The Champ of the Camp

While writing her book about Odyssey, Connie decides to explain the person she was before she arrived in town. She recalls a week at cheerleading camp in Northern California that became both miserable and wonderful because of a prank war and a brilliant boy everyone called Goggles.

Connie arrives at Camp Jumminville distracted by serious trouble at home. Her friends Marcy and Hope want her help defeating the boys' Navajo cabin, but Connie initially refuses. Then the boys hoist her beloved teddy bear, Pookie, to the top of their flagpole, and she agrees to strike back once.

The girls hide foul-smelling Limburger cheese in the boys' vents, but Goggles notices that the vent covers have been replaced incorrectly and removes it. A bucket of seaweed over a door also fails. Meanwhile, Goggles hides a speaker beneath the girls' floor and keeps them awake with bursts of music.

For three days, every prank Connie plans is detected, while every trick Goggles devises succeeds. He fills sleeping bags with homemade itching powder and leads attacks involving snails and an X-ray machine. His cleverest prank is an announced sixth attack that never happens: the girls stay awake all night waiting, only to find a note marked with the number six. Their fear has defeated them without any action from the boys.

Exhausted, Connie tries to quit the competition and angrily tells Marcy and Hope to leave her alone. Then her mother telephones with the news Connie has dreaded: both parents have signed their divorce papers. Their separation is now official.

Unable to stop the collapse of her family, Connie desperately wants a fight she can win. She returns to the prank war and designs a dangerous trap. Marcy will lure Goggles across the camp bridge, where Connie has replaced strong boards with thin balsa wood, and the girls will photograph him falling into the stream.

A counselor warns Connie that the contest has gone too far. Both cabins are placed on probation, and one more prank will send those responsible home. Connie tries to cancel her plan, but the camp director is already heading toward the sabotaged bridge.

Goggles answers the girls' walkie-talkie after Marcy runs away. He has found Connie's backpack and read her private journal, first mistaking it for a book of prank plans. Although Connie is furious at the invasion, he apologizes and says that her parents' divorce makes their competition seem childish. He offers a truce.

Connie reveals the bridge trap and her certainty that she will be expelled. Goggles promises to fix the situation. He intercepts the camp director, warns him about the weakened bridge, and refuses to name Connie as its creator. Instead, he accepts partial responsibility because his own pranks helped drive the contest to that point.

The director sends Goggles home. Connie remains at camp without knowing what he sacrificed and searches for him at the final bonfire. Though the two have been enemies all week and have never seen each other's faces, she has begun to think the mysterious boy may be kind - and perhaps even worth having a small crush on.

In the present, Eugene overhears Connie reading and recognizes Camp Jumminville. He reveals that his foster parents sent him to the same nature camp and that his old camp name was Goggles. Connie is stunned to discover that she and Eugene met through pranks years before either came to Odyssey.

Eugene finally explains how he took the blame and was sent home. Connie thanks him for giving up the rest of his camp week so that a stranger facing her parents' divorce could remain with her friends. Then Eugene discovers the passage about her old crush and rushes to tell Whit, leaving Connie to chase him and demand that her secret remain between the former Avenger and Goggles.