"This rots." Jo wiped sweat off her brow. "And it's all your fault!"
"Mine?" Brick huffed. I was following orders. Which would've been completed to a T had you not interfered!"
The two were shovelling bear poop into the dumpster behind the mess hall. Cows usually have four stomachs, but these wild, mutated ones dispersed throughout the forest had eight, and that meant double the fun when the grass came out the other end. Jo and Brick were on manure duty for the week after blowing up the mess hall, a fresh crater still on its roof, and Chef Hatchet had thought of the perfect punishment for them.
"How is setting off a grenade 'following orders,' Bricks-for-Brains?"
"It was a C-4 grenade sent by enemy soldiers!"
Jo stifled a laugh. "I should've known you had a few screws loose when you told me you gave your pet hamster a buzz cut."
"General Fluffy's hair wasn't in compliance!"
"'General Fluffy'? How is your pet rat promoted above you?"
"Cadets have a ton of honor! We've got obedience, discipline, an unwavering commitment to what we believe in. If army generals are the kings, then we're, we're….," he snapped his fingers, trying to think of a metaphor.
"Pawns?" Jo smirked.
"Yes, exactly!" Failing to see the malice in her insult, Brick went back to heaving heaps of cow poop into the dumpster.
Suddenly, Cameron and Zoey walked up to them.
"Hi, guys! Oof, what's that smell?" Zoey wrinkled her nose.
"Cow dung, courtesy of Brick's shell-shock, he got us into trouble and this is that hack of a chef's idea of punishment."
"That explains the giant hole in the dining hall. Did I do thaaat?" He suddenly put on an affected voice and shifted his eyes left and right.
What the heck? Zoey looked at her friend's strange interjection.
"Sorry," Cameron coughed, embarrassed by the three pairs of eyes staring at him. "Scott said I reminded him of a character from this really popular American sitcom, and that I should try to say his catchphrase to you guys to look popular."
Crickets.
"...I'm now deducing that that was a mistake."
"I'm definitely laughing!" Jo said. "If 'laughing' means 'wanting to scratch my eyes out'."
"Anyway," Cameron said, blushing. "How did you two manage to blow up the mess hall roof? Is demolishing dining places a popular teenage pastime?"
"In my town, the jocks seem to think so," Zoey said.
"I didn't blow anything up!" Brick dug his heels in. "I was simply protecting our camp from a dangerous explosive. I had to throw it as far away from the cabins as possible…it just happened to land in the mess hall. And it wouldn't have done that if Jo hadn't thrown off my perfect aim!"
"Please," she rolled her eyes. "You and perfect aim shouldn't even be in the same sentence. That wild throw would've landed at the mess hall anyways. Besides, I always give you 'punchies, no punch backs'! Which reminds me…punchie, no punch back!"
She socked Brick in the arm. Yelping, he dropped his shovel, which landed on Jo's foot. Yelping in turn, she stumbled into a pile of cow dung and tumbled over, but not before dragging Brick down with her.
Groaning, the two, fitted into hazmat suits (mutated cow dung is very radioactive, you know!), tried to wipe the brown stains off as much as possible.
"This is what I mean!" Steam roared out of Brick's ears. "You'd be dishonorably discharged from camp if Chef Hatchet saw you do that!"
"Blah, blah, blah," Jo yawned. '"Dishonorably discharged from camp,' you sound like such a dweeb. Is it any wonder it's so easy to pick on you?"
The two started to bicker, and Cameron and Zoey slowly started to back away. But any chance of Jo and Brick's continued ire came crashing down as they both jumped from the sight of Dawn right behind them.
"Stop it, friends! Violence is not the answer!"
"She started it!"
"You did, with your annoying military commands. Why do I have to shovel dung at an 'erect 45-degree angle?' You're such a suckup."
"But arguing won't solve your problems. Just ask Ricardo." Dawn held out her palm, and a fanged earthworm sneered at Jo and Brick. "He and Eduardo, his underground roommate, always argued about how to keep their dirt tunnel clear of pebbles. Eventually, they realized that working together, even if they didn't like each other, was the best way to solve their problems."
