Chapter twenty six
"And the theme that came in third place is..." Geleys stood on a chair outside the office. The sun was in the process of setting and every single delinquent gathered around the office to hear if there favorite theme won.
"Tropical theme!" a few people 'awed' in light disappointment but quickly got over it as they waited for the winner.
"The second place theme... Jail theme." the large group of delinquents snickered and those who hadn't heard of the theme laughed loudly.
"Alright, that one was pretty creative for you guys. But onto more important things. The winner of this year's theme party is..." Gelsey smirked evilly as everyone held their breath. When it was clear she was going to make them all wait longer than necessary, kids started to shout the themes they remembered being on the clip board.
"Okay, okay." Gelsey quieted the crowd down again. "The winning theme with nearly three quarter's of the camp's vote is the black light theme!"
Cheers erupted from the kids and Skinner high fived random kids around him, telling them that was his idea.
"Okay, so I know a few of you made lists already of what you would want for this theme so you may hand them to me now." Gelsey jumped off the chair she was standing on and accepted the papers she was handed.
"You guys are acting like you want to beat last year's party." Gelsey raised a light brow at her campers.
"Hell yeah!" Ivy cheered and the returning kids chanted with her while everyone else just laughed.
"Okay, so I need a handful of you delinquents to come shopping with me. For the rest of you, be gone!" Gelsey held in her chuckles as she made shoeing motions with her arms. She couldn't contain them however, when one kid made sheep sounds like they were in a herd.
What was left of the large group were Anika, Mel, Keira, Ivy and a few other girls. Skinner had just 'so happened' to be swept away with the retreating boys.
"Ladies! Ready to do some serious shopping?" Gelsey grinned, meeting each of their eyes.
"Hell yeah!" another girl shouted like Ivy had before.
"And are you ready to for this party?" the blond lady drew out the last word with her fist in the air.
"Hell yeah!" everyone cheered this time, except for Keira, who was laughing too hard.
"Then what are you waiting for? Four of you in my car, the rest of you animals hop in Genevieve's." Gelsey laughed and pointed at her sister who stood beside her escalade with the back door open.
"We're four!" Keira shouted as she somehow managed to grip a part of Anika, Mel and Ivy.
"Glad to see you know how to count, Keira." Gelsey snickered and opened the back door for three of them. Anika piled in first followed by Ivy and Mel while Keira happily called shotgun.
"Where are we going to put all the stuff?" Mel asked when Gelsey started the car.
"We have two pick up trucks and trunk space for anything we can find. We're driving into the closest town and raiding them of all their party supplies plus whatever is on this list." Gelsey threw the papers of the wanted items to the girls in the back seat.
"There's no budget?" Keria asked, turned around in her seat so she could see the lists as well.
"Nope. You can thank your hometowns for that. I don't think you guys are demons but they sure do and will do anything to keep you off the streets. So I named my price."
"Must of been a pretty high price. Dang. Why would we need toilet brushes, though?" Mel asked as she held up the list she had for everyone to read.
"Oh, um just ignore the totally outrageous orders. I'll have to have a chat with Gill when we get back." Gelsey muttered to herself.
"How do you know it was this Gill character?" Anika asked impressed.
Gelsey shrugged a shoulder. "You get to know your delinquents, I guess. Just seemed like something he would do."
"Oh. Then I guess he wrote down dish washing soap too?" Keira chuckled.
"That's actually not a bad idea." the girls looked at Ivy with curiosity.
"Ivy's right. They might have a bubble machine at the rental place." Gelsey briefly glanced at the girls in the back seat in the rear view mirror.
"And if not, we can always pick up some bubble containers or something." Anika provided her opinion.
"Does soap even glow under a black light?" Mel asked.
"How am I supposed to know?" Gelsey said, her eyes not straying from the road.
"We'll just have to find out." Ivy's cheeks stretched into a grin.
"Yeah bubbles!" Keira was nearly bouncing in her seat all the way to the store.
"Okay, I'm going to the rental store across the way to pick up the machines. You girls have the list, right?" Gelsey hopped out of the car and the girls followed her lead.
"Got 'em." Mel held up the lists.
"Okay, so here's my card. Go crazy but keep it realistic." was Gelsey's only warning before she headed to the farthest store on the strip plaza.
"There four of us and six of them. Perfect." Mel counted heads. "We can split in groups of twos. There's five stores. At the end of the hour, one person from each group will hold all the stuff they've found. I have the card so Keira and I will check out first. Then I'll pass off the card to whoever is in the store to the right of us and they'll pass it off to the next store to the right of them. Kay?" Mel explained and received nods.
