Campfire Cookies (20 page)

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Forget it.”

Now I was curious again. “No, really. Ask away.”

“Okay, if you say so, here goes: Why did you call me ‘Barbecue Princess' last year? I never said anything bad about you.”

“I didn't!” I said.

“Yeah, you did. That girl Quintana in your cabin told me.”

“Quintana?” I repeated. “She was
always
spreading stories about people! Didn't you know that? She just liked to stir up trouble!”

“So you really never said that?” Olivia said. “ 'Cause I hate it when people say stuff like that.”

The Moonlight Ranch main gate came into view in the distance. We would be back in twenty minutes—maybe fifteen. All the horses sensed that the barn was near, and they picked up the pace.

“Olivia,” I said, “I don't think I ever called you Barbecue Princess. But even if somebody did—it's better than being a dust-mop duchess, right?”

Olivia laughed. “I'd have to think about that,” she said.

From Grace I learned that the campers in Flowerpot Cabin think of themselves as “the membership” because they are all members of a cookie club.

“Aha!” I said. “So that proves it was the four of you who mailed me boxes of cookies last year!”

“I can't tell you
that
, Vivek,” Grace said. “It's a secret.”

I sighed and said, “Of course it is,” because here is something I just learned about girls: The very idea of secrets thrills them.

Why is that, do you think? And is it true of all girls, or only certain ones?

I will ask my mom. If I do it soon, she will answer me. But if I wait till after the baby comes, she will probably say, “Please, Vivek. You know I have no time for silly questions. I have a baby to take care of!”

Everyone tells me I will love being a big brother, but I am not convinced.

That, however, is a worry for later—when I am home again in Pennsylvania. For one more day, I am still at camp, and I have a different worry. I need to tell Grace that we are breaking up.

Please do not hate me for this. Grace is a very nice girl. She can do almost anything and do it well. She is pretty.

But I am not ready for the responsibilities of being a boyfriend. Here is what I mean. Last year I gave Grace a small present at the end of camp because I wanted to. This year it is different. She
expects
me to give her a present at the end of camp! She told me she already has one for me.

Too much pressure!

Right away I became anxious about finding the right
present for her. This is not easy when the only place to obtain a present is the Moonlight Ranch Trading Post, and the only things sold in the camp store are postcards and chips and candy and Oreos.

I do not need this anxiety. And so I will have to break up with Grace. In fact, for now I think I will give up on all girls altogether.

That said, I must in fairness praise the girls of Flowerpot Cabin for one particular accomplishment. The four of them worked very hard to perfect their method for baking campfire cookies, and in the end they succeeded. The ones we ate around the campfire at Ocotillo Lookout on the last night of Pack Trip were perfection in cookie form.

Jack pronounced them scrumptious, then said, “Wait a minute. I could be wrong, but I think I'm forgetting something. No girls I know ever sneaked into Boys Camp, did they? No? I thought not.”

Hannah, the Flowerpot counselor, was sitting beside him, and giggled. I have noticed that many of his comments make her giggle. He is a funny guy.

As always, Buck announced the Moonlight Awards at the Farewell Campfire on the last night of camp.

Silver Spur won Chore Score.

And Purple Sage was Top Cabin.

Brianna, Kate, Maria, and Haley—the girls of Purple Sage Cabin—whooped and squealed when the name was called. Lucy whooped and squealed too, then
remembered this was Flowerpot's archnemesis and toned it down to polite applause.

“Hooray for Jane!” Hannah hollered generously. She had been in an especially good mood ever since Pack Trip.

“At least they didn't win Chore Score too,” Grace whispered.

In fact, the Secret Cookie Club membership had known for a while they couldn't win Top Cabin. The demerits Olivia got when she was caught with an electronic device had knocked them out of contention.

The Chore Score competition, on the other hand, had gone down to the wire. Two nights before, a storm had swept through, knocking out power for several hours. At breakfast yesterday, there were no pancakes for Emma, no hot food at all.

And during cleanup, there was no power for the Dandy Dust Mop. The Purple Sage girls, accustomed after eight weeks of camp to using it, had allowed their hand-mopping skills to deteriorate. They lost five points for their dirt-streaked floor, putting them just behind
Silver Spur Cabin, which had lost two points earlier in the summer for cookie crumbs on the walkway outside.

As of yesterday, Flowerpot had the only perfect Chore Score at camp. The award was in the bag, right?

Wrong.

Because that very day after breakfast, they made a critical mistake. Other than a quick poke with the broom to kill off obvious dust bunnies, no one had looked under the bunk beds. On inspection duty that day, Annie, the head counselor, did look, and what she saw horrified her—ants by the zillion marching from the wall to Grace's suitcase, where, one cookie molecule at a time, they were laying waste to her hidden stash of Oreos.

Flowerpot got zeros in overall tidiness, surfaces, and beds—a devastating loss of fifteen points. In the comment section, Annie wrote only, “Ewww!”

