Stanley Yelnats was the only passenger on the bus, other than the driver and the guard. The guard sat across from the driver with his seat turned sideways to face Stanley. A rifle lay across his lap.
Stanley was sitting about ten rows back, handcuffed to his armrest. His backpack lay on the seat across from him. It contained his toothbrush, toothpaste, and a box of stationery. He promised he would write to his mother at least once a week.
He looked out the window, although there wasn't much to see—just fields of hay and cotton. He was on an eight-hour bus ride to nowhere. The bus was not air-conditioned, and the hot, heavy air was almost as stifling as his handcuffs.
Stanley and his parents and grandfather had tried to pretend he was just going away to camp for a while, like rich kids do. When Stanley was younger he used to play with stuffed animals and pretend they were at Camp. He called it Camp Fun and Games. Sometimes they would play soccer with a marble. Other times they'd run an obstacle course, or go bungee jumping off a table, tied to broken rubber bands. Now Stanley tried to pretend he was going to Camp Fun and Games. He thought maybe he would make some friends. At least he'd get to swim in the lake.
Stanley didn't have any friends at home. He was from a poor family. Most of the other kids were rich.
He looked at the guard, who sat slumped in his seat, wondering if he had fallen asleep. The guard was wearing sunglasses, so Stanley couldn't see his eyes.
Stanley was not a bad kid. He was not guilty of the crime which he'd been convicted of.
All Stanley's life, he seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His grandfather, Stanley Yelnats the Second, said it was all because of some hundred-and-thirty-year-old curse.
He smiled. Whenever anything went wrong, they always blamed Stanley's no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.
Supposedly, one of his great-great-grandfathers stole a pig from a one-legged gypsy, and she put a curse on him and all of his descendants. Whenever anything went wrong, it felt good to blame someone.
Stanley looked out the window at the vast emptiness. He watched the rise and fall of a telephone wire. In his mind he could hear his father's gruff voice singing to him.
"If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,
"The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies."
While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
He cries to the moon,
"If only, if only."
It was a song that had been in his family for over a century. His father and grandfather used to sing it to him. The melody was sweet and sad, but Stanley's favorite part was when his father would howl the word "moon."
The bus hit a small bump, and the guard instantly sat up.
Stanley's father was an inventor, but not a successful one. To be a successful inventor, you need three things: intelligence, perseverance, and at least a little bit of luck.
He had all of those things except luck.
He would work on projects for years once he started them, often going days without sleep. He just never had even the slightest bit of luck.
Every time one of his experiments failed, he would curse his dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-grandfather.
Stanley's father and grandfather were also named Stanley Yelnats. Stanley's grandfather's full name was Stanley Yelnats II. His father was Stanley Yelnats III, but he went by Stan. Our Stanley is Stanley Yelnats IV.
Everyone in his family named their son Stanley because it was "Yelnats" spelled backwards. Stanley was an only child, as was every Stanley Yelnats before him.
All of them also had something else in common. Despite their bad luck, they were always hopeful. As Stanley's father would often say, "I learn from failure."
"Not every Stanley Yelnats has been a failure," Stanley's mother often pointed out, whenever he or his father or grandfather believed in the curse. Stanley's great-grandfather, Stanley Yelnats The First, had made a fortune in the stock market. "He wasn't so unlucky."
But she often forgot the bad luck that had befell the first Stanley Yelnats as he was moving from New York to California. He lost his entire fortune when his stagecoach was robbed and his first wife murdered by the famous outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow.
If that had not have happened, Stanley's family would be living in a mansion on a beach in California. Instead, they were crammed into a tiny apartment that reeked of burning rubber and foot odor.
If only, if only…
The apartment smelled that way because Stanley's father was trying to find a cure for foot odor. "The first person who finds a cure for foot odor will be a very rich man", he had once said.
This project had also led to Stanley's arrest.
The bus ride became increasingly bumpy because the road was no longer paved.
Stanley had actually been impressed when he first found out his great-great-grandfather had been robbed by Kissin' Kate Barlow. He would have much preferred to live on the beach in California, but it was kind of cool to have an ancestor who was robbed by a famous outlaw.
Kate Barlow didn't actually kiss Stanley's great-grandfather. That would have been really cool, but the only people she kissed were the men she killed. Instead, she robbed him, killed his first wife, and left him stranded in the middle of the desert for over two weeks.
"He was lucky to have survived," Stanley's mother often pointed out.
The bus began to slow down. The guard stretched his arms and grunted. "Welcome to Camp Green Lake," he said.
Stanley looked out the dirty window, but he didn't see a lake.
And hardly anything was green.
