Camp Rules! (5 page)

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Authors: Nancy Krulik

BOOK: Camp Rules!
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Quickly Katie ripped the paper off and took a bite of the granola bar.
Mmm
. That was good. All chewy and honey-flavored. Maybe just one more bite . . .
A moment later, the entire granola bar was gone. Katie had eaten the whole thing. There was nothing left for Rocky.
“That wasn’t a very nice thing for me to do,” Katie murmured quietly. She felt pretty bad. She was also pretty thirsty. She should probably stop at her cabin and get a drink of water before going to archery.
Katie was just a few feet from the Bumblebee cabin when she spotted Rocky. He was sleeping high up in a tree, far from the reach of any humans.
Just seeing Rocky made Katie feel guilty about having eaten his snack. He was really going to have to search hard for food tonight. And it was all her fault.
Katie was too ashamed to even look at Rocky. Feeling sad, she began to walk up the stairs to her empty cabin.
Before she could get very far, a cool breeze began blowing against Katie’s neck. She looked around her. The leaves in the trees were completely still. So were the wildflowers that grew all around her bunk. The wind wasn’t blowing on them.
In fact, the wind wasn’t blowing anywhere, except around Katie! Oh no! This was no ordinary wind. The magic wind had followed Katie all the way to Camp Cedar Hill.
The magic wind grew stronger, circling wildly around Katie like a fierce tornado. It picked up speed, blowing harder and harder.
WHOOSH!
Katie was sure it would blow her away. She shut her eyes tight and tried not to cry.
And then it stopped. Just like that. The magic wind was gone. And so was Katie Carew.
She’d turned into somebody else. One, two, switcheroo!
But who?
 
