Camping

• Ella K, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2018

Not camping. Camping sucks. I would rather eat a bowl of maggots then go trudging through the woods with my older sisters and younger brother. My dad had said that my three siblings and me had to all go camping together to learn to be more responsible.

My siblings are Ashley and Olivia who are 17 and twins. They absolutely love being in charge. My younger brother, Max, is only 9. He really enjoys playing with toy planes and says he wants to be a pilot. I am Lilly and I am 13. I don’t really like attention, but I get a lot of it because of my red hair. It goes all the way down my back and I hate it. Ashley, Olivia and Max all have gorgeous blonde locks but I appear to have lost the hair colour lottery. Freckles are sprinkled across my nose and it makes me look horrible. I wish I were more like the twins.

As we trekked through the forest, where dad had dropped us of Max kept on asking “Are we there yet?’ repeatedly until Olivia gave him a death stare that someone could have nightmares for weeks at one glance. We finally arrived and I collapsed in exhaustion.

“Get up Lilly! We still need to pitch the tents. Then we need to go and get food.” I moaned and got up, hating my sisters for being so dominating! Why do they have to be the eldest? Why not me?

We finished pitching the tents up pretty fast and Ashley and Olivia left to find wood for fire. They left us to get food and make a toilet. I sent Max to get the food and I dug tirelessly until he was back.

The morsel of food Max had bought disgusted me. This would not sustain us for a week! We would wither away. I saw the look on Max’s chubby face and brightened my mood. He was only 9. Even though we had a small amount of food I couldn’t be mad at him.

“It’s okay. We can find some more food before the twins get back okay?” I said softly. Max was still very nervous. He keep looking at the food and then looking at me for reassurance. Ashley and Olivia walked back to our camp, chatting and looking excited and then looked at all the food we had. Their faces instantly fell.

“What! How could you do this to us? I knew it was not the right choice for you to get the food. I was very reluctant to leave you but I thought you could to it. But obviously you can’t even do small tasks like this!” Olivia roared.

“You’re going to be so annoying! We cannot do this all ourselves. You’d better be ready to work this afternoon.” Ashley added. After they finished ranting about how we needed to be more responsible, they walked off simultaneously. This was going to be a long week.