Camp Shady Crook by Lee Gjertsen Malone

Author:Lee Gjertsen Malone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

VIVIAN

She’d put up with so much this week—the stupid outfit, the crazy schemes. But it was all because she was expecting a payout, some sort of confirmation of all her hard work. Instead she’d lied to people, dressed like a dork, and fallen on her backside so many times, she was convinced she’d have a bruise on her tailbone for years to come. And for what? She was still at Camp Shady Crook, still friendless, and she had nothing to show for it. And now this.

“You want to con Sasha-from-the-Bus?”

“No, I want you to con her. Or try to.”

“That’s stupid. That would be way too easy.”

“Oh, would it?” He gave her a strange look. “If it’s so easy, then why don’t you want to do it?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it,” she said. But inside, she really didn’t. It wasn’t that she actually liked Sasha; she was annoying and peppy and always trying to be involved in whatever was going on—she wore her need for friends like a T-shirt that said, well, I NEED FRIENDS. Probably with a lot of exclamation points. Still, Sasha wasn’t a bad person, not really. And the point of conning was to get one over on bad people, wasn’t it? Not nice people. Not people who made friendship bracelets and asked Vivian questions about herself and seemed to actually listen to the answers.

“If you don’t want to con her, then I will,” he said.

“No,” Vivian said, with more emphasis than she intended. “I’ll do it.” The gears in her mind were whirring, trying to figure out a way to con Sasha without actually hurting her—something that would seem like a con, but wouldn’t make Sasha, well, hate her.

But whatever Vivian could do was probably better than what Archie would come up with. That would be even worse. He could really hurt Sasha. And she couldn’t let that happen. “But you can’t con her too, that won’t be fair,” she said quickly. “You have to pick someone else.”

Archie laughed. “Great. I can con anyone I want at this camp.”

Vivian raised an eyebrow. “Anyone? Even . . . Mitchell the Unnconnable?”

“Well, that’s different,” Archie said, taken aback. “He’s a special case.”

“Scared?” Vivian said. “Afraid you can’t pull it off?”

“Not any more scared than you are,” Archie shot back.

Vivian gave him an evil smile. “Then fine, I’ll con Sasha, but you have to con Mitchell. The first one to get the money—and prove that they got it from the mark, no messing around—wins the whole camp for the rest of the summer. All we have to do is decide how much.”

“How about fifty dollars?” Archie shot back.

“Fifty dollars?!” Vivian’s voice was loud enough that Oliver looked alarmed. She lowered her voice again. “That’s insane. That’s a whole summer’s worth of spending money.”

“But isn’t that the point? It’s a bet. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

She sighed. Conning Sasha was going to be hard enough. Conning her out of fifty dollars seemed impossible. Still, she was in too deep to back out now.

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