Super Creepy Camp

by Barry Hutchinson

  “How many people have seen it?”

  I swallowed. “Well, I haven’t checked the stats in a couple of days...”

  “How. Many.”

  “Just about eighty thousand or so.”

  Jodie’s jaw dropped. “Eighty thousand?!”

  “Last week, yeah. This week will probably be higher. That moustache post is really drawing the crowds.”

  Jodie stepped back, shaking her head. She looked like she was about to go into shock. “Why would you do this to me?”

  “It was supposed to help. I thought if I wrote all this stuff down, it’d stop me saying it out loud and embarrassing everyone,” I said.

  Jodie pointed at her laptop. “You told eighty-thousand people I use hair cream to remove my moustache!”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, in hindsight it was probably a mistake,” I admitted. “Oh, and I expect it’ll be closer to two hundred thousand by now. Like I say, it’s a very popular post.”

  “Delete it,” Jodie barked. “The whole thing. Delete it right now!”

  “I can’t.”

  Jodie’s face darkened. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “Because it might lead us to Madame Shirley,” I said. “And because I knew you’d tell me to delete it one day, so it asks for a two-hundred-character randomly generated password when you try to remove any posts. It can’t be tampered with. Not even by me.”

  Jodie stared at me in horror. “So, you’re saying...?”

  I nodded. “I’m afraid so. The blog’s here to stay, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it.”

  Just after five-thirty next morning, I was woken by the sound of the printer in Dad’s office. I say “office” but it’s actually just a little cupboard where he has his computer and recording equipment. We hang our jackets in there, too, which is usually a good way of muffling the sound of him singing. There was nothing muffled about the printer, though.

  At first I thought it might be a burglar but I couldn’t figure out why a burglar would be using the printer. Maybe they were trying to steal our ink, but if that were the case, surely there were better ways of doing it? I decided to go and investigate.

  I rolled out of bed and shuffled on to the landing. The light was on, which made a burglary seem unlikely and I stumbled towards it like a moth. Each eye was operating completely independently, so when one opened, the other closed, as if both halves of my face were taking it in turns to continue sleeping.

  “Mum?” I mumbled, squinting in the bright glow of the landing light. Mum was on her knees outside Dad’s open office door, several stacks of A4 paper piled up in front of her. She looked up when she heard me and tried to act like she was surprised.

  “Oh, Dylan! I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You did. What are you doing?”

  Mum looked down at the paper, as if seeing it for the first time. “Hmm? Oh, this? Nothing, really. I’m just printing off some campaign leaflets.” She laughed falsely. “Since you just happen to have woken up, you can help me.”

  “Campaign leaflets?” I repeated, my brain still half asleep. “Are you going to be Prime Minister?”

  “Not quite. The head of the PTA, remember?” Mum said. She reached into the office-slash-cupboard and pulled out a freshly printed bundle of leaflets. “Once people see these, I’m bound to be voted in.”

  Mum passed me one of the sheets. It had a photo of her standing in a heroic pose, one foot on top of a pile of paperwork, her eyes gazing off into the middle distance.

  “The paper I’m standing on represents unnecessary expenditure,” said Mum. “Or needless bureaucracy, I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Vote Claire Malone for PTA Chair,” I read. “She’s great.”

  “Your dad came up with the slogan,” said Mum, loading more paper into the printer. “What do you think?”

  “It’s rubbish,” I said.

  “Oh. Well. Thanks for that,” Mum said. “Turn it over and read the back.”

  I turned the sheet over. There were three columns of text on the other side. “Wow, that looks boring.”

  “It’s very clever, actually,” said Mum. “Fold it up, it’s a leaflet. Unfold it and it’s a lovely poster for your bedroom wall or window.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Jodie, appearing at her bedroom door.

  “Mum’s lost the plot,” I said.

  “I have not!” Mum protested. “I’m just organizing an effective campaign. You don’t win elections by lounging around in bed all day.”

