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Sam didn’t hate Boy Scouts. It was fun to learn about how to survive in the wild. Plus, some of the other boys were a little bit weird, which was nice because he was also a little bit weird. The selling popcorn thing was overrated, but so far, he liked the rest. Of course, he’d only joined a few months ago, so it was still too early to complete an accurate assessment regarding his aptitude. (He’d heard Uncle Alan say that last week, about some new guy they hired at Encom).
Anyway, even though he didn’t hate Boy Scouts, he had some… concerns about the camping trip he was leaving for.
For one, he didn’t really want to leave home. What if something happened while he was gone? And no one would tell him because he was at a campsite in the middle of nowhere, and he didn’t have a pager like his dad always carried with him. And then he wouldn’t know until he got back, and by then it would be too late to do anything about it. Not that he could do much anyway, he was only six, but still. He didn’t want to leave.
And he felt like he was pretty good at all the camping stuff. He read the manual and asked Grandpa Mac all about his camping experiences when he was a kid (which was when the dinosaurs were around, according to his dad, so it must have been extra dangerous). He thought he would probably be fine, but the other kids…
Tommy couldn’t run very fast, which was okay, unless a bear attacked them. Actually, wait, were you supposed to run if there were bears, or did you do something else? He didn’t think anyone had ever told him, and now it was too late to ask Dad because they were already in the car on the way to the campsite.
“Hey, take a deep breath, kiddo. You’ll figure it out.” He breathed slowly. Thanks, brain Dad.
Anyway, next in the troop was Michael, and he never looked where he was going. What if he stepped on a snake and it bit him? The manual didn’t have anything about what you should do if one of your friends got bitten by a snake. He would have to let their troop leader, Mr. Dennis, deal with that.
He was less worried for Kenneth and Jeremy, but he was, maybe, a little bit, worried about Kenneth and Jeremy. Kenneth was Mr. Dennis’s son, and Jeremy had been his best friend since they were 5 ½ and 5 (Kenneth was the older one). They had been camping four times already, and so they told everyone that they were experts, even though he was pretty sure that they had never read the manual, but that was okay too.
He was more worried about them being mean to Tommy, like they always were. Then, he would have to protect Tommy because Tommy wasn’t a very good fighter, just like he wasn’t a very good runner, and Mr. Dennis definitely wouldn’t help. To make matters worse, Kenneth and Jeremy were both seven, and there were two of them, so he didn’t know if he could beat them up very well. He would try anyway, of course, but he didn’t really like his chances.
So basically, he was a little bit worried about this whole camping thing. But it was fine. All the grown-ups agreed that it was an important rite of passage. Except for Aunt Lora, who had never been camping, but that was okay because she was a girl. But he wasn’t a girl, so he had to go.
It was only a short drive to the campsite, which was weird because Mr. Dennis had said it was in the middle of nowhere. He wished he had a map. He should have thought of that earlier. He could ask Mr. Dennis to let him look at the map, but then he would probably give him the “You’re a little baby, why are you asking me that?” look and wouldn’t let him see it.
42 minutes after they left Mr. Dennis’ house, they piled out of the van, grabbing their stuff and taking it further into the woods. Kenneth picked the spot where he, Jeremy, and his dad were going to set up their tent. It seemed like a good spot, with lots of shade from the big trees (Was he supposed to know what kind of trees they were? Because he definitely didn’t.).
He thought that it was probably a good idea to go next to them, but Tommy was looking kind of nervous about sleeping within 10 feet of Jeremy. Michael looked over at Tommy and suggested, “Let’s set up the tent over there, where Mr. Dennis said the lake was.”
Tommy looked a lot happier at this idea, but… “The manual said that we shouldn’t put a tent next to a lake.”
Michael looked over at him, whining, “Aw, come on! It’ll be cool! We can hear the water as we go to sleep!”
Now Michael and Tommy were both staring at him like he had stolen all their transformers, which, rude. He was just trying to help. He could just give in, but that wouldn’t be the most safe thing to do. He stated, “If you go by the lake, and then it starts raining, it’ll flood. Plus, it gets cold at night close to the water.”
From Michael: “It’s not going to rain!” Sam looked up at the sky, which had been slowly getting darker with the big clouds that Gram called “cumulonimbus,” where the “nimbus” part meant rain, and not “jerk.”
From Tommy: “I like cold!” which he couldn’t really argue against, since that was a personal opinion. Sam did not like cold, but, well, it looked like he was outvoted fair and square.