"Find a partner and get to it my lads." Ivy instructed before turning to Anika. "Do want to come with me?"
"Sure." Anika agreed and looked over to link eyes with Mel and Keira. "Good luck you two."
"Ditto." Keira beamed a smile. The golden blond then turned on her heel and ran into a store one of the other girls haven't run into yet with Mel.
"Come on. We've got ourselves a longer list than last year." Ivy tugged Anika over to another store. A blast of cool air from the air conditioning box in the door way washed over Anika as she stumbled through it.
"I'll look over here first." Anika alerted Ivy who nodded and walked off to the opposite end of the store. Anika's eyes racked through each isle as she searched for what she was looking for. He eyes lit up when she located the arts and crafts sign hanging from the ceiling and all but ran to that isle.
She allowed herself a small giggle before she ran back to the front of the store and grabbed a shopping basket. Anika skidded to a stop once she made it back to her favorite isle and let her hand hover over the paints. Her hands snatched nearly every kind of glow in the dark colored paint whether it was in a squeeze bottle or spray can. A smile slipped it's way onto her face as she gently shook a spray can and the clunking of the ball inside met her ears. An excited shiver ran down Anika's spine and she quickly dropped the cool metal can into her basket and reached for another. Yes, she thought. This is definitely going to be a lot of fun. Even though she wasn't sure if she was thinking about decorating or Ryleigh.
"How'd we do girls?" Gelsey walked into the office back at camp carrying in the last bag from her car's trunk.
"Great." Mel handed her the credit card back. "Not too expensive but we still got a lot of stuff with a lot of deals."
"Thanks. It's one thing to have a good party and another to have one only to break the bank. So what'd we get?"
"The usual; streamers- we got them in white so they glow, bead necklaces, and a bunch of other party nick-nacks." one of the other girls looked through her team's bags.
"We had an idea." another girl from a different team spoke up. She pulled out a roll of white plastic string and a partly translucent one.
"White and glow in the dark string for hand and ankle bracelets, necklaces, hair bows, or whatever." her partner explained. "We thought about making t-shirts and tank tops with puffy paints but then we thought this could be finished quicker. We wouldn't have to wait for paint to dry."
"Okay, so if you want to get a group of kids together tomorrow to make a ton of what you said, you could do that tomorrow. What did you guys get?" Gelsey turned to Anika and Ivy.
"Paint." Anika smiled.
"And lots of it." Ivy opened the bag so everyone could see the many cans and tubes.
"More glow in the dark, crackle, white and a few other light colors. We've got pour out cans, squeeze bottles and my ultimate favorite," Anika reached in and took out a can, "spray paint."
"And glitter. We thought it might look cool if we put it around the bon fire area with the flames reflecting off it and all." Ivy pulled out the two large bags of white and silver glitter.
"So glitter, and we've got glow sticks." Mel interjected.
"Simple sticks that hang off a string all the way to glow stick glasses." Keira held up a package.
"You think you have enough for everyone?" Ivy asked sarcastically as she eyed the ten bags or so, each one nearly spilling over with the black glow stick packages.
"Cleaned 'em right out." Keira smiled proudly.
"We figured we could hang some up along the paths to give the darkest areas some light. Plus, they'll last all night into the morning even." Mel added.
"Good work girls." Gelsey praised with a satisfied smile. "We'll keep everything in my office here for tonight. Our work this evening is done. Thank you for your help but for now I'm going to need all of you to head back to your cabins and rest up. Tomorrow, we decorate!" Gelsey gave each girl a hug before they left the office.
"How's everything?" she whispered in Anika's ear as she gave the raven haired girl a hug.
"Rocky. But a plan is in the process." Anika whispered back and gave Gelsey one last squeeze before she pulled away with an assuring smile. "See you tomorrow. These girls need their beauty sleep." Anika discretely jerked her thumb in Mel and Keira's direction.
"Damn right we do. Mel here ain't getting any prettier." Keira chuckled and dodged Mel's fist aimed to hit her shoulder.
"Ain't isn't a word." Gelsey corrected with a smile.
Keira shrugged indifferently. "We're delinquents, not english majors." Gelsey shook her head and started to shoo the girls out of the office building.
"Go on you horrible, awful devil children. Go back to your caves, you dark demons." Gelsey jokingly chuckled and shut the door behind them.