Innocence Lost

The One Summer I’ll Never Forget

61 min readJun 30, 2019

My parents turned around and waved one last time.

And just like that, they were gone.

From now on, I would be on my own.

None of this had been my idea at all, to be honest. Both my parents thought it would be a good idea to send me to a one month summer-camp.

They thought it would toughen me up.

And they desperately wanted me to toughen up.

I was thirteen, without friends and was spending all my free time indoors, reading books.

So looking back, I get why they thought sending me to that summer-camp was a good idea.

But as I was standing there, surrounded by dozens of mean looking kids, I was losing confidence fast.

‘This is going to be good for me.’

I kept repeating this over and over in my head, until I started to believe it.

And who knows, maybe camp turned out to be good for me in the end.

But nobody could have predicted what was about to go down.

Locked In A Crappy Bus

My parents didn’t tell me the whole truth.

They simply told me that I was going to summer-camp.

And I guess that part was true.

But as we were getting crammed into an antique bus, it suddenly dawned on me that all the kids, including me, had a migration background.

That was the reason those summer-camps got funded.

I figured that out only much later.

Apparently their goal was to nurture so called ‘at-risk’ kids and improve their odds of succeeding in life.

When boarding that bus though, I didn’t know any of this.

All I noticed was that most of the kids were much more aggressive than the kids in my school had ever been.

I had been living a sheltered life in a small yet wealthy town so I had never really dealt with rough kids before.

That was about to change.

Kids are cruel.

I don’t have to tell you that.

Even in a familiar location with familiar players, the game can escalate quickly.

And this was not a familiar location at all.

We were all locked up in a crappy bus together, on a three hour drive to a secret camp-location.

Some of the other kids were longtime friends who had clearly enrolled together.

In fact, I was probably the only kid who was all alone. Most kids had already made at least one or two friends on the bus.

And whenever we took a break, you could already see the social clusters emerge.

I had time enough to observe said clusters because I didn’t know anyone, and last but not least, I had zero social skills.

The other thing I noticed straight away was how rich the other kids looked. They were all wearing fancy clothes and holding expensive CD-players.

Yes, I’m that old.

In contrast, I was wearing my usual attire. Back then, most of my clothes had minor holes in them and my shoes were the cheapest things money could buy.

None of this was making me popular of course.

As you can imagine.

Eventually, the long bus ride came to an end and we arrived at our destination.

An old military fort retro-fitted into some kind of vacation facility.

But whoever had done the retro-fit job, was clearly a fan of the spartan way.

Because the moment you entered the place, you felt like you had enlisted into the army.

I had been talking with two boys, Craig and Christopher, during one of the many breaks and they allowed me to tag along.

So I wasn’t totally alone any more.

At least I had that going for me.

The bus left and we were all standing in the central plaza waiting for something to happen.

Everyone was busy talking to their newfound friends and trying to figure out the global pecking order.

But suddenly everyone fell silent.

Because from the entrance emerged a giant.

Off To A Crappy Start

Not a real one of course.

That’s just how thirteen year old me perceived that ‘figure’.

This giant was the tallest and biggest woman I had ever seen and she started shouting from the get go.

It was obvious that she was in charge because most people were almost too afraid to look at her.

She was all about rules and, more importantly, what happened when you broke them.

The moment she started discussing dozens of sanctions in extreme detail, I fully realized that this was not going to be a fun camp.

In fact the giant woman, Lucretia was her name, was constantly using the term ‘reeducation camp’.

Apparently she was under the impression that we were all full-fledged criminals or worse.

Looking back, I think she was convinced that she was the only thing standing between us and anarchy.

She finished her speech and left from where she had come.

Not a single kid was laughing.

There were no cellphones or internet back then.

Otherwise we would have all called our parents in a second and begged them to come and get us.

But there was no way for us to reach them.

We were basically trapped for a whole month in a reeducation camp with an insane warden.

I remember thinking at that very moment: ‘How bad can this get?’

The answer to that question would turn out to be ‘very’ and you’ll find out why soon.

It started with the lodging facilities.

There was apparently a surplus of one kid.

Or said in another way, the place happened to be short one bed.

And as luck would have it, I was socializing with my two new friends way out in the back.

So when it was our turn, there was only one room left with two beds for the three of us.

I volunteered to sleep on the floor of the room because, frankly, I was already grateful for having two friends in the first place.

