Computers are so sophisticated at recognizing faces that facial recognition is already replacing fingerprints as the ID of choice.
—VICTOR FLEMMING
The Iron Rain Memorial Day festival is the official kickoff to summer. After this there are only two weeks of school left—one for cramming for finals and one for the finals themselves. Then finally a big celebration for Journey’s graduation.
The fairgrounds have been transformed. There are games, rides, and rows upon rows of booths. You can find food, crafts, and even a farmers’ market. And today, you can sign your kid up for CSI summer camp, right here in Iron Rain.
The flyers we passed out last week said sign-ups would begin today, at the festival. Victor and Coach Wilkins are sharing a booth for camp sign-ups. Cheerleaders and athletes work on one side of the booth, talking about sports camp; while Journey, Lysa, Spam, and I work the other and talk about CSI camp.
It’s weird studying Coach Wilkins today after what we learned last night. He’s beyond competitive, practically dragging kids into the booth and trying to strong-arm them into signing up for sports camp. He’s sweaty, loud, and obnoxious. And he keeps coming over to our side to see how many sign-ups we have.
He claims he’s going to beat Victor, or else.
Since we were recently in the news and in the newspaper, we’re sort of minor celebrities in town. Lysa made the four of us matching T-shirts to promote the camp. She used a bleach pen to draw the chalk outline of a body onto black T-shirts. They look smudgy and amazing.
We sign up fifteen kids in ten minutes. Most of our brochures are gone, along with my voice. And yet the crowd around our booth continues to grow.
What I keep hearing over and over is: Hey, you’re those girls from the news.
As uncomfortable as this makes me, I try to smile through it. Rachel says my healing needs to begin with my acceptance that this is what life has dealt me. I’m not there yet, but I’m working on being able to say my name out loud without cringing and to claim my identity with a smile. People might still react with waves of pity. But I no longer view myself as a victim. I have to remember that bringing down Principal Roberts was a way to erase that stigma for me. It’s hard to suddenly stop looking over your shoulder after a lifetime of doing it. But realistically, there should be no reason for someone to be stalking me anymore. My life shouldn’t be any more dangerous than the average high school student’s.
I step back for a second just to take it all in and reflect.
Maybe I’m not some freaky weirdo crime geek after all. I hear it over and over: Lots of people are interested in learning more about forensics. The fact that I get to be a part of that is something special.
Spam suddenly grabs my arm, her fingers digging into my flesh.
“Ouch. What?”
She tilts her face up to me, frozen, eyes wild. A look that could signal an imminent meteor disaster. She continues killing my arm with full fingernails and enough pressure to empty a tube of toothpaste.
“He’s here.” She says this with an appropriate amount of horror.
“The skateboarder?” I ask.
She nods, her eyes wide enough that I can see white all the way around them.
“Tell him we want to talk to him!”
“I can’t,” she squeaks.
I stifle a laugh. Spam’s been stalking this guy for a solid week. Now she’s too shy? This must be serious, though. I’ve only known Spam to fall in love with exactly three things: ice cream, video games, and homemade lemonade.
I start to turn around.
She slaps me. “Don’t look.”
I quickly look down. “Okay. But is anyone else eyeballing him?”
Spam peeks around me. “I don’t think so.”
“And you’re sure it’s him?” I ask.
“Positive,” Spam says.
“I don’t want someone to recognize him and call him out while he’s hanging out at our booth,” I say.
“I don’t want that either,” Spam asks. “What should we do?”
“We need to know who he is and how we can contact him,” I say. “Where is he now?”
Spam glances up. “He’s talking to Journey.”
I sneak a peek over my shoulder. “You’re right. He is cute.”
“I told you,” she says. “Tell me what to do.”
“Just casually go over there, don’t make a big deal or attract any attention. Ask if you can answer any questions. Or at least find out his name. We deserve to know since we got in trouble over this whole thing.”
Spam turns to peek at him and finds that he’s looking at her. She freaks and turns back.
“Go. You’ve got this,” I tell her.
She exhales a giant puff of nerves, fluffs her hair, smooths her eyebrows, and straightens her clothes. Game face on, she turns and sidles up next to Journey.
“Would you like to know more about our CSI summer camp?” Spam asks him.
“I would.” His smile broadens. “Especially from you, shortcake. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Spam twists the tip of her hair around her finger. “One of who?”
Lysa and I stand back and try to appear nonchalant, like we’re not really listening, but we totally are.
“The crime-stopper girls from TV,” he says. “My name’s Lyman, by the way.” He offers her a fist bump.
Spam meets his fist bump and they do the exact same flourish at the end. So weird, how’d she know? I’m surprised at how smooth and calm she seems. I’m barely past my complete stammering, nervous scarecrow stage around Journey.
