Chapter One
Well, it’s two weeks into summer camp and I have to tell you, I am having a terrific time. It’s my secone summer away from home and boy was I nervous. But now I’m totally cool and happy. I still miss my mom and my dog… and my dad, but I don’t miss them that I cry about it. It’s just a little miss like I haven’t eaten in a while and I’m hungry for something. That little pain in the stomach. I don’t know why they say the heart is where all the feelings are. I feel everything in my stomach. I guess they picked the heart because it’s a prettier shape than the stomach.
Anyhow, here I am at camp. My name is Clara Hannah and I’m 10 years old. I have lots of friends here. I have friends at home too, but none of them came to this camp except the camp friends that I now see at home, but they’re camp friends. Get it?
I also have a brother here at camp. His name is JD. It’s short for Jack Dylan. He’s a couple of years older than me. We see each other every day. We love each other even if we’re very different.
Well I thought that I should start a journal about camp because, well, some weird things have started to happen and I want to try and keep them straight. It all started when my mom sent me this string bracelet. It looked like an ordinary bracelet, but as soon as I put it on, some strange things started to happen. Time for bed, I’ll write more tomorrow.
Chapter Two
Hi, it’s me Clara again. We had pancakes for breakfast and a yummy salad for lunch! I make the best salads. I love to eat. I like to eat all kinds of foods. I even ate raw oysters. Ok, I didn’t like them. It’s rest hour now. No one really rests. We just play games and sing songs and dance around a lot. Sometimes I lay on my bunk and think about home and my good dog Carli. She’s a great dog. She’s my second dog. My first dog died a couple of years ago. His name was Waldo. I loved him very much and cried a lot when he died. Daddy says that Waldo still lives in our hearts. I think he’s right.
Anyway, enough sad stuff.
So my mom sent me a string bracelet. It’s really pretty and totally cool. It took her like a week to make. It has purple hearts on it which means there are hearts all the way down the bracelet, purple on the outside and gold on the inside. She made one like this for me before, but I gave it to my friend Sarafina. She also made one with blue hearts, but I really like the purple hearts better. Anyway, as soon as my counselor, Ellen, tied on the bracelet, the weirdest thing happened, I got a shock. A real electric shock. It was like someone walked on carpeting and touched my nose, but there was no carpeting and no spark! I yelled when she finished tying it on and she thought she pinched me. But she didn’t, it just shocked my arm. And when I looked at the bracelet, I swear I saw the hearts beat. Only once, but I could swear they went, ba-bump, just like a heart goes.
Ellen said that she must have pinched me and she just laughed when I told her I saw the hearts move. After a minute, I too thought I must have imagined it.
OK rest hour over. Time to go to cheerleading! I’ll write more later.
Chapter Three
So it’s bedtime now. I showed three of my BFF’s (that stands for Best Friends Forever if you didn’t know) Julie and Julie (isn’t that funny that they’re both my friends and they’re both named Julie!!) and Raquel my new bracelet. They totally loved it. I’ll ask mom to make them each one. I hope she’s able to do it.
Anyway, at cheerleading, another funny thing happened. I was learning to do a back handspring. It’s really fun btw when you know how. I thought I would fall back and break my head, but the gymnastics teacher, Jennifer, is really really good. She just put her hand under my back and gave me a little push and I landed just right! I’m really proud of myself. Camp is definitely a fun place to learn new things. They say we may go camping out soon. I never thought I would want to do that. At home I’m a little scared sometimes to do things, but I have to tell you, I think I’m becoming brave! Well after about 5 practice runs at doing a back handspring, Jennifer didn’t need to push my back. I just ran and jumped and flipped and landed all by myself!! And when I landed it, even before I smiled, my bracelet shocked me again! It was almost as if the bracelet said “GREAT JOB” with its shock. Jennifer yelled “You did it Clara” and she asked if I was ok. I was a little, well, shocked. The shock of finally doing the gymnastic move and also the shock that my bracelet did something that made no sense again. I decided not to tell anyone about my shocking bracelet. At least not yet anyway. They would think I was going a little coo-coo.
Boy am I tired. At home sometimes it takes me a long time to fall asleep, but here at camp I usually just close my eyes and…..
Chapter Four
I woke up early today. I like the quiet times in the morning. The bunk is all still except for some sleeping noises and the light creaking of the beds. The sky was getting light. I heard two crows. One was closer than the other. I imagined were talking to each other. One calls out, “CAW, CAW CAW!” and then a few seconds later I would hear the other one answer “CAW CAW!” There was also an owl who would chime in once in a while, Hoo, Hoo. I couldn’t really see the birds because I was in my bed and they were up in tall trees outside, but in my head I could see them clearly. The crows are black and tall with black beaks and black shiny eyes. They’re not scary though. The owl is wise and thoughtful and brown. They’re just birds talking and saying good morning to each other. As they cawed and hooted, I imagined their conversation:
Crow 1: Hey Crow, any worms over there?