To show his pacifist spirit, Ricardo shot a beam of lasers at Jo and Brick, who ducked just in time.
Brick sniffed, and stiffly stared at Jo. "...I'm willing to give comrade-on-comrade camaraderie a shot. I'll be the bigger person. It's what my old drill sergeant would've wanted."
Jo scoffed. "No, I'll be the bigger person, Bricks-for–" she stopped and stared at Brick and Dawn's furrowed brows.
" –ahem, Brick."
"Well, we'll just have to see who the bigger person is!"
"I say the person who can do 100 pushups faster is!"
"You're on!"
I'd better stop them before this gets out of hand, Dawn nervously ran a finger through her hair. She got each person's side of the story.
"So, this afternoon, I'm just minding my business, right?" Jo begins…
And I hear this ANNOYING sound…
"Hut! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Hut! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…"
I look outside my cabin window, and I see Brickhead doing Jazzercise outside! I'm pretty sure I burst a blood vessel from laughing…then again, laughter tightens the core. The more he made a fool of himself, the buffer I got!
I was doing Military Jazzercise, Jo! It's completely manly!
Butt out of my narration! So anyways, I went outside to tell him to knock it off and…
"Private MacArthur, I know we've had our differences, but I really respect you and your athleticism–which might I say, comes only second to mine."
Then this meathead turned around and snarled at me. He was foaming from the mouth, like some sort of rabid military drone.
"What do you want, man-lady? I'm in the middle of exercising!"
"I-I was just wondering if you could be a bit quieter as you exercise? It would be considerate to not just me, but the other campers here…"
"SHUT UP! I can exercise as loud as I want, as annoyingly as I want, and as obnoxiously as I want, because I have MILITARY CLEARANCE."
"I know, Private MacArthur, I j-j-just–"
"You 'j-j-just' WHAT? SPEAK UP."
"I-I'm just worried I won't be able to have my afternoon nap…"
"Afternoon nap? What's a COW like you need beauty rest for? No matter how many hours a lazy CIVILIAN like you sleeps, you'll always have those saggy bags under your eyes, that disgusting face, and that HORRENDOUS body. Know why? Because YOU. HAVE. NO. DISCIPLINE!"
Then that ROTC freak gets up in my face and shoves me down. My head bumps up against a nearby acorn tree, and something falls out of its branches. Only instead of an acorn, it was a grenade! I had a feeling it was a prank bomb Scott was hiding in the trees for one of us unsuspecting dopes–not to say that I'm a dope–to be blasted with. But when I tried to explain that to Sergeant Psycho over here, he went even more berserk!
"It's a governmental conspiracy! A threat to our national security! Enemy spies…"
"Private Macarthur, calm down. I'm sure with logic and rationality, we can–"
"Quiet! This case is officially top-secret, and I'm taking matters into my own hands."
"B-but, I just think–"
"GREAT HEAVENS!"
"What is it, Private MacArthur?"
"The grenade's cap has been LIFTED."
"I think you accidentally brushed up against it–"
"You dare to accuse me, petty civilian? APOLOGIZE."
"No, I-"
"APOLOGIZE."
"I'm sorry, Brick…"
"Sorry, 'Brick'?"
"I mean, Private MacArthur."
"That's better. Now since this bomb can't be defused because YOU so clumsily set it off, I'm going to have to extract it to an LLC before it detonates."
"An LLC?"
"A Location of Least Casualties. I'll be propelling this bomb to an area where the fewest lives will be lost and where the least damage will be done."
"In other words…"
We finally found something to agree upon, despite his earlier power trip. I think we even said it in unison…
"The mess hall."
Despite us both agreeing how crummy the mess hall was, I still didn't want vandalism to be on my criminal record! One: I didn't have a criminal record. Those were for losers who were too stupid to avoid getting caught. And two: it would be morally wrong!
Since when do you care about–
Last warning, Bricks-for-Brains. Stay out of my perfect recollection of events!
