The Zeta Project Season 3 Episode 5

by clutzattack

Kim's WB The Zeta Project Road Trip

3. Day 2

She awoke the next morning, feeling better than ever. This floating net was really comfortable to sleep on. "Good morning," Zee said, already dressed. As soon as the first people had begun to stir, he'd climbed down and had changed his hologram in the privacy of their tent, then had climbed back up to wait for Ro to awaken.

While in other instances, she might have wanted to go back to sleep, right now she really just wanted to stay in her sleeping back to keep warm. The morning coolness hadn't dissipated yet, so the temperature outside of her sleeping bag was not warm enough to make her want to leave it. But, as she knew that she'd have to get up sooner or later, she might as well do it now. Ro sat up in her sleeping bag, and felt her face. She didn't feel like anyone had drawn on her with a black marker while she was asleep. But why was she even worrying? Zee had stayed up all night… She was sure of this as he'd woken her up when those girls had tried to sneak into the campsite.

"Flag ceremony is in an hour," Zee informed her.

Ro crawled out of her sleeping bag, then neatly folded it then crawled down the rope ladder, after Zee had descended it. She spent the morning getting ready. She saw Mandy around, but didn't have a chance to tell her about what had happened last night. Eventually though, she'd be sure to let her know about it. Ro even saw Jennifer around the campsite, giving directions and letting people know how much time was left. She certainly didn't look like she had gotten up in the middle of the night, or that she was really that light of a sleeper, especially considering what she'd said last night about waking her up to go to the bathroom.

After the hour was up, the campers started making their way to the flag circle. "This dust is horrific!!" Ro said, covering her mouth, as she tried not to choke on the dust that was being kicked up by the girls ahead of them.

"Don't scuff your feet when you walk!" Mandy shouted over the heads of the girls. Several of the girls, who hadn't even realized they were kicking up dirt, stopped, and the dust died down.

            "Thanks," Ro said.

            "Hey, there's plenty of dirt in our clothes and hair, we don't need it in our lungs."

            "Mandy, did you know that last night, some girls from the Redwood camp tried to sneak into our campsite?" Ro brought the subject up.

            "I know. Jennifer told me this morning."

            "Oh," Ro said, a little sad that they weren't the first to get to tell the story.

            "The only reason they came over was because we took their towels," Zee said quietly. "Does that mean we're going to be blamed?"

            "Of course not!" Mandy brushed the subject off. Zee still had the feeling that they were going to get in trouble though. "But I can't wait to get to the flag ceremony!" Mandy added, sounding rather excited.

            "Why's that?"

            "You'll see!"

            When they got to the flag circle, there was a lot of chatter and giggles going around between the girls. "Is that what I think it is?" Ro asked, staring up at the flag pole. On the main flag pole was the towels of the girls, including the ones that Mandy hadn't taken. On the smaller flag poles on the right and left of the main one, were the girls' clothing. They hung there, on display for everyone to see, and laugh at. The girls from Redwood were standing by the flag poles, with extremely angry expressions on their faces, and were loudly arguing with the camp director. But the camp director was not going to lower their items. Now, Ro was curious. Just what was going on?

            After everyone had arrived, the camp director called for silence among the large group. "Now, as several of you may have noticed, it is not the U.S. flag that is currently being displayed on our flag pole!" Several giggles spread through the group, so the director had to wait for it to be quiet again. Ro couldn't help but wondering why these people couldn't keep from laughing. "In accordance with Camp Hidden Fall's Unofficial Rule Book as set by the counselors and campers of old,  'Anyone who is caught taking more than a 15 minutes shower, when more than three people are waiting in line, is fairly subject to having their towel stolen, if not properly guarded.' In accordance with the extension of that rule, 'anyone who would like to reclaim their towel must complete a task or act, of the committee of counselors' choosing.'"
            Ro noted that she didn't mention anything about the clothes. At this point in time, all of the counselors gathered together in a small huddle.  After about a minute, the counselors broke apart, and Jennifer, announced their task.  "It is decided, by the counselors' committee, that the girls whose towels these belong to, will have to write their name, in cursive, in the air, with their BUTTS, as compensation for the return of their towels!"

            The roar of laughter was deafening. Ro couldn't help but laugh herself. What humiliation! She looked at the Redwood girls. They had only taken the towels from six of them, but the whole group was looking absolutely malevolent and sour. Their counselor was looking sympathetically at them, but was unable to do anything about it.

            The director went up to the flag pole, and began to lower the towels. The first girl stepped up to reclaim hers. Ro had no idea how the girl had known that it was her towel as they all looked the same to her. The girl turned around, rather stiffly, and bent over, then began to spell her name. "I can't believe this," Ro said, laughing, turning her head to the side. For some reason, it felt wrong just to be watching this. Everyone around her was laughing still. "Cynthia," Zee said the girl's name. The blonde girl from yesterday was named Cynthia.

            While he was watching each girl, paying attention to their name, he was rather indifferent to the ordeal. One girl came up, and spelled her name, "Al."

            "Unless, you want use to all start calling you 'Al', you'd better spell the whole thing out!" the director commented. So she finished her name, "Alexandria."

But what about their clothes? The camp director seemed to be aware of this, as after the girls had reclaimed their towels, her next comment was, "Now, it seems that more than these girls' towels was stolen."

Everyone had had their laughs as the girls had written their names, so there was no interrupting silence. "Now, due to privacy issues, and the fact that no one wants to see any full moons that aren't in the sky, the counselor's committee has decided that taking clothes is not appropriate for any reason," the director said, then turned towards the Redwood girls, "and revenge definitely counts as a reason," she added. The director then began to look around at all of the girls gathered around the flag pole area with a stern expression on her face. It seemed like she was trying to read into their souls to find out which of them committed the evil deed. Ro specifically tried to avoid her gaze, without looking like she was trying to. Luckily the director did not glance in her direction for too long.

Zee could just sense that they were going to get in trouble now. The camp director wasn't looking too happy right now. He looked over at Ro. She seemed a little worried. Mandy, however, looked smug. She didn't appear to be worried at all!

 The Redwood girls seemed to be enjoying the fact that everyone was feeling rather uncomfortable under the director's gaze. They were just waiting for her to announce the punishment for the girls who had taken their clothes. However, the director seemed to be more interested in following a different course of action. "Go take down your clothes so we can put the flag up and go have breakfast." She told them. Her tone was a little sympathetic, but with a definite hint of impatience.

