Our shitty old beater car drove down a wooded road towards the rising sun. It was early morning, and the windows were rolled down because the AC didn’t work. I stared out the window without saying much to my dad.
I knew that it would eventually be my turn to go to summer camp, but I was still upset. My sister went to this camp, my dad did, and my whole family went, up to my great grandfather. We lived in a tight-knit community, and the tradition had been around for a while. You go to Camp Owaganata once and maybe more if you like it. I didn’t think I would. Don’t get me wrong, I love nature, but from a distance. Plus, summer is my least favorite season of the year.
“Come on; it’s not that bad. Nothing is going to go wrong.” My dad said. He had a hint of a southern accent. He was born in Kansas but had moved to Oklahoma fairly early in life.
“I know nothing will go wrong, but all of my friends are staying home. I won’t know anyone here.”
“That’s the whole point. You meet new people and forge lifelong friendships. Remember Shawn? I met him at camp, and I still drink with him. I also met your mother here. You could meet your future wife here too.”
“Dad, come on!”
“I’m sorry, Your future husband.”
“Well, I guess that doesn’t sound too bad. But be prepared to get a lot of annoyed texts later.”
We both shared a laugh at that.
“Trust me; I felt the same way back then on my first day. You’ll have fun; just wait until you build treehouses.”
That sounded fun. I always wanted a treehouse, but couldn’t have one because our yard was barren. So building a treehouse would be fun. I sighed. Two long months dealing with bugs and a hundred-degree heat were what I didn’t want. It was happening though, there was no stopping it. Eventually, the wooden arch that led into the camp came into view.
“Ope there it is! Cheer up buddy, I promise you’ll love Camp Owaganata!”
“What the hell does ‘Owaganata’ even mean?”
“No idea, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean anything, just a catchy name maybe?”
The car turned onto a dirt road leading to a parking lot. The parking lot was a large square filled in with gravel and dirt from the road. It was nearly full, teeming with other teens all chatting with each other. Good lord, I thought to myself. When we stopped and got out of the car my dad told me to walk on over.
Visible from the parking lot was a mess hall dead center. On the left appeared to be the employee building. A flag pole sat in the right corner of the parking lot. It had the American flag, and the Oklahoma flag under it. They were both old, and flowed in the morning breeze. Trees surrounded the parking lot. Stretching out from the mess hall were dirt trails leading to other buildings.
“This is where you and me part ways. They’ll tell y’all where to go. Have fun buddy, love you.”
I watched as he got back in the car and drove away. I turned back to the large group of people. No one looked my way. Fine with me. If people didn’t notice me I wouldn’t complain. I scanned the crowd looking for anyone that looked even remotely interesting. I gave up quickly and waited for camp counselors to tell us where to go.
As I was waiting, an adult approached me. He was wearing a uniform so I assumed he worked for the camp.
“Hey, welcome to Camp Owaganata. What’re you doing all alone over here? Come on, meet other kids!”
He put his hand on my back and led me over to a group of kids talking with another counselor.
“I found another straggler.” “What’s your name champ?” He said, overly happy-go-lucky.
“Uhh, Oliver,” I said awkwardly.
“Well, Oliver, it is a pleasure to meet you.” He patted my back and walked off. I looked at the small group that he had brought me to. No one was talking, and everyone was avoiding looking at one another. I groaned and walked away. I didn’t want to stand around in the self-pity circle. As I walked back towards where I had been, a kid I went to school with walked up to me.
“Welcome to camp, faggot.” He sneered.
“Fuck off Derek, I don’t want to deal with your shit right now.”
“Well do something about it then!” He shouted. His outburst drew the attention of a couple of goons that followed him. I took a deep breath and tried to get away from him.
He ran up to me and shoved me to the ground.
“Hey! What’s going on?!” A counselor ran over to see what was happening. I stood up as he got up to us. He looked between all of us.
“We were just messing around,” Derek said. I rolled my eyes and said nothing.
“Cut it out.” He walked away looking disgruntled, I did the same.
After not too long a woman that looked to be the Camp Administrator stood on a wooden stage near the parking lot. She was old, mid-50s most likely. She had long straight black hair, and was very tall.
“Alright campers, listen up!” Everyone gathered around her.
“Welcome to Camp Owaganata. In the two months that you are here, you will forge lifelong friendships, gain new and valuable life skills, and have the most fun summer of your childhood! We will do fun events, but we will also work while we are here! By the end, you should be much more capable, and much happier!” There was no microphone, so she had to shout her whole speech. The crowd applauded, and she continued.
