Sweet Valley Twins Super Edition #3 - The Big Camp Secret
Brief warning: This recap was written largely during periods of insomnia, so I think it’s more bitter and long-winded than usual. I’ll let you decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
I’m pretty sure the first time I read this book was when I was at camp, and I thought it was the coolest plot ever. I thought it would be so much fun to help someone hide out somewhere, and I actually looked for places around my camp where someone could stay. Not that I actually had a person to fill that role, mind you. I didn’t have a lot of friends at camp. Anyway, reading this book again now…I know I shouldn’t be shocked by SV’s total suspension of reality anymore, but I can’t help it. The people who run this camp are idiots.
Seriously.
It’s summer again in Sweet Valley. I don’t know how many summers there have been before this book, but I’m sure it’s neither the first nor the last in the Twins series. The book begins at the mall, where Elizabeth and Jessica are buying clothes for camp when they run into Amy and Grace Oliver. The four of them go to Casey’s together, and discuss how fun camp will be, since Amy and Grace are going too. …Not! Grace makes a sad face and tells the other girls it looks like she won’t be coming to camp after all.
There’s no time to explain why, because at that second Ellen and Lila show up. They, too, are supposed to attend this magical camp. However, Lila announces she’s ditching camp to go to Paris with her grandmother. Wait, Lila has family? What? Also, what kind of camp is this where people can pull out at the last minute? It probably doesn’t matter to George Fowler, but with Grace being just your average peon, it seems a bit odd that she can just decide not to go.
>>>Sidebar: in this book, Grace is a redhead who’s mostly friends with Elizabeth. I distinctly remember in #4 Choosing Sides, which was written before this book, she was described as a small, black-haired friend of the Unicorns. By #52 Booster Boycott (written after this book), she’d made it into the club (and the Boosters), and was still small and black-haired. WTF, ghostie?<<<
Ugh. Sorry. Anyway, Grace decides she has to go home, and Elizabeth chases after her to find out what’s wrong. It turns out Grace’s parents are thinking of getting a divorce, and the two of them are going to take separate vacations to think things over while Grace stays with her godmother Kay. Um, what? The given excuse is that they “want her to be with family.” And Grace can’t say anything because she’s afraid it will just cause more tension/fighting, and her parents will go through with the divorce. The Olivers almost sound like worse parents than the Wakefields. They’ve got to know their potential divorce would be hard on Grace, so why not let her go to camp where she could maybe enjoy herself and get her mind off of it? Oh right, because then this book wouldn’t exist. (Actually…)
The twins arrive at the camp, which by the way is called Camp Loconda. That’s probably supposed to sound like a Native American word, but when I google it all that comes up is some resort in Italy. They’re in Bunk Seven, which is also inhabited by Kerry Glenn (who is apparently also from Sweet Valley, but I’ve never heard of her), Kimberly Haver, Ellen, Amy, and some girl named Nancy McCall. Poor Nancy, she’s the only one in the bunk not from Sweet Valley. They also have a counselor named Jamie, and an empty bed because Lila’s not there. There is no bed for Grace. I don’t know which makes less sense, but either way, it’s incongruous.
Jamie takes the girls on a tour of the camp. The director is named Mrs. Edwards, and she has a rude assistant named Tina. There’s also a lake (with the boys’ camp on the other side), and a hill known as Crying Moon Mountain, as well an arts-and-crafts building, sports, etc.
That night, there’s a campfire where all the counselors tell scary stories. Jamie tells the one about the girl with a ribbon around her neck. I thought that one was lame by the time I was seven, but whatever. Next, Mrs. Edwards tells the story of Crying Moon Mountain, which is kinda like a bastardized version of Romeo & Juliet but with Native Americans (and a ghost.) As the girls are walking back to their bunk, they think they see a light coming from the abandoned cabin on Crying Moon Mountain (henceforth abbreviated as CMM). Elizabeth and Amy still hold that there’s no such thing as ghosts, so Jessica dares them to climb the hill the next night.
The following day, the campers go on a treasure hunt in which they run around the camp by bunk looking for asinine little poems, which contain clues leading them to other poems, until they reach the final prize. For some reason they decide there are too many teams, so Bunk Three is split up among the other teams. Bunk Seven gets stuck with a rude, obnoxious girl named Barbara.
They don’t win. The prize was a box full of Amanda Howard paperbacks. No, seriously. Elizabeth mourns this loss as though her parents had died.
