Glow (Glimmer and Glow #2)(32)
“Come on, Alice. You’re supposed to be the healthy one here. Are you hungover or something? You out partying last night?” Terrance teased her, dimpling up with a wide grin.
“Partying,” Alice mumbled with dark sarcasm. “Who’s got time for partying?”
She perked up a moment later as she joined Terrance in stretching on the white side beach. Terrance didn’t appear to be phoning it in, but genuinely trying to warm up his muscles for their run. Maybe her attempts at hooking Terrance into the benefits of exercise were paying off. At least he’d shown up independently for their early morning jogs, which was something. It wasn’t easy getting a fifteen-year-old boy up at dawn.
After they’d returned from their morning run, Alice walked into the Red Team’s cabin with Terrance, wanting a word with the night supervisor before she left. After she’d met up with Crystal, she opened the door to the nearly empty common room. Immediately, she overheard Terrance, Matt Dinorio, and Justin Arun muttering conspiratorially together where they sat at a corner table.
“They say they’ve set up some kind of secret alarm system this year to stop people from stealing it,” she heard Matt hiss. “It’s not as easy as it was for Ormitz and McCaron and those guys from the Gold Team in the past. I don’t think we can do it.”
“You’re full of it. No one would waste so much money and effort on a damn goat. You two said the Red Team has never got it! We’ve got to try,” Terrance insisted.
“I’m serious. If you get anywhere near it . . . Boom. Alarms start blaring, and the next thing you know, you’re behind bars at the Morgantown jail.”
Alice stilled, both concerned and mystified by the boys’ conversation. Justin and Matt were both “expert” Durand campers. They were bright, energetic, and often mischievous, but not any more so than most teenage boys. She considered Terrance in the same light. Alice didn’t think any of them were capable of serious law breaking. True, Matt had been involved in several petty crimes years ago. He came from a pretty rough neighborhood and had fallen in with a bad crowd. But since first attending Camp Durand, Matt had been clean as a whistle and his grades had significantly improved.
“What are you guys talking about?” Alice demanded loudly, fully entering the room.
The boys started like they’d been goosed.
Of course she got nothing from them after that but uncomfortable laughter and some unintelligible mumbling. Alice was considering separating them for a more thorough interrogation, but stopped herself at the last minute. Something told her it would be wiser to go about this in a different way.
I mean . . . a goat? Seriously?
And hadn’t she heard someone say something about a goat recently? It came to her when: Jim Sheridan in the woods yesterday, sporting with the two kids from Kuvi’s team about a goat.
Sure, it was alarming to hear her kids talking about a theft, but there had to be something more to the story, something Alice wasn’t getting. She was mystified, more than anything.
She brought up the incident at lunch later that day while she was sitting at a table with Kuvi, Thad, and Dave Epstein. Dave grinned.
“I know what they’re talking about. Salinger told me after I heard some of my kids making some sly references to it and acting like I was too stupid to notice,” Dave said, referring to Aidan Salinger, a Durand manager. “There’s another camp down the shore called Camp Wildwood, and their mascot is a goat. They call it Bang.”
“Bang?” Alice asked blankly, pausing with her chicken sandwich a few inches from her mouth.
“The whole thing is based on an old story. Camp Wildwood puts on a firework display on the last night of camp. One summer decades ago, a wild goat broke into the shed where the fireworks were being stored and ate some of the fireworks.” Dave shrugged. “You can imagine the rest. Bang went bang.” He made an exploding sound and motioned with his hands to imply fragments shooting in all directions.
“Disgusting. You Yanks have the most warped sense of humors,” Kuvi declared when Thad and Alice snorted with laughter.
“Seriously? A wild goat? Around here? Where do they find those, right alongside the wild cows and sheep?” Thad asked, glancing from Kuvi to Alice incredulously. Alice choked on her laughter and set down her sandwich.
“Yeah, I know,” Dave assured, hushing his voice to mute the spectacle of them in the crowded dining hall. “Whether it really happened or not isn’t the point. Bang is a big deal around here. It’s become a tradition for a couple Durand kids to sneak over and steal Bang one night while both camps are in progress. They return him the next day in a canoe, so no real harm is done.”
“They got another goat after they blew the first one to smithereens?” Kuvi asked, looking scandalized.
“No,” Dave managed between jags of laughter. Thad, Dave, and Alice had busted up again at Kuvi’s wide-eyed question. Sometimes, Kuvi’s Britishness made her seem more sophisticated than any of the other counselors, but occasionally, she was adorably na?ve when it came to their American idiosyncrasies. “They have a little statue of Bang,” Dave continued. “It sits in the middle of their common, right in the center of all the cabins. Because the Camp Wildwood kids and staff know the Camp Duranders will try to steal Bang one night, it’s gotten harder and harder to do it. The Wildwood kids have made an art of defending their mascot. Last year’s attempt failed, and resulted in two Gold Team experts being taken to Morgantown jail. It was the Durand kids’ fault. They got mouthy and rude when they were caught. A fight almost broke out. They got out of jail quick enough with a slap on the hand. Camp Wildwood didn’t press charges and everything was okay. Before that happened, the Durand managers and Kehoe sort of smirked and turned a blind eye to the Bang phenomenon, considering it a Camp Durand tradition, kids will be kids, yada yada. They’ve been doing it for years now. Rumor is, secret points were even allotted to the team who successfully stole and then returned Bang. Lots of Durand alumni are pretty nostalgic about Bang.”