Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power (18 page)

On the fourth day of super camp, Abby Carnelia finally began to guess what kind of trouble she was in.

That morning, two things shattered any illusions she still had that she was at any kind of normal summer camp.

The first thing happened just after five in the morning,
when she was still deep asleep. She was in the middle of a perfectly pleasant dream, something about winning a clarinet contest with a clarinet that could play itself, when the place went nuts. It started with a deafening alarm: “NAAAAK! NAAAAK! NAAAAK!” Abby jumped out of bed and poked her head into the hallway, where bright lights were flashing. She could see other kids peeking out, too, covering their ears, looking around, freaked out and confused.

Ferd waddled into view, wearing a tiger-striped bathrobe that wasn't quite tied securely enough. Some black-shirted helpers raced down the hallway.

“IS IT A FIRE DRILL?” Abby yelled to Ferd.

He nodded. “OR A SYSTEM TEST. NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.”

A minute later, the sounds and lights turned off. The place was quiet once more, although Abby could hear some chatter from sleepy campers down the hallway.

Ferd held up his hands and shouted as he walked through the building. “Apologies, my people,” he said. “They do these system tests now and again. Forgive the ungodly hour of the night. Now, back to bed with you!”

Abby wished that Ben were there so she could at least exchange
do-you-believe-this-guy?
looks with him. But the door to his room remained closed.

The second disturbing event came later, during the morning session. One by one, each kid was pulled out of class and taken into a little medical office for a checkup by the camp doctor. It was the full deal: they took Abby's temperature, looked in her ears and her nose, tapped her knee with a reflex hammer, wrapped one of those blood-pressure sleeves around her arm, weighed her and measured her.

And then they got ready to take a blood sample.

I don't know if you've ever had that done to you, but you probably wouldn't enjoy it. It's like getting a shot. Except instead of squirting some medicine into you, the needle pulls some blood
out
of you. If you're brave enough to watch, you actually see your blood going into the clear part of the syringe.

Abby
hated
shots, just hated them. She always had. Once, when she was five, her mom buckled Abby into the car to take her for a checkup—and then made the mistake of mentioning that she would have to get a shot. Abby jumped out of the car, ran out of the garage, scrambled inside the house, and hid herself in the closet in the attic. She didn't come out all day, no matter how much her parents called her name, no matter how hungry she got. They didn't find her until nearly dinnertime, when Abby finally came out. And that was only because she had to go to the bathroom so badly she was about to explode.

Abby could not understand why the camp doctor needed some of her blood, anyway. Sure, she got weighed and measured once in a while at school, but this was ridiculous.

“It's just to keep you healthy,” the doctor kept saying. “Every camper gets a free checkup. It's all part of the program.”

“But why do I need a shot?” Abby insisted.

“Listen, not everything at summer camp is supposed to feel good,” the doctor said as he worked. “What about those early-morning Polar Bear dives into the freezing-cold lake? What about running the half-marathon around the mountain? What about when you have to carry your canoe a mile across land to get to the next place in the river? Sometimes, you just gotta do what's good for you.”

Abby looked at the doctor with a scrunched-up face. “We didn't do any of that at summer camp!”

“Well,” the doctor replied, coming toward her with the needle, “that's how it was in my day. You kids today don't know how easy you have it.”

Abby skipped the movie that night, too. She was starting to miss home and wanted to see if her mom had written back.

Yes!

Received: July 4
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Update from your daughter

Dear Abby,

Thank you so much for the e-mail! Those afternoon activities sound like a lot of fun. I can tell you, we didn't have remote-control helicopters when I was in summer camp a hundred years ago!

What do you do in the mornings? Is that when they teach the magic classes?

Are you having a chance to perform at all? Do they bring in magicians to do shows, like they did in New Hampshire?

Dad's at home for another few days, then he has to fly off. He took Ryan to a Yankees game today in New York, which is a big deal for both of them. Personally, I'd rather stay home and watch the grass grow.

Love,
Mom

P.S.—Hope you're getting plenty of sleep and meeting some great people!

P.P.S.—Old Mrs. Teplitz across the street had puppies! (I mean her dog did.)

Abby smiled and leaned back in the chair.

But after a moment, a little voice in her head suggested that she read the message again. This time, she wasn't smiling. Something was really weird about her mom's note.

“What do you do in the mornings?” “Do they bring in magicians?”

Didn't you read my last e-mail?
Abby thought.
I already told you that stuff!

Abby was growing annoyed. Her mother must have stopped reading Abby's e-mail after about one sentence. Abby was a slow typist, so her mom should appreciate every single sentence—and not get distracted after ten seconds of reading!

At that moment, there was a knock on Abby's door.

“Who is it?”

“It's . . . um, it's Monty.” But it was Ben's voice. Abby grinned as she stood up.

“What do you want, Monty?” she asked, walking toward the door.

“I want to see if you can spin an egg by tugging on
my
ears.”

She laughed and opened the door. “Why, Benjamin. What a surprise,” she said.