That night, Amy and Elizabeth head up CMM to complete their dare. Jessica comes with them (claiming it’s because “it’s only fair,” but more likely so she can be in the center of attention.) They open the door to the cabin and see…a big shadow looming in the doorway!! Luckily, mere milliseconds before the bejeezus is scared permanently out of our intrepid trio, the shadow reveals itself to be…Grace! Who as well was terrified within a hair’s breadth of lifelong bejeezuslessness.
She was able to get to camp because, in a quintessentially Sweet Valley stroke of coincidence, the bus to her godmother’s house left at the same time and from the same depot as the buses to camp, so she snuck onto one with no kids from SV. She also called her godmother to say that she and her mom had gone on a cruise, so she wouldn’t try to get in contact. I guess Grace’s father isn’t that involved. She’s been living in the abandoned cabin ever since, which conveniently had running water and electricity, as well as a lamp and some canned food lying around. However, Grace is considering calling her godmother, because she’s pretty bored all by herself. (And she’s been living off sardines and canned spaghetti.)
The girls decide to try and integrate Grace into camp activities, since they think it will be fun and their opinion of the counselors really is that low. Obviously it’s Jessica’s idea. Amy, Liz, and Jess get back to their cabin and tell the rest of the girls.
Grace makes her first public appearance at Swimming the next morning. Elizabeth, in a wholly characteristic show of martyrdom, says she’ll gladly miss Swimming, and Grace can wear her bathing suit and swim cap. No one will know the difference! Apparently Grace is the missing Wakefield triplet, except for her (disputable) hair color. Why was she not recruited to play Jennifer?!
Pretty soon all the campers knows about Grace, and they all think it’s great fun. …Everyone except Barbara, that is. Because every SVT book needs someone whose only personality trait is Antagonist. She kind of just creepily stands in the background of everyone being happy, and makes vaguely threatening allusions to nothing in particular.
Grace involves herself in all kinds of camp activities; she goes hiking, does arts & crafts, and eats with the other campers. She never stays with one bunk for too long and relies on the hope that the counselors will just think she’s from a different bunk than theirs. She still sleeps in the abandoned cabin on CMM, which it didn’t specify if there was a bed in there. Probably, though, if there was all that canned food. Or maybe that’s where her original bed went. Hmm…
Trouble occurs when Grace joins the girls when the camp shows “Old Yeller” one night. They’re counting people (like, with an actual counter) as they go in to make sure no one is missing. But, as Tina “gruffly” informs the campers, she’s counted one extra girl! Everyone is surprised when Barbara speaks up to say Tina probably counted her twice, making up a story that she came in, left to go get a sweater, and came back. But, as Liz ominously points out, “Barbara Fields doesn’t do things just to be nice.”
Barbara arrives at Bunk Seven the next morning, and blackmails them into letting her join their bunk, since they do have Lila’s extra bed and all. If they don’t let her, she’ll tell Mrs. Edwards about Grace. She bullies them about some other stuff as well. What a bitch.
They camp out in the woods. After the campfire, Jess, Liz, Amy, and Ellen decide to forgo their tents and sleep outside under the stars. Jamie lets them, despite the fact that not half a page earlier she warned them about animals. They hear a bunch of noises, and then they think it’s raining…they’re about to go back to their tents when they realize they’re just being punk’d by some of the jokesters from the boys’ camp. (See B-plot.) Why Jamie picked a campsite that’s apparently right by the other camp, I don’t know. Also, did they canoe over with all their tents and crap? (they did.)
Barbara continues to be obnoxious. She loses Capture the Flag on purpose! She enters Grace’s clay horse sculpture in the arts & crafts contest under her name! And worst of all…she tromps all over Jessica’s plans to have a dance with the boys’ camp. (B-plot again. Sorry.) She decides she doesn’t want a dance, and since she’ll tell on Grace if she doesn’t get her way, they’re trapped.
This whole confrontation makes Grace feel awfully guilty. She cries through an entire meal. She thinks it’s her fault everything is such a mess, because if everyone didn’t have to hide her, Barbara wouldn’t have anything to lord over them and make them miserable. When she puts it that way I kind of agree with her. She thinks maybe she should just leave, and as everyone is fawning all over her she bursts out and runs toward her cabin on CMM. The legit campers decide to leave her alone for the night and resume fawning in the morning.
