Camp Castaway

by Belinda Murrell

  I stood up as quietly as I could, stretching my cramped muscles.

  Suddenly, a torch shone in my face.

  ‘Spot you!’ said Alex with a huge grin. ‘Pippa and Meg, behind the wall.’

  Then he dashed for the can.

  ‘Go, Pippa,’ yelled Ariana from jail. ‘Go, Meg!’

  Meg and I raced after Alex, but my legs were still stiff and sore. Meg was ahead of me, but Alex beat us both to the can.

  We were caught! My heart sank with disappointment.

  ‘Into jail you go, my prisoners,’ joked Alex with a bow, as he waved us into the jail. ‘Don’t even think of trying to escape! I have lots of other prisoners to find yet.’

  Ariana, Jemila and Sienna were sitting cross-legged on a groundsheet. They smiled at us in welcome. Ariana looked different. Her brown eyes were shining and her face was pink from running.

  ‘Come and join us,’ said Sienna, patting the groundsheet next to her. ‘It’s going to be a long game.’

  ‘Looks like nearly all the Turtles are in jail,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Except for Olivia,’ added Meg.

  ‘Olivia’s good at hiding,’ said Jemila. ‘She won’t be found for ages.’

  ‘Olivia’s good at everything,’ said Ariana proudly.

  She certainly is, I thought to myself.

  We sat cross-legged and watched as Alex searched around the tents. It seemed like we were sitting there a long time while he prowled around the campsite. A couple of kids broke their cover and ran to find new hiding spots.

  I huffed with boredom. I didn’t like just sitting here doing nothing. I wanted to be running and hiding and playing too. Jemila and Sienna started whispering about gymnastics. Meg and Ariana were playing a complicated game with a piece of string Meg had in her pocket.

  When Alex was around the other side of the Starfish tent, I heard a soft scuffle nearby. I swung my head around to check.

  ‘Pssst,’ hissed a voice from the kitchen area. ‘It’s me. Olivia.’

  I checked to see where Alex was. He was still out of sight. I turned towards Olivia. She was lying down behind some eskies but was in plain sight if Alex came back.

  ‘Careful, Olivia,’ I whispered. ‘He’ll hear you and catch you too.’

  ‘I’m going to rescue you,’ said Olivia. ‘I’ll attract Alex’s attention then race for the can. You need to be ready to run for your lives.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sienna asked. ‘Alex is really fast.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘But I’ll have the element of surprise. Besides, I can’t let my Turtle team suffer in prison.’

  My heart warmed. We were prisoners and Olivia was going to risk getting caught herself to set us free.

  ‘Thanks, Olivia,’ I said. ‘We’ll be ready.’

  ‘Is it clear?’ asked Olivia. ‘Where’s Alex?’

  I checked. ‘He’s searching the edge of the bush behind Mrs Marshall’s tent. You can go now.’ Olivia slithered out backwards and ran bent over towards the nearest tent.

  I stood up and stretched as though I was getting stiff from sitting down. Ariana and Meg jumped to their feet too. We wanted to be ready to make a break for it when Olivia gave us the chance. Jemila and Sienna pretended to practise their gymnastic warm-ups.

  Over near the tent, Olivia deliberately knocked over a bucket, which clanged a warning.

  Alex darted out from behind the tents. ‘Spot you, Olivia.’

  They both raced towards the can, but Olivia was much closer. Alex put on a spurt of speed and began to catch up. Olivia’s ponytail was flying out behind her as her legs pumped.

  I jigged up and down with excitement. ‘Run, Olivia,’ I yelled. ‘You can do it.’

  ‘Go, go!’ yelled Meg, grabbing my arm tightly. ‘He’s right behind you.’

  Alex was hot on Olivia’s tail. He was going to catch her.

  ‘I can’t bear to watch,’ cried Sienna. She covered her eyes with her hands, but then peeked through her fingers.

  ‘She’s not going to make it,’ cried Ariana.

  Olivia didn’t pause. She reached the can a split second before Alex and gave it an almighty kick at full speed. The can flew into the air and soared to the far boundary of the clearing. Olivia tumbled over and slid across the ground, her arms and legs flailing.

  I screamed, jumping up and down, clutching at Meg. Alex slumped with disappointment, then set off after the can at a half-jog. He was puffed and coughed a little as he ran. Olivia sat up and looked back at us.