He sighed and replied, “Okay then, I guess.”
They spent the next 2 hours trying to get the tent set up. The box said that you could set it up in 20 minutes, but Sam was the only one who wanted to read the instructions. He got outvoted, again, so they decided to figure it out by themselves. They followed this strategy for an hour, at which point Sam was starting to feel like Mr. Dennis should probably come help them, but he doubted that he actually would.
Sam gave up on voting and read the instructions by himself, which took 10 minutes because there weren’t many pictures. Then, he spent another 20 minutes trying to undo all the stuff they had messed up from not reading the instructions, and 30 minutes trying to actually get the tent up. (He thought the extra 10 minutes were probably because they were a lot shorter than the adults who had originally tested it.)
Just after they finished, Jeremy ran over to their camp, eyeing it with something that almost looked like concern. He didn’t comment, though. Instead, he relayed, “Mr. Dennis says that dinner is almost ready and to get over there.”
They walked over to the other group’s tent because Tommy didn’t like to run. Someone had started a fire while they were fighting their tent, which was nice because it wasn’t even dark yet, and Sam was already cold. Mr. Dennis was sitting by it, cooking some hot dogs, while occasionally glancing up at the still darkening sky and muttering something that Sam didn’t think he was allowed to repeat.
They each grabbed a plate of food and sat down in the lawn chairs set up around the fire. Michael started to talk about how excited he was to watch Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure at the movie theater with his big brother, but then Mr. Dennis glared at him, so he shut up. It was silent around the campfire from then on.
Mr. Dennis seemed about 5% more relaxed than normal, Kenneth seemed bored but trying to hide it, Jeremy seemed bored without trying to hide it, Tommy seemed happy that no one was bothering him, Michael seemed like he was about to explode if he wasn’t allowed to talk in the next 5 minutes, and Sam was extremely uncomfortable.
The silence around the fire made it very easy to hear all the bugs and the wildlife around them, which was a lot. He tried to match sounds to creatures so that he would know if something bad was out there, but there was so much stuff that it was pretty much impossible. Somehow, the quiet felt louder than the arcade, with all of its music, people yelling, and machines, even on a busy Friday night. Mr. Dennis seemed unconcerned, though, so it was probably nothing to worry about.
They started to get up and throw trash away as the sun had just sunk below the horizon. The original plan for the night included stargazing, but it wasn’t looking like that would work out, with all the clouds. Mr. Dennis muttered, “I’m going to bed, see you tomorrow,” and marched over to his tent. The boys followed suit, looking kind of glum about not being able to do anything. It was only 8:30, and his bedtime wasn’t until 9:30 on weekends, but there wasn’t much they could do in the dark anyway.
They tucked into their sleeping bags. Michael and Tommy stayed up talking, but Sam wasn’t feeling very talkative. Instead, he stared at the ceiling, half listening in on their conversation about G.I. Joe, but mostly focusing on the wildlife sounds. A little past 9:45, they decided to turn the lamp off and go to sleep (Michael’s bedtime was 8:30, so he was starting to get tired, even if he wouldn’t admit it).
At 10:37, Sam was still awake, so he was the only one who heard as all the sounds of the forest suddenly silenced. He felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. Something was wrong. He listened carefully, but couldn’t hear anything besides Michael’s snores and Tommy’s light breathing.
At 11:12, he heard the first crack of thunder.
At 11:54, the first raindrops.
At 1:49, their waterproof tent started to seem a little less waterproof.
The water was coming in through the seams at the bottom edges of the walls and floor. It also felt like he was sinking into the ground below him, which had been slowly getting a little less solid. He hoped the lake wasn’t flooding. He wanted to open the front tent flap, but that would just let more water in and also probably wake up one of the others. He stared at the water slowly being absorbed into their tent’s floor, as if he could will it to stay outside if he glared hard enough.
At 3:07, the water started to pool in the low parts of the tent floor. Unfortunately, that was where his sleeping bag was set up, right in front of the tent flap. His pillow was getting wet, and he could feel the sleeping bag cooling, which sucked, considering that he was already freezing.
By 3:57, the puddle had expanded over to the other boys, who were starting to toss and turn, but hadn’t woken up yet. He was kind of jealous, actually.
At 4:26, a bolt of lightning struck scarily close to them. The light and the near immediate thunder woke Tommy up, who jumped, which then woke Michael up. At least now he wasn’t the only one awake, but he also kind of felt bad that they were suffering with him now.
