The Pandora Device Read online

  The Pandora Device

  Camp Hawthorne Book One

  Joyce McPherson

  The Pandora Device

  Camp Hawthorne Book One

  Chapter One

  Grandma didn’t like to talk about my parents, even when I asked. The sparkle would fade from her eyes, and her arms would wrap around me and hold me tight.

  She seemed to gather strength from the bags of clothing, newspapers and odd gadgets she brought home every day, sorting them into piles at night until the rooms were crammed full with only a path down the middle.

  For me, the rooms were like caves filled with treasure, and I used to invite Lindsey over to help me explore. I liked to think about the things we found—a black typewriter, a bomber hat, a spindly lace umbrella—they all belonged to someone once. There must be stories.

  But the stories just stayed in my head until the day we found the box.

  We were sorting through a pile of clothes, and Lindsey had tied a fringed shawl around her head so that only wisps of her blond hair showed.

  “Look Stella. I’m a gypsy queen,” she said, rattling some bangles on her arms.

  “And I’m a pirate.” I buckled on a leather belt and poked through another mound of stuff in hopes of finding boots.

  Near the bottom, a moldy boot was caught under a rickety sewing machine. I tugged at it, but it wouldn’t budge. I finally pulled so hard that the machine creaked, and a rusty box flew free with the boot.

  “Treasure,” Lindsey said.

  I rubbed the grime from the lid, and a sudden lump rose in my throat. Faint letters were scratched on the box—Franny. My mother’s name.

  My fingers prickled as I opened the lid.

  Inside lay some faded photos and a red bandana, tied in a knot. I loosened it, and a key chain fell out. For a moment it sparkled in the dim room, but I looked again and it was just blue and white plastic, braided into a rope with an empty key ring at the end.

  “Did you see that?” Lindsey asked, touching the key ring lightly.

  “Let’s show Grandma,” I said.

  We dashed down the hall to her library and squeezed through the stacks of newspapers that filled the room like yellowed skyscrapers.

  She sat in her recliner in the midst of them, and I had a quick image of those towers slowly tilting until they whooshed across the floor and through the front door. That was my biggest nightmare—that the whole neighborhood would find out about Grandma’s collections.

  “Look what we found,” I said.

  Her face crinkled in a smile at the sight of us, but when she saw the box she put a hand on her heart. “I thought that was lost. It’s your mother’s keepsakes from camp.” She pulled out one of the pictures. “And here she is with your father.” Her gray eyes swept the room with the sad look she got when she talked about the past.

  I held my breath as I took the photo. A girl with a bandana gripped one end of an oar painted with the words Camp Hawthorne. By her side a boy grabbed the other end and waved at the camera. The picture gave me a heavy feeling in my chest. When I was little I didn’t think about my parents much, but now that I was in sixth grade, it was different.

  “Something odd about that camp,” she said softly.

  I hugged the box, hoping she’d tell us more. “What was it?”

  She hesitated, and her hands fell weak in her lap. “I can’t remember, Stella.” I touched her arm, but she was far away, lost in her thoughts.

  I pulled Lindsey aside. “Let’s see if we can find the camp on the White Whale.”

  The White Whale was our name for my old-style laptop, clunky and thick. It came from one of Grandma’s friends and was so ancient, it barely connected to the internet. The case was shiny white except for one corner where scratch marks covered a logo. I’d hidden the damage with a round sticker, and Lindsey had painted Stella on it.

  We ran down the street to Lindsey’s house to use her wi-fi. Peanut butter and granola cookies were cooling on a wire rack, and we filled a plate while we waited for the screen to flicker to life.

  The White Whale chugged as I nibbled on a warm cookie. “Wouldn’t it be exciting if the camp was still there?”

  Lindsey studied the photo. “Look what’s written on the back—Franny and Dan. Their names almost rhyme. How romantic.”

  That’s what I like about Lindsey. She appreciates details like that.

  The White Whale beeped, and I typed in the words Camp Hawthorne. A link zipped into view.

  “It still exists.” My voice seemed to come from somewhere far away.

  I tapped the mouse, and a picture appeared of a lake with three green canoes lined up on the shore. In the distance, pine trees ringed the lake under a blue sky. I stared at the image, trying to memorize every detail. Had my parents paddled those canoes once?

  “There’s a tab for admissions,” Lindsey said, her voice squeaking.

  I clicked the tab, and the lake slipped away, replaced by a white screen. I read aloud:

  Dear Educators,

  Camp Hawthorne is a private camp for students who pass a specialized screening test. If you have students with an interest in camp, please contact us at the email address below.

  “What does that mean?” Lindsey asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.” My brain felt fizzy like a bottle of root beer. I’d found a link to my parents at last.

  If anyone could find out more about Camp Hawthorne, it would be Mrs. Taylor, our school guidance counselor. I met her when I started having trouble breathing. It was like a big fat cat was sitting on my chest. My teacher noticed I was taking deep breaths and sent me to the school nurse, who said nothing was wrong and sent me on to Mrs. Taylor. I had to visit her once a month and report on my breathing. It didn’t get any better, but I enjoyed talking to her. Her office was filled with posters of kids doing interesting things, like building robots and hiking in the woods. She always asked a lot of questions and then told me to stop worrying about things. Easy for her to say.