So my persuasion doesn't work. And before I know it, Brick just chucks Scott's prank explosion straight through the mess hall door. I know because the door was open as that keg head Lightning was leaving from his "afternoon protein power-up." The explosive rolled into the mess hall, and all was quiet for a few moments. Then…BOOM.
"What did you do?" I yelled. Then I raced with him to the wreckage that was the mess hall. It was mostly intact, if you count the roof being completely blown off…
"It was a calculated risk. Nothing to worry about."
"But what are we going to do about food? How can Chef Hatchet earn his living by graciously sustaining us campers with his delicious meals?"
"That greasy fry cook will get over it! From veteran to veteran-in-training, he'll understand that I had to do what I had to do to protect the camp. No thanks to you!"
At that point, Chris McLame and Chef Hatchet come back from their midday spa at La Playa de Losers. They're chewing us out, I mean really laying into us. I try to defend my innocence, but Brick keeps cutting me off, blaming me, and arguing with Chris and Chef, which only made them even angrier. In the end, they decided that us shoveling dung all day was an adequate punishment. And the worst part is, I can't even sue Chris since he's telling the judge that this is a "camp beautification project" in the name of "community service" to enrich us campers…
—
At the end of Jo's story, Cameron and Zoey stared at her, jaws dropped. They couldn't believe Brick would do and say all those things. It seemed pretty unreal..
Brick's jaw was dropped too, but not because he was shocked at how "terrible" of a person he'd come across in the story. It was because of Jo's blatant lying. Sticking his shovel into a nearby pile of glowing dung, Brick fumed through his hazmat suit, fogging up the helmet.
"Hold on! It besmirches my name as an upstanding follower of the law to allow Jo's story to be passed as the truth, and– are you mocking me?"
Brick whipped around to see Jo finishing a lip-synced imitation of him. Jo shrugged. Narrowing his eyes, Brick turned back around to Cameron and Zoey.
"Now here's what really happens…"
—
So I'm completing my self-sanctioned set of sixty sit-ups, NOT Jazzercise, to secure supreme RCMP physique, when the door to the girls' cabin bursts open. Jo tumbles out. Her hair is disheveled, her hoodie has sleep sweat stains on it, and she's even grumpier than usual!
"Hey, you utter waste of human space. I am TRYING to sleep. Pipe down before I shove a radiator down your throat!"
"Certainly, Jo. I apologize for any inconvenience I may have called. Even if my training is imperative to me becoming a good soldier one day, I should still be considerate of other campers."
"Blah, blah, blah. NO ONE wants to hear you talk as much as you just did. In fact…"
And that's when Jo really DID try to shove a radiator down my throat. She barged into the boys' cabin, probably grabbed the spare car part from B's junk drawer, then she came back out and tackled me. We tumbled around in the grass, and I finally gained the upper hand–
Don't make me laugh–
Golden Rule!
What?
It's the pinnacle of moral education for a child: Treat others the way you want to be treated! I didn't interrupt your narration, so don't interrupt mine.
You interrupted my narration plenty of times, actually.
Does plenty mean twice now?
"Ahem, guys…" Zoey looked at them.
Right. Sorry, Zoey. Anyways, back to MY honest interpretation of events…I gain the upper hand, but Jo ends up smacking me with the radiator. I go flying into this pine tree, and a pinecone falls from a needle onto my head. Only it's not a pinecone…it's a camouflaged bottle of pop about to blow! The bottle had been shaken up very recently and five mints had been dropped into the bottle. No doubt a trap set by Scott…
"Coke and Mentos: my first science experiment when I was two," Cameron reminisced.
I try to warn Jo of the gravity of the situation–that we're about to be blasted by pop–but my mouth is stuffed with a car radiator. Jo yanks it out of my mouth long enough for me to utter a warning, but she smacks me silly with it! Having had enough of her baseless assault on a soldier-in-training, I naturally defended myself. I grabbed the bottle of pop and thwacked her back with it! She then grabs the bottle of pop and tries to hurl it straight at my head. I duck just in time, and that's when the bottle rolls into the mess hall as Lightning opens the door and leaves.
