Cool Campers (7 page)

I looked around to see if anyone else might have heard. “Are you crazy?” I whispered. I couldn't believe he was actually suggesting it.

“Count me in,” Tiny said.

“What? You too, Tiny?” I dropped my head into my hands.

BB jumped up and down. “Me too! Let's do it.”

All three of them were bouncing around now. I grabbed Graham by the shoulders and tried to stop his bouncing. “Wait a minute, you guys. What if we get caught?” I was getting nervous just thinking about this.

Graham just smiled. “Come on, Raymond. This is our chance to get David back. Haven't you always wanted to really get him?”

They all quietly chanted, “TP, TP, TP . . .”

“All right, all right, I'm in too,” I finally agreed. They all slapped me on the back, and we headed back into the bathroom to find our ammunition.

THERE WERE FOUR
toilets in the bathroom, but we only took two rolls. We figured we had better leave a roll or two there. Graham and Tiny both hid a roll under their shirts, and we hurried back to our cabin. We stayed up and played cards, waiting for everyone else to go to bed. Toad came by and checked on us at around nine thirty.

“Lights out in five minutes,” he said. We turned them off and climbed into our bunks, pretending to sleep. I did such a good job pretending that I actually fell asleep. Luckily, Graham woke me up.

“What time is it?” I mumbled. I couldn't tell if I had been asleep for five minutes or five hours.

“It's almost midnight,” Graham said. “It's time to move.”

I rubbed my eyes and got up. Slowly Tiny opened the door and we crept outside. There was just a sliver of a moon, and while the stars were bright, it was still really dark. We giggled softly, thinking about what we were about to do, and headed down the path. Suddenly, we heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, Toad Claws, what's going on?” It was Toad.

“Um, hi, Toad. Where are you going?” Tiny asked. Toad said he was on his way to the staff cabins. Then he asked us again what we were doing. I had a sick feeling inside. I knew we were busted.

“Okay,” I said. “We were on our way to toilet paper the Muscular Monsters' cabins. Well, David's cabin.” I was so nervous I started talking faster and faster. “It's just that David is so mean, and then today when he switched Tiny's and Graham's underwear, we just thought we'd—”

“Shhh.” Toad put his finger to his lips. “You're going to TP the Muscular Monsters' cabins?”

“Yes, but we're sorry. We won't do it. Please don't punish us,” BB pleaded. We didn't want to get stuck cleaning the toilets, which is what happens if you get caught outside after lights-out.

“That's Flex's patrol,” Toad said. He looked around and rubbed his hand through his hair.

“Well, just promise me you'll go straight back to your cabin after you're done.”

We stood there, confused. It sounded like he was actually telling us to go ahead with our prank. Graham raised his hand like we were in school.

“Excuse me, but are you saying it's okay if we—”

“All I'm saying,” Toad interrupted, “is that I never saw you tonight.”

Toad began to whistle, and he started down the path to the staff cabins without saying another word. I remembered how Flex had made that mean comment about Toad earlier, and I wondered if Toad was secretly happy we were pulling a prank on Flex's patrol.

A few minutes later we reached David's cabin armed with our toilet paper. Graham wanted to be the first one to throw a roll. He was standing behind me. He pulled his arm way back, and Tiny, BB, and I looked up to see where the roll would go. Suddenly, I felt a smack on the back of my head.

“Ouch!” I yelled, in my loudest whisper. Graham had hit me with the roll of toilet paper. Luckily it was made of, well, toilet paper. Otherwise it would have really hurt.

“Sorry,
hermano
,” Graham apologized. “I guess my aim was a little off.”

I knew he was sorry because he called me
hermano
, which means “brother” in Spanish. We only use
hermano
when we're really serious, like when one of us is sorry for hitting the other one in the head with a roll of toilet paper.

Tiny picked up the roll. “Can I try?” he whispered. “I've never done this before.”

“Sure,” I said. “Try to throw it to the top of that tree.” There was a tree right next to the cabin, and I thought it would help him to aim at it. Tiny looked awkward as he pulled his arm back. I could tell he probably didn't play baseball. But when he threw the toilet paper it flew through the air like it was shot from a cannon. It soared up and over the tree and just kept going until we lost it in the dark sky.

We all stood there and stared into the blackness. “Holy cow, where'd you learn to throw like that?” I whispered loudly.

Tiny held up his hands and examined them. “I don't know. I guess I don't know my own strength,” he said. “I'll go find it.” Tiny disappeared into the trees. BB had the other roll.

“So who wants to throw this one?” he whispered, holding it up.

“Go ahead,” Graham said. “You do it.” BB looked at the roll and then looked at the tree.

“Okay, ready or not, here goes.” BB threw it perfectly, and it landed on one of the highest branches. But instead of unrolling as it fell, it just dropped down to the next branch and then fell onto the cabin roof. We all held our breath, hoping David and the others didn't hear the roll land.

“Oh great,” I whispered. “That was our last roll.”

BB hung his head. “Sorry, guys.”

I tiptoed toward the woods where Tiny had gone to find the other roll. I motioned for BB and Graham to follow. Tiny was still searching. We looked around for a few minutes but finally gave up.

“Hey, where's BB?” Graham said quietly. We looked around, but he was nowhere to be found. We walked back to the front of David's cabin and called BB's name softly. Suddenly we heard the door creak open. We were about to run when we saw BB tiptoeing out the door.

