“See?” Andrea hollered. “It’s fun!”
It was kind of fun, I had to admit. Then, after a few seconds, the song came to an end.
“Okay, cats and kittens,” said Mr. Klutz. “We’re gonna slow things down a little now. Here’s a song to help you remember your week at Camp Ahdoanwanna and Camp Botshagotta.
A different song started playing.
“Memories . . . light the corners of my mind . . .”
“I love this song!” Andrea said as she put her arms around my neck.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I asked.
“It’s a slow song, Arlo!” she said. “So you have to slow dance. Put your arms around my waist.”
“Ahdoanwanna.”
“Botshagotta.”
I wanted to run away to Antarctica and live with the penguins. Penguins don’t have to slow dance.
Everybody was dancing to the memory song. Soon, Ryan and his partner were on one side of us, and Michael and his partner were on our other side.
“Ooooooh,” Ryan said, “A.J. is slow dancing with Andrea! They must be in love!”
“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.
Well, that was humiliating.
On Thursday morning, it stopped raining finally. All the bunks gathered at the flagpole for assembly. Uncle Ahdoanwanna was waiting for us. He was wearing underwear over his pants. I had no idea why.
“Why are you wearing underwear on top of your clothes?” somebody asked.
“Oh,” he replied. “Today is Wear Your Underwear over Your Clothes Day. I probably should have told you before you got dressed.”
That was weird. Uncle Ahdoanwanna told us it was another big day too. It was Color War Day. He said we would have an all-out competition, like the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Olympics all rolled into one.
“Who are we competing against?” somebody asked.
“Camp Botshagotta,” he replied.
What?! Boys against girls?
“We will crush them!” some guy yelled, and then everybody started chanting, “CRUSH THEM! CRUSH THEM! CRUSH THEM!”
After we finished chanting, somebody hollered, “What does the winning camp get?”
“Bragging rights,” said Uncle Ahdoanwanna.
Oh. In other words, you win nothing. Bragging rights is what you win when they don’t want to give out a prize. It’s not fair, but it’s still fun to win.
We marched out to the big sports field that we never got to play on because it was always raining. It was pretty muddy. A few minutes later, the girls from Camp Botshagotta arrived.
“You’re going to lose, Arlo!” Andrea shouted as she walked past us.
“Your face is gonna lose!” I shouted back at her.
We glared at the girls across the field, and they glared back at us. It was a lot like last night’s social.
“Welcome to Color War Day!” Uncle Ahdoanwanna hollered into a bullhorn.
“It will be the best of seven games, like the World Series. The first camp to win four will be the winner. Game One will be Tug-of-War.”
In the middle of the field was a long, thick rope. The Ahdoanwanna boys lined up on one side of the rope and the Botshagotta girls lined up on the other side.
In a tug-of-war, each team pulls on the rope and tries to pull the other team toward them. We all picked up the rope.
“This is gonna be a piece of cake,” Ryan said to me.
Huh? What did cake have to do with anything? Why was everybody always talking about cake?
“On your mark! Get set!” shouted Uncle Ahdoanwanna. “Pull!”
We pulled. I thought it would be easy, but the girls pulled back hard. We pulled back harder. So did they. The rope wasn’t moving one way or the other. It was hard to hold on. The girls were strong.