"Jo, what have you done!"
"Don't you mean what have YOU done, Cadet Clumsy? I wonder what Chris and Chef Hatchet would say if they heard that their dutiful star camper trashed the mess hall."
"Are you trying to frame me? But why! I've been nothing but an upstanding citizen at camp…"
"Because I LOATHE YOU. Whatever punishment you get is what you deserve, G.I. JOKE!"
Well, it turns out the explosive soda bottle was REALLY explosive. I didn't expect it to destroy the mess hall's roof, but I guess Scott is just that malicious. By the time Chris and Chef Hatchet saw the roof blown off, Jo and I were in the midst of a heated argument. As much as I tried to defend myself from her blame-shifting, I couldn't get a word in edgewise. She was that determined to tarnish my record as the model camper! Eventually, Chris and Chef Hatchet, tired of Jo's grumbling (and her post-nap dragon breath), just punished the both of us. I'm okay though–punishment builds discipline, and discipline builds character. So in a way, I'm steeling myself for the trials of boot camp. Thanks, Jo. Ha!
You couldn't get any dorkier…
—
With that version of events finished, Brick swore on the scout's oath that he was not fibbing.
We'll just see about that, Jo thought.
"That's bogus! I never called you 'Cadet Clumsy.' A: I could do way better than that–"
"Convincing argument," Cameron frowned.
"And B: It wasn't a bottle of bursting soda, it was a prank bomb!" Jo yelled. Soon enough, she and Brick two were at each other's throats yet again.
"We'd better settle this, or else they'll be fighting for hours!" Zoey whispered to Cameron.
"Hmm," Cameron thought, dodging a shovelful of dung Jo hurled, aiming at Brick. "It seems that there are three constants in their stories: one of them bumping into a tree, one of Scott's explosive pranks spilling out of the tree, and Lightning leaving the mess hall as said explosive rolled in."
"In other words," Zoey nodded, "we can go to those three sources and find the real truth."
"It's elementary, my dear Zoey!" Cameron donned a Sherlock Holmes-style deerstalker cap.
"I…liked your Urkel impression better."
Cameron frowned, then a lightbulb went off in his head. He popped a smoking pipe into his mouth.
Zoey gasped.
Cameron blew bubbles from the pipe. "Non-tobacco, of course."
"Phew."
"Now?"
"Still not a fan."
—
Standing in front of the girls' cabin, Zoey and Cameron surveyed the nearby trees.
"There's nothing but maple trees around here," Zoey frowned.
"Oh Heavens, it seems Jo and Brick may necessitate a lesson in macrobotanical classification," said Cameron Holmes. "Perchance their governess can instruct them?"
"Or perchance we can get some other accounts of what happened!" Zoey strode up to Anne Maria and Dakota on the cabin porch. "Hey, guys! Did you happen to see Brick and Jo fighting around here earlier today?"
The two girls were painting their nails with a Sunset Sparkle polish. "What's it to you, Red?" Anne Maria eyed her up and now.
"Oh, nothing! Cam and I are just conducting an investi– I mean, we aren't trying to snoop or be mean or anything, we just…"
Anne Maria laughed. "I'm just pullin' your leg, dollface. Geez, you're so jittery!"
"Stop teasing them, A.M!" Dakota giggled.
"A.M.?" Anne Maria stopped painting her nails.
"Actually, it's 5:30 P.M.," Cameron corrected her.
"I'm trying out nicknames with just the person's initials. I'm going to make it the trend of the summer, C."
"How can you do that when we're secluded on an island without satellite transmission?"
"Daddy's working on installing a Wi-Fi network for the girls' cabin!" Dakota's phone started buzzing. "Hello! …Hey, Daddy! …Uh huh….I don't think so…wait, no! ….Ugh, this is so unfair!" Pouting her lips, Dakota picked up the bottle of Sunset Sparkle polish and hurled it into a maple tree across the campground.
"Hey! That's the third bottle you've thrown!" Anne Maria growled at her.
