Safe House

Day Five

Safe House Three

            We’re leaving tonight, at around midnight. Oh god, we’ve only been here half a week and now we’re leaving. It feels like we’re jumping the shark, okay, but I kind of understand it. After all, your average camp crisis only lasts about a night or two. So I guess it’s time we stop waiting around for someone to save us or something.

            We’re going to try the lake, since we figured it’s the farthest away from everywhere else in camp and if we get caught, it would be easy to change directions and find civilization from there. Once we find a town, we get some food, get some rest, call our parents, and get the hell out of here.

            Josh says that there should be about six paddleboards that we could take out, which technically means we could all take one. But he says it would be too bulky, too loud, and too much time to take them all out. So we’re going to take three of them-two to a board. Apparently we won’t have time to slip life jackets on, they’re too bulky, (we’ve pretty much abandoned the Camp Cabot Waterfront Code of Conduct at this point,) but Josh is going to take one so he can-get this-attach the string on the end of a paddleboard to his foot and then swim while carrying one of them, so we can get farther away faster.

            I hope Emily escaped too. I mean, there’s plenty of other of ways to get out of camp-we could go down the backside of camp road, hike through the woods, even just run in the backyards parallel to camp road. Hell, maybe they already went through the lake and are happily paddling on all six of the paddleboards (Josh says if this were to happen, we should just throw on lifejackets and make a swim for it, and if worse comes to worse and everything is gone, than that means they’re already at the lake and we should sprint as fast as possible in the opposite direction.)

            But I mean, it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that this is my very last night at camp. It’s not like my parents are going to send me back after this whole event, after all. But I would’ve like to spent my last night at camp pulling an all-nighter in the valley with the people in my cabin and our female equivalents, as is tradition.

            This would’ve been Sophia’s year to do the all nighter. It’s the only thing I’ve heard only positive things about that night. While all the other kids sleep in their now-empty cabins for one depressing night, the oldest kids are screaming, laughing, running around, and trying to have as much fun as possible for their very last night.

            Apparently they throw away all the rules-counselors bring out all the ice cream left over from that night’s ice cream sundae bar, kids who brought their iPhones and DS games get to play with them, and of course, some interesting stuff goes on, some last-minute love confessions. Maybe I would’ve told Emily I loved her. Maybe she would believe me. Maybe she would like me back. Maybe I would’ve leaned in for a kiss. Maybe she would have kissed me back.

Safe House Five

             So this is it, I guess. We’re planning to get out there tomorrow morning. We’re going to get up around three am tomorrow, so we can have some time before sunrise at about six. So far our only plan is to get up there, find somewhere to hide on the surface, and just be really quiet.

            We found like five backpacks in the storage area-the giant ones the teen campers use when they go on their ten-day backpacking trips. We’re going to fill up one each with blankets, first aid supplies, tons of food, water bottles, and some signaling flares, just in case worse comes to worse and we’re run out into the woods and then we’re stuck in the middle of Nowhere, Maine (I’m sure it’s a real town, they name towns the weirdest things here.)