"Zoey? What are you doing?"

Zoey gasped, and she slammed her diary shut. It was as if her roommate Dawn had come out of nowhere. There was no use trying to hole up in your top bunk when you were rooming with a witch. Or was she a wizard?

"Oh! Hey, Dawn! Nothing, just journaling. It's so therapeutic. W-what about you?" she asked, still startled.

"Not much. Just practicing my daily occupational empathy–trying one of Scott's hobbies to understand the depths of his twisted, vindictive soul. I'm wood-carving something."

"Cool! I hope I wasn't accidentally ignoring you. I can get so into my journaling sometimes."

"No worries. Getting in touch with your wounded inner child is so noble."

"Wounded?"

"There's a deep gash of loneliness in your elbow aura."

"Gash?" Zoey turned around and placed her diary under her pillow. Well, I guess it's true that I never really fit in at sch–"

Dawn was nowhere in sight. As spooked as Zoey was, she was glad Dawn was always looking out for her, even if the natural remedy she gave her smelled suspiciously like rat-gull droppings. Just to be on the safe side, Zoey headed down to the lake to rinse it off.

"Right….there! Now stay put," Scott walked around to the back of the tree.

Lightning scratched his head. He looked down at the circle of rope he was standing in at the edge of the forest. "Why am I helping you again?"

Scott hoisted something in the air behind the tree. "Because if you test out this animal trap for me, I'll swipe some extra protein powder in the dining hall for you."

A lightbulb dinged in the footballer's brain. "Sha-yeah! Bring on the rope, but make it quick. Lightning's got–"

"Hey, keghead!" Jo sprinted out of the forest and towards the beach. "I bet you two nights' dessert I can beat you to the shoreline!"

"Cheater! I didn't get a countdown or anything!" Lightning bounded after her.

"Wait up! You still haven't tested my– yow!" Scott started after the two racers, but after stepping into the circle of rope, it tightened around his ankle and yanked him into the air. Hanging upside-down, he groaned.

"Lightning, or a prize hog? Which one's smarter?" While he pondered this, the farm boy retrieved his whittling knife from his pocket and tried to cut himself down, but his freckled arms were too short.

"Dang it! I always knew T. rex arms ran in the family, but I never knew I had it this bad."

A short ways away, Mike and Cameron, who were discussing Cameron's favorite topic of the week, the history of soup can designs ("It's so mundane, yet so riveting!"), came across the dirt farmer.

"Scott, are you okay?" Mike asked.

"Doing just dandy! I'm hanging upside down like an idiot and letting blood rush to my head because I like it," Scott sneered at him.

"Point taken." Mike glared, but he took Scott's knife and sawed him down.

Thud! Scott came down like a sack of potatoes.

"How'd you get stuck like that in the first place?" Cameron peered through a magnifying glass at the rope contraption tied up to the tree.

"I was planning on catching one of these dumb mutants hunter-style and having my test dummy Lightning try it in exchange for some stolen jock fuel, but I got caught in it."

"Animal trapping?" Cameron frowned.

"Legal in Muskoka–everywhere in Canada, actually, so don't even try shutting me down with some boring law out of your egghead brain, Bubble Boy."

Cameron gasped. "I told you that in confidence!"

"Bubbles as in you blow bubbles or…?" Mike furrowed his brow.

"Before coming to camp, I used to live in a bubble 24/7. I can't believe I never told you."

"Oh! You did, I just thought you were joking!"

Scott brushed himself off. "Nope. Cam's as pathetic as he looks. Welp, land mutants didn't work, but I…borrowed a stinging fish net B made, and I'm gonna try my hand with a water freak. Catch you later, dweebs." He sauntered off to the lake.

"Protein powder, fishing nets…is there anything this guy hasn't stolen?" Mike grimaced.

"I'm unsure. We should check our pockets just to be cautious!" Cameron suggested.

After a while of searching, the boys looked at each other, frowning.

"My magnifying glass is missing."

"So's my mini fedora," Mike said, which, when he remembered Manitoba's sexist comment that made Zoey sit next to Anne Maria in the dining hall instead last night, thought it might not be so bad to have lost, but still.

"Man, he's good," Mike mumbled, as the two ran after Scott.