But one of the guards told me that that would be a fire hazard. Yes, I was allowed to sleep on the floor but I had to do that in the corridor.

So that’s what I did.

Everybody else slept in a bed while I slept on the floor.

That’s how camp started for me.

The next day, I woke up at 4 am.

We all did.

The others woke up because an alarm was blaring at full blast, I got a bucket of cold water in my face as an extra.

That would be standard procedure from now on.

I was told later that there’s always one person sleeping on the corridor floor and that person always get a bucket of cold water in their face every morning.

Anyway.

We had to do an early morning run in the woods and the slowest runner would be on active cleaning duty.

I was actually quite cheerful when I heard that because I had always been quite good at running, not really top of my class, but I could hold my own.

So I fancied my chances of avoiding cleaning duty.

We had to do a 5 mile unsupervised loop.

The first thing I noticed was that everybody was staying in their groups.

I didn’t understand that at the time.

My two friends were much better runners than me and, without even thinking, I told them to just go ahead.

I was running in the middle of the pack, doing great and keeping my own pace.

But when I got to the farthest point of the course, five other kids were barring the track and singling me out.

One kid had brought ropes with him and the others tied me to a tree with it.

And then they were gone.

The rest of the kids passed me by and smiled when they saw I was tied up. Some of the kids called me names and one kid even punched me in the gut.

I don’t really know how long I was tied up to that tree but it must have been longer than an hour.

Eventually one of the guards came by, untied me and said:

‘I guess you’re on cleaning duty now.’

The Birth Of Four-Eyes

I started losing my positivity somewhat at that point.

Cleaning duty meant that I had to clean the toilets, showers and kitchen when everybody was asleep.

And honestly, I didn’t even really mind those chores because I wasn’t getting much sleep anyway.

I was still sleeping on the cold hard floor in the corridor and whenever a kid had to go the toilet, I would always wake up.

There was even one kid, or maybe a guard, who always managed to step on me.

So in a way, not having to lie there was a plus.

And while cleaning the facilities, I would occasionally see some of the adults who worked there.

None of them would talk to me of course, but they were quite friendly nevertheless.

The chef even left out food for me once in a while that I always swallowed within seconds.

It was during one of those cleaning sessions that I overheard two adults talk.

The talk was clearly confidential.

I couldn’t quite understand everything.

Those two people were using difficult words and also whispering a bit. They must have been in an adjacent room because there was nobody in sight.

Of course, I was very careful about not making any sound at all. I knew that I would be in a lot of trouble if they would have caught me spying on them.

They were first talking about money and then, to my surprise, the two adults, a man and a woman, started flirting with each other.

I was thirteen at the time and not really ‘in the know’ about love and stuff.

But I was no idiot either.

I recognized flirting when I heard it and those two were definitely doing just that.

The man was telling the woman that they should take a little break.

The women was giggling at his suggestion and replied that the kitchen had to be clean as a whistle first.

The man then suggested that they could clean the kitchen after their ‘break’.

The woman replied:

‘Do you take me for a fool? That’s how you got me the last time.’

Again, I was thirteen at the time and quite innocent.

But even at the time, I realized that I was overhearing something that was clearly private and maybe even frowned upon.

The woman suddenly gave in and said:

‘OK, let’s take a break, we can always clean the kitchen after.’

The man clearly liked this plan because you could spot the excitement in his voice from two blocks away.

He said:

‘Four-Eyes is still cleaning too, with a bit of luck he’ll finish the job on his own.’

And then they were gone.

I didn’t know who Four-Eyes was supposed to be at that time.

Of course, I would soon find out.

I was now in my third night of active cleaning duty and I started to like the routine.

Roaming around in the dark felt empowering in a way.

And it beats sleeping on a cold hard floor.

Live Action Role Play

They let us sleep in the next day.

Around there, sleeping in meant that they only woke you up at 7 am.

We had ten minutes to get ready and gather outside in the central plaza.

Lucretia was already waiting there, surrounded by some of her guards.

She started by yelling at us for being too slow.

And then she told us that we would have to hike for 10 miles that day, without food and with only one small bottle of water each.

She also told us that we had to stay together as a group and under no circumstances were we allowed to leave anyone behind.

I actually thought that this was quite doable.

But she was not done yet.

Lucretia proceeded to divide us into two seemingly random groups, one group about three times larger than the other.

It took me a couple of seconds to realize that the smaller group contained all the ‘popular’ children.

