, shiny, metallic-purple cell phone as an early graduation gift, and Ryan had gone nuts with jealousy. He'd wanted one ever since. He was thrilled to see the look on Abby's face when she learned she'd have to do without hers. It definitely took the sting out of her being allowed to go to sleep-away camp.

“No cell phones! Oh yeah! Uh-huh! Can you feel it?” he sang. He danced around Abby, poking at her with his index fingers.

“Well, I guess I can look at the bright side,” Abby responded, glaring at him.

“What's that, honey?” asked her mom.

“No little brothers.”

I
N EASTPORT
,
the beginning of summer is a great time to be a sixth grader. It's not only the end of the school year, it's also the end of all your years at elementary school. The weather is gorgeous, you can walk or ride your bike everywhere, and nobody can concentrate on anything serious. Not even the teachers.

For Abby, June meant a parade of special end-of-the-year days. There was Teacher Appreciation Day, the performance of the school musical, and Bad Hair Day (don't ask). There was even a tiny graduation ceremony for the sixth graders called Moving Up Day, to celebrate the move to middle school.

Before she even knew what hit her, she and her family
were piling into the minivan and starting the long drive to Camp Cadabra.

Abby never could read on long car rides; it gave her a headache. And her dad hadn't been able to find the power adapter for the DVD player. So Abby spent the drive to Camp Cadabra working on her knitting project: a rainbow-colored ski hat. It did seem a little bizarre to be making a big thick cozy warm hat on a blazing hot day in late June, but it helped to kill the time.

It also helped her focus on something other than her excitement and fear. Going to camp for the first time had had its high points, like shopping for all the stuff she was going to need. Clothes. Pillow. New bathing suit. Books to read. A little case for holding magic props, even though she didn't really have much yet.

But at the same time, Abby had no idea what she was getting herself into. All of it was new: sleep-away camp, not knowing anybody, and entering the realm of magic.

Still, she was grateful that the whole family had driven up to New Hampshire to drop her off—even her dad, who had just returned from twenty days of flying for his airline and was looking forward to two weeks at home.

Abby and Ryan were halfway through a game of Window Alphabet—you race to be the first person to find things outside of the car that start with the letters A to Z, in
order—when the tires started making a crunching sound. Mr. Carnelia had just turned off of the main road.

“Now that's what I call a proper summer-camp driveway,” he announced. They were on a long, crunchy gravel lane with towering pine trees on both sides.

Abby looked out the window just in time to see a new-looking, modern sign nailed to one of the pine trees: “Have a
magical
day at CAMP CADABRA!”

“S! S for ‘sign,' ” said Ryan.

“We're here, Ry,” said Abby. “Game's over.”

Mr. Carnelia rolled down his window. “And that's what I call proper summer-camp smell,” he boomed.

Sure enough, New Hampshire smelled nothing like Connecticut. It was piney, and sunny, and foresty.

“I'm hot,” announced Ryan.

“That's sort of the point of summer camp, isn't it?” asked Mr. Carnelia, running his hand over his bald spot. “Roughing it. The great outdoors. Eating mystery meat. Drinking bug juice. Short-sheeting a few beds.”

Abby was just about to ask what short-sheeting was when the driveway ended. Suddenly, she was looking out the window at a huge, dusty, sunny parking lot, filled with families unloading cars. It looked like a minivan convention.

Camp counselors in bright red T-shirts walked among
the cars, clutching clipboards and directing traffic. Everyone was milling around, unloading, asking questions, hugging parents, taking pictures, and aiming camcorders.

Mr. Carnelia parked the car, opened the door, and stepped out. “Well, I'll be hornswoggled,” he intoned. “So this is where they grow young magicians.”

The rest of the Carnelias got out of the car and looked around, blinking in the bright noon sunshine.

“I'll go see if I can find somebody in charge,” said Abby's mom. She headed off in the general direction of the buildings, whose roofs peeked out from the pine trees nearby.

Mr. Carnelia began unloading stuff from the trunk and carrying it over to a line of low tables marked LUGGAGE. Ryan ran over to a nearby minivan, where a boy was doing magic tricks for a couple of other kids.

Abby was just standing there, taking it all in, when she heard a voice coming from her right.

“Excuse me—do you know if there's lunch?”

It was a tall, easy-moving boy, maybe fourteen, with freckles, hazel eyes, floppy brown hair.

Abby turned to him. “What?”

He held up the packet of papers in his hand. “The welcome stuff doesn't say anything about lunch. You don't know if there's first-day lunch, do you?”

Abby shook her head. “No, I don't know. We—we just got here about a minute ago.”

“Oh, okay. No biggie.” He glanced around the parking area as though he was considering whether to leave, but then he seemed to change his mind.

“I'm Ben. Close-up or illusionary?”

“Hi, I'm—I'm Abby. What did you say?”

“Close-up or illusionary?”

It was ancient Greek to her.

“Oh, I—I'm really new to all this,” she managed.

Ben was persistent. “No, I mean, what are you
into
? Close-up tricks or stage illusions?”

“Oh, right,” she said. She thought briefly about her trick—her one real trick. “Close-up, I guess.”

“Hey, really?” said Ben. “That's awesome. Me, too. Check this out!”

He pulled a car key out of his jeans pocket and put it on his open palm.

“And now . . . this is the crazy part. I'm not going to touch this key. I'm not going to blow on it. No strings attached. It's nothing more than . . . a momentary flux of gravity.”

