Escape from Camp Boring

by Tom Mitchell

  ‘I’m Zed,’ said Zed.

  Robbie’s eyes rested on me. My shaking hands went to my jacket pocket. I nodded and smiled. This was the reveal. How would he react? I really didn’t want to get beaten up. Not generally and not in front of the others. Robbie wasn’t generally hot for violence but people act unpredictably in extreme situations.

  And, all thanks to the great forest god – Herne the Hunter maybe – the sandwich bag and, more importantly, its contents, were there. I offered it to Robbie.

  His face was something else. It’s difficult to describe. Maybe it’s what you’d look like if you were boiling hot on a summer’s day and you jumped into an icy pond? A weird mixture of pain and relief?

  ‘I thought I’d left it on the bus,’ he said, his voice a trembling shadow. ‘I thought I’d left it on the bus. I was jogging to reduce the stress. Because you’ve caused a lot of stress, Will. Do you know how much stress you’ve caused? My whole future kept flashing in front of me. Like a broken TV stuck on a channel that only broadcast the word “FAILURE”. Why’ve you got it? Why did you take it?’

  Quietly Ellie spoke. ‘Like I said, I’d consider upgrading your equipment, buying some cloud storage …’

  Robbie continued staring at me. The muscles of his face tremored.

  ‘I thought it was your portable phone charger,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Whooo did this to my beautiful house?’

  Mum. Sounding like a monster owl. That could talk. And was really angry.

  Robbie raised a finger. It shook. ‘How did you get here?’ he asked.

  ‘We walked through the night, through the forest. It was like an adventure but one where everything keeps going wrong and there’s loads of walking. There was a skeleton, a llama too—’

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘All of you. I don’t know …’

  He jogged to our front garden. Hidden by the bush’s thick leaves, we listened. As his conversation with Mum played out, I imagined it as a pivotal movie scene, all shot from above. By a drone, maybe. There’d be a stirring soundtrack played on strings. The sort of classical music teachers tell you to enjoy.

  ‘It was a bird!’ shouted Robbie.

  ‘What?’ cawed Mum.

  ‘I saw a bird bang against my window.’

  ‘A what?’

  (Alexa, Ellie and Zed held hands over mouths to catch their giggles. But they hadn’t met Mum. That’s why I didn’t laugh.)

  ‘A bird! You know, the things with wings?’

  ‘A bird? Well, I hope this bird has a good lawyer!’

  What followed next were footsteps. Not Mum’s thankfully, but Robbie’s. Mum appeared to have been silenced by the bird intel.

  ‘Will?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You … walked through the night?’

  And I explained. As quickly as possible. I even mentioned the collapsing shed – I don’t know why. The bat too. The road hummed with increasing traffic, traffic we’d have to navigate should we be able to convince Robbie to give us a lift.

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me?’ he asked. ‘Like a normal kid? Why’s it always complicated schemes with you?’

  ‘Faulkner – he runs the camp – he wouldn’t let me. And I didn’t have my phone, remember? It was an anti-tech camp.’

  ‘So you escaped to return this to me? Through the woods?’ He gestured with the hard drive.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Robbie pointed at the other three.

  ‘My friends.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Robbie, seeming calmer, possibly deciding not to inflict extreme violence upon my person. Or maybe he was just shell-shocked. ‘You thought it was a portable charger?’ He stared at the hard drive. And continued staring. ‘I mean, it does look a bit like one in all fairness.’

  And then something weird happened, something I’d not experienced in years. Robbie’s features softened, he held out his arms, and he pulled me into a hug. Reader, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t smile. He smelt of sweat from the jog but I didn’t say anything about this.

  ‘Ahh,’ said Alexa. ‘See?’

  It was a prompt for us to break.

  Robbie reached out a hand. I flinched, still only 98 per cent convinced that he wasn’t going to beat me up. That’s what I’d have probably done if our roles had been reversed. Instead he brushed a pine needle off my shoulder.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I guess. It’s … been very … you know. The anxiety. I only realised last night. So …’

  I nodded.

  He nodded.

  The others nodded.

