We had to sneak out of the cabin very quietly. Not because of Ava’s dad, who apparently wore earplugs at night (the sound of the crickets chirping in the woods kept him from falling asleep), but because I knew Coco was a super-light sleeper, and my trusty puppy would totally give us away if she thought we were going out on an adventure without her. She was probably curled up, fast asleep, on Madeline’s pillow, but we didn’t want to risk it. So we all tiptoed out the screen door and down the front steps of the cabin.
The moon was nearly full, so the pathways were somewhat visible in a smattering of places. But the trees hung low in other sections of the path, choking out any kind of light at all. “This is really creepy,” I whispered as we picked our way toward the clearing that housed the communal fire pit area. There, the trees opened up into a big circle where the moon could shine through. Brennan’s family’s cabin was down a long path on the other side of the fire pit. About as far away from Ava’s cabin as you could possibly get.
“Abort mission?” Bailey suggested, when we were only about ten feet away from Ava’s front steps. “More lies and truths instead?”
“No way,” Ava said, leading us down the path. “Let’s see what Bren looks like when he’s asleep. I wonder if he snores.”
I giggled quietly. “What if he sleeps with a blankie?”
“I really hope he does,” Ava said, laughing along with me. “That would make this mission totally worth it.”
We stopped when we reached the fire pit. “It’s that path, right?” Ava asked, pointing into the darkness. “Or that one?”
In the dark, everything looked totally different than it did during the day. I could see the Cardinal cabin from one of the benches that surrounded the campfire. It was dark inside, so my parents were obviously asleep. I wasn’t even quite sure what time it was—probably close to midnight.
“It’s that one,” Bailey said certainly. “But I’m not going first. It’s really dark.” The sound of a stick cracking nearby made us all jump and huddle together. “What was that?”
“Just a squirrel, probably,” Ava said, but she didn’t sound very sure of herself. “Or a raccoon, coming to get you.” She held her hands in the air like claws and wiggled them in Bailey’s face. Bailey yelped.
We stuck even closer to each other as we walked toward the path to Brennan’s cabin. I grabbed Bailey’s hand and tugged her along behind me as we stepped onto the wooded path. “Why are we doing this?” Bailey whispered.
“Because it’s fun,” Ava said. She turned back to look at us, her face barely illuminated by the moonlight. Leaves cast long shadows on her skin, making her look sort of spotted. She reminded me of a pony, all skinny limbs and wild hair and wide eyes.
We crept down the path, almost tiptoeing because we were stepping so carefully. Periodically, one of our feet would land off the edge of the path just the littlest bit. Brush snapped and crinkled under our weight, sounding like a wild animal was walking alongside us in the woods. “I jump every single time someone does that,” Bailey said when my foot accidentally landed in a pile of dried-up leaves.
When we had Brennan’s cabin in our sights, Ava stopped. We stood in a little open area on the path, where there was just enough moonlight that we could see each other. If anyone was looking out of the window of Brennan’s cabin, they could also see us. I decided not to mention that to anyone, since I figured we all sort of realized the risks that came with our mission.
“Now what?” Ava asked, her hands on her hips. Her eyes were fixed on Brennan’s cabin.
“Now we peek in the windows,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Anyone know which room is his?”
“What we’re doing is slightly psychopath-ish. You guys know that, right?” Bailey asked. She twisted her hair up into a loose bun and jabbed a stick in it to keep it in place. “If we get caught, I’m the one that’s going to look especially insane. He already thinks I’m obsessed with him.”
“How do you do that?” I asked, pointing at her hair to try to distract her. Bailey was always twisting her hair up and keeping it off her neck using sticks, a pencil, a fork—she could get her curly hair to do just about anything she wanted it to do. It was pretty impressive.
“I just twist and stick,” said Bailey, with a flip of her hands. “My hair gets kind of gross sometimes if I tie it up with sticks, but who really cares when you’re in the middle of nowhere, right?”
“It looks pretty when you have it all piled up like that,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ava said, turning away from Brennan’s cabin to look at both of us. “Enough stalling. Bailey looks like a Greek goddess in the pale glow of the moon with her hair just so. We get it.”
We all laughed because Ava was acting so un-Ava-like and the whole situation was totally ridiculous.
There were no lights on in Brennan’s cabin, which made the spying a lot less intimidating. If they’d been up, reading or playing games or whatever their family did at night, it would be really awkward. Not that what we were doing wasn’t awkward just because it was dark, but knowing we probably wouldn’t get caught definitely helped a little. Ava crept up the front steps and peered into the living room window. “Oy,” she stage-whispered. “Get your butts over here.”
