After dinner, when the campers were supposed to go back to their cabin to get cleaned up and “rest” (Camp Shady Brook code for “Be quiet and stay out of everyone’s hair for an hour”) in preparation for the Saturday night bonfire, Archie slipped out of the Walleyes’ cabin undetected and headed for the small wooded area behind the archery range. The woods were off-limits but Archie knew which parts of the camp were regularly patrolled and which ones weren’t. It was one of the many useful bits of information he’d gleaned during previous summers.
Oliver was already waiting, and Archie quickly filled him in on the day’s events—including his encounter with the wannabe con artist, Cupcake Girl.
“I don’t see why you bother with a kid like that; there’s no way she’d ever be real competition,” Oliver said. “Scamming a couple of cupcakes? That’s preschool-level stuff.”
“You don’t understand, Oliver,” Archie said patiently. “Once a girl like that starts manipulating people, feelings will get hurt, and all our little sheep will get nervous. Or worse, they’ll go to the counselors. Then we’ll have no luck at all.”
Oliver laughed. “Only newbies would go to the counselors at Shady Brook.” It took only a few days before people realized that bringing anything to the attention of the staff at camp only ended up getting you into trouble yourself. The counselors—and especially Miss Hiss—hated complainers more than they hated troublemakers, a situation Archie had used to his advantage more than once.
“But isn’t that the point?” Archie said. “Most of them are newbies, and we both know better than to try anything with the kids who have been here before. And I just don’t want a girl like that causing problems for us before we even get started. It’s only the first day!”
Oliver nodded slowly, though he didn’t seem fully sure.
“Anyway, I’ve been working on this summer’s strategy,” Archie said, warming up to the subject. He felt like himself again, back at Camp Shady Crook, scheming with Oliver. It was as if his life at home was actually the fake life, while being here at camp, pretending to be someone else, was who he really was. “I think this week we’re going to do the usual, and get them thinking I’m related to the other Archie Drake. Just lay the groundwork for a couple of days, before we get into some of the more complicated stuff. I’ll need a loan—my parents forgot to send me money—but I’ll pay them back twice what I borrow once I get home. . . . Do that with enough kids and we’ll be raking it in by the time they all get on the bus back to their fancy suburbs.”
“That’s my favorite con,” Oliver said, seeming to forget their disagreement about Cupcake Girl now that images of cold, hard cash were dancing in his head. “So simple, yet so effective.”
“The best ones usually are,” Archie agreed. “There’s already one kid in my bunk who’s practically panting to give me his cash. Though he obviously thinks he’s going to get something in return . . . I am the ‘famous Archie Drake,’ after all.”
They both laughed, and again Archie felt that surge of happiness. It was good to be back.
“His name’s Tyler,” Archie continued. “He’s the perfect candidate for my first mark.”
“Our first mark,” Oliver said, giving Archie a pointed grin.
There was a crunching sound behind them in the trees, and they both turned to look.
Oliver stepped in front of Archie. “Hey! You’re out of bounds. You’re not supposed to be out of your cabin during rest period,” he demanded in his best tough-guy voice. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She gave them both a wide smile. “Eavesdropping, of course. I think your friend Archie here knows all about it. It’s—what’s the phrase?—‘so simple, yet so effective.’ ”
The two boys stared, open-mouthed. The girl kept walking, deliberately slowly, until she was standing right in front of them with her hands on her hips, blocking their way back to the cabins.
“Okay,” Archie said, thinking. “You do know that you get demerits for being out of your bunk, right? So even if you turn us in, you’ll get in trouble too. Probably more trouble, actually, since Oliver here is a CIT and so he’s allowed to be out and around if it’s on camp business, and if he said he was taking me to the infirmary for a stomachache, the camp director might not even give me anything more than a warning.”
He smiled back at her, the exact same knowing smile she had given them. “So maybe you should reconsider before you do anything you’ll regret.”
But the girl’s grin didn’t dim at his words. “I’m sure the camp director—Ms. Hess, right?—will be way more interested in hearing about your plan to cheat students out of money than about me being out of my bunk. Heck, the look on her face when I explain what you guys are planning might actually be worth a few demerits. Besides, I don’t care if I get kicked out. I’m only here for one week, anyway. And right now that feels like a century.”
“No,” Oliver said, shaking his head back and forth vigorously. “No, no, no.”
Oliver would never admit it to anyone, but he was deathly afraid of Miss Hiss.
Archie put up his hand again to silence him. But his smile had disappeared. “So you overheard what we said, and it intrigued you. Okay, I get that,” he said. “But if all you wanted was to get us in trouble, you wouldn’t have bothered to stop and have this little chitchat—you would have run straight for the main office to tattle before we could stop you. Why don’t you just tell us what you want?”
“I want to learn,” Vivian said simply.
“Learn?” Oliver asked. “Learn what? Archery?” He snorted.
“No, not archery. And not diving or canoeing or orienteering. I want to learn how to do what you do,” she said, looking straight into Archie’s eyes. “I thought I was good at convincing people to do stuff back in New York, but this kind of thing—pretending to be a millionaire’s son! Getting people to practically beg to give you their money! That’s incredible. I mean it. And I don’t compliment people all that often, you should know,” she added with a toss of her shaggy hair. “The point is, I want to know all your secrets.”
“Ha,” Archie said. “You don’t have any idea who you’re dealing with. Do you really think that I’m going to tell you everything I know just because you threatened to tell on me?”
Vivian flicked her hair off her shoulders with one hand and cocked her head at him. “Yes, actually, I do.” And then she walked off, so pleased with herself they could almost see the aura of self-satisfaction around her head.
Oliver was extremely skeptical as he and Archie walked back to the cabins. “I don’t think you should teach this girl anything. You can’t,” he said. “Let’s come up with another idea—maybe scare her? Something with ghosts. It’s easy to convince people there are ghosts around this dump—everything creaks and half the doors open without anyone touching them. Or maybe we should make her think she’ll get in real trouble if she works with us? Like, kicked out or something.”
“I already tried that with the cupcakes, and it didn’t work,” Archie said. “And now she knows that she won’t get in trouble because she’s already figured out that we never get in trouble. And she assumes that if we teach her what we know, she’ll be fine.”
His mind was racing, but he tried to stay calm, for Oliver’s sake. “The only problem is, she’s not wrong.”
Oliver grumbled something unintelligible.
“I think our best bet is to stick with her like glue all week, and just give her some pointers along the way. She’s only here for one week, right? She said that. We could even use her as a pawn in our own cons—then part as friends when the bus comes to pick her up on Saturday,” Archie continued. “That way she won’t tell on us, and she won’t hurt us, either. If she starts making trouble it will ruin everything for the whole summer. I can’t stand the idea of Miss Hiss finding out what we’re up to. I mean, it’s still only the first week of camp.”
“Okay, fine, you’re the expert,” Oliver said, though he still didn’t sound fully convinced. “I’d still be getting money out of kids by threatening to punch them in the teeth if it wasn’t for you. But just so you know, I don’t trust that girl one bit. You need to be careful.” He lowered his voice, and added with emphasis, “We both need to be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” Archie said with his trademark wide smile. “A week from now we’ll be cheerily waving at her while she rides the bus home, safe and secure in the knowledge that everything she knows is leaving too. And then the real fun can begin. Heck, if we play our cards right, we might even get to con her.”