Crazy as a Loon by Edwards Hailey

Author:Edwards, Hailey [Edwards, Hailey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Paranormal, Humour
Amazon: B0B73B3KRQ
Goodreads: 61802461
Publisher: Black Dog Books
Published: 2023-07-04T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Zander and I returned to Mudskipper at sundown to find the boys huddled in groups of twos or threes.

Our invisibility charms made it easy for us to sneak close, but I couldn’t get a sense of what had caused the uneasy silence blanketing the camp.

Forget the laughter you would expect. The joking. The shoving. The pranks.

These kids would have looked happier in line to go to the dentist for root canals.

“I’m out of here.” The same boy as last night, Trey, stood in a rush. “Who’s with me?”

“Sit down.” The kid next to him gripped his arm. “You want them to hear you?”

The us-versus-them mentality always existed in environments where children reported to authority figures, but I had never heard the lines so sharply drawn. Not here. Which got me thinking. I hadn’t identified a single junior counselor in the bunch. They often bridged the gap between the kids and the adults. They wore bright yellow tees to make them easy to spot, but I only saw the standard red.

That wasn’t normal, but not much of what we had witnessed here fit that category.

“I don’t care, Lane.” Trey shook off his friend. “I’m not hanging around until it gets me too.”

“The counselor said—”

“They lied.” Trey rounded on his small group. “Have you seen a kid come back from across the lake? I haven’t. The girls are on an island. The parking lot is a mile that way.” He pointed through the trees. “How are kids getting home if they’re not coming back here first?”

“But the counselor—”

“Lied.” He trembled with the need to shift. “When was the last time you heard from your parents?”

“Six days ago,” Lane confessed. “No letters from Mom or terrible drawings from Brianne.”

Between the terrible drawings and his annoyed voice, I bet Brianne was a younger sibling.

“You can’t just walk off.” Another boy stood. “That thing could be out there.”

“There’s a cabin five miles from here. I always see it on the drive in.” Trey laid out his plan. “I could run there and use their phone to call my parents. Then they could call your parents, and we’d all be saved.”

This was a terrible idea, but I could hardly come out and say so without compromising our cover.

“Wait until morning.” Lane set his jaw. “Then I’ll go with you.” He stuck out his hand. “Deal?”

“Deal.” Trey shook and sank back down with his friends. “We should sneak into the kitchen for provisions…”

Their planning fell into whispers I didn’t bother catching now that I could trust them to stay put. And by trust, I meant I would plant my butt in the shadows and wait for dawn to make sure they kept their word to each other and then foil their escape attempt in the morning by bungling it so badly Ricky kept an eye on them. But first, Zander and I had to follow up on Trey’s claim the injured kids weren’t making it home.

Careful to remain downwind from the campers, he and I retreated a safe distance away.

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