Maniac Monkeys on Magnolia Street & When Mules Flew on Magnolia Street (11 page)

Peeling potatoes for the whole camp's meals isn't so bad. I make a game of it.

Sam says washing dishes isn't that bad, either.

And mystery meat isn't looking all that bad anymore at old Camp FunWa.

It's been only four days, Charlie. How is everything on Magnolia Street?

Lots of wishes that you don't get kisses!

Your friend,
Billy

ear Charlie, How have you been doing way on the other side of the state? Is Magnolia Street still sitting there waiting for me to come back to it? I (Oops—I got to stop writing for a minute to get all this gum off my shirt.)

Well, Charlie, it's about forty-five minutes later. I was in a little trouble with the gum. Who knew it was so sticky?…I kind of got some in this girl's hair when she tried to get it off my shirt. (It's a good thing the girls will be on the other side of the lake.) Then a counselor tried to help, and it ended up all on his glasses.
I'm not supposed to be chewing it. I'll tell you why later.

(I should probably start chewing a different kind that doesn't stick so much.)

Camp Margaret is great. I really didn't think I would be very happy here, but Fm surprised at how much fun everything is.

When my aunt and uncle decided—along with Billy's mom—that it wouldn't be a good idea for us to go to camp together, I thought it might be one of the worst summers in the world. I mean, what would I do without Billy and you! But it's working out.

Camp Margaret is an art camp.

I have never painted on so many things in my life—and you don't get yelled at for doing it.

Yesterday we got to paint each other. It was crazy.

First everybody had to wear white T-shirts
and shorts. Then the counselors sprayed us with water and handed each of us a palette fall of all different colors of paint and a brush. The painting party was on.…

In the end everyone was just smearing paint on each other and wearing their palettes as hats. I looked like a huge tie-dyed walking thing. For some reason this boy named Pip was covered only in yellow paint. We all started calling him Banana Boy.

The counselors thought we looked great and took pictures. The fun didn't last long, though. The camp owner showed up with a tour of parents. We found out later we were only supposed to be painting each other's T-shirts.

The counselors had to go to a meeting afterward. But they were laughing when they came out, and the camp owner just shook his head a lot and took off in his car real fast.

I love camp.

Charlie…we have a real live (dead, really) ghost at Camp Margaret. And I saw him! That's kind of why I'm not supposed to be chewing gum.

It all started on the bus trip out here. Our parents had to drop us off at the huge mall over by Lake Blackhorse. The camp bus would pick us up and take us the two hours to camp. It was fan on the bus—meeting everybody and laughing. There were only a couple of kids who had been to Camp Margaret before. But they told the same story.…

It was a story about a kid whose parents forgot to pick him up at camp. He stayed there for a few days waiting for them—but finally got tired and went to live in the woods. He liked it so much he decided he would never go back to the suburbs. He lived off berries and wild animals. He grew older in the woods and made a house in a cave.

His parents would come at the beginning of each summer and try to lure him out of the woods with peanut butter sandwiches (his favorite), but it never worked. He was tricky and would always manage to get the sandwiches but not get captured. His parents finally gave up, deciding he would be happier in the woods.

Well, the kid grew up till one day the counselors at the camp figured he was about one hundred years old. Even though there had been a lot of sightings of him through the years—running, or swinging from tree to tree—there came a time when no one saw him for a whole summer. Everybody figured the old camper had finally passed on.

The next summer came and went, then a few more summers after that. But one night during a campfire sing-along, the Ghost of Camp Margaret was seen for the very first time.…

These two kids who were sneaking out of the sing-along to pour honey in the counselors' hiking boots saw him walking by the entrance gate, a little old stooped-over man in a Camp Margaret T-shirt and a backpack. They say he was waiting for his parents to come and take him home from camp.…

Now, that pretty much scared me while these kids were talking about it on the bus. I didn't want anybody to know it scared me, so I just laughed with everybody else, even though some of the kids' eyes got as big as mine while the story was being told. So three days later…

It's a shame sometimes that I have to chew so much gum all the time. (My aunt has been trying to break me of my bubble-blowing habit for a while. I think it's impossible.) Anyway, I started keeping emergency gum hidden in the knothole of this huge maple tree by the kitchen. I'd guess it was about two in the
morning when I was woken out of a sound sleep by the need to blow a bubble.

