by Booki Vivat
DEDICATION
For all the friends who make life feel
a little less frazzled
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Booki Vivat
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
I never thought I’d say it, but I was starting to get used to life in middle school.
I still thought the Middles were the worst, but I had survived so far and there were things about middle school that I knew I could expect . . .
like which routes to take to avoid the Spencer sisters,
when to talk to teachers,
how fast I needed to walk to class so I wasn’t tardy,
and who to eat lunch with every day.
But when we started hearing rumblings of something different:
I didn’t know WHAT to expect.
Vice Principal Kline tried to make our class trip sound all official by calling it an
But everybody else just called it
I had heard about Outdoor School from Peter, but I generally made it a point to be skeptical of things that Peter liked.
Plus, Nature and I had a history of not always getting along.
I even had this recurring nightmare of getting lost in the woods, choosing the wrong path, and facing some kind of gruesome end.
But everyone else seemed excited to go, and the more they talked about it, the more it sounded . . .
There’s even a camp dog!
From what we all heard, Outdoor School was the best part of the whole year.
Aside from a trip advisor, some camp staffers, and a handful of high school volunteers, we’d be on our own—
away from EVERYTHING for
In middle school years, that was practically a LIFETIME!
The longest field trip we ever had in elementary school was our visit to the aquarium . . .
but that only ended up going overnight because our bus broke down.
THIS was different.
This was something else entirely . . .
The news of Outdoor School couldn’t have come at a better time. Sometimes, I felt like middle school was just a gigantic hamster wheel that never stopped spinning.
Every day was the same.
It seemed like nothing would ever change, and we were just stuck in the same old routine. I had been starting to feel like a zombie lately—or maybe more like a zombie hamster trapped in the endless cycle of Pointdexter Middle School life.
But I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
I wasn’t the only one, either.
We ALL felt it happening—
We were basically becoming a class full of undead students.
I guess, in their own way, zombies are kind of stuck in the Middles too, so maybe we actually had some things in common.
But once the news about Outdoor School came out, everything changed. In the weeks leading up to the trip, it was all anyone could talk about!
The thought of escaping our normal lives—even just for a bit—was enough to bring us all back from the dead.
I couldn’t help but get excited too.
Plus, I needed a serious break from my family.
The Wu household was in a particularly EXTREME state of madness lately.
Mom had just started one of her intense decluttering phases, and it always took at least a week for things to get back to normal.
To add to the chaos, Clara had recently seen an online video of a skateboarding dog and was determined to re-create it.
Mr. Felix McSnuggles the Third seemed significantly less determined.
On top of that, Aunt Lisa was staying with us while her home was being fumigated, so the house felt more crowded than usual.
Of course, even at Outdoor School, I couldn’t escape my family entirely.
Peter was one of the high school camp counselors this year.
I knew what THAT meant.
Mom seemed to think that having him there would be a good thing. She probably figured I couldn’t handle being on my own, but I’d prove her wrong.
This trip would be the longest I’d ever been away from home, but I actually wasn’t that worried about it.
Maxine, Logan, and Jess would be with me, and I was pretty sure that . . .
Still, the night before the trip, I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.
That’s when I got
The jitters weren’t necessarily BAD, but they weren’t great either. They always showed up at the worst possible time and took up too much space.
Plus, you could never get rid of them when you wanted to.
Every time I’d come close to falling asleep, another thought would wriggle loose and start bouncing around.
I managed to sleep eventually, but when I woke up, they were still there.
I thought they would NEVER go away. . . .
But as soon as we pulled into the parking lot and saw everyone gathering outside, I started getting less nervous and more
So I didn’t notice them as much.
Once we got to school, we were supposed to check in with Mrs. Lopez, this year’s Outdoor School trip advisor. Most of us knew Mrs. Lopez as the school librarian, so at first, it was hard to even imagine her surviving in the wilderness—
until we found out that she used to be a pretty famous rock climber when she was younger.
Who knew?
Mrs. Lopez may have been prepared for the outdoors, but nothing could’ve prepared her for the horde of parents she was facing that morning.
Thankfully, Mom played it cool. Probably because Peter was there with me or because she just didn’t feel like getting out of the car. Or both.