That hit me in the gut for some reason.

And then came the kicker.

Lucretia smiled to the other guards.

And then dropped this little bombshell on all of us:

‘The kids in the smallest group are true royalty and have to be carried on this hike by the other group, the peasants. Since there are three peasants for every high-born, this should be easy.’

We all thought this was some kind of joke at this point.

But there was little humor left in this place.

Lucretia smiled again and yelled:

‘Have fun!’

And with that, she was gone.

Craig, Christopher and I had to carry an overweight kid.

Again, this really felt like some kind of joke but the guards were dead serious about the whole thing.

Whenever one lord or lady was not completely off the ground, the whole group was ordered to a standstill.

And as Lucretia had stressed, we all had to arrive back at camp together.

The weather would make things even worse.

It was early in the morning but you could already tell the heat was going to be insane.

But alas, there was nothing we could do about anything.

So our rulers were hoisted up in the air amidst the sound of groaning and complaining.

And the crowd started moving nevertheless.

We had not even progressed for one straight mile when I realized that this hike was going to kill all of us peasants.

The overweight kid, our so-called lord, was very accommodating at first and even looked genuinely embarrassed.

He was telling us how very sorry he was and how he would repay us in some shape or form.

And he even kept that routine up for like an hour.

But then, together with the other highborn kids, he started to take his role too serious and began to complain when we handled him too rough.

The lords and ladies were not really to blame in my opinion.

Because the guards were always sabotaging us peasants and calling us lazy and stupid all the time.

After a while, the high-born just forgot that this was supposed to be a role-play and acted like they were true royalty.

Our first break was two hours in.

And that’s when we faced another surprise.

I was about to drink from my bottle when one of the guards confiscated it and give it to my lord.

The other guards did the same thing to the other peasants because only royalty was allowed to drink water.

I really thought some kids would protest at this point.

Somehow I thought that we peasants would start some kind of revolution and would refuse to carry those highborn anymore.

But nothing like that ever happened.

When the break was over, the peasants resumed their drudgery like nothing had ever happened.

And for some reason, the guards were still not happy.

They were talking among themselves and it was obvious that they thought we were not suffering enough.

We were ahead of schedule and they didn’t like that.

That’s when I realized that being an over-achiever in this ‘summer camp’ was not going to be a good idea.

The guards unloaded their backpacks and ordered us to carry them too.

And again nobody refused.

Picking Through The Left-Overs

We eventually made it back.

Though near the end of the hike, some fellow peasants almost collapsed every ten minutes.

And that meant that the whole group had to wait.

But we got back eventually.

I remember being flooded with happiness when I spotted the fort at the end of the day.

My back was killing me and my feet were bleeding, but getting back to that fort was, until this day, one of the greatest moments in my life.

We all gathered in the central plaza.

Everybody was in pain. The lord and ladies not in the least, because the peasants had been quite rough near the end of the day.

But pride was the dominant emotion that time.

Definitely among the peasants and even among the highborn. We all felt like we had done something extraordinaire.

And maybe that was true.

Even Lucretia seemed genuinely impressed.

She smiled a lot and went on about the importance of persistence, leadership and whatnot.

Nobody was really listening to her because we were all hungry, thirsty and tired beyond imagination.

And then Lucretia said something that was music to our ears:

‘My kitchen team prepared an exquisite banquet which you’ve all truly deserved.’

We all cheered like they had just announced the end of World War II.

But then Lucretia stared at me.

And to my utter shock, she summoned me over.

I remember my legs being glued to the concrete and not only because of that hike.

As I approached her, my stomach turned into a knot.

I had never been this close to her and she was the largest woman I’ve ever seen, to this day.

She was black and really old.

I could clearly see her black hair was greying and that she had lots of wrinkles in her face.

For a second, I was staring her right in the face and she didn’t like that. That much was obvious.

She looked at one of her guards and asked:

‘Is this the one?’

The guard nodded back and said:

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

She studied me very carefully like she was trying to imprint every little detail.

And then, while the other kids were already enjoying their banquet, she said:

‘OK, Four-Eyes, you’re not allowed to eat and drink with the rest of them. You have to wait until they’re done and eat their leftovers. I mean, if there’s anything left of course.’

She must have thought this was funny because she couldn’t stop chuckling.

The other guards smiled as well.

I used to be quite feisty as a kid and never knew when to shut up.