  The next day I got to school early and tried to duck into Mrs. Taylor’s office before anyone noticed. Unfortunately, Ellen and her gaggle of friends spotted me. “You’re not in trouble again, are you?” she asked, straightening the headband in her curly red hair. There was an incident years ago with my grandmother, and Ellen never let me forget it.

  I plastered a smile on my face. “No, just doing a little research.” I hoped my tone sounded nonchalant. Nonchalant was one of our vocabulary words this week, and it meant calm. I was determined to be more nonchalant.

  Mrs. Taylor was pecking at her keyboard with two fingers but seemed glad to take a break when she saw me in the doorway. “What can I do for you, Stella?”

  I sat in the plump chair she had for students. “Have you ever heard of Camp Hawthorne?” I asked.

  “Should I know about it?” She adjusted her glasses and peered at the posters on her walls as though they might have an answer.

  “It’s a summer camp,” I said. “They have information online, but you have to take a test.”

  “Hmm, that may be a good sign. Entrance exams often come with scholarships.” She typed the camp name and clicked through the pages online. “The information’s here. We don’t have much time before summer break, but let me see what I can find.”

  Ellen and her gang were waiting for me when I came out of Mrs. Taylor’s office.

  “Did you get your research done?” Ellen asked. She turned to her friends and spoke in a loud voice so that everyone in the hallway would hear. “Stella had to see the guidance counselor, but she doesn’t want us to know.”

  The other girls giggled, and my face burned. I stuck my chin in the air. “If you must know, I was researchi
ng options for camp.”

  Ellen opened her mouth to reply, but I walked away before she cooked up something else to say.

  For the rest of the morning I swung between hope that Mrs. Taylor would contact Camp Hawthorne and doubt that she could do anything. I knew she meant well, but it wasn’t reasonable to expect her to drop everything and investigate camp for me.

  At lunch only two chairs were left, so Lindsey and I had to sit next to Jayden. He had brown skin and close cropped hair, and with the camouflage shirts he always wore, he looked more like a soldier than a kid. He lived across the street from me, and we did everything together when we were little. But now he walked around, never answering, as though he was under interrogation in an enemy prison. He shifted away from us and bent over his book.

  Lindsey held up a necklace made from feathers and beads. “It’s called a dream catcher.”

  When I first met Lindsey four years ago, she was wearing a white tutu and a crown. Now that we were in sixth grade, she dressed almost normally, but I still had to be ready for whatever wild idea she might have.

  She dangled the dream catcher in the air, and the feathers whirled around. “Magic’s coming,” she said.

  “You don’t still believe in magic?” Sometimes I had to remind Lindsey of the real world.

  “What’s wrong with it?” She slipped the necklace over her head and looked at me expectantly.

  That was a tough one. I still liked books about magic, but I was planning to be a scientist when I grew up. “Well, it’s not scientific.”

  “What if magic is just super-advanced science?” She pulled out a pen and began doodling swirls on her lunch bag. “You know our teacher said there’s stuff even scientists don’t know yet.”

  She had a point. People from the Middle Ages would probably assume we had magic if they saw us talking on the phone or flying in an airplane.

  I was still thinking about Lindsey’s ideas when Mrs. Taylor, nodding and smiling, caught me in the hallway after lunch. “It’s the strangest thing about that camp—I’d never heard of it, but it has the endorsement of the school superintendent and the PTA. The camp will provide scholarships if we have a qualifying team of three students, so I’ve arranged for our school to host the test.”

  “What if they can’t find enough kids who want to take the test?”

  “Not a problem at all,” she said as she scuttled back to her office. “They’re giving it to your entire class.”

  I walked in late to class to hear our teacher giving the announcement for the exam. Everyone groaned, and some of them looked at me accusingly. I wondered how word had gotten out so fast. Probably Ellen. That meant none of the other girls would want to go, even if they passed the test. I took a deep breath. The heavy-cat-on-my-chest feeling was coming back.

  Chapter Two

  On the way home from school, I found Jayden in front of his house, slamming a basketball through the rickety hoop. I called his name, and he scowled, pausing to spin the ball on one finger. “What do you want?”

  “I was wondering if you’d go to camp if you passed the screening test,” I said.

  He dribbled the ball around his driveway, his arms a blur. The ball pounded like gun shots, and he sprang for a basket. “No.”

  “Mrs. Taylor said we have to get three qualifying students for a team.”

  I asked him again, but he shook his head. It made me mad when Jayden wouldn’t answer, but it didn’t do any good to argue. It was easier talking to his grandmother. Miss Charlotte lived with his family, and she was the whirlwind of the neighborhood. She took charge of the neighborhood watch and the community clean-up and everything else she could organize. I had an idea that if I told her about camp, she’d make Jayden go.

  Jayden shot one basket after the other, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of sticking around while he ignored me. I marched back to my yard, trying to keep from exploding.

