The Zeta Project Season 3 Episode 5

by clutzattack

Kim's WB The Zeta Project Road Trip

7. Day 6

Ro found out what'd he'd done that morning, as well as everyone else in the entire camp. There was a small clearing around the girls from Redwood. Zee knew that he'd only put the stink bomb particles into three of their bags, but everyone else in the tent smelled as well. They were fairly desensitized to the smell from having been unsuspectingly sleeping with it all night long. At their campsite that morning, though, they did know that something smelled fishy. Actually, it smelled skunky.

They were first in line for breakfast, something that Ro felt she could really get used to. With her small figure, no one would have guessed that Jennifer was a champion arm wrestler. "This is the last good breakfast that we'll have. Tomorrow they don't cook but just give us prepackaged muffins. Yuck!"

"Sometimes I think the director doesn't really like kids…"

For their educational hour they were actually going to be going on a group hike. They would be going on a longer trail that led to the hidden falls. Apparently if they followed the path on the left, it would eventually lead to the hidden falls, having gone the long way around the mountain. On the hike they would be identifying plants, as well as learning how to make, or recognize emergency signals if they got lost. "I would rather prefer that we made this a biking trip, but the camp doesn't want to deal with storing bikes, or what to do if one of them gets stolen," Jennifer explained. "But we can make this a fun trip, regardless of this fact."

One girl asked, "If we don't like hiking can we stay here?"

"As much as I'd like someone to remain behind to watch the campsite, I'm told that I have to take you all with me. Sorry."

"What if I have asthma? Or what if I have a health condition that prevents me from strenuous walking?"

"Then you should have said that on your medical waiver."

If only she'd actually seen it, Ro might have thought ahead to put that excuse on there. On their way along the trail they sang several songs. They also played several word games. One of these games was very amusing in particular. The object of the game was not to laugh. The person being questioned had to answer every question with, "Grandma's big red toe." They couldn't laugh at all while doing this. The people asking the questions would try to think of questions that would make the person laugh when they responded. Half of the time because they were laughing so much in expectation of the answer, the person would laugh just because it was contagious.

"Let's see…" Mandy thought. "For dinner our chefs cooked up."

"Grandma's big red toe," Ro replied, but she couldn't hold it in. She had to laugh.

It was her turn to quiz Mandy. "Jennifer said that if you ever get lost, this simple object could be used as a sundial…"

"Grandma's big red toe." It was a little funny, but not enough to crack Mandy.

"The counselor's committee decided that anyone found hiding stink bombs in other people's tents had to rub deodorizer onto…"

That did it.

Zee was one tough cookie. No one could crack him. Only Ro knew why. They eventually passed him up, as it was more fun when they could actually get someone to laugh. The jokes became even funnier when they reached someone on a personal interest level.

One girl had an obsession with buying collectible Sleeping Beauty Pins. She'd spent five times the purchase price, buying one at a presale auction, just so she could say she was the "first" to buy one, though she wouldn't be the first to have it in her hands. It would take a few days for the pin to be mailed to her. "Along with her extensive sleeping beauty pin collection, there was a pin of…"

One girl was an anime fanatic. "Sailor Moon had to battle a new evil arch enemy named…"

Another really liked Lord of the Rings. "The one ring that controls Middle Earth was found on…"

"Luke Skywalker battled Darth Vader with…" While finding females interested in sci-fi seemed uncommon, there were a few in their group.

Another game someone invented was to take quotes from movies and to replace one of the words with "pants". Mandy announced, "I've got one from Little Mermaid!" She cleared her throat, getting to the punch line in a round about way by singing the lyrics.

"There you see her
Sitting there across the way
She don't got a lot to say
But there's something about her
And you don't know why
But you're dying to try
You wanna pants the girl

Yes, you want her
Look at her, you know you do
It's possible she wants you, too
There is one way to ask her
It don't take a word
Not a single word
Go on and pants the girl

Sing with me now
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
My, oh, my
Look at the boy too shy
He ain't gonna pants the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Ain't that sad
Ain't it shame, too bad
You gonna miss the girl

Now's your moment
Floating in a blue lagoon
Boy, you better do it soon
No time will be better
She don't say a word
And she won't say a word
Until you pants the girl

Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Don't be scared
You got the mood prepared
Go on and pants the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Don't stop now
Don't try to hide it how
You wanna pants the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Float along
Listen to the song
The song say pants the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Music play
Do what the music say
You wanna pants the girl

You've got to pants the girl
Why don't you pants the girl
You gotta pantsthe girl
Go on and pants the girl"

Ro couldn't believe how she'd taken such a beautiful song and had turned it into something to laugh at. She also couldn't believe how beautifully that the word pants fit in with the context of the song. Everything connected, and still made logical sense. It was too much. She was doubled over laughing. She had no idea how Mandy had even been able to finish the song without laughing.

The girl who liked Lord of the Rings submitted a quote from Ghandalf, "There is only one Lord of The Rings, and he does not share his pants" "—Oh, I've got another one by Aragorn! 'Open pants are upon you, whether you would risk them or not. 'Or how about this? 'We slaughtered the orcs and burned their pants!' Or Galandriel? 'I know what it is that you see, for it is also in my pants.'" She had several more, but others wanted a turn to speak so she finally settled down, and just told everyone to discover them for themselves.

They reached the hidden falls, where they stopped to eat the sack lunches the cooks had pre-made for them. Cold sandwiches with fruit, juice, and a small dessert. Ro had to remember to act like she'd never been here before rather than that this was her second time. As they didn't have to use their lunch hour to actually cook or prepare food, as it was all pre-packaged items for their sack lunches, their lunch hour was going to be used for the competitions.

Yesterday Ro hadn't noticed any obnoxious bees on their way here, or while they had been at the falls, but apparently because of all of the food that they'd brought, or because of the warm weather that afternoon, they were about, and pestering everyone. It was hard to enjoy lunch if they had to be careful that there wasn't a bee sitting on their sandwich, or flying right into their face. Jennifer remedied this problem by placing a few soda cans, partially full of soda in a cluster away from the group. As no one was going to swat them away from the soda, the bees began to cluster around the cans, leaving everyone else alone. The only problem they had was that when it was time to leave, the bees were still swarming in and out of the soda cans. No one wanted to go near the cans to retrieve them, but they knew they couldn't just leave them there as it would be littering.

Fortunately, several people had brought bug repellant with them. They began spraying it from a distance at the cans until the bees began to leave the cans. When it seemed like it was safe enough to approach, Jennifer ran and jumped onto the can, squashing it flat. Of course it sprayed soda all over, but the important part was that if there were any bees lingering inside of the can, they were squished now.

"That wasn't very nice to the bees," Zee commented.

"What are you going to do about it?" Ro casually remarked. She was ready to follow the group down the trail and continue onward, but she found that if not dragged along, Zee was going to try and rescue the bees from the soda cans before Jennifer squashed anymore. He would be immune to their stings. "Come on, don't worry about it." Ro nagged him.

Because of the small delay Jennifer had already finished squishing the cans. She remarked to herself that she'd leave less soda in the cans next time. As the sticky soda spray on her legs might attract more bees along the trail she quickly went to splash it off with the water in the pond.

"I'm ready to go," she announced. She took her position at the head of the group again and led everyone back to their campsite. There she announced that she would be taking group and event sign ups.

Mandy went forward to sign up their group, then to assign each of them to the different events. She asked Zee if he would do the archery and target range. She actually didn't really ask for his opinion, but stated, "I'm going to sign you up for target shooting and archery as I think you'll be a natural at them, okay?" Heather and Carrie wanted to do the distance and relay swimming. Ro, Laura and Mandy would do the canoe races. Apparently the water portion of the competition was actually called a "water carnival."

They went to their tents to change into their swimming suits, except for Zee who wouldn't be needing to change for his activities.

"So what is it you wanted to talk to me about?" Zee asked curiously. Ro had taken him away from everyone else at the campsite, saying that she wanted a quick, private word with him.

Ro didn't know how she was going to say this. She paused for a moment then asked, "You think you'll be okay with the target shooting?"

"Is something wrong with it?" he asked. She usually only questioned him aside like this when there was something wrong with a situation.

"I just wanted to make sure that it's okay with you. It's not really like Mandy asked if you wanted to do this. She just sort of signed you up assuming you wanted to."

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked.

Ro knew from his curious expression that he was not being defensive about his wishes or opinions, but that he wanted to know what kind of situation would make him not want to do this activity. What made him most curious, though, was that Ro was being suggestive about him having doubts. Wouldn't doing this be considered "fun"? Why wouldn't he want to try it out then?

She wasn't sure how she could put this delicately without hurting his perspective of her complete confidence in him. "Well, I was just thinking that this might be your first experience shooting a gun since, well, you know…" She couldn't bring herself to mention the period of time when he had used guns to threaten people or to kill them at the government's whim. Her tone then became very defensive, and she began to speak quicker, "It's just that I wasn't sure if you were just going to be doing this because you felt," she paused to think of the right word, "pressured to not say anything because you thought that I would want you to do it…" She knew she hadn't been very articulate in this little spiel, but she hoped he'd be smart enough to figure it out himself.

He was a little taken aback at how much she really cared about his feelings in this matter; or at least enough to take him aside to talk to him in private about them. He usually thought about her feelings and areas of comfort in different situations, so it would seem natural that she should do the same about him, but it still surprised him. "I'd already taken such possibilities into consideration, but thank you for your concern. I am in control of myself. Shooting at clay pigeons isn't going to change my programming."

"Glad that's taken care of then," Ro sighed. She felt so much more relieved now that she knew he was doing this because he wanted to and not because everyone else wanted him to. "We can head back now," she said matter-of-factly.

The water carnival was going to be going on all day long; other wise there wouldn't be enough time to fit everyone into the races and competitions. The swimming relay races were going to be first, and the canoeing was going to be last, as was tradition. The rifle shooting contest was going to start immediately rather than later in the day as well. Over the years, it'd been discovered that it was best to have the target contest before 3:00 as any time after that the sun would be right in line with where the projected path of the clay pigeons flew through. This would be unfair to those who had to shoot at this time, as the sun would be right in their eyes.

