I can’t believe we’re more than halfway through Term 1. Camp is in three weeks. Even less, if you count today. After Mrs Leeman’s daily lecture about keeping away from the muddy trench behind the toilet block, she hands out a massive bunch of permission forms. We have to return them to Mr Winsock by Friday. He must be the camp coordinator this year. I’ll have to see him and tell him I’m not going.
I’ve been so busy wondering how my jumper made its way down the toilet that I forgot all about camp. Camp is a bit like the dentist. You get home and think, Cool. I don’t have to go again till next year … All of a sudden, it’s right there and you have to do it all again. But I hate camp even more than the dentist because it goes for a week.
Even worse is that I can’t tell anyone how much I don’t want to go. Not wanting to go on camp is like admitting you don’t like holidays or ice cream.
Alex comes running over, waving the cabin diagram in the air. ‘If I put you down first and you put Jun down first and he puts me down first we’ll get put in the same cabin, yeah?’
Everyone else is screaming and yelling and waving the camp notices around in the air. I’m screaming on the inside. Mrs Leeman is busy telling Jun he won’t be allowed to go on camp because he’s ruined his camp forms. I look over at his desk. He’s drawn about fifty chickens on his medical form. I don’t know how he did it because we’ve only had the forms for five minutes. It’s an empty threat from Mrs Leeman. Not being allowed to go on camp, I mean. If only it were true.
Jun and Alex are going through the list of gear, working out what they already have. I know without looking we’ve got most of the stuff at home. I try to look a bit enthusiastic but the best I can do is a kind of upbeat neutral.
Mrs Leeman orders everyone to put their camp forms away before she’s forced to confiscate them. Another empty threat.
I wish she’d confiscate mine. The only good thing is … as far as I know, Mrs Leeman has never been on a school camp. She must have a note about it in her file.
I wish it was a note in my file.
The other thing on our desks is our ‘Sneak Peek’ assignment. I got zero. Mrs Leeman said my bee suit idea is ‘ridiculous’ and ‘fanciful’. I don’t even know what she means. I was only going to use ordinary bees. Alex got ‘very good’ for his recycling idea. Jun has a note on his desk to see Mrs Leeman after class.
At least I don’t have one of those.
When I get home that afternoon, I don’t take out my camp notices. I don’t want to bring up the subject of camp and how I plan on not going, because I’m already in trouble for something else. Last week Alex showed me how to do a roundhouse kick he learned at karate and I was practising outside on the deck. I didn’t realise Noah was standing near me until the end bit when you spin around.
I kicked him in the eye.
I don’t know who was more surprised.
Noah says I did it on purpose, but it was just good luck.
I don’t even have that level of accuracy without the spinning around bit.
Dad is still deciding my punishment. He says an accidental action carries a different punishment from one with intent.
The next day at school I return all my blank forms to Mr Winsock and tell him I’ve decided not to go to camp this year.
He makes me come back for a counselling session at lunch, just because I’m not excited about going to the Ovens Valley Recreational Facility with forty-six other kids and four teachers.
The Ovens Valley Recreational Facility. It sounds like a prison.
Mr Winsock says, ‘You’d be missing a fantastic opportunity. You’ll love it when you get there. Give it a try.’
I have given it a try. In Grade 4 and Grade 5. Why do teachers think you don’t know what you don’t like?
He says my parents have already paid the nonrefundable deposit with the excursion fees, so I have to go whether I want to or not.
He’s not a very good counsellor.
He makes me write down all the things I like and don’t like about camp. I write a list because I have to, but this is my real list. The one I’m going to hand in on the last day of Grade 6 along with all my other grievances. I haven’t listed all of them though. I do have other stuff to do.
THINGS I HATE ABOUT CAMP
1. The bus trip. It takes hours and we have to keep stopping because someone (Wesley) has to throw up. Also, the bus always smells funny. Like pool chemicals or something.
2. Sharing a cabin. I can’t sleep with three other kids in a room the size of a cupboard.
3. Camping out for a night. Some people might like sleeping outside in a stinky bag (sleeping bag) that goes inside a bigger, stinkier bag (tent) that has to be assembled first. I prefer to look at the trees and stars and stuff, then go back inside.
4. Orienteering. The strange practice of leaving kids in the middle of nowhere. On purpose.
5. Insects. The further away from civilisation you get, the bigger and meaner the insects are. With insect repellent that is repellent to people only. Last year a bull ant bit me under my arm when I had a T-shirt and a jumper on. It swelled up to about the size of a melon (my arm, not the ant). Mr S said it was my fault for standing next to an ant’s nest … a piece of information that would’ve been handy earlier.
