The next day the first steps of their plan were put into action. The final con at Camp Shady Crook. And if everything worked out the way Archie had devised, the best one yet.
Because for once, it wasn’t about him hurting his fellow campers. It was about helping them.
The counselors had finally managed to pull together a few activities for the campers, despite the limited resources with half the camp, including the lake, unusable. They set up some board games in the main hall, and organized tag and other outdoor activities in the parking lot. Tina, the counselor for the Brook Trouts, had found some pens and scrap paper so some of the kids could draw, even though the arts and crafts cabin remained locked up tight.
Miss Hiss had been holed up either in her office or her house since her outburst the day before. But every single person at Camp Shady Brook knew it was only a matter of time before she had more to say, and that, along with the destruction that surrounded them, formed a layer of gloom over all the proceedings. Even the little kids were quiet and subdued as they scratched with sticks in the dirt.
But with some help from Oliver, Vivian and Archie had managed to get the letter about the “Best Camp Director in Vermont” contest put in with Miss Hiss’s regular mail.
They’d all admired Sasha’s handiwork just that morning. Thanks to the letter Vivian had written, typed up and printed by Archie in his midnight trip to the office, and Sasha’s beautiful artwork—she even creased the envelope so it looked like it had gone through the mail—there was no way that Miss Hiss could suspect the letter was anything but legitimate. Or so they hoped. They all watched eagerly that morning as the camp director sorted through the pile of mail she had brought to her table at breakfast. Archie swore he saw a glimmer of a smile on her stony face as she opened one of the envelopes, but he couldn’t be sure—and he didn’t want to get caught staring.
Mitchell had stepped in afterward, and after a whispered conference with Nick at breakfast, had managed to cadge a ride into town, the package of printed-out pictures and a note to the Beaumonts safely stowed in his pocket.
So all that was left to do was wait.
Archie was at loose ends. He was usually confident when he was in the middle of a con, his mind working over all the possibilities. But this con felt different. And not only different. Important.
What if they failed? What if Miss Hiss saw through their plan to convince her to fix the camp for this made-up award ceremony, or what if the Beaumonts didn’t care about the pictures, or what if a million other things went wrong? Camp Shady Brook would be ruined forever and it would be all his fault. Even if most of the kids didn’t know that, he knew it. The thought haunted him.
• • •
“Wanna go see if the Bluegills are going to play Ultimate Frisbee today?” Mitchell asked him after lunch. “I bet they’d let you play too.”
Archie sighed, deep and long. “Could you just stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Stop being nice to me.”
Mitchell looked alarmed. “Why . . . ? What’s wrong with being nice to you?”
Archie groaned. “Because I don’t deserve it. All I’ve ever done is try to scam you. I’m a horrible person. Having you be all nice to me is not making that any better!”
“You’re not a horrible person, Archie.”
“Are you for real?” Archie asked.
“Because I’m being nice to you?” Mitchell laughed. “You really are something, you know. Can’t people just be nice? Without having some sort of secret agenda?”
Archie didn’t know how to answer that. He’d always thought nice people were, in a word, delusional. He never really thought that sometimes people were just nice because it was a good way to be.
But his thoughts were interrupted when he saw a couple of workers he’d never seen before carrying two-by-fours and boxes of tools. They marched past the kids with a self-important air, like people with a job to do. All the way down the path to the broken dock.
“It worked,” Archie breathed.
“What?” Mitchell asked.
“It worked. The plan. It worked.”