The others are still milling around the lodge, and our cabin is halfway down the hill. A knot spazzes in my stomach. What did Sara get us into? I’ve been feeling so odd and got kind of carried away during the skit. It was so amazing how it all fell into place. But now I need to think. Now it’s done, over with, and I need to think. After the fact.

It’s dark, but the outdoor lighting will stay on until taps. Under the lights, we make weird overlapping shadows on the path.

I have no desire to talk. I need to think. However, I don’t do any thinking. My body hits the cot and the nervous energy that fueled me all day crashes. I’m gone almost as soon as they pull the sheet over me and turn off the lights.

Day Nine

Day Nine

Resistance is necessary to measure the strength of the dominant force.

“Are we in trouble?” Margie whispers.

I shrug.

“I think Sara’s in trouble. Don’t you?”

I nod. Without a doubt, she’s in trouble. She vanished with Sue right after breakfast; we know they’re in Mr. Bob’s little office, getting dressed down. We know, but none of us mentions it. There was no mention during the whole getting-up routine, no mention during breakfast at the lodge. No mention until Margie of all people brings it up.

Margie sits on my footlocker and stares at her sneaker scraping the floor. “I hope Sara’s not being punished. It ain’t right. We all did it.”

Something makes me want to hug her. Her body seems to cry for comfort, a body so worried, wrapped in big happy bands of yellow and blue polyester. But instead of hugging, I grin my silly spastic grin. Margie’s face goes light. I sit up straight to say everything will be all right.

She stands up and pushes the broom across the floor for the third time. In the dustpan she collects barely a thimbleful of sand. “No way Mr. Bob going to find sand in this cabin. Not the least little bit.”

“Margie,” Denise says, “I heard the other cabins leaving a while back. Mr. Bob should be here now. I think he won’t be inspecting today.”

“That’s all right, I reckon.”

“Yeah, who needs Mr. Bob anyway?” Denise bobs her head. “Margie, you know more about clean than he ever dreamed of! Just tell me how these blinds look.”

Margie hides her face behind her hands, but she can’t resist peeking through her fingers at the blinds. They are level all around, with cords coiled like new spools of thread.

“Let’s put up all these things,” she says. Margie, Denise, and Peggy Jo take toiletries off the window ledges and stow them in footlockers. Finally, Margie sets my teddy bear on my pillow, so straight he could be posing for a portrait.