6. Bush tucker night. It’s not actual bush tucker. It’s flour and water mixed together in an ice-cream container. I don’t want to eat something other people have handled, cooked over the fire on a dirty stick. Yuck.
7. Three-minute showers. It takes me longer than that to arrange my stuff on the miniature shelf so that it doesn’t fall on the floor and get all wet.
8. Talent night. We’re put into groups and have to come up with a five to ten minute ‘performance’ on the last night of camp. No one at our school has any talent for anything so even the name is misleading. Every practice time half the kids make useless stuff out of the craft supplies and the other half don’t do anything.
9. It’s either freezing or boiling. You either have sweat falling in your eyes or it’s so cold you have to wear all your clothes (including pyjamas) at the same time.
10. Journals. The only thing worse than going on camp is having to write about it. I can think of plenty to write about, but we’re graded, so it’s not so much an accurate account as a work of fiction. We could do that from home.
THINGS I LIKE ABOUT CAMP
1. Mrs Leeman won’t be there.
2. Noah won’t be there.
I can’t think of anything else.
I give Mr Winsock a list that doesn’t resemble the above lists in any way and he takes a drink from his promotional Ovens Valley Recreational Facility drink bottle and says, ‘That’s better, Jesse. I knew you’d remember things you like about camp once you wrote them down. Not long to go now!’
I feel like I’m in a recruitment video, but for what I don’t know.
Mr Winsock has finished not helping me, so I head out to find the others. They’re down by the water tanks. Talking about camp.
Braden’s unhappy because he might not be allowed to go on camp.
‘I got into trouble last year at my old school.’ We all look at him.
‘I – we – James and me … we got everyone’s pillow while they were at tea and shoved them all into two sleeping bags … then we left them out in the chicken shed with all the chickens.’
‘How many chickens?’ asks Jun.
‘I’m not sure … about a hundred?’
‘How did they know it was you?’ I ask.
Alex says, ‘Chook poo? I bet it was chook poo!’
‘Yeah,’ Braden says. ‘We left footprints all around our room when we went back for our camp journals.’
He adds, ‘We had to write in our camp journals every night after tea.’
Alex starts laughing. ‘What if you put that in your camp journal?’
‘What?’
‘The whole thing about the chickens and the pillows and everything,’ Alex says.
Everyone’s laughing except Braden.
‘Dad was really angry,’ says Braden, seriously. ‘He said I wouldn’t be going on another school camp ever.’
I can’t imagine having a carry-over punishment for something I did a whole year ago. In my family, we either get yelled at straightaway or nothing happens until everyone’s forgotten what happened in the first place.
I’m hoping that’s what will happen with Noah’s eye.
I only care that I clonked him in the head a whole week ago and he still won’t talk to me. He should’ve forgotten about it by now.
Before we go home, Mrs Leeman makes Jun stand up in front of the whole class while she explains his ‘Sneak Peek’ assignment is a finalist in the National Scientific Innovation Awards. Somehow he has gone from stick figures to a tiny device that reads all the vitamins and minerals in your blood via a single fingerprint and orders all the food and drink you need. First prize is a trip to the planetarium. The National Science people aren’t that smart, though. They don’t know Jun already has a season pass to the whole museum complex. He can go to the planetarium anytime he feels like it.
Over the next week, nobody talks about anything else except camp. Mrs Leeman makes an addition to her encyclopaedic list of rules: no talking about camp in class. It’s kind of unnecessary because we’re not allowed to talk in class anyway, but it does mean I only have to pretend I’m looking forward to it as much as everyone else when we’re at recess and lunch.
By the end of the week, I realise trying to get out of camp might take more effort than going. It means thinking of a plan, carrying out the plan, and then thinking of another plan when that one doesn’t work. It might be easier just to go.
On Friday, Braden tells us he is allowed to go, after all.
‘Dad says I can go to camp because I’m at a new school,’ he says. ‘He thinks it’ll help me make some friends.’
‘You’ve got friends,’ Jun says.
‘I know, but Dad doesn’t know that. He thinks I’ve been a bit funny lately.’ Then Braden looks straight at me!
Is that because I’ve noticed he’s been a bit funny lately? Or has Braden noticed I’ve been a bit funny lately?
The thing is … I can’t tell Mr Winsock or Alex or anyone else why I don’t want to go to camp because I don’t even know myself. I want to go on a flying fox and a giant tree swing, I just don’t want to drive three hours there and back to do it. And I want to sit up all night eating stuff we’re not allowed to bring to camp, but not in a strange bed that smells weird. I don’t want yucky food, wet clothes, or cold bathrooms full of millipedes.
I’m not a baby, but if I say something, people might think I am one.
I don’t know what to do.