“Camp counselors will come around and assign you a number for your bunk rooms, and then at noon we’ll all have lunch, and at six we’ll have dinner.” She got off stage after that, and I waited to be given a number. I got four. I was led by the head of our bunk to the building we’d be staying in. There were about thirty other people in the same building as me. It was small and had thirty-two available beds. I was shown to mine and given the key to the footlocker beside it.
I started to unpack my things and organize them neatly into the footlocker. After I got done unpacking I checked the time on my phone. 9:35. What was I supposed to do for the next two and a half hours? I decided to wander around the camp and find cool things I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to look for.
When I went to leave, the head of our house stopped me.
“Sorry pal, you can’t leave until noon when we have lunch. In the meantime, you can play on your phone or anything else you brought.” He had that same cheerful tone as the last person I had talked to.
I said nothing as I went back to my bed. The main reason I had wanted to leave was that it was practically an inferno in the house. The presence of thirty-two people plus the heat from outdoors was making it unbearable. I scrolled through my phone absent-mindedly while waiting. I looked to the door, the man was standing in front of it, blocking anyone trying to leave. I wondered if it was a safety issue. I don’t know if my dad had signed any forms before sending me here. I assumed he had.
The time passed slowly; I couldn’t stand the heat in the cabin. A little bit before noon the head of our cabin started to speak.
“Alright everyone, we are going to head to lunch, but first a few rules. The first one is that you must leave all electronics in your lockers, the second is that you must follow me, if you try to take your own path it could be dangerous. The third is that there will be no roughhousing of any kind. And finally, we will not tolerate rule-breakers.” He looked a random person dead in the eyes when he said that. His face was contorted in anger. “My name is Daniel, I will be your chaperone for the whole summer. I hope we can all have a good time.”
He turned around and opened the door. “Single file line, no cutting.”
I put my phone in my locker and got in line; I was near the end. We walked slowly down a dirt path. We walked past other cabins, they all had numbers above the door. The trees were thick around the cabins. They clearly had only been cut to make the path usable. I looked up, the canopy stretched over the path, blocking most of the sky. I saw the people from other cabins following behind us. The path led us directly to the mess hall that I had seen earlier.
My group filed in slowly, two counselors stood on either side of the door greeting us. “Hey, there sweety.” One had said to me. I said nothing in return. I sat next to two people I had seen in my cabin, however, I chose not to talk to them. Once everyone was seated the administrator came into view from a side room. She was licking her lips.
“I’m so glad to see so many people here today. This is where we will eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. To keep everything calm and orderly you will be called up here at random by cabin number. I bet you are all hungry, so without further delay, cabin six come on up.”
My table was called last, but fortunately it didn’t take too long to get everyone their food. The lunch was a bowl of chicken noodle soup. It looked grey and quite lacking in anything solid. It wasn’t horrible, but it could certainly have been better. The mess hall was filled with vague chatter. The counselors were all talking with one another. I looked to the dude on my right. He looked at me and said nothing. For an awkward split second, we looked each other in the eyes before looking away again. I was bad at socializing and I ruined my chances of talking to him.
Lunch lasted until 12:30 at which point we were given another announcement.
“Today will be a resting day, tomorrow we will begin the activities. There will no wandering around the camp, there will be no sneaking out to visit people of the opposite gender.” She looked between the tables. “Alright, you will be led back to your cabins now, have a great rest of your day, we will have dinner at six.”
I was thoroughly disappointed. I didn’t expect there to be much activity on the first day, but damn, nothing at all for the whole day? We walked back to our cabin. I grabbed my phone again and texted my dad.
“They really make you sit in your cabin all day on the first day?”
“Yeah, but it’s so you can get familiarized with your surroundings.”
“What are y’all doing tonite for dinner?” I texted.
“Chinese takeout.” He sent a licking lips emoji.
We texted for a while longer before I took out my headphones and started watching YouTube. I got bored quickly and looked around at the others in my cabin. The cabin was only large enough to have thirty-two beds and one small bathroom. How was I supposed to take a shower? I got up and went over to Daniel.
“Hey, where are the showers? It’s not in there is it?” I said pointing to the bathroom.
“So you will take showers in the communal shower in the mess hall.”
I groaned quietly and went back to my bed. I had taken soccer for a couple of years and I hated communal showers. There was nothing I disliked more than being naked around other people. “Awesome,” I thought while sitting back down. It was finally time for dinner, and we went over the same rules before leaving our cabin.
When everyone was seated the Administrator spoke to all of us.
