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  I’d had visions of text messaging a guy counselor, “U R 2 CUTE.” Yeah, right, like I’d ever be that bold.

  My vast experience at communicating with guys mostly involved my brother, who was six years younger than me. Our conversations usually began with him whining, “I’m gonna tell Mom.”

  And my witty response: “Whatever.”

  I needed to seriously develop my flirtation skills—like figuring out what guys found interesting and what they wanted to talk about—and my brother was so not good practice material.

  “Maybe once we go hiking, get farther away from camp, I’ll be able to pick up a signal,” I suggested hopefully, although I was beginning to suspect that the camp had been built in the one place that the Verizon-can-you-hear-me-now? guy had yet to visit.

  Liz shook her head. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We should have expected this.”

  Or as my dad said, we were “on the farside of nowhere,” which he seemed to think was worse than being in the middle of nowhere. I sorta figured nowhere was nowhere and it didn’t have map coordinates. You were just there. No where.

  “I think I’m going into cell phone withdrawal,” I said, only half jokingly. My dad had constantly teased me for the last couple months that my hand was permanently curled in cell-phone-holding position. Of course, he said Mom’s hand was permanently curled in credit-card-holding position.

  “I’m already there,” Liz said. Her phone wasn’t getting a signal either.

  Even though Liz was the person I called most, and we would be side by side most of the summer, we’d planned to use our phones for communicating on the sly.

  QT 2 R = Cutie to the right.

  QT 2 L = Cutie to the left.

  I angled the phone and snapped a picture of Liz. At least the camera still worked. My dad was all about gadgets. No way was he going to get me a plain old cell phone for my birthday. Like my dad, I saw the value in multifunctional products. I intended to take lots of pictures, so bringing the cell phone along wasn’t a total waste.

  As Liz and I approached the main office building, we spotted a group of people milling around in front. Judging by their uniforms, they were all CITs. None were the counselors from last year, although I did recognize some people who had been campers during previous summers. I guess everyone had the idea of moving up to better things.

  “I wonder where Cute Casey is,” Liz whispered.

  I shrugged. “He’s already trained. Maybe this week it’s just the newbies.”

  “Right.” She scowled.

  I watched her freckles scrunch up. With red hair comes freckles. When we were a lot younger—and really bored—we would use a Sharpie to connect the freckles on her arms to create pictures. So whenever I looked at her cheek really closely now, I always saw a kite that I’d drawn by connecting freckles. Actually, kites were pretty much all I’d ever seen and drawn. It’s fairly easy to see a kite in freckles. Does that make me unimaginative?

  I didn’t want to contemplate that it might, since being a counselor meant coming up with creative ways to keep the campers occupied and away from the boredom zone.

  “But if the older counselors aren’t here, who’s going to train us?” Liz asked me. Obviously her scowl had represented her thinking face.

  “I’m sure someone will.”

  “Hey!” A couple of girls had turned, noticed us, and hurried over. We’d met them last summer. Caryn and Torie—Victoria, according to the name embroidered on her shirt. They’d shared a cabin with us and participated in our makeover session.

  We didn’t have much time to catch up on the exciting things we’d done since last summer—which was fine with me, since I’d done very little that I would classify as exciting. Now that I was actually here, I was beginning to have doubts that I could be an amazing counselor. Could I lead? Could I keep the campers entertained? Could I protect and serve…oh, wait, that was the job of the police. Could I care for and console those who got homesick?

  I was pretty sure I could, but soon I’d be tested.

  Liz, Caryn, Torie, and I teased each other about the fact that none of us had kept our promise to stay in touch through e-mail or instant messaging. School has a way of taking up your time.

  “I don’t remember the counselors wearing these uniforms,” Liz said. She was still hung up on not being entirely fashionable. Although trekking through the woods has a fashion of its own.

  “Last year it was T-shirts,” Caryn said. “I guess they wanted something a little classier.”

  “Classier?” Liz asked. “You think this is classier?”

  “No, but I guess they thought it looked better than T-shirts.”

  “Maybe we’ll get T-shirts after we finish this week of training,” Torie said. “You know what I’m saying?”

  “I liked T-shirts on the guy counselors,” I admitted.

  “Especially on Cute Casey,” Liz said. “Anyone know if he’s going to be here this year?”

  Before anyone could answer, a clanging began. An iron triangle hung off the porch of the main lodge. Whenever our attention was needed, someone banged its insides with an iron rod. Our adventure camp had a rustic feel to it. While we had electricity, the bulbs always seemed to burn dimly. The TV in the dining hall, where we all gathered if we wanted to watch any television shows, was a very small screen and not high-def. The reception was lousy. No satellite dish. It did have a VHS tape player, but it wasn’t exactly modern.

  A woman—the tallest woman I’d ever seen, and her blond hair was practically buzzed—stood on the porch beside a man whose long dark hair was held in place with a leather tie. Excitement hummed on the air. In front of them stood four counselors I recognized from last year. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a Casey, Hank, or George among them. I wondered what happened to those guys. They’d probably been the oldest of the crew, and it seemed like they’d been around forever. Surely they hadn’t moved on to other things. Like college or the army or a real job.

  Everyone who’d been standing around—talking and waiting for the meeting to begin—shuffled closer, jockeying for a better view. And that’s when I noticed him.

  Sean Reed.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Liz whispered harshly beside me. “Do you see—”

  “I see.”

  “How are they even letting him be a CIT?” she asked. “That is so not fair!”

  As usual, she was totally reading my mind.

  Chapter Three

  Sean Reed. My arch-nemesis. Four years running. And it looked like we were going to make it five. He couldn’t be a CIT. Absolutely couldn’t be.

  But he was wearing the uniform. And he was standing in the midst of the crowd, waiting to hear whatever She and He standing on the porch had to say.

  The first year we’d met Sean, we’d rated him a nine out of a possible ten. But that was before we really got to know him. His ranking quickly descended to zero for a variety of reasons, including some dumb pranks that involved flying mashed potatoes during supper our first summer here. He was an absolute loser, although it wasn’t apparent just looking at him. You had to get really close to him to see beyond the dark hair and the blue eyes and the killer smile.

  Against my better judgment, I angled my head slightly to get a better look at him. Something about him was different. Was he a little taller? Definitely. But something else was different. He looked older. Duh?!? He was older. But he looked way older than he had last summer.

  I wondered if they’d sent him to juvie hall for what he’d done last year on the last day of camp. Maybe being a counselor was part of his rehabilitation process, because he certainly needed rehabilitating. Still, I couldn’t believe after the way he’d sabotaged our games that they would trust him—

  “Jessica Kane,” the woman on the porch said.

  I snapped my attention to her. She was reading from a clipboard. What had she been saying before she announced my name? Was she taking roll call?

  “Here!” I called out, raising my hand, sta