  “It’s half five in the morning!” Jodie groaned.

  “Yes, well some of us have been up since three.”

  “See?” I said. “Totally lost the plot.”

  “Your poor father’s been driving around all night, trying to buy more paper for the printer.” Mum smiled fondly. “That’s dedication, that is.”

  Jodie yawned. “No, he hasn’t. He’s asleep in the car, I saw him out of my window.”

  Mum jumped to her feet. “What?!” she cried. “The no-good lazy so-and-so!” She marched along the landing and thundered down the stairs. “You two get folding. I need all those leaflets done before school.”

  By just before seven, Jodie and I had folded over two thousand leaflets. We did try to point out that there are only seven hundred pupils in our school, but Mum insisted that we keep going, just in case. Just in case of what, she didn’t actually say, just “just in case” in general.

  Once Mum had woken up Dad – and probably half the street, the way she was shouting – she made him take Destructo for his morning walk as punishment for sleeping in the car instead of going to get her paper. It was probably just as well that he had. It was only the fact she’d run out of stuff to print on that had made her stop at two thousand leaflets.

  It was a shame he wasn’t around, actually, as I could have asked him a bit more about the Wagstaffe Cup. He’d gone to the same school as Jodie and me and, although he hadn’t been picked for the team, he’d at least witnessed it first-hand.

  Today was the first day of events. One of the competition’s remaining rules was that the team was selected the day before the contest began, so no one had any time to prepare. The idea was that pupils would study and train harder all year, just in case they were chosen.

  Needless to say, this hadn’t happened in my case. Because we’d lost every single year, no one at my school really cared about the competition. The kids at Foxley Hill, on the other hand, took it very seriously.

  “So, the Wagstaffe Cup starts today,” I said, as Jodie and I sat eating our toast and cereal. She hadn’t been picked for the team when she was in Year Seven, either, but I hoped she might have some inside info, all the same. She made a point of glancing briefly at me, then looking away very deliberately.

  “You’re not still angry about the blog, are you?”

  “Hmm. Let me think,” said Jodie, tapping the side of her mouth with her spoon. “YES!”

  The hall door opened and Mum swept in. She was wearing a bright blue dress with matching shoes and handbag, and a set of white pearls round her neck. “Well? What do you think?” she said.

  “You look like the Queen!” I gasped.

  “The Queen’s ninety!” said Mum, looking horrified.

  “No, I mean the Queen from, like, twenty years ago.”

  Mum’s face darkened.

  “Fifty years ago?” I guessed.

  “What he means is you look great, Mum,” said Jodie. “But why are you dressed like that?”

  “I thought I’d walk you both to school today,” Mum said.

  Jodie and I both choked on our breakfast at the same time. “What?” I wheezed. “Why?!”

  “So I can hand out some leaflets for the students to take home to their parents, of course,” said Mum.

  “I’ve arranged to meet Dawn this morning, so I can’t walk with you, I’m afraid,” said Jodie, doing a very good impression of being disappointed. She turned to me, her face c
rinkling evilly. “Beaky, what about you? Do you have a good reason why Mum can’t walk you to school today?”

  I swallowed. If my lying powers were ever going to come back, now was the time. I’d never needed them more. Yes. That was all I had to say. Yes.

  “Nope,” I said. “There’s no reason Mum can’t walk me to school.”

  Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!

  “Excellent,” said Mum, snatching my half-eaten plate of toast out from under me. “Then hurry up and get dressed. I want to get there early to make sure I see everyone.”

  Mum stepped in front of a group of Year Ten boys and flashed them a toothy grin. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. “I’m Claire Malone. Dylan’s mum.”

  She pointed over to where I was standing beside the school gates, trying very hard to be invisible.

  “As you know, the position of chair of the PTA has become available...”

  “The what?” asked one of the boys.

  “The PTA,” Mum said again, as if that explained everything. When it was clear it didn’t, she continued. “The Parent Teacher Association.”

