Up and at ’Em

I spent the rest of that night doodling in my “shelter,” thinking about my empty stomach and whatever happened with Carmen. The campfire wasn’t exactly the happiest place on earth, even though building it did earn us our second tags. So the next morning, when Sergeant Fish woke us up at the crispy crack of dawn, I wanted to be miserable about it.

But I just couldn’t. I had one word running through my head, and that’s all it took to eject me out of that tent like a piece of toast from a nuclear-powered toaster.

Okay, I didn’t think I was waking up to blueberry pancakes and extra-crispy bacon, but that didn’t even matter. The point is, I was waking up to FOOOOOOD! BREAKFAST!

Back in the real world, what we woke up to was Sergeant Fish’s morning breath, and not much else.

“Good morning, cockroaches!” he said. “Anyone hungry?”

“Anyone not hungry?” D.J. said.

“Well then, let’s get right to it,” Fish said, and my stomach started doing a happy dance all over again. “You’re going to need some water for boiling,” he told us.

“No problem,” Burp said, and we started heading down to the stream.

“Hold on! We’re going to need a fire for that water,” Fish said.

“Okay,” Thea said, and some of us broke off and turned back toward the fire circle.

“What—you think that fire burns itself?” Fish said. “You’re going to need dry wood, and lots of it.”

I was starting to get the idea about how much Fish liked messing with us. But that doesn’t mean he was lying about all the work. I guess that’s why we had to get up at a quarter past zero in the morning—so we could have breakfast sometime before lunch.

But we did it. We split up, peeled bark, gathered wood, started the fire, boiled some creek water, and even cooked the food ourselves, once Fish and Pittman told us how. And when we finally, finally got around to the eating part, it was just two scoops of the lumpiest, grayest, lukewarmest, most unbelievably delicious oatmeal I’ve ever had in my life.

You know how they say everything tastes better outdoors? Well, everything tastes even better-er when you’re outdoors and all you’ve had for the last twenty-four hours is water, spit, and air.

And I don’t even like oatmeal.

“I want you all to remember something,” Pittman said while we were sucking down that glop. “Most kids who go to bed with empty stomachs don’t know where their breakfast is coming from either. So keep that in mind the next time you think you’re hungry.”

Nobody said anything to that, unless “mmmm” and swallowing noises counted.

But I heard what Sergeant Pittman said. I definitely appreciated breakfast in a whole new way that day. In fact, I’d say it was just about the happiest twelve to fifteen seconds I’d had in a long, long time.