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

  When we got there—we were already late. The music was playing, and the counselors had put up a bunch of crepe paper and balloons. A lot of the girls were dressed up too. Including Georgia. That didn’t surprise me. My sister had packed enough stuff when we’d left home to last her until high school.

  “Who’s that?” Bombardier asked me. “She’s kind of cute.”

  “Dude, that’s my sister,” I said. “And believe me—she’s not cute.”

  Norman went straight for a chair in the corner with his latest gigantic book and a little book-y flashlight. No surprise there.

  Legend went off to do God-only-knew-what. Also no surprise.

  Tunz hit the dance floor. Big surprise. Because, let me tell you, the big guy can’t dance any more than I can. Still, that didn’t stop him from doing the booty bounce all over the floor while a bunch of the girls did this “Gray Squirrel” thing.

  The rest of us went right for the refreshment table. There was food I actually recognized, like barbecue chips and punch made with ginger ale, instead of the usual mystery meat and bug juice we got at the Chow Pit.

  Pretty soon, everybody was evenly divided up. Half of the guys were huddled together on one side of the room, and half of the girls were on the other side. Everybody else was mixing it up in the middle.

  That included Doolin, of course. He was chatting up all the girls and dancing and showing off, and they were all acting like he was the best thing since extra cheese on your burger. To tell you the truth, he was a pretty good dancer.

  Cav said we should all name which girl we liked best. I thought that was kind of like saying which planet we wanted to fly to, because let’s face it—we were Muskrats.

  Still, I named Betsy Braces, this girl who was in most of my classes. She was pretty, for sure, but I only picked her so I wouldn’t have to say Katie Kim. I didn’t need the other guys knowing I was practically in love with my math teacher and swimming counselor.

  After that, we all stood around eating kind of stale chips, cracking even staler jokes, and flapping in the wind while we waited for the dance to be over. In other words, the whole thing went just about exactly like I expected it to.

  That was, until it didn’t.

  CAMP DANCES (STILL) SUCK

  So what’s the absolutely, totally last thing you might expect to happen next?

  Martian invasion?

  Earthquake?

  Tsunami?

  Blizzard?

  Katie Kim asking me to dance?

  I can tell you for sure that we didn’t have any alien incidents that night. There weren’t any natural disasters either. But…

  There I was, drinking my fifth—or tenth—cup of punch and pretty much minding my own business, when, out of nowhere, Katie stopped talking to Major Sherwood and started walking across the room with this odd little smile on her face.

  Headed.

  Right.

  For.

  Us.

  “Um… guys?” Cav said.

  “I see her,” Dweebs said.

  “What do we do?” Smurf asked.

  Bombardier farted.

  So I guess I wasn’t the only kid at Camp Wannamorra with a teeny-weeny crush on Katie, after all. You could practically hear the sweat dripping off the other guys.

  And there she was—standing right in front of us.

  “All right, you guys,” she said. “You can’t spend the whole night holding up the walls. Who’s going to dance with me?”

  “Uh…” Cav said.

  “Umm…” Bombardier said.

  “Well…” Smurf said.

  You know that expression “opportunity knocks”? It was knocking, all right, but none of us knew how to answer the door.

  On the inside, I was thinking, Yes, yes, yes… I’ll dance with you, Katie! But on the outside, I was still just trying to get my mouth to work.

  I knew there wasn’t much time. One of the other guys was going to speak up at any second.

  This was huge. I was going to go for it.

  So I took a deep breath. I looked Katie in the eye.

  And I said, “I’ll d—”

  Unfortunately, that’s as far as I got. Just “I’ll d—”

  Because then I felt this annoying little tap on my shoulder. Kind of a familiar tap. Who dat?

  “Hey, Rafe! Do you want to dance with me?”

  It was Georgia, showing up at exactly the wrong moment, of all moments in the history of moments. Of course. That’s my sister’s specialty.