 "That's it?" Cynthia declared, outraged. The director hadn't mentioned anything about a punishment for those girls who had taken their clothes.

The director looked at Cynthia indifferently. "You want to sing and dance for your clothes then?" she asked, mildly curious as to here what her complaint was.

"Aren't you going to punish the girls who took our stuff?"

"Sorry girls, but first of all, unless the people or person who took your clothes confesses, we don't know who to punish. And secondly, this rule wasn't expressed prior to the incident so it would be unfair to institute a punishment."

"Doesn't Jennifer know we took the clothes? As well as the other girls who saw us?" Ro whispered to Mandy.

"Jennifer isn't the type to turn us in, and no one else wants to get in trouble either, so our secret is safe."

"I hope so," Zee commented. While being in trouble with the law was a common thing for him and Ro, he hadn't become desensitized to it. The law in this case, was of common courtesy and playing fair.

The Redwood girls were absolutely appalled and crimson with rage. How dare this director let them get away with this act unpunished!   Once they found out who was responsible, they would take the matter into their own hands, and revenge would be satisfied. They wouldn't steal their clothes, as the director had warned them, but would find some other way to satisfy their vindictive nature.

The flag ceremony was very short. Mandy told Ro and Zee that the only reason they had the flag ceremony, besides out of respect for their country, was because of "certification." At the late night fireside, small necklaces would be handed out to each person. Each time you did an activity, you'd get a bead for the necklace, or if you learned something new in the education hour, you'd get a bead. It was a check-off system, and a mini-contest to see who had the most beads by the end of camp.  If a girl participated in the flag ceremony she could get a bead to add onto her necklace.

"Count us out. There's no way we could win against those girls who've been saving their beads up all these year, " Ro declined.

"It restarts every year, so that doesn't matter. Also, some people don't know how to participate in a flag ceremony so they don't get a bead for it, but they might do something like archery instead."

"Would they have the opportunity to learn how if they wanted to?" Zee asked.

"Yeah, they teach you during free time. But like anyone really wants to spend their free time doing that… So it's mostly the same people every year who do it."

Once that was over, everyone made their way over to the mess hall and sat down. The had to wait for their counselors to have their small competition to decide which site got to get in line first. The competition was a watermelon seed spitting contest. Earlier this morning, or last night, someone had drawn a forty foot line and marked off one foot increments. The watermelon had already been sliced and was waiting. One slice, for every counselor. They had five tries to spit a watermelon seed as far as possible. The furthest distance would be recorded, then the seeds would be swept away before the next counselor tried.

"That is so gross, yes interesting," Ro commented.

While Jennifer tried very hard, she couldn't get her seeds past the twenty-five foot mark, and ended up getting fourth place out of the seven counselors. But it wasn't like there was a shortage of food, and whoever was last didn't get the same selection as whoever was first.

"So why didn't you tell us that taking the towels was an official rule?" Ro asked over breakfast. It was the traditional pancake and eggs and hash brown-type breakfast. It was just as delicious as yesterday's dinner. Ro noticed that Zee had a plate in front of him with food on it. His hologram was so real in appearance that she couldn't tell if he'd actually picked up a real plate, or if he was only faking it. She mentally scolded herself for not having brought the subject up last night like she'd been meaning to. She'd find out over breakfast if it was real or not, by seeing if he pushed food around his plate to make it look like he was eating, or if one of his hands appeared to be super-glued to the plate and he was lifting forks of "food" up to his mouth, then having the food disappear, and come out of his mouth as an empty fork.

Mandy replied, "Some of them might have, if they've come here before. Probably not though. No one ever is daring enough to go through with the actual act, even if they're tired of waiting for the shower… And I didn't bother to say anything because that takes all of the fun out of it!"

Zee began to process over the fact that Ro and Mandy had both used the word "fun" to describe a risky situation. "Is there a copy of the rulebook we could look at?" Zee asked. He didn't want to get caught not knowing any of the other rules.

            "It's the unofficial rule book, so it's not written anywhere. The rules are passed down by word of mouth from camper to camper every year."

            "Then how do you remember everything?"

            "You don't. The director has been around for several years, though. I think she might actually write down the rules we make up somewhere, but no one really cares. The punishments are always some simple stupid act like the girls had to do today. It's nothing too serious, and it's always in good fun.

Now she was using the word "fun" in a different context, and it had a whole new meaning… Was he to glean from this that being mean was fun?

"Some of the rules are more common than others… Like the 'No elbows on the table rule.' Everyone remembers that one."

When she mentioned "no elbows on the table," both Ro and Zee had looked down to see if they were using polite manners or not. Luckily, subconsciously, both of them had remembered, so they didn't have their elbows on the table. Ro also noticed that neither of Zee's hands were touching his plate; he was using the 'food pusher' method.

"What happens if you do have your elbows on the table?" Ro asked.

"You have to sing a song, or run around the table acting like a barnyard animal."

"Fun," Ro sighed sarcastically. Zee thought his circuits would overload. She looked over at the Redwood girls. They were all seated at one table, and weren't mixing in with any of the other sites. At their table, they had some girls from Buckeye, Spruce, and Evergreen. "They're certainly eyeing every one suspiciously," Ro commented,"I don't think they thought that their 'sky-writing' demonstration was very fun. I'll bet they're plotting something."

"They're wondering who did it. And the best part is, they'll never know unless we tell them."

"But last night… they came to our camp," Zee pointed out.

"Jennifer told me that they'd been hitting all of the campsites. Their counselor is unhappy with them, but she's not going to enforce anything. Ugh… Marianne always lets them get away with that kind of thing."

"Marianne?"

"Redwood's counselor," Mandy informed Zee. "Don't worry about them, though. I doubt they have enough brain cells to think of anything worth worrying about. Besides, I've got enough TP to get them back if they do something, in addition to several other pranks I could choose to play on them rather then on the boys across the lake."

Ro and Zee were both interested, as Bucky was across the lake. Maybe they could coordinate a time when the could both sneak over there? "You're going to play pranks on the boys?" Ro asked.

"Shhh," Mandy quieted Ro down.  "You can get in big trouble if you're caught so it's best not to speak about it too loudly or too much. But, yes. I do have some tricks up my sleeves."

"When are you planning on going over there?" Zee asked.

"Always at night. There's too many people out and about during the day."

Zee thought that it would be best to go over during the day rather than to wake Bucky up in the middle of the night. Luckily for him, though, he didn't have to worry about getting caught, as he could always holomorph and disguise himself as a counselor or another camper.

