Vivian took the long route back to the Rainbow Smelts’ cabin after the bonfire so she could brainstorm. Conning someone like Sasha out of fifty dollars was going to be hard. Not impossible, but not as easy as getting a few dollars or some candy from one of the Bluegills, or even train fare from a grown-up in Grand Central Station back home in New York. This kind of scam would take real planning, and real work.
What was the first rule of con artists? Know your mark. Even though she hated that she could hear Archie’s instructions echoing in her head, she knew he was right. And if there was any mark she knew well at Camp Shady Crook, it was Sasha-from-the-Bus, who’d been hanging around her since the first day of camp. The only problem was that as much as she tried, she couldn’t help but like Sasha.
And that made conning her all the harder.
But maybe she could find a way to con her without actually conning her? Just enough to get Archie to admit she’d won, but nothing that would make Sasha mad at her. Something she could easily fix, once the bet was over. And then she’d beat Archie but also not make Sasha mad . . . and she’d win the bet and keep her friend at the same time.
She smiled to herself in the gathering darkness.
It would be easy enough to get Sasha to take the bait. She’d been waiting since the first day of camp for Vivian to notice her overtures of friendship, and once Vivian gave more than begrudging attention, Sasha would be an instant convert to anything and everything Vivian wanted to do. All she had to figure out was what Sasha wanted—and that was easy enough. Because after spending two weeks listening to Sasha’s grumbling, she knew the answer: Sasha wanted paints.
It was all she talked about at arts and crafts—how they weren’t allowed to use the good materials, just string and beads and construction paper, like the little kids. “I asked my parents if they would send me my watercolors but they are afraid I’d lose them here?” she’d said the other day, with a small sigh. “I’m really disappointed! I thought I’d get to paint nature all summer!”
She’d even checked out the camp store, but they didn’t have anything she wanted, just “like, a billion colored pencils and Femo clay! I don’t want to sculpt, I want to paint pictures! And I know they have to have paints because there’s all those paintings in the art cabin? I don’t know why Amanda won’t let us use them? I asked her and she said we’d just make a mess, even though I promised I would be careful!” She let out a very un-Sasha-like sigh. “I don’t see why some kids have to ruin stuff for everyone!”
“So,” Vivian said quietly as they walked toward the lake for swim lessons the next morning. “I might have a solution to your paint problem.”
Sasha cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
Vivian took a deep breath. “There’s this girl—she doesn’t want me to tell you who she is—but she has a full set of watercolor paints she brought from home. And she wants to sell them.”
“Sell them?”
“Yeah,” Vivian said. “She’s already spent all her money and she wants to be able to get more stuff at the camp store. But she’s not really supposed to sell her stuff, you know.”
Sasha was skeptical. “Well, that doesn’t sound right? She’s going to get in trouble with her parents when they find out!”
“That’s her problem,” Vivian said. “You want the paints, right? And you’ll be able to use them to make wonderful paintings all summer, just like you wanted. I bet you could paint a beautiful picture of the lake, better than anyone else, if you just had the right materials. . . .”
Sasha sighed again. “I do really want to paint the lake? Like, at sunset? Okay, okay! I’ll take them! It’s not like I’m going to use that money for anything else, anyway?”
Vivian smiled, though internally she was fretting. She hoped Sasha wouldn’t figure out what was going on and be mad. But she knew if she could get her hands on some paints from the arts and crafts cabin, then she could sell them to Sasha, telling her they came from that mysterious, unknown paint-selling girl. Sasha would be happy. And then Vivian would take the fifty dollars and show it to Archie, and she’d win. And then the whole thing would be finished.
Of course, getting paints for Sasha meant breaking into the arts and crafts cabin and taking something, and while she’d conned people before, she’d never actually . . . stolen something.
But once she’d won the bet, she’d tell Sasha everything. Heck, Sasha would probably think it was funny, and they’d both have a good laugh at Archie’s expense. And then Vivian would give the money back and put the paints back where she’d gotten them, and it would all go back to the way it was before. So it wouldn’t even really be a real con. Or even stealing—because she was going to return the paints when it was all over. It was just winning the bet, and beating Archie. And then Archie would have to stop conning kids at Camp Shady Brook forever. Viewed in that light, conning Sasha was almost a good deed, right?
She just had to keep telling herself that.