Chapter 1: The Misadventure Begins

  June 2006

  Some folks have days that burn themselves so deep in their skulls they might as well have happened yesterday. This is mine.

  Because really, when your Dad drags you with your duffel bag by a dog chain onto a rickety old bus smelling of gym socks and something… that isn’t gym socks, the memory isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Especially if, while you beg the neighbors to call 9-1-1, your second youngest brother is watchin’ your suffering from the kitchen window like it’s some kind of nature documentary, with yours truly as the wounded gazelle!

  Little turd thought he was hot stuff since he got to stay home with baby Joel despite being two years younger than me!

  Guess I oughta back up a bit. My name is Watterson Tostig, but you can call me Watt. And despite what the dog leash I’d been shackled to implied, I was not a bad kid! Sure, I put Damien Slacks in the hospital, but I didn’t mean to! Ms. Tweedy didn’t see it that way, though. She just saw the 3’4’’ kid with the C- average kick a boy twice his size hard enough to crack bone.

  One stern conversation with my folks later, I found myself sentenced to three months at Camp Sham!

  CAMP SHAM!

  A name immortalized in the idle gossip that echoed through the halls and cafeteria of Ronald Reagan Charter School.

  “I heard there’s only one T.V.- a real crummy one that doesn’t even have a DVD player!”

  “No air conditioning!”

  “Bugs everywhere!”

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  “Word is, a kid ran off into the woods back in the eighties and never returned!”

  And nastiest of all:

  “Yes, Watterson: you will have to sit still and socialize for more than five minutes at a time.”

  . . .

  I spent the ride there huddled at the rear of the bus, clutching my dog collar, gazing longingly back at the life I once had as it rolled away into the distance. My backpack rested in the middle of the seat, the only barrier between me and the girl my age in black- black boots, an elegant black dress, and long, silky black hair cascading over her face. The only thing that wasn’t black was her skin, which had the color and sheen of pearl.

  “This is all your fault, Hilda.” I grumbled. “If I hadn’t taken your stupid advice and kicked Damien in the shin, I’d probably still be at home playing Smash Bros.!"

  “The only one doing anything stupid was Damien, and that was swiping our picture of a dino-horse and calling it retarded!” She protested. “It didn’t even look like a dino-horse, it was more of a turtle horse!”

  Thought about sniping back, but I wasn’t in the mood. Ever since I turned ten, it seemed like a lot of my talks with Hilda went south one way or another.

  "And besides," she added, "Now we won't have to constantly hear your Mom and Dad bickering downstairs."

  I might have gotten really riled at that one, but right at that moment, some chunky kid who probably ate his own boogers sat on top of her. Most folks would have protested this sort of thing, but Hilda being Hilda, she just kinda phased right through him.

  Instead, I kept glaring out the back window, grumbling. Much as I hated to admit it, I really needed some advice on how to escape that stupid bus. Advice I couldn’t just ask for now that chunky kid might mock me of talking to air. Instead, I’d have to take a cue from Mom: if I really wanted something done, I’d have do it myself.

  Unless that something was changing the carpet’s color using my play paint. Then I had to ask her permission for everything.

  But still! I was rumbling over cracked asphalt to my certain doom, and ideas weren’t exactly dropping themselves into my lap. So I did what any truly good kid would do in my situation: I slammed my fist against the window, explaining to any passing car as loud as I could how I’d been set up and didn’t belong with these psychos. When not a single driver noticed me- heck, I think a few actually drove away from the bus!- I switched to plan B: fiddling with the bolt on the window. Figured if I was lucky, maybe I could jump on a passing car and hitchhike back home. But the camp must have had past experiences with kids trying to pull that stunt, because the thing was welded shut! In the end, I resorted burying my head in my duffel bag and entering defense mode. With any luck, the counselors would think I was dead and I could escape my unmarked grave later.

  For the rest of the ride I sat there, trying to imagine myself still at home, watching SpongeBob while sitting in my pajamas with baby Joel in one arm a big bowl of dill pickle potato chips in the other. Then half the bus started singing ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ at the top of their prepubescent lungs, so I couldn’t even be granted that small mercy.

  Hey, I thought to myself, there’s gotta be a limit to how lame summer camp can get, right?