“Hello, Abby Cadabra,” he said as he came in.

“I thought you went to the movie.”

“Nah,” Ben replied. “It's
Titanic II: The Voyage Home
. I've seen it, like, six times.”

“I know. Me, too. I practically understand the plot by now.”

Ben flopped down into a big leather swiveling chair by the window. He had brought along a foam-rubber football. And now, as he swiveled the easy chair back and forth, he was absentmindedly tossing the football straight up into the air and catching it.

“So how are you enjoying super camp?” he asked.

Abby stopped and looked at him. Then she looked around. Without a sound, she walked over to the bed and pressed the button on the wall that made the TV screen rise up out of the dresser.

“What are you doing?” Ben asked, bewildered.

“Let's watch some TV! Can you grab the remote by your foot?” She turned on the TV and flicked through the channels until she found a concert video.

It was the Badd Boyz, singing their hit song, “U R 2 Good 4 Me”:

 

Ooh baby, can't U C
That U R 2 good 4 me,
Ooo, honey I want yo touch,
But girl, U R way 2 much . . .

 

Abby turned it up loud.

“Auuuggh!” Ben shouted, trying to make his voice heard over the music. “Okay, first, I can't stand that song. And second, if I wanted to watch TV, I would have stayed in my own room!”

She put a finger to her lips, in a
Shhhh!
motion. Then she dragged the desk chair across the rug until it was right next to Ben's easy chair and sat down.

“I just want to make sure they can't hear us,” she said.

“Who?”

“You know, in case they've got little microphones hidden around, and they're listening to us.”

Ben studied her with curiosity. “Do you really think?”

“I'm sorry. I don't trust these people. They took blood
from us today! This isn't a super camp—it's a super lab. And we're their guinea pigs.” She looked away. “I know. You think I'm completely paranoid.”

“Actually, I don't,” he said. “I thought I was the only one.”

Abby looked at him sharply.

“Why? Did you find out something?”

“Well, let me just ask you this: What's the deal with all the security?”

Abby shrugged. “They said it's to keep us safe from outsiders.”

“Nope,” Ben replied. “It's to keep us
in.”

Okay, that's a little creepy,
thought Abby.

“Why do you think that?” she asked.

“You'll see,” he said, glancing around. He brushed his floppy hair off his forehead, the way he always did. But this time, she could see that his eyes were especially intense.

“You know how I never show up at breakfast?” he said. “They think I'm a slacker, or maybe just a little unpredictable. But it's great because they leave me alone so I can do a little exploring.”

“What kind of exploring?”

“Well, like this morning, I woke up super-early, for some reason, so I decided to see how hard it would be to
get outside. Not inward, into the courtyard, but the other way. Out of this place. So I went past the reception desk where Candi sits. I don't have one of those security cards, but I didn't need one; someone had left the first set of doors open. So I just walked right through them, down the hall toward the doors to the main building, when all of a sudden—”

“What?” Abby asked, spellbound.

“It was like: ‘BAAAAMP! BAAAAMP!' These alarms went off!”

Abby lit up. “Oh, yeah! We heard that! Like in the middle of the night! That was you?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “That was me. And they have these metal gates that come down from the ceiling, just like in the movies. Both ends of the hallway. It scared the heck out of me.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, I was trapped in there! I couldn't get out either end of the hallway. I was in there for, like, five minutes before three of those helper guys could open the gates again and let me back in.”

“Well, what made the alarm go off? Did someone push a button or something?”

“I don't think so,” Ben replied. “It went off right when I started walking down the hall. Didn't Phil say something
about motion detectors or pressure sensors in the floor? Just stepping into that hallway makes the alarms go off.”

Abby frowned. “But didn't we come in that way on the first day? There wasn't any alarm then.”

“I know,” Ben said. “They probably turn themselves off during the day. They must be on a timer.”

“So what did you say when they caught you?”

Ben grinned. “I pretended to wake up. Like I'd been sleepwalking.”

“Are you kidding me?” Abby had always known that Ben was a daredevil, but she couldn't believe his guts this time. “Did they believe it?”

He nodded. “I think so. Since the day we got here, I've sort of been letting them think that I'm a little loopy.”

“Oh, like you're really not?”

She grinned at him. But inside, her feelings were anything but cheerful.

I
F YOU REALLY WANT
to be totally accurate about it, the day that really changed the direction of Abby's life wasn't the day she discovered her power.

It was the day Ben sang to her in the Telekinesis lab.

Ben had now been an impostor at the super camp for six days. His key-flipping trick was so good, it had everyone convinced that it was a real supernatural power (although a pretty pointless one). Ben kept telling Abby that he was sure he was going to be discovered at any moment—but so far, nobody had suspected.

The sixth day in the lab was no more interesting to Abby than the other days had been. Monty had brought in some scientific machines to see if he could figure out
what kind of force she was actually applying to that egg. “To see the unseen!” he said, holding one finger up in the air. “This is our challenge today!”