  ‘Run!’ she screamed. We had forgotten our instructions in all the excitement.

  We didn’t need reminding again. We all raced as fast as we could for the safety of the shadows. Olivia jumped up and jogged after us. I looked back and gave her a thumbs-up sign. She grinned at me, then disappeared into the trees.

  We were safe. At least for now. The game continued with Alex hunting for prisoners to catch with his torch.

  He had just caught me for the second time when Zoe rang the bell to call us back. It was time to get ready for bed. We all straggled back into the centre of camp to clean our teeth and wash our faces. None of us wanted to go to bed yet. Some of the boys seemed particularly slow, taking their time to appear. We all hung around the wash buckets, talking in the lamplight.

  ‘Okay, kids,’ said Zoe, pretending to be stern. ‘Enough chatting. It’s time to go to bed.’

  Meg and I said goodnight to Charlie, Cici and Ariana before wandering back to our tent.

  Alex walked past and gave me a crooked half-smile. He coughed into his fist. Alex must have been puffed after all that running.

  Inside the tent we all changed into our pyjamas by torchlight. Olivia had a headlamp – it shone in the centre of her forehead like a bright round eye. We had to stoop while we changed or we brushed our heads on the roof.

  We crawled into our beds. I wriggled my legs down and bumped something weird at the bottom of my sleeping-bag. Something hard and prickly. Something that definitely shouldn’t be there. I pulled my legs out super-fast. Was it alive?

  ‘Eeek!’ screeched Olivia and Sienna in unison, arms and legs thrashing.

  ‘Ouch,’ yelled Jemila, struggling out of her bag.

  ‘What’s is it?’ I cried.

  Meg rummaged down to the foot of her sleeping-bag and pulled out a large, brown pine cone. She held it up. ‘Someone has been playing tricks … again.’

  I reached my hand in and pulled out a matching pine cone. All five of us had one buried in our bedding. We looked at each other. From Charlie and Cici’s tent next door, we could hear the sound of similar shrieks.

  ‘Sounds like someone has been playing pranks on the other girls as well,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the boys,’ said Sienna. ‘They must have crept in here while we were cleaning our teeth.’

  ‘Right,’ said Olivia. ‘It’s time we took revenge.’

  We all crawled out of our beds, ready for action.

  ‘What should we do?’ asked Sienna.

  ‘Collapse the tents, like they did to us,’ I said.

  ‘Throw a bucket of water over their beds,’ suggested Meg.

  ‘Great idea,’ said Sienna. ‘But Mrs Marshall wouldn’t like it one bit.’

  ‘It might be worth it to see their faces,’ said Jemila. I wasn’t so sure. Mrs Marshall could be very scary when she was angry.

  ‘Throw pine cones in their tent like grenades,’ said Sienna.

  ‘Mrs Marshall would hate that too,’ said Meg. ‘And we might hurt someone.’

  Olivia thought hard. Then she smiled.

  ‘We’ll need to be super-quiet,’ she whispered. ‘We don’t want to warn them.’

  Then Olivia outlined her plan. The Great Prank Revenge Plan. It was brilliant!

  ‘But we’ll need to wait awhile until everyone has fallen asleep,’ said Meg.

  We switched off our torches and lay down in our beds again. I didn’t feel at all sleepy. The five of us whispered in the dark about our day. Talking ab
out the day’s activities reminded me how irritated I’d been with Olivia during our orienteering challenge, and how frightened we’d been when we thought they were lost. All that frustration had disappeared when we played the compliment game and watched the turtle hatchlings. Then Olivia had risked herself to set us free during our kick-the-can game. I’d never expected her to do that. I felt a little ashamed that I was always so quick to judge her.

  ‘That was a great rescue you did tonight, Olivia,’ I said. ‘I thought we’d be stuck in jail forever.’

  Olivia paused for a moment in the darkness.

  ‘No problem,’ she said finally. ‘It was fun.’

  ‘I thought Alex was going to catch you for sure,’ said Jemila. ‘He was just a second away from overtaking you.’

  ‘Go, Team Turtle!’ said Sienna.

  I remembered how Olivia had kicked the can at full pelt, then tumbled over, sliding through the dirt.

