Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill

  And maybe everyone already knew it.

  I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR STINKING RULES!

  Once we’d finished eating the mystery meat, mystery veg, and mystery dessert (that might have also been meat, I’m not sure), it was time for after-dinner announcements. This old guy I didn’t recognize got up in the middle of the Chow Pit and clapped his hands for everyone to be quiet. Amazingly, everything got real quiet, real fast.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Dweebs.

  “That’s Major Sherwood,” he said. “We call him the Dictator. You definitely don’t want to get on his bad side. And he doesn’t have a good side.”

  “Really?” I said. “He looks kind of harmless.”

  “I know, right?” Smurf said. “Go figure.”

  “Hello, boys!” Major Sherwood said. “And welcome to another summer at Camp Wannamorra!”

  Everyone clapped and cheered then, including me, since I didn’t know any better.

  “This is the first and last time your counselors will be waiting on you, so don’t get used to it,” Sherwood said, all smiley-faced. “The young men of Camp Wannamorra look out for themselves. Isn’t that right, boys?”

  “Yes, sir!” a bunch of the campers yelled back. This time, I noticed that nobody at my table said a word, except for Rusty.

  After that, things started sounding a little more… familiar.

  “As most of you know, I like to run a tight ship around here,” Sherwood said. “To that end, there are certain guidelines one needs to follow. So let’s start off by going over a few of the expectations we have of our campers here, shall we?”

  It was all getting clearer by the second. Tight ship? Guidelines? Expectations? Just another way of saying RULES, RULES, and MORE RULES.

  And Camp Wannamorra had plenty of them. I know, because Major Sherwood told us about every single one.

  There were rules about not wasting water or electricity or food or paper or “other resources” (whatever that meant).

  There were rules about keeping our cabins clean every day and about taking a shower at least once a week.

  Camp Wannamorra was a “Personal Electronics–Free Zone,” which meant that anyone caught with a phone or an iPod or a laptop could kiss it goodbye for the rest of the summer.

  We weren’t allowed to wander off by ourselves, and we definitely weren’t allowed to go into the adults-only areas of the camp.

  Curfew was nine o’clock. Sharp. No exceptions.

  Lights-out was ten o’clock. Sharp. No exceptions.

  Wake-up was seven o’clock. Sharp. Unless you were up at six or five.

  School started at eight (sharp, like a needle to the eye).

  There was absolutely no storing of food in the cabins. No sneaking over to the girls’ camp. No this, no that, no… I’m not even sure what else. My brain hit FULL a long time before Major Sherwood was anywhere near done. But I was definitely starting to see where his nickname came from.

  Finally, somewhere after dinner and before the end of time, I guess that Major Sherwood ran out of rules to tell us about.

  “All righty, then,” he said. “Enough of that. How about we have a little fun before curfew?”

  That sounded good to me. I was hoping he meant Capture the Flag, or making s’mores, or something like that. But instead, someone handed him a guitar, and he started playing. And you know what? He was even worse than my sister, Georgia, who plays in a band called We Stink.

  I actually recognized the tune of the song. It was this old one Mom used to sing in the car. She said it was called “Guantanamera,” which is Spanish for something, but I always thought it sounded like “One-Ton Tomato.”

  It turned out that “One-Ton Tomato” was also the camp song, but with its own words.

  Camp Wan-na-morra!

  We’re here at Camp Wan-na-morra!

  Camp Wan-na-mooooooor-ra!

  We all love Camp Wan-na-morra!

  Everyone sang along off-key while Major Sherwood played his guitar and walked around from table to table. And even though I was still learning the new words, I moved my mouth up and down and pretended like I was singing. It was only the first night of camp, after all. I didn’t know what Dweebs meant about not getting on Sherwood’s bad side, but I figured this wasn’t the time to find out.

  Hopefully, if the real fun ever started, somebody would let me know.

  We’re here at Camp Wan-na-morra!

  Eight weeks at Camp Wan-na-morra!

  Please help me get through to-morr-a.

  LOSERVILLE

  After a couple more oldy-but-moldy songs like “On Top of Spaghetti” and “B-I-N-G-O” and “Help Me, Help Me, Someone Please Get Me Out of This Crazy Camp That’s Really Just a School with a Lake” (okay… two out of three, anyway), Major Sherwood finally, mercifully, let us go for the night.

  All of us Muskrats walked back to our cabin together, joking around and acting like that whole “dead meat” thing never happened. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe nobody else was even thinking about it anymore. They all seemed pretty okay—

  At least until we got to the Muskrat Hut.

  That’s when we saw the sign someone had made. It was on a giant piece of paper taped over the screen door. In big black letters, it said WELCOME TO LOSERVILLE.

  Oh, man. I’m not saying I knew for a fact that Doolin and the other Bobcats were behind this. But it seemed like a no-brainer to me. It was obviously them.

  The guys just stood there in front of the cabin. Nobody said anything for a second.

  But guess what? A second is all the time I need.

  In fact, it’s more than enough time—for Nuke Khatchadorian.