When we said good-bye, it actually hit me that I wouldn’t be home for an entire week, but I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t handle it, so I tried to play it cool too.
Before she drove away, she gave us one of those classically sentimental Mom looks and said,
As soon as she was gone, I went off to find my friends in the crowd and left Peter to do whatever it was a volunteer camp counselor was supposed to do.
Everyone said Outdoor School was going to be an unforgettable experience, but last time I checked, they didn’t have an annoyingly popular older brother as their chaperone.
I didn’t need him to look out for me, and I was going to prove it!
The only problem was, there was so much happening around the bus loop that I didn’t really know where to start.
I couldn’t seem to find my friends anywhere. . . .
And by the time I looked back, I had lost sight of Peter too.
Just when I was starting to get really worried, I heard someone call my name
and turned around to see
She and Peter had been friends for FOREVER, though I wasn’t sure why. Sydney was much cooler than my brother—and she didn’t flaunt it either.
She was the only one of his friends who I actually kind of liked. Maybe because she always treated me like a regular person and NOT like I was her friend’s little sister.
When I was younger, I used to wish that she and Peter would magically switch places so I could have a fun older sister instead.
Once I explained the situation t
o her,
she knew exactly what to do.
Before I knew it, we had dropped off all my stuff, checked in, and found Maxine, Logan, and Jess.
If only I had grown up with HER instead. . . .
When the first bus pulled into the bus loop, I couldn’t believe it! This was no ordinary bus—it was a COACH bus.
It was NOTHING like the beat-up, boring yellow school buses we usually got.
Up until that point, Outdoor School was just some distant idea, but now it finally hit me—
Once all the buses arrived, Mrs. Lopez started separating us into groups and ushering everyone on board.
Maxine, Logan, Jess, and I made sure to stick together so we wouldn’t get separated.
The bus was NOT something any of us wanted to face alone—
even if it WAS a fancy coach bus.
We originally wanted to sit in the back, because everyone said the back was the best place to sit, but Peter and his friends had already taken over!
Of COURSE I ended up on the same bus as Peter. Of COURSE.
I wasn’t thrilled about sharing a bus with my older brother, but everyone else seemed to LOVE it.
Everyone seemed to love HIM.
I knew he didn’t plan it like that, but whether Peter meant to or not, he always had a way of overshadowing me.
This was
I didn’t want it to follow me to Outdoor School too. . . .
Not that I had much of a choice.
We were so different, it was hard to believe we were even related.
At least, everyone else seemed to think so. Personally, I didn’t see it.
As soon as Peter and his friends started telling stories about their time at Outdoor School, they had the entire bus hanging on their every word.
I couldn’t help but overhear.
Up until now, I had thought of this trip as a temporary escape from middle school, but maybe it can be more than that.
I had to admit . . .
their stories were pretty epic.
I had no clue what this week had in store for us, but I guess that was the point.
It was kind of exciting and scary at the same time.
The uncertainty of it brought back those weird jitters, but they didn’t bother me as much this time around.
Maybe I was getting used to them.
The farther we got from Pointdexter Middle School, the more I started to think that maybe this was what I needed.
Maybe this would be an adventure after all!
When we stepped off the bus, it felt like we were stepping into another world.
It was quiet in a calm sort of way.
There was so much green.
It smelled better here, like the pine-fresh smell of cleaning supplies or air freshener—only REAL.
Too bad I only got to enjoy it for eleven minutes and twenty-seven seconds.
As soon as we unloaded all our stuff from the bus, Mrs. Lopez decided to drop the biggest nightmare of a bomb . . .
I hadn’t even considered a scenario where I wasn’t in the same cabin as at least one of my friends. . . .
But turns out, we were ALL SPLIT UP.
Maybe this was Mrs. Lopez’s revenge for that one time I snuck snacks into the library and got crumbs all over the reading carpet.
It was bad enough that we were separated, but it got even worse when I found out who was in MY group.
My cabin counselor was this girl named
Unlike a lot of the other high school volunteers, she didn’t seem all that excited to be there. In fact, she didn’t seem to care at all.
On the other hand, the girls in my cabin were EXTRA excited to be there.
