The campers, who’d all stopped to watch, clapped and hooted.
“Now your turn,” Lucky said, handing Oliver an apple.
Oliver didn’t look like a strong shot, so Lucky called Spirit to come in closer, and she positioned him partway between Oliver and the town square. As it turned out, Oliver had a good arm but a really bad aim. He tossed the apple hard, and it flew way over Spirit’s head, toward Main Street, where people were milling about.
“Oh no! Oliver!” Lucky shouted as the apple flew toward a street vendor with a cart of pots and pans. She called to him, “Duck!”
“Huh?” The old man didn’t move very fast. The apple was coming in hard, straight toward his surprised face.
In a flash, Spirit leaped over two young women eating at an outside café, snagged the apple, and skidded to a stop, catching himself just in time before crashing into the bakery.
“Good boy, Spirit!” Lucky shouted, chasing after her horse.
He was in the street, where a small group came to see what had happened.
“That horse is a menace,” a young man told his wife loudly enough that others could hear.
“Vote for me for mayor, and we will keep wild horses out of the main square,” a man in a hat called out. He was running against Maricela’s father for the job.
“That horse tried to kill me,” one of the women from the café added to the throng.
“Come on, Spirit,” Lucky said, leading her horse away. “I know you were just trying to protect the street vendor.”
As they passed the man with the pots and pans cart, he thanked them, then turned to the angry mob, trying to explain, but no one would listen.
Lucky climbed on Spirit’s back. She was going to try to explain to the group. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We—”
“Don’t let it happen again!” the man running for mayor interrupted, then began handing out flyers for the upcoming election. Everyone turned away, interested in hearing the man’s plans to keep wild horses off the streets.
When she and Spirit got back to the others, Oliver had all the campers gathered around him. All of a sudden, he was chatting up a storm.
“Did you see my toss?” he was bragging to Snips. “I’d have hit one of those hanging pots if it weren’t for that wild horse.”
He glanced up, sensing Spirit was behind him, and moved a few steps away.
“That wild horse saved the old man from a bump on the head,” Lucky countered. “What were you thinking?” Wait! Oliver was talking. Bragging, actually, but at least he had words coming from his mouth. It seemed that all it took to get Oliver talking was a little bad behavior. Maybe he was finally loving camp!
“Why are you talking?” Lucky asked him. She wondered if things were easier when he wasn’t speaking at all.
“Because I’ve decided that camp is so boring,” Oliver told her in a droll, Julian-like voice. “I told Julian that he won the challenge. Next week, I’m not coming to camp anymore.”
That explained it. He didn’t have a reason to keep silent. In Oliver’s eyes, Julian had won. Problem was, if Oliver didn’t come back, Lucky and her friends would be out two dollars. They needed that money.
What to do?
Once he started speaking, it was hard to get him to stop. And Lucky would’ve loved for him to stop. “We could be having so much more fun if there was a little more danger,” said Oliver.
Abigail leaned to Lucky and said, “He sounds a lot like Julian, doesn’t he?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to prevent,” Lucky said, moaning.
She went back to the idea that Oliver liked adventure. Wasn’t that why he threw the apple? To mix things up and see what would happen?
Oliver was still talking, and now he had the ears of all the campers. And it looked as if they agreed with him!
“My brother would make this camp much more fun,” he told them all.
“We remember the roller coaster,” Turo said. “That was amazing.”
“But he stole all your money,” Lucky reminded everyone. “Julian is not the answer.”
“Ten minutes ago everything was fine. No one was complaining about camp before you started talking,” Pru told Oliver. She pointed at his tree. “You can go sit down now.”
“No!” Snips argued. “We want to hear what Ollie wants to do.”
Abigail, who had been supportive of Julian coming to camp, said, “Maybe we could just ask Julian for a few fun ideas.”
“No,” Lucky protested. “Never.” This was a nightmare, and Oliver, rapidly becoming Julian Junior, was turning the campers against the PALs. He wouldn’t stop talking—and none of it was in support of the PALs Adventure Camp.
“We want more fun,” Mary Pat and Bianca cried.
“Want to throw more apples at town?” Stella asked with a glint in her eye. “I think Maricela would be okay if we used the guy running against her dad for mayor as target practice.”
This was all getting out of hand. The campers were rebelling. Now they were chanting “Bor-ring!” over and over.
The day was almost done. Lucky had to do something, or no one would come back to camp after the weekend. And worse, they might request their money back. How would Lucky explain to Aunt Cora when she couldn’t replace the crystal bottle and the bubble bath?
“I know!” Lucky said, and turned to her friends. “Let’s have an O-Mok-See.”
“O-Mok-Fun!” Abigail said. An O-Mok-See was like a rodeo, but with more fun games and less competition.
“That sounds great!” Pru agreed. “Safe adventure and a lot of fun.”
They all put their hands in a pile and raised them together, shouting, “O-Mok-See!”
The campers wanted to know what that meant, and Abigail said with a chuckle, “O-You’ll-See.”
Everyone was intrigued, but soon Oliver declared, “You have no fun ideas. It’ll be boring just like everything else.” He mocked them, saying, “How about we have another scavenger hunt? Everyone can find dirt
