Lally Sunshine All Around Camper (eBook)

Leslie Chalson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
178 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-2136-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Nine year old Lally is leaving for summer camp for the very first time and all she wants to do is have big fun and fit in. She wants to feel like a part of the group right away and so she brings her lucky rabbit's foot from home to give her that extra little something! But when she meets a really friendly new girl on the bus ride to camp and they make a plan to sleep right next to each other, she is gobsmacked when told they won't even be in the same bunk! Looks like her rabbit's foot might not give her the luck she counted on.

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Leaving home for an extended period of time can be daunting for an adult and completely overwhelming for a child, especially when the child is a nine year old named Lally. She frets when getting ready to pack and leave, and is embarrassed to discuss it with her older sister or her parents. She certainly doesn't want to appear to be a crybaby, but she is about to embark on a summer adventure and wants to have fun and feel accepted by the new girls she's about to meet. so what's a nine year old supposed to do? She's about to find out, because the bus is leaving in just a few ore days...

Textauszug

4

Girls’ Hill

By the time we finished our treats, and everyone was back in their seats, our bus was repaired and ready to roll. Cookie announced that the trip to camp would take another hour, so we should sit back, relax, and get ready to sing some camp songs.

I looked at Betts and told her that my mom and dad had met at camp, so I had heard some songs at home, but knew none of the words. Just at that exact moment, Cookie appeared with song sheets for all of us to look at. The first song was called “Route 22.” We thought singing about a road was very funny, and started to giggle, but when the older campers started to sing it, it all made perfect sense.

“Route 22, that’ll take you my way, straight back to that camp, Route 22, northern winding highway, straight to that wonderful camp.”

While the singing was going strong, Betts whispered, “Your parents really met and fell in love at Wahconah and Potomac? How romantic,” she sighed.

“Yeah, and my dad is still friendly with some of the boys from his bunk. They all get together and act like doofuses and retell this one famous baseball story. Someday we’ll have to get him to act it out for you. My mom still has friends from Wahconah too. They refer to themselves as Amazon women ‘cause they’re all good athletes—not sure where that comes from, are you?”

“Anyone else from your family ever go here? Aunts, uncles, grandparents?”

“I don’t think so. How about your family?”

“I have an older sister. She goes here too as I told you before, and I have a younger sister at home.”

“What’s your older sister’s name?”

“Nan. She’s a Subbie.”

“Is she blonde like you?” I asked.

“All three of us are blonde. It’s a Bettinger trait, I guess,” she said.

“My sister’s a brunette like me, and she’s a Subbie too; maybe they know each other. It’s nice to have an older sister here, isn’t it? It kind of helps from feeling homesick, don’t you think, Betts?”

“I never thought of it that way because this is my first year, but I guess it does.”

“So you and Nan are the only ones from your family to ever come here?”

“Definitely.”

“Well, I guess that makes me and Teddy what they call second-generation campers.”

“Who’s Teddy?”

“My sister, remember, the one you saw when we changed seats.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Cookie passed our row. “C’mon, girls, where’s that Wahconah spirit? Join in for the next song.” We looked at the song sheet to find they were up to “We Welcome You to Wahconah.”

“Here goes nothing,” Betts said, and we all followed along.

“We welcome you to Wahconah. We’re mighty glad you’re here. We’ll send the air reverberating with a mighty cheer. We’ll sing you in, we’ll sing you out, we’ll give the world a mighty shout. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here for the summer of ’59.”

By the time we finished all the songs on the sheet, we were turning onto a street named Bull Hill Road. The bus wandered down the winding road and slowed just as the WAHCONAH FOR GIRLS~POTOMAC FOR BOYS sign came into view.

“This is it, Betts.” We looked at each other, gulped hard, and shook hands like we were making the deal of a lifetime.

Cookie’s voice boomed again over the loudspeaker.

“WELCOME TO CAMPS WAHCONAH~POTOMAC, GIRLS WILL DE-BUS AT THE BOTTOM OF GIRLS’ HILL. BOYS WILL REMAIN ON THE BUS AND CONTINUE UP THE MAIN ROAD TO BOYS’ HILL. SEE Y‘ALL SOON AND HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!”

With our hands over our ears so we couldn’t hear her or each other, I yelled, “DOES SHE THINK WE’RE ALL DEAF?”

The entire bus erupted in a burst of laughter. I could feel my face getting beet red. Oh gosh, me and my big mouth. I looked up to find Teddy’s eyes searching mine to see if I had survived what had to be my most embarrassing moment. “I’m such a...”

“No, you’re not,” Betts chimed in. That’s a real friend, I thought.

