Mr. Rabbit

Ivy On The Trail: Episode Three

Ivy On The Trail is a supernatural adventure novella, serialized in ten projected parts. This is Episode Three.

Click HERE to start at Episode One, or click HERE to head back to the Navigation Page.

Previously, the counselors showed up for orientation, and a ghost story was told.

In this episode, the campers arrive, and Ivy joins in on a first-night prank.

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Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

Ivy paused to catch her breath, doubled over with her hands on her knees in the shade of a big tree, before she continued jogging down the hill to the main camp building. The late Sunday afternoon was hazy hot and windless, and the unshaded parts of the paved road seemed to sizzle under the soles of her sandals. In the gravel parking lot were minivans, SUVs, cars of all types.

The campers had arrived.

It was mayhem, but an organized kind of mayhem. The sort of dance that everyone knows the steps to, and the newcomers just follow along with the tide. Kids of various ages piled out of cars with their gear and were shepherded by staff and parents toward the check-in tables set up on the lawn. Those who were already checked in were standing with their counselors in cabin groups, playing silly games and singing camp songs to keep busy.

“Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are mighty long…”

The strains of the songs and laughter of kids mixed and mingled as Ivy crossed the parking lot toward the folding tables where Maia and the camp’s office manager were checking campers in and assigning them to their cabins. Ivy hadn’t seen Bailey since check-ins began; the two of them were running ragged in opposite directions, doing whatever tasks needed doing. They had already led a few parents to the nurse’s station so they could drop off some medications, helped unload bags from cars, herded kids to their cabin groups, and even cashiered in the canteen for a few minutes so the staff person who usually worked there could use the bathroom.

It had been a very busy afternoon.

Ivy leaned on the table beside Maia. “What next?”

Maia handed her a piece of paper. “Could you run this list into the kitchen? It’s the updated food allergies. We missed a few at sign-up.”

All Ivy wanted to do was jump into the lake to cool off, but she smiled and took the paper. “Sure thing, be right back.”

After dropping the paper off at the kitchen, Ivy lingered in the air conditioning for a little while, gazing wistfully into Maia’s office where she knew her phone was being kept with all the others, in a lockbox. She hated whenever her parents hinted that she was on her phone too much, but without it, her fingers had started to itch. When they all gathered to turn in their phones Ivy had waited until the very last minute, hoping for one more text from Jake. When it didn’t come, she powered it down and handed it to Maia. She wondered if he had responded. Even though she had warned him she wouldn’t have her phone, she hated for him to think she didn’t care enough to reply.

She left the main building and was hit with the force of the heat, like a muzzy wall.

“Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your nose always twitches…”

The sound of a child crying rose over the din of songs and games. Ivy turned to see one of the younger campers, probably six or seven, crying and hugging his mom, clutching at her as she moved to leave.

The mom had a difficult expression on her face, something haunted by love and pain behind a mask of reassurance, encouraging him to have a good time, that she would see him soon. His counselor steered him away with a cheery smile—the little boy still crying, calling for his mom over his shoulder—and she turned toward her car so no one could see the tears on her own cheeks.

The afternoon wore on like that, parents arriving and dropping off and leaving again, until finally check-ins ended. The last stragglers of parents left the parking lot, and each cabin group was released in a line to trek up the hill to their cabins, carrying their gear, their songs and chants filling the buzzy summer air.

In the quiet that followed, Ivy and Bailey bought ice cream bars from the canteen, ate them in tired silence, and then flopped down on the grass of the lawn outside the main building. Within minutes, Maia emerged from the building where she had been putting away the folding tables and followed suit, sighing as she gazed up at the sky.

“I’m exhausted,” Bailey said.

Maia nudged her. “Camp only started three hours ago.”

Bailey groaned. Ivy laughed.

“Check-in is always the craziest part,” Maia said, almost as if she was talking to herself. “The parents being here makes it feel intense. All those family dynamics in one place, knowing that we’re taking care of the most precious things in their lives. It’s a lot. But now we can get into the swing of things. It’ll be great.”

Ivy caught the hint of comforting self-talk in Maia’s voice and said, “You did really good, meeting everybody today. Keeping stuff organized.”