"We'll see how things turn out, because we've been meaning to go over there," Ro casually said. She'd have to talk to Zee about what he thought of the idea of going over together, or whether they should try to go over there during free time in the middle of the day or something else.

When breakfast was over they got up to put their dishes into be washed. Zee appeared to have a lot of leftover food to scrape into the trashcan first, though, or was it an excuse for him to make his plate disappear? Sycamore was in charge of clean up for this meal.  Mandy went over to look at the schedule of clean up for the rest of the week with Ro. "We have breakfast cleanup tomorrow, lunch the fifth day here, then dinner on the last night here. Ugh… having to clean up after dinner on the last night is always the worst," Mandy sighed.

"Why is clean up on the last day bad?" Ro asked.

"Well, if there's ever going to be a food fight. It will be on that day. And we'll have to clean it up."

"Food fights involve everyone, so shouldn't everyone pitch in?"

"They try to make people, but it usually doesn't happen."

On the way back to their campsite, Ro lagged behind, letting Mandy get a head of them a couple of paces. She wanted to have a short, private word with Zee about the food situation before they got back to camp. "Nice job with the plate of food," she smirked. "But you forgot your drink."

"I didn't take one because then it would be apparent that the water level in the cup wasn't going down."

"Why not take a canteen then, or some other container that you can't see into? I know you bought one. I saw it when I was loading the stuff into the car right after you bought it. "

It was a good idea. Ro always seemed to come up with good, sensible ideas. Why couldn't he see something this simple? "I'll remember to bring it with me for lunch," he replied.

At this time, Mandy realized that they'd fallen behind, and stopped ahead on the path for them to catch up. They continued walking back to the campsite as a group.

As scheduled, the girls return to their campsites for a quick morning clean-up before their educational instruction. Jennifer was barking orders left and right. Whoever had the cleanest campsite would be first in line for lunch, and dinner. Ro thought that this first in line thing was highly overrated.

Everyone had to have their sleeping bags rolled neatly up and tucked away, all of their personal belongings neatly packed into their bags. Their shoes should be neatly placed beside their tent door if they were not wearing them. There was to be no litter on the ground, and nothing that anyone could trip over. There had to be a full bucket of water beside their camp fire, and a bucket of ashes, even if the fire wasn't lit. Everything had to be perfect in only a half or before the inspector, or the camp director, came by.

When the camp director came by, she was rather impressed with the cleanliness of their camp site. She especially liked what Zee had created in between the four trees. She commended him on having not used any nails, or anything harmful to the trees. Ro was just glad that she wasn't going to tell them to take it down because it might possibly be a safety hazard. There were only some minor comments that she wrote down on her clipboard, but nothing serious like having an unsafe fire circle or a cord that someone could trip over. After she left, Jennifer began to assemble the materials she'd need to teach the lesson, and people began to gather the supplies that she told them they'd need. Because Zee had gone shopping, they were all set.

"The first thing that we're going to do today is learn how to make a heat source for cooking or warmth, and we'll also learn the old fashioned techniques on how to make fire," Jennifer started.

She then produced a fuel rod from a box. It was a long tube about two inches in diameter and a foot long. She held the stick in her hands, then broke it in half like a pencil and quickly set it on the ground. With in a few seconds it began to radiate heat that could be felt rising in the air, by everyone standing around it. "The fuel rod is good for four hours. And as long as you're not trying to cook a pot roast or a turkey, this should be long enough for you to warm up your prepackaged dinner," Mandy informed the group. "Now, fuel rods come in smaller and bigger sizes. You use the big ones when you want a lot of heat, and to last for a long time. You use the smaller ones to do the opposite. End of lecture. –Now, onto the fun part. Let's learn how to make fire! "she said, excitedly, then produced a lighter from her pocket, and lit it. "See? Fire. Now, you've all got that requirement signed off. I'll give you your beads at the end of the hour."

"But what if we don't have a lighter?" one of the girls asked. "How would you start a fire then?"

"If you don't have a lighter with you, I assure you, you're not going to have the second item which can be used to make fire, which is a book of matches. But let's pretend that all the smokers around you forgot their lighter, and all you have is matches. Then you are faced with the problem that your match only lasts for a few seconds. You should already have a fire pit set up with wood and kindling in it first. Otherwise, your match will burn up, and you'll be right where you started, only your finger and thumb will be burned. For now, we're going to learn how to start a fire in a variety of ways, in case you don't have a lighter, or matches."

            Jennifer then began to go over several other ways to start a fire. She invited one girl to come up and to start a fire in a leaf pile, using a magnifying glass, "And if you don't have a magnifying glass, find someone who has really bad eyesight, and borrow their glasses." She also had someone start a fire using batteries and steel wool! Even this surprised Ro as she'd thought that she already knew how to make a fire in almost every possible way. Jennifer even showed them how to strike a match when they'd lost the match box. Apparently, the zipper on a pair of jeans worked to light matches as well. "But always strike it down because you don't want to catch your shirt on fire," she'd told them.  

After everyone had learned to start a fire, Jennifer was running around, telling the younger girls not to set the forest on fire by playing around with burning leaves and sticks, and teaching them how to properly put out a fire.  She then demonstrated the several types of fires, such as the log cabin, tepee, pit, and star formation set up and what their different purposes were. Fires could be used for cooking, heat, or for long duration. Jennifer covered everything in a very efficient manner, and were done within a half  hour.

"I guess we can get ahead on tomorrow's lesson: how to purify water. You can either boil it, or you can add a little chlorine to it. The directions are on the bottle, or on the package if you buy the tablet forms. But if you're bothering to carry chlorine around on you, you're packing too much. Now, while you're here at camp, we have clean water for you, so I wouldn't go making my own. If you put too much chlorine in you can get sick."

 Jennifer then looked over the rest of tomorrow's lesson. "We also have to cover the food pyramid…" she mumbled to herself, then asked, "Who doesn't know what the food pyramid is, and how to eat healthy?"

No one raised their hands, "Well, I guess we don't need to go over that. It seems like we're covered for tomorrow then."

As the hour time period was up, Jennifer dismissed the group to go and wash up before lunch.

Despite their hard effort to make their campsite the cleanest, after the points were tallied up, they were only second, having lost to Evergreen. It wasn't because Evergreen had a cleaner campsite, but because they'd improved their campsite by building their own individual campsite flag pole. They were not just cleaning up, but improving on it. Therefore, the camp director had found it appropriate that she give them more than the previously total amount of points.