Having swimming and target shooting going on at the same time was inconvenient to those who would have liked to participate in both events, and for those who wanted to watch participants in both events. But, because the contests had to be crammed into one day, sacrifices would have to be made, and people would have to prioritize which event was more important to them.

Mandy had declared that she was going to watch Carrie and Heather in the relay races. Ro knew that even before she'd found out that she'd have to chose which event she'd be watching that she was going to go and watch Zee. She had to be there, just in case something did go wrong.

They followed some other girls from their campsite to the target range as they hadn't visited it once the entire week during their free time to know where it was. The target range required a small bit of hiking to reach as it was purposely located away from the main area of camp to make sure that stray arrows or rifle shots didn't hurt anyone on a trail deep in the forest somewhere. It also was located more towards the boys' half of the camp than the girl's.

The range was broken up into three sections: one for archery, one long range for target shooting with rifles, and one for clay pigeon shooting with shotguns. On the long range, targets with paper bulls-eyes were set up already. Ro could hear the sounds of the rifles reloading, or pumping, then firing shots at the target. Apparently they weren't using plasma rifles as they were more dangerous and would completely blow the target away rather than leaving a small hole in the paper targets as a conventional bullet would. These counselors didn't trust their campers with plasma weapons. The ground on the clay pigeon range was littered with a mess of broken clay pigeon pieces from years past. The mound of clay pieces reminded Ro of the scales on a dragon: a dragon with clay pigeons for scales.

On the archery side of the range there were several hay stacks set up with large targets strapped on for those participating in the archery event. There were three girls and two boys lined up one fifty feet away with their bows drawn back. They aimed at the targets and released their arrows. Apparently to make things go faster and to end the competitions sooner they'd already started the early arrivers out on the events.

"So we're here. What now?" Ro asked.

"Maybe we should ask someone what to do?" Zee asked.

They looked at everyone around them, trying to identify who would be best to ask. Should they bug one of the counselors, who looked busy as it was, or should they try to find another camper to ask who looked well-informed?

"Look, there's Jerr…" Zee started to say before Ro clamped her hand over his mouth.

"Shhh!"

Zee immediately stopped talking. "What's wrong?" he asked quietly. Shouldn't' she be glad that he found someone whom they could ask what to do next?

"There are some girls from Redwood here, and there are counselors. What are they going to think if we just walk up to a random group of guys and act all buddy buddy with them?"

"They'll think that we know them," he said quizzically. What was wrong with that?

"Precisely."

"Don't we, though?"

"Yes-- I mean No! We're not supposed to know them! We have to act like we don't know them."

"Why?"

"Where did we meet them?"

"At their cabin."

"Right. We weren't supposed to be over at their cabin."

It made sense now. It was against camp rules for campers form either camp to be at the other's campsite, or in their tents or cabins. And while they could make up a story such as they'd met on the trials somewhere, it would be rather far-fetched as none of the trails did meet up, except for at certain places where they shouldn't be, or where they're would have been counselor supervision to begin with.

"We should go re-introduce ourselves then," Zee suggested.

"Just what I was thinking."

They walked over to Jerry and his group of friends. "Hi, my name's Zee. What's yours?" Zee asked politely, extending his hand to shake with Jerry.

Ro sighed. "Not what I meant," she said, shaking her head.

Jerry just laughed, "I'm Jerry," he played along. It had also occurred to him that they weren't supposed to know each other, which is why they hadn't said anything when they'd seen Ro and Zee coming up the trail with the other girls from their campsite.

"You guys here for the contests?" Ro asked casually.

"Yeah, we figure with all of our gaming skills this should be right up our alley. We're going to take our best shots at it," he tried to play on a lame pun. "

"Ha… Ha…" Ro faked a laugh. She wanted to ask where Bucky was, but that would be admitting that she knew him. Instead she asked, "Any of your other friends coming, or doing any of the events?"

Jerry must have read her thoughts like an open book, "Bucky is going to be doing the canoe races. He's over there watching the swimming contests right now."

"So, how do we get started here?" Ro asked.

"Right now they're just checking to see that everyone's certified."

Oh, great. Zee wasn't certified as they hadn't been up here all week. "And what if you aren't?" Ro asked.

"Then you just get to watch."

"So they can't just quickly certify you?" Ro asked.

"There's a whole gun safety procedure, and a lot of other bull crap that they have to go through. It'd take too much time to go through it. Why do you ask?"

"Ro was just debating if she wanted to try it out or not," Zee spoke up. "I guess she'll just have to watch me then."

Was he crazy? He wasn't certified either. She wondered what they'd think afterwards if they'd found out that they'd given an as x-killer robot without even a "gun safety bead" have a loaded rifle. Then again, his past history should make him qualified to use such a weapon…

"Well, I won't be participating so you can have my bead," one of Jerry's friends offered Ro. "I'm just here to watch Jerry. This contest is going to prove if he really is as good of a shot as he says he is, or if he's really just using a hack to get all of his kills like I think he is." He began to tug on the brown colored bead on his lanyard, to remove it to give it to Ro.

"Yeah right! You comparing the spatial field of a video game with real life is ridiculous!" Jerry retorted.

"I actually think I'd prefer to just watch," Ro declined, even though it would be handy to have the bead so Zee could participate. She did wonder, though, why Mandy hadn't mentioned that they'd need to be certified to participate in this event when signing Zee up. Jerry's friend stopped trying to pull off his bead.

A counselor announced over the chatter that anyone who had not been checked off for certification to please step forward. "I guess that includes me," Zee commented. He headed towards the counselor. In his hand he held a holographic necklace, complete with one "gun safety", brown bead.

"Name?" the counselor asked.

"Zee."

"Are you certified?" the counselor asked.

Zee held out his hand with the necklace and the bead on it. The counselor eyed the bead then made a mark on his clipboard. However, the counselor knew that having a brown bead wasn't proof enough that he should be giving a lethal firearm to the camper with the bead. An unexpected pop quiz of firearm safety would prove sufficient enough to determine this camper's eligibility.

It was fortunate for Zee that there was a posted poster of gun safety rules located several feet behind the counselor. It was too far for a normal person to read, so it hadn't occurred to the counselors to take it down so that someone didn't' try to cheat. Not to mention, it was probably too much of a hassle to remove it then repost it, or to find something to cover it up with.

Zee passed the verbal pop quiz. The fact that he had previous experience using guns, and that he could read through the warnings on the sing for the correct answer (without making it seem like he was unsure or stalling for time to decide on the right answer) undoubtedly helped. He was instructed that he would be in group seven and that he could just wait with the spectators until it was his turn.

"I'm in group seven," he announced when he returned to the group.

"Me too," Jerry commented. Ro knew she should feel sorry for Jerry as Zee was going to kick his butt in this competition, but she really only had the capacity at the moment to feel smug. Feeling proud and sympathetic was too strenuous at the moment. She'd just be sure to not be a boasting winner when it did happen. "If you haven't already, you should go get your group number for the other events. That way you don't have to just be waiting all day long."

It turned out that Zee was in group five for archery, and twenty fourth in line for clay pigeon shooting.

There were a few benches set up for spectators, far off on both sides of range. They could either have a good view of the clay pigeon shooting or the archery, but not the long range shooting in the middle. As one of Jerry's friends, Greg, was in the third group for target shooting Ro and Zee found them on the clay pigeon side, trying to watch Greg in the middle of the range. They'd only have a minute to watch and then Zee would have to hurry over to the archery range.

Ro sat down, and watched Greg. "Rifle shooting has got to be the most boring sport ever," she commented.

"I thought you said golf was," Zee commented.

"Nah, this is more boring. They just stand there, and you hear a sound, then they reload, then they just stand there again, then they shoot… I've officially decided that rifle shooting is the most boring sport, to watch at least."

"What about fishing?" Jerry suggested. "They just sit there, and sit there, and sit there waiting for a bite." Ro considered his suggestion, and changed her mind to agree with him. When Greg went up to check how well he'd done Zee and Ro got up to head over to archery.

He'd already had to prove his certification when he found out what group they were in so Ro took a seat with the other people who were watching while Zee went to get a bow and some arrows. He was right on the end, closest to the benches, in the line up. They would get one practice shot, then the seven following that would count towards their final score. Ten points for hitting the bulls-eye, then the point value decreased by one for each ring away form the center.

Zee began to examine the distance from where he was standing to the target and the height of the target from the ground. He then began to calculate the difference between the height of his eyesight and the height the arrow would start at as it rested in the ready position on his bow at about shoulder level. He'd have to aim a little bit down. The unknown variable in his trigonomic equation was how much force he'd get by how far he pulled back the bow. He knew how much force he needed, but it wasn't as if the bow had a gauge on it that told him. That was what the practice shot would be for.

As soon as the other girls started shooting their practice shots he released his arrow. It embedded half of itself into the target, just above the bulls-eye. He had a little too much force, but how had he missed the bulls-eye? Simple, it was the arrow's fault, never his. If they were using professional-quality arrows it would have been dead on. His only other question was whether he wanted to try lowering his aim, or if he should just hope that the rest of his arrows would be direct hits. Then again, he shouldn't worry too much. Everyone else was doing far worse in comparison. Only two others out of his group actually landed somewhere on the target. The rest hit the corner of the hay stack or completely missed.

His second try, which actually counted for points, was a direct hit. He turned toward the crowd and saw Ro smiling. It wasn't an aggressive sport so no one seemed to be cheering loudly or calling out names. They were just casually watching. They were just there to show support by their mere presence.

His third arrow went into the 8 point range. "That's messed up," Ro commented. She knew that all of Zee's arrows should have been in the bulls-eye. She knew that the other people who were hitting the mark close to the bulls-eye were really just lucking out. No way could they have that kind of natural talent. Zee still ended up winning, however with 67points, the highest score so far. But that didn't mean that someone couldn't out score him. They were in an early group for the day. However, anyone who wanted to beat Zee would have to hit the bulls-eye five out of five times, and the 9 ring, for the other two shots. No on in Zee's group even came close. The next highest score was a 44.