At the beach, there was no clear winner for the race to the lake.

"The finish line was at the shore, dumbbell," Jo said. "I won."

"No way! The finish was at the staircase. Lightning won," he argued.

They debated the terms of their race, each feeling redder by the second. Nearby, Cameron and Mike stopped Scott in his tracks.

"Scott, where's Manitoba's fedora and Cam's magnifying glass? We know you swiped them!" Mike confronted him.

Scott whistled. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Mikey. I'm as clean as a whistle." To demonstrate, he turned his pants pockets inside-out. Nothing spilled out.

"Either my copy of A History of Stage Magic is outdated and Scott's a really good illusionist or he's actually telling the truth," Cameron whispered to Mike.

They squinted at Scott. Scott beamed.

"Wow," Mike rubbed his neck. "Sorry for accusing you, Scott. It's just that normally, you're so…"

"Unscrupulous? Pernicious? Disreputable?" Cameron offered.

"...Slimy."

Scott shrugged. "What can I say, gentlemen? I've turned over a new leaf! Now if you'll excuse me, that clam shell over there looks ripe for some whittlin'." He strolled away.

"I still don't buy Scott being a saint," Mike considered, "but I guess he's held off on the kleptomania…at least against us."

"I concur," Cameron nodded. "We shouldn't have misjudged him so hastily."

"Hi, guys! What's up?" Zoey walked onto the beach.

"The rise of kleptomaniac behavior in rural adolescents," Cameron noted.

"Oh…"

"What're you doing here, Zoey? Not that you shouldn't be here, or that I– we– me and Cam don't want you here, I was just wondering," Mike blushed and stuffed his hands in his pockets, which only made him look more awkward.

She sighed. "Looking for Dawn–I thought she'd be here. It's like everytime we start to have a good conversation, she vanishes!"

"Her powers of omnipresence are truly scientifically incomprehensible," Cameron marveled.

Zoey nodded. "Anyways, who did you two 'misjudge so hastily'?"

"Scott," Mike said. "We thought he stole our stuff but apparently, he's 'turning over a new leaf.'"

"Aww!" Zoey clasped her hands together. "I knew he had a heart buried deep in that jerky exterior."

Trying to pick up the clam shell, Scott yelped as it reared its head and blasted a jet of sand in his eyes. Stumbling backwards, he tripped and fell onto the sand. A folded fedora and magnifying glass slipped out the bottom of his pants.

"Or not!" Zoey gasped.

"Stupid mutants. Can't a guy whittle in peace?" Looking up to find Mike, Cameron, and Zoey surrounding him with glares, he laughed sheepishly.

"Whoops. Found your stuff?"

"Scott, stealing is wrong." Zoey shook her head. Mike and Cameron snatched their things from him.

"Sorry, Zoey! You're right," he held his hand out. Surprised, Zoey took it and helped him out.

"Welp, I'd best be going!" Scott hurried off, but not before Zoey felt a draft across her forehead. She touched her head and found that she was missing the flower in her hair.

"Hey!" Zoey grabbed Cameron's magnifying glass and hurled it at the farmer.

Thwack! The tool hit Scott's head, who yelled.

"Sorry!" Zoey winced. "But you did steal my hibiscus."

Thwack! This time, it was a football that smacked the sticky-fingered boy in the head.

"Yes!" Jo cheered from across the beach. "A headshot. Ten points for me, and zero for you, Fizzle."

Fuming, Lightning picked up his own football. "Fizzle? Lightning ain't no Fizzle! Watch this!" He launched a perfect spiral across the length of the shore and hit Scott in the head.

"Ow!" A dizzy Scott stumbled around, trying to regain his balance.

"Sha-bam! Not one, not two, not three, not…the other numbers, but ten points for me too!" Lightning pumped his fist. Jo rolled her eyes.

"Jocks are so inconsiderate," Zoey muttered under her breath. "Maybe you guys should try less…conscious targets for your game?

"Even if they are Scott," Mike added.

Cameron nodded. "While I appreciate your noteworthy athletic endeavors, that football surely would've injured me too if I had been a few inches taller–"

"But you're not, Shrimpy, so there's no problem," Jo cut him off.