The only problem was, they knew each other already . . .
and they weren’t particularly interested in getting to know me.
Plus, they clicked with each other in a way that I just DIDN’T.
Once Mrs. Lopez finished reading off the whole list of names, everyone started heading to their cabins to unpack.
On the way there, Katrina barely paid attention to where we were going . . .
while Crystal, Lindsay, and Kaley just talked to each other the whole time.
I had no idea what they were talking about and I couldn’t think of anything to say to them, but they didn’t seem to notice one way or the other.
It’s like they forgot I was even there.
When we finally made it to our cabin, things didn’t get much better.
They already had their beds picked out, so I got stuck on the bottom bunk with the lumpy mattress and the weird sweat stains.
I tried to tell myself that it didn’t REALLY matter. I wasn’t planning on spending that much time in the cabin anyway. There was plenty of stuff to do outside.
Plus, I had Maxine, Logan, and Jess. . . .
That night, everyone gathered in
for our official “Welcome to Outdoor School” orientation session.
Despite its intense name, the Arena was actually just this outdoor amphitheater big enough to fit everyone at camp.
We were forced to sit with our cabins for “bonding” purposes, which felt a little excessive. We already had to share a bathroom and sleep in the same room. How much bonding time did we need?
It was a pretty standard “welcome” orientation—laying out the camp rules, introducing all the counselors and staff, encouraging us to “make the most of our time” and all that.
But then, Mrs. Lopez brought up . . .
The Golden Pig wasn’t a REAL pig. It was a metal figurine about as big as an average-size burger.
I’m pretty sure it was just spray-painted gold, but that didn’t matter because it was LEGENDARY.
The Golden Pig was the heart of Outdoor School and the center of a historic camp competition.
The mission was simple.
The entire week was an epic clash of
culminating in one very important question at the end of camp—
This Outdoor School camp tradition had been going on since the beginning of time . . . or at least as long as Outdoor School had been around.
In all the years that Outdoor School and the Golden Pig had existed, the campers had NEVER WON.
The closest they got was Peter’s year. They were only a few hours away from victory, but then . . .
Some people called it a curse, and maybe it was. . . . But curses could be broken, and this year HAD to be different.
If we could do it . . .
if we could keep the Golden Pig away from our camp counselors . . .
if we could break this seemingly unbreakable losing streak . . .
we would go down in Outdoor School history as LEGENDS. Not to mention, we’d be immortalized on . . .
The Wall was a sacred space in the center of camp—one side dedicated to the counselors who were able to steal the Golden Pig, and the other side reserved for the campers who managed to protect it.
Our side was empty.
. . . but not for long. This was OUR year.
Plus, rumor had it that the winning side got a massive victory party with pizza and cake and ice cream floats, while the losing side had to take care of all the end-of-camp cleanup.
We had to win no matter what.
Besides protecting the Golden Pig, there was a lot happening at Outdoor School. The camp was so big that it took us a while to figure out our way around,
but once we did, it felt like a whole new world was open to us.
Life at Outdoor School was NOTHING like what we were used to at Pointdexter.
Instead of an annoying, high-pitched bell going off every few hours, the camp speakers played a series of pleasant, melodic chimes to keep us on schedule.
Our classes weren’t typical math or history classes, and half the time, they didn’t even happen in a classroom!
Then there was the food.
The dining hall at camp was the complete opposite of the cafeteria at school. The kitchen staff always had snacks for us, and their fo
od was actually GOOD.
The best part, though, was
Everything that made Outdoor School different from Pointdexter was great, but it also made things
And NOT in a good way.
I had always known that my friends and I were very different . . . but being different kind of worked for us. Istvan always said that we only had one thing in common:
. . . which honestly seemed like a pretty legitimate basis for friendship to me.
I guess I just thought that, like everything else, we would go through Outdoor School together. . . .
But when it came down to it, they each had REALLY different ideas of how to use their time there.
Jess planned to go on all these intense hiking expeditions. . . .
Logan wanted to check out this exclusive board game society that he heard about from one of the counselors. . . .
And I think Maxine liked the idea of just hanging out with the other girls in her cabin.