Michael bleerily looked around him before whisper-shouting, “Is it flooding?!”
Sam responded, far more calmly, “I don’t think so. It just got really muddy, and then it got really puddly.”
Tommy stated, “It’s cold.” Sam wanted to say something rude, but he thought that Uncle Alan would give him a look if he heard about it, so he kept his mouth shut and only nodded.
They each laid back down, but Michael didn’t start snoring, and Tommy was breathing faster than he had been when he was asleep.
At 5:41, the rain stopped, and they all breathed a sigh of relief.
At 5:53, a twig broke not far from the outside of their tent. Tommy whispered, “What was that?” Sam sat up as he tuned his ears to the maximum. No rain, but there were still occasional drips, lots of bugs, and the waves from the lake. No animal sounds, except for… there. Whispering. Another whispered reply, and then footsteps getting stuck in the mud with a squelch.
He started to answer, “It’s just…” but he was interrupted by a yell from behind the tent and then another from the front. Tommy screamed in the sort of way that hurts your ears, and Michael sat up in his sleeping bag, looking around frantically. Sam sighed, “Guys, it’s just…” but again, he was interrupted, this time by laughter.
Michael groaned. Tommy started crying. The laughs got louder. The guy behind the tent ran around to the front, which was a bad idea because he slipped and fell in the mud. Sam wished he could have seen it instead of just hearing it.
Whoever was in the front didn’t notice, though, because he was too busy fumbling the tent flap open in the dark. Sam came to a crouch, blocking the entrance. The tent flap opened, and Tommy started crying even louder as Kenneth tried to force his way in. A second behind him, Jeremy came around the corner, looking a little bit muddy. Sam didn’t move to let them through.
“Why don’t you let us see how your friend’s doing, Sammy?” Kenneth taunted.
Maybe Uncle Alan would call him rude, but they were bullies so he thought it was fine. He replied, “We don’t want Jeremy tracking mud into our tent.”
Kenneth turned around, snorting as he saw how messy his sidekick had gotten. “Alright then. Jeremy can stay outside, and I’ll come in.”
“No thanks, we don’t want our tent to smell like dirty underwear, either.”
Michael started snickering. Kenneth got an angry look on his face and decided to force his way past him to get to Tommy, still wailing in his sleeping bag. Sam reacted before he thought. He let Kenneth push him over, but once his legs weren’t supporting him, he used them to sweep Kenneth’s feet out from under him. Kenneth fell into the mud outside the tent, and Michael openly started laughing. He even thought he heard a giggle out of Tommy.
Michael teased, “Now you’re both too muddy to come in.”
Kenneth glared at Michael, then at Sam, and threatened, “I’m gonna beat your ass, Sammy.”
Tommy was almost smiling as he replied, “Ooooh…. Kenneth said a bad woooord.”
Michael would have taunted, except that by the end, he was laughing, “I’m gonna tell your dad. You’ll have to tell us how the soap tastes.”
Sam stood up, and it was probably stupid, but he thought that it was what Tron would do in this situation, so it couldn’t be that stupid, so he replied with a smile, “Alright, let’s go.”
He stepped out of the tent and held his fists up the way that he’d seen boxers do. Kenneth responded by running at him to tackle him. Something kicked in, adrenaline, he thought it was called, and it felt like time slowed to match with a [click-click-click-click] that he was probably imagining because your brain did weird things when it was 5:57 and you hadn’t gotten any sleep.
He stepped to the side as Kenneth ran past him, and he pushed him to the ground from behind. He heard Jeremy running at him also, which was probably cheating, but there was nothing he could do about it. He turned around and punched him in the gut, like Dad said to do, because if you punched them in the stomach, they would lose their breath and then you would win.
Sure enough, Jeremy wheezed as he stumbled, so Sam punched him in the nose while he was distracted. He got a nosebleed and was somewhat preoccupied with that, which meant that he was probably out of the fight. That was good, because now Kenneth was standing back up.
Kenneth learned from his mistake this time, so he raised his fists to block a punch. Sam would lose the advantage, though, if he hit first, being about 6 inches shorter than Kenneth and likely weaker. He raised his fists to match and circled so that both Kenneth and Jeremy were in front of him, rather than surrounding him.
“You gonna hit me, or what, Sammy?”
Sam snorted. “I’m not sure where you’re finding an M. Y. in there. I thought you were s’posed to know how to read by 2nd grade.”
