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Authors: Gordon Korman

The Second Adventure (2 page)

BOOK: The Second Adventure
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She activated the Skype app on her phone and called Griffin. A shadowy face surrounded by sheets and towels appeared almost immediately. “Are you crazy?” Griffin rasped. “You know we're hiding in the back of a van! You want to get us caught?”

Melissa's wide eyes were clearly visible behind her curtain of hair. “Savannah has to talk to her dog!”

Griffin understood her instantly. Just seconds later, Savannah appeared on the screen, in full dog-whispering mode. Melissa held the phone up for Luthor to see.

The Doberman was a little bewildered by the tiny Savannah who was here and yet not here. But there was no question — that was her face, and that was her voice, which meant he wasn't so abandoned after all.

Melissa and Logan exchanged a look of pure dismay. Luthor was calm again — but for how long? Would his hostility return the minute Savannah's familiar face was no longer before him?

“Great,” Logan said with a nervous laugh. “Now all we have to do is keep her on the phone forever.”

Melissa retreated behind her hair. It was going to be a really long three weeks.

T
he buildings of Camp Ta-da! were laid out around its performance center — an old barn converted into a small theater and rehearsal space. It was a tight squeeze to get one hundred fifty campers plus their counselors inside at the same time. But when it was raining — like it was on that day — no one minded the crowding. All eyes were on head counselor and creative director Wendy Demerest, who was running through the details of the annual “Showdown” against the camp's cross-county rivals, Camp Spotlight.

“For the next week we work around the clock to script, stage, and rehearse a forty-five-minute revue,” she explained. “At the Showdown, both camps put on dueling shows for a trophy and bragging rights. Spotlight has beaten us the last three summers” — a loud chorus of boos greeted this statement — “and that's why this is the year we bring the cup back to Ta-da!, where it belongs.”

Melissa was amazed at the wild cheering that greeted this announcement. Even Logan — who normally looked at his acting as serious business — was on his feet, punching the air and howling. She had only agreed to go away for the summer because her parents thought she spent too much time alone with her computers. She'd signed on with Logan and Ta-da! in order to avoid all the sports, competition, and rah-rah-rah. Yet here she was in the middle of what looked like a pep rally. It turned out that these drama types were just as crazed over their specialty as the kids at the baseball camp up the road. Rah-rah-rah couldn't be avoided.

As the ovation died down, a distinct
woof
could be heard over the general din. Melissa reached out and pinched Logan's arm, but the campers who
didn't
know there was a dog in the attic hadn't noticed the extra sound.

There had been only one place to hide Luthor, chosen after an intensive search for something safer. Every other building, cabin, Quonset hut, or tent in camp was used regularly. But the hayloft above the rehearsal hall was strictly an off-season storage area. Now that camp was in session, all the props, sets, and costumes had been moved downstairs. The attic was empty, and would remain so until the buses arrived to take the campers home.

There was a thump from upstairs. Unlike the woof,
everyone
heard that. To Melissa it sounded exactly like a large Doberman bumping into a crossbeam.

An uneasy murmur rippled through the campers, but Wendy smiled. “Any theater worth its salt is haunted. Maybe that's our ghost up there — the spirit of some old actor who wants us to beat the pants off Spotlight on the seventeenth. It's good luck.”

Everyone laughed, and there was scattered applause.

“Now,” Wendy went on, “the title of our revue is
The Best of Broadway
. The first thing we need is a captain for our Camp Ta-da! team. Vote carefully, because our captain will be your leader through every stage of the competition — from scripting to costumes and set design to rehearsals to performance. The nominees are Dante Bryant, Mary Catherine Klinger, and Logan Kellerman.”

As the counselors circulated with slips of paper to serve as ballots, Logan flashed Melissa a knowing smile. “It's in the bag,” he said confidently. “Everyone knows I'm the best actor in camp. They've probably seen the Vicks commercial I starred in. Nobody does post-nasal drip like a Kellerman!”

In the crush of the crowded theater, a tall counselor accidentally brushed against a hanging cable. As he reached up to steady it, his thumb depressed the operating button. An electrical hum filled the barn, and a rectangular platform began to descend from the ceiling.

Melissa and Logan stared in horror. They'd thought that the only way to get to the attic was via the steep, ladderlike staircase leading from the back of the barn. They'd had no idea this hoist platform even existed. And there was a pretty good chance that when this thing came down to eye level, Luthor was going to be perched on it!

Shoving campers out of his way, Logan made a screaming run for the descending platform. He got his hands on it and vaulted aboard, prepared to shield the dog from view with his very body. An “oof” escaped him as he landed face-first on the hard metal.

Since all eyes were on Logan's antics, only Melissa noticed the big Doberman head peering down from the opening in the ceiling. Urgently, she waved him back, and was surprised when he obeyed and vanished from view.

The counselor pressed the button again, and the platform was ascending, bearing Logan with it.

“Hey, you guys!” Logan shouted. “Let me down!”

With a click, he was closed into the attic. He reappeared several minutes later after climbing down the ladder. By this time the vote was over. Mary Catherine Klinger was the captain of Ta-da!'s Showdown team.


I
voted for you,” Melissa consoled Logan.

