Dear Ashley,
You know how in my last letter I told you about the lice war? Even though in the poem I wrote, Super Combman and the Shampolice destroyed the lice, in real life the war is still raging. Don’t worry, I don’t have it and no one in my bunk does. But a lot of girls have it, and even a boy in another bunk got it! Yesterday, we got another talk about how to prevent it. All the girls have to wear bandannas, and all the boys have to wear hats all the time now. It seems like the counselors and the nurse are really confused. No one can figure out why it’s still around, not even Wesley in his sleep. These lice are tough! We play Lice vs. Hair during recess. It’s kind of like tag, but the person who’s It is lice and everyone else is Hair. It’s fun.
It was probably the sign that doomed Gabe’s bunk. The very day their counselor taped a sign to the cabin door that said BUNK 2B IS A LICE-FREE ZONE, Victor Kim started scratching his head. No one noticed it at first because Victor was a thoughtful kid who scratched his head whenever he asked a question. But he scratched and then tossed Robby the hat he’d forgotten on his way out of the bunk. And then Robby dried his hair after swimming in the lake and dropped his towel on top of Justin’s. And then Justin told Nikhil he thought he had a mosquito bite on his head, and Nikhil took a big step away from him and sent him to the nurse.
Their counselor took down the sign.
“The lice should be totally gone by now,” Nikhil lamented, “not invading our bunk!”
Wesley reached to scratch his head but thought better of it. “It is weird. It seems like everyone is doing what they’re supposed to, but the lice keep spreading.”
“It’s a mystery,” Gabe agreed. Even he, who’d wished for an epidemic, thought this lice situation was getting old. It was annoying to have to think about his hair all the time and to listen to Nikhil freak out over every regular itch. He’d even stopped gelling his hair in the mornings, afraid to touch his head too much. The only good thing about lice was that a whole group of girls in Amanda’s bunk had it at some point, so it gave him a valid excuse to keep away from her. But somewhere deep in his brain he admitted that he’d rather combat Amanda Wisznewski than head lice. At least she kept things interesting.
“I wonder if they won’t break Color War until the lice are gone,” said Wesley. “The algorithm has it starting at the end of the week, but all the counselors are so busy shampooing people.”
Gabe had a scary thought. “What if there’s lice until the end of the summer and they have to cancel Color War?”
“We have to stop it from spreading,” said Nikhil. “Maybe if Wesley takes a nap right now, he’ll tell us how.”
But Wesley was hesitant to put his head on his pillow. Everything in the cabin looked dangerous. Pillows and sleeping bags, clothing, towels—even books and calculators could be infested.
Gabe said, “I kind of wish I’d just catch it already so I could stop living in fear. If everyone had lice, we could just have Color War, because there’d be no danger of anyone new catching it.”
Nikhil glared at him to take it back.
Wesley shook his lice-free head. “Yeah, but it’s not like chicken pox, where you get it once and then can’t ever get it again. Like Jenny Chin. She got it in the beginning, and then, after the nurse finally said she was clean, she got it again.”
“That is fishy …,” Gabe said. He had an idea. “Maybe Combman and the Shampolice aren’t superheroes—they’re detectives in the Case of the Returning Lice. And the first suspect is Jenny Chin.”
Wesley raised his hand. “Can I be Combman?” he asked.
“No,” said Nikhil, “Gabe gets to be Combman because he invented him. We’re just his sidekicks.”
“The Shampolice,” said Gabe.
“Can I be chief of the Shampolice?” asked Wesley. Nikhil shrugged, and Wesley said, “Yes! Chief of the Shampolice reporting for duty. What do we do, Combman?”
“Investigate,” said Gabe. “We need to question the suspect.”
The questioning took place the next day during free time. They all met at a picnic table in the woods, and anyone who came by chasing a Frisbee or looking for a quiet place to read apologized and ran off, since it was clear that the meeting was official. The suspect wore a bathing suit beneath her tank top and shorts. At Amanda’s suggestion, Jenny refused to talk without legal counsel present, so she was joined by Amanda, who looked the part in a big T-shirt with the name of her father’s law firm on the pocket. Both girls had their hair in two French braids beneath bandannas, Jenny’s red and Amanda’s tie-dyed.
On the other side of the table, the detectives all wore shorts and T-shirts. Combman sat in the middle, wearing a New York Mets hat. The Shampolice officers sat on either side of him. The chief was wearing a khaki fisherman’s hat that said FAN FAMILY REUNION on the front. He had a notebook and pencil to take notes. The other officer was wearing a shower cap with masking tape around the elastic. Just to be safe.
