Ann Martin - Mary Anne And Camp

I looked over there and saw Carolyn and David Michael scrambling to their feet. "Uh," David Michael said, "we didn't, exactly."

That didn't faze Kristy. "Oh? Well, keep up the good work. Now, who can do cartwheels? It's very important that we have at least one clown who can do cartwheels ..."

"Raaaarrrr,"shrieked Claire. "I'm a wild animal and I'm going to bite you, Andrew. I'm a lion!"

"Well, I'm a giant tiger and I'm bigger than you are!" Andrew shrieked back.

"If you're a giant tiger, we'll have to draw giant tiger whiskers on your face for the circus," Claudia intervened hastily. "Let's draw a picture of what you want your tiger face to look like."

Alicia, I was relieved to note, didn't seem at all disturbed by the wild animal war. She sat calmly next to Jamie, gluing something together. . I turned back to the circus snobs.

"Okay, you guys," Mal was saying. "You don't have to be in the circus. You can just sit quietly and watch everybody practice and make costumes."

Karen frowned.

"Good idea," I said quickly. "We'll set up a special table for all the people who are being left out of the circus. We'll even give you a special place to sit when we put the show on for the parents on the last day of camp."

Karen frowned harder. Then she said, "It's a dumb circus. I guess we'd better be in it just to make sure it isn't too dumb."

"Yeah," said Ricky. I saw his eyes turn toward the circus dancers, who were spinning like tops as Jessi watched. Then he said, "Maybe I could be a dancer."

"Dancers in the circus? That's silly." Karen wrinkled her nose. "You should have a trapeze act."

"You could try out the circus dance and see if. you like it, Ricky. If Jessi will let you,” said Mal. (Of course, we knew Jessi would let more kids join, but we didn't want to make it seem too easy.)

A moment later, Ricky, Nancy, and Hannie were walking toward Jessi's group.

Karen watched them go. "Dancing," she said scornfully.

Mal said, "Jessi's got a big group over there, maybe I could help her."

I nodded. I was thinking. "Well, if we can't have a tightrope act, what about a high board act?" I suggested.

Bobby said, "What?"

Looking toward the barn, I watched Logan and Vanessa dragging a bale of hay out of it. "Like with a couple of bales of hay," I said slowly. "We could put a board between a couple of bales of hay and do some balancing tricks on that."

"Oh, brother, how exciting," Karen said sarcastically.

"Karen's right," said Chris. "That's not hard at all."

I said, "You can't do them up high, so it won't be exciting to wonder if you're going to fall off. But maybe you could do some cool tricks anyway."

"I guess," Bobby said.

"Let's get a couple of bales of hay and a board and give it a try," I said, leading the three kids toward the barn.

Bobby and Chris ran ahead of me and Dawn waved at them. "Hey. Temporary roustabouts! Give me a hand with this bale."

"We should make a hay carpet from the barn to the circus ring," said Vanessa. "A special circus carpet would be just the thing."

"Good idea," said Logan. He tore some hay from a bale and began to scatter it on the ground.

Carolyn tore some hay from the bale and dropped it on Haley's head.

Linny was one of the kids who'd been to circus camp, but when Dawn had asked for "big, strong" volunteers he hadn't been able to resist. He was helping — reluctantly — but suddenly he dropped his circus snob pose, grabbed another handful of hay, and flung it at Logan.

"Hay fight, hay fight," chanted Nicky happily and plunged in.

For a moment, the hay flew. When Dawn and Logan laughingly called it quits, everyone looked like scarecrows. It made me itch just to look at them.

I was glad I'd managed to stay out of the way of the flying hay.

I wasn't the only one who hadn't gotten

involved. I looked around to see Karen just standing there, a brooding look on her face.

"Have you decided what — if anything — you want to do in the circus?" I asked her.

Narrowing her eyes, Karen shook her head. "I'm thinking!" she said. "I'm thinking!"

Chapter 6.

"Oh, oh, oh HI oh," my father sang, way, way off key. I winced and covered my ears but I was laughing.

"That bad, huh?" said Dad. "Okay, I'll stop." He disappeared down the hall. I heard him say, "I know I left my extra pair of brown socks in this drawer."

It was Sunday, the end of the first week of Camp BSC and the day my father was leaving for Cleveland, Ohio. I hadn't forgotten, exactly, but I'd been so busy with Camp BSC that I'd lost track of when he was leaving until Sharon had said something about a special going-away lunch for Dad on Sunday.

"A calling-all-cookbooks blowout feast," Sharon said. "And then it's the last time I stove-wrestle until Richard comes home again."

I'd had to laugh. "You mean you're giving up cooking until then?"

"Until then," she'd agreed. "You want some input on this blowout feast?"

"Definitely," I said.

So now I was headed downstairs to help Dawn set the table and start lunch, which was really a brunch menu: cold poached salmon (Sharon's recipe) with asparagus vinaigrette (we were serving that hot, with Dawn's special oil and vinegar herb dressing). Dawn and I were even making real bread, from the ground up. I hadn't done that before, but Dawn had, back in California.

While the bread was baking and the warm asparagus that we'd just cooked was marinating, Dawn and I set the table and made a bouquet of flowers from the back flowerbed. We had plenty of flowers to choose from. Sharon's gardening is sort of like her housekeeping — a little of this and a little of that thrown together. It made for a colorful flowerbed and a beautiful big bunch of flowers.

Sharon came downstairs and made fresh squeezed orange juice and coffee and even heated the milk for the coffee and put it in a pitcher .on the table, just as my father came down the stairs.

"Mmm," he said. "Something smells good."

"Homemade bread," said Dawn, pointing to the basket, where the bread was wrapped in a red and white checkered dishcloth.

"Brunch is served," said Sharon grandly and she escorted Dad to his seat at the table and held his chair for him. That made Dawn and me giggle.

We sat down and ate and talked, and I thought how much I like my family (I often get these thoughts when we are gathered around the dinner table, most often when it is for a special meal).

Then my dad looked at his watch and said, "Time for half a cup more," and shifted into his organized-husband-and-father routine. That meant that between sips of coffee, he went over all the lists of where things were and who to call if something broke and where he would be and what needed to be done while he was away.

Sharon was cool. She didn't remind Dad that she and Dawn and Jeff had lived in the house awhile before Dad got there, so of course she knew where things were and who to call if something broke that she couldn't fix it herself. She thanked Dad for reminding her (twice) to be sure to have the oil changed on the car the moment it had gone another fifty miles.

So Dawn and I nodded and smiled, too, as Dad reminded us to do our chores (as if we hadn't been doing them all along!) and not to get into any trouble. We were careful not to