“So starting tomorrow we will begin our projects and events. Each cabin will be a team and will gain or lose points depending on conduct. The cabin with the most points by the end of the summer will be given a trophy, and will be displayed on our wall of winners.” She pointed to the left wall of the mess hall. It was covered in pictures from every year.
“The other cabins will get nothing. In addition, you will be given a patch that you can keep. It has ‘Camp Owaganata’ embroidered on it, with our camp seal. It will be handed out by your cabin counselor tonight. Now for dinner, cabin four is first.”
Dinner was a smattering of peas, a fruit salad, and for the protein, it was a tuna sandwich. Jokes on them, I liked tuna and peas. I ate dinner and walked over to the wall of winners. I couldn’t see the pictures at the top of the older years, they were about nine feet up. Last year my sister’s cabin won, I looked at the picture. “2020 Cabin 2” was written on the image. I found the year that my dad went, but he didn’t win, and neither did my mom. I saw a couple of other people pointing out their siblings or parents on the wall. I looked to the top again. I really wanted to see how long the camp had been open. I counted the images, and there were one-hundred and twenty-two images total. Holy shit! The camp had been around since 1899! Oklahoma wasn’t even a state back then. I sat back stunned.
I found the nearest counselor and asked if there was any way I could see the older images. He shook his head. I frowned. I went back to the wall and looked at all of the images. Some of the kids looked less than happy in their pictures. In 1981 the cabin that won looked extremely unhappy. A few looked like they were crying. Meanwhile, the administrator in the image had a huge smile on his face. When I noticed this I started to scan every year I could. Sure enough, 1954, 1960, 1978, 1981, 1999, and 2014 all featured kids that looked either sad or scared. I didn’t know what to think. What was I supposed to make of this?
I was startled out of my thoughts when someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around to see a kid that looked about fourteen. He had dark blonde hair and was slightly chubby.
“Hi, I’m Larry.” He extended a hand to me.
I shook it and replied. “I’m Oliver.”
“My parents told me to meet people here and you seemed cool enough. So, got any family that’s gone here?” His voice lacked much emotion.
“Yeah, basically my whole family tree has gone here. What about you.”
“Nah, but I wanted to go because it looked fun. What cabin are you in?”
“Four,” I said back
“Seven.”
“Well, I hope you win this year,” I said to him.
“Same here, I’d love to be stared at by strangers.” He was being sarcastic.
I chuckled. He gave me his phone number so we could text each other. Afterward, he did the same thing to another person. We all stayed in the mess hall until seven, at which point we were given the option of a shower, or heading back to the cabin. I chose to take a shower. I didn’t like it, but I had been sweating all day, and I smelled like ass. The shower room was a huge addition to the mess hall. Each showerhead had walls like a stall separating them from the others. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I was led back to my cabin for the night. At nine on the dot, Daniel announced that it was bedtime, and all electronics should be turned off. I put my phone away. All of the beds were filled when everyone laid down. Daniel looked around the room one last time before shutting off the lights and leaving. After a record-breaking fifteen seconds, someone broke the silence by making a fart noise. This elicited laughter from a few others. I didn’t know why, but things were always so much funnier when you couldn’t see anything. After a few more moments someone produced a real fart, and this drew laughter from about a dozen people. A few seconds passed and the door swung open with immense force.
“Hey! Lights out means no talking, and no goofing around!” Daniel screamed into the room. He slammed the door shut again. The sudden outburst caused the whole room to go silent. I could hear some muffled laughter. I happened to roll over and I saw Daniel staring through one of the windows near the door.
I woke up to the door being swung open and hitting the wall.
“Everyone up! It’s five am!” Daniel’s yelling awoke the rest of the cabin. I looked around deliriously, still half-asleep. One bed was empty I only noticed because it was right next to mine. I definitely remember someone sleeping in it last night. Everyone started to stretch and wake up. I wondered how much Daniel actually slept last night. I wanted to ask how long he stared through the window but I knew it would be pushing the line.
“Breakfast will be at six, and after that, we will begin our first event,” Daniel said, returning to a cheerful voice. He then went over the same rules once again. I woke up dehydrated and covered in sweat, so I was already in a bad mood. Hearing him repeat the same thing annoyed me. If I was going to hear that three times a day for two months, I was going to lose it.
We left the cabin and headed toward the mess hall. The dirt path was irking me. My shoes weren’t thick enough to prevent jagged rocks from poking at my feet. In addition, the humidity was nearly one hundred percent. It was overcast and smelled vaguely of rain. We got to the mess hall and there was no morning announcement from the administrator. Instead, the chefs called up tables. It was scrambled eggs and bacon. It wasn’t anything to get excited about. Once I finished eating I went back to the wall of winners. I looked at those same years. I couldn’t get it out of my head yesterday. Why did they look so distraught? The worst one was in 1978. The image read ‘1978 Cabin 3’ Same format as the others. However, the people in the image looked like someone had been killed in front of them. There were twenty-one people in the picture and at least half were sobbing. The others looked haunted. Then if you contrast that with the next year, everyone is fine.
