Lights Out! by Laura Dower Read Free Book Online Page A

Madison tried to spot a constellation like the Big Dipper but couldn’t find it. The moon was like a giant, white, round egg. She could even see the craters.
    “Are we going or what?” Ivy said.
    Another tree groaned and a few girls jumped again.
    “My heart’s beating a thousand beats a minute,” Fiona said. “This place gives me the creeps.”
    “Oh no!” Aimee wailed. “Look!”
    “WHAT?” someone else said with a start.
    She pointed up to the light in the bathroom. The gray paint on the ceiling had peeled half off. Bugs were everywhere—big ones, fat ones, and wormy ones. Some were dead. A dirty cobweb woven years ago from the corner of the ceiling still hung there, glued together after all this time with a thick layer of camp dirt. No one has cleaned this place in centuries, Madison thought.
    “Do you guys smell that?” Aimee asked.
    Madison pinched her nose. “What is that?”
    Everyone looked at the bathroom stalls and showers. The air was musty and damp. Mosquitoes buzzed at everyone’s ears. Stacey opened a stall door and bravely stepped inside.
    Poison Ivy opened another stall. “It doesn’t look so bad,” she said, closing the door behind her. “It’s fine in here….”
    Madison smiled at Aimee and Fiona. They loved watching the enemy squirm.
    “AAAAAAAAH!” Ivy screamed. “Get it OUT!”
    Rose and Joan banged on the door. “What is it? What’s wrong, Ivy?”
    Ivy’s voice trembled. “A spider… It’s huge…. Oh my…”
    Everyone backed away.
    “You guys?” Ivy’s voice cracked. “Are you out there? What am I supposed to do? You guys?”
    “Kill the spider,” Madison said.
    “No…I can’t…move…” Ivy said. “It’s near my HEAD!”
    “It’s okay, Ivy,” Joan said. “Just open the door and we’ll shoo it away. How big is it?”
    Ivy sounded like she was about to faint. “BIG!”
    “Open the door, Ivy,” Joan said.
    “Yeah, open the door,” a bunch of girls echoed.
    All at once, the stall door burst open and Ivy pushed out, shaking herself off and jumping up and down. She nearly knocked the flashlight right out of Madison’s hands.
    “Get it off me!” Ivy squealed. “GET IT OFF!”
    “Shhhhh!” Madison said. “Stop screaming. Where is it?”
    Joan poked her head into Ivy’s stall. “It must have crawled away. It isn’t here anymore.”
    “Is this the spider?” Stacey asked. She held open her stall door and pointed to the wall. On it, a fat brown spider measuring about half an inch crawled down a pipe. “I guess he crawled in here when Ivy screamed,” she said.
    Ivy shook her head. “That can’t be him,” she said. “He was way bigger than THAT!”
    Stacey reached over and the spider walked onto her finger. “I like spiders,” she said. Everyone gave her a funny look. She held it out to Ivy.
    Ivy jumped backward. “Get that away from me,” she howled.
    “We’d better get back to bed. Lights-out was almost a half hour ago,” Fiona said. “And we have to get up early tomorrow.”
    The group left the spider behind to eat up some of the bugs. They slipped and slid in the mud on the way back to the cabin, sidestepping fallen branches.
    Once they were inside, the girls removed their muddy sneakers and wet pants, changed into their pajamas, rolled out sheets or blankets (those who had them), and unzipped their sleeping bags. Madison had brought an old, army green sleeping sack that Dad had given her when she was in third grade. She noticed that Ivy had the same one. Their dads had probably shopped together back then, back when Maddie and Ivy were still friends.
    After good-nights with Aimee, Fiona, and Lindsay, Madison pulled on some wooly socks and crawled into her sleeping bag with her orange notebook and flashlight. It was a little hot under the covers. Sleepy hot.
File: Lights-out
    Rude Awakening: Why do they call it the great outdoors? What’s so great about mud and bugs? This field trip is like a head trip—especially when Ivy acts