Zee was awarded a certificate with his score on it, just in case the score book got lost or someone tried to cheat by altering the scores later. They returned to the pigeon side of the range to wait until it was Zee's and Jerry's turn to shoot.

The turns at the rifle target shooting went fairly quickly. "Remember, it's not good to be Davy Crockett at this event," Ro reminded him.

"Davy Crockett?" Zee asked.

"This event should be more accurate than the archery one. Even if you can, it's not good to shoot through the same bulls-eye hole. They'll think you missed the target completely, rather than shooting your shots through the same hole as the first one."

"Right."

The counselor informed the group that the gun sights had all been zeroed in this morning for this particular distance so there was no need for them to be done again now. However, after Zee made his first shot, his vision zoomed in on the target. "Zeroed in." Yeah right. The sights had only been calibrated enough so that the bullets hit some part of the paper target. He adjusted his scope a little, then made another shot. Bulls-eye! He was really good at this.

When he'd used up his ten shots he considered leaving the scope as it was, but that would mean that whoever was after him would have it made for them. Or should he change it back to the way that he'd found it? Everyone else before him had had to use the gun the way it was. Or had they just not bothered to fine tune the scope? Did they know how much it was off while they were shooting it or after they saw their target up close? Did they bother to alter the sight or just aim a little more to the right or left? However, as he realized that winning was the game here, he adjusted the scope back to where he'd found it. He was too kind-hearted to completely disorient the scope for the next user. He collected his target then went back to Ro.

When he brought back the paper target to show Ro there was a distinctive spaced out pattern of ten bullet holes, all directly inside of the bulls-eye, except for one that was off to the side. The paper target had been initialed and stamped by the counselor in charge to make sure someone didn't grab a blank one and try to punch holes in it, trying to pass them off as shots. "You're going to give yourself away if you keep this up," she said, elbowing him gently. She wouldn't tell him to stop though. She was enjoying how all of the boys were completely shocked that they'd been beat by a girl.

They were only on the fourteenth person for the clay pigeon contest. Only one person could shoot at a time, since they only had one skeet launcher. When the 23rd person was about to start Zee was called over. "Good luck," Ro said, just as he was getting up to leave.

"As if she needs it…" Jerry commented.

"Your practice shots are whatever she misses," the counselor told Zee. "You can only shoot after she's made her shot."

Zee had been watching the people before him while he waited for his turn, so he was now familiar with how the system worked. He waited off to the right of the person whose turn it was. The skeet was launched, the girl traced the skeet with her gun then fired at it. She missed, and within a second Zee shot the skeet out of the sky. She shouldn't have traced it, but should have led it. Or she should have traced it, then quickly jumped ahead before shooting it.

There was only enough time for ten pigeons a person. Already, it was taking a long time as it was. During free time, each person usually got between twenty and forty pigeons. The girl missed again, and again Zee demolished the pigeon. There was a very strict range that someone could shoot the pigeon in, mainly because of the direction the gun would be facing in to shoot it. If they shot it early in its trajectory they'd be shooting to the left, over the archery and target range. Too late in its path and they'd be shooting to the right, on the same side as the spectator benches. But, because the benches were located behind the range, there was very little, if any, danger to the spectators. Still, no one wanted to send a note home to someone's parents saying that their child had a small bullet wound.

She got a hit on the third and fourth pigeons, but missed the fifth. She got it again on the sixth, seventh, and eight, but missed the last two. It was an average score when compared with the twenty two people before her. Even though Zee shot down all of the pigeons she missed, none of his hits counted toward his score.

He held us shotgun up. Ro held her breath as she watched. "Please, don't let anything happen," she prayed. But why was she so worried? She didn't actually believe this exercise would make him a killer again.

The first skeet flew into the air, then fell to the ground in pieces after having been shot. The same pattern followed for the rest of the clay pigeons.

"Ten out of ten, not bad," Ro commented. "I think you've impressed enough people for now at least."

They started walking back down the trail towards the dock. They'd have to see if it was on the other side of the lake once they got there. "Did you enjoy yourself?" Ro asked.

Was she really asking him if he liked shooting a gun at targets? How did she expect him to reply to such a question? He expected that she'd like to have him tell her that it was fun and enjoyable, but what would that sound like coming from an ex-killer robot? How would it sound if he said, "Yes, I like shooting guns." Or would she feel bad for dragging him into this if he said that he didn't like it at all? "I liked scoring for our camp and campsite," he safely answered.

"That's nice."

The races were still going on when they reached the docks. The swimming races were going to be held on the girl's half of the lake as the range was located closer to the boy's half of the camp. The canoe races would cover both halves of the lake. They didn't have swimming on both halves of the lake as it would be hard to make two equal, distance measurements on each side of the lake.

Swimming through water was hard work and took a long time, which was why they still hadn't finished. Also, having a 12 minute relay to see how many laps a person could swim in that time, couldn't be any shorter in time than twelve minutes. They were near the end of the races though, which meant that they would then be setting up for the canoe races. The majority of the people at the range would just be coming back into the camps when they started the races. There would be a few, who had signed up for clay pigeon shooting, that would be able to participate in one of the late canoe groups, but not in one of the earlier groups.

Mandy spotted Ro and Zee. "Hey! How'd you do?" she asked Zee.

"Zee's awesome," Ro answered for him.

"I got a 67/70 on archery, and a 10/10 on the skeet shooting."

"That's amazing!"

"Not really. I just analyzed the distance from my position to the target, and calculated the height difference…"

Ro cut him off, "There were some other people there too who were really good," she lied. No one there had been as good as Zee, but there were people there who were "good."

"You ready for the canoe races, because we're in the first group," Mandy asked Ro.

She was wearing her bathing suit underneath so she didn't have to worry about finding a place to change. She just needed to take off her clothes and she would be ready. "Can you watch my stuff again?" she asked Zee.

"Sure."

"I'm ready now."

Laura was waiting by a canoe for them. Ro was handed a life preserver and a paddle. "This race is just for speed, so don't purposely jump out of the canoe or anything like that," she laughed playfully.

Ro was glad Mandy was acting so calm about the whole situation as she had a swarm of butterflies in her stomach. She was feeling much anxiety about this competition. She just hoped she could channel some of that energy into the race. One thing that really relieved her was that Redwood wasn't in this race, nor was Bucky. She was just competing against nameless people, so it wouldn't mean too much if they did lose.

Ro was the middle person in their canoe. She would be paddling on the right with Mandy paddling on the left, and Laura in the back alternating sides to counter whichever direction the canoe started to drift in.

"We're just racing around the buoy on the other side of the lake then back here again. We're not going to try and paddle around it like everyone else will. We're just going to come in close to it, then I'll back paddle on the left side, while you two forward paddle on the right. We'll make a tight turn around it while still retaining most of our speed. I'll go into more details as we come closer. Now, battle cry, ladies."

Battle cry? Mandy lifted her oar high into the air, as well a Laura, and shouted really loudly. Ro felt silly, but followed suit. Then, Mandy brought her paddle down on the surface of the water with a loud smack sound. Laura followed, then Ro. Their paddles splashed water all around, but not on anyone in particular.

"Just start paddling when you hear the whistle," Mandy instructed Ro and Laura behind her. Ro couldn't wait for the whistle to blow. She had so much energy wound up insider her. It would be a relief to get some of it out and to get this over with.

The whistle blew and she immediately began to paddle as past as possible. She didn't know that this would be highly inefficient if Laura wasn't watching her from behind to match her strokes with hers, and if Mandy wasn't looking behind her to match with Laura. They eventually settled into a smooth pattern with long, strokes. As could be expected in a race, everyone else was paddling as fast as possible, and was doing a good job at keeping up. Ro still had plenty of energy left as they came up to the buoy. The canoes around them began to swing out to make a circle around the buoy. "Forward paddle on the right side!" Mandy called out.

Laura and Ro quickly began to paddle on the right side of the canoe.The back of their canoe began to swing out as they also began to turn around the buoy. They'd made it around the buoy! The rest of the canoes who were making a wide circle were now behind them. Ro was feeling a little tired, but the fact that they now were ahead of the other canoes gave Ro more strength. "Resume paddling forward!" Ro continued to paddle on the right with Mandy on the left. They were gaining speed, and they were ahead of everyone else! The boys and girls who had still kept their momentum by making a wide circle around the buoy came in about twenty seconds behind them. Their time score was 4m 22s. Even after they finished though, there were some canoes still trying to make it around the buoy. They were having problems coordinating paddling on either side so that the canoe didn't just spin in a circle, but actually moved forward as well.

"How well did we do?" Ro asked Mandy, as they turned in their life preservers and paddles to the next group.

"Not bad. I've done faster other years."

"Sorry," Ro apologized. She was sure it was because she was on their team. She had paddled as fast as she could, but she guessed it wasn't' enough.

"It's not your fault. There's a little cross breeze today. It's really annoying because it's doesn't help. If it was head wind, it would at least be behind you on the trip back. Cross winds just blow and make it harder to stay forward."

They had several minutes to hang out and watch the other racers before the second half of the canoe races would start. The second half was the two person races and was the last even of the day. By then, everyone would be gathered on the docks and shore to watch. The water carnival was definitely more lively in spirit than the range had been, and far more competitive.

In the free moment Ro went back to the campsite to get a towel for after the race she'd have to do with Mandy. If she had to jump in the water as part of the drill, she would want a towel when she got out. She hadn't brought one with earlier as she hadn't' really wanted to carry it around with her.

"You did very well!" Zee said encouragingly.

"You think so?" She didn't think she did well, but average. Mandy had been the one who had made it possible. She'd just been paddling. She'd really been trying hard to meet Mandy's expectations, but in doing so she might have spent herself on the first race. She hoped she'd be able to save up enough energy by the time she had to participate in the second race.