I looked around at the other kids at the wall. I pointed 1978 out to them and they crowded around to see. I showed them all of the years in which the kids looked upset. The group grew larger as more and more people showed their friends. Eventually, a counselor came over to see what was happening.
“What’s going on over here?” He pushed through to get to the wall.
“Why do these guys look scared?” Someone near the front of the group asked him. He pointed to the picture from 1978.
The counselor studied the image. I could see him looking between the faces.
“I really couldn’t tell you. I went here in ninety-two, and I started working here in o’four.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course he wouldn’t know. He walked away without saying anything else. At the end of breakfast, we were sorted by cabin and given our first tasks. Mine was whittling. Really? Could this place get any more cliche, from the log cabins to the competition, and now whittling. The other cabins got things far more interesting. All of the events were announced. The only one that seemed less fun than whittling was fire-starting. They told us that we would be doing our tasks until lunch.
Daniel corralled cabin four together to lead us to our work area. When we left the mess hall, we took a left and turned into the woods. The path was fairly short and led to a small wooden building. A label above the door read “Crafts.” There were five tables, a bathroom, and many windows. There were no lights in the building, so we relied on sunlight. It was six to a table. I sat on the side closest to the window so I could see interesting things if they appeared.
“Now listen up campers. Today we are going to practice the art of wood carving or whittling. You will not perfect it in only a couple of hours. We will come back to this over the summer so you can refine your skills. I will give you a knife, a piece of wood, and an image to copy.”
Just like he said he handed out the items to everyone. I opened the knife. It looked dull and the blade was damaged.
“Alright, you may begin. You should try your best so we can get points for this, and if you have any questions feel free to ask me. Good luck!”
I looked at the template I was given. It was a weird shape. It was a pentagon, except the base was the bottom of the log we had been given. There was a small circle on the top point of the shape. I grabbed my piece of wood and got started. The knife was extremely inefficient at cutting the wood. The force I used to scrape off wood had to be dangerous. After three tries I gave up.
“Hey Daniel, can I have a new knife? This one doesn’t work,” I said
He walked over to me and examined my knife. “It’s not that bad you can still use it.” He patted my back and walked away to help other people.
It was hard work trying to use the shitty knife. The cuts were jagged and uneven. I had one side carved when Daniel came to examine my work.
“Good work, see I told you the knife was fine.”
“Thanks,” I responded less than enthusiastically.
After nearly three hours of work, I looked up just in time to see someone at my table slip and cut their hand.
“Oh fuck! Holy fuck that hurt!” He looked at his trembling hand to observe the damage. “Oh shit, that’s deep! Daniel, I cut myself!” His voice was panicked. Daniel came over and grabbed his hand.
“Alright, let’s get you to the nurse. Everyone keep working.” He escorted the poor kid out.
I couldn’t help but think, “That’s what happens when you give teenagers knives and no real instructions.” I wasn’t even surprised that an injury had happened. It was only a matter of time with these knives. Daniel returned without the kid a couple of minutes later. By the end of the time, I had only managed to get two sides. I spent that time trying to make it look good. I looked around hoping that I wasn’t the only one that didn’t finish. To my relief, most of the cabin had failed to complete it. Daniel got progressively more displeased as he looked around.
“Seriously guys, we need to step it up. If this is how we’re going to perform over the summer, we need to change it quickly.”
I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I subtly looked at it. Larry had texted me.
“Did you do good or is your counselor also screaming at you?”
I looked up at Daniel who was still lecturing us.
I texted back. “I’m not getting screamed at, but ours is disappointed in all of us.”
I put my phone back in my pocket and stood up with the rest of the group.
“Was your knife also useless?” A voice said behind me.
I turned around to see a kid that looked to be my age looking at me. “Yeah, I could barely do anything with it,” I said pointing to the table.
“I’m sure they re-use the same knives every year,” he said shaking his head. “I’m Rick.”
“Oliver,” I said in return.
We walked together to the mess hall, chatting the whole way. I was glad to have another person in my cabin to talk to. Rick was taller than me by about an inch. He had short black hair and was wearing a camo hat. We sat next to each other for lunch. The administrator arrived a few minutes after the rest of us.