"Next time. Next time it will be ours," Jennifer was muttering, her fist clenched, in front of her and her shoulders quivering.  She had an aura around her like that of knight, bruised and broken, but with a hidden power that she would unleash then wield it in her fight for the honor of her lord.  While being first in line wasn't Ro's top priority, because Jennifer seemed to be making such a big deal out of it, her enthusiasm was spreading throughout her campers in a positive manner.

            They waited at their table until they would be called to get their food. One thing that was nice about being earlier in the line to get food was that you got to eat sooner, which would be nice if you were starving of hunger. However, she hadn't worked herself up to a big appetite at this place yet, so that wasn't an issue.

            After lunch was the arts and crafts hour, or free time. However, it didn't seem like they'd be getting the opportunity to go see Bucky at this instant. While there was no way that Jennifer could force them to surrender their free time into cleaning up their campsite, she was doing a very good job at making people feel obligated to stay, just by her own determination. "Maybe we could just put in an hour of help, then go and sneak over in the second hour before dinner?" Ro suggested quietly to Zee once they were back at their campsite.

            "It doesn't give us much time, but it does seem like we do need to contribute in some way," he agreed.

            Everyone was seated around the unlit campfire in their own portable lawn and camping chairs. They were stuck with the task of coming up with an improvement project that was better than the flagpole Evergreen had come up with. Also, as Evergreen wouldn't be able to use the same idea twice, they'd undoubtedly be starting a new project as well. It irritated Jennifer how they could have got their act together that quickly to get a flag pole up so easily. Their counselor must have been planning it from the first day of camp.  Most likely she already had a dead tree picked out to be felled, and already had the approval of the camp director that the tree was a fire hazard so it was okay for it to be removed. It would be a simple matter of cutting off the small branches, and digging a hold then erecting it. Once Jennifer thought about it, she was sure that this was preplanned. No one carried around an extra pulley with them, complete with mounting bracket. So, their counselor probably had several other ideas planned in advance for the rest of the week as well. Sneaky.

            Their brainstorming session was pretty pathetic. There were a lot of good ideas, but none that they had the materials for. Someone suggested making real benches out of branches, another person suggested birdhouses. Unfortunately, no one bothered to bring nails or a hammer as it wasn't on the list. Then someone came up with a plausible idea. "Why don't we start a forest restoration project?"

            Everyone seemed to agree that it was nobler in purpose than a private flag pole, so Jennifer began to make plans on how they could accomplish this.  For starters, Jennifer suggested that people go around in small groups or in pairs and collect loose trash up off of the forest floor into large garbage bags that she could supply them with. As they'd already cleaned up their campsite, they would have to carry the bags around with them while they went to various activities around the camp. "How embarrassing! Who wants to be seen as a trash picker?" Ro whispered to Zee.

"You don't like the idea?" he asked.

"It's not a bad idea, but, seriously. Do you want to carry around a bag of trash all day long?" Zee thought that it couldn't be much different than carrying around Ro's shopping bags all day long.

"But it would be an easy excuse to be dismissed early," he rationalized.

"Good point." Ro stopped whispering so the group could hear her, "So when can we get started?" she asked.

"I've got trash bags locked up in the campsite storage cabinet. We can start as soon as I get those out. You can take them with you to your other various activities," Jennifer suggested. "Well. No point in waiting. Let's get started!" Jennifer announced, getting up from her chair to head over to the cabinet with the trash bags in it.

Ro and Zee got in line. Mandy was somewhere in the back of the group, talking with some other girls. It didn't seem that they'd have to worry about having her too close by.

Ro and Zee picked up a garbage bag then started heading out towards the main road with it when Mandy called for them to stop, then hurried over toward them. "Great…" Ro thought a little irritated. She'd have to think of an excuse why they couldn't hang out with here right now.

"Some of us are going swimming. I thought I might let you know in case you wanted to come," she said once she got close to them.

"Thanks, but we were hoping to get some other things done today," Ro recited her planned answer.

"That's cool. But if you change your minds, we'll be at the lake," she replied. She didn't seem to feel snubbed in the least bit. Ro felt a little guilty for thinking that Mandy was going to be clingy and insist on coming with them.

"Come on, let's go," Ro said to Zee.  They began to walk along the road that headed toward the boy's camp, keeping a vigilant eye out for anyone following them, or any counselor who would make them turn around if they saw them coming.  When they got fairly close, Zee reached his arm out to stop Ro from walking, and pulled her off to the side. "What is it?" she asked. "Is someone  coming."

"There's a counselor from the boy's camp up ahead."

Ro tried to peer down the path, but she couldn't see anyone. This generally meant that the person was really far ahead and Zee could only see them because of his robotic eyes. "What disguise method should we use this time?" she smirked.

Typically when they were running away from the feds or anyone for that matter, they used four main tactics to evade them. The first tactic was to run around a corner, or into a room or anywhere out of sight then to holomorph into another costume and act like nothing was wrong. This usually led their pursuer to believe that they were still running ahead of them, or that they'd gone down another corridor. However, the feds were getting smarter and had started using their holoviewers to check the rooms they ran into to make sure that they didn't do this, so it really only worked on anyone else but agents. However, no one was chasing them so this technique would be useless. Their second method would be to take the figure of someone else on the same side as the people who were pursuing them. If they pretended to be another police officer, generally they weren't suspected as being a target. Their third variation was deviated from the second one. They'd found that they could escape the feds by taking the place of another figure that they'd seen recently. This would usually work until the real person showed up. While these last two methods would work, apparently they would be using "alternative method #4".  Method #4 just consisted of holomorphing into a position of authority pretending to escort a delinquent.

"Ready?" Zee asked her. Ro quickly folded her trash bag as small as possible and shoved it into her pocket. Zee followed her example, and was going to place his in one of his storage compartments, except that Ro thought it'd be a lot simpler if she just held onto it. She shoved this in her pocket, then replied enthusiastically, "You bet!"

 Zee placed his hand on his shoulder, and began to grow in height while his hologram changed. Ro soon found that her clothes were taking a new shape and form as Zee's hologram began to cover her as well. She'd been turned into a young boy about thirteen years of age. Zee was none other than their own counselor, Jennifer.

"Let's do this," Ro said confidently. With Zee's firm hand on her shoulder, they stepped out back onto the road and began walking. While the counselor wouldn't be able to see them for a while, Zee still couldn't take his hand off of her shoulder, and, it would too awkward for them to be holding hands. It wasn't too bad, though; Zee looked like he was marching Ro back to her camp, rather than that he liked to rest his hand there for no particular reason.

