Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

The final week of day camp brings excitement for Libby and horror for Sheila. Libby is in love with a 14-year-old boy named Hank Crane, and Sheila thinks they might have kissed during a camp movie. After camp one day, Marty announces Sheila will be taking her swimming test in a few days, and Sheila becomes certain she will drown.

One night, the campers go on a hayride, and Sheila is nervous about the horses pulling the wagons, because she thinks they might “go wild and pull [them] into the woods” (120). During the hayride, one of the camp counselors plays her guitar and tells the campers ghost stories, which Sheila tries to tune out. The hayride takes the campers into town, and Mouse tells Sheila they are riding on Old Sleepy Hollow Road, where the character Ichabod Crane saw the Headless Horseman. Sheila becomes more frightened, and when she thinks she hears the sound of the Headless Horseman and sees a flash of lightning, she decides to “bury [her]self under the hay” so she will be “[s]afe from the lightning and the horses running wild and the terrible dark woods and the Horseman” (122). Mouse and one of the counselors dig her out, and Sheila lies and says she just didn’t want to get wet if it starts raining.