“So I have gone around and observed all of the activities, and I will now assign points. In first place… Cabin three, with seven points. In second, Cabin one, with six points. The third is cabin six, with five points. In fourth place is cabin five, with four points. Fifth is cabin four with three. Cabin seven in second to last with two points, and one point to Cabin two.”
I looked around to gauge the reactions of the different cabins. I saw Larry looking at me, when we locked eyes he pointed at the administrator and rolled his eyes. I did the same back.
After Rick and I finished lunch we went over to Larry. Rick and Larry swapped phone numbers and fist bumped.
“So did your counselor actually scream at you?” I asked Larry
“Yeah we were supposed to be foraging and we did terribly. He went on a rant about how we were useless and would die if we were supposed to survive in the woods.” Larry said without even a hint of being upset.
“Goddamn, ours was just disappointed.” Rick said.
“Yeah Oliver told me.” Larry replied. “It was kinda funny to see how red his face got.”
“I don’t think that’s a good thing.” I said, concerned.
“Oh definitely not, but it was funny.”
When lunch ended we were all given new tasks. I was given foraging. From the mess hall we took a left, however we diverged from the path to the crafts building and went into the woods. We were taken to a clearing, where the trees were cut back to form a circle. There were dozens of bushes, and small trees growing all sorts of berries.
“So your goal today is to bring me three different kinds of fruits. A blackberry, a porcelain berry, and a sand plum. Make sure you bring me those kinds of fruits, and not ones that look similar. And… Go.”
I knew what a blackberry looked like, and a porcelain berry, but I’d never heard of a sand plum. I assumed and hoped they looked like regular plums. I stayed near Rick, and we looked together.
“My Pa grows sand plums, so I can identify them easily. Lemme tell you, the jelly you can make from ‘em is amazing.”
We quickly found a black berry and we took two to show Daniel. He examined them for a second. “Those are dewberries, blackberries don’t have trailing stems.” So we went back.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get several cuts from thorns. I tried to avoid them, but with so much plant growth on the ground it was sometimes hard to see them. By the end of our allotted time I was sore, sweaty and tired. My hands still hurt from the carving, and now my legs itched like crazy, and were covered in tiny cuts. Rick and I found all three fruits. We were only one of a few that managed to do that.
Back at the mess hall we were scored again. My cabin was tied for fourth, and Larry’s was second to last. Cabin three was still in the lead. Dinner went quickly and we were all ushered back to our cabins. I asked Daniel for benadryl or maybe some itch cream, but he refused both.
Two beds were empty this time. I remembered that one kid that cut himself, but I wondered where the other had gone. When we were told to go to bed, people started making noises in the dark, trying to get laughter again. When the laughter started, Daniel opened the door quickly and looked around. I had one eye open, to see what he would do. He walked over to the bed and stared down at the culprit. The cabin was dead silent, people were either too afraid to make a noise, or unaware of what was happening. I didn’t know how long Daniel stood there, but eventually he left. As soon as the door closed people started cackling quietly. Weird.
I was awoken in the middle of the night to a scuffle near my bed. Two people were arguing, and while I couldn’t see, I assumed by the noise that they were hitting each other.
Oh my fucking god, I thought. If Daniel freaked out about fart noises, what would he do about this? Sure enough the door opened. I shifted in my bed, and I could tell from the outline that it was not Daniel.
“Hey, what the hell is going on in here?” A light switch was flicked and the lights came on. I pretended to wake up and look around. The two kids were more wrestling than fist fighting. The man who had opened the door walked over to them. He kicked the kid on top in the back, and hard enough to knock him off. He grabbed them both and forced them to their feet. They were both red in the face. Without any words, he escorted them out., shutting off the lights, and closing the door on his way out. Quiet chatter filled the room, and quickly it was revealed that they had started fighting because one had tried to steal money from the other.
I woke up at five am when Daniel stormed into the room. He slammed his fist on the wall a couple times to wake up the others.
“We have some things to discuss. So, I just learned that last night there was a fight in here. They took all of our points away, we are at zero now. Dead last. So I figure a punishment is deserved.”
“That’s not fair, we weren’t all fighting!” A short kid said.
“Shut up!” Daniel shrieked “We lost all of our points! So yes, you will all get punished!” He looked between everyone furiously.
“No food today for any of you,” he said
This caused an uproar. Everyone started to complain or try to argue with him, including me. I was not about to be denied food because of two stupid assholes. Another demand of silence from Daniel was ignored as we all continued to complain. Once he realized that we weren’t going to stop, he said: “fine, you can all stay in here today, no activities either.” He slammed the door shut.
Then the uproar got worse once people realized that no one had their phones anymore.