True Blue Read Online Free Page B

everything we’ve done for this camp, I figure we are owed this time to hang out together.
    If only the campers don’t get in the way too much.
    Casey appears in front of me with eight little girls in tow, including Stephanie. She stands out from the rest. She looks like a doll in her Tinker Bell t-shirt, or an ornament on a cake. She knows it, too. The other girls are looking at Casey and me to see what we will tell them to do next. Stephanie is checking out her reflection in the glass of the camp craft display case, twirling her blonde hair into ringlets.
    We load up with bedrolls and backpacks and head off to our cabin. By the time everyone finds their assigned bunks, chooses the cabin name (the Butterflies) and listens to Casey and me go over the camp rules, it’s time to get ready for lunch. We herd the kids outside the cabin and Casey does a body count. She comes up one body short and blows two short blasts on her whistle.
    “Buddies!” she calls out.
    We’ve paired them up. Alison, Stephanie’s buddy, is alone.
    “Where’s Stephanie?”
    We all look around the cabin and in the washrooms, calling her name but seeing no sign of her. She pops up twenty minutes later.
    “I had no idea you were looking for me,” she says, smiling sweetly and tossing her hair.
    We laugh it off. Except for the cold grilled-cheese sandwiches we have to endure, and the Johnny Appleseed grace we have to sing in front of the whole camp, there are no other consequences.
    She disappears again after lunch, cutting into the Butterflies’ swim time by fifteen minutes. After swimming, we spend another fifteen minutes shivering in our wet bathing suits, looking for Stephanie. Casey finally spots her hiding behind a canoe, watching us and laughing.
    “You need to stay with us,” Casey tells her. “We need to know where you are. You don’t want to keep everybody waiting, do you?”
    “If she wants to hide, let’s let her hide,” I tell Casey. “She’ll get tired of it if we ignore her.”
    But Casey is determined to win her over. She tries talking with her before lights out.
    “We want to get to know you,” she tells Stephanie. “How can we do that if you keep running off?”
    “I don’t care if you get to know me or not,” Stephanie says. “And it’s your job to keep track of me, not my job to keep track of you.”
    Casey doesn’t give up.
    “You need to stay with the group because we’re going to do all sorts of fun things. If you’re not with us, you’ll miss out, and we want you to have a really great time at this camp.”
    Little Stephanie just smiles sweetly and chirps, “I am having a good time.”

“That’s enough,” my father said. “I don’t like your tone. If there’s anything else you want to know, I’d like our lawyer to be present. We’ll come to the station.”
    “That’s not necessary,” Mom said, but my father ushered Detective Bowen out the door, which he closed and locked behind her. He used the phone in the kitchen to call Gerald Grey, his golfing buddy and lawyer. All the time he was talking, I kept my eyes on my orange juice because I knew my mother had her eyes on me.
    “He’ll meet us at the police station in one hour.” Dad made his announcement, then retreated to his basement office.
    I pushed back my chair and went to my room. But I couldn’t stay there because I was afraid Mom would come in and I’d be trapped. I had to get out. But I’d have to go by the kitchen, which was at the center of the house. No escape through either the front or back door without going past her.
    I paced back and forth.
    My bedroom was small. There was room for a single bed, a desk, and a dresser—that was all. I’d rearranged it a dozen different ways over the years, but nothing gave me more space.
    Casey’s room wasn’t any bigger, but her father had built her a bug lab in the garage, so she hung out there most of the time.
    There was no extra space for me in my house. We had another bedroom,