“Thanks,” Maia said, and meant it. But before she could say anything else, her walkie-talkie crackled.

“Hello, Colfax?”

Maia sighed a humorless laugh. “Everyone thinks they want a big black radio until they get a big black radio. Popularity isn’t for the weak.” She heaved herself up to her feet, unclipping the walkie-talkie from her belt and pointing the antenna down at the two girls still lying on the grass, jabbing the air to punctuate her point.

“Everyone’s gathering at the ballfield before dinner for the icebreaker game. Five-PM sharp. Got it?”

Bailey mimed the cracking of a whip as Maia headed back into the office.

Ivy sat up. The grass was freshly cut and scratchy against her legs, and even though the sun was still fierce on her shoulders a sea breeze had picked up, stirring the treetops and cooling the skin.

Knowing that sixty kids were up at the cabins right now, picking their bunks and unrolling their sleeping bags and learning each other’s names and buzzing with excitement and fear and expectations, made Ivy’s stomach churn a little bit. Like they had all crossed some kind of point of no return, whether they had meant to or not.

“We should probably head up there,” Ivy said.

The two girls helped each other up from the grass and walked around the corner to the ballfield.

Everyone was there. All sixty campers and their counselors, standing in their cabin groups. The din was incredible: kids laughing, teasing each other, gossiping, bragging.

The kids in the eight cabins were grouped by age. Turtle and Sabrina had the two teen cabins, Buck, French, Circus, and Peppa had the “middle” grades of age nine to thirteen, and the “littles”—age six to eight—were in Willow’s cabin along with the other male counselor.

This last counselor’s camp name was Loki. Since his late arrival at dinner on the first night, Ivy hadn’t really had a chance to get a read on him. He was probably around twenty years old. He sat quietly and observantly at all the orientation activities and team-building exercises, and didn’t engage much without being engaged with first. Ivy picked up from context clues that he hadn’t attended camp here at all, and certainly hadn’t worked here before. But he seemed nice enough, just a bit on the quieter side.

When Ivy and Bailey arrived, Turtle gestured them over.

“Do you two mind helping Willow and Loki out with the youngest kids? This game isn’t hard but the littles can get confused. Ivy, you head over to Loki. Bailey, you take Willow.”

Ivy felt a pang of disappointment. She would rather have helped out Willow, since she and the older girl had bonded a bit during orientation. But she headed over to where Loki’s cabin of six boys were waiting for their instructions. For most of what staff called the “littles,” this was their first year at camp. Some of them were wide-eyed with overwhelm, some hyped up and overstimulated.

Loki gave her a kind wave as she approached.

“You giving me a hand?” he asked.

She put on a smile. “Yep, happy to help.”

“Great. Ivy, right?”

She nodded.

Loki turned to the six boys, crouching down to their level, and said, “Hey guys, this is Ivy. She’s going to be helping us out with the game, okay? If you have any questions or need any help, you can ask me or ask her and we’ll both help you out.”

Ivy had to hand it to Loki; he knew how to talk to kids, and his campers already seemed to like him very much. Some of the boys waved up at Ivy, some said hi. They were so young. Ivy had only moved to Ferris Island when she was ten, so she hadn’t attended camp before that. But she tried to imagine herself at six years old, staying a whole week at a camp. It was difficult to picture.

An ear-splitting klaxon sound filled the air, and Turtle jumped up onto the bleachers with a megaphone in his hand, Sabrina standing beside him. In their green staff shirts they were the very picture of summer camp enthusiasm: bright smiles, livewire hype, energy so incandescent you could read by it in the dark.

As Turtle started his spiel, welcoming everyone to camp and explaining the game they were about to play, something slithered across Ivy’s mind, an uneasiness as she looked out across the ballfield.

It was a lot of kids. Sixty kids in all, with eight in each teen or middle cabin and six in the “littles” cabins. The staff seemed dwarfed by the enormity of the crowd. Ivy couldn’t remember noticing the discrepancy when she was a camper, the unbalanced ratio between kids and “responsible” adults, who were all barely grown-up themselves. It made her nervous for reasons she couldn’t name.

