Chapter One Camp It will be great Matt His dad’s words rang in his ears Matt stood in his cabin doorway and watched the car drive away I loved this camp when I was a kid his father had told him You will too Just wait and see Matt kept his back turned to the other kids He was not going to let them see him cry But after the car drove out of sight he felt a big painful lump right where his heart should be He’d never been good at outdoors stuff He wasn’t sure about this at all In the cabin it sounded like a whole army of boys were fighting over the bunks they wanted A counselor’s voice rang out 9
Okay guys enough Tim you’re a big guy You take a bottom bunk Don’t want you crashing down on the kid beneath you Rupal you take the top one Joey the other top one The three boys settled down and began to make up their bunks And you Matt Matt wiped at his eyes and turned around Matt you get the bottom one over there under Joey There were six boys in the cabin The two others had taken the last bunks One boy was already on the top one the other on the bottom Matt was sur prised to see that they were twins Sandy Tommy I can’t tell you two apart the counselor said Looks like you’re all set up Great Matt dumped his bedroll on his bunk He was glad he had been given a corner one He crawled in to spread out his sleeping bag and it was like a cozy dark cave 10
He didn’t have much chance to enjoy it though Listen up the counselor said My name is Dave I’m in charge of this cabin That’s my bunk over by the window First off you all have to know the rules Then you have to obey them Anyone who doesn’t gets sent home Getting sent home sounded pretty good to Matt but he listened Camp was going to be hard enough He didn’t want to get in trouble too His dad would hate it if he were sent home The problem was Matt always forgot things Matt was too nervous to eat much dinner that night The singsong around the campfire was fun but when they went back to the cabin he got nervous again He crawled into his sleeping bag The counselor Dave stood by the door Lights out now Dave said He waited for a minute and went out Soon Matt heard a quiet whisper 11