They returned to the docks to watch the rest of the groups. Redwood was extremely devilish when the raced. They were splashing water into everyone's face with their paddles, intentionally. Sure some water splashing was expected, but it seemed like they were trying to load up their opponents canoes with enough water to make them heavier and sluggish. When they went around the buoy they were purposely crashing into everyone else's canoe to send them off course. Bucky and his friends were in a different race. They did really well—most likely because they copied Mandy's technique! He beat their time with a score of 3m 58s. They must have been paddling faster in general than they had.

"I think they should add on twenty seconds for having copied your technique!" Ro scoffed.

"They still would have beat us with that score, though."

"It'd make me feel better at least, to only have them beat us by four seconds rather than by twenty four."

"It's a fairly common technique… I think if they did it, they deserve their time."

Ro decided not to argue the matter any further. It wasn't her technique they'd stolen so if Mandy wasn't going to make a big deal about it, she shouldn't. There were nine groups of six canoes that went in total. Out of all 36 scores, Bucky's group got first. Another group of boys, got second for just being speedy. Mandy's team got third. Redwood got sixth place, which Ro felt was highly undeserving, as while they hadn't done any main apparent cheating, she still felt that they must have some how cheated to get that score.

The scores of all of the canoes were analyzed and everyone was grouped in with other canoes that had about the same speed time. Oh no. Redwood would be competing in their group for the last race, as well as Bucky. Ro could see the counselors logic in grouping the canoes, but why did they have to go against Redwood and Bucky? "It'll be better this way. We won't have to worry about someone who doesn't know what they're doing getting in the way or something like that," Mandy said optimistically.

"Yeah, I guess…" She still thought they were going to regret this.

They would be in the last group of the day. How much more suspenseful could it get? They had the best groups competing against each other for the last, most important event, at the end of the day?

"You nervous?" Zee asked Ro.

"So it shows?" she asked sarcastically. Of course she was nervous!

"Anyway I can help?"

"Not unless you can make all the other canoe's sink out in the middle of the lake," she said gloomily. Zee looked at her hopefully. Her wish, was his command…

She must have read his eagerness to please her, as she thought better of her question, "No, Zee. I don't want you to drill holes in the bottoms of their canoes."

"What about…"

"No, not that either," she cut him off before he could finish. "It'll be alright. I'm just stressing, that's all. It's just a simple race. You don't need to get involved."

If she really didn't want his help then he wished she wouldn't say anything. It was just too tempting to fantasize about slipping away from the group, then jumping in the water. He could hold his breath infinitely… he'd just wait out in the middle of the lake, under the surface, watching for the large oval shapes to pass overhead. It would be simple enough to sabotage them for underneath, like the lockness monster or something. But Ro had said not to drill holes in the bottom. He came up with a better plan. Why not just hang on for the ride? He could easily weigh down one of the canoes to make them go slower. But that wouldn't stop them all. What if he secretly pushed Ro's canoe with his own propulsion? No, too risky. He might easily be seen under the water by someone else in another canoe. He liked his plan of pushing Ro's canoe for her from underneath, but he would respect her wish to not get involved.

The second half of the canoe races began. Ro watched for successful techniques, and ones that didn't work so well. She really couldn't piece out much though. So far, Mandy had shown her the best techniques for this event. One thing that Ro did pick up on, was that whistle commands used along with the verbal commands. One whistle to change places, two to jump out of the canoe. The canoes had to go from one end of the lake, around a buoy there, then back again. The race was longer than the one she'd been in with Laura and Mandy.

As these were the canoe groups that hadn't done well on a simple race they weren't doing well on these harder challenges. Some of the canoes did improve, as different people were rotated into the canoe, but they still weren't very skilled. The eighth group of canoes was really good. Eight minutes flat.

The nervous feeling was back in Ro's stomach, so she knew that she would at least have plenty of energy for the first half of the race. She was handed another paddle and life preserver.

"The worst thing about being last for this event, is that the life preservers are all wet and cold," Mandy shivered as she put hers on. She had a big smile on her face. Ro wished she could be feeling less anxiety over this, so that she could enjoy it more. "Need me to tighten yours?" she asked Ro.

"Sure." The cold preserver hugged Ro even tighter as Mandy tightened the straps. It didn't matter that warmed up from being against Ro's skin. She was just going to be jumping in and out of the water getting it wet over and over again.

"When they give a command, or blow a whistle, don't hesitate. Do it immediately," Mandy gave her one last tip of advice. "That way we'll always be synchronized with each other."

They climbed into their canoe, Mandy in front and Ro in back. Ro glanced longingly at Zee. He was waiving to her, mimicking what Laura, Heather and Carrie were doing. When they cheered, he cheered a second later. He made her laugh, and that eased the tension a little. "It's just a race," Ro told herself. They paddled out to the starting point.

"One whistle, means change places. Two whistles means you have to jump out then climb back in to your same positions. You're to take your canoe down to that buoy, turn around, then come back. First canoe over the finish line wins for this group. The quickest time wins for the day."

"See you at the finish line!" Bucky taunted, looking over at Ro.

The tension was back again.

The whistle to start was blown. "YEAH!" Mandy laughed, and they started off. They'd only been going for a few seconds when two whistles were blown. "No time to fret about how cold it will be," Ro thought as she jumped into the water at the same time as Mandy. They both climbed up into the canoe at the same time, and started paddling again. They were a little behind from some of the other canoes in the group. They were ahead of Ro and Mandy because they hadn't jumped out immediately but had paddled a few strokes before dropping their paddles to jump out. Although they had been fast in the races, the fifth group was slow in getting back into their canoe. The first group's canoe veered off to the left a little when they jumped out. Apparently the person on the right had pushed too hard when they jumped out. They began to paddle past the swimmers, who were scrambling to get back into their canoes. They were paddling for a while when a whistle was blown. The counselor didn't have them jump out again, as there was still one canoe still trying to get back in. Ro dropped to the floor of the canoe and scooted up to the front while Mandy took large steps over her. Their canoe slowed down for a little, and started to turn to the left a little, but after they'd switched they quickly picked up speed again and straightened out their canoe. The buoy was up ahead. They'd have to start to do their maneuver around it, or they'd have to swing out to go around it. Just their luck, a whistle was blown. Again Ro dropped to the floor of the canoe, and scooted backwards. Unlike other canoes, theirs continued in a straight line path when they switched places. They were getting ahead of the other canoes! "PADDLE FASTER!" Mandy shouted.

Wasn't she paddling as fast as she could as it was already? Apparently not, as when Mandy said this Ro quickened her pace. She was beginning to feel her arms aching. "Paddle on the right!" Mandy shouted, while thrusting her own paddle into the water on the left side of the canoe and back paddling. The back end of the canoe made a wide swing behind them, while the front end began to circle around the buoy. What a quick turn around!

A double whistle was blown. Ro was sure she'd look like a drenched rat by the time they crossed the finish line. As she climbed back into the canoe she saw Redwood circling the buoy behind them. They didn't stop to jump into the water at the sound of the two whistles. Ro figured they'd do it when they got safely around, but they didn't. "They're cheating! They didn't follow the whistle!"

"I know, the counselors have a hard time seeing as far as the buoy."

"Then why didn't we cheat as well?" Ro wondered.

Redwood was quickly catching up with them as they didn't drop in the water. Bucky was right behind Redwood. In a second Redwood was right along side them! Ro paddled faster to get ahead of them, but it was hard as Alexandria was purposely hitting her paddle wither own. Ro was actually grateful when Bucky came up along side them and ran into the side of Redwood's canoe. It was a little inconvenient to them as well, though, as Redwood's canoe bumped into their own. If Ro wasn't too busy trying to concentrate on paddling, and listening for whistles she would have heard the eager cries of the crowd watching in suspense. "Heck with this!" Ro shouted as their canoe got bumped for a second time. She stood up in her canoe and extended her foot out to Cynthia's canoe. She quickly shoved it with her foot. True their canoe moved off to the side as well, but at least they were free to put their paddles in the water again. They were only paddling for a short while when two whistles were blown. Ro was going to have to do something evil to the counselor who was blowing the whistles. None of the other canoes had had to jump in the water this many times.

She ,made it back into the canoe fine, but Mandy was having a problem. When Cynthia had jumped out, she tried to delay Mandy from climbing back in by holding onto her preserver. Ro grabbed her paddle and used it to separate Cynthia from Mandy. "Thanks," Mandy said, as Ro pulled her in.

"No problem."

They quickly began to paddle again, trying to get away from the group of canoes. This was difficult because as the second person in Bucky's canoe was climbing back in Cynthia had tried to hold onto his leg. Bucky's canoe had then started turning sideways, blocking Redwood's canoe, and being partially in the way of their canoe. Despite all of their delays, however, they were still in the lead of the other three canoes, and their time was still under everyone else's canoe at this point. They quickly began to paddle forward when a whistle was blown. Ro quickly traded places with Mandy. As soon as she'd picked up her paddle, another whistle was blown. She as sure now that the counselor was just doing this for their own pleasure and enjoyment, and not to make this race fair. With all of these drills they had to go to, how could they possibly beat the other canoe groups times?

They were on the straight stretch back to the finish line. Ro felt more strength come to her as the end was so close. Apparently so did Cynthia and Alexandria. They were right on their side again! Couldn't they ever just stay behind? A whistle was blown. As Mandy was walking over Ro, Cynthia reached out to grab her leg and make her fall.

Mandy must have been a gymnast in another life as she managed to fall, but still remain in the canoe, and not rock it. She fell forward, but caught herself.

"You okay?" Ro asked.

"Yeah. We need to keep going!"

Mandy took her place in the back and they began paddling. Ro began paddling as well. Cynthia and Alexandria were ahead of them. They were going to win. No wait! They were still switching places from the whistle blow! Ro couldn't have witnessed a more wonderful event. Somehow in their rush, both managed to fall out of the canoe, tipping it over as well. Ro's and Mandy's eyes lit up, and they paddled faster and faster. Ro quickly glanced to the shore to still see if Zee was there. He was. This was pure luck rather than helpful synthoid interception. The finish line was only a dozen feet away and Bucky was two canoe's lengths behind them! They were going to win!

Then… two whistles blew. "Run and jump out of the end of the canoe!" Mandy shouted.