If Kenneth had been a bull in a cartoon, there would have been smoke coming out of his nose. He charged again, like an idiot. Sam ducked under the punch aimed at his cheek and landed one on Kenneth’s stomach. He stood back up to his full height and pushed Kenneth over and into the mud.
“Wooo!!! Get him, Sam!!” cheered Michael. Kenneth was on the ground in a daze, and his eyes were looking a little shiny. In the movies, this is where the winner would get on top of the loser and start pummeling them, but Sam didn’t really want to do that. Kenneth was already embarrassed and had hopefully learned his lesson; there was no point in making it worse.
Sam stepped forward and started to reach out a hand to help Kenneth up. Unfortunately, that was when Mr. Dennis arrived. “What’s going on here?!” he demanded.
Kenneth scrambled to his feet and yelled in reply, “Sam attacked me and Jeremy!”
“Jeremy and I,” Sam corrected, absently. Gram said that if you said “me and,” it made it sound like you were calling them “mean.” Although in this case, it kind of fit, so maybe “me and” was fine.
“No he didn’t! Kenneth was going to beat up Tommy! Sam was defending him!” Michael yelled, drowning Sam out.
Sam appreciated the defense, but Mr. Dennis was glaring at him like he personally was the reason that kids in Africa were starving, so he didn’t think it would do much.
“What do you have to say for yourself?!”
“What Michael said.”
Mr. Dennis glared even harder. “How dare you accuse my son of something like that?”
Sam narrowed his eyes, “Why are they over here, then?” he asked, gesturing at Kenneth and Jeremy, now standing to the side with annoyingly smug looks on their faces. Jeremy, at least, faltered when Sam stared at them for a little too long, but Mr. Dennis didn’t look at them long enough to see it.
He didn’t answer, an annoying habit Sam had noticed with some adults who thought they knew better than everyone, any time that he asked something they didn’t like. He was glad that his family didn’t include a Mr. Dennis. He would probably be a bully, too, in that case.
Their wise and impartial troop leader shifted his focus to Michael and Tommy. Sam glanced between the two of them, shifting on their feet, and Mr. Dennis, looking like he was ready to commit a murder. He inserted himself right in front of Mr. Dennis’ gaze with the glare that his dad said looked like Tron’s.
Mr. Dennis raised his hand, probably to slap him, but in the hush that fell following Tommy’s gasp, he was distracted by a weird growl coming from somewhere nearby. Sam looked around, trying to find the source of the danger, but they were still a ways from sunrise, and even if his vision was better than most, he couldn’t see anything hiding in the trees, and it was difficult to pinpoint where the sound was coming from, exactly.
Mr. Dennis also looked around for a moment as he lowered his hand, before fixing his gaze back on Sam with an expression that almost resembled fear. He shook his head quickly, blinking, and turned to the rest of the group, shakily ordering, “You know what, let’s pack up and go home.”
Sam turned on his heel without a second of hesitation and went to collect his stuff. Michael and Tommy followed behind him, only waiting for a moment to watch Mr. Dennis. They packed their backpacks in record time and took down the tent. They finished before the other group did, so they sat on a log near the lake and watched the sunrise.
At 7:51, they got back in the van and drove home. Sam must have crashed at some point in the drive, because the next thing he remembered was waking up at 8:42 as they pulled into Mr. Dennis’s driveway.
He looked around until he saw his dad’s motorcycle parked down the road, with his dad beside it, talking to Tommy and Michael’s parents. He got out of the car as soon as it stopped and ran across the street (he did look both ways, just while he was running), and practically tackled his dad in a hug, which felt as awesome as his dad’s hugs always were, but somehow even better than usual because of how miserable he’d been since leaving. He felt just a little bit more energized after his dad pulled back.
“Greetings, program. I didn’t think you would miss me that much,” he joked after he got his breath back.
Sam took another step back, looking up to meet his dad’s eyes. He replied with as much seriousness as he could muster, “I missed you sooo much. Never make me do that again. Ever.” He paused, reconsidering, “Well, I guess it was good that I was there. Because otherwise, they would have never gotten the tent up. And then Tommy would have gotten beaten up. But still. I don’t want to do that again. Okay?”
His dad stared at him for a moment in surprise and replied, “Yeah, okay. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. But I do want the story on that.”
Michael, who had just made it over with Tommy, teased, “Ooooh, you’re in trooouuubleee,” but his dad was smiling as he laid an arm around his shoulders, so he doubted it.
