4
No Cheating
"Kay, so Leonardo says that tonight it's three drachma to play, so cough it up." Chris said, pulling a tattered baseball cap from under his bunk.
The hat was passed around the circle of cabin 11's residents and they each coughed up 3 drachmas or, if they were broke, backed up and sat on the bunks to observe.
Travis dumped in three golden coins and passed the hat to his left, so to Connor.
In case you were wondering; Leonardo was an unclaimed kid who was, like, 5 and got to pick how much it cost to play each night. Everyone threw in 3 bucks, and there were now 11 people playing; so the winner got all the money. Tonight; 33 drachmas. Leonardo (call him Leo and be warned; the kid bites) also enjoyed making his siblings pay in candy, paper money and foreign currencies (in which case he was kicked out of cabin 11 and someone else picked).
"Kay, cards are shuffled," Chris said, passing them out.
"I start." Eva called.
"No I start!" Chris protested.
"I start!"
"I'm older." Connor said.
"Loser, I'm older than you." Travis said, smacking his brother in the back of the head.
"Yeah, but I'm older than any of you." Chris said, smacking them both behind the head.
"Fine, fine, Christie starts." Travis said.
"Cool," Chris said. "Eva, do you have any threes?"
Travis didn't know what the other cabins did after curfew, but it was a sacred tradition of cabin 11 to play Go Fish with gambling.
Why Gold Fish?
Because every idiot knew how to play Go Fish, but some children of Hermes dared present themselves to camp without any poker experience. It saved time explaining and made it all 'more fair' although no one gave a Styx about that.
"Go Fish." Eva said. Chris picked up a card and put his first four cards down- fives.
"Dude- for real?"
"Re-shuffle, re-shuffle!" Packrat yelled.
"No re-shuffle, its luck!" Chris protested.
"Re-shuffle disguarded," Kate said. She wasn't playing, she was basically the referee. She sat on a top bunk so she could see everyone's cards and looked out for cheating.
"Okay, go Mel." Chris said to the girl on his right.
The game went on with nobody else making a pair except for Chris.
"Travis," Vanessa said, "Do you have a 4?"
Travis looked at his cards. He had the three fours that Vanessa didn't have. Aww man, he couldn't just give those away! And it was his turn to be placed in Kate's blind spot (they rotated each week), so he could get away with it…
No cheating.
Katie would never know, right? Nah, of course not. She hadn't, like, chipped his jacked or planted cameras in his shoelaces. That would be creepy but cool at the same time.
But at the same time he wanted to win this bet. He didn't want to cheat his way out of a bet about not cheating. Travis loved irony, but this was serious Katie-Gardner-involving matter.
He took his three cards and gave them to Vanessa who put them down.
They all stared at Travis in shock.
"You gave them to her?" Chris asked.
"Yeah…" Travis said feeling pathetic.
"But… You're in the blind spot."
"Yeah..." Travis said feeling even more pathetic. They stared at him in shock.
"Should I go get a medic? Are you feeling nauseous? How many fingers?" Chris said sticking his hand in Travis' face. Travis swatted it away.
"Leave me alone, Howie's turn." He muttered.