  “Yeah, suuuure,” I told her. Like that was ever going to happen without a court order.

  Except Katie didn’t hear me say “Yeah, sure” like “No way.” She heard me say “Yeah, sure” like “YEAH! SURE!”

  “Omigosh, that is the sweetest thing,” she said. “You guys are brother and sister, right? I wish my brother had been that nice to me when I was your age. Rafe, you’re a real class act, you know that?”

  I think I said, “Mrglph.”

  This was like the definition of an impossible situation. I either had to show Katie that I was the exact opposite of the good guy she thought I was. Or I had to dance with my sister and look as pathetic as it’s possible to look at a camp dance.

  What would you have done?

  You sure about that?

  UNFORGETTABLE

  And then out of nowhere, I lucked out!

  There I was on the dance floor, having the worst three minutes (that felt like three hours) of my life, when some kind of commotion started up by the windows. At first, it was just a couple of kids standing around pointing at something outside.

  But pretty soon, it started spreading like a brush fire. You could see kids whispering to other kids and more people crowding around to see what was up.

  Some of them were laughing. A few girls screamed or screeched. And then everyone was scrambling for the door to check out whatever it was.

  That was all the excuse I needed. As soon as Katie wasn’t watching anymore, I dropped my sister like the hottest potato in the history of hot potatoes and headed out like everyone else.

  Do you remember at the beginning of the book when I showed you a picture of a flagpole that didn’t exactly have a flag hanging on it? Well, that was just part of the whole thing. I was kind of saving the rest.

  When I got outside, this is what I saw.

  Just for the record, this wasn’t anywhere near the first time I’d seen ladies’ underwear. At home, I live with a whole house full of ladies, and believe me, Grandma Dotty isn’t shy about that kind of thing. There’s almost always something white and floppy hanging in our bathroom.

  But this wasn’t Grandma underwear, or Mom, or even Georgia. This was real girl underwear. Maybe even counselor underwear. Maybe even… Katie Kim underwear.

  And that’s the part that made my head almost explode.

  The whole thing was over pretty quick. One of the counselors started taking down the “flag” while the others herded us all back inside, saying stuff like “Move it along” and “Nothing to see here.”

  Nothing to see? Yeah, right! That’s what they say at car crashes and crime scenes when there’s all kinds of stuff to see.

  Still, we didn’t have much choice. By the time we got back inside, they’d already refilled the refreshment bowls and had the music going again, like nothing had happened.

  But it didn’t take a genius to notice the way Doolin was laughing with his friends or how they were all looking around to see what everyone was doing now.

  The Bobcats had struck again, of course. Who else?

  I guess I couldn’t complain. It got me out of dancing with Georgia. It showed me something I’d never seen before (in a good way). And it meant that Doolin and fiends weren’t doing anything to us in the meantime. It seemed like a pretty good deal, actually.

  Or so I thought.

  In fact, the worst night of the whole summer had already begun.

  FOOD POISONING!

  The all-of-the-camp, all-of-the-
time barfing started around four in the morning.

  You know those machines in the hardware store that shake up paint cans? That’s about how my insides felt when I woke up. My head was spinning too, and I could tell that all those chips and the punch in my stomach were about ten seconds away from liftoff.

  I got out of bed in the dark and bumped right into someone.

  “Watch out!” It was Tunz. “I’m gonna—”

  “Me too,” I said. We both hit the door at the same time and beat it down to the latrines.

  It turned out we were wasting our time. I didn’t even know the cabin was half empty when I left it. And the latrines were full when we got there. In fact, they were more than full. There was a line of guys out the door.

  Maybe you already know this, but when you’re feeling like you’re about to blow chunks, it doesn’t exactly help to hear someone else doing the deed ahead of you. It just kind of speeds things up.

  Or like Tunz so eloquently put it—“barf makes barf.”