We froze in our footsteps. I couldn't believe BB was coming out of David's cabin. What had he been doing in there? We could see he was carrying something white in his hands. He had a big smile on his face. As he caught up with us, I realized he was carrying two pairs of underpants. We hurried away from the cabin and back to the main trail.

“No way.” I laughed. “Are those what I think they are?”

“David's underpants. At least, I think they're his—they were under his bunk. Can you believe he only brought two pairs?”

“Nice work, BB.” Graham high-fived him. “I didn't know you were so sneaky.”

“Well, when you catch bugs you have to be very quiet and extremely quick,” BB replied proudly.

“What should we do with them?” Tiny asked. We thought for a moment, then snuck over to the big statue of a bear standing upright by the lodge. We put one pair on his head like a winter hat and stuck the second on the front of the bear so it looked like he was wearing the underpants. We stood back and covered our mouths to muffle our laughter. Then we hurried back to our cabin.

We tried to fall asleep, but every time one of us drifted off, someone else would start giggling. Then we would recount the whole evening again. It was one of the best nights of my life.

I FINALLY CLOSED
my eyes for what seemed like only a few minutes before I heard the morning gong. Toad was outside singing some song about getting out of bed. I think he was making it up as he went along. Tiny came bounding down from his bunk, and BB was already putting on his shoes and socks.

I stood on my bed to wake Graham up. He was snoring like crazy.

“Wake up!” I shouted.

“I didn't do it!” he mumbled, with his eyes still closed. “That bear already had underwear on his head.” Finally, he woke up. “What's going on? What time is it?”

“It's morning. Time to go see if anyone has noticed the new wardrobe on the grizzly statue.”

Graham immediately jumped up. We all got dressed as quickly as we could and ran outside.

“Good morning, Toad Claws!” Toad called out.

“Good morning, Toad!” we answered back.

“Did everyone sleep well?” Toad looked straight at us and smiled. Once the whole patrol was standing outside, Toad announced the day's activities: eating breakfast and then hiking up Mount Grizzly. That evening, the girls' camp would be joining us for a marshmallow roast at the big fire pit halfway between the cabins and the lodge.

“So let's go get some breakfast, Toad Claws.” Toad led the way, hopping down the trail. I don't know how he always had the energy to hop around all the time. We all followed, but we got tired of hopping about halfway there and walked the rest of the way.

As we got closer to the lodge we saw a bunch of kids gathering around the statue and laughing their heads off. We didn't see David anywhere.

Fuzzy made his way through the crowd and pulled the underpants off the bear. He turned and held one hand up to quiet the group.

“Okay, the show's over.” I couldn't tell if he was angry or not. It kind of looked like he was holding back laughter.

“Does anyone know who these belong to?” He looked at the tag, but there was no name. Everyone looked around, but no one answered. I noticed Zach and a couple of the other Muscular Monsters giving each other looks. Fuzzy gave us a lecture on respect for others and about Grizzly pride.

“Well,” he added at the end, “if any of you finds out you're missing your underwear, you can pick them up from the lost and found.”

Aside from the brief lecture, I was relieved he didn't seem too mad. Toad walked up to us and said quietly, “You guys wouldn't know anything about this, would you?”

Graham and I looked at each other. “Well, let's just say the toilet paper didn't work out so well,” Graham said.

“We're not in trouble, are we?” I asked.

Toad held up his claw finger, squinted one eye like a pirate, and said, “Har, your secret's safe with me, Toad Claws.” We both let out sighs of relief.

We got in line for breakfast with Tiny and BB. While we were eating Fuzzy announced that we all needed to be on our best behavior that night when the girls from Camp Wildflower visited. He said we had to let them get their marshmallows first, and also that we should offer to get them some punch. “Remember, they're our guests,” he said.

Once we finished our breakfast, Toad gathered the Toad Claws together by the flagpole. He had two water bottles for each of us to bring on our hike. It was going to be a mile and a half up and a mile and a half back down. Then he gave us some great news.

“We will be hiking today with the Fighting Eagles.”

I looked at Graham. “Do you know who's in the Fighting Eagles? Mark Herron!”

“This is perfect!” Graham said. “All we need to do is become friends with him, and popularity and coolness will be ours. Remember to say
dude
a lot.” After all the TP and underwear excitement, I had forgotten about saying
dude
.

Just then Mark and his patrol showed up. Graham and I immediately headed over to him.

“Dude,” Graham said. “Your show at dinner last night was amazing.”

“Thanks, dude,” Mark said, giving Graham a friendly fist bump.

“Yeah, I thought so too,” I added. Graham gave me a stare like I was forgetting something. “I mean, I thought so too, dude,” I said. Graham smiled and nodded.

We started up the trail. Along the way we stopped to look at certain plants that Toad pointed out and took a lot of breaks. We were only allowed to go as fast as the slowest hiker. That was usually Carl. About halfway up Mark took his shirt off and wrapped it around his head like a hat. Graham and I hurried to do the same. If that's what cool people like Mark did, then that's what we did.

Toad led us in some songs as we hiked. Toward the top it got really steep, and we were getting tired. Our singing slowed down until we were too tired to sing at all. Graham and I were even too tired to call each other
dude
.

But at last we made it to the top, and it was well worth the climb. It seemed like you could see forever. Toad and Twig, the Fighting Eagles' counselor, had brought sandwiches for all of us in their backpacks. We each found a rock or a log to sit on and ate. Graham and I sat on each side of Mark.

Just then a hawk flew over us and out into the open sky.