Code Name Cassandra Read Free Page B

and if anyone had ever suffered from a case of the I’m-So-Greats, it was Karen Sue. Seriously. The girl totally thought she was all that, just because her dad owned the biggest car dealership in town, she happened to be blonde, and she played fourth chair flute in our school orchestra.
    And yeah, you had to audition to make the Symphonic Orchestra, and yeah, it had won all these awards and was mostly made up of only juniors and seniors, and Karen and I had both made it as sophomores, but please. I ask you, in the vast spectrum of things, is fourth chair in Symphonic Orchestra anything? Anything at all? Not. So not.
    Not to Karen it wasn’t, though. She would never rest until she was first chair. But to get there, she had to challenge and beat the person in third chair.
    Yeah. Me.
    And I can tell you, that was so not going to happen. Not in this world. I wouldn’t call making third chair of Ernest Pyle High School’s Symphonic Orchestra a world-class accomplishment, or anything, but it wasn’t something I was going to let Karen Sue take away from me. No way.
    Not like she was taking Frangipani Cottage away from me.
    Well, frangipani, I decided, was a stupid plant, anyway. Smelly. A big smelly flower. Birch trees were way better.
    That’s what I told myself, anyway.
    It wasn’t until I actually got to Birch Tree Cottage that I changed my mind. Okay, first off, can I just tell you what a logistical nightmare it was going to be, supervising eight little boys? How was I even going to be able to take a shower without one of them barging in to use the John, or worse, spying on me, as young boys—and some not so young ones, as illustrated by my older brothers, who spend inordinate amounts of time
gazing
with binoculars at Claire Lippman, the girl next door—are wont to do?
    Plus Birch Tree Cottage was the farthest cabin from everything—the pool, the amphitheater, the music building. It was practically in the
woods
. There was no lake view here. There was not even any light here, since the thickly leafed tree branches overhead let in not the slightest hint of sun. Everything was damp and smelled faintly of mildew. There
was
mildew in the showers.
    Let me be the first to tell you: Birch Tree Cottage? Yeah, it sucked.
    I missed Frangipani Cottage, and the little girls whose hair I could have been French braiding, already. If I knew how to French braid, that is.
    Still, maybe they could have taught me. My little girl campers, I mean.
    And when I’d stowed my stuff away and stepped outside the cabin and saw the first of my charges heading toward me, lugging their suitcases and instruments behind them, I missed Frangipani Cottage even more.
    I’m serious. You never saw a scruffier, more sour-faced group of kids in your life. Ranging in age from ten to twelve years old, these were no mischievous-but-good-at-heart Harry Potters.
    Oh, no.
    Far from it.
    These kids looked exactly like what they were: spoiled little music prodigies whose parents couldn’t wait to take a six-week vacation from them.
    The boys all stopped when they saw me and stood there, blinking through the lenses of their glasses, which were fogged up on account of the humidity. Their parents, who were helping them with their luggage, looked like they were longing to get as far from Camp Wawasee as they possibly could—preferably to a place where pitchers of margaritas were being served.
    I hastened to say the speech I’d been taught at counselor training. I remembered to substitute the words
birch tree
for
frangipani
.
    “Welcome to Birch Tree Cottage,” I said. “I’m your counselor, Jess. We’re going to have a lot of fun together.”
    The parents, you could tell, couldn’t care less that I wasn’t a boy. They seemed pleased by the fact that I clearly bathed regularly and could speak English.
    The boys, however, looked shocked. Sullen and shocked.
    One of them went, “Hey, you’re a
girl
.”
    Another one wanted to know, “What’s a girl counselor