  ‘I guess you’ve saved my life. Having almost ended it.’ He held up the hard drive like it was a gold nugget, if a gold nugget is what I think it is. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I’ve got to hand this in. And you lot are going to be in serious trouble, right? Sucks to be you.’

  ‘Well …’ I began.

  ‘We were hoping you might give us all a lift back to camp before breakfast register so we don’t get caught?’ asked Alexa, speaking double time, smile from a toothpaste ad.

  ‘Yeah … and Dad says the New York trip’s off if I get in any more trouble,’ I said, deciding not to mention what he’d also said about the possibility of Robbie and his girlfriend getting the tickets. We’ve established that I love my brother, but I’m not a moron.

  ‘Well, we can’t let that happen, can we?’ Robbie said.

  Sometimes, I’ll admit, having a perfect brother had its advantages. A normal person would have left us on the road.

  There came the sound of someone clearing their throat. It was Dr Morris at the other side of the gate. Her approach must have been disguised by the traffic that was now properly roaring. She looked dressed for work and held a bag.

  ‘Umm,’ she said. ‘Why’re you all standing at my gate? Are you stealing or selling?’

  We didn’t make the breakfast register.

  If the town had a better public transport system, would there have been fewer cars on the road and therefore less traffic to get stuck in? Is there a single person responsible for transport? The mayor? What if there existed more than one road into the forest? Who knows? And it wasn’t even the cars that were responsible. It was the cyclists. They made us late. It was their fault. And although there were only minutes in it, sixty seconds can be the difference between catching the last train and walking home in the rain.

  Getting the car was easy. Mum was ‘working from home’, so didn’t need it. And she was so pleased that her favourite son had found his hard drive, she’d practically thrown him the keys when he’d said he needed the car to pick up some last-minute supplies and contact a glazier about his bedroom window.

  ‘And, this is the most unbelievable part, Mum even fell for the bird thing,’ said Robbie, later, talking from the driver’s seat. ‘She said there was a pair of troublesome magpies that she’d had her eye on for a while. It smells like soil in here. Can you lot smell that? A definite soil smell.’

  I felt a sudden and deep yearning to be in bed. My bed. In my bedroom. Now that the hard drive had been returned, my mind had found other things to worry about. Like a hamster in a wheel, it felt compelled to constantly turn (over some kind of anxiety). Me getting caught and New York obviously loomed large. My legs still hurt. The ripped jacket.

  ‘Does he have a pierced ear?’ whispered Ellie into my ear.

  I nodded.

  ‘Lit,’ she said, and I’d never heard the word used so sarcastically.

  With Ellie to my left and Alexa to my right I was squashed like a bird’s nest in a fork of two branches … if you can picture that. It wasn’t comfortable, that’s what I mean. Especially when the car took a corner and I was forced against one or the other of the girls, straining muscles not to make excessive contact.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Robbie. ‘What deadline are we working to?’

  ‘Eight. Breakfast register.’

  ‘L
et’s hope Google Maps is lying,’ said Robbie. ‘Thirty-three minutes to get to the Lonesome Pine camp, it says. It’s going to be close.’

  The time was 07:24. Add thirty-three to that. It comes to 07:57. Breakfast register was at 08:00.

  Like a barber to Hollywood stars, we were cutting it fine. And that was before the bike problem.

  The first sign of the bike problem came when Robbie said, ‘I think we’ve got a bike problem.’ We shifted to get a better look through the front windscreen. Outside was more bike than road. Red and white helmets from the future occupied the whole road. They reminded me of the earlier swarm of bees, only with more Lycra.

  We were out of town by now and approaching the turn-off for the forest. Left from the car was the (too) familiar sight of pine trees, arrows pointing skywards as if to remind you that things could only get better. Right were empty fields that faded greenly into houses on the town’s outskirts.

  And there, in front of us, a solid wall of middle-aged men, probably all members of some club that took over the roads for the half an hour before they were due in their sales offices. Our car had slowed to walking pace, growling behind them.

  ‘Sound the horn!’ said Ellie.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Robbie, but he hadn’t even finished speaking before Zed leant across to smash a palm against the steering wheel.

