by Tara Ellis
“You’ve all heard of Bigfoot, right?” she begins. The four girls all nod, but Becky already looks wary. “So the sightings started earlier this summer. There have been three altogether, each one happening closer and closer to the camp…”
“Oh please!” Sandy interrupts. “Don’t you have something more original?”
“No, it’s true! One of them even…”
Lexie doesn’t get a chance to finish, because Butterfingers walks into the inner circle of campers and calls everyone to attention. As she starts to lead them all in a fun campfire song, Sam looks at the gathering darkness behind them with a little more unease.
9
LEGEND OF THE WOODS
The next morning arrives bright, early, and very cold. The night before was filled with dancing, singing and making s’mores. Sam was appalled to learn that Sandy had never had one and it was quite funny to watch her eat it for the first time.
Her encounter with Ms. Cooper seems like a distant memory, and she’s eager to start their second day at camp. However, the warmth of her sleeping bag is holding her back.
“I can’t believe how cold it is!” Sandy whines from under her covers. Last night, Sam had thought Sandy was silly for bringing an extra blanket with her, but now she’s envious.
“I think I can see my breath,” Becky adds in confirmation.
“Oh ya big babies,” Lexie laughs. Swinging her bare legs over the side of the top bunk, they dangle in front of Becky’s face. “You’ll get used to it. Wait till you go polar-bearing. That’ll toughen you all up! Anyway, once the sun warms things up, you’ll be complaining that it’s too hot.”
Polar-bearing is another camp tradition, where you take a morning dunk in the frigid pool water before a half-hour work out, followed by breakfast. Lexie had somehow managed to make it sound fun, but now it seems more like torture.
“Count me out,” Sandy mumbles, her face still buried deep inside her sleeping bag. “I’ll see you guys at breakfast.”
Plopping down loudly onto the floor, Lexie turns to face Sam and Ally. “How about you guys?”
Reluctantly, Sam drags herself out of bed and then pulls Ally up. The three of them coax Becky into going, but Sandy won’t budge. Butterfingers is already gone, and they find her down at the pool helping to organize things.
It proves to be just as shocking as Lexie told them it would be, and they are all wide awake when they line up to exercise. It turns out to be a lot of fun though, and Sam is glad that they decided to do it.
Breakfast is as good as the other meals were the day before. When they file back outside and into the courtyard, where the sun is now in full force, they feel energized and eager to do something fun. Butterfingers excused herself early due to a bad headache, so they don’t want to go back to the cabin and disturb her.
“Now what?” Sandy is the first to ask. At least she isn’t whining.
“Can we go hike around now?” Sam is quick to suggest.
“I’d really like to see more of the camp, too,” Ally adds. She’s happy that Sam seems to have shaken off her rocky start, and she’s eager to get things back on track. A fun hike through the surrounding woods would be just the thing.
“Maybe we can do that for a while and then go to the lake?” Sandy offers.
Sam looks at Sandy in surprise. It’s a good idea and Sandy actually sounds pleasant. Maybe the extra sleep she got this morning was good for her.
“I don’t see why not,” Lexie agrees, looking to Becky.
“Oh!” Becky gasps. “I’ll do whatever you guys want. I’m so nervous about learning how to swim this afternoon that I can’t even think about anything else!”
Sam had almost forgotten. The first of only two open swim sessions begins after lunch. If Becky wants to be able to use the pool during their daily free time, she’ll have to pass it. The second session isn’t until Thursday, and they all go home Friday.
“You’ll be fine, Becky” Ally says with confidence. “You already know how to float and do the doggy paddle. You can even hold your breath and go under. It shouldn’t take us long to teach you how to do the breast stroke.” They had taken advantage of the extra time in the pool the day before to find out what she could do.
“Do you really think so?” Becky questions, as they start up a trail.
“Absolutely!” Sam reassures her. “We’ve got three hours, and you just have to make it across the deep end once.”