This was one of those moments.

I stared at Lucretia, the warden of this miserable place, put my chin way up in the air and said the legendary words:

‘I don’t understand why I can’t eat with the others. I didn’t do anything wrong.’

This made Lucretia crack up and she said to her guards:

‘This one is not only blind but also stupid. If it were a dog, we would have to put it out of his misery.’

For some reason, the other guards found this hilarious.

Lucretia then looked at me and said:

‘Not doing anything wrong won’t help you in here.’

She turned around and went inside.

The other guards had a weird look on their faces.

Something between pity and disgust.

But then one of them grabbed my shoulders and pointed me toward the toilets.

I had to clean them until told otherwise.

And that’s exactly what I did.

But I first illegally quenched my crazy thirst by drinking from the hose for almost ten minutes straight.

We had not been allowed to drink water during the hike and no guard could have stopped me from sucking every little drop out of that hose.

Strangely enough, I was not hungry at all.

At this point I had been eating, and especially not eating, at the weirdest times so I guess my body simply didn’t care that much about food any more.

I spend the next hour cleaning the toilets and again, I started enjoying the routine for some strange reason.

Lucretia and the guards were throwing everything at us, at me in particular, to make us cave but it wasn’t really working.

In fact, I was feeling mentally stronger than ever.

Before this camp, I had been lazy and kind of a push-over, but getting treated like shit by the adults and even the kids turned me into a force of nature.

At least, that’s how I felt at the time.

Because an hour later, one of the guards told me to quit cleaning and he accompanied me to the dining room.

The moment I entered the room, the other kids immediately noticed me and everyone started laughing and ridiculing me.

There was an empty chair way in the back of the room and it was obvious that I had to sit there.

The other kids were excused and left to prepare themselves for the night.

There was no food for me, but I was allowed to sift through whatever was left on the plates and eat what I fancied.

The kids had, maybe on purpose, left their plates as disgusting as possible.

Luckily, I managed to salvage some decent chunks of meat and some half-eaten vegetables.

The whole process was intended to be degrading but I didn’t really care at that point.

In fact, I even liked the food and eating all by myself in that huge room didn’t feel like a punishment.

I wasn’t even totally alone.

The cleaning staff, probably the same man and woman I had heard the other night, were starting to clean the place.

When the woman saw me, she smiled and winked.

I didn’t have to do any cleaning duty that night and the next day, well, that was actually a fun day.

They divided us in two groups, the cool kids and the losers, and we got to play paintball in the forest.

Since it had been raining that night, the whole thing had turned into a total mud-fest.

But nobody cared.

Kids will be kids.

I started to make some friends in my own group, the loser group. The kids in the cool group still didn’t like me at all of course.

By the way, it was easy to tell which group was which.

The cool kids smoked.

And the losers didn’t.

The Magical Bullet

Actually, that was not entirely true.

Among us losers, there was one kid who smoked. His name was Ayrton and he even sported a piercing.

You could have easily mistaken him for a popular kid but for some reason, he chose to be part of the losers.

I didn’t understand that at the time.

If they had offered me the possibility back then to be part of the cool kids, I would have joined them in a heartbeat.

Ayrton was actually a very nice kid by the way.

He was tall and very muscular, and would protect us losers against the bullies as much as he could.

The bullies in this case were the popular kids of course, and sometimes even the guards.

During the final stages of the paintball game, Ayrton and I were hiding in a ditch together.

We were near the enemy camp and cut off from our own team.

Our goal had been to capture the enemy flag but they defended themselves better than expected.

We were basically locked in.

Fortunately, the enemy couldn’t spot us because the ditch was very shrubby.

There was nothing for us to do but to wait.

Ayrton pulled out a cigarette.

Not a great idea in hindsight because the smoke would instantly give away our position to the enemy.

I guess we didn’t know any better.

Ayrton presented me the pack and asked:

‘Want one?’

I shook my head and said:

‘I don’t smoke.’

He didn’t say anything and focused on inhaling smoke. He looked like his cigarette was all he cared for in this moment.

We sat there for minutes.

Suddenly, after puffing out yet another drag, he said:

‘It would solve a lot of your problems.’

I was puzzled and asked:

‘What do you mean?’

Ayrton flicked away the cigarette and stepped on it. You could tell he had practiced on that move a lot.

He then looked at me and said:

‘This is my second camp, I was here last year as well. They always pick on the weakest kid. All of them.’