  Our house was the last on the row and suffered from a general sagging. The roof slanted at crazy angles, and the gingerbread trim was barely recognizable because of bits that had rotted away. Grandma’s pushcart was parked behind the porch. She must have come home early from her thrift store rounds. Sure enough, broken baskets and bags full of stuff were piled near the door.

  I was holding my breath, and I let it out in a sigh.

  Tackling the larger bags first, I carried soft items like clothes to the piles in the living room. Newspapers I took to the library, where I found Grandma asleep in her recliner.

  I was hoping to tell her the news about Camp Hawthorne, but it could wait till dinner. Instead, I sat on the porch and got out my math homework. Today it was percents and probabilities, which intrigued me. Numbers are usually dependable, but they can lie, too. For example, you can have a 90% chance of sunshine and still get rain. That’s because there’s a 10% chance you won’t get sunshine. You have to keep an eye on that possibility.

  Jayden passed by, hunched over an armload of books as though they were secret files. Maybe they were. He made trips like this to the library every week, but whenever I asked him what the books were about, he just shrugged.

  I hoped to see his grandmother soon. I figured my chances were pretty close to 100%. She stopped by every day to mention something that needed to be cleaned up, and my grandmother pretended she was not at home.

  Grandma was not at home for other people too. Like the brown people. We called them that because of their clothes. Even the women wore them—brown raincoats with clunky square-toed brown shoes to match. Lindsey and I made up sinister plots about them, but her mother said they were probably just employees of the water company. I wasn’t convinced, and it worried me that we were seeing more of them lately. According to my calculations, there was a 50% chance of seeing one on any particular day.

  As for Miss Charlotte, my prediction proved true before I even got to problem twenty-five in my math book. She came striding toward our house, walking tall with her shoulders back. The neighbors said she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders, but she didn’t look it.

  “I want to discuss these piles on your porch,” she began as a way of greeting.

  I looked around in a panic—I’d missed four garbage bags in the corner. “These belong inside,” I said, grabbing two bags and dragging them toward the door.

  Miss Charlotte nodded her approval. “Jayden tells me Mrs. Taylor has arranged a test for summer camp.”

  I hefted the bags through the door and went for the other two. “Do you think Jayden will come?”

  “Honey, he can say otherwise, but if he gets into that camp, I’ll make sure he’s there.”

  My arms felt powerful enough to carry four bags at once. “Thank you, Miss Charlotte. I was worried we wouldn’t get enough kids to go.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, you’ll get enough. I’ll make sure of it.”

  I watched her make her way to Lindsey’s house, where I knew her parents would learn about the summer camp idea. With Miss Charlotte on my side, things were going to happen.

  I went back inside, and Grandma stirred at the sound of my steps. “Dinner time already?” She shifted forward in the chair, her shoulders pulled low.

  “Don’t worry about dinner,” I said quickly. “I’ll make something for tonight.”

  I found a can of tuna in the bin for mystery cans. Tuna cans were easy to identify because they were thinner than the rest. The tall cans were usually vegetables—corn or green beans or beets. When the labels fell off, the store sold them for almost nothing. Grandma and I made a game of guessing what was in them, and I’d found that if I shook them gently I could pick the right vegetable. Grandma thought it was a nifty trick.

  As we ate our tuna sandwiches, I told Grandma my news. “Do you remember the photos from Camp Hawthorne?” I asked. “Lindsey and I found out it’s still there, and they’re going to take a team of three kids from our school.”

  Grandma's forehead puckered, and I hoped I hadn’t upset her.

&n
bsp; “I don’t have to go if you need me here.”

  “Nonsense. I’ve been taking care of you since you were a baby.” Her face relaxed. “Did you see what I found at the thrift store today? Two jackets and a whole bag of socks.”

  I’d stopped telling her I had enough clothes a long time ago. She would just remind me how fast children grew, and how it was her responsibility to take care of me now that my parents were gone. I didn’t want to have that discussion again.

  After dinner I sat by the front window to read until bedtime. When it grew too dark to see the words on the page, I stared out at the glowing street lamps and the moths flickering around the globes. I was thinking about camp and how to convince Jayden to go when a man in a brown raincoat stepped from behind a tree. He looked up at our roof and then stooped to pick up something from the ground.

  I caught my breath and leaned back into the curtains. But the dust made me sneeze, and when I looked again the man was gone.

  The day of the test finally came, and our teacher got us ready after lunch. She made a big deal about us being the first class at our school to take the exam. “It will not be like a math or English test,” she said. “This camp is for students with special abilities, and it’s quite an honor to receive an invitation. All expenses are paid.”

  A short knock sounded on the door, and a man with a green bow tie, blue shirt, khakis and black high top sneakers walked into the room. I’d never seen a grown-up dressed that way before.

  The man’s gaze swept back and forth across the rows of desks. “My name is Mr. Parker, and I’m from Camp Hawthorne.”

  “What’s it like?” Ellen asked. She wasn’t interested in camp before, but now she wanted to know everything about it.

  Instead of an answer, Mr. Parker began passing out blue test booklets. “Please print your name on the cover,” he said.

  I wrote on the line, making my letters straight and precise. I imagined Lindsey would be doodling a flower above the “i” in her name.