After climbing along nicely groomed trails for half an hour, they emerge on the shoreline of a decent sized lake. Sam was already impressed with the beauty of the place, but the scenic, tree-lined shoreline practically takes her breath away.
“Oh my goodness, this is gorgeous!” she exclaims, taking in the distant mountain peaks and even a small island situated near the middle of the lake.
“I knew you’d love it,” Ally says, smiling. Even Sandy seems mesmerized by it, and is the first to walk down to the water.
“It’s pretty warm,” she observes, shaking her wet hands. “Too bad we didn’t bring our suits.”
“We’re only allowed to swim in the designated area,” Lexie explains. “They always have a lifeguard on duty during free time. But you still have to have passed the swim test, since there’s only one guard. Sorry, Becky,” she adds, turning to the other girl.
Before they get a chance to discuss swimming any further, they’re interrupted by loud laughter and shouts from nearby. Following the noise back to its source, they find several girls playing an intense game of volleyball on a sandy court. It’s quickly determined that all five of them like the game, and they agree to play the winner.
An hour later, they’re worn out and wishing more than ever that they’d brought their swimsuits. Instead, they settle for going in up to their knees right there next to the court, splashing and chasing each other. Cooled off, they head back towards the main lodge, debating what to do next.
“We don’t have too much time left,” Lexie notes. “Why don’t we work on our barge until lunch? We’re basically going to be gone for the next three days doing other stuff, so we should try and get more done.”
Sam notices Sandy looking at the small blister fading on her finger and grins. She hasn’t even seen the craft hut yet, but it sounds neat.
“I think that’s a great idea!” Becky approves. After saying it, she glances nervously at Sandy. The two of them seem to have formed some sort of unexpected friendship and it’s obvious that Becky doesn’t want to upset her.
“So long as no one lets me use the hot glue gun again!” Sandy laughs, shaking her finger in the air.
Relieved that they all agree for once, Sam realizes that Lexie is right. They won’t have any more free time for a while. Tomorrow is one of the big activity days. They all had a list of things to choose from when registering for camp. She and Ally picked a daylong hike for tomorrow that includes a creek and ‘fanny sliding’ down some waterfalls. The overnight horseback ride is the day after. That will only leave them Thursday for their remaining free time.
“Who else is going on the creek walk?” she asks, hoping that all of them are.
“I wouldn’t miss it!” Lexie shouts, leading the way back onto the trail.
“Well I would,” Sandy counters. “I’m going on the kayak trip. How about you, Becky?”
Looking at each girl shyly, Becky shrugs. “The only thing that didn’t require the ability to swim: archery.”
“Nothing wrong with archery!” Lexie tells her. “I’ve actually done that one, too. It’s lots of fun!” Becky smiles in response, and everyone relaxes.
Their mood is light when they enter the small, airy art hut a short time later. Like the other cabins, it has a screen door and the windows are open. Where it differs are the rows of shelves that take up the wall space instead of beds. And three tables fill the middle of the room. The art cabin is such an unexpected thing, out there in the middle of the woods, that it has a magical quality to it. It’s been decorated with ivy and v
ines so that it looks like something out of a fairytale, and Sam loves it.
There’s only one other group using it now, so there’s plenty of space to spread out the items they’ve collected so far for the barge. Sam notes several impressive pinecones, some cool looking moss, a picturesque mushroom and some fern sprouts. The base of the barge is a solid piece of bark, but it looks small in comparison to the other items…and to the other barges lined up on one of the shelves.
“Umm….” Sam mutters. “It’s great, but don’t you think it needs to be a little bigger?” Lexie gives her a pained look while handing her a small slip of paper.
“Write your wish down on that,” Lexie directs. “We tried to find a bigger piece of bark, but we aren’t allowed to actually pull it off the tree. All the other cabins seem to have picked the area around here clean.
“Then let’s go look a little again, a little farther away this time,” Sam suggests. Thinking briefly, she smiles and then jots something down. Folding the paper over, she drops it into a cup marked ‘wishes’.