After walking for another minute, Ro saw the counselor that Zee had seen earlier. He was sitting in a chair on the side of the road looking rather bored. Ro thought it pointless for him to be sitting there. Sure, he was guarding the road, but she was sure that if someone really wanted to sneak over they could just side track from the road for couple hundred feet and easily sneak by out of his gaze.  Then again, they had taken the main road, so if they didn't have these clever disguises he'd certainly have stopped them.

The counselor spotted them coming a fair distance away but didn't actually get up out of his chair until they were a couple of feet away. "What's going on here?" he asked. He glared at Ro. Since she was a boy, it could only mean that she was from his camp. The counselor immediately began to wonder how he'd managed to get by, then sure that he'd not come by him, figured that he might have gone the other way around the lake.

"Caught this one near the girl's showers," Zee said in Jennifer's exact voice. Ro put on a sheepish smile, trying not to look too guilty of the crime Zee was setting her up for.  "I found this on him," Zee said, producing a hologram of a small device with a lens on it in the palm of his hand. It looked like a small camera to Ro. Zee quickly pretended to put the device in his pocket before the counselor could ask to see it.

"What's your name?" the counselor asked Ro.

"He's been giving me a different name each time I asked him. I'm going to take him to the director and have him sent home if he keeps this game up," Zee said, to prevent Ro from having to speak in a fake boy's voice.

"I can take him there," the counselor offered.

"Oh, that isn't the least of it. I have reason to believe that he was sending digital feed to his computer over here with this camera. It appeared to have a wireless router on it…  He'll be taking me to his cabin, where I will be deleting any video footage that he might have taken," Zee said to the counselor, and then looked at Ro, "won't you," he said more strictly. If Ro didn't know that he was putting on an act, her knees would have been shaking because of the intimidating nature Zee had. As she thought about it, she didn't ever want to get on Jennifer's bad side. The way Zee made her eyebrows arc up in anger was nerve-wrecking. Zee continued speaking to the counselor, "As this footage is from the girl's shower room, I wouldn't have you or his counselor review it, if you know what I mean… And you'd be wise to show me exactly where you sent it to your hard drive," Zee said, glowering at Ro.

She couldn't see his glare because she was lowering her head in shame, or to prevent herself from laughing.  Zee never seemed to lie to anyone when she was with him, so she was wondering how he'd been able to come up with a lie like this one. It was absolutely hilarious, despite the fact that he'd turned her into a pervert. Then again, no one took showers in the day so there would be nothing to see anyway.

"Yes, well, the director is located on the far side of the camp. Just keep following this road and you'll get there. His cabin is "L"."

"Thank you very much," Zee said, then gruffly pushed Ro forward.

When the counselor was out of sight, Ro began laughing. It'd been so hard to hold it in for that small time! "You should have a business card," Ro teased him. "Zee- expert in prevarication, dissembling, and equivocational counseling."

"But I don't plan to take it up as a habit, so it's best that you save yourself the printing costs," he said seriously. He was using his own voice rather than Jennifer's voice. I felt very strange to be hearing it coming out of the mouth of a woman.

"Should we ditch these disguises?" Ro asked.

"Not yet, but I have an idea," he said, pulling her behind a large tree. There was no one around, so he was safe to take his arm off her shoulder. Her disguise disappeared while his still remained. He reached into his chest, and pulled out the holomorphic bracelet. "We probably should have used this earlier," he said handing it to Ro.  "But then again, I didn't think of it until we were talking with the counselor."

"What good would it have done? There were no boys at our camp to take a picture of!" Just as she said this, Zee began to shrink in size, and his clothes began to change into the boy's outfit that he'd used for Ro's hologram.

"Take a picture," he prompted her.

"Ah, I see," she said, holding up the bracelet. She then took a picture of Zee, with the bracelet. She now had her own individual hologram. Zee returned to his regular appearance. No one would look twice in his natural form in this environment.

"Shall we go?" Ro suggested, handing him her elbow. But, she then remembered that it wasn't proper for guys to link arms, so she dropped her arm to her side. "Oh, yeah, sorry," she apologized. She began to feel nostalgic for the times that she could hold his arm without having to worry. She would be glad when camp was over and they didn't have to play this gender game anymore.

Bucky's cabin had been fairly close to the entrance to the camp, which meant that they'd have a fair amount of walking to do. In hindsight, it would have been best if they'd tried to sneak around the other side of the lake at the other entrance. But, as their campsite was on this side, it seemed quicker to go by this way.  "I don't think we could be any further apart," Ro commented as they walked towards his cabin.

"You're probably right. I'd say that if our site and his cabin were plotted on a circle, they'd be an equal distance apart."

"What I said, only more technical," Ro laughed.

They passed several other young boys as they walked to Bucky's cabin. No one seemed to be out and about like at the girl's camp. One thing was for sure that in nearly every cabin the glow from at least one computer screen could be seen through the windows.  Those boys that they did pass didn't take a second glace at them. No one noticed that they were new and that they didn't belong. Maybe at the end of the week (after everyone had gotten to know each other) they might recognize that they were outsiders, but not at the beginning of the week.

They finally made it to cabin "B3", Bucky's cabin.  They knew he, or one of his room mates was in there from the loud laughter and shouting that was coming from the inside. "Sounds like a party," Ro commented.

They approached the door of the cabin, and knocked twice before arbitrarily letting themselves in. Ro doubted that Bucky even heard them knock because he was making so much noise with his friends. When they entered Ro saw that Bucky as well as the the rest of his cabin mates were all lying on their beds.

She didn't know the name of the game they were playing, but knew that it was quickly growing in its popularity. The game was most recognized by its unique hardware, which cost a fortune in addition to the game console itself. Each player had a headset with a microphone and earpiece for giving game commands and talking with other players. It also had a holographic visor that projected the game image in front of their face.  While several other games had these functions, the key identifier was the strange controller they were using. The controller was in the shape of a military rifle. The player would use his right hand to operate the trigger, then with his left hand he could operate the directional controls which were located on the stock of the gun on the right side as he was holding the end of the rifle from beneath.  Then end result was a group of boys who looked like they were on the battle field, swinging their riffles right and left, shooting invisible targets, completely oblivious of the world around them past their visors.

Bucky was so engrossed in the game that he didn't notice that they'd let themselves in. "How are things going?" Zee asked.