It wasn't what they'd practiced, but Ro knew to trust whatever it was that Mandy said. Mandy turned around and jumped out the backside of the canoe. Ro stood up and took several steps, then shoved off the canoe as she jumped out. Their canoe went sailing forward, right under the rope finish line that had been strung across over the lake. "TIME!" the counselor with the stop watch at the finish line shouted. Their canoe was certainly the first to cross the finish line, but did it count since they weren't in it? An uproar of shouts and cheers came from the girl's camp, except from the girls in the Redwood campsite. All the girls from Laurel had their swords in the air and were waving them wildly, screaming battle cries of success. Apparently, it did still count. They'd won!

Just so that they could say that they actually finished the race, they swam the rest of the way to the finish line. They were still ahead of Bucky's canoe which had just resumed paddling forward. Cynthia had tried to hang onto the back of Bucky's canoe, but he was slapping her knuckles with his paddle and elbowing her off. He was making a rather fun joke of it as well. Second place was secure for him. He had time to enjoy prying her off of he back of his canoe.

Zee ran to Ro and Mandy, Ro's towel in his hands. He presented it to her. Ro wiped her face off with it, then wrapped it around her shoulders. In her excitement she hadn't forgotten how cold she still was. Their time was 7m 08s. Wow. Ro didn't think that they'd beaten the eighth group's best time by that much, but apparently they had. The best thing about this whole race, though, was not that they'd beat Redwood and Bucky, or that they'd beaten all of the other Redwood canoes, and all of the other boy's canoes, but that it was over and she could relax.

It was a few minutes before Redwood brought their canoe over the finish line. There was a ton of water in the bottom of their canoe. "Your time is 13 minutes, and twenty-nine seconds, plus a twenty second penalty…" the counselor added onto their time.

"Penalty? FOR WHAT?" Cynthia demanded.

"You missed one of the double whistle drills just at the buoy… let's see… your time is thirteen minutes, forty-nine seconds."

Ro and Mandy weren't carried back to their campsite on the shoulders of their peers, but they did have everyone's admiration. They didn't bother to shower before dinner as they'd still end up wanting one before they went to bed, especially if they'd be having to get dirty from clean up after dinner.

Dinner was far too delicious to waste by throwing it around in a food fight. Laurel lucked out. It was hamburgers, French fries, and shakes, and was very easy to clean up after. Redwood still managed to make an absolute mess out of it at their table, though. After wards they hurried back to their campsite to retrieve their swords for their skit. How was it that Redwood got the first draw of the cards? Their skit would be last but with luck, everyone would be too wowed by their skit to pay too much attention.

The director made several announcements about how she was glad no one got hurt, but how everyone did their best and everyone had fun. Announcements of the final winners were going to be made after the skits, though most everyone had asked around to hear what everyone else's score was. They still didn't know what several of the boy's scores were. The director also announced, that this year they would be having a skit exchange with the boy's camp. Whoever had the best skit from the girls camp would be invited to go perform for the boys. While the boys didn't have a skit competition, they still would be electing an act to come and perform for the girls. Ro wondered what Bucky's skit was, and if his would be chosen. They would be performing before the announcements for the girl's skits were made, as it would give the counselors time to vote, and it was the only time the boys could come over.

Finally, it was time for their skit. Some girls had donated their tarps and twine to make a small back stage area. It was the best they could do in this environment. Ro was just glad that they'd get to perform their skit while there was still some amount of light out. It would really stink to have put in this much effort and have it be too dark for people to notice the fine details. The skit opened with two girls walking out onto the "stage" area. They weren't actually in the Laurel campsite, but were just supplied with some opening dialogue lines. Once they'd they'd finished their lines they would be free to sit down and enjoy the rest of the performance. Their names were Katy and Vanessa.

Katy stated the opening dialogue for their skit, "Hey I just bought this really cool new super TV;it's an interactive TV."

"So what's on?"

"I dunno, let me check." She pretended to turn on a TV, by mimicking the motions with a pretend remote control. "It's one of those samurai--sword fighting type shows."

"Sure, why not," Vanessa said, then sat down with Katy to watch the program.

Since Zee had done most of the choreography, it was decided that he should go first. Ro was his partner, so they stepped out from behind the tarp and took their places. Zee and Ro both had their wooden swords in had, and were standing in their fighting stance ready to begin. Zee started their act, with a really fast sword combo. Even though they'd practiced it several times, Ro still had no clue what it exactly Zee was doing, or how he did it so quickly, She only saw his sword whipping around her, and knew what she was supposed to do afterwards. She dropped her sword and fell over, "dead."

"Hold on! Rewind it! I missed it!" Vanessa shouted to Katy.

"I'll use the slow motion button…" she offered. She shouted the magic words, "STOP! REWIND! SLOW MOTION!"

Ro got up from where she was lying, almost in the same manner that she'd fallen down in. She picked up her sword again and reversed her movements until she was in her starting stance again.

"PLAY!"

She then began to reenact the skit with Zee, only it was much longer played out than the first time. Zee had taught Ro the choreography from a really popular, recently released vid movie that had had some sword fighting in it. Everyone instantly recognized the classic moves. Needless to say, they were impressed. They began to travel around the stage area until they eventually wound up back where they started, and Zee finished Ro off, and she fell over dead again.

The audience clapped, but that wasn't the end of the skit. Zee and Ro left the stage, and were replaced by Mandy, Heather, Carrie, and Laura. They began to fence each other, almost as impressively as Zee and Ro's fighting. Mandy, ended up as the loser, out of the four. It would have been impressive by itself, but in keeping with the humorous side of their skit, Vanessa played out her cue again. She repeated the magic words. "STOP. REWIND. SLOW MOTION. PLAY!"

The girls resumed their position. Each held her sword up as she had in the beginning of the, skit, and they began to reenact the last part of their duel. However, at the part where Mandy was about to be finished off, Laura stopped the momentum of the fight. She lowered her sword, then looked at Carrie and Heather behind her. She made a very simple hand gesture to them that read, "Take her out." Laura then stepped back away from the action, to let her minions do the dirty work. Heather and Carrie grabbed Mandy's shoulder, with her back towards the audience, then pretended to punch her in the stomach, as if they were the mafia, taking someone out. Mandy was trying not to laugh, but make sounds like she was actually being beat up. Heather and Carrie had a hard time keeping a straight face as well. They were supposed to be the "tough guys" but they were having too much fun to put on grim expressions. Mandy fell to the ground, pretending to be dead, and Laura picked up he sword again, and pointed it at her, as she had at the end of the first skit when she'd finished her off.

Alyssa and Nancy were up next. They stepped out from behind the tarp and took their places. They had their swords in hand and were ready to act. They stood in the ready position to begin dueling, then winked at each other, and fell down dead.

"STOP. REWIND. SLOW MOTION! PLAY!"

They got up from where they were lying and reversed their movements until they were at the starting position again.

They began to duel again, but this time they were doing the choreography that they'd practiced. Their swords clashed against each other, in a very fierce battle. Everyone was awed and wowed.

"It was still too fast!" Vanessa complained. "Can you slow it down even more?"

"STOP! REWIND! SUPER SLOW MOTION! PLAY!"

They repeated the choreography, but with added humorous jokes in it this time around. At one point Nancy stopped to bend down to tie her shoe, and missed being beheaded while Alyssa mad a swipe over her head. At another time, Alyssa simply side stepped to avoid Nancy's attack.

For the fourth skit, the girls began throwing punches and kicks, as well as trying to slap their opponent on the back of the head or somewhere during the slow motion part of their skit. Another group had a pizza delivered (it was actually just the left over box from when they'd ordered it earlier) that they sat down to enjoy in the middle of their fight. Lily and Bethany were a riot. As a part of the skit, Lily was just going to simply hold her sword with one hand while Bethany did all of the sword work. Lily liked it this way as she didn't think she could remember all of the steps for a full length fight, and she still got to be the victor. Bethany's job was to set up elaborate combos, only to have Lily simply raise her sword to block her. This went on for minutes, and Lily kept on looking at her watch, bored, while Bethany was working up a sweat. The last part of the joke was that Lily just handed her sword to someone in the audience to take over for her, while she went off to get ready for bed. The audience member just did the same thing Lily was doing. Their part of the skit ended when the next group came in. As it turned out, Bethany kicked all of the next group's butts.

While everyone had laughed a ton during their skit, Ro didn't necessarily think that they'd win. It would be nice if they did, because then, if they were invited to perform at Bucky's camp, they could get a quick word in with Bucky. But while winning would be nice, the fact that they'd had a lot of fun doing this skit was what counted.

Redwood's skit, stunk. It was completely vain, and self-centered. They were just pretending out a skit where there was an elite group of people who was better than everyone else and it was their job to get rid of them. Jennifer swore that they'd copied their idea of having a fighting-type skit. The fact that they'd carried their swords around everywhere must have let them know that they'd need to beef up their skit as well. If they were going to do a story for their skit, couldn't they have picked one with a better plot? Or at least one with a climax.

"The best part about that skit," Ro commented. "was the end."

The director got up to thank everyone for their skits and announced that they would be tallying up the points, and announcing it after the boys performed their skits. Ro hadn't even heard them come up, but they were standing in a group off to the side with two of their counselors. The boys in the group weren't anyone Ro or Zee knew.

"The stage is yours," the director said to the boys. Their counselors sat down, smiling. They'd seen the skit before and knew what to expect. They were already laughing to themselves, as they thought about how funny the skit had been the first time they'd seen it.

One of the boys stepped forward. "Hi, y'all. I'd like to be known by my rapper name. P. Zachy." His name was actually just Zach.

"Are these boys going to do a hip-hop number with break dancing then?" Mandy asked Ro. What made her think she'd know either?

There were eight boys behind Zach staggered themselves in windows. "LIGHTS!" Zach called out.

Several of the girls in the audience took this as a cue to turn on their flashlights and shine it, not in his face, but on the ground around the boys.

Zach then added, "By the way, I'm going to be throwing in some of my own, uh, interpretive dance moves in this number ."