I tried to look as tough as possible and said:

‘I don’t care, I can deal with those bullies. All of them.’

Ayrton held his head a bit closer and started talking in a real low voice:

‘Look, I like you for some reason. Don’t try to stand out. They’re going to break you. You don’t know what they’re capable of…’

He was about to tell me more when some kind of foghorn sounded.

It meant that a flag had been captured, probably ours, and that the game was over.

When we gathered in the central plaza afterwards, we were all in a good mood.

The winning group had been the popular kids, but you would not be able to tell by looking at the losers.

There was clearly some bonding happening, everybody was intermingling and reliving the game.

Especially one kill was subject of all conversations.

The magical kill.

It was a weird story.

One kid, part of our loser group, had been close to capturing the flag but had been killed by a magical bullet just before winning the game.

Everyone called it the magical bullet because no other kids had been around at the time.

But even though nobody had been around, the kid was clearly hit by a bullet because his face plate was covered in red paint.

None of the popular kids had claimed the shot or even witnessed it, so for a brief time that magical bullet united all kids into a frenzied chatter.

Nobody understood what had happened and everybody was a conspiracy theorist now.

We all expected Lucretia to show up but she was nowhere to be seen.

Instead one of the guards, second in command, started talking. He had a high pitched voice and we all called him Kermit.

Kermit was boring as usual and started going on and on about team-spirit, game theory and the Nash equilibrium.

Nobody ever listened to Kermit and today was no exception.

Everybody was actively ignoring him.

Until the end of the speech that is.

Because that’s when he revealed the price for winning the game.

To all our surprise, the popular kids had won a two day excursion to the nearby town.

They started cheering.

Everyone had been talking about that nearby town as soon as we had arrived in this place.

Because apparently there was booze, bars and whatnot there. And that would spark the imagination of any thirteen year old in history.

In our young minds, that town had grown to the luster of Las Vegas or New York.

Kermit barely managed to talk through the excitement and his closing message for all of us was to shower and get ready for bed.

I was about to hit the shower when one of the guards stopped me.

‘You can’t use the shower any more until the end of camp. Lucretia’s order.’

I looked at the guard and thought he was joking.

But of course, I should have realized by now that the guards never joked about anything.

I wanted to object but my voice had lost its power.

Instead, I felt tears welling up in my eyes and for a second, I felt tempted to give up and cry.

But then I realized how much all of them would love that.

So I simply nodded and returned to my ‘bedroom’ in the corridor.

I really stank and the smell of sweat slash mud kept me awake.

But there was nothing I could do.

I was basically powerless against the alliance of guards and bullies.

Suddenly the thought of running away surfaced.

After all, the nearby town was about ten miles or so and I figured I could get there before dawn.

And there, I could get hold of a landline or something and call my parents.

The more I thought about the idea, the better it sounded.

So I eventually got up, took my things and tip-toed away.

Towards the central plaza.

Escape From Alcatraz

The plaza was empty.

As you would expect.

It’s already quite overwhelming in the full light of day, but now it was downright horrific.

It was full moon and the silver light turned the place into something beyond creepy.

I tried to cross it as fast as I could while trying to be as soundless as possible.

The central plaza was always going to be the riskiest part of the escape.

You could view the plaza from everywhere in the fort and the guards were supposed to be up all night.

At least, that’s what we kids told each other.

As I was smack in the middle of the central plaza, extremely vulnerable to peeping eyes, I heard a noise.

I couldn’t quite locate it, so I decided to just make a run for it and sprint towards the gates.

They were open.

This made me a bit overconfident because I blasted through them without checking my surroundings.

And then, something stopped me dead in my tracks.

I saw a figure, sitting on the wall outside the gate and smoking a cigarette.

At first, I thought it was Lardo.

Lardo was a popular kid and my worst bully. His real name was Lawrence but because he was so big, we called him Lardo.

Luckily, when I got closer, I saw it was Ayrton instead.

I started breathing again.

Ayrton was not all surprised to see me, like dozens of children passed through the gates every night.

He just nodded.

I didn’t know what to think about all this and asked:

‘What are you doing here?’

He took a drag and answered:

‘What are you talking about? I sit here every night. It’s my favorite spot. Everyone knows that.’

I was so taken aback by the situation that I forgot that I was supposed to be escaping this place.

This kid was really unbelievable.

I asked:

‘Do they let you do that?’

