How to Survive Summer Camp (11 page)

‘Do you?’ He stared at his desk thoughtfully. He stared at the
National
Geographic
magazines. ‘What about you starting up your own magazine while you’re here? An Evergreen Magazine, with you as the editor. Does the idea appeal?’

It did. Very much indeed.

I
 sat cross-legged on my bed in the Emerald dormi, doodling with my new felt tips on a pad of rough paper. It was Marzipan’s pad actually, but I was sure she wouldn’t mind. I wrote my name in bright pink and outlined it in magenta. It looked very stylish. I tried a wavy emerald green line round the magenta and then edged that with midnight blue. The STELLA was a little blurred now but it still looked impressive.

I wondered about calling my magazine
Stella
. I thought about it, colouring until the midnight blue seeped right through the page and blotched the one underneath. I wanted my magazine to be grander than a comic. But I wanted to show it was
mine.

I thought some more, doodling. I doodled faces and flowers, smiley suns and stars. Stars. I’d looked up Stella once in a book of girls’ names. It was a Latin word and it meant star.

‘Star,’ I whispered, smiling.

I turned to a fresh piece of paper and printed the word in giant crimson capitals. I filled them in with little silver sparkly stars. Well, they were grey pencil really because I didn’t have a
special silver crayon. Then I got my felt tips and drew a whole galaxy of multi-coloured stars filling up the whole page. I sang star songs as I coloured.
Twinkle twinkle little star. Star
of Wonder, star of night. Star light, star bright, first little star
I see tonight.
Inside the darkness of my head ideas sparkled like the Milky Way.

I was having such a lovely time I was annoyed when the others came trooping into the dormi.

‘There she is! Did you get into trouble then, Baldy?’ Karen demanded. ‘What was the Brigadier like? Did he get really cross?’

‘Nope. He was very nice,’ I said, grinning at Karen’s disappointment.

‘Well, you’re still in trouble with Miss Hamer-Cotton. She went looking for you when you didn’t come back to Art,’ said Karen triumphantly. ‘She’s furious with you, isn’t she, Louise?’

‘I think we ought to boot Baldy out of the Emerald team altogether,’ said Louise, jogging me on purpose as she went past.

‘See if I care,’ I said serenely, doing a golden rain of stars with my yellow ochre.

‘Didn’t you really get into trouble?’ Marzipan whispered. ‘Hey, Stella, is that my pad?’

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Well, you’ve used up rather a lot of paper,’ said Marzipan reproachfully.

‘Yes, what’s she been drawing?’ said Karen, snatching. ‘What’s all this star rubbish?’

‘It’s a design, Karen,’ I said. ‘For a magazine cover.’

‘What magazine?’

‘
My
magazine,’ I said. ‘I’m starting a magazine. A proper one for the whole of Evergreen.’

‘Who says?’

‘The Brigadier, that’s who,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you pull the other one, it’s got bells on,’ said Karen pathetically.

‘You go and ask the Brigadier then. You’ll see,’ I said, colouring away.

‘But why are you doing this magazine? You’re the one who keeps messing about and getting into trouble. You’ve lost heaps of team points. Why should you get to do a magazine?’ Karen demanded furiously. ‘It’s not fair.’

I remembered what the Brigadier had said to me.

‘Life isn’t fair, Karen,’ I chortled.

‘You think you’re so clever,’ said Karen. ‘You make me sick. Your magazine’s going to be a right mess. Isn’t it, Louise?’

‘Is my rough pad going to be your magazine?’ asked Marzipan.

‘Well—I expect I’ll get some proper paper later on, but can I go on borrowing your pad meanwhile?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Marzipan, sighing.

‘I’ll let you do a special bit in my magazine. What do you fancy doing? A poem? A story?’

‘I can’t make them up like you,’ said Marzipan, lying on her bed and reaching for her book. ‘I don’t like writing stories, I just like reading them. Here, is your magazine going to have Book Reviews? I could write about
Little Women
, it’s my favourite book.’

‘OK,’ I said. I thought Book Reviews sounded a bit dull, but it was her rough pad after all.

‘Are you going to have a Fashion Page?’ asked Janie. ‘Oh
go on, please, Stella. I could do all drawings of new fashions, I’m quite good at that. Can I?’

‘All right. But you’ll have to do them really carefully.’

‘Here, Baldy, are you going to have Hairdressing Hints?’ Karen called. ‘I can just see it. Baldy’s Beauty Column. You too can have hair as long and luxuriant as mine if you use Sulphuric Acid Shampoo, says Boring Baldy Show-off Stebbings.’

I waggled my tongue at her, too busy to be bothered to fight. I scribbled down our names in a column.

‘Right. I’m the editor. Marzipan can be in charge of the Book Page. Janie can do some Fashion.’

‘Can I do something, Stella?’ Rosemary begged. ‘I can’t do joined up writing yet, but it doesn’t matter, does it? Can I write about Dora? I could write about how you rescued her, Stella. I’d do it ever so carefully and you could tell me how to spell all the long words. Please let me, Stella, I know I could tell it all.’

‘You’ve told it all. Repeatedly,’ said Karen. ‘Who wants to hear that old story again? Honestly, you’re all mad. Why do you want to write for her daft old magazine? It’ll just be rubbish. Won’t it be rubbish, Louise?’

‘What about the boys?’ said Janie. ‘Are you going to get them to write for the magazine too? That James could do you a poem, couldn’t he?’

‘Do we have to have the boys? They’ll just mess about,’ said Marzipan.

‘I’ll see,’ I said grandly. ‘There’s not going to be much left for them to do. I’m going to do a story and then there’s the Stars page, I want to do that too, and then if we have Book Reviews we might as well have Film Reviews, and I could do that, easy-peasy. What else do you have in a magazine? I suppose we could get Alan to do a sports page.’

‘I’ll do the sports page,’ said Louise.

I stared at her.

‘I know more about sports than anyone else, don’t I?’ said Louise, idly picking up her tennis racket and bouncing a ball up and down on the strings.

She was right. And it was a major triumph, Louise actually wanting to write for my magazine.

‘OK, Louise. You’re the sports correspondent,’ I agreed.

Karen had gone very red. She looked as if she might be trying hard not to cry.

‘You can be on the magazine too, Karen,’ said Marzipan.

‘Here, I’m the editor,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t write for your daft old magazine even if you went down on your knees and begged,’ Karen shouted, and she ran out of the room.

We soon forgot about her because we were so busy. I had great fun writing the Stars page, especially the horoscope for my own birthsign, Sagittarius.

‘You are at the start of a brilliant career. At last everyone will recognize your true talents. Do not be deterred by
hostility. They are only jealous. You have a really starry future. Warning: avoid water at all costs!’

Then I settled down to do my Star Film Review. I drew a big screen taking up nearly all the page on Marzipan’s pad and then did a border of all the delicious food you get to eat in the cinema: popcorn and Mars bars and Magnum icecreams and hot dogs and Coke and ice lollies. Then I started writing my review inside the screen—and that was when I got stuck.

My all-time favourite film was
Curse of the Killer Vampire
Bats.
Mum bought it for me by mistake. She found a whole pile of children’s videos at
£
1 a time at a Car Boot Sale and gave them to me to keep me quiet. They were mostly babyish cartoons and I fidgeted and fussed throughout—but when I watched
Curse of the Killer Vampire Bats
I stayed still as a mouse and didn’t so much as squeak. It was certainly
not
a children’s video. It had got put in this Kute Kartoons for Kiddies case by mistake.

I couldn’t believe my luck. It was so wonderfully scary. I
loved
the Killer Vampire Bats. They started off as furry little Vampire Bat Babies with weeny teeny teeth, but then they grew and grew and grew. Their teeth turned into the sharpest fangs ever so they could rip your head off your neck with one bite.

Mum just about died when she saw what I was watching and threw it in the dustbin. I was furious with her—but she couldn’t stop me buying my own toy rubber vampire bat with my pocket money. I called him Bloodsucker and decided he
was a distant wicked relation of Squeakycheese. I encouraged Bloodsucker in his evil habits for all I was worth. Mum had just started to go out with Uncle Bill then. Bloodsucker decided he simply couldn’t stick Uncle Bill. He kept attacking him like crazy, going for his neck.

Mum said if I couldn’t control Bloodsucker he was going in the dustbin too. I knew she meant it, so Bloodsucker decided Uncle Bill’s blood was too watery for his taste. He had a happy time in my toy cupboard instead, gorging on all my old discarded Barbies.

But now I was stuck writing my review of
Curse of the
Killer Vampire Bats
because Mum had thrown it away when I was only halfway through watching it. I needed to know what happened at the end. I asked everyone if they’d ever seen a truly super film called
Curse of the Killer Vampire Bats
but nobody else had seen it. Then Rosemary smiled.

‘I’ve
seen it, Stella,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’ I said doubtfully.

‘Yes. I remember the vampire bat. I couldn’t watch much. I had to go behind the sofa.’

She was taking a break from writing DORA’S DRAMMATIK RESKU because her wrist was aching so she was busy tidying Dora’s bed.

‘She’s got it in such a mess, I just don’t know what she’s been up to,’ said Rosemary primly. ‘Naughty Dora.’

‘I’m not at all surprised you had to go behind the sofa.
I
was just a little bit frightened of
Curse of the Killer Vampire
Bats
,’ I admitted.

‘Dora was
terribly
frightened,’ said Rosemary, making her donkey shake all over. ‘They attacked a cow.’

‘A cow?’ I said. ‘You mean … a naughty lady?’

‘No. A real cow. And Dora and I thought if those vampire bats could attack a cow they might easily go for a donkey.’

‘There weren’t any cows in
Curse of the Killer Vampire
Bats
,’ I said. ‘There were lots of ladies in nighties and they all died horribly, blood dribbling down their chests.’

‘I didn’t see any ladies in nighties,’ said Rosemary.

‘Yes. Well. You were behind the sofa.’

‘But I was listening. There was just this one man. And the vampire bats. On the telly.’

It turned out she’d been watching some little
nature
programme.

‘You are an
idiot,
Rosemary,’ I said impatiently.

‘Don’t be mean to me, Stella. You’ll upset Dora,’ said Rosemary, making the donkey droop.

‘Cheer up, Dora,’ I said quickly.

‘She’s too unhappy now. Look, she’s sobbing,’ said Rosemary, making little sniffy noises and helping Dora wipe her eyes with her front hooves.

I was getting a bit fed up with all this.

‘She’s
yawning
now,’ I said, snatching Dora and making her mouth gape. ‘She’s terribly tired. I think we’d better pop her into bed now.’

‘No! Don’t put Dora into bed,’ Rosemary squealed, snatching her away.

‘Why not?’ I asked, startled.

Rosemary shuffled right up to me and whispered in my ear. ‘She’s wet it.’

I giggled. ‘No she hasn’t. She’s completely house trained and—’

‘She’s really wet it, Stella. Look,’ Rosemary whispered, holding up the old cardigan.

So I looked. And examined it. Rosemary was right.

‘Rosemary!’

Rosemary shrugged helplessly.

‘You didn’t—?’

‘No!’

‘Then—?’

We both looked at Dora. Her head still drooped, as if in shame.