It seemed like an eternity had passed by the time the kids got off the bus with all their bus bags, canteens, and tennis racquets. The older girls had portable hair dryers in big round cases, which we weren’t allowed to bring because our bunks weren’t wired for them and because the camp mothers were supposed to wash the little kids’ hair. I thought that was unfair, since I had been showering by myself since February, and besides, who were these camp mothers, anyway?

Girls’ Hill was exactly that—a hill so big it seemed like a small mountain. There were tree roots sticking out all over the place and slippery moss growing everywhere. The pine trees were so tremendous I could barely see the tops without craning my neck all the way back. The girls’ head counselor, Suz, was standing with a clipboard near the white-gated entrance that spelled out W-A-H-C-O-N-A-H in big green letters. Suz had silky, dark red hair, a friendly face, and an inviting voice that she used to direct us up the hill to the flagpole.

“Let’s go, girls, straight up the hill, watch the tree roots along the way.” No kidding, I thought. “Just follow me.”

On we went, like little goslings following our mother goose, waddling from side to side trying to balance our loads. There was a special perfume in the air, and it wasn’t from the older girl tramping in front of me either, because it didn’t smell like “Shalimar” or “Tabu,” or any other perfume Teddy wore for special occasions. It smelled sweet and woodsy, and I liked it a lot.

“Did you see that bunk over there? It’s huge. Do you think ours will be as big, Sunny?”

“Maybe that wasn’t a bunk at all. Maybe it was where the camp mothers wash our hair.”

“What’s a camp mother?”

“A lady who’s supposed to wash our hair and trim our nails and all that dumb stuff. Teddy told me about them. Last year, there was this lady named Aunt Bertha.”

We were so busy wondering about who would wash our hair that by the time we looked up, we were gazing, with mouths wide open, at the tallest flagpole we’d ever seen. It was topped with a beautiful sky-blue ball smothered in gold stars, with the most gigantic American flag waving in the breeze. We’d made it to the top of our summer mountain, Girls’ Hill.

There were six double-sided white wooden cabins with green shutters, gray roofs, and gray porches, definitely big enough to play jacks, facing the flagpole on one side of campus, and another six wood-bark-covered cabins with white shutters and porches whose backs faced the flagpole, on the other side of the oval. The whole center was carpeted in thick, soft green grass that must have been mowed that morning because it smelled so grassy-sweet.

While I was looking around, Suz was explaining where everything was.

“Junior and Middie girls will summer in the white cabins numbered 1-12.”

“Boy, that’s a funny way of putting it. She means we’ll live in those cabins, right?” Betts asked.

“Ssshh. I guess so.”

“All sub-Seniors will find their way to the bark cabins numbered 13-24. Please take a minute to check your nametag and note what number, 1-24, is printed under your name, then take all your belongings and walk to your porches. Your counselors will tell you everything else you need to know about unpacking and preparing for dinner. See you all at the flagpole for lineup!” And Suz was off to headquarters.

“Oh, so that’s what these numbers are under our names. Uh oh, our numbers don’t match. I’m 6 and you’re 5. That means we won’t be in the same cabin. What are we gonna do?”

I felt my stomach doing somersaults, and I was feeling clammy. Betts had noticed the difference in our numbers before I did, and she was dead right. I didn’t want to cry, and I knew she didn’t want to either, but from the way we both looked, we were very close to tears, and we hadn’t even met our counselors!

“Don’t panic,” I said. “There must be some mistake or something. Let’s go meet our counselors and ask them.”

The porch of cabin 5-6 was a tangle of ten other confused, tired, and cranky nine-year-olds. Betts stormed the porch and asked the first tall girl she could find. “My name is Bonnie Bettinger and I know I’m supposed to be in the same cabin as my best friend Lally Sunshine here, but our numbers on our tags don’t match. What should we do now?”

Her story was so dramatic that Joey, the counselor, smiled just a little smile out of the right corner of her mouth. Betts didn’t notice because she was about to have a hissy fit any second.

“Well, let me see.” Joey walked toward Betts and motioned for me to come along too. We walked off the porch and stood facing the cabin where it was a little quieter.

“First, let’s introduce ourselves. I’m the counselor for cabin 6, Josephine Birke, also known as Joey.”

“I’m Lally Sunshine.”

“I’m Bonnie Bettinger.”

“Okay, that was easy. Now tell me what the problem is, girls.”

I spoke up first because Betts was already wiping a tear from her left cheek. “We were on bus two together and we’ve become very good friends. We even gave each other nicknames on the bus, and we just thought that since we were the same age, we’d be in the same cabin.”

“That sounds like a...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.2.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-2136-9 / 1667821369
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-2136-8 / 9781667821368