He didn’t seem to understand the question.

‘Of course! They let you do everything. Haven’t you noticed? The gates are never locked.’

He took another drag and now, for the first time, he seemed to spot my backpack and suitcase.

This made him somewhat interested in me and he asked:

‘What’s up with the suitcase? Are you off?’

He didn’t really look like he expected an answer though, his cigarette was all that mattered for the moment.

And for the first time since my ‘escape’, I started to regain my confidence and I proudly proclaimed:

‘Yeah, I’m off. To the nearby city, gonna try to find a landline and phone my folks to come and get me. I’m done with this place.’

I had his full attention now.

He grinned like that was the dumbest thing he had heard all day and jumped off the wall, about to head back in.

But then he stopped and turned.

He said:

‘Good luck with all that, but your parents won’t come get you. I would bet all my cigarettes on it. They sent you here for a reason. In fact, it’s possible that they will even double your camp-time if they hear about this.’

I didn’t understand what Ayrton was saying.

‘If I tell them about Lardo, Lucretia and the evil guards, they will surely come and get me. They didn’t know that this was some kind of rehab. They thought it was a normal summer camp.’

Ayrton was now outright smiling and said:

‘Dude, you’re thirteen and you still believe in Santa or what? Of course they knew this place is rehab. They got paid by the government to put you here. That’s why all these kids are minorities.’

Tears started welling up but I managed to get a grip.

I was desperately trying to find some courage deep down and when I finally was ready to defend my parents, I noticed that Ayrton was gone.

Without making a peep.

I stood there in total agony for what might have been minutes.

It was clear that I didn’t know what to do next. What Ayrton said sounded unbelievable, yet deep down I realized it was true.

That killed my resolve to escape.

I guess I was too afraid to eventually get hold of a landline and find out the truth:

That all this had been planned.

I started walking in the direction of the nearby village but things were different now.

My dedication was gone.

Something pulled me back towards the fort.

That’s how it felt.

After about ten minutes of bumbling alone in the moonlight, I let out a sigh, turned around and walked back to the fort.

The gates were still open and the plaza was still empty.

But when I got back to my ‘bedroom’, that place in the corridor where they had dumped my mattress and sheets, something was amiss.

Lucretia stood there.

She seemed in a good mood, ignored the suitcase and backpack, and said:

‘Hey Four-Eyes, I’m glad I found you. You must have been away for a while because we couldn’t find you. I hope you didn’t take a shower.’

I began stammering something.

But she interrupted me right away and said:

‘I’m just joking. I have great news by the way. We have a spare bedroom. Two people from the staff are dating and they’re sharing a bedroom now.

So it’s your lucky day. Take your stuff and follow me.’

And that’s how, after sleeping on the floor for several nights, I was finally granted a proper bed.

My room was in the basement next to the heating units, so it was noisy, dirty and very small.

But I didn’t mind.

That dirty room felt like a palace to me and it took me no more then five seconds to fall asleep.

It was the first time I really slept since leaving home.

And I truly needed it.

The Clash Of The Titans

They let us sleep in again.

We didn’t have to get up until seven in the morning and on top of that, breakfast was truly unbelievable.

There were all kinds of eggs, bacon, cereal and even candy.

Everyone was extremely excited because, well, kids will be kids.

The other kids were freshly showered and I, well, I had to use a rag and the sink since the shower was off limits.

But I had cleaned up OK nevertheless and didn’t really smell that bad.

My two friends had already reserved a seat for me and waved me over.

I half expected a guard to show up and refuse me the right to eat because of some imaginary offense.

But nothing like that happened.

I got to have breakfast with my friends and it was actually a lot of fun.

We had now officially started calling ourselves the losers and at times like this, it was almost like being at an ordinary summer camp.

But then Lardo came over.

He didn’t waste any time and went straight for me while yelling to his friends:

‘OMG, Four-Eyes smells like shit. Better call him turd-eyes.’

He really liked his own joke and started laughing uncontrollably. His friends laughed as well but you could tell the laughter was fake.

Maria, the hottest girl in camp, looked a bit bored.

It was obvious that Lardo was really into Maria and that she was playing hard to get.

So Lardo decided to step up his game and started shoving my face into my plate.

He then looked at Maria for praise, but she was talking with one of her friends and was clearly ignoring him.

‘Dude, why go for the weak kids? Why don’t you try me for once?’

