I'm (Not) Falling In Love

By 13Shimer13

Disclaimer: I don't own the plot, I don't own Holes, but I do own my Original Characters: Isis, Jeffrey, Captain Crunch, Arsenic, Axis, Axe, Antsy, Arrow and Ape.

A/N: I have decided I'm sick of reading those silly 'girl-goes-to-C.G.L-and-everyone-loves-her-and-she-falls-in-love-with-one-of-the-cute-bad-boys-and-they-all-live-happily-ever-after-the-end' stories, which not only lack basic intelligence (hello—they hardly ever dig. They spend most of their time in the tent gossiping or kissing and somehow, the girl always manages getting away with a load of stuff—talking back to Mr. Sir, being best friends with the Warden, and sometimes emotionally trouncing the poor D-Tent boy's hearts), but also lack proper spellings and punctuation. Girl-goes-to-C.G.L stories just generally suck. It's a well known fact. Well, I've had enough of all of this, and so here is this story. Enjoy.

Chapter 1: Welcome to hell.

I was not a particularly nice girl. To say that I was sweet would be a blatant lie. But then, my life had never been that great, either. I don't go in for self pity—it's not my style—and so the bus driver, who nervously consulted his rear view mirror to see my expression every few minutes, was disappointed when he saw a bored girl stare back. I did not cry, I did not smile, and I did not look at all upset to be here. I was indifferent, and—from experience—I found that this usually creeped people out. By never showing emotion, I managed to unnerve the man, and I hadn't even spoken yet!

I loved messing with people. It was so easy! I much preferred being sarcastic to being indifferent, but that was merely because it was fun to think up witty things to say. Indifference and sarcasm worked just as well as each other for messing with minds, but being sarcastic gave me a secret pleasure. However, I simply couldn't be bothered to speak; we were in a desert, after all, and although a window was open (like that did anything), it was just too damn hot to be sarcastic; for now. But the bus ride had been silent for however many previous hours, and I certainly wasn't going to end it. Silence is golden.

But we arrived, eventually, and getting out was horrible—my legs had never been so dead in all my sixteen years of living! We walked in silence, of course. We reached a tiny shack-like building, and the bus driver nodded for me to enter. He followed and I almost sighed as we stepped into the air-conditioned room. Almost. Inside there was a man sitting at a desk. He looked grumpy, he was chewing sunflower seeds and he wore a cowboy hat. My first thought? Where can I get one of those?

"My name is Mr. Sir, when I speak to you, you will address me as Mr. Sir, Miss . . ." and here he looked at a manilla file on his desk, before speaking again "Fane. Well, well, well, Isis Fane. I would have thought that they'd have made you go to prison." He shook his head at me, and I stared back at him, my dead green eyes unblinking.

"Well, girlie, you'll need your new clothes, I suppose. You get two suits; one for work and one for relaxing. The laundry's done every three days, and you'll change in the tent like the others—no special treatment offered at this camp." Mr. Sir dumped two orange suits into my waiting arms and then picked up some circular shaped lumps of metal. "These are shower tokens. You'll be showering with the other boys, and we have given them strict orders to treat you like a boy. Basically, no touching allowed. Some of these boys are stupid, so they may still insist on attempting something. If they do, you have permission to stop them. Otherwise, there's no fighting allowed, girly."

I nodded. What else was there to do?

"A proper response, if you please, girly!" Mr. Sir growled.

"Yes, Mr. Sir. Sorry, Mr. Sir." He nodded in approval (oh! So that's what else there was to do . . .) and told me to get changed. He turned around, and I pulled on the suit. It was baggy, which may well have been a good thing—the boys at this camp had probably not seen a girl in months—and it was, as previously stated, a disgusting bright orange colour. Then Mr. Sir talked to me about the dangers of the camp—other than the campers, there was snakes, scorpions and, most deadly of all, the Yellow Spotted Lizards. When he had pulled out his gun, I had thought he was going to give me a lecture, but he had simply told me that the gun was for the Lizards, not me or the other campers.

And then he called in another man. "Isis Fane, meet your councillor: Jeffrey Reedman. Jeffrey, meet your newest criminal, Isis." The man was fairly tall, with sun bleached hair, so light it was a fine shade of white. He was young, wearing worn clothing and was smiling at me.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss. Fane. I am, as Mr. Sir just said, your councillor, so if you have any troubles, just come to me. You'll be with A-tent, and I've told them to be on their best behaviour. Let's go and meet them now."

Before we left, Mr. Sir yelled at my back, "This aint no Girl Scout camp, missy. Welcome to hell, girly!"

Jeffrey Reedman seemed nice—he was nicer than Mr. Sir at the very least—but it was the nice ones you had to watch out for. If somebody was nasty from the moment you met them, you wouldn't expect them to change. If somebody was nice to you, you'd always be waiting for them to become nasty.

"The 'A' stands for Atonement. Atoning is, after all, what you are here to do," Jeffrey sounded bored; no doubt he was required to say that to all of the criminals he was in charge of. And I also couldn't help but think of some more . . . ruder things that the letter 'A' also stood for. So yes, 'A' stood for atonement, but it also stood for: Anal, Asshole, Assed, Anger, Amputation, Arguing, Attila (the hun), Army, Acting, Aggression, Aggravation and Annoyance.

I almost had a giggle-fit. Almost.

"This is your tent, and inside you will find your tent mates. It's camp tradition to have nicknames, and those are the names you'll be calling them by, so I won't bother telling you their real names. It will only serve to confuse you. In A-tent, we're slightly more . . . creative than the other tents when it comes to names. All of our names begin with the letter 'A'. I'm your councillor, yes, but when you're here you'll be calling me by Ace. It's the boy's nickname for me—I have it a lot better than most of the other councillors, D-tent call theirs 'Mom' and E-tent call theirs 'Captain Crunch'. Any questions before we go in, Isis?" he raised an eyebrow at me, challenging me silently to show any weakness.

"No, Ace. No questions at all." He looked at me for a minute, as if deciding whether to actually bring me in or not, and then nodded.

And so we walked into hell.

There were six boys sitting on various cots—and they were hardly cots, let alone beds—just chilling out. And then, they looked at me: chaos ensued. And I was scared shitless.

Some were confused; "Hey, Ace, who's the girl?"

Some were leering; "Hello baby! We're gonna have some fun!"

And others were more . . . loud; "Ooh! Camp just got a hell lot better!"

But Ace was taking no shit today. Hee hee. "Alright, boys; shut the hell up!"

And there was instant silence. Sigh. Peace at last!

"Isis, these are your tent mates; we have: Arsenic, Axis, Axe, Antsy, Arrow and Ape. Guys, this is Isis."

The boys had waved as their names had been called out. Ace told me that Arsenic would be my mentor, and then he left me. Alone in a tent with six boys in; and a very prominent awkward silence.

What had it been that Mr. Sir had said again? Oh yeah, "Welcome to hell."

Truer words had never been spoken.

A/N: So . . . what did y'all think? Worth carrying on?