The summer we turned thirteen (Published)

The summer we met: Early morning surprise

James

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The morning after Jasper threw Buddy into the lake, I was awoken by ear-piercing screams.

My first thought was that the screams were my own. I had been having a terrible dream about what had happened the night before, but in the nightmare, I was the one Jasper threw into the lake instead of Buddy. When I shot up in my bed, I knew it only had been a nightmare.

But the yelling had definitely been real.

I turned my head to try and assess the situation, but for some reason, there was a blanket hanging from the top of Evan's bed, covering my view of the rest of the room.

I cautiously reached to peek out of it, feeling afraid of what I might see. I heard Jasper and Mike angrily shouting behind it loudly and wondered if I should just let myself remain hidden. But my curiosity outweighed my fear, so I ended up opening the makeshift curtain.

When I did, I was in for the surprise of a lifetime.

The room was in chaos.

Never, had I ever seen such disaster unfold.

Jasper and Mike's beds were soiled in food, but the mess on their beds could hardly compare to the mess covering their bodies.

Evan was groaning in the top bunk above, asking,

"What in the world is going on?"

I didn't reply; I was in too much shock at everything happening around us myself. Mike was mumbling something about "payback," and Jasper was angrily tearing himself from his bed.

But when he got up, he tripped over something that caused the mess covering him to go from bad to worse. Unbeknownst to us, there had been a string lying across the floor that someone had tied to the switch of the ceiling fan. It seemed to be set up so that when Jasper got out of bed, he would fall over it, thus activating the ceiling fan.

I wasn't sure what the fan had to do with any of this, but a couple of seconds later, I understood its purpose.

After Jasper face-planted the floor, feathers began to fly everywhere.

My mouth gaped open.

I didn't know whether to laugh, scream, or cry.

So I just continued watching Mike and Jasper stumble around helplessly.

As I gawked on, Evan started climbing down from his bed. I gasped when I saw he was soiled in food too. The amount of dessert and syrup he was covered in wasn't nearly as bad as Mike's and Jasper's, but he had definitely been targeted as well. His eyes locked on mine, and I looked away, dumbfounded.

Everyone in the cabin had been targeted, except for me.

Why was that?

Or, more importantly, who was it that had done this?

Was the person waiting to do something even more horrendous to me later?

Or had they purposely left me out for another reason?

The blanket that shielded my bed was yanked down and tossed to the floor.

Jasper, Mike, and Evan stood before me baffled.

It hit me then how suspicious I must have seemed. I was the only one nice and dry in my bed, and they were all soaking wet and sticky, not to mention the fact, they were now all covered in feathers too. The three of them started throwing accusations at me, but I couldn't find the words to deny any of them. I honestly didn't know what to do. It felt like I was living out a scene from Camp Crusaders, a film where a group of underdogs at summer camp teamed up to prank back their bullies.