Crow 2: No Crow, none here, how about over there?
Crow 1: Nope. Maybe we should fly somewhere else.
Crow 2: Yeah, maybe we should.
Owl: I like mice, any mice over there?
Crow 2: Hey Crow, you speak owl? I have no idea what that guy is saying.
Well, as I’m listening to the birds and seeing the sky get lighter and smelling that pleasantly heavy wet grass morning smell, I looked at my bracelet. I ponder, did I really get shocked by it? Did I really see the hearts beat once? I know it doesn’t make any sense. But you know what? I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense. I think it happened. Thinking about it this morning, it seems possible. The world is just waking up. The day is brand new. My dad would say “today is an anything can happen day” and that “it’s up to me to make it a great day.” So if that’s true, maybe I can choose to believe my bracelet is special. Yup, that’s what I’m going to do. As soon as I decided that, the bracelet shocked me just a tiny shock, as if saying, “thanks.”
Chapter Five
Wow, what a day! I still can’t believe all the things that happened. I went knee boarding for the first time in my life. I was really scared at first. I saw a girl named Melinda fall off earlier in the week and she cried. She got water up her nose and was coughing a lot. Then she sneezed and all this water came out of her nose. We all laughed at the gusher, but she thought it was scary and she cried some more. Our counselor took her to the nurse and now she’s ok. Well anyway, I had that vision in my head of her snot waterfall and I sure didn’t want that to happen to me. But Julie G (not Julie H) did it first and she’s smaller than me. I wanted to be brave, but was really scared. My mom is always telling me to do new things, but sometimes new things are hard for me. I was about to say “no” when my turn came, but before I could, I got a big shock from my bracelet. I looked down at it and the hearts grew in size in one big heart beat – Boom! I knew that it was trying to stop me from making a bad decision. So I thought to myself, “should I do it?” And the heart bracelet gave me a little friendly shock. I told Abbey (the waterfront counselor) that I would go next. Boy am I happy that I did! It was so much fun!!! I loved it so much, it was a “day maker!” I went around and around and bounced a lot but stayed on the board all the way. When I got off the board and came back on shore, the bracelet’s hearts were beating nice and fast and it gave me one last happy shock of appreciation. At least that it felt like and it made me even happier! I know this is crazy stuff, but I really think that my bracelet is proud of me!
Chapter 6
Last night was sooo unbelievable. I’m a little tired today, so I’m actually resting at rest hour. Most all my bunk is resting.. The reason we’re so tired is because we were up for three hours in the middle of the night.
The night time was pretty normal. We had a yummy dinner of tacos and salad. We then got ice cream for dessert. There was no moon, so it was really dark. We all went to sleep after some silly songs and cheers. We switch around beds a lot, but tonight I fell asleep in my own bed. I was dreaming a happy dream about something I can’t remember now when my bracelet shocked me. I woke up a little, but wanted to get back to the dream so I closed my eyes. It shocked me twice more and that got me fully awake. I thought to myself, “am I in danger?” my bracelet shocked me softly two times quickly. I thought, “am I ok?” my bracelet shocked me softly one time. Is my name Poopyhead? I got two quick shocks. Is my name Clara” I got one little shock. Wow! Whatever was communicating with me through the bracelet now had a way to tell me things! I asked, did you get me up for a reason? one shock. Should I stay here? two shocks. OK, I’m not in danger, but I shouldn’t stay here. Should I go outside? one shock. I quietly got out of my top bunk. My counselor didn’t wake up. She snorted a little snore but stayed awake. I heard one girl across the bunk fart in her sleep. Just a little meeeep. I giggled a little but again no one woke up. I walked to the door of the cabin and slowly opened it. Normally I would have been scared to do anything like this. But since coming to camp, i’ve gotten braver. That, plus my bracelet said “no” when I asked if I was in danger. The spring creaked a lot when the door opened and I slowly closed it so it wouldn’t slam. I took two steps out. It was so dark but there were millions of stars in the sky. There was no moon, so the stars seemed even brighter. I was just looking up at the stars when out of the corner of my eye I saw…
Chapter 6 (continued)
I was just looking up at the stars when out of the corner of my eye I saw a bright flash. The next second another flash. The next second the brightest streak flashed across the whole sky! It was meteor shower!! I’d never seen a shooting star before and now I just saw three! My dad always tells me about stars and nature and stuff. I usually tell him to stop talking about it. I say things like “dad, I’m not in school, why are you always trying to teach me.” But he never told me it could be this cool! Then another streak. This was a shooting star festival! What did they call this, I think it’s a meteor shower. My bracelet shocked me one little shock to tell me I got it right. Should I get anyone else to see this? I thought I should. Before I went in though, I sat down and enjoyed the view all to myself for two minutes. it was a great show and it was all for me. After about 100 shooting stars which took only a minute or so, I went back in the cabin. I woke up Julie and Julie first and they weren’t so quiet as I was. They were a little cranky, but since I never did anything liek this before, they knew it must be important. I told them to follow me outside. I think because they were so sleepy they didn’t even ask why. As soon as we got outside and cleared the roof of the cabin, three shooting stars streaked across the sky at the same time. One lasted longer than the other two and made it almost all the way from one side of the sky to the other. Both Julies went at the same time “Oh!!!!” and then when the long shooting star went out they both yelled out “COOL!” Well that woke up the whole cabin. All the counselors came out and then all the kids too. Ellen, who is really smart, said, “Oh yeah. It’s the Perseids Meteor shower. I forgot it was tonight.” For the next two hours it was like the fourth of July outside, but even cooler because it wasn’t something that people made. It was coming from outer space. Every few seconds a bright streak across the starry sky. Ellen explained that the shooting stars were really small bit of dust, sort of like grains of sand, burning up as they came too close to Earth. No while I was amazed at this explanation, it also made me a little sad. All the grains of sand wanted to do was to come home and instead of getting back down to Earth, they burned up instead. Poor sand.
