by Mo O'Hara
“Bad,” I said, and then blanked him and talked to Sanj.
“What’s with the kid with the hair?” I asked.
“Dustin,” Sanj corrected.
“Whatever,” I continued. “We had stuff planned. We were gonna work together. We had ideas.…”
“I just had to seize the moment, Mark,” Sanj said. “Besides, Dustin has some great trap ideas too. He’s actually been out in the wild and trapped things.” Then he lowered his voice. “He’s Canadian, you know.”
“And he’s evil?” I said. “No way.”
“Um, that’s like a major national stereotype, dude,” Dustin jumped in. “I’m evil and I’m Canadian and I’m proud of it.” Then he paused. “Oh, excuse me for interrupting.”
Was this guy for real?
“Fine!” I said to Sanj. “I hope you and the Canadian trapper dude are happy together.” I held out my hand. “I just want my notebook back.”
“I don’t have it,” Sanj said, but I knew he was lying.
“Look, I can turn you upside down and shake it out of you, or you can hand it to me.” I stepped toward him.
But Dustin crossed between us. “I think you should leave it. We aren’t allowed any unauthorized violence at camp,” he said.
“This is an EVIL Scientist Camp and it’s against the rules to thump somebody?” I said.
“Yes. You can thump people during Evil Henchmen 101, but not outside class.” Dustin tossed his hair again. “I checked the rules very carefully.”
I couldn’t believe there were that many rules at an EVIL camp that you had to check.
“I will get that book, Sanj,” I said. “Those are my ideas too and you can’t steal them. And I’ll build a better trap than you losers anyway. Even if I have to work with a waste of space like Geeky Girl.”
I turned to stomp off when I bumped directly into Geeky Girl.
She did not give me any size smile this time. What she did give me was a totally evil glare.
“You aren’t my first choice either, you…” She let her evil glare look me up and down as she decided how to insult me. “… you … you … wall!” She didn’t seem happy with that insult at all, and she looked like she was gonna kick me in the shins instead, but Dustin tutted at her.
“Tut, tut, tut … unauthorized violence.” He shook his head.
So instead she walked over and mashed his marshmallow right in his face. Then she stormed away.
“I bet that takes ages to wash out of bangs,” I said as I walked off, just hearing Dustin mumble, “I’m sure that counts as unauthorized violence.”
Geeky Girl strode off into her tent, and I swear she slammed the tent flap. I didn’t think that was even possible.
I kinda thought I should maybe try to say sorry for the line about her being a waste of space. I was mad at Sanj, not her. I thought maybe I should say something at least, but just as I passed my tent, I stopped.
From inside, I could hear a very low hissssss.
“It’s a snake, man!” I could hear Diablo shouting. “There’s a snake in here.”
8
I recognized that hiss. Not that I’ve heard many snake hisses in my time. Well, none in real life to be exact and only a couple in movies. But this hiss I’d heard all the time. This was pretty specific. It was a clear, I’m-really-mad-that-I-can’t-go-out-and-I’m-hungry-and-I-haven’t-bitten-anything-in-a-really-long-time hiss. And I knew exactly who was making it.
I pulled back the tent flaps to find Diablo, Bob and Igor all standing on Igor’s bed, trying to poke a stick under my bed. I strode up to my bed and stood there.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
“Get back, man,” Diablo shouted. “There’s a snake under there!”
“And it doesn’t sound happy,” Bob added.
“Urrrggghh!” Igor agreed.
“Is that it?” I smiled and reached out and grabbed the stick from Diablo.
“Well, that snake picked the wrong bed to hide under,” I said, pushing up the sleeves of my white Evil Scientist coat.
“Can you get it out?” Bob asked.
“That snake is gonna wish he’d never met Mark the Snake-in-ator,” I added.
“Is that your name?” Bob asked.
“Well, the Snake-in-ator bit is really a tag, ya know…,” I started.
“No, Mark. I just call you Annoying New Kid—”
“Or just New Kid if you’re in a good mood, Bob,” Diablo interrupted.
“Yeah,” Bob said.