Just from the first line alone, everyone in the audience knew what song he was singing. It was the love song from a very popular movie. Not an Adam Heat guy-type action movie, but a girly chick flick. "Not this song!" Ro groaned. Nearly every other girl her age was in love with this most dull, song. They all requested it on the radio. It was everywhere; there was no hiding from it. It drove Ro crazy, as it was an awful song to listen to, and wasn't even a decent song to dance to! The beat of the song was too slow even for slow dancing! The song just droned on and on… There were two groups of people, those who loved the song, and those who hated. There was no such thing as "middle ground."

Zach's voice suddenly changed, and it became very screechy. It sounded like someone was stringing a cat up by its tail then beating it like piñata. Or maybe it was a constipated weenier dog being stretched to four times it's regular length. Then it became very low and hoarse. He was making a mockery of the song! He then began to do overly exaggerated arm movements and spins with some awfully choreographed interpretive dance moves, that Zee identified as "churlish." Ro began laughing. This wasn't that bad after all. The girls in the audience who actually liked the song began to scowl, while those who hated it were laughing hysterically. Undoubtedly, this was even more popular at the boys' camp, as everyone of a male gender hated this song. The boys in the background began to writhe and squirm as Zach sung. They were melting, and dying! It was too much! When the part in the song came up where the singer began to express her undying love for the man that she'd lost out at sea, the boys dropped onto their backs and lifted their legs in the air—as if they were a cockroach on its back, dying from poison. Then, they snapped their legs together, and began putting on a synchronized swimming type display. It was very basic and very simple, but oh! It was funny! They moved their legs together, then opened them up then did kicks and scissors switches. One of the boys pretended that he was in a crow's nest being a look out, while another one smacked him up-side the head for goofing off. It was too much. Ro leaned her head against Zee's shoulder, holding her sides with her arms. She was laughing so much that it hurt.

"What's so funny about loosing a loved one?" he asked.

"Nothing. The mockery of the song is what's funny—as well as seeing a group of boys imitating water ballet." There's was the best skit Ro had seen all week long. Their skit was shorter than the actual length of the song, as Zack didn't sing all of the verses. Ro didn't think she'd be able to stand it if he had.

The director stepped up again, to thank the boys for their performance, and that in a few minutes, they would have the opportunity to have one of the girl's groups go over to perform for them. The boys began to head back, while the director began to announce the awards for the week.

There were scores for "all around" which meant that their scores were compared with those from the boys' camp. Then there were scores based on how well each individual campsite did just for the girl's camp. Then the average of all the scores for each event were tallied up, and compared between the camps. These scores weren't as valued as the all around scores, but did show whether one camp was better at an even than another.

Zee got the "Robin Hood" award for having the best archery score out of all the scores for both camps. He didn't receive any prize, but a printed out certificate with his name penciled in on it. This also meant that Laurel won the archery contest, campsite wise. In general though, the girls did better than the boys did at archery. Zee was also awarded the "Sharp Shooter" award for the rifle range, as he had the highest score there from both camps. However, the total value of the boys' scores were higher than the girls' camp total scores. Mandy insisted it was because of their video game experience. Zee didn't get a complete unchallenged championship for all of the target events as there was someone from the boys' camp who also got all 10 of the pigeons. Still, for the girls' camp. He beat everyone. The boys did better on this even than the girls did as well. He wondered what the scores would have been if they counted him as a guy, or if they didn't count his scores at all.

Carrie got third place out of the girls' campsites for one of her swimming relay events, but was sixth all around. Heather got second place on the 12 minute relay all around, but was first for the girls' camp. The boys seemed to beat the girls for the quick relay races, but the girls had more stamina for the longer races. Ro was already aware of the winners for the canoe races. Ro felt smug that they had first campsite wise for the three person race, and first for the two person canoe race all around.

The total times for each camp's canoe races really didn't reveal anything about which camp was better because both sides had had some really bad groups that completely obscured the results, so all the director announced was the all around results.

The last item to announce was the winner of the skits. Everyone was disappointed when the director announced that they were doing a new system of judging this year for skits. Too bad she hadn't mentioned this before they'd planned their skit. Instead of awarding points based on a rubric they were awarding "best of" for different categories. Some of these categories were: Most Funny, Best Drama, Most Effort, Most Original, Best Dialogue."

Mandy could already tell what award was going to each skit. The director had listed seven awards, and there were seven campsites, which equaled seven skits. Redwood got the, Diva Stars" Award. Probably because they couldn't think of anything else nice to say about their skit.

"How lame! They deserve the 'Cookie' award," Mandy scoffed.

"Wouldn't that be best to give to the cooks?" Zee asked.

"I don't think you know what the cookie award is…" Mandy laughed. She began to pantomime the "cookie" award. She held her hands out as if she was eating a big cookie, and pretended to gobble down on it. Then she asked, "Now what's left over when the cookie is done?"

Ro raised her eyebrow curisouly.

"Crummy. Crummy. Crummy." Mandy said, dusting her hands off of the invisible crumbs.

"Or how about the 'Corn on the Cobb' award?" Laura suggested.

"Why would they get that?"

"Because it's Corny."

"Or the 'Watermelon' award," Mandy suggested. She took a big bite out of an invisible watermelon and began to spit out the seeds.

Ro thought of one, "How about the 'Balloon' award?" She prtended to blow up a balloon, then released it and mimicked the sound that it would make flying around the room with her tongue between her lips, "PHBBBBBT!"

They began laughing among themselves. "With this new award system, how are they going to decide who gets to perform at the boy's camp then?" Ro asked.

The director answered her question as she finished. Spruce, the campsite that had done the first skit on the third day, was selected. It that the same skit that made Ro laugh to herself every time she thought of the punch line. It had been a really funny skit. When Jennifer rejoined them, she explained that they hadn't been selected because their skit took a while to perform, and they didn't want to encroach on the boys' schedule too much. Though truthfully, the director would rather have had Laurel's skit be shown to the boys rather than Spruce's. The joke of the skit had actually been on her. Luckily, she wasn't too sore in taking the joke.

The director explained clean up procedures for their campsite tomorrow, and who they had to check with before they could leave camp tomorrow morning. "A whole week. And nothing on Dr. Edmund," Ro sighed. Hadn't Bucky had enough of camp? Maybe they could kidnap him in the middle of the night and take him home where he could start looking on his home computer?

The director also urged everyone to be in bed by curfew and to go to sleep. She knew none of them would listen to her, though. She usually always was up for the entire night trying to get everyone in bed again. Everyone was dismissed, except for Spruce who would be escorted over to the boy's camp. While not everyone had participated in the skit, they were all invited to go over and watch it again.

"Come on!" Mandy said, dragging Ro.

"Where are we going?" Ro asked.

"To the boys' camp."

Ro quickly reached out to grab Zee's wrist and drag him along as well. Mandy positioned herself and Ro near the edge of the group of girls heading over to Spruce. She caught someone's eye, and pulled her over. "We'd like to come too," she said to her friend. Mandy seemed to have connections with everyone!

"Stay in the middle!" the girl from Spruce advised her. Ro felt herself being tugged into the middle of the group of girls as well as Zee and Mandy. They were going to the boys' camp!"

It was dark by now, so they didn't need to put on any obvious disguises. They just had to stay close to everyone else. They walked with the group to the Spruce campsite to get the supplies they needed, then back to the main road. They followed the main road into the boys' camp. They boys actually had a lit stage area to perform in, which was convenient as it was dark outside. How was it that they had all of the modern conveniences? Ro, Zee and Mandy seated themselves with the rest of the girls from Spruce, and waited while the boys' camp director announced what was going on, and the girls set up for heir skit. Ro was glad that she would be able to see it again. "It's starting," Zee whispered. Ro knew. She'd seen the skit before.

Two mountain hikers entered the scene. One of them walked in briskly, completely loaded from head to foot with camping gear. This was Angelina. Her assistant, however, was lagging behind. The instant that Kiara came crawling into the scene, breathless and completely exhausted, and only carrying a small back pack, everyone started laughing. Kiara was already known to be a class clown around the girls' camp, so naturally, everything she did had more of a tendency to be considered funny than if someone else did it. But the boys here wouldn't have gotten to know that part of her yet. Her character became apparent as she continued acting.

"We finally made it to echo mountain!" Angelina exclaimed.

Kiara was still busy putting on an act, by trying to pull herself up, but clawing her fingers up Angelina's leg. Instead she ended up pulling so hard on Angelina's leg that she pulled her pants down. This was a part of the act, and Angelina had purposely borrowed a pair of pants from another girl that was too large for her, and she'd worn a T-shirt that came down below her underwear, but the audience didn't know that. Kiara quickly pulled her pants back up, and quit pretending to kid around. They'd considered taking this part out of the skit as they were now at a boys' camp, but decided to do it any way because it'd been in the original version, and Angelina's extra long shirt did come down to mid thigh.

"Why do they call it echo mountain?" Kiara asked.

"Watch, I'll show you," Angelina offered. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted, "Baseball!"

A quieter echo came somewhere from behind the audience, off to the right. "Baseball." It was followed by a quieter voice, behind them in the center. "Baseball." Then, "Baseball!" The last echo got louder! It was really three girls hiding behidn the audience.

"Here, let me try," Kiara said. "BALONEY!" Everyone in the audience was quiet, waiting for the echo. All was silent. Kiara dramatically looked left, then right, then up, then down. "You lied to me?" she turned to Angelina.

"Here, let me show you again. PILLOW!"

The echos sounded off. "Pillow. Pillow. PILLOW!"

"Okay, now I've got it," Kiara said, then tried again. "STRAWBERRY!"
The echos sounded. "Strawberry. Strawberry. STRAWBERRY!"

Angelina took a turn, "Ferarri!" The echos sounded.

"Ferarri. Ferarri. FERARRI!"

"Hot dog!" Kiara went.

"Hot dog. Hot dog. HOT DOG!"

They were traking turns playing with the echos. Each time, the girls behind the audience mimicked what they said.

Everyone was laughing as while Angelina varied her words, Kiara was always listing food items. "You know, you think you're so smart with your simple, food category," Angelina took on a haughty tone. "Well, you haven't seen anything yet…"

"THE DIRECTOR HAS SEXY LEGS!"