Anyway, the dance is on (Ugh, B-Plot, I’m so sorry. I’ve never done a recap where I split it up like this before) and as the girls (sans Barbara) are merrily finding outfits for it, Barbara storms in from wherever the hell she was and presents Elizabeth with a note she says is from Grace.
Well, you guessed in, Grace has left. I guess her cabin’s amenities didn’t include a phone, because she’s decided to walk to the bus station and I guess just show up at her godmother’s.
Of the many holes in this plan, the one that ends up happening is an electrical storm starts brewing, making it unsafe (or at the very least, unpleasant) for Grace to take a long walk. I’m guessing it would be long, because it would be a pretty odd location for a nice woodsy camp to be right by the bus station.
Jessica and Elizabeth get permission to use the pay phone by saying it’s their mother’s birthday and they forgot to send a card. Really though they’re calling the depot to ask if Grace has arrived there yet. She hasn’t. In a moment of desperation (and in Jessica’s case, melodrama) they tell Mrs. Edwards the whole story about Grace, leaving out the parts about Barbara. She sends the girls back up to their bunk and tells them to send Jamie to her.
Back in Bunk Seven, all the girls confront Barbara, who is quite distraught having nothing to blackmail them with anymore.
Jamie comes back in record time, notifying the girls that they’ve contacted Grace’s mother (who is now on her way to the camp), the bus station again, her godmother, and the police, and no one has seen or heard from Grace. How she did this all in less than two pages is beyond me.
The bunk splits into search parties, but predictably neither group wants Barbara with them. Just as Jamie is making a case for the girls to put aside their squabbles to try and find Grace, Barbara bursts out the door and runs off. Jessica comments on the weirdness of this action, but no move is made on Jamie’s or anyone else’s part to see where Barbara ran off to. Don’t they realize by now bursting is a bad sign? This is the second instance of bursting in a very short period of time!
Some time later, the girls return to their bunk and Mrs. Edwards is all “hey, so Jamie told me Barbara ran off…guess she’s not back, huh?” Like, she’s really casual about it. I mean, I wouldn’t care too much if someone like Barbara went missing, but Mrs. Edwards is in a position to get sued. The girls decide to tell her the whole story.
Meanwhile, Barbara’s trudging up CMM, en route to the very same abandoned cabin Grace had been sleeping in. She opens the desk drawer and pulls out a bunch of letters from her parents, who are in the midst of a divorce. Both of them seem to be fond of including snappy one-liners insulting the other parent in their one-paragraph messages. Barbara starts to cry, bemoaning her position of being stuck in the middle, as the storm starts to get worse.
Just then, she hears a noise coming from the back room. I wasn’t aware this thing had multiple rooms, but apparently it’s like a luxury resort or something, just in a very undesirable location. It’s Grace! She had started out for the bus station quite early, but saw the storm coming when she was only a quarter of the way there, so she decided to turn back. On the way back up CMM, she slipped in the rain and twisted her ankle. She had had no idea that people had called the bus station and are looking for her.
Anyway, Barbara explains that she entered Grace’s horse sculpture so she could give Grace the prize. Grace thinks that’s nice, and she also tells Barbara she doesn’t blame her for anything that’s happened. She makes all kinds of ham-handed hints about how she “understands” why Barbara acted the way she did. The bitch is practically putty when Grace finally says outright that she read Barbara’s letters. At this point putty becomes (justifiably) enraged at the invasion of privacy, and assumes somewhat perplexingly that Grace is going to tell everyone how she went up to CMM every day to cry. Just after Barbara storms out (not to return to camp, but just to…leave…), lightning hits the cabin and the roof catches on fire. Pieces of burning roof are falling all over the place! Gaaaahh!!!!! Barbara’s about halfway down the hill when she remembers about Grace’s ankle, so, like any one-dimensional character in need of redemption, she runs back up and pulls her out to safety.
Barbara realizes she won’t be able to get Grace down the hill by herself, so I guess she just leaves her under a tree or something as she goes back to the camp to get help. Of course, this isn’t until after the requisite “you saved my life” speech.
Grace is rescued shortly thereafter by an “odd procession” of Mrs. Oliver, Mrs. Edwards, Tina, and the two paramedics who are carrying her on a stretcher. Her dad appears, too, but not until they’re back at camp. I guess his daughter wasn’t worth the climb.