  “Oh,” said one of the boys.

  “Aha! Now you’re interested!” Mum laughed.

  “Not really.”

  “Right,” said Mum, doing a very good job of keeping her smile in place. “Well... You’ll be delighted to know I’m building my campaign around cutting unnecessary school bureaucracy, and streamlining the process of— Hey ... hang on,” said Mum, thrusting flyers into the boys’ hands as they hurried past her through the gates.

  “I hope I can count on your parents’ votes!” she called after them, then she came over to join me. “Well, I think that went rather well.”

  “It didn’t,” I said. “They’ll just throw them in the bin.”

  Mum sighed. “Try to be a bit more positive, Dylan!”

  I shrugged. “They’ll probably just throw them in the bin. Is that better?”

  Mum let out a loud gasp. Her face tightened, like she’d just eaten a lemon. “I don’t believe it. It’s that Green woman! What’s she doing here?”

  I followed her gaze. A woman who looked a lot like Mum was marching towards us. She wore a near-identical outfit, but hers was green, not blue. In her arms was a big stack of leaflets and trudging along beside her was Evie from my class. Of course! Evie Green. I hadn’t made the connection between Evie and Mum’s arch-nemesis before.

  Mrs Green stopped half a metre away from Mum. They eyeballed each other like gunfighters in an old Western.

  “Helen.”

  “Claire.”

  Evie gave me a wave. “All right, Beaky?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  Evie smiled. “Nah. Nor me. All set for the contest?”

  “Not really,” I said, shaking my head again.

  Evie’s smile widened. “Nah. Nor me.”

  “I didn’t think I’d see you here,” said Mum. “Never pictured you as an early riser.”

  “Oh, I’ve been up since four,” said Mrs Green.

  Mum smirked. “Three,” she said.

  “I didn’t go to bed until two,” said Mrs Green.

  “Oh. Well, that explains why you look so tired,” said Mum. She and Mrs Green glared at each other, their fingers hovering over their respective bundles of leaflets.

  At that moment, a Year Eight girl made the mistake of walking past. Mum and Mrs Green both pounced, thrusting their flyers at her and shouting over one another.

  “Take this!”

  “Give it to your parents!”

  “No, take mine!”

  “Mine!”

  Evie sidled up to me. “Should we leave them to it?”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “Who do you think is going to win?” Evie asked.

  I watched both our mums practically wrestling outside the school. “Dunno,” I said. “But it’s definitely not going to be us.”

  Speaking of things we definitely weren’t going to win, after registration we all headed to the special assembly that would mark the start of the Winston and Watson Wagstaffe Cup of Competitive Chummery.

  Wayne, Chloe, Evie, Theo and I were all made to stand on the stage to the right of Mr Lawson. On the other side of the stage, five students from Foxley Hill School stood snapped to attention in their crisp green blazers. Like our team, Foxley Hill’s was made up of three boys and two girls. Unlike ours, they looked completely confident, as if their victory was already in the bag. Which, to be fair, it probably was.

  Two teachers stood next to them, at the end of the line. One was clearly a PE teacher. His whistle was a dead giveaway. He also looked like he was a member of the SAS and probably ran twenty miles every morning before breakfast.

  I looked along the stage to my right at Mrs Moir, our PE teacher. She’d been at the school longer than anyone could remember – she’d even taught Dad when he’d been my age – and her hips made a weird clicking noise whenever she walked more than two miles per hour. Despite that, she seemed to be under the impression she was still as fit as she’d been back in the 1970s. Coincidentally, her tracksuit – a bright red nylon atrocity with a single white stripe down each arm – had last been fashionable around about that same decade. It was a mystery why Mr Lawson didn’t retire her.

  Mrs Moir was also a bit deaf. She was having to lean so far over to hear what Mr Lawson was saying that I was amazed she hadn’t fallen flat on her face.