He briefly turned his head to see who it was, but couldn't see anyone because of the game screen in front of his face. He tilted his head down, and looked over the then edge of the visor to see who it was briefly. He recognized Zee immediately, but it took him a second to realize the person next to him was Ro, only in disguise. After seeing who it was, he then quickly resumed his fixed stare on the screen of his game. "I'm  three kills behind Jerry over there, but I've had the lease amount of deaths than anyone else and I'm third in ranking for holding the skull the longest," he said, in reference to the game he was playing. "The winner gets the access codes for the Jupiter computer database."

Ro was vaguely familiar with the name. Apparently it was a big vid game producer. She rolled her eyes. "We meant the email thing, " she said,  lowering her voice slightly, but not by very much. She would be one thirteen year old who hadn't had his voice change yet.

"Oh, that! I just got my laptop hooked up this morning. I haven't spent much time online so far.

"Because you're playing this dumb game," Ro thought. They obviously did not have his undivided attention. She wished to drag him outside where she could talk normally but it didn't seem that he was anxious to leave the cabin, as he couldn't take his eyes off of his game for more than a second.  "I see you're a little busy now. Should we come back later?" Zee asked.

"No need to trouble yourselves. There's a computer programming seminar this evening that I'm not going to bother to attend. I can take care of thing then," he said.

"If you're sure…" Ro said, incredulously. With the attention that he was giving to his game, she couldn't help but think that this was just an excuse for them to leave him in peace so that he could give it his full attention again.

Bucky knew that it looked like he didn't really care about their needs because he was really into his game, but he did. He also understood the importance of finding the information as soon as possible. The longer the time it was since the incident, the harder it would be to find any information. Also, if they were looking for something in an email, Bennet might only keep the email on his computer for a few days before deleting it, and then they'd never find it. 

"So, how has camp been for you? You get settled in ok yesterday?" he asked, trying to prove that he could carry on a conversation while playing his game at the same time.

"It was fine," Ro said. Normally she would have gone into the situation they'd had with the Redwood girls and Mandy and Jennifer, but she couldn't go into those details because they were supposed to be pretending to be boys. Or, at least she was. Zee was himself.  But it would be weird for either of them to say that they'd been over at the other camp.

            "That's good," Bucky said.  "Got anything planned for later?" he asked them.

            "Well," Ro said mischievously, "We were thinking of playing a couple of pranks at this one campsite at the girl's camp later tonight… We've heard that one of the groups is planning an extensive series or practical jokes to play on us, as is expected. However, we're hoping to beat them to it, though. I can't quite remember the name of the campsite though, but I know it's the one in the middle of the lake. It was some kind of tree. I think it began with an "R"." Ro said slyly, looking at Zee, expecting him to play along. It took him a moment before he realized what she he was up to.

"Redwood?" he suggested.

"That's the one!" Ro said excitedly. "We're sure going to show them, aren't we?" Ro said to Zee, but was looking at Bucky.

He looked up briefly from his game. He wasn't stupid enough not to know that Ro wanted him to read between the lines. It seemed like she was trying to warn him about the Redwood campsite, as they had a lot of pranks planned out, but in the way she delivered this information, it made it seem like she was purposely trying to get him to play his pranks on that particular campsite rather than any other."

"Well, let me know what time specifically you're planning on sneaking over there and we'll help you out," he smirked.  As Bucky said this several of the boys in the cabin chuckled to themselves.

Ro had known that they might have been vaguely listening in on their conversation, which is why she'd brought up the subject. Someone in this group was bound to have a good idea of how to get revenge on the Redwood girls for her.  While they'd taken their towels as a form of revenge, she still felt like she needed to be repaid for how rude they were when they'd first arrived. The towels had just been for showering too long.

"It will be late. Very late," Ro told him.

"Speaking of being late," Zee added, "We only have fifteen minutes before we promised to meet back at the…"

"Right, of course" Ro added quickly, preventing Zee from having to give out too much information or to lie about a location they were supposed to meet some non-existent people at.  "Well, it's been fun, but we have to go," Ro said to Bucky.

            "See ya around," Bucky replied.

            Zee opened the door for Ro and they walked out of Bucky's cabin. When they were a few steps away Zee suggested, "We should go back around the other side of the lake. We don't want to risk having the counselor still be there. However, as there was a counselor from Bucky's camp at the other end, this leads me to believe that one of our counselors might be watching the other side."    

            "Then I'll wear a disguise and you can pretend like you're bringing me back. But you worry too much. With our disguise abilities, we can pull off anything."

            They continued to walk through the boy's camp until they got to the other end. Zee carefully scouted ahead to see if there was anyone guarding the road on this side of the lake, but from what he could see, there was no one.

            "Why wouldn't there be anyone?" Ro asked. "Do they really think that people are only going to try to sneak by on one side of the lake?"

            "I'm not sure. But we should still be careful," Zee said, holomorphing back into his feminine appearance. Ro turned off the bracelet, but still wore it in case they might need another quick disguise.

            They cautiously walked back along the road into the girl's camp, half expecting one of the counselors to jump out from behind a tree. Only when they began to see other girls wandering around on the road and in their campsites, did they relax, knowing that they'd made it back safely.

"So what's next?" Ro asked Zee once they'd made it back to their tent at their campsite.

"I think it's dinner time." Zee said.

"Good, I'm hungry." Apparently all of the walking they'd done had given her a small appetite.

"There you are!" an accusing voice came from across the campsite.

The hair on the back of Ro's neck was on end, but she casually turned around.  Someone had seen them, and they were in trouble now.

It was only Mandy. "I've been looking all over for you two!" Ro wanted to ask if it was because they were in trouble, but knew that if she did, it would be confessing that they had done something that they should fear the consequences of.  "How much trash did you find?" she asked excitedly.  

Maybe they weren't in trouble after all. Ro thought of the empty bags in her pocket. They hadn't picked up a single piece of trash since they'd been given the bags.

"Haven't found anything yet," Ro said.  This was true as they hadn't even bothered to look for any trash yet.

"Instead of swimming, we decided to go and pick up the trash that was along the hiking trails. Man, were they a mess… Anyway, just thought I'd ask. Jennifer is collecting all of the trash we found in one big bag to show off tomorrow at campsite inspection."

"Won't that be nice?" Ro said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. Showing off a bag of garbage like it was a tournament trophy seemed a little out of place.

"Well, I'm going to get washed up before dinner. See you there!" Mandy said, then left them.