.

.

.

.

.

"Baloney. Baloney. BALONEY!"

The message was simple enough to understand, even at the boys' camp.

When it came time for Spruce to pack up and leave, Mandy began to follow the group, but the broke off, and hid behind a tree. Ro and Zee followed her. They'd have to deal with getting back out later. "So what now?" Ro asked.

"We have to wait for a package delivery."

"Package?"

"Yeah. They're going to come and drop it off in a minute."

"Who's going to?"

"Compliments of cabin B3."

"What's in the package?" Zee asked.

"Something we'll need for tonight."

"You're not going to tell us what it is?"

"And ruin the surprise?"

It was longer than just a minute before a dark shadow approached them. Unfortunately, it wasn't Bucky. It was just one of his friends. He had something tucked under his arm. "Here," he said, handing the small parcel to Mandy." There's dozen servings."

"Servings, of what?" Ro thought.

"Here's your half, as promised," Mandy said, pulling out a bag from her coat. Just from the sound it made Ro knew that it contained a fair portion of Mandy's stock pile of candy.

"Good doing business with you," the boy said, then left them.

"I'm good to head back now," Mandy declared. "We have five minutes before we need to get back. Anything you guys need to do here?"

Did Ro dare mention that she wanted to talk to Bucky while they were here or should they just forget about it until morning when they wouldn't have to worry about getting caught? Then again, five minutes wasn't worth the trouble.

"No, we're good," Ro decided. They began to make their way back down the main road. Ro couldn't help but wonder why they only had five minutes to get back.

Up ahead on the trail, Ro saw two headlights. Someone was coming! She quickly dashed behind a tree, but Mandy pulled her out. She's here! Hurry up! They began to dash towards the truck. The truck slowed to a stop.

"Well, get in already!" Jennifer called to them from the driver's side window. They were busted.

"You're a little early," Mandy commented.

"So sue me," Jennifer replied. Jennifer was helping them out?

Mandy jumped into the back of the bed of the truck and lay down. Ro and Zee climbed in as well. Mandy pulled the tarp that was folding up in the back over them. Jennifer then began to drive forward, back into the girls' camp. She came to a stop behind the mess hall. "Okay, you can come out," she whispered. Mandy pulled the tarp off of them, then climbed out of the truck.

"Why are you helping us?" Zee asked. "Shouldn't you be turning us in?" he asked. "Won't you get in trouble if you don't?"
"So many questions," Jennifer sighed, then explained, "It's my last year here as a counselor. I want to have a little fun too," she smirked.

"Did you get what you needed?" she asked Mandy.

"I sure did."

"Good," she then headed off toward the campsites, but Mandy didn't show any intent on following her.

"So you told Mandy what's in the package but not us?"

"No. I just told her I needed to pick it up."

"So when are you going to tell us what's in it?"

"Fine, I guess I'll tell you now," Mandy decided.

She opened the package. Inside were several packages of safety pins. "Saftey pins. Big deal."

"What you mean big deal? This is a big deal! It's the basis of my plan for tonight. Oh, and these as well…" She pulled out a 12 pack of "E-Z Sleep air filters."

"Mandy, the reason you're not sleeping well is because you keep getting up every night to go play pranks."

"It's not for me, but for Redwood!"

"Are you sure it's safe?" Zee asked.

"I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it was."

"There's a difference between thinking and knowing it's safe." Ro had to agree with Zee on this point.

"If I went to the trouble to find some biodegradable toilet paper, I certainly would have read into the effects of a sleeping air plug in."

"But there's nothing to plug it into."

"No need to. These ones can just be set by your beside."

"So we have to sneak them into their tents?"

"You got it."

"This is certainly more adventurous than anything we've done before," Ro commented.

"Not for Zee here. Hiding all of those stink bombs all over their campsite… That was good."

"Sounds like a plan, then."

Mandy closed the lid of the box, then tucked it back under her arm. They then walked over to their campsite together. They were greeted by Carrie. "Hey, we were looking for you guys. We're taking the first years on a snipe hunt. Want to come?"

The first alarm that went off in Ro's mind, was that they were "first years." Also the fact that didn't she didn't know what a snipe hunt was bugged her. "What exactly is that?" she asked.

"Well, traditionally on the last night here, we take the first years out looking for these little birds that only come out at night. You get sticks together and smear tooth paste on them, and stick them in the ground. The smell attracts the birds, and then you try and catch one when they get close."

"Do you ever catch any?" Zee asked.

"About one or two a year," Mandy replied.

"That's strange considering the snipe is of a shorebird family. Snipes typically live in wet meadows and marshes rather than lakes… I wouldn't think that there was enough algae in toothpaste to have enough similarities to their normal dietary supplements…"

Ro quickly silenced him, "Zee reads a lot…" she covered for his encyclopedia type knowledge. Carrie thought it was funny, though.

"Mandy means that we usually catch one or two suckers a year. You can't be fooled though. It's just another little prank we do here. You get a bag and put some sticks in it then warm up a juice box and put it in with the sticks. Mandy here, also does the best imitation of pretending to have one squirming in her hands. It's really good when she starts crying out that it's slipping out of her hands while she puts it in the bag so everyone can feel it."

"You give me too much credit. Half the work is finding someone gullible enough who hasn't heard of a snipe hunt from someone else here already."

"Oh, but it's so much fun when as they're feeling the bag you throw it in their face and they start screaming… It just makes them want to find someone else as gullible and have them fall for the same trick," Carrie sighed.

"Well good luck to you, but we think we're going to pass," Ro said, walking away.

"I suspected something was up when they said that the birds came to the smell of toothpaste, but you certainly saw through their plan," Ro commented.

"Sorry, did I do something wrong?"

"No, you did fine. You just talk too much sometimes."

They joined the group around the campfire. They weren't singing rowdy camp songs or being rambunctious, but were talking in moderate voices and were laughing. After a few minutes of just sitting there, listening to Jennifer tell about a hike in the past year when there'd been a rattlesnake on the trail and how they'd hacked off its head with a shovel then cooked it up later, Zee reminded Ro that she might want to take a shower before going to bed. After all, it was getting really close to curfew. Ro debated in her mind if she really did want to. She had been swimming in the lake so it would be good to get cleaned up, but if they were going to go and do something with Mandy then why bother? It was camp. It was okay to be dirty for a while. Also, she didn't want to leave this pleasant atmosphere at the moment. Eventually everyone found their way into the circle. A half hour later the director came by to break up the group and send everyone to bed. Despite that they were being quiet in comparison with the other campsites, she insisted they put out their fires and get inside of their tents. They didn't have to sleep, but they weren't to leave the tents or make any noise.

"Want to go swimming?" Mandy asked on their way to their tents.

"At this time of night? It'll be colder than it was during the day! HECK NO!"

"Then do you just want to go and sit on the docks and star gaze?"

"Didn't the director just tell everyone to get in bed?" Zee asked.

"It's the last day of camp. What's she going to do? Send us home? Call our mommies?"

"I like how you think," Ro commented. "But what about Redwood?"

"Already taken care of."

"You implanted the E-Z sleeping things?" Ro asked

"It was perfect. Several of them were at the showers, while the rest were at the campfire. Then the director came by to send them all to their tents. It was beautiful. They won't dare venturing out for at least a half hour, but by then they'll all be drowsy, and will easily nod off."

"They're not still going to be asleep tomorrow morning, are they?" Zee asked. He was always thinking ahead, or about all consequences of a situation.

"Not any longer than they usually would. E-Z Sleep doesn't make you stay asleep, it only helps you to fall asleep, and sleep deeper."

"So it's all set then?" Ro asked. She actually didn't know what was set, or even what Mandy planned to do with the safety pins.

"It's all set. We've got an hour or two before we need to worry about things."

"Then let's go star gazing."

Zee just grabbed his overly large beach towel to take with them to the docks. It was easier than trying to take chairs or their sleeping bags with them. Ro's was still damp from when she'd used it earlier, so she'd just share with him. Mandy didn't mind that hers was a little damp.

The checked see if anyone was coming down the road, before heading out. Most everyone had gone to their tents when the director came by their campsite. No one was as daring as Mandy, Ro and Zee to completely ignore her warning right after she'd issued it. Other people would try to sneak out later, but no one else was completely disregarding her instructions right from the beginning.

Ro could hear the water of the lake quietly lapping at the shore. Zee noted that the position on the dock, right in front of the oar and life preserver store house would adequately shield them from being seen by anyone on the road. They carefully checked to see if the coast was clear again before making their way down to the dock. "Here should be good," Mandy said, sitting down on the dock.

"Someone would be able to see us from the road there, Zee pointed out. "We should be shielded from view if we lean up against the store house."

"Smart thinking."

Zee spread his towel out. Ro sat down on the ground next to him, until he actually invited her to sit with him on the towel. It was the polite thing to do, even though she knew that she was always more than welcome to share anything that Zee had. Mandy spread out her towel then lay down on it on her back. Zee's towel was so big that both Ro and Zee could fit on it shoulder to shoulder.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Mandy commented.

"They are."

Ball of gas burning at intense heat billions of miles away was beautiful? Beauty was another thing that was hard for him to understand, aside from fun. "The stars in the entire sky are actually divided into 88 constellations," Zee informed them. He wasn't good at noticing beauty, but her sure knew a lot about it.

"Too bad I can't recognize any of them," Mandy replied.

"Which ones are you looking for?"

"The Pheonix."

"It's in the southern hemisphere."

"Oh."

"What about Pegasus?" Ro asked. Zee began to trace out the pattern in the sky. "Looks more like a flying microwave with an antenna," Ro scoffed.

"What else can we see?" Mandy asked.

"Andromeda, the princess. Antlia, the pump. Aquila, the eagle. Auriga, the chariot driver. Bootes, the herdsman…" he began to list them alphabetically.

"Antlia, the pump? Who thought of that one? Spare us the list, what are the interesting ones?" Mandy laughed.