And, since both of Grace’s parents are there, it’s a perfect time for her to explain what she’s doing at the camp in the first place, and how she was scared to tell her parents how badly she wanted to go. Rainbows form in the sky as a mutual understanding is reached and Grace cheekily asks to become an official camper. Wish granted, Orphan Annie!
None of this happy news has reached Bunk Seven, however. They’re sitting in their cabin, still worried about Grace and furious at Barbara. Barbara comes in, and before she can explain anything they all start chewing her out.
They’re in the middle of this when Jamie comes in and announces that Grace has been found. Everyone wants to see her - except Barbara, who’s already seen her, and Jessica, who wants to keep yelling at Barbara. Everyone else leaves and Jessica starts throwing Barbara’s stuff all over the place and out the windows, saying she’s packing her up and is going to make her leave. Uh, Jess? “Psychopath.” Look it up.
Barbara goes outside to pick up her stuff, but Jessica blocks the doorway so she can’t come back in. Just then, Grace appears, and her “face turns as red as her curls” when she realizes what Jessica is doing. She explains things.
Then Barbara runs off and hides in a stable. What the hell? Barbara doesn’t cease to be annoying. She’s also probably diagnosable. Grace goes and finds her and talks her down and tells her to be honest with her parents and with the other girls about why she was so…psychologically unsound. (Grace, by the way, is using “a cane that had been found in the infirmary.” They had all that crap up in the abandoned cabin, but they don’t have a pair of crutches?)
Believe it or not, this book does not deviate from canon in that it ends with a party. The only punishment everyone gets for the whole ordeal is a lecture, and Jessica’s dance is a success. Everyone is friends now, even Barbara. It ends with the line “Lets get out there and make our last night at camp the best one ever!”
And, freeze frame on everyone triumphantly high-fiving. The end.
B-Plot:
It’s pretty lame, so I’m just giving you a skeletal version. Plus the rest of this recap is long enough already, good god.
I’m pretty sure the first time I read this book was when I was at camp, and I thought it was the coolest plot ever. I thought it would be so much fun to help someone hide out somewhere, and I actually looked for places around my camp where someone could stay. Not that I actually had a person to fill that role, mind you. I didn’t have a lot of friends at camp. Anyway, reading this book again now…I know I shouldn’t be shocked by SV’s total suspension of reality anymore, but I can’t help it. The people who run this camp are idiots.
Seriously.
It’s summer again in Sweet Valley. I don’t know how many summers there have been before this book, but I’m sure it’s neither the first nor the last in the Twins series. The book begins at the mall, where Elizabeth and Jessica are buying clothes for camp when they run into Amy and Grace Oliver. The four of them go to Casey’s together, and discuss how fun camp will be, since Amy and Grace are going too. …Not! Grace makes a sad face and tells the other girls it looks like she won’t be coming to camp after all.
There’s no time to explain why, because at that second Ellen and Lila show up. They, too, are supposed to attend this magical camp. However, Lila announces she’s ditching camp to go to Paris with her grandmother. Wait, Lila has family? What? Also, what kind of camp is this where people can pull out at the last minute? It probably doesn’t matter to George Fowler, but with Grace being just your average peon, it seems a bit odd that she can just decide not to go.
>>>Sidebar: in this book, Grace is a redhead who’s mostly friends with Elizabeth. I distinctly remember in #4 Choosing Sides, which was written before this book, she was described as a small, black-haired friend of the Unicorns. By #52 Booster Boycott (written after this book), she’d made it into the club (and the Boosters), and was still small and black-haired. WTF, ghostie?<<<
Ugh. Sorry. Anyway, Grace decides she has to go home, and Elizabeth chases after her to find out what’s wrong. It turns out Grace’s parents are thinking of getting a divorce, and the two of them are going to take separate vacations to think things over while Grace stays with her godmother Kay. Um, what? The given excuse is that they “want her to be with family.” And Grace can’t say anything because she’s afraid it will just cause more tension/fighting, and her parents will go through with the divorce. The Olivers almost sound like worse parents than the Wakefields. They’ve got to know their potential divorce would be hard on Grace, so why not let her go to camp where she could maybe enjoy herself and get her mind off of it? Oh right, because then this book wouldn’t exist. (Actually…)
The twins arrive at the camp, which by the way is called Camp Loconda. That’s probably supposed to sound like a Native American word, but when I google it all that comes up is some resort in Italy. They’re in Bunk Seven, which is also inhabited by Kerry Glenn (who is apparently also from Sweet Valley, but I’ve never heard of her), Kimberly Haver, Ellen, Amy, and some girl named Nancy McCall. Poor Nancy, she’s the only one in the bunk not from Sweet Valley. They also have a counselor named Jamie, and an empty bed because Lila’s not there. There is no bed for Grace. I don’t know which makes less sense, but either way, it’s incongruous.