"Would you like to wash up too?" Zee asked her.

"Even though I haven't been picking up trash, it's a good idea," Ro said. They then hurried to catch up with Mandy.

Dinner was delicious, and was especially enjoyable as they didn't have clean-up. For dinner they'd had a buffet of Chinese dishes, and as a result, there was sticky rice all over the tables, ground, and on all the dishes.  While they should just leave the mess for the birds to pick off, it would mean that there would later have to clean up the mess left by the birds. The only other worse thing might possible be a spaghetti dish.  They only had a few minutes to return to their campsites and get flashlights and lawn chairs before having to hike to the large campfire circle for the entire camp. Afterwards, they'd have their own individual campsite fires, then they'd be able to go to bed.

"Got your flashlights?" Mandy asked them once they were back at their campsite after dinner.

"Yeah, right here," Ro said, shining the light at Mandy's feet for a demonstration.

"Good. Now, just as a suggestion you might want to bring some bug spray. The mosquitoes will go away once it gets dark in a half hour, but before then, you'll want protection."

"Right," Zee said, selecting a spray bottle and lotion from his pack.

"Now, let's get our chairs and go," Mandy suggested.

Zee picked up Ro's camping chair in addition to his own, and carried them both, one under each arm. "You sure you don't want me to carry it?" Ro asked. She knew that Zee could handle both of them, but it was the human thing to ask.

"I've got them, it's fine," he said.

They followed Jennifer down the path towards the showers that they'd used last night. There was a line of girls coming out the door waiting to use the bathroom. There would definitely be some competition for this shower tonight, unlike last night.  The campfire area was a sloped hill, shaped in a semi-circle. The fire pit was at the bottom of the hill. Large tree trunks had been split in half and were set into the banked hill for benches. Following the other girl's examples, Ro and Zee set up their chairs on top of the bench and sat down.

It wasn't required that the girls sit with their campsites, but by the time that everyone had sat down, everyone had chosen to sit with their own campsite.  Once everyone was seated, the camp director started the campfire meeting. "Glad to see that you all made it. And if you didn't, you wouldn't be here to hear me say that. We don't have much planned tonight, but to review kapers and start the skit bid sign up."

"Kapers?" Zee said quizzically. Even Ro had no clue what the director was talking about this time.

"The plural of K.P., or Kitchen Patrol," Mandy informed him.

The director read off the list that was posted by the kitchen. Ro felt this a complete waste of time, as anyone with half a mind could simply go and read it for themselves. They didn't have to suffer themselves to be mosquito food to hear her read off the chart. When she had read the list, she went on to take bid sign ups for doing a skit at the campfire on different nights.

Each counselor for the campsite went up and drew cards. Whoever had the highest card, got to sign up first. Jennifer miraculously, pulled out the second highest card. When each counselor had a card, they began to sign up for a night to do their skit on. The person with the highest card signed up for the last night, and worked back from there.  Some of the skit nights were doubled up, so even though they had the second highest card they'd still be able to perform on the lat night.  Apparently, whoever had the lowest value card would be stuck being first on the list, and would have to come up with a skit by tomorrow night's campfire. To make matters worse, the skits would be judged by the counselors of the other site for an award at the end of camp. Both Zee and Ro thought this was highly unfair as it would mean other campsites would have more time to put together a better skit. Mandy assured them with the extra bonus points for going first, it would be fair.

The campfire was dismissed after a few more rules were reinforced such as: no running, only walk around in pairs, lights out also meant "be quiet"…

"That was short," Ro commented. It hardly seemed worth the effort of bringing their chairs with. But, they did need their flashlights, as by the time the campfire had ended it was dark.

Ro, Zee, and Mandy returned with the rest of their site to their campsite. Jennifer reviewed their schedule for tomorrow while everyone made smores. "Nothing special about tomorrow, except that we'll be cleaning up in the kitchen after breakfast tomorrow so we'll not have a lot of time to clean up before inspection. So I expect you to clean up tonight, and have everything neatly packed away for tomorrow's inspection," Jennifer told them. "If any of you want to participate in a flag ceremony, let me know soon, and I'll work out a day when you can get certified for that. Also… If any of you have any trash that you've picked up during the day and haven't turned in, bring your garbage bag to me as I'm collecting all of the trash in one big bag…  And, that's it for tonight. Wake-up will be the same time as tomorrow. –Now, someone better have saved me a chocolate bar, or I'm going to be upset…"

Ro's knees were getting nice and warm as she sat in front of the fire, toasting a marshmallow. Some of the people around her were actually roasting their marshmallows. She could always tell when someone's marshamallow had gotten too hot because they'd start screaming as they waived their stick with their burning marshmallow on the end all around in the air, trying to exhaust the flames.

"I'm just waiting for when the marshmallow goes flying off and lands on one of the tents, catching it on fire," Mandy said to Ro, laughing.

"It is a fire hazard indeed," Zee agreed.

She'd only looked away from her marshmallow for a split second, but the flames had leapt up and caught her own marshmallow on fire. As it burned, it melted off of her stick and fell into the fire where it caramelized then turned to ash. "Guess I'll get another one, and try again," Ro said, about to get up.

"You can have mine," Zee offered, holding out his stick with his perfectly golden marshmallow on it. It was completely toasted evenly all around, and even had a crisp outside with a soft inside.

"That is one perfectly-toasted marshmallow," Mandy commented in awe. Of course it was, he'd read the burning temperature of the marshmallow and had compared it to the temperature of the fire, and had carefully watched it to make sure that the heat tolerance level of the marshmallow was not exceeded.

"Would you like me to toast you one?" he asked.

"Nah. Toasting it is half the fun," she replied.  "Why don't you make one for yourself?" she suggested.

"Zee doesn't like marshmallows," Ro said quickly. "And she doesn't like to eat too much sugar before bed. It keeps her up late."

"That might not be such a bad thing," Mandy smirked, then leaned closer to them. "I was thinking of playing a couple of jokes tonight on the boy's camp in the middle of the night. If you're up, do you want to come? I'll be going over with a couple of girls from Evergreen as well."

Ro thought this over in her mind. It would be a good chance to talk to Bucky in private, but if he'd taken their suggestion to play some pranks on Redwood, then he might not be there if they did go over.  "You can wake us up in the middle of the night before you leave, but I'm kind of feeling tired, so I'm not sure if I want to commit to it right now," Ro said. She'd leave her options open, so that she could talk things over with Zee before making a decision.

"Sure," Mandy replied.