  Now take that idea and multiply it by the whole camp. It wasn’t just the kids either. All of the counselors were sick too. Everybody was running around from the latrine to the cabins to the main building to the cabins and back to the latrine, like this totally nutball video game called Vomit!

  By the time the sun came up, Camp Wannamorra was one giant disaster area.

  Back in our cabin, the only people who weren’t feeling like empty sacks of skin by now were Norman and Legend. It didn’t take long to figure out that they were the only ones who didn’t pig out on chips or punch at the dance. Norman had been reading all night, and Legend had been… off doing whatever he wanted, I guess.

  “They’re saying it was some kind of food poisoning,” Norman told us. “It’s just as bad over on the girls’ side too. It must have been something in the chips or the punch.”

  “Don’t say chips,” I told him.

  “Don’t say punch,” Dweebs said.

  “Or anything about food!” Smurf said.

  “Don’t say food!” Cav said.

  That’s about how the morning went. We mostly hung out in our bunk, just praying we were done running back and forth to the latrine or into the woods or behind the cabin or—you get the idea.

  I lost track of time, but somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, and just when I was starting to feel normal again, we got hit with another surprise.

  “EVERYONE UP!” Rusty said, coming into the cabin. “LET’S GO, LET’S GO!”

  “What’s happening?” I asked. “And please don’t tell me we’re going on a nature hike.”

  “Nope.” He looked more serious than I’d seen him all summer. “I need you dudes to line up outside. Major Sherwood’s coming through the cabin. Right now.”

  “What for?” Smurf asked. “Turns out it wasn’t just regular food poisoning last night,” Rusty said. “Someone put something in that punch—”

  “Don’t say punch!” Dweebs said.

  “—and Sherwood’s determined to find out who it was. Guys, welcome to your first surprise inspection!”

  THE DICTATOR’S INSPECTION

  The Dictator has ways of making you talk. Even when you don’t have anything to say. Even when you don’t know anything.

  While a squad of his highly trained officers ransack Muskrat HQ, we’re all taken outside. This is scary. And major-league upsetting. And my stomach is still feeling really queasy.

  That’s when the Dictator starts grabbing us, one by one, for interrogation.

  Starting with yours truly.

  “All right, Mr. Whatchamacallit,” he says. “Think very carefully. Where were you when the poisoning in question occurred?”

  “I don’t know!” I tell him. How could I possibly know when the food poisoning started?

  “LIES!” With the press of a button, he sends a thousand volts of electricity right into me. My whole skeleton vibrates like a body full of chattering teeth.

  “I swear-r-r-r-r!” I tell him. “I don’t even know when it happened, so I can’t really say where I was, sir… Mr. Dictator… sir.”

  He gives me another jolt, just for fun, and something tells me he’s not done with me yet.

  “NEXT!” he roars.

  It goes on like that for hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Or maybe about fifteen minutes. It’s all just a blur now. Hard to say.

  Then, finally, one of the Dictator’s guards comes outside.

  “Sir! Mr. Dictator! Sir!” he says with a salute.

  The Dictator pauses with a terrified fourth grader standing in front of him. “Yes?” he says. “This had better be important.”

  “I believe we’ve found something, sir! Evidence.”

  “Well? What is it?”

  “This, sir!” The guard holds up a dark, unmarked bottle of some kind. “We found it wrapped up inside of this,” he says. With his other hand, he holds up something white and lacy that definitely doesn’t belong to anyone on this side of the lake.

  Now the Dictator smiles. “Where did you find those?” he asks.

  “In a camper’s trunk, sir,” the guard says.

  “Which trunk? Whose trunk?” The Dictator sucks back a mouthful of drool. I can tell he’s ready for blood. And if I’m not mistaken, he’s looking right at me.

  This is it! I’ve been set up! I know it. Good-bye, cruel world! Tell Mom I love her. Tell Jeanne Galletta too. Wait—no. Don’t tell Jeanne that. It’s just embarrassing. Never mind—

  But then, the guard reaches out and points a finger—not in my direction.