They all agree to look for a sturdier base, and they’re soon quite a ways past the craft area. Sam is leading the hunt, scanning the forest floor. There are several fallen trees, but their bark is either already gone, or all mushy and covered with damp mushrooms.
Climbing up a slope, the trail changes from well groomed to less traveled, and soon Sam spots a couple of small flags staked into the ground.
“This is as far as we can go,” Lexie points out. “Those are the markers.”
They are at the top of the rise, and Sam can see for some distance. Twenty feet ahead is a large tree that looks as if it hasn’t been on the ground for very long. Big chunks of bark are hanging from it.
“Stay here,” Sam instructs. “I’ll grab some of that bark real quick and come right back.
“I don’t know if you should,” Becky says, concerned.
“Nah, it’ll be fine,” Lexie decides, grabbing Sam’s arm and pulling her towards the tree. “It’ll just take us a second.”
As they near the huge evergreen, Sam notes that Ally is following, too. By the time they come up alongside it, Becky and Sandy have also joined in on the escapade. Grinning, she’s surprised at how close she feels to them all. Sam starts to pick up a good-sized section that’s already on the ground, but nearly drops it when Sandy suddenly cries out.
“What?” Becky yelps, jumping back and almost falling down.
“I saw something!” Sandy whispers, pointing beyond them into a darker patch of trees.
“Stop trying to scare us,” Lexie scolds, but she doesn’t sound that confident.
“No, I really…” Sandy stops as a loud cracking sound echoes around them. Something very big is moving nearby. Frozen in fear, they all turn towards the stealthy footsteps of someone…or something coming towards them.
“Who’s there?” Sam calls out bravely, her voice cracking slightly.
The answer is complete silence. It’s obvious that whatever it is…heard them.
Then, a large, shadowy figure leans out from behind a massive tree not more than fifty feet away. They all clearly hear deep, raspy breathing that doesn’t sound as if it could come from a human being.
“Big…Bigfoot!” Becky barely chokes out, and her declaration moves them all into action. Turning as one, they blindly run through the woods, not daring to look back.
10
DESTROYED!
The mad rush back to Cabin Navaho is a blur, and Sam can hardly remember how they even got there. The first to arrive, she crashes through the screen door that’s already ajar, and nearly falls over a backpack in the middle of the floor, its contents spilled everywhere.
Trying to catch her breath, she looks around in confusion at the destruction. Before having a chance to take it all in, she becomes aware of movement above her and looks up to find two huge, hissing raccoons perched on her bunk!
Already scared from the ordeal in the woods, Sam’s reaction is extreme. She screams in alarm, falling back. The rest of the girls run into the cabin, and Sam nearly collides with them, flailing her arms as she tries to regain her balance.
Ally reaches instinctively to catch her, but she’s too late, and both of them go down in a heap. Convinced that Sam’s screams and the cabin’s disarray are signs that Bigfoot somehow got there before they did, Sandy, Becky, and even Lexie cry out and try to flee, but the screen door has shut behind them and they pile into it. This intensifies their fear, and they yell even louder.
“It’s just raccoons!” Sam calls to them, pushing herself up from the floor. Her heart isn’t pounding quite so hard in her chest now, and she’s able to grasp what’s really going on. Someone left the door open and the scavengers got inside. But why are they getting into her backpack? They have raccoons back home and she knows that while they’re cute, they’re nasty up close. They can also carry rabies.
This thought propels her the rest of the way to her feet. Maybe that’s why they’re tearing up their stuff in the middle of the day for no reason. Getting out of the cabin as fast as possible isn’t such a bad idea.
Lexie spotted the culprits at the same time that Sam shouted to them, and is now holding the door for Sam and Ally, while keeping a close eye on the animals. “We’ll leave the screen open and just wait for them to come out on their own,” she explains, as they all gather out front.