Even though there were still a few minutes that they were technically supposed to be in their campsite, around the campfire, Jennifer gave everyone the option of going to get in line for the showers early. While there was still a long line at the regular showers, they only had to wait seven minutes for the showers by the camp campfire circle.

Ro stepped out of the shower, feeling clean and refreshed. Zee was already out and was pretending to dry his hair with a towel. Mandy was still getting dressed in the changing stall. There were some other girls that she could go back to the campsite with, so Ro took this opportunity to excuse her and Zee to go back to the campsite together, so she could go over with him whether they wanted to go over to the boy's camp tonight.  "Mandy, we're going to start heading back to camp, okay? See you in a few minutes!" Ro said cheerily.

"Okay!" her voice echoed from the shower stall.

"Come on," Ro said, linking arms with Zee.

It was as if he'd read her mind, as he immediately brought up the subject she'd been hoping to talk with him about. "Do you really want to go see Bucky again tonight?" he asked.

"Not really. I actually am feeling a little tired... Do you want to go without me? Then again—sending you somewhere alone without a robot to human translator might not be such a good idea."

"I'm more worried as to whether you'll be fine by yourself while I'm gone."

"I think I can handle myself tonight. The first night is usually the scariest."

"Then our only problem would be if Bucky and his friends, were trying to do the exact same thing to our camp while we're over there at his."

"Which might be why it would be a good idea for me to stay and you to go then."

"Only if you're sure."

Ro thought about it for a minute, "I don't know why but sending you off by yourself doesn't feel right. We'll let it pass tonight. We don't want him to be exhausted tomorrow because we kept him up tonight. Besides, if I know Bucky, he is going to go for the prank tonight because of what we said earlier. I want to  here to hear their screams."

            They continued to walk back to their campsite, with Ro's armed linked around his. Such an intimate gesture was automatically degraded to "casual friends" because of the fact that they were both girls. He was tempted to resume his normal appearance, if only for a moment, because it was dark so no one could see him, but he didn't dare. He wasn't going to do something risky like that without a logical reason.

            Ro replaced her toiletries in their tent and checked to see that the rest of her stuff hadn't been tampered with during the rest of the day. Everything seemed to be in its place. She didn't think that they had to worry about someone getting into their stuff as there would usually be someone at the campsite, or everyone would be together at the flag ceremony or at breakfast so there wouldn't be anyone around to worry about having to protect their things from.

            Zee jumped up and grabbed the net ladder down and held it steady for Ro to climb up. "Thanks," she said, once she'd reached the top. It was very gratifying to be regarded as useful.

            Ro was still arranging her sleeping bag on the net—as close to the center as possible—when Mandy returned from the showers with some of the other girls. Ro called her over to her to tell her that they were going to pass on tonight's adventure.

            "That's alright, there's always tomorrow as well," Mandy winked.  She then went to her own tent to go to bed.

            "Today seemed pretty easy," Ro commented, snuggled up in her sleeping bag. "But it seems like tomorrow is going to be more hectic."

            "There's nothing much different except that we'll have breakfast kapers."

            "That, and we'll also have to think of a new way to get over to talk to Bucky. Also, there's that skit thing we're going to have to participate in, and Jennifer's going to want us to do something else to 'improve our campsite' on top of that…. And we haven't collected one piece of trash at all today."

            Zee didn't say anything, but listened to Ro. Humans sure worried about the most petty of all things. Then again, who was he to speak? He processed every little bit of information no matter how small it was. Several times he would analyze the smallest gesture, trying to read the person's motivations behind it, and would turn it into a really big deal when it had been something rather small. He did this a lot when he was with Ro. He was constantly trying to read her mind, and predict her reactions, but she always surprised him by doing something unexpected. "I could go out and look for garbage tonight," he suggested.

            "I'm not going to bother with it anymore," Ro said, scooting closer to him. "It's nice right here. I'm sure everyone else got enough. Besides, it's the thought that counts. Not the quantity of trash accumulated."

            "Goodnight, Ro," Zee said softly.

            "Goonight, Zee," Ro yawned, and fell asleep.

            So began another night that he'd stay up watching. It was at least an hour before each tent grew quiet. The girls seemed more tired and less excited today than the night before, so the urge to stay up late was lessened. He wondered if anyone was going to come into their campsite tonight. A  regular person would get bored from just watching a bunch of trees all night long and might wish for some action, but he hoped for a calm night. If there was to be some disturbance, he hoped it would be Bucky sneaking over to tell them that he had some good news about Dr. Edmund.  He knew that they were looking for him on his behalf, but he was now realizing that he hoped that they'd find Edmund more for Ro's sake than for his. As soon as his name was cleared, so would her name be.  But then, would she leave him? He was sure that she wouldn't, but this doubt wouldn't stay passive in his mind for very long before he found himself thinking about it again. He was sure that their interdependency on each other had grown to be more than a survival instinct.

            It irritated him that whenever he thought about Ro leaving him he wished to jeopardize their current plan for his freedom. Right now, he was thinking of ways how he could innocently prevent them from finding any information on Dr. Edmund without making it seem like it was his fault. Such ideas were encouraging Bucky to play the online game with his friends, and to help him to get distracted or to forget to look for the information.  When he started thinking about such topics, he'd get a feeling of what Ro described as "remorse or guilt". While he would enjoy her company if she were to stay with him, it would be a bittersweet victory, as he'd always feel bad for taking away her chance for freedom.  Then again, how was he to know that she wouldn't still want to stay with him once she got it?

            He lay next to her, listening to the quiet sounds of the forest, and the comforting sound of Ro breathing in each of those sounds, then exhaling softly. No matter what he thought, or how he felt—her needs, her best interest, should always come first, even if it meant a life without him.

            At around four thirty in the morning, he heard the zipper to Mandy's tent slowly opening up. Then he heard her lightly stepping out of her tent. She was very careful in walking around to the other tents to wake up her accomplices as the slightest snap of a twig could wake Jennifer up. If that were to happen their plans would be ruined. In only a few minutes, Mandy and three other girls set off to the boy's camp. Each had a backpack on which they probably had their items for playing practical jokes in. Apparently Mandy had decided to leave her toilet paper bed alone for another day, as nothing they were carrying could possible hold all of the rolls she had for her bed.

            They set out, and returned an hour later. Their smug faces let him know that that must have made a successful run. Quietly they climbed back into their tents and went back to sleep. He'd have to have Mandy tell him about what they did in the morning.