Dakota started sobbing. "I'm so sorry! It's just…Daddy said the Wi-Fi is a no-go…I can't keep surviving on these flip phones with limited minutes. It's so unfair!" She continued boohooing and stormed into the girls' cabin, flopping onto the bed.
Zoey frowned. "Dakota's a bit more…than usual?"
"Dramatic? Pretty much," Anne Maria rolled her eyes. "A side effect of the Sunset Sparkle polish is irrational mood swings."
"Uh, how is that possible?" Zoey looked at the chipped red polish on her nails. "Is she huffing the polish or something?"
"Nope," Anne Maria started filing her nails. "Sunset Sparkle's, uh, secret ingredient causes that."
"Secret ingredient?" Zoey frowned.
Cameron squinted at the polish on Anne Maria's nails. Sunset Sparkle was a soft pinkish-orange color. Glitter was mixed in with the polish, but why did it look like the glitter glowed? On closer inspection, the pieces of glitter looked white, flaky, frosty…
"Danger! Danger!" Cameron squealed and stumbled back, tipping over the porch.
"Cameron? What's wrong?" Zoey called over the railing.
"Ugh, the cat's outta the bag," said Anne Maria. "D and I saved some radioactive snow from the freak blizzard a few weeks ago. It looked like it would make our nails pop, and lo and behold," she proudly wiggled her nails in front of them.
Cameron and Zoey were horrified, but their shock quickly subsided. After all, Cameron was fascinated by radioactive decay as a nail-polish preservative, and Zoey entirely expected Anne Maria and Dakota, the same girls who had ventured into the Wawanakwa Swamp for weeping-willow barrettes, to do something of this sort.
"Just out of curiosity," Zoey said, "apart from mood swings, what other side effects does this polish have?"
"Hmm…can't think of anything else." Anne Maria shrugged. "Now if ya done grilling me, I– wait! There is one more thing. B said the nail polish would blow up if it was agitated too much."
"Like if its feelings were hurt?" Dawn sat cross-legged on the porch railing. Anne Maria, Zoey, and Cameron jumped, but they were used to being jumpscared by the creepy camper, who always seemed present yet absent at the same time.
"More like if the bottle was shaken too much, my dear Zoey."
"Your aura is wafting with brown tweed and tobacco," Dawn commented.
"So hypothetically speaking," Zoey said, "if a bottle was thrown into a tree, then rustled around in said tree after someone bumped into it really hard, that would be enough agitation to make the nail polish explode?"
"I guess so," Anne Maria agreed.
"But with such force as to destroy an entire roof?" Cameron frowned. "We'd better confirm with the inventor of this hazardous cosmetic to see if it could do that much damage."
After popping over next door to the boys' cabin and confirming with B (a single thumbs-up made for the quickest interrogation ever), Zoey and Cameron reconvened at the beach.
"Looks like our prank bomb/fizzy soda was actually a bottle of nuclear nail polish…one that Dakota threw," Cameron jotted something down in his notebook.
Zoey nodded. "All that's left is to confront Lightning, and see if he knows if it was Jo or Brick who threw the bottle of polish."
Some meters away, Lightning was skipping rocks into the lake.
"Stupid Jo!" he muttered under his breath. "Probably not tough enough to show up."
"Show up for what?" Cameron asked.
"Aah! Talking shrimp!" Lightning hoisted Cameron up and dumped him into the lake. "Be free, shrimpy! You can't breathe air!"
After a commotion of Cameron drowning in the two-foot-deep shore, Zoey saving him, and Lightning slowly realizing that the scrawny stack of nothing that had just talked to him was no shrimp, but his fellow cabinmate, the questioning began.
"Did you see Brick and Jo fighting when you left the mess hall after your afternoon protein refuel?" Cameron asked, wringing water out of his hoodie.
"Yup. Those two were locked in a sha-smackdown! My money was on Jo, but of course he'd never be able to take me. Probably why he hasn't shown up for our rock-skipping match!"
"Er, Jo is tied up in some…fecal matters," Zoey explained.
"Fiscal matters? Jo's an accountant?"
