Raft Building? OH NO!

• Vivaan Srikanth, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2021

Chilly, mellow camp air softly stroked against my pale cheek as the autumn leaves rustled and twirled near my feet.
“Hello students, what a scrumptious breakfast we just delightfully enjoyed. A big round of applause to our hard working chefs. It is now time to head to your first exciting activity.”
“Oh great”, Ethan and I groaned as we sluggishly packed our day bags.

I was so enraged that I could twist metal rods, but there was no hope foolishly complaining, Ethan and I had to bolt down to raft building
When we arrived, we were puffed like a dog with droopy eyes.

“I’m Aaron” said a blonde haired man who was standing with the materials.
“My name is Michelle” shouted another lady who was in the river, setting up
illuminating boundaries in the water. She looked unpleasant in the water, and I was curiously but nervously figuring out why?

Aaron separated us into teams.
I luckily got placed with Connor, Henry and Ethan as my ‘winning’ team. Or so I thought...
We all started squabbling, and had constant quarrels about who’s idea is suitable and who’s is intricate and assiduous. We then settled to make a sturdy base of wood planks and tie plastic tubes with rope to not submerge like the titanic.
“This raft ain’t gonna float” Connor whispered

After twenty minutes of sheer hard work, we had what looks like a scrap pile of wood at a garage sale, while other concentrated teams had well designed rafts.
“All right Camp Group 7! These are some ‘wonderful’ looking rafts. His voice stammered when he looked at our raft. It looked like a marauder ship that had hit a mine!

Helplessly dragging our raft to the river, we pushed it in, along with ourselves of course. THEN IT HAPPENED! The ice freezing, body numbing water intertwined with my pain receptors, and attacked my brain at bullet speed. I started mentally breaking down in the water, an inch close to crying and panicking. Ethan was very observant and asked if i was ok, I should’ve said yes, but I assuringly replied...

“I’m ok, let's win this,” I whimpered unfaithfully, then the infrastructure of the raft immediately broke up! The poles traveled down the river, so Henry and Connor were forced to chase them. All Ethan and I had were pieces of mashed up wood blocks and loose rope. We continued to go to the end of the river, which was about 2 metres away. Suddenly Ethan’s brain went fuzzy and the light faded from him. I swiftly chucked the materials on shore and shouted at Ethan.
“Ethan! Wake up.” No answer. Henry splashed a wave of water, and he got ‘electrocuted’ back to life . While Connor shoved the remaining pipes up the end of the river, Henry, Ethan and I were sunbathing in tiredness, shock and proudness. Although Aaron was disappointed that our raft wasn’t sturdy, he was pleased to see that we were alive, and I DEFINITELY WAS TOO!