Bailey wrapped her arm through mine, and together we snuck up the steps to join Ava. “There’s no one in there,” I said, pressing my face against the glass.
“I know,” Ava whispered. She pointed to the back of the cabin. “Bedrooms.”
“Okay . . .,” Bailey murmured. “But what if they sleep naked or something?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out, right?” I said quietly as we tiptoed back down the creaky stairs. “It’s a spy mission. We need to gather some recon.” I paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Wait. Do you sleep naked, Bailey? Is that, like, a common thing?”
“No!” she said, rather loudly, given the circumstances. “But I know some people do.” She twisted a curl that had escaped from the pile of hair on top of her head—it was now snaking down her neck. “I don’t want to know if Brennan is one of those people.”
“There’s, like, a two percent chance that he is,” Ava whispered. Her voice was very matter-of-fact. “But we could find out, if you two would quit stalling!”
Bailey and I grinned at each other. I was pretty sure we were both thinking the same thing—that Ava was a different person when she was on a spy mission. Like, her usual shy-girl attitude was just a daytime cover-up for some scandalous nighttime secret identity.
We skimmed under the branches that pressed up against the sides of the cabin and made our way to the back of the Snowy Owl cabin. There were only two windows at the back of the building—one for each bedroom. The tree cover was so dense that there was almost no light around back, so I couldn’t see Bailey’s or Ava’s facial expressions. We all just looked like dark blobs under the trees. I could hear Bailey’s ragged breathing—it made me worry she was going to have a panic attack.
“Who wants to peek first?” I asked, hoping Ava would volunteer. She seemed eager.
But instead, she said, “Not me. I did all the hard work up until now. One of you has to go first this time.”
“Don’t you feel like we’re, like, violating their privacy or something?” Bailey asked, after a few seconds of silence.
“Fine,” Ava said with a huff. “I’ll look first. You are the biggest wimp.”
Something about the way she said it made me start laughing—hard. Unfortunately, that got Bailey going, and suddenly, we were all cracking up outside what was very possibly Brennan’s bedroom window. Bailey began to snort, which sent Ava into total hysterics. We were no longer quiet and stealthy. Instead, we sounded like a pack of yipping hyenas.
The light flicked on, on the other side of the glass, and seconds later, a face peered out into the darkness. It was Brennan. “Aah!” Ava yelped.
Bailey threw herself to the ground, howling with laughter. I pulled her up, then dragged her around to the side of the house. Because it was so dark out, I was pretty sure Brennan hadn’t actually seen us—but there was no doubt that he had heard us. Embarrassed and freaked out, we ran, tripping on sticks as we all barreled back down the path to the fire pit.
“That is so embarrassing,” Bailey hissed as the full realization of what had just happened hit us. We’d been caught snooping at Brennan’s window in the middle of the night. “Oh. Oh no. Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed.”
“Did anyone, by any chance, see what he was wearing?” Ava asked, giggling. “Was he wearing cute jammies?”
This made us all laugh even harder.
“Let’s go down by the lake, where at least no one can hear us, okay?” Bailey said when we had all calmed down just a little bit. “What if his parents heard us laughing and woke up, and now they’re out searching for us?”
I giggled. “I think that’s highly unlikely. For one thing, it’s the middle of the night and it was pretty obvious that the three giggly people outside Brennan’s window weren’t mass murderers lurking around, waiting to pounce.”
“So you think he knew it was us?” Bailey asked, cringing.
“Um, yes,” Ava nodded. She glanced at me, and we both started laughing again.
The path to the lake was better lit than the paths to the cabins were. The moon guided us down to the beach area. We sat at the end of the dock and dangled our feet in the water. “Do we need to attempt another spy mission, since that one was a total bust?” I asked, poking my toes up to wiggle them on the surface of the lake.
“I don’t think we’re cut out for this business,” Ava said matter-of-factly. “I mean, I think I might be decent at it, but with sidekicks like you two, I’m sort of doomed.”
“We could toilet-paper Izzy’s cabin,” Bailey suggested, after a long silence. “I bet her dad would like that. Maybe he’d think it was, like, some sort of new-guy initiation thing.”
I laughed. “I’m sure I’d be stuck cleaning it up,” I said. “My mom would probably make me actually use the toilet paper I pulled out of the trees as punishment or something.”
“That’s disgusting,” Ava said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe we should just go swimming instead? Raccoons don’t swim, do they?”
“I think we’re safe in the water,” Bailey said.
“Night swimming,” Ava said happily. “Sounds perfect.”
And it was.