"No, she– yes. Jo's an accountant," she sighed. "But that's not important! We need to know if you saw who threw that bottle of nail polish in the mess hall as you were walking out."
"Hmm, Lightning wishes he could help, but he was too busy admiring his protein-fueled, perfectly sculpted biceps to care. I've got priorities, you know. Sha-yeah!" He flexed in a Superman pose.
"Gee, thanks for your help," Zoey muttered. Jocks.
"In the meantime, can you tell Jo to get his cowardly behind over here? I've got some rock-skipping to whoop her in!"
"Sure thing, Lightning," Cameron said. Zoey pulled him into a group huddle.
"Now what do we do? We've reached a dead end, and we don't know who's really to blame for throwing that exploding nail polish into the mess hall…I knew I wasn't cut out for sleuthing."
"Chip, chip, cheerio. Keep your chin up, love. We'll solve the case!" Cameron Holmes blew a few bubbles into her face.
"I guess…"
At that moment, the Wawanakraken, the sea monster whose tentacles kept the campers on their toes when they least expected, extended a slimy tentacle in the air. It silently stretched across the beach to a seashell and threw it with reckless abandon.
"Yikes! That tentacle thingy keeps doing that. It stole a pile of my skipping rocks a while ago and threw it around the camp," Lightning fumed.
"Quite mischievous for a legendary sea creature," Cameron thought aloud.
"Mischievous?" Zoey gasped. "I wonder if it's not the Wawanakraken after all, but its baby!"
A larger tentacle reached out and wrapped around the tentacle that threw the rock, dragging it back down underneath the surface.
"Looks like Mum is fed up with her baby's meddling," Cameron said.
"Your British accent is getting way better."
"Thanks!" Cameron tipped his hat at her. "If the Wawanakraken's baby was the one throwing the nail polish into the mess hall, how could the polish have gotten onto the beach? I thought it fell out of the tree onto the campground while Brick or Jo were fighting?"
"The question then becomes how the bottle of polish made its way from the ground under the maple tree to the beach, so it was in reach of Baby Wawanakraken," Zoey narrowed her eyes. "Let's ask around!"
—
"Take me to your leader!" Outside the boys' cabin, Sam bowed before a giant rat-gull, whose sharp beak and long, pink tail glinted menacingly in the late afternoon sun. It squawked at Sam before hoisting him up by his shirt collar and carrying it towards Boney Island.
"Awesomest day ever!" The gamer called into the distance.
Watching this from the middle of the campground, Cameron and Zoey gawked. They knew Sam was obsessed with seeing all the "cool" mutant creatures on the island, but they never thought it'd end up with him being kidnapped by one. Oh, well. If they knew their friend as well as they thought, his pluckiness would make up for his lack of athleticism, and he'd be back on the campground in time for mess hall dessert. Hopefully. Maybe.
Springing out of the ground, Manitoba startled Cameron and Zoey and sprayed them in a cloud of dirt.
"Hope I didn't frighten you, Sheila. I know how my impromptu digs can spook the ladies."
"Thanks for your consideration, Manitoba." Zoey dusted herself off. She liked all of Mike's alters, some more than others. Manitoba, with his sexism and propensity to dirty all of her clothes within seconds of meeting, was definitely "others."
"H-hi, Manitoba," Cameron said, still trying to steady his heart rate from the jump scare. "I thought Mike hid his fedora under his bed for the day."
"He did, that little wombat. But Scott was proper enough to pluck it onto his head. Probably trying to mess with the poor guy, but I didn't think much of it. I'm free, am I not?"
"Ugh," Zoey scoffed. "I don't blame Brick and Jo for thinking Scott had something to do with the explosive item, even if they weren't right. He's such a little trickster…"
"Manitoba, what have you been doing with your, uh, free time?" Cameron asked.
Manitoba straightened his fedora. "Sam and I have been birdwatching all day, but I caught a sense of something glimmering beneath the ground, and I can never resist a good dig. Turns out it was just a flake of nuclear snow that didn't decay though. The bird-watching was getting plain boring, at any rate. Nothing but rat-gulls picking at any shiny thing they saw and hoarding it in their nests. Where is Sam anyway?"