She tried to lock in, listen to the instructions. The game was simple. There was a line down the middle of the ballfield, and one side had been labeled YES with a big sign and the other labeled NO. When Turtle called out a simple question—have you ever been to camp before? do you know how to swim? do you have a dog at home? do you like broccoli?—the campers were to run to one side or the other and then ask the name of one person beside them. Typical low-stakes icebreaker stuff.

When the game started, as expected, it was pandemonium. Ivy stood to the side, watching the kids figure out the rules. But when she did a quick headcount of Loki’s campers, she came up one short.

She turned, and spotted one little boy sitting on his own at the edge of the field with his back to the game.

Ivy walked over. Only when she got closer did she recognize him as the little boy who had been crying at check-in.

“Hey,” she said in as cheery and welcoming a voice as she could. “Don’t you want to play?”

He looked up at her, lower lip trembling. He had big brown eyes and freckles.

“I miss Mommy,” he said, so quietly that Ivy barely heard him.

She sat down in the grass next to him. “What’s your name?”

He picked up a fir cone, pretended to study it, suddenly shy. “Oliver.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Oliver. I’m Ivy. Is this your first time at camp?”

He nodded, eyes glimmering with tears. “Mom said I’m brave enough this year.”

“I’m sure she’s right,” Ivy replied.

“I miss her, though,” he said. “And I feel like crying.”

“Only the bravest people cry,” Ivy said, half to herself, remembering the time someone very dear to her told her the same thing when she was little and afraid. “So it’s okay to cry if you need to. But I promise that camp will be lots of fun.”

Oliver lightly tossed the fir cone away from him and scuffed the toe of his tennis shoe in the dirt, uncertain.

Ivy looked up, and there at the edge of the woods only a few yards away was a rabbit. Just a thin and tawny woodland rabbit, ears flicking as it mumbled the leaves off of a patch of clover. Ivy instinctively checked, but both of its legs looked just fine.

“See that, Oliver?” Ivy said, pointing. “See the rabbit?”

Oliver saw the rabbit and looked up at Ivy, tears momentarily forgotten, delight on his face. “Whose rabbit is that?”

“It doesn’t belong to anybody,” Ivy said. “It lives in the woods. Hello, Mr. Rabbit. You know the song? Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are mighty long…”

Oliver waved at the creature. “Hi, Mr. Rabbit!”

The rabbit paused munching for a moment, pinned its sidelong gaze on Ivy and Oliver, and Ivy met its stare in return. Daring it to frighten her.

I’m brave. I’m staff. I’m not scared of you, Mr. Rabbit, or any old story. Try again.

The rabbit blinked first, a small victory, and ambled away. Ivy turned back to Oliver.

“What do you think?” she said. “Should we go play?”

Oliver nodded, and the two of them stood. He reached out and grabbed her hand, and let her lead him back to the ballfield where the mayhem of sixty children and Turtle’s voice on the megaphone echoed up and out to the blue curtain of evening.

*******

After the first dinner in the main cafeteria, another wild and noisy event, Ivy had just taken her dishes to the kitchen to get cleaned when Sabrina sidled up to her.

“Hey,” she said, conspiratorial, “could I ask a favor?”

Ivy nodded, trying to act nonchalant, but this was unexpected. “Sure.”

“Me and Turtle are going to play a little first-night prank on the older campers to get ‘em loosened up,” Sabrina explained, as if it was the most normal thing on earth, “and we need an extra person to help out. Could you do it?”

Ivy hesitated at the word prank. “Oh. I guess, maybe…what would I have to do?”

“It’s super easy,” Sabrina said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Do you know how to whistle?”

Uh oh. Ivy knew what was being asked before her brain let her think it through. She wanted to say no, but Sabrina was looking at her with such expectation, such hope.

“Uh. Yeah, I can whistle.”

“Good, good.” Sabrina clapped her hands. “We’re going to tell the Woodmother story to the older kids at the campfire tonight after the younger ones go to bed. Buck and Circus are in on it, too. And after we tell it we need you to hide in the woods and do the whistle, really freak ‘em out. It can’t be one of us or the campers will get suspicious, so we thought you would be perfect! Sound good?”

