Cool Campers

Table of Contents

 

 

VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in 2010 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

 

Text copyright © Mike Knudson, 2010

Illustrations copyright © Stacy Curtis, 2010
All rights reserved

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Knudson, Mike.

Raymond and Graham, cool campers / by Mike Knudson ; illustrated by Stacy Curtis. p. cm.

Summary: Best friends Raymond and Graham decide to reinvent themselves when they go to Camp Grizzly over the summer.

eISBN : 978-1-101-52881-5

[1. Camps—Fiction. 2. Popularity—Fiction. 3. Best friends—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Curtis, Stacy, ill.

II. Title. III. Title: Cool campers.

PZ7.K7836Rao 2010

[Fic]—dc22

2009024899

 

 

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To Randy Evans and David Cope, two cool campers!

—M.K.

 

For Michael, Mason, and Shana

—S.C.

THE FINAL BELL
rang, and the school year was officially over. We grabbed our backpacks, said good-bye to Mrs. Gibson, and ran for the front doors. Summer was here! The air smelled more like summer than it had even an hour ago at recess. I couldn't wait for sleepovers, staying up late, and best of all . . . SUMMER CAMP.

IT WAS MONDAY
afternoon. School had ended over a week ago. I heard the doorbell and ran down the stairs. I knew it was my best friend, Graham. I jumped down the last three stairs only to find my sister already opening the door.

“Why hello, Geri,” I heard Graham say from the front porch. “It's so lovely to see you.”

“Oh, it's you,” she said in her you're-even-dorkier-than-my-brother voice. And without another word she turned and walked away.

“Have a nice day,” Graham called after her, with a big smile stretched across his freckly face. He was always saying stuff like that to my sister.

“How come you're so nice to her?” I asked. “She's just as mean to you as she is to me. She thinks we're both dorks.”

“Yeah, but I think she's been nicer to me lately. She probably thinks I'm cool now.”

I looked down at Graham, who was much smaller than me. His legs were whiter than his socks, and his T-shirt was tucked into the front of his underpants. “I'm not so sure about that,” I said.

“Well, she's still an older lady.” Graham smiled. “And she's pretty cute.”

A shiver went down my spine. “
Geri?
Are you serious? First of all, she's no lady. She's just my mean thirteen-year-old sister. Second of all, have you ever heard her burp? There's definitely nothing ladylike about that! And thirdly . . . don't ever say she's cute. That's just plain sick.”

“Okay, okay, don't have a heart attack,” Graham said, shaking his head.

We went up to my room and took turns shooting my little foam ball through the plastic rim on the back of my door. “So what should we do tonight? We need to celebrate,” Graham said.

“I know. This is going to be the best week ever!” The next day we were going to Camp Grizzly for four days. We had been looking forward to this forever. “Finally, we get to go to the real Camp Grizzly instead of Grizzly Cub camp.” Grizzly Cub camp was always in August, but the camp for bigger kids was at the very beginning of the summer. It was so much cooler to be leaving right after school ended instead of having to wait.

Graham smiled and moved his eyebrows up and down. “I heard we get to have a marshmallow roast with the girls from Camp Wildflower. Diane told me that Kelly is going to camp this year too.”

Graham had liked Kelly since the first grade, back when all of us boys thought girls had cooties and all the girls thought boys were gross. It was weird. I kind of liked Heidi, another girl in our class, but I would never have told her. Graham didn't care if people knew how he felt about Kelly. And even though she didn't like him back, he didn't mind. He just kept liking her anyway.

“Well, we should definitely do something fun tonight, since it's our last night at home for the rest of the week,” I said.

Graham's face lit up. “Let's have a party! We can invite people over and play hide-and-seek outside.”

“Great idea!” We hadn't really played any games with the neighborhood gang since school ended. Graham lived next door to Heidi, and Diane's house was on the other side of Graham's backyard fence. A lot of our other friends lived within a block or two. I lived about two blocks up the road from Graham, but I always wished I could live next door to him.

We called a few people, but only Zach answered, and he was busy. We decided to walk over to Diane's house, and we found her and Heidi jumping on Diane's trampoline.

“Hey, can we jump with you guys?” Graham asked. He already had his shoes off and was on the trampoline. Diane jumped really high and landed next to him. He fell onto his stomach. She and Heidi kept jumping, making it impossible for him to stand up.

“What's this all about?” Diane said. “You ask if you can jump, and before we even answer you just climb right on.”

“Yeah, where are your trampoline manners?” Heidi added, laughing.

“May we please jump with you?” I asked. My shoes were still on.

“Why yes, you may,” Diane answered politely. I kicked off my sneakers and climbed up.

After bouncing around for a while we all lay down on the trampoline to rest.

“Hey, we were thinking of getting everyone together tonight for a party. Maybe we can play hide-and-seek or capture the flag. Do you guys want to come?” I asked.

“Tonight? We're going to Eden's birthday party,” Diane said. “This summer is going to be filled with parties. Tonight it's Eden's, then next Saturday is Brad's pool party.”

Graham and I looked at each other. “What pool party?”

There was a big pause, and then Heidi said, “Oh, it's nothing.” I could tell by the way she looked at us that she was lying, like she felt sorry for us. “I think it's only for a few people—”

“You guys weren't invited?” Diane interrupted. “Everyone's going. I know for a fact that Luke, Matt, and Kelly will be there. Even Lizzy.” Heidi jabbed Diane in the ribs. “Oh, I mean, just a few of us.”

But it was too late—we'd heard her loud and clear.

Now the confused look on Graham's face turned to anger. “You're saying that everyone was invited to a pool party at Brad's except us?”

The girls didn't know what to say, so we just sat there for a minute or two in silence.

“Even Lizzy?” I asked. Lizzy was the most annoying person in the world. She was the biggest teacher's pet, and she was so snooty she drove me nuts. I shook my head in disbelief.

“Don't worry about it. I'm sure it won't be fun,” Heidi said.

Graham and I didn't feel like jumping anymore after that, so we climbed off the trampoline and walked over to Graham's house. We sat down in his front yard.

“I just can't believe this, Raymond. Did you know we were so unpopular?”

“No way. I mean, I know David kind of picks on me, and Lizzy and I have been enemies forever. And sure, my sister thinks we're dorks, but I always just thought that's the way sisters are. I didn't know everyone else agreed with her.”

Graham lay down in the grass and looked up into the sky. “So this is what it all comes down to. We're just two dorks who are so unpopular we can't even get invited to a party that Lizzy got invited to. Even Matt Lindenheimer is going.”

“Yeah, I always thought we were more popular than Matt—except last summer at Grizzly Cub camp. Remember how everyone thought he was so funny?”

Graham sat up. “You're right. Somehow Matt went from being plain old regular Matt to being the coolest kid at camp. But when camp was over, everything went back to normal, and he was the same old Matt ‘The Brain' Lindenheimer again.”

“Yeah, but now he gets invited to parties,” I said. “Now he's Matt ‘The Party Brain' Lindenheimer.” Graham nodded in agreement. We sat there quietly and felt sorry for ourselves. Then suddenly Graham stood up.

“That's it! At school Matt's just the smart kid who always sits in the front row. Then at camp he was suddenly Mr. Popular. It's like no one knew who he really was.”