Vanishing Act, page 14
“Is that so?” he asked, his look of confidence wavering. “Where is the White Oak cabin, then?”
“Over there,” Gary said as he pointed at the Red Wood cabin’s table on the other side of the cavernous dining hall. The TTBI agent immediately turned and started in that direction, his counterparts trailing him.
“I thought people who knew what was good for them didn’t mess with the TTBI,” Hudson said.
“I’m not one of those people. Just ask the principal at my school,” Gary said with an evil grin as the TTBI agents finally reached the Red Wood table. “Shall we head out?” he said, turning to us. We all stood and made our way quickly through the dining hall in the opposite direction of the agents and out the back door. I was about to let out a whoop of triumph when we ran smack into Mr. Munkhouser.
“Going somewhere, boys?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“With you?” I said.
“Good answer,” he said. “Let’s go.” With a sigh of resignation, we followed Mr. Munkhouser toward the nurse’s cabin, five very disgruntled TTBI agents falling in behind us.
Nurse Betsy did not like TTBI agents, a fact that she made no effort to hide as all of us crammed ourselves into the tiny cabin that acted as the medical hub of the camp. In fact, I think she was the only adult on campus who didn’t seem to get a little twitchy around the guys in suits. Instead she made it crystal clear to them that they were on her territory and it annoyed her.
“Stop taking up so much space,” she said as the TTBI agents attempted to arrange themselves in some kind of semicircle around us. “You goons have shoulders the size of Buicks. What did your mothers feed you as children? Elephants?” I watched our short and stout nurse push around the TTBI agents like they were a bunch of naughty campers she’d caught messing around with the Band-Aid stash. I sure did love Nurse Betsy.
“Ma’am,” Mr. Munkhouser said to her, his voice stern.
“Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me,” Nurse Betsy said. “I don’t have time for this nonsense today.” She turned to the TTBI agents, her finger already shaking in their faces. “Protocol is sending one agent. One! Why did we get the whole kit and caboodle today? Don’t you boys have something better to do than to get in the way of people who actually have work to do? Watch your heads,” she added as she sent three prescription bottles and a notebook sailing off her desk. Four of the agents ducked, but one was a tad too slow and got clubbed in the back of the head with one of the bottles.
“Sorry about that,” Nurse Betsy said, not sounding the least bit sorry as she sent four clipboards zooming like bats through an open door to the right. A small boy, probably a Red Maple guy, was sitting in a chair with an ice pack on his head, and a second later he was levitated up and sent through the same door as the clipboards.
“Was that boy here for an injury involving his RISK factor?” Munkhouser said as he attempted to maneuver his iPad up and into a working position in the crammed office. “Do you know what level he is?”
“That is classified,” Nurse Betsy said, turning her accusing finger to Munkhouser, who cowered back a bit.
“Begging your pardon,” Munkhouser said. “But I am the head of the Department of Summer RISK Management and Assessment. Nothing is too classified for me.”
“Fine,” Nurse Betsy said. “Then it’s not classified. I just don’t want to tell you because it’s rude to ask that in front of a large group of people. Now, please, hush a moment so I can get this mess sorted out.” She turned and raised an eyebrow at a stack of files that immediately zoomed through the air and into her outstretched hand. She turned back to Munkhouser, who was clicking away at the iPad, and narrowed her eyes. “No electronics allowed in here,” she said. “It goofs up my equipment.” Before he could protest, his iPad popped out of his hand and zoomed out the window like some kind of weird black bird.
Hudson watched all this with his mouth hanging open. I’d forgotten that he’d never really seen Nurse Betsy in all her levitating glory.
“She’s pretty great, isn’t she?” I said as she whisked a jar of lollipops out of the hands of one of the TTBI agents and across the room to her own desk.
“She’s amazing,” Hudson said in awe. “Does she ever lose control?”
“Not that I’ve ever seen,” Emerson said.
“It would be pretty funny if she did,” Gary said. “She’d send a camper flying out the window or something.”
“I’d be happy to do that for you, Gary, so we could evaluate just how funny that would be,” Nurse Betsy said to Gary without looking at him.
“Listen up,” one of the TTBI officers said, turning to us. “We need to speak with you about the time-traveling incident that happened today.”
“What time-traveling incident?” I said.
“Don’t play dumb,” another officer said. “The traveler in your cabin named Murphy appeared at your table not more than fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh!” I said, slapping my forehead. “That! Well, we’d barely even noticed another Murphy was there. I mean, it’s pizza day. Have you tried it? Each slice is perfectly crispy on the outside and delightfully squishy on the inside, probably because they use about a pound of butter in the crust. If you really want to level up, though, go for the garlic dipping sauce. You guys look like garlic-dipping-sauce kind of guys, I think. I’m sure we could get you a slice without too much trouble.”
“And how many times has another Murphy shown up here at camp?” the officer asked, ignoring my pizza manifesto entirely.
“Hmmmm,” I said thoughtfully. “It hasn’t happened at all this summer. I think it may have happened once last summer, but we never got to talk to him, did we, boys?” Everyone else murmured their general agreement, and I saw one of the agents pull out a pad of paper to write something down.