“Wait for what to come out? What in the world is all of the screaming about?”
Sam groans inwardly at the sound of the director’s voice. Ms. Cooper and Butterfingers have come running up the trail, apparently having heard the commotion.
Great. Just what we need right now. Sam runs a hand through her long hair, trying to gain some control of it so she doesn’t look quite so desperate. As she does, Sam notices a long, bleeding gash on her right forearm. She remembers hitting it on something when she fell, but didn’t realize it was that bad.
“We’re okay,” she offers quickly. “We were just surprised by a couple of raccoons when we got back. I was startled when they hissed at me, so I shouted at them. I’m sorry!”
Rushing forward with a look of concern, Butterfingers reaches for Sam’s wounded arm. “Did one bite you?” she gasps, looking a little pale.
“Oh, no!” Sam counters, shaking her head. “I tripped over some stuff and fell. It’s just a scratch.”
They’re interrupted by a noise behind them and they turn to see the two creatures scurrying around the corner of the cabin and back into the woods. They don’t look as big or scary now, and Sam is embarrassed at her overreaction. But she isn’t about to tell the director that what had really scared them was the Bigfoot sighting in an area of woods that was off-limits.
Marching to the cabin, Ms. Cooper goes inside without even acknowledging Sam. Butterfingers motions for them all to follow, and they find the director standing next to Sam and Ally’s bunk, hands on hips.
Turning to face them, Sam is alarmed by the dark scowl on her rigid face. “Still having a hard time following the rules, I see.” She barks. It’s obvious that she’s talking to Sam.
“Wha-um, what do you mean?” Cringing at Ms. Cooper’s obvious scorn, Sam can’t imagine what she’s done now.
“Don’t play games with me, young lady. Both you and Ally know the rules, yet you decided to keep this in your possession, a direct violation!” Holding her hands out dramatically, Ms. Cooper reveals a bag of cookies and two candy bars. They are a unique brand only sold at the camp store.
Ally’s mouth falls open in shock and she looks at Sam in confusion. They’ve never even been to the store, let alone bought anything.
“That isn’t ours!” Sam exclaims.
Reacting as if Sam had just slapped her, Ms. Cooper takes a step back and looks at her in astonishment. “How dare you lie to me!” she practically yells.
While the rest of her friends are cowering from the enraged director, Sam isn’t having any of it. Placing her hands on her own hips in an imitation of Ms. Coop
er, she squares off with her. “I’m not lying! I don’t lie, and I don’t make things up.” Pulling the five-dollar bill from her back pocket, Sam waves it in the air. “This is the only money I brought with me, and I haven’t even been to the store, so that couldn’t be mine! If that was in my bag, then someone else put it there!”
It’s clear at first that the older woman isn’t sure how to respond. But it only lasts for a moment. Then her scowl deepens, her face reddens and she points a finger angrily, first at Sam, and then Ally.
“Both of you will clean this mess up. Then, you will check in with the nurse and get that scratch tended to before you report to the isolation cabin!”
Lexie gasps at this declaration, and Sam realizes that she has earned them step two of the progressive discipline.
“I would suggest that you not open that mouth of yours again,” Ms. Cooper continues when Sam begins to protest. Her tone is menacing and Sam wisely obeys. “You will stay there for the remainder of the day, until bedtime at ten. This is your last chance, young lady. Unless you and Ally want to go home, then you had better learn to do as you’re told. You’re lucky that scratch isn’t a bite, because then you would be on the way to the hospital to receive rabies shots!”
Becky moans behind her, and Sam feels bad for the other girl. Wait…she stops herself. This isn’t even her fault. Sam can’t believe that this woman is actually making her feel guilty for something she didn’t do. What if her new friends believe that she’s lying?
“There are valid reasons for the rules,” Ms. Cooper presses, looking around at all of the upset girls, including them in her lecture now, too. “If you can’t abide by them, then you will leave Camp Whispering Pines!”
11
ISOLATION