  I’d never before heard the car’s horn. If you put it on a scale of scary animals, it’d probably come between mouse and rabbit. It was more of a toot than a blast and had no impact on the obstruction. We shared panicked looks.

  ‘How far is the turn-off?’ asked Robbie.

  My memory was blunted from the trauma of the original drive in but—

  ‘Like ten minutes at least. At a normal speed.’

  Robbie tried the horn again, his initial reluctance to do so forgotten now that it had already sounded in the least aggressive way you could possibly imagine. Did one guy, grey hair cut too short, flinch slightly? Did he move his head a centimetre? I don’t know. Maybe my desperate hope was making me see things?

  Robbie grumbled to himself. ‘Let’s not forget that I also have a pretty important deadline today! I need to hand in my work.’

  Ellie wound down her window. She stuck her head out like a dog on holiday.

  ‘Get back to your retirement homes, granddads,’ she barked. ‘You’re thirty years too old to be wearing clothes that tight. Why don’t you spend your money on something more age-appropriate? Like pipes and slippers? What’s wrong, couldn’t afford a sports car?’

  Like a flock of starlings, the pool of bikes turned as one, pulling over to the tree-lined side of the road as Robbie slowed the car. The men craned their necks like prairie dogs on high alert and they were pink and sweaty and stung by Ellie’s harsh words. I don’t know if they waited for a bicycle ringleader, a King Lycra, to speak – we didn’t hang around to find out. Having fooled them into thinking he was stopping, Robbie revved the engine and thrust us forward, past the red-and-white band of puffed-out, powerless men.

  ‘It’s weird you never see women in all that gear on expensive bikes,’ said Alexa.

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Robbie, the road opening up in front of us. He caught my eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Hey, I just thought – it’s like we’ve gone from a hard drive to a hard drive. Get it?’ Nobody responded. ‘You returned the hard drive and now we’re driving hard. A hard drive.’

  ‘Your brother is so funny,’ said Ellie.

  She could teach sarcasm at university; she really could.

  Robbie stopped in the single-track lane that led up to the camp’s car park. The trees threw a shadow over us. They knew. They wanted to help, to disguise us from onlookers.

  It was a few minutes past eight. We were so missing registration. But we were here, and that was a miracle in itself.

  As we walked from the car, thank-yous and goodbyes done, Robbie called me back. He spoke from the driver’s window.

  ‘I won’t tell Mum,’ he said. ‘And … thank you. You’re an absolute nightmare. But you’re a good –’ he struggled for the right word – ‘person.’

  There was awkwardness as he reached his arms out of the window and I, having to crouch a bit, went in for a hug (mad difficult with a car in the way) and the cringe endured to be honest. One of the others, obviously Zed because it was weird and stupidly loud, wolf-whistled.

  ‘I hope today goes well,’ I said. ‘At art college. I mean, I know it will. Everyone knows it will.’

  Robbie started the engine. ‘If our roles were reversed, I’m not sure I’d have done what you did, Will.’

  My eyes stung. It was probably hay fever. I’d never had hay fever before but there must be a first time for all sufferers.

  ‘I mean the escape and all that. But obviously I’d never have taken the thing in the first place because I’m not a moron.’

  He turned the car and drove off … to a future that somehow I’d managed to avoid ruining.

  Alexa, Ellie, Zed and I didn’t run towards camp. We were already late and, also, more tired than ever – and hungry. In the car we’d each glugged from a water bottle Robbie had brought. Supposedly he didn’t want to make Mum suspicious by bringing food. This dodgy truth hadn’t stopped my stomach grumbling.

  We stood under the Lonesome Pine signpost. Its stern wood and smart lettering gave the impression of an organised camp. You can make anything seem professional with the correct font.

  ‘What now?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘Exercise,’ I said.

  Because I had a plan, a plan as cunning as the forest fox. All wasn’t lost yet. It wasn’t over until the fat man rang home.

  The word was met by three question-mark faces.

  ‘We find a clearing or whatever and we get caught exercising. Honestly, it’ll work. We’ll say we didn’t know the time because we didn’t have phones. What about pine-cone yoga? We could do that. Wasn’t that an activity?’