Jamie takes the girls on a tour of the camp. The director is named Mrs. Edwards, and she has a rude assistant named Tina. There’s also a lake (with the boys’ camp on the other side), and a hill known as Crying Moon Mountain, as well an arts-and-crafts building, sports, etc.
That night, there’s a campfire where all the counselors tell scary stories. Jamie tells the one about the girl with a ribbon around her neck. I thought that one was lame by the time I was seven, but whatever. Next, Mrs. Edwards tells the story of Crying Moon Mountain, which is kinda like a bastardized version of Romeo & Juliet but with Native Americans (and a ghost.) As the girls are walking back to their bunk, they think they see a light coming from the abandoned cabin on Crying Moon Mountain (henceforth abbreviated as CMM). Elizabeth and Amy still hold that there’s no such thing as ghosts, so Jessica dares them to climb the hill the next night.
The following day, the campers go on a treasure hunt in which they run around the camp by bunk looking for asinine little poems, which contain clues leading them to other poems, until they reach the final prize. For some reason they decide there are too many teams, so Bunk Three is split up among the other teams. Bunk Seven gets stuck with a rude, obnoxious girl named Barbara.
They don’t win. The prize was a box full of Amanda Howard paperbacks. No, seriously. Elizabeth mourns this loss as though her parents had died.
That night, Amy and Elizabeth head up CMM to complete their dare. Jessica comes with them (claiming it’s because “it’s only fair,” but more likely so she can be in the center of attention.) They open the door to the cabin and see…a big shadow looming in the doorway!! Luckily, mere milliseconds before the bejeezus is scared permanently out of our intrepid trio, the shadow reveals itself to be…Grace! Who as well was terrified within a hair’s breadth of lifelong bejeezuslessness.
She was able to get to camp because, in a quintessentially Sweet Valley stroke of coincidence, the bus to her godmother’s house left at the same time and from the same depot as the buses to camp, so she snuck onto one with no kids from SV. She also called her godmother to say that she and her mom had gone on a cruise, so she wouldn’t try to get in contact. I guess Grace’s father isn’t that involved. She’s been living in the abandoned cabin ever since, which conveniently had running water and electricity, as well as a lamp and some canned food lying around. However, Grace is considering calling her godmother, because she’s pretty bored all by herself. (And she’s been living off sardines and canned spaghetti.)
The girls decide to try and integrate Grace into camp activities, since they think it will be fun and their opinion of the counselors really is that low. Obviously it’s Jessica’s idea. Amy, Liz, and Jess get back to their cabin and tell the rest of the girls.
Grace makes her first public appearance at Swimming the next morning. Elizabeth, in a wholly characteristic show of martyrdom, says she’ll gladly miss Swimming, and Grace can wear her bathing suit and swim cap. No one will know the difference! Apparently Grace is the missing Wakefield triplet, except for her (disputable) hair color. Why was she not recruited to play Jennifer?!
Pretty soon all the campers knows about Grace, and they all think it’s great fun. …Everyone except Barbara, that is. Because every SVT book needs someone whose only personality trait is Antagonist. She kind of just creepily stands in the background of everyone being happy, and makes vaguely threatening allusions to nothing in particular.
Grace involves herself in all kinds of camp activities; she goes hiking, does arts & crafts, and eats with the other campers. She never stays with one bunk for too long and relies on the hope that the counselors will just think she’s from a different bunk than theirs. She still sleeps in the abandoned cabin on CMM, which it didn’t specify if there was a bed in there. Probably, though, if there was all that canned food. Or maybe that’s where her original bed went. Hmm…
Trouble occurs when Grace joins the girls when the camp shows “Old Yeller” one night. They’re counting people (like, with an actual counter) as they go in to make sure no one is missing. But, as Tina “gruffly” informs the campers, she’s counted one extra girl! Everyone is surprised when Barbara speaks up to say Tina probably counted her twice, making up a story that she came in, left to go get a sweater, and came back. But, as Liz ominously points out, “Barbara Fields doesn’t do things just to be nice.”
