Code Name Cassandra Read Free Page A

wasn’t at the restaurant, the only people I’d have to hang around with would be my parents (no thanks); my brother Mike, who was preparing to go away for his first year at Harvard and spent all the time on his computer e-mailing his new roommate, trying to determine who was bringing the minifridge and who was bringing the scanner; or my other brother, Douglas, who did nothing all day but read comic books in his room, coming out only for meals and
South Park
.
    Not to mention the fact that for weeks now, there’d been a white van parked across the street from our house that didn’t seem to belong to anyone in the neighborhood.
    Um, no thanks. I’d stay here, if it was all the same.
    “Um, yeah,” I said. “Whatever. Just tell me what cabin I’m assigned to now, and I’ll start moving my stuff.”
    Pamela actually hugged me. I can’t say a whole lot for her management skills. One thing you would not catch my father doing is hugging one of his employees for agreeing to do what he’d asked her to do. More like he’d have given her a big fat “so long” if she’d said anything but, “Yes, Mr. Mastriani.”
    “That’s great!” Pamela cried. “That’s just great. You are such a doll, Jess.”
    Yeah, that’s me. A regular Barbie.
    Pamela looked down at her clipboard. “You’ll be in Birch Tree Cottage now.”
    Birch Tree Cottage. I was giving up frangipani for birch. Story of my damned life.
    “Now I’ll just have to make sure the alternate can make it tonight.” Pamela was still looking down at her chart. “I think she’s from your hometown. And she’s a flutist, too. Maybe you know her. Karen Sue Hanky?”
    I had to bite back a great big laugh. Karen Sue Hanky? Now, if Karen Sue had found out
she
was being reassigned to a boys’ cabin, she
definitely
would have cried.
    “Yeah, I know her,” I said, noncommittally.
Boy
,
are you making a big mistake
, was what I thought to myself. But I didn’t say it out loud, of course.
    “She interviewed quite well,” Pamela said, still looking down at her clipboard, “but she only scored a five on performance.”
    I raised my eyebrows. It wasn’t news to me, of course, that Karen Sue couldn’t play worth a hang. But it seemed kind of wrong for Pamela to be admitting it in front of me. I guess she thought we were friends and all, on account of me not crying when she told me she was moving me to a boys’ cabin.
    The thing is, though, I already have all the friends I can stand.
    “And she’s only fourth chair,” Pamela murmured, looking down at her chart. Then she heaved this enormous sigh. “Oh, well,” she said. “What else can we do?”
    Pamela smiled down at me, then started back to the administrative offices. She had apparently forgotten the fact that I am only third chair, just one up from Karen Sue.
    My performance audition score, however, for the camp had been ten. Out of ten.
    Oh, yeah. I rock.
    Well, at playing the flute, anyway. I don’t actually rock at much else.
    I figured I’d better get a move on, if I was going to gather my stuff before any of the Frangipanis showed up and got the wrong idea … like that Camp Wawasee was unorganized or something. Which, of course, they were, as both the disaster with the sign—the one I told you about earlier—and the fact that they’d hired me attested to. I mean, had they even run my name through Yahoo!, or anything? If they had, they might have gotten an unpleasant little surprise.
    Skirting the pack of friendly—a little
too
friendly, if you ask me; you had to shove them out of your way with your knees to escape their long, hot tongues—dogs that roamed freely around the camp, I headed back to Frangipani Cottage, where I began throwing my stuff into the duffel bag I’d brought it all in. It burned me up a little to think that Karen Sue Hanky was the one who was going to get to enjoy that excellent view of Lake Wawasee from what had been my bed. I’d known Karen Sue since kindergarten,