"Besides, this is important," Lightning huffed. "It's football!"

Waiting for the jaw-dropping reverence deserved of this explanation, Lightning scoffed at the blank stares he received.

"Your boo-hooing about almost getting hit gave me a great idea, though," Jo considered. "A few inches taller, huh…what if I angled my shot lower, then? This one's worth twenty points, Meathead," she told Lightning.

Cameron gulped.

Picking up another football, Jo winded up.

"Hey! It's my turn again!" Lightning reached for the pigskin in her hand.

"Watch it, Jockstrap!" Jo launched the football just as Lightning pushed her arm, trying to snatch the ball away.

The football, originally angled at the warmhearted agoraphobe, was tilted off-course by Lightning's shove, and it flew towards the lake.

"Interference!" Jo growled. She tackled Lightning, and the two rolled around in the sand.

"Not cool, dude!"
"I'm not a dude!"

"Whatever floats your boat! Take this–sha-pow!"

"Ouch! You'll pay for that, you overgrown punching bag!"

Seeing the three friends distracted by the jocks' fighting, Scott took the opportunity to slink away. Eventually it turned into a full sprint, and before Mike, Cameron, and Zoey could notice, Scott was dashing away.

"My flower!"

The three chased after Scott. When he looked behind him, he didn't see Jo and Lightning roll in his path, and he tripped over them. Mike, Cameron, and Zoey soon followed, and eventually, all six campers were in a pile, disgruntled.

Their bickering voices drowned out the splash of water as the baby lake monster, Wawanakraken Jr., rose to the surface. The football had hit it in the tentacle as it was swimming near the lake's surface, and both the baby and its mother Wawanakraken were angry.

Once everyone had gotten up and brushed the sand off their clothes, they stared, petrified, at the two giant water beasts staring daggers at them.

"This is all your fault, Birdbrain!" Jo hissed at Lightning.

"Mine? Lightning makes no mistakes."

"We should blame Crybabies McGee over here," Scott sneered at Mike, Cameron, and Zoey. "If they hadn't gotten all bent out of shape over my little pranks, these creatures wouldn't have woken up."

"I'd hardly consider petty theft a prank," Cameron fumed, "although my knowledge of practical jokes and effective humor in general is relatively stunted."

"What do we do?" Zoey gulped.

"Back away slowly?"

"Or better yet," Jo began. "Run!" She turned and bolted.

The other five followed suit, but they were no match for the Wawanakraken mother-son duo, whose sixteen combined tentacles wrapped around the teens from head-to-toe and hoisted them in the air. Voices muffled from the slimy suckers covering their mouths, the pair of giant squids launched them as far as they could towards the inland. Satisfied, the creatures hummed deeply and descended below the surface. Highly unsatisfied, the six squid victims screamed as they soared through the air and descended into the heart of the deep forest.

It was a good thing the dense canopy was there to cushion their fall. Otherwise, the six of them would've broken their bones, and joined the rest of the heaps of bones of animal corpses strewn throughout the deep, dangerous forest. Here, the thick treetops shielded almost all sunlight reaching the ground, and a dark, vast thicket of thorns greeted the campers. Zoey desperately wished Dawn had carved a map of the island and given it to her.

Although they still felt dazed from their fall, they instinctively knew that they had to escape the most dangerous part of Camp Wawanakwa–the heart of the forest. They started to walk, in disoriented, worried silence. Even if Boney Island was miles away, the middle of the radioactive woods was just as frightening. Shadows danced over their faces, the occasional, miraculous speck of sunlight touching their cheeks, but for the most part, the chill of sunless forest awaited them. What started as a wisp of fog intensified into a suffocating cloud that wafted up to their waists–for Cameron, up to his chin–hiding who-knows-what kinds of mutated snakes, squirrels, and insects.

"This place is really creepy," Zoey shuddered.

"No dip," Jo said.

After a few more minutes of wandering through the woods, Mike ran ahead of the group. He started walking backwards to face them.

"We should split up and look for clues!" he suggested.

"Clues? For what?" Cameron asked.

"Not sure. I saw a guy say it in a cartoon once. It seemed like a good idea."

"Great idea! If we split up, the mutants can pace themselves on their three-course meal," Jo rolled her eyes.

