Glub, glub.
I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t know how much time had passed. All I knew was that I was lying on my back on the dock and somebody was blowing air into my mouth. I opened my eyes.
And you’ll never believe in a million hundred years who was giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
I’m not going to tell you.
Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.
It was Andrea Young, this girl in my class at school with curly brown hair!*
Noooooooooooo!
“Ooooh,” said Ryan. “A.J. and Andrea are kissing! They must be in love!”
“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.
I jumped up. Andrea was wearing pink sunglasses and a bathing suit with butterflies on it. A few other girls were behind her.
“Ugh, gross! Disgusting!” I said as I wiped my mouth.
“I saved your life, Arlo!” said Andrea, who calls me by my real name because she knows I don’t like it. “And this is the thanks I get?”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I go to Camp Botshagotta,” Andrea said. “It’s on the other side of the lake.”
“I dragged you out of the water,” said Uncle Craig. “You were drowning, dude.”
“Then why didn’t you give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?” I asked him.
“This young lady volunteered,” he explained. “She said she took a CPR class after school.”
Of course. Andrea takes classes in everything after school. If they gave classes in clipping your toenails, she would take that class so she could get better at it.
I changed my mind. This was going to be the worst summer in the history of summers.
After my humiliation at the lake, we changed into our clothes and walked to the dining hall, which everybody calls the mess hall. When I walked in, the first thing I saw was a giant moose head sticking out over the door. That was weird.
“What’s with the moose head?” I asked Candyman.
“Anybody who gets a care package in the mail has to kiss the moose,” he told me.
“Why?”
“It’s a camp tradition,” he explained as he picked some spoons out of the silverware tray and put them in the pocket of his trench coat.
“Why are you stealing spoons?” I asked.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he whispered. “So I’m gonna tunnel out of this joint. Shhhh! Don’t tell anybody.”
“You’re going to dig a tunnel with spoons?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “In the middle of the night. You wanna help?”
“Uh, maybe some other time,” I replied. That guy is weird.
It was really noisy in the dining hall. After I found a seat at the Owl table, Uncle Ahdoanwanna came in. He clapped his hands and shouted, “I would like to make an announcement!”
“ANNOUNCEMENTS! ANNOUNCEMENTS! ANNOUNCEMENTS!” everybody chanted.
“This afternoon,” announced Uncle Ahdoanwanna, “we will have softball, basketball, and pickleball. And tonight will be a campfire in the woods.”
“YAY!” everybody shouted. “Ahdoanwanna! Youdoanwanna! Wedoanwanna! Theydoanwanna!”
“Okay, let’s eat!” shouted Uncle Ahdoanwanna.
The Owl table went up to the window to get our food. There was a lady behind the counter wearing a yellow hat, yellow shirt, yellow pants, and yellow gloves.
“I’m Aunt Kim,” she told us. “Are you boys hungry for lunch?”
“I’m starving!” I replied. “Do you have hamburgers?”
“No,” she said.
