The Sign in the Smoke (Nancy Drew Diaries #12)(38)

“I think we are almost there now,” I said, “but yeah, point taken, Kiki.”

“You guys are so much stronger than you were!” cried Maya excitedly. “You’ve grown so much this week! I can’t believe you’re all going home tomorrow. We have to keep in touch.”

Harper rolled her eyes. “Don’t get all sappy, Maya,” she said. “We still have tonight.”

At that moment, I caught a snippet of conversation from the eleven-year-old group in front of me. Sam, who’d taken over Bella’s position as of lunchtime, was patiently repeating the story she’d told about fifty times since Bella’s departure. “She just urgently had to go home,” Sam said. “I told you guys, everything’s fine, but it was unavoidable. She wanted to say good-bye, but she couldn’t. Don’t worry, though—we’ll still have fun.”

“Why do you always wear that baseball cap?” one of Bella’s campers, a redhead named Haley, asked.

Sam grinned, touching her fingers to the brim. “Because it keeps the sun out of my eyes,” she replied. “Plus, it looks so darn good on me. Yankee blue is my color, don’t you think?”

About ten minutes later we finally came upon the clearing on a rocky ledge above the lake where we’d be camping that night. Each bunk was given thirty minutes to set up their tent and lay out their sleeping bags inside. I’d been worried that it would take longer than that to set up, but actually, with all eight of us working together, setting up the tent was a breeze. It made me realize what a great team the eight of us had become, and that made me smile.

Once our bags and sleeping bags were laid out inside, we headed over to where Deborah and Miles were setting up a campfire. While Miles used a flint to get the campfire started—a cool trick he’d tried to teach the campers—Deborah asked the counselors to line up the insulated bags of food we’d brought. I plunked down the bag I’d gotten from the mess hall, which included hot dogs, buns, potatoes for roasting, and apples. Soon each of the kids was holding a hot dog on a pointy stick over the roaring campfire, and we’d all wrapped potatoes in aluminum foil to roast in the fire.

I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I began to smell the hot dogs cooking, and then my stomach rumbled angrily.

“Hungry much?” George asked, sidling up beside me.

I smiled. “I guess so,” I admitted. “Things were still so crazy at lunch, I don’t think I ate a lot.”

I’d filled George and Bess in on the Bella incident during free period.

George patted my back. “Don’t feel bad about it, Nance. You got a crazy person out of here! You saved the campout! Look at all these happy faces that would have been sad, watching another DVD in the mess hall or something.”

I looked around at the happy campers, trying to feel the truth in George’s words. But something just wasn’t sitting right.

“What if she didn’t do it?” I asked.

George turned to me, her eyes flashing. “Nancy, come on. You can’t be serious. Bella was acting weird since the moment we all got to camp.”

I sighed. “On the hike up here, I was noticing how many people wear Chuck Taylors,” I said. “Sam has them. Maddie too. Deborah even has a pair. What if I—”

“Don’t doubt yourself,” George insisted. “Except about your hot dog, because that thing is about to burn to a crisp. Come on, put her there.”

George picked up a paper plate with a bun on it and held it out to me. I pulled my hot dog in from the fire—it did look a bit well-done, now that I inspected it—and dropped it on the bun. George handed me the plate, then gestured to a row of condiments that had been set up by a tree.

“You had plenty of reasons to blame Bella. Maybe one or two of them could be explained in other ways—but all of them? No. So eat something,” she encouraged me. “Enjoy yourself! You solved the case! Now you can relax and enjoy a freshly roasted hot dog with a stellar view.”

I nodded, slathering my hot dog with mustard and ketchup and moving over to where my bunk had gathered on an overturned log. Soon the happy chatter and jokes of my campers took my mind off Bella, and any of the other crazy events of the week. George is right, I thought as I enjoyed my dinner. The hard part is over—now I can enjoy the little time I have left! The sun setting over the lake was beautiful. And it was hard to ignore what a good time all the campers seemed to be having. They really would have been disappointed if this had been called off, I realized.

But the night wasn’t going to be totally perfect. We’d just finished up our dinner and started roasting marshmallows for s’mores when the sky suddenly darkened, and a huge crash of thunder sounded.

I looked to Deborah, who turned to the sky just as the heavens seemed to open up and rain came pouring down in a gush.

“Auuuuughhh!” half the campers screamed.

“Everyone run to your tents!” Deborah shouted. “Take cover! I’ll put out the fire!”

“You heard her, guys! Come on!” I corralled my campers into a clump and navigated them back toward our tent. Once we got the zippered flap open, we all tumbled in with a groan and scooted over to our respective sleeping bags.

“I can’t believe it,” Maya said, shaking her head. “Was it even supposed to rain tonight?”