Applewhites at Wit's End Read online

  “Things could have been worse,” her father said now.

  Her mother wasn’t buying it. “Besides the food disaster,” she said, “we’ve got a kid who threatens to go home every time something doesn’t suit her—”

  “Just don’t let her get to a phone!”

  “—and a mother who has already called four times to find out if her kid’s okay.”

  “Which mother?” Lucille asked.

  “Samantha’s. Turns out the child has never been away from home overnight.”

  “That explains it! When the insurrection started, she came to me crying and begging me to let her call home.”

  “Bad idea!” Randolph said. “If we let the girl talk to her mother, they’ll just stir each other up all the more. Next thing you know that child will be on a plane headed home. We are not going to lose a camper!”

  “Never mind,” Lucille said. “I gave her some breathing exercises and told her to give herself three days. By that time she’ll be all caught up in camp activities. It’s just homesickness. She’ll be fine.”

  “And I explained to Mrs. Peterman the last time she called,” Sybil said, “that we’d call her if there were any problems. We nearly lost a camper before he even registered. Mrs. Giacomo practically had a heart attack when she saw Marlie Michaels’s tattoos. I had to do some fast talking, let me tell you! It’s a good thing Harley looked normal or David would have been back in Virginia by now.”

  Randolph slammed his hand down on the arm of the couch. “We aren’t refunding deposits! No matter what. The income from this benighted idea is barely enough as it is.”

  Apparently her father had forgotten for the moment whose benighted idea it was, E.D. thought. At least he had come back from whatever rosy fantasy land he was inhabiting when the meeting started. If they were going to save Wit’s End, they all had to gut this out no matter what it meant, but there was no point in pretending it was going to be easy.

  “We need to talk about Community Service,” E.D. said now. “Nobody mentioned it at the Opening Ceremony.” She held up the stapled schedules she was planning to give the family tonight and hand out to the campers in the morning. “It’s all here, and after seeing how they reacted to the idea of roughing it, I think when they find out about Community Service, we could have another insurrection on our hands.”

  During the weeks of planning for camp, E.D. had been the first to realize that all the usual chores that kept Wit’s End livable would still need to be done. The jobs like laundry and cleaning, vacuuming and dusting had always been a source of considerable conflict in the family. No one liked doing them, and what they didn’t like, they tended to avoid whenever possible. From time to time Wit’s End had, in fact, become very nearly unlivable. That couldn’t happen with people paying big money for their kids to be here.

  Besides that, having six more people in residence and two more cottages lived in regularly meant that there would be even greater-than-usual need for most of these chores, so E.D. had come up with the idea of simply including them in the camp schedule. Each camper would be assigned a particular chore every day. “Calling this stuff Community Service should help support the whole ‘all for one and one for all’ thing,” she’d said.

  Lucille had agreed. “We will appeal to their higher natures.” It had seemed a better idea at the time than it did now.

  In her welcoming talk Lucille had mentioned that all beds were to be made each morning and the bunks straightened before her prebreakfast Welcome-the-Day Meditation and Yoga activity. There had been considerable groaning among the campers even at this. Community Service included plenty of worse jobs: cleaning bathrooms, setting up for meals, helping with dishes, weeding the vegetable garden, feeding the goats, cutting the grass.

  “We should just spring their assignments on them every morning at breakfast,” Sybil said. “That’ll keep them off balance. These are intelligent and creative kids. Give them too much time, and they’ll figure out a way around actually doing anything.”

  “Off balance!” Randolph said then. “That’s an excellent idea. We should spring the whole schedule on them a day at a time. It will encourage flexibility, one of the prime traits of the creative individual. Each camper will have to begin the day ready for anything.”

  E.D. thought of the effort and the time—days and days—she had put into creating the camp schedule for the whole eight weeks. The schedule, in its three-ring binder, was on top of a filing cabinet in the office. She had with her now the first week—three-and-a-half double-sided pages stapled together. They were neatly laid out, spreadsheet fashion, with workshops color coded for easy reference.

