Rumors by Katy Grant Page B

Well, not just me. She hates everybody. She’s so mean because she hates coming to Pine Haven every summer,” said Laurel-Ann. “She calls it Pain Haven. And you want to know why she hates camp so much? The first year she came, she was only seven. She got dropped off, and then nobody came to pick her up. On the last day of camp, all the other campers left one by one, but nobody came to get Katherine.”
    Natasha made a gasping sound. “Oh my gosh! That’s so sad!”
    â€œEda kept calling her parents, and nobody answered. So Katherine had to stay at camp for days and days after it was over, and nobody was here but Eda and all the counselors getting ready for the second session.”
    â€œWhat happened?” asked Ashlin. “Did somebody pick her up eventually?”
    â€œYeah, eventually. But it wasn’t her parents. It was some relative or something. Now she doesn’t live with her parents anymore. They’re alive and everything, but they put her up for adoption when she was seven. Isn’t that terrible?” Laurel-Ann was propped up on her elbows, whispering softly to us.
    â€œAre you sure?” I asked. “That sounds pretty unbelievable.”
    â€œIt’s a true story! I swear! You want to know how I know?” asked Laurel-Ann. “Katherine told me herself. Last summer. She didn’t always hate me so much. I thought maybe the two of us could be friends. But then she turned on me for no reason.”
    â€œDoes it have something to do with Rainbow Trout?” I whispered.
    â€œWhat’s Rainbow Trout?” Natasha and Ashlin asked at the same time.
    Suddenly a flashlight clicked on, and the beam was shining right in our eyes. “Oh, is that you girls talking?” We heard Rachel’s voice through the darkness. “I thought we had a chipmunk invasion. All I could hear was chatter, chatter, chatter.”
    â€œWe’ll be quiet,” Natasha told her.
    And that was enough to make Laurel-Ann close her mouth.
    Rainbow Trout. Rainbow Trout. I lay there in my sleeping bag, imagining all kinds of crazy stories. Did it have something to do with fish? Or rainbows? Or was it a code phrase of some kind?
    I rolled over on the hard ground and glanced at Laurel-Ann’s still form beside me. I doubted she’d ever tell me the story behind it. But she wasn’t the only one who knew what it meant.
    Katherine did too. Maybe she’d be willing to talk. I knew it was some big secret, but I was good at keeping secrets.
    Most of the time.

Tuesday, June 24
    â€œWhat a quiet group,” said Rachel, looking around at all of us. “I wonder what happened to the chatty bunch that was here last night?”
    We were huddled around the campfire, only this morning there was no fire burning, just a pile of ashes and some dead embers. Breakfast was instant oatmeal and dried fruit, but it didn’t taste as good as last night’s dinner.
    Nobody was talking much this morning because everybody was sore, cold, and tired from sleeping on the ground. When I’d first woken up, my sleeping bag was soaking wet with dew. Camping out was fun, but it did have its downsides.
    As soon as breakfast was over, we had to get ready to leave. Jerry poured water on the already completely dead fire and spread out the embers with a stick, just to be safe.
    â€œMy back is killing me,” Natasha groaned as she pulled on her backpack.
    â€œI know. Mine too,” I agreed.
    â€œCan you believe that corny joke they played on us?” asked Ashlin. We’d woken up to find strands of red yarn hanging from lots of the tree branches. Lori insisted that the ghost of the redheaded woman had visited us during the night.
    â€œI’m sure I heard her calling,” she kept telling us. I’d liked the story, and I thought it was funny to find all that red yarn.
    We fell into a long line in about the same spots we’d been in yesterday, with