"What's your problem?" Mike huffed.

"Bicep envy," Lightning kissed his upper arms. "He'll get over it!"

"A: I'm not a dude," she shoved Lightning, "and B: The only problem I have is being stuck here with you morons. I'm just calling it like I see it. If we split up, whatever monsters are hiding around here'll crush us."

"Man-Lady's right," Scott said. "Fog on the farm always brought wolves trying to catch our pigs off guard."

"That's it!" Jo snapped the twig she was carrying in half. "If you nimrods can't even tell that I'm a girl, you definitely won't be able to tell where camp is. I'm heading off on my own."

With that, she broke off from the group. Striding down an unfamiliar path, she speed-walked, unsure of where she was going but determined to get as far away from those idiots as possible. It was just as well, too. She'd been feeling a slight weight, like a tugging, on her back for the past few minutes. All the humidity in the air must've been weighing her down. Reaching to scratch her back, she felt a hoodie other than her own. Yanking the hood and the person inside it in front of her, she glared at a sheepish Cameron.

"Only a shrimp would leech off the efforts of others. Why am I not surprised it's you?"

"Hey!" Cameron frowned. "I'm not leeching off of you. Call it a mutualistic form of symbiosis! I conserve my energy–and my life–by traveling on the safety of your back, and in return, I alert you to any suspicious animals. My optometrist upped my lens prescription before I came to camp, so I've got eyes as sharp as–"

"–An eagle, yeah, yeah."

"How'd you know what I was going to say?"

"They've got the best vision of any predator. Shouldn't you know that, dweeb?"

"I-I do, but I never expect–"

"As a future multi-gold Olympic champion, I make sure I know about the best of the best, including apex creatures. The kings of the jungle, the rulers of the forest.

Cameron's eyes glittered. "You're a fellow ornithologist?"

"That sounds like a label for a geeky shut-in, so no. Don't get me wrong–we're nothing alike, Cameron. But I guess I could give this arrangement a trial run. Just until we get back to camp, though! I'm not interested in making a habit out of helping you or enabling laziness."

"I'm not lazy…I just get really winded after long periods of physical exertion. Like walking through a thick canopy of trees for hours."

Jo yawned in his face. "You say 'potato,' I say 'couch potato.' Hop on, spud, we don't have all day!"

Cameron jumped onto her back, and they started trekking through the woods. He was not a fan of the new potato-based nickname–yet another to add to the collection of Jo's bottomless pit of insults–but he was glad he was interacting with her in a way that wasn't completely bulldozing his self-image.

Meanwhile, Mike and Zoey were driving Scott and Lightning with their conversation about monster movies. Who knew that a debate about Godzilla vs. King Kong could garner so much blushing and giggling? Certainly not the dirt farmer, who pulled the football star aside to formulate a plan to break them up. The perfect opportunity arrived when a band of two-headed crows swooped in, searching for a midday snack.

With double the trouble, the two-headed creatures flapped their wings as they pecked at the four campers. Yelping, they flailed around, running away from the crows. Grabbing Mike's arm, Scott ran in one direction. Taking Zoey's arm, Lightning sprinted away in the other. After what felt like forever, it seemed that the two pairs, now separated, had finally evaded the crows. Just as Scott planned, the perfect (yet painful, he thought, rubbing the sores on his face from the crow bites) opportunity had come. Mike and Zoey wouldn't be able to grate his ears with their awkward flirting anymore.

"Woah!" Zoey gasped, she and Lightning still running through the forest. "Shouldn't we stay together with Mike and Scott?"

"Uh…the wind is telling Lightning that camp is this way! And Lightning is never wrong."

"Really? I seriously doubt that," she muttered under her breath.

At this point, the two had slowed down, and were passing landmarks that looked more and more unfamiliar. A rotting tree whose wilted leaves formed crooked, black teeth. An impossibly tall oak tree with a crown of writhing vines that looked like thorny tentacles. Each site they passed was creepier than the next, but Zoey was fed up by Lighting's constant boasting along the way.

"...sha-sweet sense of direction carried my team to the national championship!"

"Huh?" The redhead said, startled out her dissociative stupor.

"Were you listening? I was talking about how I'm like a human compass."