Barbara arrives at Bunk Seven the next morning, and blackmails them into letting her join their bunk, since they do have Lila’s extra bed and all. If they don’t let her, she’ll tell Mrs. Edwards about Grace. She bullies them about some other stuff as well. What a bitch.
They camp out in the woods. After the campfire, Jess, Liz, Amy, and Ellen decide to forgo their tents and sleep outside under the stars. Jamie lets them, despite the fact that not half a page earlier she warned them about animals. They hear a bunch of noises, and then they think it’s raining…they’re about to go back to their tents when they realize they’re just being punk’d by some of the jokesters from the boys’ camp. (See B-plot.) Why Jamie picked a campsite that’s apparently right by the other camp, I don’t know. Also, did they canoe over with all their tents and crap? (they did.)
Barbara continues to be obnoxious. She loses Capture the Flag on purpose! She enters Grace’s clay horse sculpture in the arts & crafts contest under her name! And worst of all…she tromps all over Jessica’s plans to have a dance with the boys’ camp. (B-plot again. Sorry.) She decides she doesn’t want a dance, and since she’ll tell on Grace if she doesn’t get her way, they’re trapped.
This whole confrontation makes Grace feel awfully guilty. She cries through an entire meal. She thinks it’s her fault everything is such a mess, because if everyone didn’t have to hide her, Barbara wouldn’t have anything to lord over them and make them miserable. When she puts it that way I kind of agree with her. She thinks maybe she should just leave, and as everyone is fawning all over her she bursts out and runs toward her cabin on CMM. The legit campers decide to leave her alone for the night and resume fawning in the morning.
Anyway, the dance is on (Ugh, B-Plot, I’m so sorry. I’ve never done a recap where I split it up like this before) and as the girls (sans Barbara) are merrily finding outfits for it, Barbara storms in from wherever the hell she was and presents Elizabeth with a note she says is from Grace.
Well, you guessed in, Grace has left. I guess her cabin’s amenities didn’t include a phone, because she’s decided to walk to the bus station and I guess just show up at her godmother’s.
Of the many holes in this plan, the one that ends up happening is an electrical storm starts brewing, making it unsafe (or at the very least, unpleasant) for Grace to take a long walk. I’m guessing it would be long, because it would be a pretty odd location for a nice woodsy camp to be right by the bus station.
Jessica and Elizabeth get permission to use the pay phone by saying it’s their mother’s birthday and they forgot to send a card. Really though they’re calling the depot to ask if Grace has arrived there yet. She hasn’t. In a moment of desperation (and in Jessica’s case, melodrama) they tell Mrs. Edwards the whole story about Grace, leaving out the parts about Barbara. She sends the girls back up to their bunk and tells them to send Jamie to her.
Back in Bunk Seven, all the girls confront Barbara, who is quite distraught having nothing to blackmail them with anymore.
Jamie comes back in record time, notifying the girls that they’ve contacted Grace’s mother (who is now on her way to the camp), the bus station again, her godmother, and the police, and no one has seen or heard from Grace. How she did this all in less than two pages is beyond me.
The bunk splits into search parties, but predictably neither group wants Barbara with them. Just as Jamie is making a case for the girls to put aside their squabbles to try and find Grace, Barbara bursts out the door and runs off. Jessica comments on the weirdness of this action, but no move is made on Jamie’s or anyone else’s part to see where Barbara ran off to. Don’t they realize by now bursting is a bad sign? This is the second instance of bursting in a very short period of time!
Some time later, the girls return to their bunk and Mrs. Edwards is all “hey, so Jamie told me Barbara ran off…guess she’s not back, huh?” Like, she’s really casual about it. I mean, I wouldn’t care too much if someone like Barbara went missing, but Mrs. Edwards is in a position to get sued. The girls decide to tell her the whole story.
Meanwhile, Barbara’s trudging up CMM, en route to the very same abandoned cabin Grace had been sleeping in. She opens the desk drawer and pulls out a bunch of letters from her parents, who are in the midst of a divorce. Both of them seem to be fond of including snappy one-liners insulting the other parent in their one-paragraph messages. Barbara starts to cry, bemoaning her position of being stuck in the middle, as the storm starts to get worse.