No, it did not sound good. But as much as she hated the Woodmother story and was trying very hard to push past her own fears, Ivy felt a strange pride at being asked to do something like this, especially by Sabrina. Cool Sabrina. Camp legend Sabrina.

So she nodded. “Yeah, sounds fun.”

“Awesome!” Sabrina turned to catch Turtle’s eye across the room as he was gathering his campers to leave, and she gave him a thumbs-up, and he mimed a cheer. “This is going to be so good!”

Yeah, Ivy thought. So good.

Sabrina left to go lead her cabin out of the dining room and into the falling evening, and Ivy went to go find Bailey. She found her finishing dinner and told her what Sabrina had asked her to do.

“Oh,” Bailey said, genuinely surprised, and maybe even a little envious; it was tough to tell with Bailey. “A prank, huh? I thought we didn’t do pranks.”

“We don’t,” Ivy said. “But this isn’t my prank, I’m just helping.”

“Right.” Bailey finished her last bite and piled her silverware on her plate. “Okay, well, whatever. I’ll be here helping Maia with the scavenger hunt stuff, so you can join us when you’re done, I guess. With your prank.”

“It’s not my prank.” Ivy tried to keep her tone light, but felt herself bristling. It had been a long day, and she felt her patience thinning with the way Bailey pushed on things, sometimes. “I’m just helping.”

Bailey shrugged. “It’s fine, Ives. I’ll see you later, okay?”

She stood to take her dishes to the kitchen, leaving Ivy sitting alone.

*******

Ow. Ow!

Ivy gingerly removed a grabbing blackberry cane from the sleeve of her hoodie, unable to see properly in the dark with her flashlight off. She was only a few yards away from the campfire, close enough to be able to hear the conversations and songs and the jokes and the laughter. The littles and younger middles had already gone to bed—or at least they were making the attempt, through first-night jitters—and the kids remaining at the fire were the kids between twelve and sixteen, like her.

She crouched in the brush and shivered. She hadn’t counted on it being quite so dark and cold this far away from the fire, especially after how hot the day had been.

The moon was invisible, hiding low on the horizon, and the stars above reeled barefoot in their black meadow, tip-toeing across the treetops.

A sudden hush at the campfire told Ivy that Sabrina had started telling the Woodmother story. But it was still the camper-safe version, the short version. Not the real thing. Not the true story.

Suddenly, she heard Turtle’s voice shout, “Wait, did you hear that?”

It was her cue. She straightened up, took a solid breath, cupped her hands around her mouth, and let out a long, low whistle.

Granted, it wasn’t perfect, and didn’t sound all that scary coming out of her own mouth. But it must have been good enough—especially at a distance—because she heard the commotion at the fire, shrieks and shocked voices, and sat back on her haunches with a pleased smile.

Not bad, not bad at all.

At the campfire, Sabrina called out, “It’s her! It’s her! Back to the cabins, everyone! Go, go, go!”

There was a loud hiss as one of the counselors doused the flame with a bucket of water, steam and smoke rising skyward in a thick billowing cloud. This dramatic moment was followed by the thunder of shoes on the trail as everyone was herded back to their cabins in terrified panic, flashlights dancing through the trees and away.

A prank, but not a bad prank, Ivy reasoned. Just good, clean camp fun.

She stood up and dusted herself off, feeling a strange sense of accomplishment. Sure, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but she felt she had played her part admirably.

She picked her way through the trees to the now-empty campfire clearing. The fire was still smoking with irritation, the water sizzling on the hot embers, and a handful of campers had left things behind in their rush, sitting on the log seats: a water bottle, a hat, a removed sweatshirt, a fleece blanket. The objects sat like forgotten totems in the dark.

Ivy stood for a moment in the sudden stillness. From here, whatever tumult was happening at the cabins was impossible to hear. It was only the thick swallow of night in the circle of trees.

She might as well be the only human being on earth.

Shaking this thought away, Ivy left the campfire clearing and headed back down to the main building to meet up with Bailey and Maia. She skirted the cabins, making sure no one saw her, before she reached the road and clicked on her flashlight. She walked at a brisk pace, sweeping her flashlight in front of her, soaking in the elation of being part of the joke, for once.

Ivy was in the dark no-man’s-land halfway between the comforting chaos of the cabins and the window-lights of the main building when she heard it.

A long, low whistle.

The sound bounced, impossible to tell what direction it had come from. Ivy swiveled her flashlight back and forth, from the woods on one side of her to the other, but the bright circle revealed only startled trees, harsh shadows.

“Turtle?” Ivy called, her voice sounding so strange in the gloom. “Sabrina?”

The silence that followed was absolute and purposeful, a held breath.

“That’s not funny, you guys,” Ivy said, with as much conviction as she could muster.

No response. Not even a whisper of movement.

Skin singing with fear, Ivy jogged all the rest of the way to the office, not daring to stop or look back.

*******

The phone rang twice before Ivy heard her mom’s voice on the other end. It was nearly ten at night, but Ivy knew they would be awake.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom,” Ivy said, pulling up her legs so she could sit cross-legged in Maia’s office chair. “It’s me.”

“Oh, hey you!” Then, over her shoulder to Ivy’s dad, “It’s Ivy.”

Pete called out a greeting in the background. Ivy felt her throat tighten a little bit. She could see them in their usual habitat of the little house in Seavend, doing their evening routine, washing dishes or watching TV or working at their own projects. Normal stuff. Stuff you don’t notice as sweet and certain until you’re not there, not part of it.

“How’s it going out there?” Ivy’s mom asked. “Having fun?”

“Yeah, the first night is all done. It was really crazy today. There’s lots of kids.”

Erin laughed. “Sounds like camp, alright. The best kind of chaos. Have they been putting you to work?”

Ivy nodded. “Yeah. The counselors even asked me for help with…a project, tonight. They asked just me to help, and that was pretty cool.”

She was about to say prank, but caught herself before she did. Her parents weren’t too keen on pranks. They didn’t know much about social media but they knew that pranks these days usually led to problems, and they discouraged it at every turn. Which usually suited Ivy down to the ground; she wasn’t much of a prankster anyway, and neither were any of her friends.

She didn’t feel like explaining that camp pranks are different.

“Wow, that’s awesome! I bet that felt good, to be asked,” Erin said. “Shows that they really see how responsible you are. I’m proud of you.”

Ivy accepted the compliment, even if it felt a little hollow under the circumstances. “I just wanted to call and check in and let you know I’m good.”

“I’m glad you did. We miss you around here.” Erin paused, and Ivy heard a shuffling sound, like her mom had maneuvered away from the living room, to be alone. “Are you sure everything is okay, sweetheart?”

Ivy swallowed. She couldn’t hide from her mom, especially when she was scared or unsettled. Erin could always tell.

There was a small, frightened part of Ivy—a tiny Oliver, wide-eyed and out of depth—that wanted to say, Please come and get me. Please take me home to my own bed. Please give me a hug. Please let me watch the shows we like and listen to the music we like and not think about ghosts and pranks and icebreakers and spare cabins rotting away in the woods. This isn’t fun anymore.

But instead, Ivy thought about why she had agreed to do this in the first place. To have fun with Bailey, sure, but also to prove something, both to herself and to anyone else who would listen:

I can do this. I am responsible. I am brave. I know what I want, and I can grab it.

So she said, “Yeah, it’s awesome. I’m having a really good time. I promise.”

“Good,” Erin said, audibly relieved. “If that changes you know where to find us, right? I love you, Ives.”

“I love you, Mom.”

Ivy hung up the office phone and sat for a minute longer, listening to the murmur of Maia and Bailey’s voices in the small conference room next door as they gathered stuff for the scavenger hunt, painted signs, made sisterly small talk.

There was a tiny Oliver within, sure. A scared little kid who wanted to go home.

But I can’t, yet.

Ivy was already doing good things. Taking care of tasks. Helping kids get back into the game. Joining in with the camp fun, making memories. It had only just started. She couldn’t go back, now.

I got this.

Ivy stood from the chair, humming the Mr. Rabbit song—now thoroughly stuck in her head—as she left the office to join Maia and Bailey.

“Every little soul’s gonna shine, shine. Every little soul’s gonna shine along…”

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