"Sorry, I was distracted."

"Thinking about what? Nothing's more interesting than what the Lightning's got to say!"

"I've got a whole laundry list that says otherwise…"

"Oh, yeah? What's on it?"

"Making my own Harry Potter wand-inspired paint brushes, double-length crochet yarn, aubergine hair clips, photography books, Rocky Horror box sets…"

Lightning yawned. "Sha-boring!"

Zoey frowned. "B-boring? I knew a JJ like you wouldn't understand my hobbies. Most people don't."

"JJ? That name sounds like Jo, and I do not like that dude!" the footballer huffed.

"JJ–Jerk Jock. It's what every meathead who rules the school and goes cow-tipping every weekend does in my town." She folded her arms and rolled her eyes. "You'd fit right in."

The two started arguing about whose interests were better. Indie music or throwing around the old pigskin? Taking baths with artisanal soap or steaming showers in the locker room? Art class or gym class? Art geeks or jocks? The debate grew more and more heated.

A conclusion not so conducive to camp camaraderie came out: Zoey and Lighting's interests and even personalities were severely misaligned. As much as Zoey wanted friends and Lightning wanted admirers, the two couldn't stand each other. But as different as they were, they could agree on one thing–survival. They didn't see eye to eye on anything during their spat, but they definitely did not want to be a mutant gopher's lunch. So when it burrowed out of the ground with a startling shriek, it sent the indie chick and the jock sprinting away from it.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of camp, Mike and Scott trudged onto the beach and flopped onto the sand, too exhausted to move. Mike's hair was even spikier than usual, disheveled all around. Scott's white shirt had more dirt stains on it than normal–it almost looked like a brown shirt. And of course, both Mike and Scott boasted black eyes and facial welts, duh. What other rewards were granted for encountering a territorial mutant gopher mother.

Their lazing on the beach was sand's warmth felt amazing, but the pinching crabs were a little less pleasant. Regardless of the pinching pain, the boys were glad–pain was a signal of their lives, still intact, but nearly unraveled just minutes ago.

"Wait up!" Lightning zoomed towards them out of the woods, Zoey closed behind. They sported similar bruises.

"Come on! You run slower than my grandma!" Jo was running towards the beach in the opposite direction, looking behind her at Cameron's heaving figure.

"Must…use…inhaler!"

Jo rolled her eyes. "Asthma's for babies, but whatever." She threw an inhaler at Cameron, who gulped in air from the pump.

"Corticosteroids and beta agonists," Cameron closed his eyes and smiled.

"What are you losers doing here?" Jo turned around and frowned at Mike, Zoey, Scott, and Lightning, who looked like survivors of a cave collapse. "You guys know me and Cam–but mostly me–creamed you guys in the race to the beach?"

Cameron raised his fist in the air. He wondered if this was how it felt to be number one at a physical challenge. He also wondered if it was less of a race to the beach and more of a trek back to camp after being flung away from it by a terrifying urban legend…

Regardless, winning felt pretty good…minus the girl whose back you were riding on who, high off victory, forced you into an impromptu training session which included a run across the entire perimeter of the beach on the island.

"Forget about the race!" Scott glared. "Some mutants just tried to eat us back there! I'm never going anywhere near you sods again!"

"Ahem," Mike coughed, burning a hole into Scott's bulging pockets with his eyes.

Mike, Zoey, Jo, Lightning, and Cameron surrounded the slippery camper.

Tugging at his shirt collar, Scott fanned himself. "Is it hot out here or is it just me?"

"The weather feels great, actually," Zoey frowned.

"As right as rain! Only…without any rain!" Lightning nodded his head. He and the redhead shared a small smile. It wasn't much, but hating Scott's guts was a good enough start to finding some common ground.

"The jig's up, Scott. I don't know how you stole our stuff or why, but hand it over." Mike held his hand out.

Scott narrowed his eyes.

"Looks like he's opting for a broken nose, then," Jo cracked her knuckles.

Scott ran. He pushed past Cameron and Zoey, but tripped on the stairs of the beach. A slew of pinecones, twigs, and stones of varying sizes scattered across the ground.

Everyone looked confused. They pressed Scott as to why he'd taken so much stuff from the forest, and why it was lining his pockets instead of…their things.