“I call this meeting to order,” said Wesley. He tapped his pencil eraser against his notebook like a gavel.
“This isn’t court,” said Jenny.
“No, but it’s just as important that you tell the truth,” said Wesley.
Jenny and Amanda looked at each other as if to say, Boys.
Amanda folded her hands on the table. “You had some questions for my client?”
Gabe nodded. “We are investigating the Mystery of the Returning Lice, and your client is our first suspect.”
“Suspect!” said Jenny. “Try victim.”
“Jenny,” warned Amanda. She looked at Gabe. “My client objects to the term ‘suspect.’ She is a blameless victim of lice.”
“Twice?” said Wesley with his eyebrows raised.
Jenny crossed her arms. “You think I wanted to catch lice twice?”
“I’m sure we can clear your name,” said Nikhil. “We’re investigating everyone right now,” he explained. “Just to be safe.”
Gabe looked to either side of him, impressed with the good-cop-bad-cop routine his roommates had worked out without even planning it. That meant he, Combman, could just play it straight and ask the questions. “Do you have any idea how you caught lice the first time?” he asked Jenny.
She shrugged. “All these girls in my bunk got it. It could have been from anything.”
“What about the second time?” Gabe asked.
Jenny glanced at Amanda and then looked down at the table and shrugged again.
She’s hiding something! Gabe thought. “After you got it the first time and the nurse gave you the shampoo treatments, how long was it before you got it again?”
Jenny did some math in her head. “Three days.”
“Did a lot of other people in your bunk still have it in those three days, so you could catch it?”
“Not really,” Jenny admitted. “Everyone got shampooed.”
Wesley stood up and leaned over the table. “So, where’d you get it from the second time, then, huh? Tell us or we’ll throw you in the slammer!”
Amanda stood up. “Objection! Don’t try to intimidate my client.”
“Take it easy, Wesley,” said Gabe.
“If you can’t keep your boys in line, this is over,” said Amanda.
“I’m sorry,” said Nikhil. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this.”
Wesley sat down, but his suspicious eyes didn’t leave Jenny for a second. She stuck out her tongue at him.
Gabe summoned all he knew about police interrogations from TV and books and tried again. “Even though it may seem like it from my partner here”—he motioned to his right—“no one is accusing you of anything. We’re just wondering if you can give us any clues about why the lice won’t go away. Think hard, Jenny. Did you do anything that might have caused you to get it again in those three days?”
Jenny looked at Gabe and Wesley. She pulled her lips back and forth in consideration. Then she looked at Nikhil with his masking-taped shower cap and started giggling. “Can I have a minute to consult with my lawyer?” she asked.
“Okay,” said Gabe. The boys got up and walked a few feet away. They quizzed one another on various digits of Pi until the girls called them back to the table.
Amanda said, “My client would like to make a deal. In exchange for her information, she’d like three books, two Twizzlers, and a Snickers bar.”
Gabe let out a low whistle. Wesley threw his arms up. “Three books! How do we even know if her information is good?”
Nikhil whispered, “Let’s do it. I don’t think they’d cancel Color War because of the lice, but we have to try to get rid of them, just in case. Besides, this masking tape hurts.”
Wesley whispered, “But I’m down to my second-to-last Snickers.”
“Two books,” said Gabe firmly. “Two Twizzlers. No Snickers.”
The girls looked at each other.
“Deal,” said Amanda.
“Let’s go,” said Jenny.
The boys looked at one another.
“Where are we going?” asked Nikhil.
“The place I went in the three days before I caught lice again. Come on.”
She led them through the woods, across the field, past the bunks, and to the front of the science building.
“You’re not supposed to be in classrooms during free time,” said Nikhil.
Jenny ignored him. She opened the door and walked inside. The others hurried to catch up with her. Up the stairs, down the hall, and around the corner, she stopped at a door between rooms 222 and 224. Unlike the classroom doors, which had large windows on top, this door was solid wood. Jenny put her finger to her lips. The five of them stood silently. Gabe closed his eyes, and he could make out muffled noises from behind the door. Something top secret is going on in there, he thought.
“You guys move over there,” Jenny whispered. She straightened her bandanna. Then she raised her fist and knocked in a beat: Tap. Pause. Tap-tap. Pause. Tap.
A secret-code knock, Gabe thought. This I definitely have to tell Zack.
