“Hey! Quiet down!” Danny shouted. He was standing on a chair in the dining room. “I can’t hear myself think!”
“That’s good,” Betsy shouted to him from her seat at the next table. “It’s better if you don’t think. I’ve heard enough of your riddles.”
“Hey, you didn’t hear this one. What did one baby ear of corn say to the other?”
Betsy didn’t answer.
“It said, ‘Where’s pop corn?”’
“Sit down,” Jacob told him.
Cam, the other girls in G8, and all the other children at Camp Eagle Lake were in the dining room. They were waiting for their dinners. It was near the end of Cam’s third week in camp. Soon she would be going home.
“What’s for dinner?” Betsy asked.
“I know what’s for dinner tomorrow night,” Terri said. “The last night in camp is banquet night. We get hot dogs or steak or chicken or hamburger or turkey. We get whatever we want. It’s like a restaurant.”
Fran and Gina came out of the kitchen. They each held a large round tray.
“What’s for dinner?” Betsy asked again.
“Food,” Fran answered. “Good food.”
Fran and Gina rested their trays on the edge of the table.
Fran said, “We have tuna fish or chicken, spinach or carrots, and baked potatoes.”
“I’ll take the chicken,” Betsy said. “No one likes tuna fish.”
“I do,” Cam said. “Kitty does.”
Fran took off the platters of chicken and tuna fish and bowls of spinach, carrots, and baked potatoes. One by one, she gave them to the girls in her group.
Cam and her friends talked while they ate. When dinner was done, Cam put a little leftover tuna fish in a napkin. She put the napkin in her pocket.
When she got back to her bunk, Cam looked for Kitty. But Kitty wasn’t in her usual place on the porch.
Cam put the tuna-fish-filled napkin on her night stand. Then she sat on her bed and thought about all the fun she had had in camp. She was sorry the three weeks were almost over.
“The basketball courts have lights,” Terri said to Cam. “Let’s shoot some hoops. This may be our last chance. Tomorrow night is the banquet.”
“Sure,” Cam said. “But first, I want to feed Kitty.”
She took the tuna fish. Then Cam and Terri told Fran where they were going.
“Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” Cam called once they were outside the bunk. Cam opened up the napkin and held it out.
“I wonder where she is,” Cam said.
“Maybe she’s not hungry. Or maybe someone else is feeding her,” Terri said. “Let’s just play basketball.”
Cam closed the napkin and went with Terri to the basketball courts. There, under the lights, was Kitty. Eric and Jim, the sports counselor, were there, too. It was Eric’s turn to help Jim. Both Jim and Eric had brooms. They were about to sweep the courts. Jim and a helper swept the courts every evening after dinner.
Eric was petting Kitty.
Jim said, “Sometimes Kitty comes here at night. I think it’s the light that attracts her.”
“I’m going home soon,” Cam told Kitty. “I’ll miss you.”
Meow!
Kitty quickly ate the tuna fish. Then Cam told Jim that she and Terri wanted to play basketball.
“I want to play, too,” Eric said.
“Here,” Jim said, and gave Eric a key. “Get a basketball from the sports shed.”
The others watched Eric walk slowly across the road to the shed. He stopped there for a moment and ran back.
“Everything is gone!” Eric told Jim. “When I got there, the door was open and all the sports equipment was gone.”