  I take off at nuclear speed and head straight for Doolin’s cabin. As I approach, I can sense him through the walls, and no, I don’t bother with the door. I bust right through the spot in the wall where he’s sitting on his bunk. By the time anyone even notices he’s gone, there’s just an empty bed and a Rafe-shaped hole left behind.

  Quicker than light, I swing past the lake, with Doolin hanging upside down.

  I dip him in just enough to get his head wet and keep going. Next thing you know, I’m back at the Muskrat Hut. I fly back and forth, back and forth, faster than the human eye can see, using Doolin’s head like a scrub brush to wipe that Loserville sign out of existence. If he’s a little bald by tomorrow… well, that’s not my problem.

  Finally, as that second on the clock pushes into the home stretch, so do I.

  I whip Doolin back to where he started, drop him on his bunk, and fly back to my own guys, who are standing there looking at the place where that sign used to be.

  And… TICK!

  “Did you guys see something?” Dweebs says. “Like a… sign or something?”

  “Uh… I kind of thought so,” Smurf says, scratching his blue head. “But I guess not.”

  “Must have been an illusion,” I say.

  After that, everyone goes inside, nobody even knows that stupid sign was ever there in the first place, and our summer at Camp Wannamorra starts to look a whole lot brighter.

  Yeah…

  Yeah…

  Yeah… I wish.

  PUT A LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT

  Spoiler alert! I wish I could say that the rest of the night went okay, but it didn’t.

  After lights-out, Rusty went off to the counselors’ dorm, which I guess is like the teachers’ lounge, if the teachers slept at school. Supposedly, they had real food in the dorm, and some of the counselors from the girls’ side came over to hang out at night and I don’t know what else. (That kind of stuff, as teachers say, isn’t exactly “age appropriate.”)

  A little after that, before any of us were asleep, I heard footsteps outside. There was whispering. And snickering too.

  Then a flashlight came on—right through the window and right in my face, so I couldn’t see a thing.

  “What time is it?” someone whispered.

  “Dead meat!” someone else said.

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nbsp; “Wha…?” I said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  Then another light came on—this time it was shining in Cav’s face, on his bunk.

  “What time is it?” another voice said.

  “Dead meat!” they all whispered.

  “Buzz off!” Cav yelled at them then, but they just laughed some more.

  Then a third light came on. I saw it across the cabin. It was coming right into the window next to Legend’s top bunk. Except when it came on, he was already waiting for it.

  “What time is—”

  “YOU JUST PICKED THE WRONG INMATE TO MESS WITH!” Legend said. “I’M TALKING TO YOU, DOOLIN. YOU HEAR ME? BAD CHOICE… VERY BAD CHOICE!”

  Okay, I’ve got a couple of things to say about all that. In fact, here’s everything I was thinking while Doolin and the other Bobcats went running for the hills:

  That was the first time I’d ever heard Legend speak.

  Sweet! It looked like the Muskrats might have a secret weapon.

  Unless… maybe he wasn’t our secret weapon at all. Maybe he was more like a nightmare living in the same room as we were.

  In which case… what, exactly, was this kid capable of? What had he done in the past that the Bobcats were so scared of now?

  Did I need to be scared of him?

  Hmmm…

  WIDE AWAKE!

  Was Legend sleeping? I sure wasn’t. I was too busy thinking.

  Now, the following is way too deep for me to understand—but my old English teacher, Ms. Donatello, once said I have the ability to go from denial to acceptance, and that it’s a gift. (Maybe your mom can explain that one to you—or maybe one of your teachers can. I sure can’t.)

  The point is, I was now certain that very bad things were in store for me and my friends at good old Camp Wannamorra. I accepted that fact.

  So I just lay there in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling, wondering what to do about it. Well, I was actually staring at the bottom of Booger Eater’s mattress in the dark. Assuming Norman got his nickname for a reason, I could only hope he was more of an Eater than a Flicker. I’m no scientist, but even I know what gravity will do to something that gets flicked off a top bunk, with me down there on the bottom.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand all this thinking anymore. I grabbed my flashlight, got up, and went outside to the bathroom.

  At Camp Wannamorra, the bathroom was called the latrine. This one was more like a concrete bunker, with showers, toilets, and sinks. You had to walk through the woods to get there, which was a whole new thing for me.

  And I don’t mean I had to use the bathroom. I just wanted to go there. I’ve always had pretty good luck getting privacy in bathrooms.

  It was also the first chance I had to really talk to Leo.

  If you know me, then you’ve been wondering where old Leo’s been all this time. And if you asked my mother that question, she’d say something corny but true. She’d point at my chest, where my heart is, and say that Leo is always there with me.

  But if you’re sitting there thinking What the heck is this guy talking about, and who is this Leo person? then I should catch you up.

  Let’s see, how do I say this without sounding too weird? Leo was my twin brother, my absolute best friend when we were little. He got sick and ended up dying. After that, I always wondered what it would be like if he were still around, and it just kept going from there. That’s why I have conversations with Leo all the time, inside my head.

  Okay, never mind. There’s no way to tell you that without it sounding weird.

  For the record—I’m not embarrassed about Leo. I still think of him as my friend, besides also being my brother who died. But when you’re at a summer camp, and you’re living with seven other guys every minute of the day, there’s not a whole lot of room for conversations with people who aren’t actually there.