“Pleasure to meet you, Lyman.” Her voice is soft as velvet. “My name’s Sp—Samantha.”
Lysa and I lock eyes in shock, our eyebrows peaked in the middle like circus tents. Holy crap. Starting in fourth grade she would literally punch you if you called her Samantha.
Lyman looks confused. “I thought you’re the one they call Spam.”
She giggles. “Yeah. That is what my friends call me.”
Lyman checks her out. She’s wearing a striped top and striped pants—same color field, different stripes. No one else would ever put these two clothing items together, but Spam pulls it off in the very same way that Lyman pulls off his plaid.
“What do I have to do to get to call you Spam?” he asks.
“You could sign up for the camp,” she says, and I swear she’s batting her eyelashes.
“Already done.” He nods toward Journey, counting out a bunch of small bills.
Journey hands Lyman a receipt. “You’ll get the paperwork in the mail for your parents to fill out.”
“Thanks, man,” Lyman says.
“Then I guess I’ll see you at camp,” Spam says, being flirty.”Unless…”
Lyman looks disappointed. “Unless I can’t wait that long?”
She grins and pulls her cell phone out of the pocket of her hoodie. “Snapchat?”
He pulls out his phone and they both open the app. Spam hovers her phone under his. He clicks, then pulls his phone back and grins: “@spamalot?”
She nods.
He keys a few things into the phone. “See you around, @spamalot.” He tips a pretend hat before strolling off into the crowd.
I peer over her shoulder. He sent a Snapchat photo of her talking to me just a few minutes before she turned around and saw him. Her expression goes all dizzy and she fans herself with what’s left of our stack of applications.
Lysa and I just shake our heads.
“There was a time when I might have been like this over Journey, too,” I whisper to Lysa. “But I at least had the sanity to keep it to myself.”
Lysa gives me a look. “Oh, girl, please. You didn’t keep anything to yourself. Do you not remember the lectures and almost-interventions we tried to run on you?”
Okay. Maybe I wasn’t that covert after all.
“I need a job as a counselor, too,” Spam says.
“What about working at your dad’s store?” I ask.
She waves away my concern. “The stuff I do for him, I can schedule my own hours.”
“Are you sure?” Lysa asks in that tone she uses that sounds like her mother.
“Yes, Mom,” Spam says. “Besides, I don’t want you getting any ideas about stealing that one away from me.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Lysa says. “I can’t compete with you for that snappy dresser.” There’s an element of sarcasm in Lysa’s tone. I glance quickly at Spam to see if her feelings are hurt. But she’s too much in dreamland to care about what either of us thinks.
“I know,” she says. “His style is crazy amazing.” She taps my nose to get my attention before drifting out of the booth. “You’ll talk to Victor, right?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’ll talk to him.”
Spam isn’t gone thirty seconds before we get another visitor. Detective Sydney shows up and asks to snag Lysa and me for what she calls a face-to-face.
“Where’s the other one?” Detective Sydney asks.
“Spam? She left early. Why?” I ask.
“Because I know you three and it’s best to nail you down all at once,” she says.
Lysa and I exchange worried looks.
Detective Sydney digs in her purse and comes up with the envelope containing Lysa’s phone. She hands it to her. “You can have this back now.”
Lysa brightens. “Oh. Thank you.” She pauses. “Was everything…”
“Settled?” Detective Sydney asks. “I wouldn’t say that. You might still hear from the driver about the mirror on your case. But, for now anyway, we’ve decided the skateboarder incident is no longer a police matter. You girls just need to continue to mind your own business and you’ll be fine.”
We thank Detective Sydney for her advice and breathe a sigh of relief. Rachel always says timing is everything. And now Spam’s free to pursue a guilt-free relationship with her knight in shining plaid.
Meanwhile, Coach Wilkins is having a meltdown on his side of the camp sign-up booth. Victor has announced that our camp is overfull and is taking names for a waiting list.
Apparently, Coach Wilkins only has twenty sign-ups.
I get him being upset … kind of.
But he looks foolish over there balling up his brochures, throwing them on the ground, and stamping on them.
I’ve got to hand it to Victor. The guy has class. He’s willing to wade straight into the middle of Coach Wilkins’s meltdown by pretending to rap a song about cool camp. The rap is horrible, but Victor is great because his little show takes the pressure off the football players and cheerleaders helplessly watching the coach blow up. Pretty soon, everybody is clapping and stomping along with Victor and Coach Wilkins has worn himself out.
Miss P would have done something similar, to diffuse the situation. It wouldn’t have been a goofy rap, but she would’ve done something.