Just then, she hears a noise coming from the back room. I wasn’t aware this thing had multiple rooms, but apparently it’s like a luxury resort or something, just in a very undesirable location. It’s Grace! She had started out for the bus station quite early, but saw the storm coming when she was only a quarter of the way there, so she decided to turn back. On the way back up CMM, she slipped in the rain and twisted her ankle. She had had no idea that people had called the bus station and are looking for her.
Anyway, Barbara explains that she entered Grace’s horse sculpture so she could give Grace the prize. Grace thinks that’s nice, and she also tells Barbara she doesn’t blame her for anything that’s happened. She makes all kinds of ham-handed hints about how she “understands” why Barbara acted the way she did. The bitch is practically putty when Grace finally says outright that she read Barbara’s letters. At this point putty becomes (justifiably) enraged at the invasion of privacy, and assumes somewhat perplexingly that Grace is going to tell everyone how she went up to CMM every day to cry. Just after Barbara storms out (not to return to camp, but just to…leave…), lightning hits the cabin and the roof catches on fire. Pieces of burning roof are falling all over the place! Gaaaahh!!!!! Barbara’s about halfway down the hill when she remembers about Grace’s ankle, so, like any one-dimensional character in need of redemption, she runs back up and pulls her out to safety.
Barbara realizes she won’t be able to get Grace down the hill by herself, so I guess she just leaves her under a tree or something as she goes back to the camp to get help. Of course, this isn’t until after the requisite “you saved my life” speech.
Grace is rescued shortly thereafter by an “odd procession” of Mrs. Oliver, Mrs. Edwards, Tina, and the two paramedics who are carrying her on a stretcher. Her dad appears, too, but not until they’re back at camp. I guess his daughter wasn’t worth the climb.
And, since both of Grace’s parents are there, it’s a perfect time for her to explain what she’s doing at the camp in the first place, and how she was scared to tell her parents how badly she wanted to go. Rainbows form in the sky as a mutual understanding is reached and Grace cheekily asks to become an official camper. Wish granted, Orphan Annie!
None of this happy news has reached Bunk Seven, however. They’re sitting in their cabin, still worried about Grace and furious at Barbara. Barbara comes in, and before she can explain anything they all start chewing her out.
They’re in the middle of this when Jamie comes in and announces that Grace has been found. Everyone wants to see her - except Barbara, who’s already seen her, and Jessica, who wants to keep yelling at Barbara. Everyone else leaves and Jessica starts throwing Barbara’s stuff all over the place and out the windows, saying she’s packing her up and is going to make her leave. Uh, Jess? “Psychopath.” Look it up.
Barbara goes outside to pick up her stuff, but Jessica blocks the doorway so she can’t come back in. Just then, Grace appears, and her “face turns as red as her curls” when she realizes what Jessica is doing. She explains things.
Then Barbara runs off and hides in a stable. What the hell? Barbara doesn’t cease to be annoying. She’s also probably diagnosable. Grace goes and finds her and talks her down and tells her to be honest with her parents and with the other girls about why she was so…psychologically unsound. (Grace, by the way, is using “a cane that had been found in the infirmary.” They had all that crap up in the abandoned cabin, but they don’t have a pair of crutches?)
Believe it or not, this book does not deviate from canon in that it ends with a party. The only punishment everyone gets for the whole ordeal is a lecture, and Jessica’s dance is a success. Everyone is friends now, even Barbara. It ends with the line “Lets get out there and make our last night at camp the best one ever!”
And, freeze frame on everyone triumphantly high-fiving. The end.
B-Plot:
It’s pretty lame, so I’m just giving you a skeletal version. Plus the rest of this recap is long enough already, good god.
- Jessica is in a state of panic because she won’t be able to see any BOYS!! the whole time she is at camp. Camp is two weeks long.
- Conveniently (and clichédly), there’s a BOYS’!! camp across the lake from Loconda. Not surprisingly, all the standard SV hotties are in attendance.
- Jessica starts a petition at Loconda to have a dance with the BOYS!! Everyone signs it.
- She canoes over to the BOYS’!! camp, even though contact is strictly Verboten, and hands off the petition. All the BOYS!! sign it too.
- The BOYS!! return the petition, all signed, during the campout ambush. Jessica tries to plan a way to present it to Mrs. Edwards (which is when Barbara butts in), but she doesn’t need to because…
- The BOYS!! kept asking their counselors when the dance was happening. Way to keep it on the DL, guys. Camp officials talk.
- The dance happens. Jessica is praised for her ingenuity and absurd, desperate, single-mindedness.