"I'm making a stash by the beach. It'll be defense for the next time that overgrown piece of calamari tries to yank us around like a runt of the litter," Scott explained, frowning at Lake Wawanakwa. His explanation was met with a medley of silence and raised eyebrows.

"You were doing something…nice?" Zoey asked. She started feeling a little guilty. Usually, she always saw the best in people, but Scott really knew how to bring out the distrustful jerk in her. Thinking about this inner jerk also made her feel kind of bad about losing her cool in the forest with Lightning.

"Wrong, Red!" Scott made an X with his arms. "Not nice, just prepared. It's what growing up on a dirt farm does to you."

"Dumb plan," Jo rolled her eyes. "We can't fight that beast with pebbles."

"Not even if we pack them into clay-like balls of wet sand and lodge them into her tentacle suckers?" Scott side-eyed her.

Jo gulped. Dirt Boy actually had a good plan, but she couldn't let him know that. Regaining her composure, she shook her head. "Not even then. Stick to hog calls!"

"Hey!" Zoey said. "The plan sounds nice, Scott, but I'm not sure it'll work…"

Lightning frowned. He didn't think that the thief dude's plan would work either, but Sha-Lightning had to respect fighting the Wawanakraken with brute force. He also had to respect Zoey defending Scott's brute-force plan, he guessed. Maybe she wasn't such a buzzkill.

Cameron nodded slowly. "The lack of structural integrity in the sand's sedimentary composition–"

"Way to shoot down my ideas, Shrimpy," Scott said. "Then we're stuck getting terrorized by this thing even if it gets bothered by accident?"

"Not quite," a wispy voice echoed behind them, and all six of them gasped. Turning around, the startled campers saw Dawn with a smooth wooden ocarina.

"My wood-carving is complete!" The ghostly girl cheerily said.

"Cool," Sam smirked as he walked up to the seven of them on the beach. "Is that an Ocarina of Time?"

"I call it the Ocarina of the Wawanakraken," Dawn corrected him. She handed the instrument to the gamer, and instructed him to repeatedly blow on all the note-holes in increasing order.

The Wawanakraken and its child burst through the surface of the lake, startling everyone except Dawn. Bracing for another flight through the sky and into the trees right back where they started, Mike, Cameron, Zoey, Lightning, Scott, and Jo slowly opened their eyes and unshielded their faces. The lake monster and its baby seemed to be in a trance. They swayed slowly to the melody of Sam's playing under Dawn's instruction.

"Snake-charming, but with marine life," Cameron observed. "Fascinating!"

"Now play it backwards," Dawn told Sam, and the gamer, all too eager to live out his Link fantasies, obliged.

Slowly, the Wawanakraken and its baby submerged themselves to the bottom of the lake.

The campers dug a shallow hole into the beach, buried the Ocarina of the Wawanakraken in it, and covered it back up. They marked the spot with a circle of nearby conch shells, and that is how they resolved the issue of lake-monster hostility, a recurring source of conflict to their ordinarily chaotic–but at least not life-threateningly chaotic…okay, their lives were threatened on a near-daily basis by all the mutants anyway–summer camp experience.

The eight of them never divulged to the other campers the Ocarina of the Wawanakraken or its location, because they never needed to. They were never bothered by that majestic beast and its equally majestic offspring again. They could put the lake-monster issue to rest. Jo and Lightning went off to settle another tiebreaker (who can choke down the most bowls of Chef's gruel the fastest?) refereed by Brick, Mike and Cameron went back to discussing the history of soup can designs, Zoey went off to relay the day's wild events in her journal and to the girls' cabin, Scott went off to assert his superior wood-whittling skills to Dawn in a contest (a best-of-three contest he thoroughly lost), and Sam went off to replay Ocarina of Time, inspired by the afternoon's events.

All was well, but everyone wondered where Chris and Chef were. Shouldn't their adult supervision have prevented the six of them from getting catapulted into the heart of the perilous woods in the first place? The answer is "Yes, of course!" As for the answer to Chris and Chef's whereabouts…that was even more predictable.

The spa-room of their mansion next to Camp Wawanakwa. That day was Mani-Pedi Monday, obviously.