"Well there's the Perseus Family, the the Heavenly Waters, and the Hercules Family…"

"Draco the dragon. Show me Draco the dragon!" Mandy said excitedly.

He began to trace the star's outline in the sky. It was very hard to help Mandy get oriented to where it was exactly that he was tracing. From where Mandy was lying, it looked like he was just swirling his finger around in the sky. He would have preferred to just show her a hologram on his hand, but Ro had warned him about the strange puppet shows before.

"Star gazing is so much better when you're with someone who knows what they're talking about," Mandy commented.

Ro had to agree with her.

After they'd grown bored with having Zee point out all of the zodiac signs along the ecliptic, they lay there in silence. "I've really enjoyed spending this week with you guys. But… there's just one thing I'd like to ask you before this week is over. But, I don't want you to tell me if you don't want to…I mean, I know everyone has secrets, or things that they don't want anyone else to know, and I tried to respect that by not bugging you with questions about it during the week, but I was kind of hoping that by now you have told me what yours is."

"Secrets?" Ro tried to ask naively. Mandy had figured out that something was up with them. Heck if she was going to tell her, so she could turn them into the feds. It was like asking a superhero to reveal his true identity. No friend was worth getting caught by the feds for.

"I can't tell you, but I can show you," Zee said sitting up.

"Zee!" Ro tried to pull him back down.

"Please! If it causes disagreement between you two, DON'T!" Mandy tried to stop him.

"No, it's alright," Ro quieted down. Mandy wasn't going to turn them in.

Zee's body began to grow, then his holographic covering disappeared. Mandy didn't scream in terror, but gaped in awe. Zee then quickly covered up his synthoid body with his regular hologram. It felt good to be back again. He sat down on the towel next to Ro, and leaned his back against the storage house.

"You're a robot!"

"Complete with changeable holographic emmiter…So you know now." Ro chimed.

"Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"We've kind of got a problem with the feds. Trying to keep a low profile. But we must not have done a good job if you saw through his disguise," Ro said, picking a piece of dirt out of her fingernail casually. Being able to say that she was a fugitive from the law made her feel important. Of all the feelings she could be feeling, it was strange to think that important made the top ten.

"I didn't see through it. I just knew something was up. You never seemed to eat, and you just always seemed a little off center, you know? Now that I try to look back on it and put my finger on it exactly, what gave you away was the fact that you don't seem to emanate the whole female aura."

"Yeah, this was a new experience for Zee."

"What about that other boy, Bucky? Is he a robot too?"

"No, he's just strange all of the time."

"Is this why you couldn't go swimming?"

"Yeah. Zee's actually an excellent swimmer. But the water's not really good for his 'skin'."

"Too bad, it would have really been awesome having you on our canoeing team. I'm sure we could have fit four people in one canoe… Man… If I'd known that you could change your hologram, sneaking over to the boys' camp would have been so much easier."

"Not really. We still had to come up with ways to get past the counselors at the borderline," Zee commented simply.

"You mean that you went over there without me?" She faked a sniffle.

"We didn't do anything to them, so you don't have to worry about being left out."

"You know, I've been meaning to ask… I didn't ask last night because everyone else was bugging you about it, but what really happened at the water falls? I thought you were going hiking there but everyone said you went for crazy bread instead."

"We did both."

Mandy laughed and clapped her hands. "I'll bet Redwood was really mad about that! So they weren't lying!"

"No."

"And those were really your pants?"

"What pants?"

Mandy couldn't help but laugh to herself. "So, how did you do it exactly?" she asked.

"My hologram can cover more than just myself," Zee answered. He wasn't going to tell her about the bracelet.

"Whey they came up the path, all they found was a group of guys. Bucky had really hiked over here, but they just pretended that they didn't know that they'd managed to hike all the way into the girl's camp. We ordered the crazy bread so that we could get a ride in past the counselor in the pizza truck."

"Oh, perfect!" Mandy clapped her hands again. Ro was worried that she might be making a little too much noise in her excitement.

"Too bad it's the last night here. We could have had so fun trying to pass you off as the director to Redwood," Mandy turned to Zee.

He looked blankly at her. He'd never really used his hologram to intentionally deceive people just for the fun of it. "Don't mind Zee. He has a little trouble understanding the concept of playing mean tricks on people just for the fun of it."

"I'd say that she," Mandy corrected herself, "he, knew pretty well what she," she sighed and gave up. Zee would always be a girl to her, first, then a guy. "he, was doing when he put those stink bombs in their tents."

"That was personal," Zee said stiffly.

"It must have been really easy for you to just slip in there. You could pretend to be anyone of them that you wanted…"

"That's the part I'm good at," he smiled.

They gazed into the stars in silence for another few minutes before Mandy suggested they should get back. They collected their towels then hurried off back towards the main road. It surprised Mandy when one second she was looking at a handsome young man, and the next, Zee was there again.

"Any idea what time it is?" Mandy asked once they reached their campsite.

"2: 11 pm, and twenty seconds, twenty-one… twenty-two…" Zee informed her.

"It's so cool how you know that!" Mandy chimed.

"That's one expensive clock then," Ro muttered. The novelty had worn off for her.

"You think it's late enough to go over to Redwood?" Ro asked.

"Everyone else around them still going to be awake, but they should all be asleep. Let's go."

Mandy grabbed the box of safety pins from where she'd dropped it off at her tent. She tossed a couple of packages to Ro and Zee. "What are these for?" Ro asked.

"For their tents." Ro didn't understand, but around Mandy that was a very common thing before the explanation. "We're going to safety pin their tent doors and windows shut!"

"Why so many?"

"One safety pin every two inches. We might have to extend that to three inches on the windows to have enough to go around."

Zee was sure that Mandy had already considered the possibilities of what would happen to them in case of an emergency. In a worst case scenario they could easily rip a hole in their tents to climb out of. "Will they be able to get themselves out of their own tents?" he asked.

"Unfortunately yes, it'll just take a while to un pin all of the safety pins."

It seemed harmless enough. The only thing they'd have to worry about would be if someone had to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and found themselves pinned in. But, as they could get themselves out, there should be no problem.

"We're going to need some help for this one." Mandy then went over to wake up Carrie, Heather, and Laura.

The group set out quietly to Redwood's campsite. Everyone seemed to be sleeping heavily at the site. There weren't any tents here where there were quiet, muffled giggles, or the faint glow of a flashlight hidden under someone's sleeping bag. Even Marianne's tent seemed really quiet.

Ro and Zee went to work on the first tent after Mandy demonstrated where to place the pins. "One inch until you get one foot away from the ground, then two inches until you get about half way around the zipper. They'll be able to crawl their way out of the tent by then, to undo the rest with much more ease. Don't bother to put any on the windows if the windows don't open up. Oh, and quietly zip their zipper to the closing position if it isn't. If there's two zippers make sure that the pins are on both sides of the zippers. Leave them about an inch to get their fingers out to undo the first few safety pins. And, that's it. Happy hunting."

Ro and Zee carefully approached the first tent. Zee opened up the safety pins so that it would be easier for Ro to pin them into the tent, and kept a steady supply of them for Ro. It helped to work as a team rather than by trying to do it herself. She knew laughing would give them away, so she tried really hard not to. She bit her lower lip, to keep quiet while she just widely grinned. She contemplated on how she'd been playing a lot of pranks this week. All of them had been on Redwood. They actually hadn't done any on Bucky's cabin, or on the boys' camp as she'd initially expected she would. They'd actually only had the one prank played on them as well the entire week, and it had been by Redwood. Ro remembered Mandy telling her how Laurel was usually hit the worst with the pranks. Apparently their connection with the boys was really a "cease fire" kind of treaty.

Ro examined the windows. They didn't need to be pinned on this tent, as they didn't seem to unzip. It made her feel even more awed at how Mandy had found tents with windows that did unzip to use for their snake stunt. They moved onto the next tent. It took about ten minutes per tent to put all of those pins in. When Ro thought that they'd ran out of pins, Mandy always had more for them. It was absolutely wonderful. The managed to pin each and every single one of the tent doors in the Redwood camp shut as well as any of the windows that opened up. Near the end they'd had to space out their pins more, but the point of the matter was that they'd had enough to go around. "Now, for the finishing touch," Mandy smirked.

She went over to one of the Redwood tents. She found the fan device that kept the tent inflated, and standing upright. She turned the fan off. The tent held its figure for a second then slowly began to crumble. "Don't worry. They won't suffocate," she smiled. The tent had mesh windows that would allow for air circulation, so there was no need to worry when the tent gently fell over their sleeping bodies. It was like having a lightweight sheet placed over them.

They began to go around and find the tents that had fans which could be turned off. But what about the ones that were old-fashioned? It took a four way team effort to pull the poles and quietly disassemble them without letting the structure fall on the sleepers inside of the tent. They cleverly arranged the poles to spell out a short message to Redwood. While Mandy had wanted to say, "Up Yours," they didn't have enough tent poles. And when they tried to spell it out, it didn't really look like it spelled anything. Instead they left the simple message:

"L L L "

It was four in the morning by the time they returned to their camp. Had it really be that long? Ro was surprised that no one else had come by Redwood's site while they were wandering around doing their mischief. No matter, though. They hadn't been caught and that's what counted. "You going to get up early to watch when they wake up?" Ro asked Mandy.

I want to, but I don't want to draw attention to myself by being around the crime scene too eagerly. We put enough safety pins in place to give us some time to come and see them as they're still trying to get out of their tents.

Ro climbed up the net ladder. She was still in her clothes, and was either too tired or too lazy to change into her night clothes. Zee climbed up the ladder after her, and crawled into the sleeping bag with her. Mandy thought about making a tart comment about how they really shouldn't be sleeping in the same sleeping bag, but decided to just let them sleep peacefully, or to let Ro sleep peacefully. She doubted that Zee slept.

"Let's leave as soon as possible, tomorrow," Ro said, as she drifted off to sleep.

"Tired of camping?"

"Just a little. This prank stuff wears me out."

"Well tomorrow we can stay in a nice hotel then, and you can sleep in as late as you want.

"That'd be really nice." Ro said then dozed off completely.