“Where is Murphy anyway?” I said, glancing around. “Like, the one that is supposed to be helping us at our next camp challenge? Not the past or future or whatever Murphy who showed up at lunch?”
“That’s none of your concern at the moment,” one of the agents said.
“Actually, it is,” Mr. Blue interrupted as he crammed himself into the tiny cottage. “There is a camp-wide challenge about to start, and I’m sure he would like to participate.”
“What he would like isn’t really a concern of ours,” the tall blond agent replied. “He and his time-traveling counterpart are currently being questioned, and their information is being documented. He will be released to your care once that has been accomplished to our satisfaction.”
“What about the rest of the cabin?” Mr. Blue asked. “Are they to be documented as well? If so, their parents will need to be informed and I’ll have a mountain of paperwork I need your assistance with.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, and his elbow hit a glass jar. It toppled off the shelf and shattered on the floor. Everyone jumped, and I saw each agent put a hand reflexively to their hip, even though whatever they usually carried there was conspicuously absent.
“What do you all think this is? A clown car at the circus?” Nurse Betsy yelled, and suddenly every item around the room jumped to attention to hover somewhat menacingly a foot in the air.
The agent closest to the shards of glass that were currently spinning ominously near his face cleared his throat. “I think we’re probably done here, at least with the miscellaneous campers.”
“Miscellaneous campers,” Anthony grumbled under his breath. “Makes us sound like the contents of a junk drawer.”
“We’ve been called worse,” Gary pointed out.
“Wow,” Hudson said as he reached out a finger tentatively to give the glass of water floating in the air beside him a gentle spin. “This would get like a million likes,” he said.
“Well then, I’ll just get these gentlemen out of your hair,” Mr. Blue said. He turned to Nurse Betsy, who was standing behind her desk with a red face and her hands on her hips, and he smiled apologetically. “Sorry about taking over your cabin. Please send Murphy over when he’s done here.”
“Of course,” she said. “I know how to do my job, unlike some people who apparently need five people to do the job of one.” The stuff in the room gave an angry shudder, and Mr. Blue quickly herded us back out the door to where Aaron was waiting. Mr. Munkhouser shouldered past us to reenter the cabin, his cracked iPad under his arm, and I had a moment where I was actually worried about Nurse Betsy. In the next second one of the TTBI officers yelped, and a jar of Band-Aids was launched from the window, and I stopped worrying.
“All right, then,” Mr. Blue said as he hustled us away from the cabin. “Glad that is over with.”
“Nurse Betsy is a boss,” I said.
Mr. Blue chuckled. “That she is, Hank, that she is. If I die tomorrow, I think she could single-handedly run this entire camp and do it better than I could.
“Aaron!” Mr. Blue said, striding over to our counselor. “Please escort your cabin to the next camp challenge. It’s about to begin.”
“I hear they played a trick on the TTBI agents,” Aaron said, arms crossed over his chest. “How many points should I deduct from their score?”
Everyone started yelling at once.
“What?!”
“That’s not fair!”
“Those guys are jerks!”
“The jerkiest of jerks!”
“This isn’t fair!”
Mr. Blue held up his hands to hush our clatter of indignation and looked over at Aaron. “Today was an unprecedented situation, and I don’t believe that they should have any points deducted. However,” he said, turning back to us, “if anything like this happens again, I expect complete compliance out of you lot. Murphy is here due to special permissions granted, and if we step one toe out of line, they could decide to revoke our time-traveling supervision license. Which would mean that Murphy gets sent home immediately. I don’t believe you want that, do you?”
Everyone murmured their agreement. “Good. Then you boys need to hustle,” Mr. Blue said. “The next challenge is beginning any minute, and you don’t want to leave the Swallowtails on their own, do you?”
“Let’s go, then,” Aaron said, and started jogging down one of the paths that led into the woods. I hesitated a second and turned back to Mr. Blue, who was studying the nurse’s cabin with a furrowed brow.
“Sir?” I said, and he turned to look at me in surprise.
“Yes, Hank?” he said. “I’d have thought you’d want to be the first one to the challenge so you could quote Shakespeare to the ladies.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” I said. “But I had a question, though, if you have a minute.”
“Oh?” he said, eyebrows raised. “What’s that?”
“It’s something that you said about Murphy and getting your license to monitor time travelers revoked,” I said. “I was just wondering: Do you have a license for each of our RISK factors? Like, are you only allowed to have a kid at camp if you have a license for their specific RISK?”
Mr. Blue nodded. “Sort of. There is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo and a mountain of paperwork involved, but basically we have an umbrella certification to monitor some of the more common RISK factors. It’s why you are allowed to spend your summer here instead of in a government-run facility.” He gestured around him to the towering trees, log cabin buildings, and dirt paths, and I nodded as I mentally compared them to some of the other concrete and brick institutions that were allowed to keep an eye on kids like us during the months we weren’t in school. The comparison was not a kind one, and I felt a rush of gratitude that I got to be here. “But in order to accommodate kids like Murphy we have to have a special certification, and if you keep disappearing things, we may even need to get special permission for you,” he said with a wink.