  ‘That was a fantastic kick,’ I said.

  ‘Soccer skills can come in handy,’ said Meg. ‘Olivia is one of our best goal shooters.’

  ‘We play soccer during the winter season,’ explained Olivia. ‘You should join our team, Pippa. You’d love it.’

  I felt a thrill of excitement. Had I heard correctly? Did Olivia just invite me to join her winter soccer team? I’d never played properly before, I’d only ever mucked around with Harry, Bella and Summer in the back garden. But I was sure I could learn.

  ‘Thanks, Olivia,’ I said. ‘I’d really like that.’

  After about half an hour, everything seemed silent outside.

  ‘Is everyone still awake?’ whispered Meg.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Is it time to go?’

  ‘Don’t forget to watch out for the guy ropes,’ Olivia warned. ‘We don’t want anyone to trip and give us away.’

  We climbed out of bed without turning on our torches and pulled on our shoes as quietly as we could. Then we crept out of the flap of our tent. I brought my sleeping-bag, wrapped around me like a cloak.

  Outside, the campsite was super-quiet. We could see lamplight shining from Nigel’s tent at the very far end of the row. Solar lamps were placed at regular intervals so that people could see if they needed to go out during the night. Thousands of stars burned brilliantly overhead.

  Olivia crept towards Alex’s tent. We all followed, treading carefully and silently. Meg grabbed an empty bucket, which clinked gently. Olivia held up her hand in warning and we all froze. A few moments later, she waved us on again.

  Olivia undid the ribbon that fastened the flap of the Porpoises’ tent, then slowly, carefully unzipped the mosquito netting along the bottom. We all held our breaths as the zip rasped like fingernails down a chalkboard. I was so sure the boys would wake up and we’d be caught red-handed.

  Olivia reached inside the gap at the bottom of the tent and fumbled around inside. She pulled out a shoe. The girls passed it back to Meg to put in her bucket. A few more shoes came out and several disgusting socks.

  ‘Eeeew,’ whispered Jemila, pinching her nose. ‘These stink.’

  ‘Shhh,’ warned Meg.

  Next out came a backpack. The top was open and clothes were spilling out. Sienna shoved everything back inside, closed it and handed it to me. I shoved it inside my sleeping-bag. Olivia stretched her arm deeper inside the gap. She pulled out another backpack and passed it to me, then an armful of loose clothing. I stuffed it all into my sleeping-bag.

  In a few minutes we had grabbed everything we could reach from the annexe of the boys’ tent – an assortment of shoes, clothes and bags. These were replaced with the five pine cones that we’d discovered in our beds.

  Olivia zipped the tent back up and we sneaked away. Meg carried the bucket of smelly shoes and socks. I carried my oversized Santa Claus sack.

  As planned, we took our stash to the ruins of the closest whaling cottage. We carefully piled everything up behind a wall. Then we went back to the other boys’ tent and did another raid. We were able to reach even more stuff from that tent as most of the clothes seemed to be in a massive jumble on the floor.

  We took as much as we could reach from outside and hid it all in the ruins. Then we tiptoed to our tent and crawled back into bed.

  ‘We did it,’ said Jemila as she snuggled down into her pine-cone-free sleeping-bag.

  ‘And we didn’t get caught,’ added Meg. ‘It was the perfect commando raid.’

  We giggled with excitement at our success.

  ‘Great work, Team Turtle,’ said Sienna.

  ‘I can’t wait to see the boys’ faces in the morning!’ said Olivia.

  ‘They are going to be soooo cross,’ I said with huge delight.

  Later, deep in the middle of the night, something woke me. I felt thirsty and needed to go to the bathroom. That is if we had a bathroom! I grabbed my torch, crawled out of the tent flap and stood up, stretching. I didn’t turn the torch on just yet. Overhead was the round moon, smiling down on our campsite, and a vast sky, spangled with stars. I looked up in awe.

  It took me a moment to realise that there was a strange noise. A wheezing, panting, gasping sound. I froze. It must be some sort of wild animal wandering in our campground. I looked around in the dim light of the fading solar lamps, trying to locate where it was coming from. It was near the campfire.

  I crept closer. It wasn’t an animal. It was a person making that terrible noise. Someone sitting on a bench by the glowing coals of the campfire.