Chapter 7
Wow! I can’t believe I haven’t written almost a week! Well so much has happened. My bracelet was very quiet for a while after the meteor shower. Camp was going along smoothly and I was having a great time. OK, well like I said, my bracelet was pretty quiet – meaning I didn’t get any shocks or see any hearts beat or anything. My mom sent me up my i-touch to camp. I tried to text my friends, my home friends that is, but it doesn’t work. We’re not allowed to have phones that can make phone calls or can get online. So my i-touch is only good for apps, not texting. Until, two nights ago in the middle of the night, I heard a very soft buzz from my i-touch. I got up and there was a text. It said, “miss me?” There was no signal bars and no other signs off anyone else in the cabin that could have typed on it. It must be mom I thought. I quietly typed back, “mom, is that you?” I got back the response, “nope.” And my bracelet shocked me. I sat up wide awake now. “Are you real?” I typed. “Yup.” And another shock. “Are you a friend?” I typed. “An old friend,” it typed back. “What’s your name?” I asked. “You know it,” it typed. I typed, “no, I don’t.” And there was a long pause. And then slowly the letters started to come out on the screen – “You don’t remember me? I am G…”
To be continued…
Chapter 7 continued…
And then slowly the letters started to come out on the screen – “You don’t remember me? I am …Ganda.” Ganda. GANDA! I thought in a flash. My imaginary friend from when I was little! Ganda! I can’t believe it. Am I dreaming? I pinched my arm and Ouch! It hurt. I typed back, “Ganda?? You’re make believe.” “No, I’m not. I’m real. I’m here and when you let your mind open and be free I can be with you again just like when you were three.” “Where have you been?” I asked. “I’m always with you Hannah. I’m just not always in your ‘now.’” Not in my “now?” I asked myself. My dad sometimes spoke to me about the specialness of “now.” He liked to talk about “time” a lot. He said that time was a funny thing. Even though we measure it with calendars and watches and clocks, we’re always in the same time, now. We are always and have always been and will always be “right now.” When we were born, it was now. When we learned to ride a bike, it was now. It’s not the end of camp yet, but when it happens it will be now. I sort of get it, but mostly when he says these things I roll my eyes and laugh at him. But now, I have to think again about what it is to be “now.” I type to Ganda, “So you’re here right now because I’m thinking about you?” “Yes and also because this it’s a special place. Camp is special.” I know camp is special. It’s a lot like real life, but I get to be a little more grown up and still get to do lots of fun kid stuff. Ganda typed again, “go back to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day.” And with that, my i-touch shut off.
You would think that after such a fantastical thing like this happened, I would never go to sleep. But you would be wrong. I felt warm and loved and full of wonder. I always like the feel of a heavy blanket on my to sleep. It’s a little hug. That’s how I felt, I felt like my old best friend showed up and gave me a big hug. I also felt very very sleepy….
Hannah gets a lead in the play. Terrific Ten instead of Fantastic Four. The Object instead of The Thing.
Use this some point?
My parents came up for visiting weekend (most camps have a visiting “day” but we’re so lucky we get a whole weekend). We went to beautiful lake called Lake Lafar. We had a great time. My dad made me hike off the path, but it was worth it. We saw the lake in the early morning and it was beautiful. My brother got stung by a bee, but other than that it was great.
Counselors names Alaina, Halley, Jenny
Kids Sydney Andi Alisa, Chelsea, Sammy Sophia
Make It a Good Story 