Free True Blue by Deborah Ellis

night.”
    She stops. “What are you talking about? We’ll have fun. I can gather up all my insect traps and we can check the trails for tuck-shop trash. It will be like we’re putting the camp to bed—Is that Stephanie?”
    It is. I can recognize that damned pink Tinker Bell shirt from across the camp.
    She is being marched through the field by Jan, the pottery instructor.
    “She’s all yours,” Jan says. “She’s done with pottery.”
    “What happened?” I ask.
    “She kept throwing clay at people and wrecking their projects.”
    “Why did you do that?” Casey asks her.
    “Just for fun,” Stephanie says.
    “She’s all yours,” Jan says again, and leaves the brat with us.
    “You might as well help us get ready for arts and crafts,” Casey says.
    “I want to look through your microscope,” Stephanie says.
    “You just got thrown out of pottery,” I say. “Why should you get what you want?”
    “Because my mother paid a lot of money to send me here so that I could do what I want to do. And I want to look through your microscope.”
    “Not now,” Casey says. “Now we are getting ready for arts and crafts.”
    “No.”
    We don’t answer her. She stops asking. We set up the picnic tables for crafts and the rest of the cabin soon joins us. Casey cuts big butterfly shapes out of the plastic drop cloths and gets the kids to paint designs on them. While the paint is drying, we go on a hunt for long sticks. Two sticks get attached to each butterfly. The kids run and swoop with them across the field, the butterflies blowing behind them, and I have to admit that they look pretty good.
    Casey and I sit on the picnic table, tightening paint lids and watching the kids run around.
    “What I said before,” I begin, “about you not wanting time later. I know it wasn’t true. It’s just that the summer has gone by so fast. Things are going to change soon. Everything has gone by so fast—”
    “How many kids are out there?” Casey asks, interrupting me. “One, two, three, four—I wish they’d hold still…there’s only seven butterflies.” She stands up and raises the whistle to her lips to blow the buddies signal.
    “Leave it,” I say. “How many times are we going to chase after her? The kids are having fun. Leave them be.”
    “We should go look for her,” Casey says. “Who knows what she’s throwing in the swamp?”
    “Maybe she’ll be eaten by a snapping turtle,” I say.
    “Or a praying mantis,” says Casey.
    We both make our secret signal, and we laugh. Casey is back with me again. I am happy enough to suggest running with the kids, and we race out onto the field.
    “We are starlings,” Casey tells them, “and we are hungry for butterflies!”
    We play this new game of chase until the bell rings to tell everyone to get cleaned up for supper. We bug-walk back to the cabin, sweaty and happy, to find that Stephanie has wreaked a path of destruction. All the kids’ crafts—their spider webs made from sticks and wool, the dragonfly mobile hanging from the ceiling, the pictures made with stuff they found on nature hikes—are torn and crumpled on the floor.
    And the microscope is missing.
    “What are you looking at me for?” Stephanie says from her bunk, where she’s reading a Ramona book and eating a contraband Three Musketeers bar. “I didn’t do anything.”
    I leave Casey with the kids and go find Mrs. Keefer.
    “Stephanie can’t stay with us,” I say. “She’s making everybody miserable. And she stole Casey’s microscope! Casey babysat for six months to buy it.”
    What if there are difficult people in Australia? Casey will ask me. How will I manage without you? You’d better come with me.
    Mrs. Keefer sighs and shakes her head in defeat. She takes me into her little closet of an office, pulls Stephanie’s file and punches her aunt’s number into the phone. Mrs. Keefer leaves a cautious message, asking Stephanie’s aunt to call back to discuss some issues with