“Looking forward to the race?” asked Aunt True, who had come to cheer us on.
I made a rude noise, and she laughed. Aunt True and my mother weren’t part of Team Lovejoy. “For one thing, we’re walkers, not runners, and for another, every team needs a cheering section,” my mother had said firmly when my father had invited them to join.
“The only thing I’m looking forward to is the fireworks,” I said, which was the truth. I loved fireworks, even though the ones they had in Pumpkin Falls couldn’t rival the ones in Austin. As the capital of Texas, Austin always pulled out all the stops.
“Cassidy!” Aunt True called out suddenly, waving to a tall red-haired girl who was stretching nearby with a bunch of campers.
The red-haired girl waved back, then loped over to join us. She was older than me, and obviously a counselor. “Nice to see you again,” she told my aunt.
“Truly, this is the girl I was telling you about,” said Aunt True. “Cassidy Sloane and some of her fellow counselors are the ones who started the book club for their campers.” I vaguely remembered her saying something about that.
“How are you enjoying Understood Betsy?” asked Aunt True.
“We love it so far,” Cassidy replied. “And we adored your pumpkin whoopie pies!”
Pumpkin whoopie pies were one of Aunt True’s signature treats. She’d been alternating between those and her Bookshop Blondies in the store for the past few months. I’d be sorry to see either of them retired for the season—but Hatcher was right, the blueberry donut muffins were pretty great too.
Aunt True laughed. “Stop by the bookstore anytime, and I’ll make sure you head back to camp with goodies as well as books.”
“I’ll definitely take you up on that,” Cassidy replied. Just then, one of the campers trotted over and grabbed her hand, tugging her back toward their group. “Gotta go! Good luck, Team Lovejoy!”
Hatcher poked me in the back as she left. “Hey, Professor Rusty’s research assistant is here!” He pointed to Aunt True’s boyfriend, who was standing in the shade talking to a girl in a Camp Lovejoy uniform. “I’d know those cinnamon buns anywhere.”
I grinned. He was talking about her hair, which she wore coiled over her ears in Princess Leia–style poufs. “What’s her name again?”
“Felicia something.”
“Grunewald,” Aunt True told us. “Felicia Grunewald.” She gave us a sly smile. “Maybe I should add cinnamon buns to our signature treats at the bookshop.”
Hatcher and I stared at her, then burst out laughing.
“What?” said Aunt True, the picture of innocence.
The loudspeaker crackled. “Runners, make your way to the starting line, please!”
“Team Lovejoy’s Books!” barked my father. “Follow me!”
As Hatcher, Danny, Lauren, Professor Rusty, and I set off after him, I surreptitiously sized up the other teams.
Team Library was led by Mr. Henry, who had pulled his dreadlocks back into a ponytail for the occasion. Beneath his racing bib he wore a red-and-white-striped tank top over red shorts. No surprise there—Aunt True called red and white Mr. Henry’s signature colors. Hatcher said he looked like Waldo in Where’s Waldo?
“I’m so E-X-C-I-T-E-D!” squealed Annie Freeman, skipping along beside Mr. Henry. Annie was the reigning winner of the Grafton County Junior Spelling Championship and my sister Lauren’s best friend. Annie herself wouldn’t give us too much of a run for our money today, but there was also Annie’s brother Franklin to consider, along with Calhoun and his sister, Juliet, and my friend Jasmine’s brother Scooter.
Jasmine herself was running for Team Starlite, which was definitely stiff competition. Jasmine was a star basketball player, and Cha Cha and her parents were in great shape, thanks to all the dancing they did at their studio. Plus, they’d recruited two guys from the high school track team.
The Team Kwik Klips “krew members,” as they called themselves, were looking pretty competitive too. They’d all sprayed red, white, and blue streaks into their hair, and were clearly fired up for the race.
Oh well, I thought, whether or not we won, at least we were all running together in support of Mr. Henry’s library project. That was the main goal. Our real competitors were the teams running in support of Ella Bellow’s Grange project.
Ella wasn’t running in the race herself, but she’d twisted the arms of a bunch of her customers to join her team, including my swim coach’s wife and Bud Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson was a huge bear of a man who I hoped was as slow as he was big. Technically, he was Ella’s landlord, not her customer, although he’d taken up knitting after getting roped into a class on socks that my mother and I had signed up for over Spring Break.
Team Mahoney’s Antiques looked stronger. Like my father and Danny, the Mahoneys were both dedicated runners, and their friends on the team looked equally fit. Team General Store, on the other hand, was a bit of a wild card. None of the Farnsworths were running—they were all older than Grandma G, for one thing, and hardly what you’d call athletic. Four of the people on their team I’d seen around town but had never met. The only two that I knew were Mr. Burnside, our school principal, and Mr. Bigelow, my science teacher. Like Professor Rusty, Mr. Burnside was tall and skinny—thanks to my weird habit of classifying people as birds, I’d always thought of him as a flamingo—and he had the look of a runner, with long legs and a lean build. But any potential edge he might give to the team was probably offset by Mr. Bigelow, who was short and kind of tubby and reminded me of a duck. On the other hand, I knew from experience that Mr. Bigelow had an enormous amount of enthusiasm—he was one of our school’s most popular teachers—and sometimes that made up for lack of athletic ability.
The only team I was almost positive that