I was kind of sleepy as I sneaked out of the cabin, hopping over Mickey Howard's Bigfoot trap (he thinks Bigfoot lives in the woods). I was really needing to blow a big bubble and really didn't pay attention to much else except finding the tree in the dark when all of a sudden there
he
was, the ghost camper, with a backpack on, by the kitchen, almost glowing in the dark.

Charlie, I couldn't even yell for help I was so scared.

The ghost of Camp Margaret was right in front of me!

Okay, okay, Charlie, it's not like that time I thought I saw the Loch Ness monster in Krieger's Pond. And it's not like that time I saw the pterodactyl flying over the bridge that runs past Magnolia Street.

This was different.

I fell to my knees and crawled real fast back to my cabin. Boy, is there a lot of stuff on the ground you don't notice when you're walking straight up, on your feet. I was really moving, Charlie. I knew nobody was going to believe me about the ghost. I had to wake up somebody. Unfortunately, I woke up
everybody.
Absolutely everybody in the camp.

Just as I was about to pull open the cabin door and wake up Mickey, his Bigfoot trap caught me.

The next thing that happened was a huge blanket was being tossed on me, and about the whole cabin was screaming that they had caught Bigfoot.…

I kept screaming that I wasn't Bigfoot and that I was about to smother underneath the blanket.

Mickey kept screaming, “Listen to Bigfoot! He can talk!”

By that time the whole camp was awake, and all I could think of was how they'd scared the Camp Margaret ghost out of its skin and no one would believe I'd seen it.

Well, I'm not allowed to chew gum until the end of camp now. The camp director, Mr. Watson, lectured Mickey and me all about imagination and thought maybe painting the fence alongside the stables might help us burn off some energy.

You know, I get tired of people thinking I need to burn off energy. I think I'd like to keep my energy for a day when I might need it fall strength. (I needed it when the whole cabin was sitting on me thinking I was Big-foot.)

It's been a hard last few days. I don't like painting fences so much. Painting people is a whole lot better.

And the Camp Margaret ghost…

I know he's still out there—waiting to go home.

ear Lump and Billy, (Hope you two don't mind me sending you both the same letter.) I hope you guys got my last letter. I've missed you and can't wait to see you two next week. It hasn't been the same here since Camp FunWa and Camp Margaret grabbed both of you away from Magnolia Street.

I've met a real fun person from Chicago named Ashley while you two have been away at camp. I know we'll all have fun together when you guys meet her. She likes to plant things, and I'm starting to not mind gardening so
much. I even pick vegetables instead of giving Sid half my allowance to do it for me.

I'm sorry you guys have been having a few problems at camp, but I know you're having fun anyway. How could you not?

Not much has been happening in the last couple of days. Ashley is visiting relatives in the country. Everybody has been so busy that mostly I just sit reading underneath the willow trees and drink lemonade all day long.

My dad says I have what he calls a good life.

But guess what?

I've been hanging out with Sid.

Yeah, my brother, Sid. The one who teases me and plays tricks on me and once even filled my room with so many frogs it took me days to find all of them.

I shouldn't say not much has been happening. I really meant to say not much is happening
now.
There have been a few things going on.…

You see, mules have been flying over Magnolia Street.

No, really.

Really!

I didn't know I'd ever see such a thing. My brother, Sid, was the reason it all happened.

Do you guys ever wake up right as the sun is rising? Do you ever hear the man with the cart rolling down Magnolia Street singing this song?

Well, even if you never woke up to hear him, you probably ate some of the fruit off his cart,
'cause everybody in the neighborhood buys fruit from Mr. Janks.

I wake up just to listen to him calling through the streets. It wouldn't be summer without him.

Well, what I didn't know about Mr. Janks is that the mule pulling his cart is called Sweet Shirley and he's had her for twenty years. I finally got to meet her a few days ago.

She's great. She brays and swishes her tail when she sees me.

Sid is the one who introduced us all to each other. Sid says he and Mr. Janks have been friends for a long time. They know each other from our old neighborhood. Sid says Mr. Janks used to give him grapes when he'd see Sid on his paper route.

Who knew Sid was that likable?

I didn't, but it seems Mr. Janks and Sweet Shirley think so.