  I crept closer still and realised that it was one of the boys. He didn’t sound at all well.

  ‘Huh … Huh … Huh,’ he gasped, struggling for breath.

  ‘Hello? Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Is … that … you, Pippa?’ It was Alex.

  ‘It’s … my … asthma … I can’t … breathe … well.’

  He was struggling to get the words out. It made my heart leap with panic. The horrible wheezing reminded me of when Bella was a baby and had a croup attack. I remembered Mum’s white, scared face, and her trying to help Bella to breathe as we waited for the ambulance. I wished Mum were here now. She’d know what to do.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ I asked. ‘Shall I wake Mrs Marshall?’

  Alex shook his head. ‘I’ll … be … okay … soon.’

  It definitely didn’t sound like it. I felt sick in my stomach. We were on a deserted island a long way from a hospital. What if Alex was really, really ill? What if he stopped breathing altogether?

  I felt relieved when another shadow slipped beside us. It was Ariana.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘I heard a strange noise, but wasn’t sure what it was. Then I heard you talking, so I came out to see if you needed help.’

  ‘Huh … Huh … Huh …’ Alex wheezed, painfully sucking in air. He sounded worse by the minute. I glanced at Ariana in horror.

  ‘My cousin gets terrible asthma,’ Ariana said calmly. ‘Do you have a puffer or some medicine we can get, Alex?’

  ‘Couldn’t … find … puffer …’ panted Alex. ‘Couldn’t … find … bag.’

  Of course! We’d stolen the boys’ bags and now Alex couldn’t find his puffer medicine when he really needed it. This was our fault.

  ‘I think I know where your puffer is,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘I’ll wait with Alex,’ said Ariana, sitting on the bench beside him and patting his back. ‘Maybe you should get Zoe too.’

  She turned back to Alex. ‘Just breathe slowly, Alex. In … Out …’

  I ran as fast as I could. I raced through the darkness with my torch shining the way. My first stop was Zoe’s tent. Zoe was a volunteer surf lifesaver. She’d know what to do. I stuck my head in the opening.

  ‘Zoe. Zoe,’ I called urgently. ‘Wake up. Quickly.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Pippa?’ Zoe’s voice sounded calm and reassuring from the darkness.

  ‘Alex is having an asthma attack. He can’t breathe properly. I’m going to find his puffer.’
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  ‘I’m coming,’ said Zoe, crawling towards me.

  ‘He’s by the fire.’

  I didn’t wait for her to come out. I raced for the ruins.

  I stared in dismay at the messy pile of belongings the light of my torch revealed. I didn’t realise we’d taken so much stuff. There were T-shirts, shorts, hats, runners and towels, all jumbled together. The puffer could be anywhere.

  I started scrabbling through the pile, my heart pounding with panic. I stopped and thought. I needed to be methodical about this.

  Alex had said he couldn’t find his bag. So the puffer must be in there, not loose with all the other stuff. I hurriedly checked the four bags we had. There it was. Alex Gilbert, written neatly in black marker across the back. I unzipped the bag and began rummaging through his things. It made me feel horribly guilty to be rifling through Alex’s private belongings. But I had to find the puffer.

  Where could it be? I was searching too fast. It would be easy to miss. Then I had a brainwave. If I had packed something like that, I’d put it in a special spot, not just loose with everything else. I’d put it in one of the small, outer pockets.

  I unzipped the first one, then the next and searched. There it was. Packed in a clear Ziploc bag in the smallest pocket. I snatched up the puffer and raced back to the campfire.

  Zoe was there with Alex and Ariana. She was speaking calmly and gently rubbing his back around and around.

  ‘Huh … Huh … Huh,’ wheezed Alex. Was it my imagination or did he sound even worse?

  ‘Good boy, Alex,’ murmured Zoe. ‘You’re okay. Just breathe slowly.’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ I cried, brandishing the puffer triumphantly. ‘I found the puffer.’

  ‘Great work, Pippa,’ said Zoe. She peeled open the bag and pulled out the blue-and-grey puffer, carefully reading the directions. She removed the cap, shook it gently and handed it to Alex. He put the puffer in his mouth, pressed the top down to release the medicine then inhaled.

  ‘Okay, Alex,’ said Zoe. ‘Now breathe.’