  The other teachers involved in the contest were from both schools’ English departments. Foxley Hill’s Head of English was much younger than any of the teachers at our school. She looked like a sort of funky librarian, with elf-like black hair and thick-rimmed glasses. Our Head of English, on the other hand, looked less like an elf and more like an ogre.

  Mr Heft was the largest teacher in school, no matter which direction you measured him in. He’d had to have a special over-sized desk built for him and he had to duck every time he passed through a door.

  Our school’s assembly hall is pretty tiny and can usually only handle one year group at a time. Today it was busier than I’d ever seen it. Rows of tightly packed chairs stretched all the way from the very front to the back, with an aisle down the middle, splitting the audience in two.

  On the left side – our side – the whole of Years Seven and Eight had been squashed in, so there was standing room only at the back. Across the aisle, a hundred or so Foxley Hill School pupils and teachers sat to a sort of hushed attention.

  Mr Lawson had been banging on about the history of the contest for a full ten minutes now. He was all “noble tradition” this and “great honour” that, and it was clear from their fidgeting that our half of the audience had lost interest about ten seconds in. The Foxley Hill pupils, on the other hand, were soaking up every word that dropped from Mr Lawson’s mouth, as if he were the most fascinating man alive.

  “Wow, their head teacher must be really boring,” I whispered to Theo. “They think Mr Lawson’s actually interesting! I mean... Mr Lawson.”

  I caught Wayne’s glare and quietly cleared my throat. “Sorry. Forgot he was your dad.”

  “The rounds of the contest are the same as always,” Mr Lawson announced. “First up is the quiz round, which this year will include a quick-fire spelling segment.”

  The Foxley Hill pupils murmured excitedly, while most of our supporters sighed and rolled their eyes.

  “Then we’ll move on to the debating round. Both teams will be given the motion and will have one hour to compose their arguments before delivering them during the debate.”

  There was a faint smattering of applause from the Foxley Hill side of the audience. Over on our side, someone burped. It echoed impressively around the hall and Mr Lawson had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of giggling from our school’s Year Eights.

  “And finally, the main event,” Mr Lawson continued, his voice taking on a sort of hushed excitement. “The overnight wilderness survival round. Both teams will be taken to two
randomly selected spots in the woodlands behind the school and tasked with making a camp. Then, tomorrow morning, they’ll complete an obstacle course and race back here. Whichever team makes it back first will be crowned the victor of that round.”

  He gestured to his left. “Without any further ado, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the team from Foxley Hill School. In fact, I believe they’re going to introduce themselves, is that right, Mr Mann?”

  The Foxley Hill PE teacher nodded abruptly. “Yah, is right,” he said in a fierce Eastern European accent. He screamed the next few words, making everyone from my school – including Mr Lawson – jump. “TEAM FOXLEY HILL, GO!”

  A tall, pale-looking girl who was at the end of the line closest to the middle of the stage immediately launched herself into a cartwheel from a standing start. She landed in perfect splits and raised her arms in the air in a way that just cried out for a fanfare noise. It would have been an impressive move at the Commonwealth Games and the fact she managed it wearing full school uniform only made it more impressive.

  “Felicity Swanson,” the girl announced. The Foxley Hill pupils applauded enthusiastically. Everyone from my school was still staring at her in disbelief as she stood up, bowed, then returned to the line.

  If we were stunned then – and we were – the next two minutes were positively shocking. All along the line, the Foxley Hill kids demonstrated some sort of amazing acrobatic skill, each one more impressive than the last.

  Edgar Knope somersaulted. Christopher Eccles backflipped. Twice. Jessica Kwon somehow managed to somersault and backflip at the same time, landing in a weird crab-position that made it look like her head was on upside down.

  The boy at the far end was last to show off. He was much taller and broader than the rest of his team, towering almost as tall as his hulking PE teacher. He had the wispy beginnings of a moustache and could easily have passed for sixteen.