Camp Wild Read Free Page B

gentle-flowing water for about half an hour, which is what makes this site such a safe place to learn. Then the river starts dropping faster and becomes rapids with boulders the size of cars that you have to maneuver around.”
    â€œCool,” Charlie inserts, but some of the tykes are clutching their paddles and looking behind them nervously.
    â€œAnd then?” prompts Herb.
    â€œThen it drops into a narrow canyon with steep walls on both sides and non-stop rapids for hours. It’s really, really intense.”
    â€œYou’ve canoed it?” the little girl with wet hair asks, wide-eyed.
    â€œI have,” Claire says solemnly, staring at the dark water beside her canoe as if it’s replaying the footage. “I did it with a bunch of crazy guys last summer. I’d never do it again.”
    â€œWhy?” the kids shout together as they inch closer to her, the same way they dowhen she tells ghost stories around the evening campfire.
    Claire’s eyes glow with a faraway look. “Because there’s a killer waterfall at the end of the canyon, and you have only seconds to get out before you reach it. Plus you need ropes to climb down from there to the last rapids before the river dumps into a wilderness lake. It’s not safe, and we should never have done it,” she says solemnly.
    I mentally add rope to my equipment list. I want to ask about those last rapids before the lake, but I don’t want to make her suspicious. So I turn to order the kids back to their paddling exercises. Claire tosses me a grateful look. One by one, our charges return to paddling Camp Wild’s decidedly un-wild river bend. All except Charlie, whose eyes, squinting beneath the wet spikes of red hair sticking through his kayak helmet’s drain holes, refuse to leave my face.

chapter five
    Today is D-Day, as in time to defect from this camp. That puts me in such a generous mood that at the breakfast buffet, I load one Danish into my mouth, two more into my pockets and deliver a fourth to Herb. He is hunched on the bench that pulls up to the long mess-hall table.
    â€œHerbie, buddy, extra rations for you,” I say cheerfully, dropping it on his plate.
    â€œNo thanks,” he says glumly, stirring a spoon listlessly in his oatmeal.
    Wait a second. What’s wrong with this picture? I’m the glum guy; he’s always Mr. Happy.
    â€œWhat’s up? Got up on the wrong side of your bunk?” Not technically possible, but hey, I’m being real nice this morning ‘cause in just hours I’ll never share a bunk with him again.
    â€œGot toilet-cleaning duty today, and Patrick won’t let me trade. What’d you draw?”
    â€œK.P. Want me to snitch some chocolate bars for you?” Getting kitchen patrol is like winning the lottery at Camp Wild. Even though it means scrubbing pots for an hour, it also means potential access to the pantry’s box of chocolate bars. Never mind that Cook makes you whistle the whole time you are in the pantry. (That way you can’t stuff anything in your mouth.) She also checksyour pockets when you come out. But the best-informed campers know she does not check socks or hats.
    Toilet-cleaning duty, on the other hand, is losing the lottery. Poor old Herb. I watch him frown and shake his head.
    â€œFlag time,” Patrick announces in his booming voice as he stands at the front of the room. I silently order the moose antlers on the wall above him to fall on his skull, but they don’t cooperate. So I file out behind Herb to where two juniors are proudly unfolding the flag and getting ready to run it up the pole. Did I do stupid stuff like this a few years ago? Do my parents really think I am still a kid? Are their careers really so much more interesting than their own offspring?
    I try to regain my cheerfulness by reminding myself that tonight, the minute Herb starts snoring, I’ll be turning tail on this poor excuse for a