  Straight at Legend.

  SO LONG, LEGEND

  Nobody could believe it. Not that Legend had made the whole camp as sick as a dog—but that he’d been caught.

  As soon as they found that bottle and that bra in his trunk, Major Sherwood took him down to the main building, and they disappeared inside. By the time Legend’s parents showed up to get him, the whole camp was hanging around waiting to see what would happen next.

  “It’s like the end of a… what do you call something that you thought would never end?” Dweebs said.

  “An era,” Norman said. For once, he was hanging out with us. Even he seemed kind of surprised about this, and Norman didn’t usually show a whole lot of emotion.

  The other thing that was hard to believe was Legend’s parents. I kind of figured they were going to look like this:

  Or like this:

  Or at least like this:

  But they were just like everyone else’s parents. They didn’t even seem afraid of Legend. In fact, they looked pretty darn mad.

  When Legend came outside, he didn’t look around or say good-bye or anything at all. He just got in the backseat of his parents’ car and waited while his parents finished with Major Sherwood. A minute later, they were pulling away, leaving camp forever. Almost everyone was there to watch him go. It was like a major event.

  I didn’t even notice Doolin and the other Bob-cats until it was over. They were all hanging out by the sports shed, sticking to themselves. The thing was, they weren’t watching Legend leave. They were watching us stay. And they had these meat-eating grins on their faces, like they were all thinking the same thing.

  I may not always be the fastest car on the track, but as soon as I saw the way those guys were looking at us, I started to figure it all out. This was a huge conspiracy.

  Legend hadn’t done any of this. They had.

  The whole flagpole thing was just a distraction. It got everyone looking the other way while Doolin or somebody dumped whatever it was into the punch bowl at the dance. After that, it wouldn’t have been too hard to plant some fake evidence in the bottom of Legend’s trunk. Or to tip off Major Sherwood about who the “real” criminal was.

  And guess what? They’d pulled it off. The conspiracy worked.

  Now, with Legend out of the way, the only thing standing between the Bullyboys and our complete destruction was… well, nothing.

  Which I think was the whole point: We were n
ow officially Dead Meat Walking.

  THE DEAD MEAT THREAT

  Have you ever lived under a Dead Meat threat? You’re nervous and afraid every minute of the day. Kind of like when bullies say, “Meet you after school. We’ll settle this with our fists!”

  Only this was more like: “Meet you anywhere, anytime we want, and we’ll settle this with our fists—or maybe rocks, ball bats, hockey sticks, weapons of mass destruction.”

  Actually, the Bobcats didn’t wait around very long. First thing the next day, they started in with the…

  When I woke up, all of my shoes were gone.

  Bombardier got hit with a bucket of water in the latrine.

  Cav got hung by his boxers on a doorknob.

  And that was all before breakfast.

  When I told Rusty about my shoe problem, he thought it was totally hilarious. He said this one was a “classic.”

  “Believe me, dude, those shoes’ll be back. Don’t sweat it too much. That’s like begging for more,” he told me.

  Then he let me take a pair of world’s oldest sneakers out of the lost and found and sent me off to class. I didn’t tell anyone else, because it was kind of embarrassing, and I didn’t expect them to do anything about it anyway.

  Which they didn’t.

  In the afternoon, Smurf’s sleeping bag got thrown way up in a tree.

  Then Dweebs got stripped and pushed out in front of the girls at the water-front.

  And just before dinner, Tunz got hit with two shaving-cream balloons.

  I never saw who threw them, but I didn’t really have to. I was reading the Bobcats loud and clear. We all were.

  And they weren’t done with us yet.

  Dead Meat Walking.

  CHARLIE BROWN MAY BE A GOOD MAN, BUT DOOLIN SURE ISN’T

  The only person who hadn’t gotten seriously punked by now was Norman. Not that I thought the Bobcats had forgotten about him. It was more like they were saving the worst for last.