•  •  •

The wake-up bell rang at six forty-five, as usual, on the last day of camp. Parents were due to arrive around lunchtime. When the campers were gone, there would be a farewell
dinner for counselors. Hannah had a reservation to fly from Phoenix to New York City the following day.

For Hannah, there had been many sad days this summer and many long days, too. She and Lance, the handsome counselor from Silver Spur Cabin, had flirted under the stars after evening riding, but in the end she realized she was only a sounding board for his complaints about his ex-girlfriend.

Some days she had felt worthless. But her campers got her through—their goofiness, their schemes, and most of all, their affection. They thought she was worth something, and maybe they were right.

And then, like a gift, she had realized that this unlikely guy named Jack was interested in her, and she found to her surprise that she was interested back. Hannah hated the word “relationship” because it was lame, and she hated the word “romance” because it sounded like something at the drugstore next to the cheap perfume. So she and Jack had a “thing,” dimensions to be defined later . . . when he had returned to Chicago and she was back home on Long Island.

And here it was the last morning, and all of a sudden an eventful summer was wrapping up in a feverish blur of packing.

Even after dealing with the ant infestation, Grace still finished first. Olivia was having a hard time closing her trunk. Emma kept offering good advice on packing to Lucy, who had borrowed two duffel bags from the camp lost and found since the latches on her footlocker were broken.

“Hey, Grace,” Olivia said. “So, are Vivek's parents coming to get him? Or just his dad?”

“How should I know?” Grace said.

Everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at Grace, who looked back. “What? Oh—I guess I forgot to tell you. After the campfire last night, we broke up.”

Olivia rushed across the bunkroom and put her arms around her friend. “Oh, you poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor
thing
! Tell me, is your heart entirely shattered? I never liked him! He isn't worth the nail on your pinky toe!”

“I didn't say he broke up with me,” Grace said.

“Did he?” Emma asked.

“Kind of,” Grace admitted. “But in the end it was on both sides. He's cute to look at, but not really boyfriend material.”

“Sounds like Lance,” Hannah said. “Jack, on the other hand, gave me cookies.”

Once again, the girls looked at one another. Finally Emma spoke up. “Hannah, I hope this is not a big deal. But actually, Jack didn't.
We
put the plate of cookies on your pillow. We wanted you to think they were from Lance.”

Hannah laughed. “Not those cookies. I knew
those
cookies were from you. As if I wouldn't recognize a Lucy Ambrose original watercolor! But Jack brought me some of those snowball cookies right out of the oven. They really cheered me up too. He's a guy who appreciates flour power.”

“That's right,” Emma recalled. “A couple of weeks ago when we baked cookies, he left all of a sudden. It was Vivek who locked up the kitchen.”

“He said he was going over the rainbow,” Lucy remembered.

“That's
so
sweet!” said Olivia. “But while we're on the
subject of everybody's love life, there's one more thing I don't get. Lucy, what is with you and Jamil?”

Facing away from the others, Lucy didn't answer. She was trying to unstick the zipper on one of the borrowed duffel bags.

“Lucy!”
everyone chorused, and finally she looked up.

“Jamil?” she said. “Oh, him. He tried to break up with me too, a couple of weeks ago, right after Emma broke her ankle. And I told him he couldn't because we weren't going together. Or if we were, he should have told me first. Then he said something about cookies I didn't understand, and I got worried that he might be even crazier than the average boy, and I walked away, and he hasn't spoken to me since.”

“Oh, you
poor, poor
thing!” Olivia said. “And now is your heart shattered?”

“It is,” Lucy admitted. “But not about that. I really wish we had won Chore Score.”

“Next summer we will,” Olivia said.

“Next summer!”
Grace and Emma agreed.

Then all four of them looked at Hannah, and Hannah
hesitated. “That's pretty far in the future to plan, don't you think?” she said. “A lot could happen between now and then.”

“Well,
duh.
But you can't let that stop you,” Olivia said.

“It didn't stop us,” Grace said.

“Nothing went like we thought, but that was okay,” Emma said. “I mean, my cast comes off in two weeks.”

“I hope I can come back next year,” Lucy said, “but I'll miss you guys in between.”

“I have an idea,” said Grace. “We could bake cookies and send them to each other during the year.”

“Very original,” said Hannah. “Can I get in on it? After all, you're using my grandfather's recipes.”

“Sure you can,” said Emma, “if you promise to come back next summer too.”

Hannah thought of what she had missed out on this year. The marble-lined corridors, the air-conditioning, the ancient art and high heels. Then she looked out the window at the bright blue sky and looked down into the faces of her girls.

“Oh, why not?” she said. “Next summer! And the other cabins better watch out.”

1) Read the recipe through before you get to work.

2) Next, get out ingredients, utensils, bowls, and pans so you know you have everything you need.

3) Finally, prepare each item so that it's in the state described in the ingredient list. In the s'mores cookie recipe, for example, melt the butter and pulverize the graham crackers before you preheat the oven. Remember to ask an adult for help with the oven or mixer.

These are much better than the Marshmallow Fluff version prepared at Moonlight Ranch.

(Makes 24 bar cookies)

1 cup melted butter