"Being carried to the Rat-gull King." Zoey pointed in the sky to the disappearing figure of the rat-gull with Sam in its beak.
"Crikey! I'd better go after him. He won't last a minute on Boney Island himself. That place has enough woolly mammoth skulls to make you wonder what the heck's been eating those giant beasts anyway? My guess…rat-gulls."
Without leaving any time to talk further, Manitoba burrowed under the ground again. Cameron and Zoey could see the underground trail make its way to the beach, then below the surface of the lake, digging to Boney Island.
"Did you hear that?" Zoey's eyes widened.
"Yes. Manitoba's burrowing at an incredible rate! I should compare his underground speed with that of a mutated mole rat!"
"Experiments aside, Manitoba said the rat-gull's did nothing to pick at shiny objects on the ground…"
"Ah, yes!" Cameron nodded, focusing. "Then, the way the nail polish could've moved from under the maple tree to the beach is a rat-gull!"
"Yup!" Zoey said. "Then, it would've been within reach of Baby Wawanakraken's tiny tentacles."
As if demonstrating their point, a gaggle of rat-gulls circled around glittering bits of plastic litter on the beach. In one coordinated motion, they soared down, gobbled the plastic into their beaks and flew away. While flying away towards the lake, though, many of them dropped the plastic from their beaks back onto the beach.
"It's elementary, my dear Zoey–"
"–my dear Cameron," they said at the same time.
Their accents had considerably improved.
—
"So we're innocent?" Jo looked as if she was about to burst a blood vessel. "All this cruddy dung-shoveling was for nothing?!"
"In essence…yes," Cameron admitted, hiding behind Zoey.
"Our names are cleared! Charges dropped! I'm honorably discharged." A tear ran down Brick's cheek. "You've brought us semi-legal justice, Cameron and Zoey. Thank you, comrades!" He saluted them vigorously.
"And…," the cadet began, "I suppose apologies are in order for my false accusations. Sorry, Jo."
"I'm sorry, too…sorry that Chef had to punish his perfect little pupil," she cackled.
Brick blushed. "He wouldn't have had to stain my perfect disciplinary record if you didn't mouth off in the first place!"
"Don't blame me; it's those stupid mutants' faults after all that we got 'busted' in the first place!" Jo fumed. And now I'm late for my rock-skipping contest with Lightning. He's gonna think I'm a chicken. Well, I'll show him a chicken!" Jo, still in her hazmat suit, stabbed her shovel into the ground and sprinted to the beach.
"I'd hate to be Lightning soon," Cameron whispered.
"Jo just needs time to cool off," Brick huffed. "Still, just because she's abandoned her duties, doesn't mean I will. Innocent or not, freeing the island of this mutant animal poop is an essential job to the beautification of this camp!"
"So…you're still going to follow through with your punishment?" Zoey was gobsmacked.
"I've been given orders. What kind of soldier would I be if I didn't?"
"You could be an innocent soldier who doesn't have to do all that…say, one who could prove he's the best rock-skipper on the island!"
Brick shook his head. "No, sorry. Duty calls. Besides, everyone knows I'm the best rock-skipper."
"I don't know…Jo and Lightning have other words…"
"Of course they do! Their skipping stance is completely reckless. I'll show them!" Throwing down his shovel, Brick ran to join the two on the beach.
Cameron and Zoey smiled and watched him hurry away.
"Do you think it was ethical of us to convince him to stop shoveling the dung?" Cameron asked her.
"My collection of philosophical texts isn't as vast as yours, Detective, but I do know that it's good to help a friend loosen up every once in a while."
They walked away to the arts-and-crafts tent.
"So…if we're not going to clean up the dung, who is?" Cameron wondered.
"I figure Chris will just wait until Scott gets caught pulling a prank on Chef, then make him do it."
"Aah, astute prediction, Detective Zoey. Can you also predict if a macaroni necklace will complement my detective cap?"
"Let's just say, some leads are better left unpursued."