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.