  ‘What’s yoga?’ asked Zed.

  ‘Don’t worry about yoga,’ said Ellie. ‘I know yoga. I just don’t get how yoga will save us. I can’t believe what I’m saying.’

  ‘We’ll say we got up extra early to do it. That’s why we weren’t in the bunkhouse at morning register.’

  Alexa gasped. ‘I just thought. What if they’ve called the police? What if they’ve reported us missing?’

  ‘It’s only five minutes past registration,’ I replied. ‘Unless they noticed us missing at night. And they would have called home and Robbie would have heard about it all. Which didn’t happen. We’re safe. As long as we get caught doing yoga, like, stat. It’ll be like your mum doing up your laces for you – all the loose ends will be tied.’

  I didn’t expect them to applaud my simile but I did imagine there’d be a wave of protest. Or a splash of complaint at least. I think if they’d come up with the plan, I’d have pointed out the obvious flaws.

  But instead Ellie said, ‘Let’s go,’ and the others nodded.

  I said, ‘All righty, then.’ (Not sure why. I’d never used that expression before. I was very tired, I suppose.)

  Alexa suggested we head for the activity space. There’d be nobody there – adults and children alike would be at breakfast. It’d be an obvious place to search once they realised we were missing, though.

  The boardwalk, groaning under our feet, snaked between trees. Up ahead you could see the office building’s corner as the path turned. It was strange to be back again. It felt like we were on the edge of where the past met the future.

  We stepped off the boardwalk and joined the trees again. Me, Alexa and Ellie did our best not to step on broken branches but Zed stumbled ahead like a puppy on sugar. Ellie had to grab his arm and show she meant business with a finger to her lips. We curved round behind the office building and the main clearing.

  Ferns parted like curtains and, in no time, the back side of the Cooler flashed between the trees. We were soon past it and out into the activity area. As we’d hoped
, nobody was there.

  ‘Right,’ said Ellie. ‘Yoga.’

  We each found a pine cone from the floor.

  ‘How about you shout out instructions and we copy you?’ I suggested.

  She clambered up on to one of the wooden tables.

  ‘Okay. I think the point of the pine cones is that you balance them somewhere,’ she said, putting a pine cone on her head. Then she barked, ‘Bakasana!’

  ‘Baka what?’ said Zed.

  Crouching, Ellie fell forward on to her hands, drew her knees in and lifted her feet from the table. Her face was tight with concentration. She looked like someone frozen in time while playing leapfrog. You’d think it impossible for anyone to ever assume that position, not least because somehow the pine cone stayed balanced on the top of her head throughout.

  Me, Alexa and Zed exchanged alarmed glances.

  ‘Ellie,’ I said. She returned her feet to the table. ‘One: try something easier. Two: really shout – we need the camp to hear.’

  ‘Three: where do we put the cones?’ added Zed. ‘Zed doesn’t have the same skull as you.’

  It took three positions before Noah came crashing through the trees: Matsyasana, Paschimottanasana, and, my favourite, Bhujangasana. Alexa wasn’t bad at balancing the pine cone on various parts of her body. Zed held his in his mouth like a dog. Mine rolled off somewhere during my attempt at Matsyasana.

  ‘Have you lot been eating the forest mushrooms?’ asked Noah, having to lean against a tree because of the shock, presumably. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘A dynamic backward stretch for the upper body and spine,’ said Ellie.

  And so, for possibly the first time ever, a plan of mine actually worked out the way I intended. Faulkner was so impressed we’d got up extra early to do yoga, we didn’t even get in trouble for being late to breakfast. Especially when Ellie said that she was going to tell ALL her school friends how great the camp had been and also that her dad was a rich lawyer.

  The rest of the day trickled towards the leaving ceremony like the camp showers that were actually welcome after the night we’d just been through. After a final round of You Time, during which we all slept, there was a leaf-modelling exercise where we were given twigs and leaves and told to make little stick figures. Zed was the only one of us who didn’t lie out on the grass to sleep again.