“So, if something goes wrong with a kid like Murphy, you could lose your certification for him to come back?”
“Correct,” Mr. Blue said. “Now, is that all? Your team is waiting for you.”
“Yes,” I said, “but also, no. I was just wondering. What would have to happen for you to lose your licenses to watch all of us? Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Well,” Mr. Blue said, his brow furrowing again. “Hypothetically, if something were to happen to a camper on our watch, we would be in danger of losing our certification. It’s one of the reasons we are so hard on you guys when you do things like sneak out to light lakes on fire.”
“Right,” I said as I remembered that our punishment for that little adventure had been scrubbing down all the boys’ bathrooms with bleach and a toothbrush. It was not an experience I wanted to re-create anytime soon. The faint sound of a whistle being blown down by the lake came drifting up the hill, and Mr. Blue smiled.
“You’d better hustle,” he said. “The challenge has probably already started.” With that he turned and walked back toward the TTBI-infested cabin. I raced after the rest of my cabin.
As I ran, I went over my conversation with Mr. Blue. It confirmed something I’d been suspicious of ever since Mr. Munkhouser had shown up and started interrogating us after the canoe incident. If a kid got hurt at Camp Outlier, like the kind of hurt you’d get if your safety tether became untethered twenty feet in the air on a ropes course, then the camp could lose its license. Was that why the government had decided to post Mr. Munkhouser here for the summer? Was he a watchdog making sure that no one stepped a toe out of line? The thought didn’t sit well inside my head. For one thing it made me feel a bit guilty as I recalled some of the stuff I’d helped orchestrate last year, which included jumping off a bridge and encouraging Murphy to lasso a pig. Had any of those things gone wrong, we might not have been allowed to come back to camp this year.
“Get the lead out!” Emerson called to me, and I put on another burst of speed to catch up, smiling at the irony, since Emerson’s vest had actual lead weights inside it. I pushed my suspicions to the back of my mind. It was time for another challenge.
Chapter Fourteen
We arrived to the challenge about five seconds before it was about to start, which was probably the first place we went wrong. The Swallowtails were waiting for us impatiently as all the other teams milled around chatting in excited anticipation.
“What’s the challenge?” I huffed as we came to a stop beside the girls.
“What took you so long?” Amy said.
“No time for chitchat,” Gabby said. “We need to get to our spot before the whistle blows.”
“What spot?” I said, but Amy had me by the arm and was dragging me after the rest of the group as the girls pushed, shoved, and dragged us through the trees.
“Wait, is that the maze?” Emerson said, and I turned to look in the direction he was pointing. Sure enough, barely visible through the trees, was a seemingly endless jumble of white rope stretched between the trees.
“Keep up!” Kristy yelled, running ahead of us.
“I don’t understand,” I said, glancing around. “We aren’t anywhere near the maze entrance.” I remembered traversing the mile-long maze the summer before. It was configured using thick white rope wrapped between the trees, and it could be baffling at times, forcing you to backtrack and try multiple routes before you could find your way out. It was also fireproof, something we’d all been grateful for with Anthony on our team.
“Do you really think they have the same maze every year?” Gabby said, rolling her eyes.
“Yes?” I said at the same time about three of the other guys said the same thing.
“There are five entrances this year,” Amy said. “Each team enters the maze when the whistle blows, and the first team to get one of their members successfully to the middle of the maze wins the points.”
Before we could ask any more questions, the sound of a whistle blasted through the air. The girls redoubled their speed, and we hurried to follow them. A second later we rounded a corner, and I spotted the opening in the maze. It was about five feet wide, and the white ropes on either side of the tree stretched out into the woods. I glanced to the left and saw one of the other teams in the distance entering the maze from their own entrance. The sounds of shouts and laughter rang out through the woods, and I felt my adrenaline jump in my veins. This was going to be fun.
We made it to the first split in the maze.
“Take the left, we’ll take the right,” Kristy instructed.
“You heard her, men,” I said. “Charge!” This time I took the lead, heading at a sprint down the path to the left as it wound through the trees.
“Slow down!” Gary yelled, panting.
“Hurry up!” I called back. For a solid minute we followed the meandering path dictated by the white ropes as they zigzagged us this way and that through the forest. I rounded the next corner at full speed, took another step, and then the ground under my foot disappeared. I felt my stomach drop a half second before my body followed suit. I let out a yelp of surprise and braced myself for impact, which hit painfully. My ankle rolled sideways, but before I could even fully appreciate that burst of pain, I felt someone land on top of me, followed by three more somebodies as what felt like my entire cabin fell into the same hole I had. For a minute there was a lot of yelling and shouting as we attempted to untangle ourselves.
“What is this!” someone yelled.
“Sure looks like a big stupid hole,” said someone else. A flailing elbow connected with the back of my head, and I squirmed in an attempt to free myself from the other guys without much luck.
“Do I smell smoke?” someone yelped.
“Do NOT set anything on fire, Anthony!” someone cried. That made us move a little faster, and a second later we were upright.
