Applewhites at Wit's End Read Online Free

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    E.D. absolutely refused to let Eureka! derail her. Since that first planning meeting, she had finished three research papers (for science, history, and current events), read four books and written book reports (for language arts), kept up her vocabulary study, and maintained a steady A average in math. If camp was supposed to save their way of life, she didn’t see how it could do that by destroying hers! So even though she’d been up late the night before creating the fifth— fifth!— version of a weekly schedule that could include all the camp activities everyone thought were absolutely necessary, she was still managing to stay on her own daily school schedule—except for occasional accidental catnaps.
    She swiveled her chair around to look at the list she’d posted on the wall by the door. It was a list of all the things that needed to be done to make the camp happen, and it stretched from very near the ceiling all the way down to the floor. Everyone in the family had contributed to the list, including Destiny, who wanted them to build tree houses for the campers to live in, to bury play money all over Wit’s End, and then to make pirate costumes for treasure hunting. Those, at least, didn’t actually have to be done. Her father had added an enormous number of absolutely necessary tasks and then headed cheerfully off to Pennsylvania to direct another play. “Just like you,” her mother had complained to him, “leaving the rest of us to do all the work!”
    â€œ All the work? Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d said as he stowed his suitcases in the trunk of his Miata. “I’ll be back in plenty of time to help with the most difficult job of all: winnowing the hundreds of applications we get to find the best possible candidates, the cream of the creative crop. Everything that needs to be done between now and then will be an exhilarating challenge for the whole family! Don’t think of it as work; think of it as stretching boundaries, galvanizing energies. Meanwhile, I’ll be all by myself in Pennsylvania, slaving away in the theatrical salt mines to keep the mortgage paid.”
    E.D. had thought about her father’s words quite a lot in the weeks after he’d left. It had been a challenge, all right. By now a lot of entries on the to-do list had been crossed out, but there were still an unsettling number to go. Hal had designed the camp logo, and Uncle Archie had built the website. Randolph had driven to his directing gig in Philadelphia instead of flying, as he normally would have, so they could use the money he’d saved on airfare to finance the advertising campaign.
    There hadn’t yet been leaves on the trees when the brochure and website deadline had arrived, so Lucille couldn’t take any new pictures. She’d gathered photographs of Wit’s End from family albums and then spent days on end Photoshopping in images of happy campers she’d found on the internet so they appeared to be frolicking in what the brochure called “the summer glory of Eureka! ’s natural setting.”
    Then there had been the problem of creating the camp application. “It needs to give us a sure way to determine who belongs to that ‘cream of the crop’ Randolph wants and who doesn’t,” Sybil pointed out. “We’ll need a form for basic information, and lots of supporting materials, too—like samples of the children’s creative work.”
    â€œWe should require recommendations from teachers and coaches . . . ,” E.D. had added.
    â€œAnd an essay from the child explaining why he or she wants to attend,” Lucille added. “I want to see something of their thought process.”
    â€œNot everybody likes to write,” Archie had protested. “We need to let them send a video instead—let them talk if they want.”
    There had been several major arguments and three