I didn’t realize they thought I was annoying. Me? How? I mean, I just thought they were hanging back and being cool about accepting me. I had to ramp up the action and get them on my side.
A louder hiss came from under the bed, and they all jumped back even farther onto Igor’s bed.
“I’ll handle this,” I said smugly. ’Cause, really, how else can you say a line like that at a time like this?
“What are you going to do to it when you get it?” Diablo asked.
“Do you wanna see?” I said, and started poking under the bed with the stick. The hissing got louder.
“Noooo,” Bob and Diablo shouted together, while Igor made a slightly higher-pitched “Urgh.” Then the three of them bolted out of the tent, leaving me alone with the stick and the monster under the bed.
“You can come out now, Fang,” I whispered, pulling the campfire hot dogs out of my pocket and holding them out to her.
The hiss turned into a low grrrrrrowl as she smelled dinner.
Fang poked out a single claw and swiped one of the hot dogs and pulled it under the bed. Then, after a few seconds of gobbling noises, she came out purring.
She rubbed up against my knees as I knelt next to the bed. “We got them good, didn’t we, kitten?” I said as I stroked her ears.
She rose up and kitten fist-bumped me and then, just cause she’s Fang, she swiped my hand with her claw.
“Owww!” I pulled back. “You are definitely more dangerous than a snake.”
Fang purred and then grabbed the second hot dog and dove back under the bed just as Bob peeked into the tent.
“We heard you yell,” he said. “Did the snake get you?”
“Just a nip,” I said, letting him see the blood on my hand from the scratch. “No big thing. I got him cornered. Won’t be long now.”
Bob ducked back out of the tent, and I could hear him telling the other guys how the snake bit me but I kept fighting it.
“They’ll be so embarrassed when they find out they were scared of a little kitten, won’t they, Fang?” I whispered. Then it hit me. They could never know. Apart from the fact that me and Fang would be thrown out of camp, they’d know I’d been lying about the snake, and I would go from potential Snake-in-ator kid to Annoying-camper-who-made-up-that-he-fought-a-snake kid. They had to think Fang was a snake.
I reached under the bed and took the hot dog away from Fang. She immediately hissed at me. I thumped against the underside of the bed and shouted, “I’ll get you, snake!” and then I added a loud “You’re no match for me!” because at the time it sounded like an I’m-fighting-an-imaginary-snake kind of thing to say. Fang looked at me like my head had just fallen off. “Come on, kitten, play along,” I whispered. “I have to make this sound good.”
I took another hot dog out of my pocket and waved it in front of Fang, but wouldn’t give it to her. She hissed and swiped at it.
I could hear Bob and the guys outside the tent. “Man, that snake is fighting back.”
“Maybe he can’t defeat it?” Diablo said.
I was rolling around under the bed, making as much pretend fighting noise as possible, while occasionally letting Fang get a bite of hot dog so she wouldn’t actually lose her cool, when a moment of pure genius happened. Ya know when you’re just doing some ordinary mundane evil thing and you suddenly have an evil lightbulb go off in your head? That happened. Evil genius can show itself in unexpected ways, and mine showed when I rolled over on a ketchup packet.
I suddenly knew how I was going to convince them that I’d killed the snake. Ketchup blood! I took the remaining hot dogs out of my pocket and stuck them on the stick. Then I rolled them in the smeared ketchup that was on the floor from the squashed packet. Fang licked up the rest of the ketchup while I wrapped up the “snake” in a T-shirt and—boom!—instant dead, defeated snake body on a stick!
I made some final snake-fighting noises and then went quiet.
“OK, Fang, here’s the last hot dog. Stay curled up under here, and I’ll be back in a bit. Shhhh.”
She meowed, licked more ketchup off my fingers and slunk back under the bed to snooze.
I stood up and strode over to the tent flap, whipping it back dramatically and stepping outside.
“Is that … it?” Bob said, staring at the “bloody”-T-shirt-covered mess I was carrying.
“Yup.” I shrugged. “All that snake wrestling got me hungry. I’m just gonna go cook this on the campfire. Anyone else want BBQ snake?”
