The last two weeks of camp were as much fun as the kids could have ever imagined, and they passed in a blur of happy activity. Miss Hiss was gone—they had no idea where, but most of them didn’t care. But the lack of her angry face lifted everyone’s spirits.
The Beaumonts moved into the house on the hill, but they were a constant presence around camp. Asking kids their names, cheering on the games, and always ready with a kind word. Mr. Beaumont was obviously very sick, but even he took time to talk to as many kids as possible.
Mrs. Beaumont got a locksmith to open up the arts and crafts cabin and let kids use all of the supplies they wanted. “Paints!” Sasha sighed happily. “And clay and fabric and cool colored pencils!”
Plus, right after Miss Hiss left, Mr. Beaumont went into town, and the next day there were three brand-new canoes, plus a kayak, and even better, a big bouncy float in the middle of the lake that kids could swim out to and then jump off from. There was a constant stream of kids bouncing and jumping all during the daylight hours.
And every single night there was a bonfire.
Swimming, canoeing, drawing, and painting. Almost like a whole summer packed into fourteen days. It was everything camp should be, and as the countdown to the last day of camp came closer, Vivian remembered how much she’d dreaded Camp Shady Brook, and how desperately she’d wanted to leave. But now it felt like the summer had flown by, and she couldn’t imagine going home.
When Vivian did have free time, she’d mainly spent it hanging out with Sasha and Archie. Already they were planning on texting each other when they got home, and Vivian had invited them both to come visit her in New York. At meals the kids no longer sat with their bunkmates; instead they could mix it up as much as they wanted, so the girls sat with Archie and Mitchell and even Oliver sometimes—CITs didn’t have to serve food anymore, since the Beaumonts decided to keep the catering service Miss Hiss had hired. “We’ll get in a proper cook next year,” Mrs. Beaumont told the kids. “But for now, this seems to be working out, right? You kids are liking the food?”
Most of them were too busy eating to do more than nod emphatically.
The last time Vivian saw Archie at Camp Shady Brook was when they were both getting on the buses to leave, for good. She gave him a wry smile, and came over to say good-bye.
“I guess this is it,” she said to him as they waited for their turn to board the buses.
He smiled, and they both looked around at the busy campers, sharing addresses and promises to write, as the counselors darted back and forth with pieces of luggage, trying, and failing, to bring order to the mayhem that surrounded them. It was weird to finally be leaving.
It seemed like only yesterday Vivian was standing in this exact spot, plotting how to get all these kids to do stuff for her. And now it seemed like half of them were her friends. And the ones that weren’t, well, she kind of wished they were.
“Any regrets?” Archie asked her.
“Tons,” she said.
“Me too,” he replied. “But in a way, it was the most fun I’d ever had.”
She smiled at him. “You’re insane, you know that?”
He didn’t reply, but just looked out at the camp again.
“So, um,” Archie said finally. “I guess this is good-bye.”
He looked different standing there with his hands in his pockets. Almost like the awkward act he put on for marks, but also completely not like that at all.
“Yeah,” Vivian said. She didn’t quite know what to say to him. They’d been through a lot more than she’d ever imagined that first day, when he’d told her she had to follow the rules or else. The thought made her giggle.
Talk about first impressions gone wrong.
“Thanks for everything,” he said. “I mean it. I don’t know if I’m going to be coming back next year—I have a lot of things I need to explain to my dad, and especially my stepmom—but I’m still not sorry about the way things worked out.”
“Me either,” she said. She’d been entertaining the thought of asking her parents to send her back, especially now that the camp had changed so much, but the idea of Camp Shady Brook without Archie Drake seemed impossible to contemplate. Even if he was reformed.
“Anyway,” Archie said slowly. “I have something for you.”
“Really?” She gave him an incredulous look and wondered, for a second, if this wasn’t one of his little tricks. But the look on his face was too genuine.
He pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s not much. . . .”
She looked down. It was the multitool hair clip, the one she’d admired so much in the camp store the first time they ever went in there. The day he began to teach her how to be a con artist. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
She smiled, but then said slowly, “I don’t know if I’ll need this. I think my days of crime are behind me.” She tried to hand it back, but he wouldn’t take it, just kept his hands shoved in his pockets and kicked at the dirt.
“You don’t have to use it for cons, you know,” he said. “You can just use it for fun. To make things. Or fix things. To do things with friends.”
The word hung there.
“Friends,” she said.
“Friends,” he replied.
She wondered if things would be different once she got back to New York. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy, to go back to school and start over. But maybe everyone felt that way sometimes. Maybe even someone like Archie.
She looked at the clip again. “But I can’t take it—I can’t. It cost twenty dollars! That’s got to be most of the money you made this summer.”
“Yeah, especially since I think I’m going to give it all back.”
“It doesn’t feel right anymore,” he said, looking around at all the happy campers around them. She knew what he meant more than she could say.
But she still gave him a searching look. “Are you saying that your days of crime are finally behind you? No more Archie Drake, Man of a Thousand Scams?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I’m just tired of it all.” He paused. “Maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, taking things from people. Maybe there are better ways to have fun.”
For once, even Vivian couldn’t argue.
“Anyway, Oliver paid for it. I think he likes you!”
That’s when she punched him in the arm.