Charmed Forces #19 Read online

  Gwenda must have read the panic on Alyssa’s face, because she said, “No, it’s okay. I don’t mean that you did something bad. I’m talking about the predictions. Interpreting dreams. I heard some of your bunkmates talking about it last night. They said you even predicted the snow.”

  “It’s true,” Alyssa said. “That amethyst is magical.”

  “I don’t believe in magic,” Gwenda said. “And I doubt your predictions had anything to do with magic. The evidence is circumstantial and highly suspect. Yet still strangely compelling. So compelling that I set up an experiment. I tried to make some predictions myself, using the amethyst.”

  “You did?” Alyssa was amazed. “What happened?”

  “Well, this morning I tried interpreting some dreams. Winnie dreamed that she was eating a hamburger at a picnic table and a squirrel kept taking bites out of it. Weird, huh? So I concentrated and thought about what it could mean. I told her the squirrel represented time, taking bites out of her life.”

  “That’s depressing,” Alyssa said. “And kind of gross.”

  “Time is going by quickly,” Gwenda said. “I’ll be in eighth grade next year.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not exactly Death’s door. What did Winnie say about your interpretation?”

  “She said the squirrel was definitely biting a hamburger, not time, and mostly she was mad at the squirrel because she was hungry and wanted to eat the burger herself,” Gwenda said. “Then she told me to give up.”

  Alyssa shook her head. “There’s an art to this, Gwenda. You can’t just blurt out any old thing. People take their dreams seriously.”

  “I know. The truth is, when she told me her dream, I didn’t see anything. No visions or flashes of understanding. I just made something up.”

  “Were you holding Amy while you interpreted the dream?”

  “Amy?”

  “I named your amethyst Amy.”

  “Oh. Yes, I was holding it. I tried a couple more times, but nothing came to me. Nothing at all. I guessed that we’d have oatmeal for breakfast, but we had bacon and eggs. I felt like a fake.” She paused, picking at the grass. “How do you do it, Alyssa? How do you see the future? How do you make accurate predictions? Where do your visions come from?”

  “I—I don’t know. I guess I’ve got a gift,” Alyssa said, hoping she sounded more modest than she felt. She did have a gift—she knew she did. Maybe it had something to do with the amethyst; maybe it didn’t. The point was, Alyssa could read people, and she could read the world around her. The signs, the symbols, the portents. She was good at it.

  “Well, whatever it is, I don’t have it,” Gwenda said.

  “I still don’t see why you’re fessing up to me,” Alyssa said.

  “It’s by way of explanation for what I’m about to do,” Gwenda said. “Which, without the explanation, might appear illogical.”

  “Feel free to be illogical around me,” Alyssa said. “I don’t mind.”

  Gwenda reached into her pocket and pulled out the amethyst. She offered it to Alyssa.

  “Would you like to have it back?” she said.

  Alyssa gasped. There she was, good old Amy, sparkling purply in the sun. Alyssa had missed her so much! She reached for the rock, picked it up, and wrapped her fingers around it. It seemed to warm at her touch. Alyssa grinned broadly. “Thank you, Gwenda!”

  “I still need it for the nature fair,” Gwenda said. “So don’t lose it. But after that, you can keep it for good. I can always get another amethyst for my collection. But you seem to have a strong connection to this one. It wouldn’t make sense for me to keep it when you can do so much more with it. To me, science is magic. I don’t understand all that psychic stuff. But if it works, it works.”

  “Gwenda, you’re the sweetest!” Alyssa threw her arms around Gwenda’s neck in a big hug.

  “Thanks,” Gwenda said. “You will let me display the stone at the fair, right?”

  “Of course, of course.” Alyssa was so thrilled to have Amy again. She squeezed Amy tight and vowed never to let her go.

  “Alyssa, what are we having for dinner tonight?” Brynn asked. “I’m hungry now, but I don’t want to spoil my appetite by eating all these chips if we’re having something good.”

  “Just a minute, I’ll check.” Alyssa grabbed Amy from under her pillow and rubbed the smooth purple facets. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Suddenly, she thought she smelled fried chicken.

  There was her answer.

  “Fried chicken,” she said, opening her eyes.

  Brynn ate a chip, and then rolled the bag closed. “Excellent. I’ll save room for fried chicken.”

  “It’s so nice to have Amy back,” Natalie said. “It makes planning the future so much easier.”

  Chelsea rolled her eyes. “I’ll never believe Alyssa is psychic, period.”

  “What if we get to the mess hall and we’re having fried chicken?” Gaby said. “Then will you believe?”

  “No,” Chelsea said. “I said never, and I mean never.”

  “Dinnertime, girls,” Mandy said. “Let’s go get some fried chicken.”

  “So you believe in the amethyst’s power now, Mandy?” Alyssa said.

  “Sure,” Mandy said. “It was the snow that got me. That was too weird to be believed.”

  Alyssa put Amy in her little purse, ready to go to dinner. She didn’t care whether Chelsea believed—Amy was good luck and that’s all there was to it.

  The bunk 6B girls walked together to the mess hall and took their table. “It does smell like chicken,” Candace said.

  “Please,” Alyssa said. “Why do you doubt? Amy is infallible.”

  A CIT brought a platter of food and set it on the table. Alyssa stared at it.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Chicken cacciatore,” the CIT said.

  “See,” Chelsea said. “That’s not fried chicken. Alyssa the Infallible is wrong again.”

  “No I’m not.” Alyssa took some vegetables from the platter. “I said chicken, and this is chicken. Amy and I are still right.”

  “You said fried chicken,” Alex said. “This is chicken cacciatore. That’s totally different.”

  “No it’s not. It’d be one thing if I had said meat loaf and they brought chicken. But I said chicken and that’s what they brought.” So her prediction was a little off; there was no way Alyssa was admitting it to Chelsea.

  “Maybe you don’t get the difference because you’re a vegetarian,” Chelsea said. “But trust me, if I ordered fried chicken in a restaurant and they gave me this, I’d send it back.”

  “Quit picking on Alyssa,” Gaby said. “Chicken cacciatore is close enough.”

  “Girls, girls!” Mandy said. “Let’s agree to disagree and start eating.”

  “We’ll never all agree,” Candace said. “That’s the fun of it.”

  Alyssa patted Amy in her purse. Fried chicken, cacciatore, it didn’t really matter. Deep in her heart, Alyssa didn’t really know if the amethyst brought her magic. But it was so much fun to believe she did. Just thinking about magic seemed to make it happen—like snow in July.

  She saw a vision, clear as a movie, of a long string of happy days stretching through the summer. Camp was half over, but Alyssa knew the best was still to come.

  Get out your hankies...

  Camp Confidential is coming to an end.

  Be sure not to Miss the heartbreaking final book, Suddenly Last Summer, in bookstores this summer.

 

 

 

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