  She had begun to think of the whole thing as a work of art, an absolutely practical work of art. The colors provided continuity for the whole eight weeks, even as daily schedules varied. Morning workshops and evening activities (all required for all campers) were in red, mealtimes in yellow, optional afternoon workshops in green, water activities in blue, and free time in purple. Staff members each had an icon—theater masks for Randolph, quill pen for Lucille, pencil for Sybil, musical note for Jake, ballet slippers for Cordelia, paintbrush for Hal, saw for Zedediah, and chisel for Archie. These icons, in the upper left corners of the color blocks, showed who was in charge of the activity.

  Aunt Lucille reached over and patted E.D.’s hand. “Don’t worry, sweetie, everybody knows what a great job you did with the schedule. The only thing that’s changing here is when the campers see it.”

  Zedediah yawned again. “Everybody remember, it’s only the first day.” He looked at his watch. “Closing in on becoming the second. Staff meeting or no staff meeting, I’m going to bed. There’s nothing more we can accomplish here tonight.” With that, the old man pushed himself up from his chair and went over to Paulie’s perch. “Bedtime, fella,” he said, holding out his arm.

  The parrot ruffled his feathers, stepped onto Zedediah’s arm, and made his way up to his shoulder. “Night, night,” the bird said. E.D. had a feeling, sometimes, that Paulie knew exactly what he was saying.

  In the doorway, Zedediah turned back for a moment. “You did a fine job with the schedule, E.D. Give them just one day of it tomorrow, and we’ll see what happens. We’ll all have to take this a day at a time, you know. I have great faith that this family can accomplish whatever we set our minds to do—even if it was Randolph’s idea. See you at breakfast.”

  “Oh, my God, breakfast!” Sybil said as Zedediah left. “Breakfast! I promised the twins stone-ground whole wheat bread by morning! And whatever will we do for lunch?”

  Archie opened his eyes and stretched his arms over his head. “I’m going to town for fans first thing. I’ll stop at the grocery store while I’m there—just give me a list.” He glanced around the room, saw that Zedediah was no longer there, and turned to Lucille. “I’m wiped. Let’s go.”

  “All right, all right,” Randolph said. “Meeting’s over.”

  E.D. sighed. She couldn’t go to bed till she’d printed out six copies of only the first day’s schedule.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was only 7:45, and already the day was hot and muggy. After Destiny had been forbidden to go to Lucille’s first Meditation and Yoga session, Jake had brought him to the goat pen. Jake had, of course, shut Wolfie and his food into the shed, because Destiny had been chased so often he had nightmares about brown-and-white monsters with huge lopsided horns.

  Now Destiny was grumbling as he scooped feed into Hazel’s plastic bucket. “I don’t see how comes I don’t get to do what the campers do,” Destiny said. “What’s a mascot anyway? Doesn’t mascots get to do anything?”

  “You get to do things,” Jake said. “You have a Community Service job every single day, just like everybody else. Today you and I both have goat duty.”

  “That’s not a camp thing. We gots to do that all the time. I wanna do what Aunt Lucille’s doing in the barn.”

  “It’s just for campers.”

  “E.D.’s ther
e, and she’s not a camper.”

  “What can I tell you, kid? Life’s not fair. Besides, it’s meditation. You know you don’t do meditation. You always talk the whole time.”

  “Sometimes I sing!”

  “Right. Singing’s good, but it’s not meditation. Maybe, if you ask nicely and promise not to talk during it, Lucille will let you do the yoga part after today. They’ll do that outside. It’s the sun salutation.”

  “I like yoga,” Destiny said. “I do downward-facing dog real good.”

  “You do. But you’d have to promise not to bark. Listen, Destiny—even if your aunt lets you do yoga with the campers, you’re still not going to get to go to the workshops with them.”

  Hazel came over to get her breakfast, and Destiny patted her head. “Well, it’s not fair. There’s all these new kids here—I don’t hardly ever get to see new kids—and nobody’s letting me be with ’em!”

