Lucie sat in her bed, flipping through channels on TV. She sighed and shoved a handful of popcorn in her mouth. The sound of her Aunt and another overseer at the camp, Mr. Sir, arguing almost drowned out the sound of the television. Lucie remembered that every time she came to Camp Green Lake, Mr. Sir would come to the cabin after all the boys were in their tents and he always made the warden mad. At first, Lucie would stand by the door and listen and snicker at the things the two said to each other, but after a while it got old. She stopped on the Food Network where they were making fudge and sadly looked down at her stale popcorn. Suddenly, there was a loud thud on the window. Lucie jumped and looked at the window. She didn't see anything. She waited and when there wasn't another noise, she sat back against the headboard. A few moments passed before there was another THUD. Lucie threw back her covers and hopped out of bed. She cautiously pulled back the drapes on the window and peered over the tall hedges that grew outside the window.
"Squid?" she asked herself. "Surely not." But the dark hair that poked over the bushes led her to believe it was.
She pulled the latch on the window and lifted it up. "Who's there?"
"It's me…Squid."
"What in the world are you doing out there?" she squealed, a little louder than she had intended.
"I just want to talk to you. Why won't you talk to me?"
"Leave me alone." Lucie demanded. "You're going to get us both in trouble. Just go back to your tent."
"But-" she didn't hear the rest of Squid's sentence. She pulled the window back down and latched it back. She let the drapes fall back into place and climbed back into bed.
"Good morning." The warden said when Lucie emerged from her room at ten o'clock. "How'd you sleep?"
"Fine." Lucie replied, sitting at the table across from her aunt.
"I take it you aren't going to dig today."
"No. It's my first day here."
"Ok, ok. Just as long as you dig one hole a week, I don't care what day you do it on." The warden took a bite of eggs and shrugged her shoulders. "I just figured you'd want to go ahead and get it over with."
"I don't feel like it today, Aunt Lou. I just want to stay in and write. Just let me plan my own schedule."
"Excuse me." The warden said, raising her eyebrow.
Lucie stopped and looked up at her aunt. She rolled her eyes and nodded. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get smart with you."
"Thank you." She stood up and took her cowboy hat from the chair beside her, where it was hanging. She placed it atop her head and cocked it a bit to the side. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check up on the campers." She flipped her red braid over her shoulder and clicked across the floor and out the door.
Lucie finished her breakfast and went out to the back porch where there was a porch swing with a large, fluffy pillow on it. She plopped down and opened her writing portfolio. After a while she became bored with writing, as she usually did, and decided to go exploring.
When she stayed at Camp Green Lake, Lucie often liked to go walk around on the lakebed and see how far out she could walk before she got too tired. She always looked with desire at the mountains in the distance. She knew they were miles and miles away but something about them made her want to just run to them. After staring at them for a while, it looked almost as if she could just take a few steps and reach them. She watched the clouds gather around the mountaintops and disperse as they floated toward the lake. No clouds ever made it to the lake.
Lucie's thoughts quickly returned to the dry lakebed around her when she heard a familiar voice.
"Lucie? What are you doing out here?" said the voice with the noticeable southern accent.
Lucie spun around to find herself in the middle of the D-tent boys and their holes. She had been so busy gazing out into the distance that she hadn't even noticed she had wandered into the digging area. She saw Squid jumping out of his half-dug hole. He had a t-shirt wrapped around his head, a baseball cap on top of that and a toothpick hanging out of his mouth.
"Oh, I didn't realize…I'll just get out of ya'lls way." Lucie said turning around.
"What's the hurry?" the camper with the thick glasses asked. She remembered his name was X-Ray.
"I didn't mean to come out here. I was just wandering around and I wasn't paying attention." Lucie explained.
"We don't bite." Magnet told her, laughing. "We wouldn't mind if you hung around for a little while."
She glanced back at the cabin, knowing the only person in there was her aunt. She looked back at the boys who had all stopped digging and were waiting for an answer. She would be lonely back at the cabin.
"O…ok." She mumbled. "But uh, what do you want me to do?"
Zig Zag jumped out of his hole and walked up to Lucie. "You can just sit your pretty little self down right here in the middle and relax." He smiled an odd smile at her.
Lucie's eyes narrowed a bit as she surveyed Zig Zag. "What do you mean?"
Squid stepped up closer and shoved Zig Zag slightly, getting right in front of Lucie. His dark eyes were barely visible under the t-shirt on his head. "What he means is, we'd like for you to just talk to us. We need someone new to talk to. It gets kind of boring out here all day, and we've all known each other for a while. It'd be nice to hear from someone new."
Zig Zag nodded. "Yea. That's what I meant. Just sit down and start talking. Or, if you're more comfortable, you can stand up."
Lucie looked around at all the boys. They all nodded at her so she nodded back. "Ok."
Squid and Zig Zag went back to their holes and started digging again.
"So, why are you here exactly." The big kid named Armpit asked.
Lucie hesitated. She didn't really feel comfortable talking to these boys. After all, they were at a juvenile correctional facility.
"I just am."
"What kind of answer is that?" Magnet asked.
"Yea, you gotta give us more than that." Squid insisted.
"Why don't you all just leave her alone? If she doesn't want to tell you, she doesn't want to tell you."
Lucie turned to look at the person who had spoken. The curly headed boy who had introduced himself as Caveman had stopped digging and was looking at Lucie. "Sorry about them. They just don't know how to treat a lady."
Lucie smiled a little at him. "Thanks, Caveman." She said.
The smallest kid there, the one with big frizzy hair who she was told was named Zero, jumped out of his hole. He spit in it and walked toward Lucie. "Yea. Stanley is the only one around here with any tact." He nodded at her and headed back to camp.
Lucie turned around and watched him walking away. "That's Zero, right?"
"You're good with names." Squid told her. "We've only told you once and you remembered."
"I guess so. So, is he done already?"
"Zero's the fastest digger here." Armpit said."
"Yea. He gets done way before anyone else. We always say he's a mole." Squid added.
Lucie laughed softly.
"Where have you been?" the warden asked Lucie when she came back in.
"I went out for a walk."
"Where to?"
"Well, I started out just walking around but I ended up in the digging area and the D-tent boys talked me into talking to them for a while."
"Oh, I bet that was educational. A bunch of brain surgeons, they are." The warden rolled her eyes.
Lucie chuckled. "Yea, but they're pretty funny."
The two sat down on the couch.
"Why is Stanley here?" Lucie asked.
"Caveman? He stole a pair of shoes."
"Really? He just seems like a good kid, to me."
"Honey, this is Camp Green Lake. None of them are good kids."