I'm serious. You never saw a scruffier, more sour-faced group of kids in your life. Ranging in age from ten to twelve years old, these were no mischievous-but-good-at-heart Harry Potters.

Oh, no.

Far from it.

These kids looked exactly like what they were: spoiled little music prodigies whose parents couldn't wait to take a six-week vacation from them.

The boys all stopped when they saw me and stood there, blinking through the lenses of their glasses, which were fogged up on account of the humidity. Their parents, who were helping them with their luggage, looked like they were longing to get as far from Camp Wawasee as they possibly could—preferably to a place where pitchers of margaritas were being served.

I hastened to say the speech I'd been taught at counselor training. I remembered to substitute the words birch tree for frangipani.

"Welcome to Birch Tree Cottage," I said. "I'm your counselor, Jess. We're going to have a lot of fun together."

The parents, you could tell, couldn't care less that I wasn't a boy. They seemed pleased by the fact that I clearly bathed regularly and could speak English.

The boys, however, looked shocked. Sullen and shocked.

One of them went, "Hey, you're a girl."

Another one wanted to know, "What's a girl counselor doing in a boys' cabin?"

A third one said, "She's not a girl. Look at her hair," which I found highly insulting, considering the fact that my hair isn't that short.

Finally, the most sullen-looking boy of them all, the one with the mullet cut and the weight problem, went, "She is, too, a girl. She's that girl from TV. The lightning girl."

And with that, my cover was blown.

C H A P T E R

2

That was me. Lightning Girl. The girl from TV.

Lucky me. Lucky, lucky, lucky me. Could there be a girl luckier than me? I don't think so. . . .