Chapter 1
Memories clouded his vision, memories of mothers who scream and hit and fathers who only show up once a month to beg for money. Memories of flames that dance menacingly in front of your eyes, threatening to engulf you. Memories of hard cement to sleep on and people that stare at you as they walk past.
BUMP.
The yellow bus hit a pothole and jerked fourteen year old Chester out of his nightmare. He groggily opened his eyes and looked out the window. All there was to see was coarse dirt and clusters of holes that went on for miles.
The bus finally stopped in front of a group of small buildings and tents that looked worn out. Chester pushed his light brown hair out of his eyes, the blistering heat from the sun causing him to sweat.
The judge had called this place 'Camp Green Lake'. Chester looked around, but he didn't see a lake or anything green, except for the two small trees in front of a cabin separated from the rest of the camp.
The guard who had been sitting in the front of the bus unhooked the handcuffs that had been holding Chester to his seat. Grateful, Chester started to stand up when the guard roughly shoved him back down.
"I didn't say to get up. Wait here."
The guard stepped off of the bus and talked to a man wearing a cowboy hat who had walked up. Chester couldn't hear what they were saying, but the guard starting laughing about something. Then he came back on the bus and said, "Well, what are you waiting for? Get down here."
Chester got up, clutching his green book bag that held his few possessions in his hand.
The man in the cowboy hat scanned Chester's figure before turning to the guard and saying, "I doubt he'll last a week out here."
He spit out a sunflower seed and laughed. The guard just shrugged and handed the man a file. The man handed a drink to the guard, who thanked him and got back on the bus.
As the bus drove back down the winding dirt road, the man turned to Chester and said, "My name is Mr. Sir. Whenever you speak to me you will call me by my name. Is that clear?"
Chester stood there for a minute, unsure of whether he should reply or not.
"I said, is that clear?"
"Y-yes, Mr. Sir," he finally stammered.
"Good," Mr. Sir said. He turned and led Chester into a building marked "Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility – Main Office". He doubted whether there were any more offices here, since the only other building he saw other than tents was marked "wreck room".
Mr. Sir opened up the file the guard had given him and scanned over it. He pulled out a drawer in the filing cabinet behind him and placed the file in there.
"Follow me."
Mr. Sir led Chester into a shed filled with orange jumpsuits. He handed Chester two of them and then grabbed the book bag and started going through it. While he did that, he explained that one suit was for work and one was for relaxation. Chester had to change into one of the suits in front of Mr. Sir so he could check for weapons.
After he was done, Mr. Sir tossed Chester his book bag and went on, "You are to dig one hole each day. It should be five feet deep and five feet wide. Your shovel is your measuring stick."
Chester nodded, wondering what kind of camp this was.
"Chester!" somebody called from behind him. Chester flinched and tensed his body out of habit.
"Oh, God," Mr. Sir said, obviously annoyed.
"I know you may have made some mistakes in your past, but that does not make you a bad person. I respect you, Chester," said the new man as he walked up. Chester turned around to face him. The man had on khaki shorts and a polo shirt. He had a mustache and a beard, a blotch of sunscreen on his nose, and a huge smile that unnerved Chester.
"I'm out," Mr. Sir declared, and left.
"Follow me," the man said. "I'm Mr. Pendanski. I'll be your counselor while you're here. You'll stay in D Tent. D stands for Diligence."
Mr. Pendanski led Chester to a group of three boys carrying shovels.
"Hey, Mom, who's the new kid?" the one in the front asked. The other two stood behind him.
"Chester, this is Rex. The two behind him are Alan and Theodore," Mr. Pendanski said, pointing to each boy in turn.
"Hey, my name's X-Ray," the boy said defensively. "And those two are Squid and Armpit."
"Yes, well, they all have their little nicknames. I prefer to call them by their real names," Mr. Pendanski said, still smiling. "Come on, let's meet the rest of the boys."
X-Ray, Squid, and Armpit put their shovels in a shed marked "library" and followed Chester and Mr. Pendanski to a tent with a huge "D" on the side.
Inside were three other boys. Mr. Pendanski called the first two Ricky and Jose. X-Ray called them Zigzag and Magnet. Mr. Pendanski and X-Ray both called the last boy Zero.
"I'm counting on all of you to help Chester. You all remember what it was like to be new."
All the boys grunted in approval. Finally, Mr. Pendanski left all of them alone.
"Come on, Chester. We'll show you the wreck room," one of the boys said. Chester was pretty sure it was Ricky, or Zigzag.
All the boys got up to go, so Chester followed behind them silently. The boys seemed nice and acted like they liked him, but Chester had learned not to trust people. He was constantly on his guard and being in a bigger group of people made him nervous.
Chester had been living on the streets for almost two months before he was caught stealing and sent to Camp Green Lake. But even before that he never had friends. He stopped going to school at a young age and there weren't many kids in his neighborhood.
The only person he ever spent time with was his mother, and he hated being with her. She was an alcoholic who constantly screamed at him and hit him. His father ran off when Chester was eight, and only showed up every once in a while to beg for food or money. Not that Chester and his mom ever had any, so most visits ended in Chester's parents screaming at each other and his father leaving, claiming he'd never come back.
But he always did.
Chester didn't miss his dad at all. Even when he lived with them, all he did was yell and hit, just like Chester's mom.
Chester had never had anyone care about him. The only thing he owned were a few pairs of clothes that his mother gave him when his old clothes got too small for him to wear.
He'd always had to find food for himself, ever since he could remember. By the time he was seven, he'd learned to sneak into other people's houses in the neighborhood and take food from them. He had to be careful not to be caught though, because most everyone else in the neighborhood were drug dealers and criminals, and if they caught him they'd probably kill him.
So when he finally got tired of his mother one day and left the house for good, it wasn't hard to get used to sneaking into other people's houses to take whatever he needed. He never stole anything big. Just food, mostly.
But then he finally got caught, and the judge sentenced him to eighteen months in Camp Green Lake.