 
Katie opened her eyes slowly. The sunlight seemed very, very bright to her all of a sudden. It was almost blinding. She blinked a few times and then used her front claws to scratch an itch on her ear.
Wait a minute. Katie didn’t have claws. She had fingers and toes . . . or at least she used to. Now she had claws! Sharp ones!
Katie looked down. Sure enough, her red sneakers were gone. That made sense since her feet were gone, replaced by paws.
Raccoon
paws!
Oh no! The magic wind had turned her into Rocky!
Katie gulped. It had been fun having a raccoon for a pet, but she didn’t want to be one. Especially not one that was as hungry as Rocky was. Katie’s tiny raccoon tummy rumbled with hunger.
Now Katie really wished she’d saved that granola bar. But now there was no granola bar in sight. At least she didn’t think so. It was hard for Katie to see anything. Her little raccoon eyes were meant to see in the dark, not the sunlight. The light made her head hurt.
And she was kind of sleepy. She wasn’t supposed to wake up until nighttime. Well, actually,
Rocky
wasn’t supposed to wake up until then. But since Katie
was
Rocky . . .
Katie couldn’t think about that now. She couldn’t think about anything but how hungry she was. Her little raccoon belly was completely empty.
Katie picked her head up for a moment and sniffed at the air.
Mmmm
. . . something smelled really good. Sweet, like berries.
She turned her head in the direction of the scent. Sure enough, there was a mulberry bush a few feet away. Quickly she shinnied down the tree trunk and scurried over to the mulberries.
One by one, Katie used her raccoon paws to pick the berries off the bush and smush them up. Katie didn’t really know why she was doing that. She had a feeling it had something to do with checking that there wasn’t anything sharp or dangerous in the food, but she couldn’t be sure. It was just some raccoon thing.
Mmm
. . . the mulberries tasted delicious. Katie swallowed the mushed berries and licked every bit of the sweet juice from her front paws. She didn’t want to leave a drop.
The berries were heavenly, but they weren’t very filling. She needed something bigger to eat. Just then she spotted some grubs crawling around a rotting log. She just had to eat them.
Katie stopped for a minute. Grubs.
Yuck
. Why was she so eager to eat disgusting, wormlike bugs?
Because she was a
raccoon
. That’s why. And even though eating squiggly, wiggly bugs wasn’t something Katie would ordinarily do, they were definitely on Rocky’s menu. Quickly Katie scurried over to the log and scooped up a handful of grubs. She used her front paws to squish them up. Then she popped them in her mouth.
Katie sighed. You couldn’t be a vegetarian when you were a raccoon.
They ooey-gooey grubs slimed straight down Katie’s throat. To her raccoon tongue, they actually tasted pretty yummy. Maybe there were some more inside the log. Katie reached in with one of her front paws and felt around.
No. No more grubs. But the inside of the log did feel kind of soft. And it was dark in there. Katie was feeling tired. She thought about crawling inside the log and taking a nap . . .
Suddenly there was a slight shift in the breeze. Katie lifted up her little raccoon head and sniffed at the air.
Mmm
. Something sure smelled good. Kind of sweet and creamy. Like cookies. She sniffed at the air again. The smell was coming from the Bumblebee bunk.
There was food in there.
Good food
.
Katie just had to have it!
Chapter 9
The door to the cabin was shut. But Katie wasn’t giving up. Whatever was inside that cabin was too good.
Katie used her teeth to pull at the bottom of the door. It opened just a crack. But that was enough for Katie to slip her little raccoon paw in and pull the door open a little wider. She snuck right inside.
The cabin was empty. Perfect. No one to shoo her away. It was just the snack and her.
But where was the food? Whoever had been sneaking it into the cabin was smart enough not to leave it out for all to see.
Katie padded around the cabin for a moment, sniffing the air as she moved.
It wasn’t in her cubby—she already knew that. And one good sniff of Chelsea’s side of the cubby let her know there was no food in there, either—although that strawberry lip gloss sure smelled sweet.
But Katie didn’t want shiny lips. She was looking for food. And as she passed by Alicia’s cubby, she knew she’d found it.
The sweet smell of peanuts and sugar was coming through plain and clear. There was definitely some sort of candy in that cubby. It was in the bottom shelf. Perfect! Katie wouldn’t even have to climb to get it!
She reached her paw into the cubby and began to yank Alicia’s clothes out of the way. Her raccoon claws finally landed on something hard. There, hidden inside Alicia’s green-and-white Camp Cedar Hill T-shirt was a half-eaten pack of cookies.
Oh yeah!
Supper time!
Quickly Katie climbed inside the shirt and took a cookie in her front paws. She opened her raccoon jaws wide. But before she could even take one bite, the cabin door swung open.
“AHHH!” From inside her T-shirt dining room, Katie could hear Chelsea’s screams.
“That T-shirt!” Chelsea yelled. “It’s moving all by itself. It’s a
ghost
! The evil camper ghost! Alicia wasn’t making it up!”
Katie remembered how scared of ghosts Chelsea was. She wanted to show her that she wasn’t a ghost at all. She was just a little, hungry raccoon.
Katie struggled to climb out of the shirt. But the more she rolled and wriggled to get free, the more she got tangled in Alicia’s big camp T-shirt.
“The ghost is going crazy!” Chelsea cried out.
“Chels, calm down,” Katie heard her counselor’s voice. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
Suddenly Katie heard a loud whirring noise. Chelsea screamed again. Her hair dryer was in her left hand. A blast of hot air shot right at Katie.
“What are you doing?” Shannon shouted.
“I’m trying to blow it out of here!” Chelsea shouted.
“You’re blow-drying a ghost?” Shannon asked, amazed.
“I thought you said there were no such things as ghosts?” Chelsea demanded.
“There aren’t,” Shannon said. “I just meant that . . .”
At just that minute, Katie managed to poke her little raccoon head out of the neck of the shirt.
“AHHH!” Now it was Shannon’s turn to scream. “It’s a raccoon! I hate raccoons!”
Shannon could scream even louder than Chelsea. The loud shouts, the whirring of the hair dryer, and all that hot air were making Katie very scared. Her baby raccoon heart was beating fast. She dropped the cookie, wriggled out of the shirt, and jumped up on top of one of the beds.
“Get out! Get out!” Shannon screamed, picking up a broom and trying to shoo Katie to the door. Katie leaped out of the way of the swinging broom and scrambled across the floor, knocking over a trash can as she ran.
“Get out! Get out!” Shannon shouted again.
Katie gulped. Her counselor was swinging the broom wildly. She didn’t care if she hit Katie or not.
Of course, Shannon didn’t know she was Katie. She thought she was a raccoon. Not that that made it any better.
Katie had to get out of there, and fast! She leaped up onto a top bunk and looked for a way to escape.
There was only one way out—through the windows. But they weren’t open. And she had no time to figure out how to open the latch with her paws. So Katie escaped the only way she knew how.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
In an instant Katie had used her sharp raccoon claws to tear a hole in the screen window. A hole just big enough for a raccoon to slip through.
And in a moment Katie was free!
But Shannon was right behind her.
“Raccooooon!” she shouted out.
“Raccooooon!”
Luckily, Katie spotted the hollow log where she’d been snacking a few minutes before. She leaped into the hole and pulled her head down low.

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