Mr. Dennis had just finished unloading the car, and he started walking over, which, ugh. He really did try not to look toooo angry at their troop leader, but, well, he was pretty angry at their troop leader. His dad glanced between them and turned to Sam, asking, “What’d he do?”
Sam gave up on trying to cover his glare as he stated, “He looked like he was gonna hurt Michael and Tommy. And he was rude, but that’s okay because most grown-ups are rude. But I’m still mad about the Michael and Tommy thing.”
Michael furrowed his brows as he added on with a near shout, “What about you? He was going to slap you!”
His dad stepped in front of him, blocking Mr. Dennis from his view as he demanded, incredulously, “He was going to slap you?!”
“Well, yeah, but that was only because I stepped in front of him when it looked like he was going to hurt them.” He nodded at the other boys. “I also did the Tron Glare, which I don’t think he liked very much.”
His dad blinked twice, and his mouth almost turned up in a smile, but he was still obviously angry at Mr. Dennis. Sam took that as his cue to continue, “He didn’t, though, because he got distracted by this weird growling noise.”
Michael looked up at him frantically, “What do you mean weird growling noise? There was a growling noise?!”
Sam nodded stoically and said, “Yeah, that’s why he decided we should leave early. You didn’t hear it? It was pretty loud.”
That was the end of his explanation, because, from behind his dad, Mr. Dennis politely inquired, “Excuse me, Mr. Flynn, but I would like to speak with you about your son’s behavior on this trip.”
His dad turned to face the conversation’s newest adult, but kept an arm protectively around Sam’s shoulders, which he thought was maybe a bit much, but he didn’t do anything to stop him. “Okay then. We’ll start with what I already know, which is that he was a good friend to those two.” He gestured at the other two boys, “And that you nearly slapped him.”
Mr. Dennis gaped like a goldfish, which was perfectly in line with Sam’s assessment of his intelligence. (He heard that phrase from Aunt Lora). His dad had a hardness in his eyes that Sam only saw when he talked about the Encom board, and if he was as angry at Mr. Dennis as he usually was with the board, then Sam figured that their troop leader was in for it.
“Hah, kids have the wildest imaginations. In fact, my son tells me that Sam attacked him and Jeremy.”
His dad snorted. “That is quite possibly the least believable thing you could have told me about this situation.”
Mr. Dennis started actually sputtering. “Are you calling my son a liar?”
“Uhh, yeah. I mean, you called Sam and Michael liars, and I think Tommy would back them up, so you don’t have much of a leg to stand on there.”
Tommy and Michael were looking at his dad with something that resembled awe (he completely agreed). The other adults looked on with respect. He didn’t think his dad noticed. He looked over at Sam, then looked back up, and suggested, “How about this. You obviously don’t like Sam very much. Sam doesn’t like you very much. So we’ll leave the troop, and you can do your little camping thing or whatever in peace.”
Sam wanted to like this idea, but he had a problem with it. Specifically, what would happen in the future if he weren’t there to protect his friends? He was saved from having to voice these concerns by Tommy’s dad piping up, “You know, I think Tommy will be looking for a different troop as well.”
“So will Michael.”
So that settled that, then. He looked up at his dad and nodded. His dad smiled back at him and stated, “Well then, Dennis, I hope to not have to see you around for a while.”
The drive home was nice. He didn’t fall asleep this time because falling asleep on the back of a motorcycle would be a bad idea. Plus, it was only 5 minutes, anyway. Upon arrival, he trudged over to the couch and flopped face-first into the cushions. His dad came and sat down next to him, so he moved himself to be half on his lap.
“Kenneth is a nimbus. Like jerk, not rain cloud.”
His dad laughed and replied, “So’s his dad, it seems like.”
“Yeah.”
“But you beat him up?”
Sam bit his lip. He didn’t think he was in trouble, but still, beating people up was usually something you got in trouble for, not that he’d ever done it before. “Kinda? Like, I think he’s fine besides maybe a few bruises. But he was going to do a lot worse to Tommy, so…”
His dad cut him off with a proud smile, “Good job, kiddo.”
Sam smiled back, “Thanks. Can I go to bed now? I didn’t get any sleep last night.”
His dad laughed, even though he also looked a little concerned, and replied “Of course.” He tucked him into bed, even though he was 6 and could do it himself. Just as he was falling asleep, he thought he heard his dad knock his head against a wall and state, “Flynn, you are an idiot,” but he probably dreamed that part.