Camp Walandguno

• Xavier Egan, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2016

So, here I am waving goodbye to my parents, on a train going to a strange camp.
A camp for juveniles.
Now I know what your thinking, I’m a bad egg. Well I'm not, I'm a really good kid but I was framed by a bully at my school. He had bullied me since third grade!
I'm in grade seven now but he got into my high school.
He's not the smartest. One day I was sick of him picking on me. I told him to leave me alone and then gave him a light shove. In retaliation he punched me extremely hard in the jaw. I saw he was going to do it again and just before he punched, I moved out of the way and he tripped. He fell right onto the edge of a metal seat, down concrete stairs and was left bleeding and unconscious.

Some bystanders saw and went to the teacher who wouldn't believe my story. Actually he wouldn't even let me talk about it. Next step, the police got involved and now I'm going to boot camp.

I looked around the train. I saw people that I don't belong with, but I did find one kid like me.
We mostly spent the trip in silence.

When we got there you could see everything from up on the hill. There were about five average sized cabins, two large cabins and one mess hall.

We were arranged into cabin groups. I was paired with two kids, Mark, the guy from the train and Bill, a real big and masculine looking kid. Both my age. Bill had red slicked back hair and Mark had spiked brown hair.

The cabin was small with one bunk on either side and a dresser with four draws on the back wall. I was first in so I got one of the top bunks before anyone else. Mark and Bill arm wrestled for the other top bunk. Now Bill looked a lot stronger than Mark but Mark won……. three times!

The next morning I missed breakfast because you had too be there by six, I arrived at six o two, they wouldn't let me in.

We got sorted into activity groups. I had rock climbing but this was no ordinary rock wall, it was a cliff! I am quite good at rock climbing but others weren’t. Three people fell. One died but the instructor gave a blank expression and shrugged.

Next it was canoeing in the rapids. A canoe crashed and sunk, no life jacket's.

At dinner I told my friends what had happened, suspiciously they said the same thing had happened.

We made plans to escape.

As we discovered a hidden wall, a camp instructor caught us and asked us to follow him.
He led us to a grave yard.

There were three freshly dug graves.

One had Marks name it.

One had Billies…

and the last was for ME!

That terrible place is where my body lies.