  Jake sighed. Home schooling was a really good thing in some ways, but maybe not so much for a kid like Destiny. The more people there were for him to talk to, the happier he was, and the easier it was on everybody. “Tell you what. My workshop’s about singing. If your parents say it’s okay, you can come to that.”

  “Yay, Jake! I loves to sing. Singing makes my heart feel good.”

  Jake laughed. “Mine too.” He ushered Destiny out of the goat pen, opened the door of the shed, sprinted across the pen, and slammed the gate behind him moments before Wolfie crashed into the fence. “Let’s go back and see what’s for breakfast.”

  “Maybe it’s waffles! Waffles is the best of best.”

  As they came around the side of the Lodge, Jake heard a vehicle slowing down out on the road. “Archie must be back from town,” he said to Destiny. “He went to get groceries.”

  Destiny stopped and listened. “Nope. That doesn’t sound like the truck.”

  “Maybe he took your mom’s car.”

  They could hear it turning into the driveway now, tires crunching on the gravel. After a moment it stopped, its engine idling.

  “How comes he stopped?” Destiny asked. “Let’s go see if he brung waffles for breakfast.”

  The car Jake and Destiny saw when they got around the row of bushes wasn’t Sybil’s. It was a plain, black compact. As soon as the driver saw them, he threw the car into reverse, backed hurriedly onto the road, and roared away.

  “Who was that?” Destiny asked. “Hardly nobody ever comes down that road.”

  Jake shrugged. “Or into the drive. Maybe he was lost.”

  “I coulda told him where he was. Mommy made me learn our address. Did you know our road doesn’t even gots a name? Just a number.”

  “He was probably using the driveway to turn around.”

  “No, Jake. ’Cause when he went away I heard him goin’ the same way he was already goin’ before.”

  Destiny was right, Jake realized. He was one sharp kid.

  “Look, look!” Destiny said, “Uncle Archie’s truck’s over by the tent. Let’s go see if he brung waffles.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the stage floor in the barn, Cordelia and the campers were sitting cross-legged—Samantha in full lotus position—in a circle around Lucille. Cinnamon was in blue again, Ginger in green. Q and David sat together, elbowing each other from time to time. Harley, a camera on a strap around his neck, was staring fixedly at something on the floor in front of him. E.D. had slipped in late and was standing in the shadows by the stage door, leaning against the rough barn siding. Hal must have skipped out again, she thought, till she saw him in the back corner of the stage, his eyes already closed, probably pretending he was alone in a cave somewhere.

  “Stillness is essential to the creative imagination,” Lucille was saying now. “That’s why we don’t allow cell phones at Eureka! All the electronic technology we’re surrounded with fractures our attention.”

  “Huh!” Cinnamon snorted.

  Lucille went on as if she hadn’t heard. “Meditation can mend that fractured consciousness. So now, if you are comfortable with it, close your eyes.”

  As far as E.D. could tell, most of the campers did that. Cinnamon, however, sat with her arms crossed in front of her, fingers tapping her upper arms, frowning into the shadows above the rows of theater seats.

  “Become aware of the air moving in through your nostrils. Now, let it out again, with a gentle sigh, through your mouth.” Lucille closed her eyes as well. “Try breathing that way for three minutes, keeping your attention on your breath. Feel the air moving in—out—in—out. Feel it. Listen to it. Let your mind go still.”

  Lucille had been trying to find a way to help E.D. meditate for years now. Sometimes, she said, instead of closing your eyes, you could still your mind by focusing your attention on something beautiful. A candle flame. A mandala. A lotus. E.D. focused her attention on David, watching his shoulders and chest rise and fall with his breath. A thin shaft of sunlight shone between the boards of the barn wall and fell on his dark, wavy hair. E.D. began to imagine that light expanding until it surrounded him with a pale, golden aura. Little by little, the aura seemed to become real, growing around him with each breath. Stillness. E.D. smiled. She had achieved stillness!