The guys all shook their heads and then took a step back and let me pass.
Now this was how I thought camp was going to be.
I didn’t need Sanj, and I didn’t need Geeky Girl. I got respect from some hot dogs and ketchup in a T-shirt. Result!
I could hear them mumbling, “Mark the Snake-in-ator” as I walked away.
9
I woke up the next morning to the sound of a trumpet.
“Dum, Dum, Dum, da da Dum, da da Dum!”
“Darth Vader music?” I mumbled from under the covers.
“It was the evilest thing the kid with the trumpet knows,” Bob said.
“He’s playing it better than last year,” Diablo said.
I looked at my watch. Six a.m.!
I guess ya gotta start early in evil camp.
I got up and pulled on a T-shirt, sweatshirt and shorts and started to put on my white coat.
“Urgghh.” Igor shook his head at me.
“We’ll be doing throws into the lake this morning. You don’t need your white coat, New K—” Bob stopped himself. “Mark.”
I quickly pulled on my swim shorts instead and threw the white coat on the bed.
“Let’s get going,” Diablo said, and raced out of the tent. I followed the rest, and then remembered Fang. “Um, guys, I’ll catch you at the lake. I gotta … umm … umm … umm … fold my white coat.” They turned around.
“Seriously?” Bob asked.
“Hey, man, respect the white coat, and it will respect you,” Diablo said.
“Urgh,” Igor nodded.
“Yeah, so I’ll see you guys in a bit,” I mumbled as I dove back inside the tent.
“Pssst, Fang,” I whispered. A few seconds later Fang stretched her front half out from under the bed, arched her back and then slowly walked her back half up to meet her front.
“I’m going down to the lake, but I’ll bring you back something from breakfast after.” She purred and rubbed against my leg. “Just stay put.”
I ran out and caught up with the guys on the pier by the lake. Sanj and Dustin were there already. They had that look like they were already well into planning evil stuff together. I recognized it, because Sanj and I were like that when we were plotting evil stuff. Geeky Girl was standing on her own in a proper wet suit. She didn’t even make a corner-of-eye contact with me.
“We have a lot of evil stuff to cover this morning, so we’re going to kick off right away,” Kirsty Katastrophe said. Then she leaned back and karate-kicked the kid closest to the pier’s edge into the lake.
“Aaaarrrrggghhh,” the kid spluttered, and splashed in the water.
“Lesson One: the element of surprise.” She smiled as the kid pulled himself back onto the pier.
I tried to quietly stand at the back with Bob and the other guys. As I came up to them, I heard Bob say to another kid, “Then he caught it in his bare hands. It bit him, but that didn’t even stop him.”
Kirsty said, “Now, all of you should hope to get an apprenticeship as an evil henchman at some point.”
I could see Geeky Girl rolling her eyes at this, and Sanj mumbled, “I have much higher aspirations, of course.”
“You are going to need some basic skills. Blocking, chasing and throwing are the top three that you will need to master to get to your Evil Henchmen Basic, Level One,” she said, walking to the end of the pier. “Now I’m going to demonstrate some throws.”
She looked out into the crowd of eager campers waiting to be thrown into the cold lake by Kirsty and totally grateful for that chance. “You!” She pointed over toward Bob, Igor and Diablo. Bob stepped forward.
“No, I mean Snake Kid,” she said. Bob did that thing where he looked like he hadn’t meant to step forward but did a little kick with his foot, like there was a piece of dirt that needed kicking at that exact time and he needed to be the one to do it. Lame cover, really. Then he stepped back, and I stepped forward. “Me?”
She nodded and I came forward to the edge of the pier. She called me Snake Kid. She had heard of me. I was in awe.
* * *
The next five minutes were a haze of being flipped over into the water again and again by Kirsty. I probably sprained my shoulder, bruised parts of me that I didn’t realize could bruise, and I still can’t remember a single move that she did. But those five minutes were possibly the best five minutes of my entire life to that point.
