CHAPTER 7

The next morning Jo and Ripley woke up early and headed to the lake for a safety seminar with Seafarin’ Karen and Barney, as part of their Water Safety RULES! badge.

April, who already had this badge, was off to get her SNAP! badge for photography.

Molly headed toward the kitchen to work on her Maki Me a Believer badge with sushi master BunBun.

Mal was supposed to join Hes and Barney’s rugby team for practice, but . . .

“AW, COME ON!”

Mal stood in the middle of the cabin. “Where did they GO?!”

Now even Molly’s sparkly bee socks were gone.

“Unless . . .” Mal climbed up to peek at Molly’s bed. No socks, but there was a sleeping raccoon curled up around . . .

Mal peered closer. Bubbles’s little claws gripped the edge of a large, imposing-looking textbook covered in Post-its.

“What the Ada Lovelace,” Mal said. She’d thought she’d seen Molly reading something early that morning, but she’d hoped she was reading something cool.

Poor Molly, Mal thought, doing HOMEWORK when she should be at her Molly LumberBEST.

Later, on the rugby pitch, while half of her brain was ready to play for Team Barney, at least three-quarters of Mal’s brain (the math is a work in progress) couldn’t stop worrying about Molly.

“She got MATH homework at CAMP? I love math, but that is super uncool,” Hes said, handing Mal a pair of socks on the edge of the rugby pitch.

“That explains why she was feeling so un-Molly-like yesterday,” Barney added. “I mean, it’s one thing to do math because you LOVE math. It’s another thing entirely to have math thrust upon you.”

“My mom sent me almond brittle.” Hes grinned. “And crossword puzzles!”

Mal slipped on her sneakers. Hes’s feet were about two sizes bigger than hers, so the socks bunched up around her ankles.

But they were socks.

“OKAY, SCOUTS,” Jen tweeted from the center of the pitch. “LET’S PLAY RUGBY!”

Easier said than done. Mal couldn’t concentrate. Even with a wall of determined Dartmoor scouts rushing toward her, Mal had a serious case of “What about Molly?” brain.

“Molly deserves to have FUN,” she fumed, darting across the pitch, next to Barney.

“Of course,” Barney said, tossing the ball to Mal. “Everyone deserves to have fun!”

“It’s just that she starts thinking about this stuff, this home stuff and . . .” Mal tucked the ball under her arm and huffed it to the goal line. “And she gets all sad.”

“Well—” Barney started to say that the best thing they could do was be supportive, but then Alicia from Dartmoor jumped and tackled Barney to the ground. “GUH!”

“RUN, MAL!” Hes cried from the other end of the field. “MAL! RUN!”

“Yeek!” Mal jumped and sprinted up the field.

Mal was fast, but Dartmoor was faster. Haley Court, Dartmoor’s most vicious forward, jumped up in the air like a tiger, soared over her fellow teammates, and tackled Mal so hard that she punched the ball out from under Mal’s arm. It sailed into the air and into the awaiting arms of Hes.

“HA HA!” Hes bolted up the pitch, ball in arm.

Mal laid on the ground. Thinking.

What if Molly needed a distraction, Mal thought.

Something to take up the space the package was holding in her brain.

Molly needed . . .

“OF COURSE!” Mal popped up from the ground and brushed the dirt off her knees.

“HEY!” Mal danced over to Barney, who was still recovering from their tackle. “If Molly has something ELSE to think about, something to FIGURE OUT, then she won’t have any space in her brain left to think about her mom’s package and be sad.”

“Oh.” Barney wondered if that would work.

Mal was sure it would.

So sure that she forgot she was playing rugby and took off running to the mess hall, where the air was thick with the smell of maki rice and soy sauce.

“Hey.” Mal spotted Molly at the corner table, neatly slicing rows of rolled sushi with a knife as big as her arm.

The pieces of cucumber maki Molly was cutting up looked like little minus and plus signs laid out on a plate decorated with edible pink flowers.

“They’re Math Maki,” Molly explained. “You want to try one?”

“Better question.” Mal waggled her eyebrows, picking up a plus sign from the plate. “Are YOU hungry for a MYSTERY?!”

Molly looked confused. “Mystery Maki?”

“No! My socks,” Mal explained. “They’re missing. Again. Your socks! And I thought maybe today we could figure out what happened. I mean, do you want to . . . investigate?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Hungry for a mystery? You’re hilarious. Does my mystery come with a side of wasabi?”

Seeing Molly smile, Mal felt an instant flood of relief. This was a perfect idea.

“No, but it comes with . . .” Mal considered, grabbing another maki and popping it in her mouth. “Um. SOCK-I?”

“Holy Hiromi Goto, that’s a bad pun.” Molly burst into laughter. “Okay, let’s go.”