He squeezed one eye shut—and that's when it happened. The key, lying flat on his palm, slowly rose up on its edge and flopped over.

That's all it did. But it happened so slowly, so clearly, and so close to Abby's face, that she felt a shockwave of amazement.

Ben noticed her look and beamed happily. “I
love
close-up,” he said.

“That's a
really
good trick,” she said, because it was. “Will you tell me how you did it?”

She knew that magicians weren't supposed to reveal their secrets to their audience, but she didn't know if magicians couldn't tell
other magicians
. Maybe that kind of thing didn't apply in an all-magician camp.

“Well, this is going to sound weird,” Ben said quietly, almost whispering, “but
I don't know.
It's just something that I seem to be able to do. I noticed one day that if I just squint one eye—”

And he did it again. He squinted one eye, and the key rolled up and over on his hand.

Abby's stomach practically dropped out of her body. For a moment, she was struck speechless, motionless, and brainless. Could this be happening? Had she just met another person with some tiny magical power and no way to explain it? Maybe she wasn't the only one!

This changed everything. This was
huge.
Ten minutes at summer camp and her sense of freakiness and isolation was starting to crumble.

“
Are you kidding?”
she gushed. She grabbed his forearm, not even noticing his surprise. “You really don't know how you do it? Oh my gosh, I have to tell you something. I'm just like you! A few weeks ago, I was chopping eggs—well, never mind about that. See, I have a trick, too. Not a trick, really; the thing is—”

“Witches 3,” Mrs. Carnelia announced, appearing from nowhere, with a red-shirted camp counselor following just behind. She had chosen that exact moment to return. “Isn't that cute? The boys' cabins are all called Wizards, and the girls' are all Witches.”

Abby was suddenly hot and frustrated. “Mom, just a second, okay? I'm kind of in the middle of something here.”

“Well, introduce us, honey!” Mrs. Carnelia nudged Abby's shoulder.

For a second, Abby couldn't remember his name. He rescued her.

“I'm Ben Wheeler,” he said, offering his hand to Abby's parents in what Abby was sure they'd think was a very mature way.

“Hello, Ben,” said Mr. Carnelia. “We're Abby's parents.” He glanced around. “There's supposed to be a brother, too.”

“Wheeler, Wheeler,” muttered the counselor, checking her clipboard. “Here we go—Wheeler, Benjamin. You're in Wizards 4. You're gonna be with Tony—he's your
counselor. You'll love him; he's great. Want me to introduce you?”

Abby's brain answered for Ben:
No no no no! I mean, no, thank you. I'm going to hang out here with my new friend Abby. I've just discovered that we have the most astonishing thing in common—

But Ben's brain had other plans. “Sure,” he said, shrugging.

The counselor wagged a finger toward the Carnelias. “You guys are all set?”

Mr. Carnelia nodded. “Witches 3, up the hill past the dining hall. We'll find it. Thanks.”

“Okeydoke. Come on, Ben, I'll take you to meet Tony, and then I'll show you where lunch is set up.”

Ben perked up. “Lunch?” he said. “There's lunch?”

Ben and the counselor walked away.

Mr. and Mrs. Carnelia set about rounding up Ryan and getting Abby signed in. If they saw any of the excitement and confusion on Abby's face, they didn't say so.

“L
EMME HEAR YOU SAY
YEAH
,
Witchezzz!” said Claudia.

She was the red-shirted, college-age, slightly pudgy, completely pumped-up counselor in front of Abby's cabin. Every time she shouted, her side-mounted ponytail flounced like a pom-pom.

“Yeah!”
shouted Abby and the other girls.

“Lemme hear you say
Rock,
Witchezzzz!” said the counselor, louder now.

“Rock!”
shouted the girls, louder still.

“All right, now, gimme the W!” She thrust her hand into the middle of the circle of girls, with her three middle fingers sticking up like a letter “W,” and they all knocked fists in midair. It was a corny way to build cabin
togetherness and spirit, Abby knew, but she had to admit that it was working. She was already feeling some sisterly affection for the five other girl magicians in her cabin.

“All
riiiiiight!”
shouted Claudia, pumping her fist in the air by itself now. “Listen up, Witches. I'm gonna be straight with you: there are at least three times as many boys as girls at this camp. But this is day one, Witches. And by day fourteen, you know what we're going to show the world? That girls make just as good magicians as boys. Or
better
, right?”

“Right!”
shouted the girls, definitely pumped up now.

“All right, so listen up, ladies. You are in Witches 3. It's the coolest, classiest cabin in Camp Cadabra. Oh, sure, it may look just like the other girls' cabins. It may be on the same
hill
as the other girls' cabins. It may have the same
view
as the other girls' cabins. But it's not the same. This one is
special.
You know why, Witches?”

The girls shook their heads, grinning.

“Because only Witches 3 has Claudia. That's me. And only Witches 3 has the six of you. And as you shall see,
that
is what makes this cabin the coolest and the classiest. Now let's get inside so I can show you around.”

Fired up with excitement, the girls pushed their way into the cabin.

Now, a word about the Camp Cadabra cabins. When you
read the word
cabin
, you're probably thinking of, say, a
log
cabin, or a
camp
cabin, or a cabin in the woods. Something simple, and bare bones, and woodsy.

But the cabins at Camp Cadabra were quite another story.

This camp, Abby soon discovered, was
not
all about “roughing it.” Abby had never seen any other sleep-away summer camps, but she could tell right away that on the comfort scale, this one was Extra Cushy.