“One vote!” Logan mourned. “I didn't even get to vote for myself. Mary Catherine the Klingon couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag! There's no way she could do post-nasal drip like me! She couldn't work up a decent sniffle!”

Melissa resettled her hair so that Logan could see the sincerity in her eyes. “At least Luthor didn't get caught. That's the important thing.”

Logan was furious. “The stupid dog hasn't even been here a day yet, and already he's cost me an important stepping-stone in my career. He'd better not cost us the Showdown!”

* * *

Melissa didn't make friends easily.

Actually, she didn't make friends at all except where Griffin's plans were involved. It wasn't that she didn't want to be more social; she just never knew what to say to anyone. To the other girls, it was so natural — they stayed up for hours after lights-out, giggling and snacking on cookies they'd stashed away from dinner. Funny — Melissa could hack into top secret data storage facilities or bounce an e-mail off so many servers around the world as to make it virtually untraceable. Yet the natural ease of her bunkmates, whispering, laughing, and chowing down, might as well have been a code with uncrackable protocols. To Melissa, it just didn't compute.

Mary Catherine Klinger was in the next bunk. “Watch out for that Kellerman kid,” she warned in a confidential tone. “He's all sour grapes that no one voted for him to be captain. I think he might try to sabotage our production for the Showdown.”

Shy as she was, Melissa couldn't let that go unchallenged. She had to speak up for her friend. “Logan would never do anything like that. Theatre is his life's work.”

Mary Catherine and the girls looked around, trying to identify the source of the quiet yet strident words. For some reason, no one noticed Melissa, who was now sitting up in bed.

Mary Catherine got a bead on her at last. “Well, that's what he
says
. I've seen his type before. He acts like super actor, gets everybody to buy into his big pie-in-the-sky ideas. But when it's time to deliver, he'll flake out and leave us with nothing.”

“You don't know Logan,” Melissa defended him. “He's really talented.”

Mary Catherine had a broad, toothy stage smile — the kind that could be seen from the very last row of the balcony. Now her grin abruptly disappeared as she frowned at this new girl. They had been living together in this cabin for a week now. Was it possible that the Ta-da! captain simply hadn't noticed her?

“I don't think I know your name,” Mary Catherine said.

“M-Melissa —”

“And what's your specialty, Melissa?” Mary Catherine persisted. “You know, acting, dancing, singing . . . ?”

“I'm good with computers,” Melissa offered lamely.

“Computers?” echoed Athena Sizemore, who was never far from Mary Catherine's side. “Then what are you doing at a drama camp?”

Melissa didn't like the direction this discussion was taking. But now that she was in it, she couldn't just quit, could she? Were you allowed to resign from a conversation like it was a chess match? These were the things that came naturally to most people that Melissa just didn't get.

“Well” — she was back behind her hair again, but it wasn't doing her any good. She could feel the other girls' eyes burning into her like lasers — “my parents want me to be more outgoing.”

“Nothing brings you out of your shell like singing,” Mary Catherine enthused. “And I know a solo in the Showdown that's just
perfect
for you!”

“A solo?” Melissa was horrified. “I can't sing!”

“That's what rehearsal's for,” the Ta-da! captain assured her. “We start tomorrow!”

Great
, Melissa thought miserably. Now the loudest, pushiest girl in the whole camp had set her sights on turning her into a singer.

That's what I get for sticking up for Logan. . . .

Life was simpler back before she'd had friends. Lonelier, but simpler.

I
t was after midnight by the time all the girls were asleep. Melissa took stock of the steady breathing of her cabinmates, paying special attention to Desiree, the counselor, who was snoring softly. The coast was clear.

Careful not to make a sound, she crept out of the cabin. Sneaking around in the dead of night definitely scared her, but not as much as it used to. If you wanted to be in on Griffin's plans, sneaking was a must-have skill.

Logan was already at the meeting place — hidden behind the low fence that extended from the side door of the performance center. He turned on his flashlight, the beam momentarily blinding her. “What took you so long?” he hissed. “I've been waiting forever!”

“The other girls wouldn't go to sleep,” she explained. “Mary Catherine wants me to do a solo in the Showdown. I don't know how to sing!”

Logan was bitter. “I can't get elected team captain when I'm a professional actor, but you get your own solo!”

“I don't want a solo!” Melissa exclaimed, showing as much temper as Logan had ever seen from her. “Mary Catherine's going to
make
me do one!”

Logan couldn't see past the fact that Mary Catherine was running things and he wasn't. “Who puts a Klingon in charge of a drama team? This place is just like the Golden Globes — it's all fixed.”

Melissa reached into her pocket and pulled out a napkin that concealed three salami slices and a half-crushed cupcake. “It was all I could save from dinner. What did you bring?”

Logan looked bewildered. “I'm not hungry.”

“Not for you,” Melissa explained patiently. “For Luthor.”

He shrugged. “It's not
my
dog.”

“That's the whole point. Neither of us is Savannah, so we have to bribe him if we expect him to do what we want. If he won't go for a walk, it's going to get messy up there.”

They took the stairs up to the loft. When they got to the top, they were greeted by an unfriendly growl . . . and a large white Doberman.

BOOK: The Second Adventure
10.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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