Thanksgiving ghost story

This past week, before I left on vacation, I grabbed the first book I could find on the shelf on my way out the door. In this case, it wound up being the Young Adult classic, Crash Course, by Nicole Davidson.

The set up is fairly standard, 8 high schoolers go out into the woods of for an SAT prep course over the extended Thanksgiving break at Deep Creek Lake with just a teacher keeping track of them. We have Kelly, who's going mainly because Thanksgiving has been awkward since her mother left; Paula, who's boyfriend has already gotten an appointment to the Air Force Academy most of the way across the US from Maryland; Isabel, a new student who's along to make friends; Angel, the goth girl who goes out of her way to be strange an unusual; Jeff, the wrestler who has a crush on Kelly; Chris, the football player trying to get into UCLA who also has anger issues; Nathan, the guy from the wrong side of the tracks who plays foil most of the book; and Brian, Paula's boyfriend. Watching over everyone is Mr. Porter, an unpopular teacher who no one knows why he's doing this.

We focus mainly on Kelly throughout the book, with occasional passages covering another character briefly. (Although to be honest, the prologue lets out more information than we should have, as astute readers will likely figure out half the mystery early on.) Essentially, Deep Creek Lake is cold and has an underground creek that feeds the lake in the middle. Legends tell of young Susquehanna lovers who returned to the lake after finding their tribe slaughtered, and asking Gweemush, the underworld guardian what to do. Needless to say, his answer was to join him, so they drowned themselves.A story that Isabel tells around the fire the first night. The next morning, before dawn, a scream awakens everyone, and we run out to find several characters outside the cabin who shouldn't be, and Paula claiming Brian had been in a boat in the lake with a stranger who pushed him in to the lake.

With no bus coming back until Sunday, and no sign of Brian or his body, Mr. Porter sets off to get help. He never returns. The seven folks left start becoming more and more at odds, as everyone secrets come out. Nathan gets stabbed, but survives, even though he's mostly unconscious.

Eventually, Kelly pieces everything together and like a young Miss Marple, brings all the truth of the weekend to light.

While there are some fairly major plot holes, and a premise that seems largely unlikely in the modern age (one supervisor? no way to contact the outside in case of emergency?), it does provide an amusing distraction that holds up several years after publication.

She actually wrote a sequel a few years later, but I don't remember the name of it, nor did I particularly like it. But that's neither here nor there.