There was some shuffling behind the door, and the boys waited, Gabe and Wesley with eager anticipation, and Nikhil with a combination of curiosity and fear. Finally, the door opened just enough to let a single eye peer through the crack and see Jenny. Then the door opened halfway and a hand waved Jenny in. She beckoned the rest of the group to follow her and said, “Come on, guys.”
They walked inside what seemed to be a deep janitor’s closet. Piled on the floor were buckets and cleaning supplies. A few janitor uniforms were hanging from hooks along the left wall. But it was what was along the right wall that made Gabe’s eyes widen behind his glasses. There was a long table, but all the cleaning products were pushed together far from the door. In their place were two microscopes, an array of petri dishes, and a pyramid of glass jars labeled with black marker.
Gabe was so absorbed with the makeshift lab that he didn’t even notice the other person who was in there until he spoke.
“Uh, Jen,” the guy said. “What are you doing?”
Gabe looked at this guy and wondered if his thick glasses were deceiving him. He was one of the older kids, but he wasn’t just any older kid. He was Calvin Chin, C2.
Everyone knew C2. He was the smartest of the smartest of the smart kids at Smart Camp. He had skipped third grade and then sixth. So now, at thirteen, he had already completed one year of high school and was smart enough to be starting college. But he had lots of friends in his current grade, and his parents wanted him to have a normal teenage life, so he wasn’t going to skip any more. That made him the best combination: a thirteen-year-old who was college smart and high school cool. He was a legend! And talk about cool: His nickname represented the hypotenuse of a right triangle and the speed of light. Zack would think that’s nerdy, Gabe thought, but C2 wouldn’t even care.
C2 was wearing a white lab apron and, like Nikhil, a shower cap. But unlike Nikhil, he somehow managed to make the shower cap look so good that Gabe wished he had one himself.
“Guys,” said Jenny, “this is my brother Calvin.”
Brother! Gabe thought. Of course! Why hadn’t he put it together that Jenny Chin and Calvin Chin were brother and sister? If he had known Jenny was related to C2, he would have tried to hang out with her more, and even with Amanda.
C2 said, “Hey,” and lifted his chin at the group to acknowledge them. Then he looked back at his sister. “I told you not to bring anyone here.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but they were investigating the lice thing, and we made a deal. Besides, I’m tired of lice. I told you, if you don’t shut it down today, I’m going to tell my counselor.”
C2 sighed and shook his head.
“What is all this stuff?” asked Wesley.
“It’s the Double L,” C2 said proudly. “The Lice Lab. Some friends and I got it going. We got specimens from this girl’s hair, and then we set it up to do some experiments.”
“What sorts of experiments?” asked Gabe.
“Just looking at them on slides, breeding them in jars, seeing how they act if you feed them different things. That sort of stuff.”
“Cool,” said Gabe.
“Do the teachers know?” asked Nikhil. “How’d you get the microscopes and stuff?”
“We took the petri dishes and jars from a few science rooms, and we’ve been bringing the microscopes back and forth from one of the labs.”
“You mean, you stole them?” asked Nikhil.
C2 shrugged. “It’s in the name of science. But it’s probably a good idea to shut it down and disinfect all the equipment now, anyway. Now that everybody knows and tons of people are coming here to look, Jenny.”
“Whatever,” said Jenny. “You’re the one breeding lice and feeding them to keep them alive while the rest of the camp is trying to kill them and wondering why they keep coming back.”
Free time was almost over, but before they went to line up for dinner, C2 gave them a tour of the lab and let them look at the lice through the microscope. The lice were intricate little bugs with six claws, like tiny, hairy crustaceans. Between solving the mystery, hanging out with C2, and seeing a real louse under a microscope, Gabe thought, this was officially the best free time ever.
C2 kept his word—he shut down the lice lab the next day during free time. But Nikhil still made sure Jenny told her counselor, who then sent the nurse to make sure everything was sterilized. C2 and his friends got in some sort of trouble for operating it illegally, but part of the punishment was to go present to the science classes about what they found. By the end of activity time the next night, everyone at camp knew about the lice culprits.
“Well,” Gabe said that night in their bunk, “Combman and the Shampolice helped crack the case.”
“But Jenny totally tricked us,” said Wesley. “She got those books and Twizzlers even though we would have found out.”
“That was pretty smart,” Nikhil granted.
“Figures,” said Gabe. “Her brother is C2!”
“And we hung out with him during free time,” bragged Wesley.
“And did you see what he was wearing?” Nikhil said with a grin. He ran his fingers along his head, where he still had a red mark from the masking tape. “That guy’s got style!”
Problem: Am I a nerd who only has nerdy adventures?
Hypothesis: No.
Proof: