The Legend of Camp Jellywitch Part III

  Five was not the fifth child. He was not the fifth best at anything. He was just the fifth Drey. His grandfather, Drey the Fourth, hadn’t spent his life being called Four.

  His other grandfather, Zero, had spent his life being called Zero.

  So Five was Five, even though everybody else had perfectly respectable names that didn’t make them have to explain to their teachers that they were Five the name and five the years old.

  Right now, he was five hundred percent sure he did not want to go to summer camp. All the kids went for three weeks right after summer festival, as soon as they turned eight. It was so the parents could have a break, because there were a lot of kids but there were not a lot of parents.

  Five was negotiating terms with one of his dads. He had two dads — his demon and his angel. The demon did a lot of right things the wrong way so people were always irritated with him. The angel did a lot of wrong things the right way, so people always acted like he did nothing wrong ever.

  His dads loved each other, but they didn’t live together like other parents did. They lived with other people that weren’t his dads, like Nell who ran the summer camp and Niels and Talise, who ran their mouths.

  It was a lot of work to convince his demon dad that camp was a bad idea. Right now, he was on televisions. “They don’t have any?”

  His demon dad shook his head. “They don’t. But they have games, a lake to swim in, activities.”

  “So it is haunted,” Five concluded. Everyone knew electricity couldn’t work around ghosts.

  His demon dad sighed. “It’s not haunted.”

  “Then why don’t they have televisions?” Five said. He knew he had his demon dad on that point. 

  Sure enough, his twin brother Zane was right there with the obvious answer. “Because of the Jellywitch. We have to stay out of the lake.”

  No, they had to stay out of the camp. 

  “The Jellywitch,” his demon dad said, “is a story. It’s not real.”

  “Says you,” Five’s sister Alexis said. It looked like maybe no one would be going to camp today. The Jellywitch was a major safety concern, not that their parents cared.

  “Yeah,” Five added. “Drey is a story too, all about how he died to kill the bad king. But Drey is alive, so that’s not real, but you still think it happened.”

  “But Drey is a story about here,” his demon dad said. “The Jellywitch is about somewhere else, not the camp you’re going to.”

  Then why was it called Camp Jellywitch?

  Five shared a skeptical look with Zane. 

  “If we die,” Emma suggested, “we can haunt Dad.” Emma was older. She was The Oldest Sister. This made her important and boring, because she was always doing older sister things like her homework and cleaning her room when they told her to.

  “With jellyfish?” Five joked.

  “And spooky fingers,” she said, wiggling them and making a ghost-like eerie sound.

  Five scowled at her. She couldn’t scare him. “If it’s not at the camp we’re going to, why is it called Camp Jellywitch?”

  His demon dad blinked. “It is?”

  Zane waved the camp pamphlet in their demon dad’s face. “They even lied on their book,” he said.

  The pamphlet clearly said Camp Greenwood. Everyone knew woods were green. Why would anyone have to advertise about it, unless they were lying?

  Their demon dad groaned and started over. “Well…the Jellywitch is sad, right? Not mean.”

  Ah, so he admitted she was real! “Do you like being sad?” 

  “No,” his demon dad said, like he was walking on tiptoes with his words. “But being sad doesn’t make me hurt people.”

  “You haven’t been sad enough,” Five told him. Just this morning, one of the littler kids had tried to take Five’s brand new rock he’d found in the desert. Five had wanted to hurt him. He’d dug his fingernails right into the kid’s arm until he let go of the rock. Five had gotten in trouble, but his rock was safe.

  “The Jellywitch is sad because her head fell off,” Emma said, generically to everyone. Five wasn’t sure what her point was.

  He decided to add to it anyway. “See?” he said to his demon dad.

  Fort, who was Emma’s twin and The Oldest Brother as well as The Oldest Child and The Heir to Nothing, looked at Five. “It’s called Camp Greenwood, not Camp Jellywitch. She isn’t real.”

  Five was about to open his mouth and tell Fort that Fort wasn’t real, but before he could do any such thing his demon dad kneeled between them and said, “Five,” very softly, like he was pretending to be their angel dad.

  This would be interesting. Five looked at him. 

  “If you’re afraid of a jellymonster, don’t swim. It’s not the Landwitch.”

  This was proof positive that parents were oblivious to how the world worked.

  Five carefully enunciated the very obvious flaw in his demon dad’s advice. “She can walk.”

  “Okay, well…” His demon dad sighed like it pained him. “What if I stay?”

  At camp? “Noooo!” The whole point was to not go to camp, to be one of the kids who stayed home and had free reign of the whole area while the other kids were gone. It would be amazing.

  If his dad went to camp with him, it would be…well. It would be more embarrassing than if he wet the bed.

  “Oh, is that worse?” his demon dad teased. “I think I will. I’ll get my bag…since you’re too afraid to be alone…”

  Five dug his heels in. Literally. Divots appeared in the desert floor. “I think I need to stay here.”

  His demon dad nodded. “I’ll make sure the theater group knows you won’t be there. They did have a cool theater set up, a big play at the end of the week…”

  Theater sounded like the perfect place for the Jellywitch to target. All those people would be easy victims for her ravenous stomach. “Yeah, but they don’t have my television games.”

  “Is that what this is?” his demon dad asked. He reached for Five’s tablet. “Here. Take it.” He didn’t even give Five the charging cord, but even if he had…

  “These don’t work there. Cause of the Jellywitch.”

  His demon dad groaned again. He looked like he wanted to claw the skin right off his own face.

  Behind Five, someone moaned, “Hellllppppp I’m the Jellyyyywitchhhhh.” Something slimy and frigidly cold landed on the bare skin of Five’s shoulder. 

  Five made a sound he was too afraid to be ashamed of, and vaulted to the far side of their little group. The wet cold thing fell off his shoulder.

  “India!” Fort said. “Don’t you want to get to camp?”

  India grinned, but the demon dad crossed in front of the group and caught Five in a hug.

  Five climbed right up him, even though he was almost too big for that. No way was India putting anything else on Five’s shoulders! “I’m staying home,” he said. Mostly, at this point, he said it because India was going to camp.

  “Okay,” his demon dad said in angel dad tones. “You can stay home. I have to drop everyone else off, though.”

  Alexis asked Zane, “You’re coming, right?”

  “Yeah!” Zane promised.

  Five’s demon dad patted his back. “Will you at least come to drop them off with me?”

  He wasn’t sure about this plan. It felt like a trap. “She’s not there on drop-off day, right? She hides in the lake, ‘cause she doesn’t like all the parents being there?”

  “She’s only there at night, duh,” Emma promised.

  His demon dad shook his head. “I’m sure the Jellywitch goes on vacation during camp. Think how noisy all the kids will be. We’ll go, stay near people, drop them off, and transport home.”

  The Jellywitch didn’t care about noise. She cared about victims!

  To make that point, India thrust a jellyfish — where had she gotten a jellyfish? Had it been on Five’s shoulder? — into the air. “Unless you’re eaten!”

  “India!” Five growled. There was only one way to convince India he wasn’t afraid, and Five was up for the challenge. “I will eat that thing and then you won’t have a jellyfish!”

  She smiled up at him. “So eat the Jellywitch, if you’re so brave.”

  Eat…the Jellywitch?

  He would be the bravest kid in the world. Everyone would know his name. He wouldn’t be Five anymore, he would be One, as in, the One Who Ate the Jellywitch and Saved the World.

  India was a genius.

  He dropped off his demon dad’s shoulders. “Let me just get my bag!”

  If anyone could eat her, it was him. He would be a hero, just like his dads.

Camp Jellywitch will return…