Disclaimer: I do not own any Holes rights and am not Louis Sachar. Easy to know as I'm writing this onto a website, not a huge publishing corp.

Camp Red Lake.

Not that there was a lake. Or ever had been, at least for the past 200 years. It's just that mirages usually appear there, making it look like a lake is there.

Underneath the ground there was a mine. Every day boys and girls would dig in the mine, making it a bit bigger. The reason for this is most of these boys and girls had no choice. They had been bad. And if you make a bad person dig a mine repeatedly, they will turn into a good person.

At least, that's what people thought.

Dangers can always happen down a mine. You can hurt yourself with a pick-axe, hit your head on the ceiling. In worse cases the roof can fall down. You can survive that.

Mostly

But you don't want to get bitten by a devils fire snake. One bite and you're a goner. There's only death to look to.

Always


Nelson Noslen looked out the bus window. He smiled. He liked his name. So did the rest of his family. He was actually Nelson Noslen the 6th. When the first one realised it was spelt the same forwards as backwards, it stuck.

He continued to look out the window. The heat was stifling, even with the air conditioning on. Looking out the window didn't help. Outside there was a desert that made his mouth incredibly dry. Staring outside didn't help. He wondered when he would see the lake.

He looked down at the sheet in front of him. It clearly stated 'Camp Red Lake Detention Centre', yet there wasn't any lake for miles around.

Nelson even remembered the judge saying "You can go to jail, or camp green lake. The choice is yours." Camp red lake sounded better.

He even committed a crime that he didn't do. It was (according to his farther) his great, great, great grandfather's fault, and otherwise known as his no-good-dirty-rotten-cow-stealing great, great, great grandfather.

Supposedly he had stolen a cow from a black tribesman, who put a curse on their family, but no-one really believed it. His mother certainly didn't, though every time she got something wrong she blamed him.

"Hey!" said the guard. Nelson jumped, he'd completely forgotten about him. He followed the guard off the bus, and entered camp red lake.