  And that’s what I wanted to talk to Leo about.

  “Sorry I haven’t been around much,” I told Leo.

  “It’s all right,” Leo said. “But we need to talk about this jerk Doolin. What are we going to do about him?”

  “That’s the thing, Leo,” I said. “I’ve been thinking maybe I need to start figuring out some of this stuff on my own.”

  “What for?” Leo said. “I’ve already got a couple of awesome ideas.”

  Leo always has good ideas. In fact, once he gets started, it’s hard to get him to stop. It’s not like he needs sleep or anything.

  “It’s just… I don’t think the guys in my cabin would understand,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Leo said. “You’re probably right. Not everybody can understand about us.”

  “Don’t be mad,” I told him.

  “I’m not mad.”

  He was mad.

  “I just need to keep all this stuff dialed down for a little while,” I said. “It’s only eight weeks.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay, fine. I get it,” Leo said. “Good luck with all that.”

  That’s the other thing about Leo. He’s kind of touchy. But I was going to have to worry about that later. I already had enough on my plate to deal with.

  Real stuff first.

  Sorry, Leo.

  ONE CAMP WANNAMORRA MYSTERY SOLVED

  WARNING: This is one of the grossest chapters in the book. Not the grossest, but probably in the top ten. If you’re eating something, you might want to put it down for a second.

  So… it felt like I was asleep for about five minutes that night—before they started playing the wake-up song over the camp loudspeaker.

  That was seven o’clock. At seven thirty, we had to be at breakfast. That meant half an hour to get up, get dressed, and do whatever else you had to do in the morning.

  Which brings me to how I found out where Bombardier’s nickname came from. You might think about skipping to the next chapter now.

  I guess not, huh? Okay, here goes.

  After I got dressed, I went back to the latrine before I headed down to the Chow Pit. It was crowded now, with guys brushing their teeth and doing whatever—gargling, running their hands through their crew cuts, Q-tipping their ears and noses. There I was, waiting my turn, looking around, and just starting to wonder why I didn’t see any of the other Muskrats, when out of nowhere…

  It happened. Now I understand.

  It starts with the smell—and it hits you like a Mack truck up the nose. But it doesn’t stop there. The next thing you know, you’re gagging—a little at first, but if you’re not careful, it turns into a full-on, blown-chunks kind of situation.

  That’s only if you stick around. Nobody ever does. Not when Bombardier’s been in the latrine. (It goes like this: Bombardier + broccoli = BOOM!) The only trick at that point is not getting crushed by the stampede.

  The bad news? Well, just look at the picture.

  The good news? I wasn’t sure how it might work yet, but maybe the Muskrats had another secret weapon on our hands. Or maybe a not-so-secret weapon.

  More bad news? I mean, come on! Did you look at the picture?

  More good news? Actually, yes: This isn’t a scratch-and-sniff book.

  SUMMERTIME BLUES… SORT OF

  Okay, so it had to happen sometime.

  That morning at eight, to be exact.

  The start of summer school!

  I don’t know how much you need to hear about this. You’ve been to school. You’ve taken English and social studies and math and all that stuff. The only real difference was that this school was held in a couple of tents on the camp grounds, with signs on them that said the fun starts here!

  I was starting to figure out that the people at Camp Wannamorra had a whole different definition of fun than I did.

  One surprise was that the girls came over for school in the morning too. I even saw Georgia, but we just kind of waved at each other and kept moving. It’s not like we were in the same classes or anything.

  My group included me, Dweebs, Smurf, and Booger Eater, which was another big surprise.
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  “I kind of thought you’d be in with the brain patrol,” I said. But Booger Eater shrugged it off.

  “My mom thinks I could use some extra help,” he said.

  Still, it seemed weird. He just looked smart. Not to mention that he always had some kind of book surgically attached to his arm. It was hard to imagine a kid like that not being good at school.

  First period was science. The Challenge Program kids went off to study the lake or something while my group sat in a tent and learned about the human circulatory system… just like I’d learned about it (kind of) at Hills Village Middle School.

  Second period was English. Mostly, the teacher talked about the play we were going to put on that summer, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I didn’t know what that had to do with English, but I guess it could have been worse.

  Third period was social studies. (Are you getting bored yet?)

  I was just starting to wonder if that morning was ever going to end, when I walked into fourth-period math. That’s when I saw our math teacher for the first time.

  “Hi, everyone,” she said. “I’m Katie Kim. Nice to meet you all.”

  Her name was Katie Kim.

  Katie Kim.

  Did I already say Katie Kim? I just wanted to make sure that you knew her name. It was Katie Kim.

  Listen, I don’t know what love is supposed to feel like, but I definitely had something at first sight that morning. She even made me forget about math for a little while.

  Actually, scratch that. It doesn’t take anything for me to forget about math. But Katie Kim made me just a little bit glad I was there.

  I’m not going to say she was the best teacher in the world, because to tell you the truth, I don’t really know. I mean, I heard all the words coming out of her mouth, but I wasn’t really putting them together into sentences. I was just sitting there, thinking about how much I wished Katie Kim wouldn’t ever stop talking.