  Did angels have to breathe, she wondered suddenly. Did they have lungs? Botticelli, she knew, had painted his angels from human models, but did real angels have real bodies? Or weren’t they real at all? Were they just figments of human imagination? David, of course, was no figment… .

  A brilliant flash shattered the moment. Everybody’s eyes were open now.

  “Harley! No, no, no! There will be no cameras in morning meditation!” Lucille held her hand out. After a moment the boy took the strap off over his head and handed her his camera, muttering about the beautiful dead beetle he’d found.

  “Can we be done?” Cinnamon asked. “My butt hurts.”

  “Maybe we could bring pillows next time,” Samantha said.

  “If you focus on your breath, you’ll find that after a while you don’t even notice the floor,” Lucille said.

  E.D. had tried this. It never really worked for her. The floor was the floor. Apparently it hadn’t worked for anyone else, either. The others had begun groaning and fidgeting now, so Lucille announced they could all get up and go outside. “Meditation takes practice. In fact, it is a practice. We’ll start every morning this way”—Cinnamon sighed dramatically—“and you’ll get the hang of it soon enough. Three minutes at first, then five, then ten; believe me, meditation will enhance your creativity and defuse stress. It will be a useful tool the rest of your life.” She pushed herself up from the floor. “Everybody up! Let’s go salute the glorious sun and get those bodies awake and energized and flexible. Balance, campers! Mind, body, spirit.”

  E.D. slipped out the door. If there was one thing she liked less than meditation, it was yoga. Her body was not flexible. Aunt Lucille—Cordelia too—could bend over at the waist and put their hands absolutely flat on the floor. E.D. had never gotten farther than her ankles. Even Jake did better at yoga than she did. She headed for the kitchen to get something to eat before she had to hand out the schedules in the dining tent.

  Three hours later she was tromping through the woods in search of a missing camper. She should have realized that things had started off too well. There had been no rebellion at all about the first Community Service assignments. She had attributed that partly to assigning only easy chores this first day—no bathroom cleaning—but mostly to the fact that it was Zedediah, with his white hair and mustache and that natural air of authority, who had explained the concept. Not even the Boniface girls had raised a complaint, though Cordelia had told her at breakfast that she’d had to teach them how to make their beds. “Can you believe they’d never done it before?”

  After that, the first required workshop, Archie’s Introduction to Natural Materials Sculpture, went well. E.D. attended, having decided that Eureka! needed a historian—someone to observe and take notes so there would be
a record of what worked and what didn’t, in case, against all sanity, they ever decided to do this again. As historian, of course, her iron-filing self would have an excuse to hang out around David-the-magnet. It made her heart beat faster, somehow, just to be in the same room with him. The second workshop had been Poetry. She hadn’t been able to go to that one because Sybil needed her in the kitchen.

  That was how she had missed the moment when things went wrong. Lucille had asked the campers to write a poem in their journals—a poem about the first feelings they’d had when they woke up that morning—and Cinnamon had said she needed to go back to Dogwood for a different pen. “I write better in color.”

  Lucille, of course, allowed her to go. Cinnamon had not returned. After ten minutes Lucille considered sending Ginger after her sister, but Ginger was writing steadily and furiously in her journal and Lucille didn’t want to interrupt. So she had simply continued her workshop, assuming that Cinnamon would show up at any moment. She did not.

  Nor, when the workshop was over, was she found in Dogwood, in any of the bathrooms, at the pond, in the Lodge, or in any of the other cottages. E.D. had been sent to wake up her father, who was seldom functional till noon.

  “Missing?” Uncharacteristically, he had leaped out of bed so fast that he had a dizzy spell and had to hold onto her shoulder for a moment. “A camper is missing? Don’t tell the other campers,” he said, running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair.

  “They already know,” E.D. said. “They were all in the workshop she didn’t come back to.”

  “Then get the campers busy doing something and get everybody else out there searching. We have to find her! Now!” He grabbed for his jeans. “We simply cannot afford to lose a camper on the very first full day!”

  As if we could afford to lose one ever, E.D. thought as she went back downstairs.