As I climbed back up onto the pier after her final throw, I was smiling ear to ear.
“OK, go and grab some breakfast. Then we’ll meet back here for some chase training on evil getaways.” She slapped my arm as I wrung out the water from my T-shirt. “Nice one, Snake Kid.”
I’m pretty sure that I floated back to the mess tent. By the time I got there I was starving. Being the Snake-in-ator is hard work.
I piled my plate with bacon, eggs, toast and double of everything.
“Mark!” My food piling was interrupted by the sound of Sanj’s voice coming from a table on the left side of the tent. “There’s a space here,” he said.
I smiled as I walked over in his direction and then straight past him and Dustin to Bob’s table.
“Mark? Mark?” Sanj shouted after me. “Oh, he must not have heard me.” He covered, and said to the other people at his table, “We got our evil start together, you know? The Snake-in-ator and me.”
I think my walking had turned into a full-on swagger by the time I brushed past Geeky Girl at the cereal counter. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye, but I heard her mumble, “The Snake-in-ator? Please.” I still felt kinda bad about yesterday, but there was no way I was gonna let her ruin my moment.
Bob, Igor and Diablo slid over to make room at their table, and I slammed down my tray with an evil thwak! “Nailed that throw, right?” I said, and fist-bumped Diablo.
“Totally evil throw,” he said back. “Kirsty was impressed, man. You are on your way to this week’s Emperor of the Camp.”
It was then, in the glory of my most perfect morning ever of all time that I saw the furry gray tail disappearing under the flap of the mess tent and heading for the kitchen.
10
Fang! Oh no! I jumped up and looked over. Geeky Girl had spotted it too. She gave me that look that said, “You have no control over that kitten, do you? You don’t see my budgie misbehaving like that.” It was a very huffy look.
“Ummmm, I’m still hungry,” I said. “I’m gonna go see what they have left in the kitchen,” and I rushed around the side of the tent.
That’s when I heard the shriek.
“There’s a rat! Look, a rat!” a voice squealed from the kitchen tent. I pulled back the opening and saw the cook waving a saucepan over his head and stomping his feet on the ground. I had to get Fang outta there before she was knocked sideways with the saucepan. There was a rustling in the storage cupboard and flashes of gray fur as something jumped and rummaged through the food stores.
“I got this,” I said in my same smug
voice from the night before. It was totally becoming natural for me to sound this smug. It was like Mark the Snake-in-ator had a deep pay-attention-to-me voice with just a hint of “na naa naa naaa naaa” thrown in.
I got the saucepan from the cook and grabbed a lid from the counter. Then I crawled into the cupboard. Sure enough, Fang was happily clawing open a packet of sandwich meats and licking the lid of a peanut butter jar she’d managed to knock over.
“I thought you were gonna stay in the tent, Fang,” I whispered. I went to scoop her into the saucepan, but she dodged me and jumped up out of reach. I raised my head to see where she went and—thwak—my head hit the bottom of the shelf. “Owwwwwch!” I shouted.
“Did you get it?” the cook said, trying to look over my shoulder. “I will never take a job in a campsite again!” he mumbled to himself. “I am a four-star evil chef, not a rat catcher.”
“Fang, come on. If you don’t let me catch you, that guy is gonna splat you with a frying pan,” I whispered.
“You are talking to the rat?” the chef shouted from behind me.
“Yeah … umm … rats are really smart, so I’m explaining to the rat that it has to go, but I’ll take it somewhere where there’s better food.” I looked at Fang when I said that bit.
“Not that your food isn’t good, you know, just for rat taste…” I gave up trying to explain. Fang jumped down off the shelf, and as she casually licked peanut butter off her paw, I managed to sneak the saucepan behind her and scoop her inside (complete with peanut-butter-jar lid). I slammed the lid on the saucepan. “Got it!” I said.
When I crawled out of the cupboard, the cook was wiping his brow with a dish towel. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, get that out of here. Please. I HATE rats!”
By the time I came out of the cupboard there was already a group of kids watching.
“Look, the Snake-in-ator kid got something else,” one of them said.