Everyone was now trying to locate the source of this interruption.

It was Ayrton.

He was sitting all alone in the back and had been looking at the spectacle with a detached amusement.

But now he was done observing and was approaching Lardo fast, eager to get into a fight.

This was evolving into something extra-ordinary and everybody seemed to realize it at once.

Every kid was suddenly quiet, excited to see a fight between the two biggest kids in camp.

The clash of the titans.

Even the kitchen staff was gone.

Or more correct, they were watching this confrontation from a safe distance.

The guards were flooding the place but didn’t do anything to stop the impending fight.

In fact, they looked as excited as the kids to witness the inevitable fight and some of them were even looking to get some betting action going.

Even Maria was now absolutely fascinated by all this, and her pale blue eyes were firmly fixed on Lardo and Ayrton.

I was looking for Lucretia but she was nowhere to be seen.

‘So what’s it gonna be?’

Ayrton’s voice was totally calm but sounded unbelievable menacing.

That could have been my imagination, of course.

But still.

Lardo was not as confident as usually. He started saying something but his voice shrieked and he sounded nervous.

Then he coughed and regained his posture.

He let go of me, turned around to stare Ayrton straight in the face and said:

‘What are you doing, Ayrton? You’re not a loser like those guys. You should be part of our group. There’s no reason for us to fight. Not over this loser.’

Maria didn’t like this at all. You could tell she was really disappointing.

Ayrton replied: ‘That’s what I thought. You’re just a cowards. Like all of them.’

He pointed towards the cool kids and went back to his spot.

And that was it.

Gorging On Ice-Cream

Lardo went back to his spot too.

He had been sitting next to Maria, as usual, and she didn’t even granted him as much as a glance.

Lardo picked up on that and kept staring at me with straight up killer eyes.

I didn’t care at the moment. Breakfast was too delicious and I simply resumed the feeding frenzy

In fact, all kids did just that. Not even a minute later, everybody was back to stuffing their faces and having fun.

The kitchen staff reappeared and they even had ice-cream with them.

Frankly, at this point I should have been suspicious. I mean, ice-cream in the morning is really too much.

Right?

But I was thirteen and still a kid.

We all were.

And we desperately wanted to believe that our suffering was over. We truly wanted to believe that this reeducation camp had turned into a genuine vacation now.

So we all gorged on the ice-cream.

For a brief period in time, there were no losers or cool kids.

No bullies or victims.

All you would have seen on that particular morning in that oversized dining-room, were happy kids being high on life.

Or sugar.

I was in the middle of my third serving of ice-cream and this time, I had decided to combine chocolate and strawberry.

It still tasted great but my stomach was starting to act up.

And that’s when I saw Lucretia entering the dining-room, followed by some of her closest guards.

They were all dressed in gym clothing.

That’s when the alarm bells went off in my head.

Yes, we should have smelled the trap much earlier because it’s basically your typical Hollywood trope.

You give your victims unlimited food, convince them that everything’s cool and when they’ve taken the bait, you show them what’s really going on.

I figured out the whole routine in that one second.

As my stomach was acting up, Lucretia informed us that we were about to have another survivor run in the forest.

Some kids were groaning and protesting, but most were simply lethargic.

They, like me, had known the gig was up the moment Lucretia entered in gym clothing.

It’s the same with every con, things are only painfully clear in hindsight.

We all had to put on our running gear and assemble in the central plaza.

One of the guards told us the rules of the game.

We would be running five mile loops for the rest of the day, until there was only one kid left running.

That one kid would then be the leader for the duration of the camp. He or she would get the best food, the best sleeping quarters and would assign all chores.

When the guard had finished talking, everybody was already sizing up the competition.

Some kids were probably cheering inside, especially the athletic ones, because they fancied their chances.

I on the other hand, knew I was toasted. I’ve always been more of a sprinter and definitely not a long distance runner.

So things couldn’t get worse for me.

Battle Of The Sexes

Then the guard started speaking again.

We could apparently avoid this whole ordeal by doing one simple thing.

If our group managed to come up with one leader, we wouldn’t have to go through the whole ‘battle royal’ routine.

And we had only one hour to elect someone.

The moment the guard walked away, the plaza exploded.

Everyone started talking at once, and for the first few minutes nobody could understand a thing.

I was already known as a silent kid in normal times, so this cacophony certainly didn’t entice me to speak up.

While everyone was advertising their leadership skills, I was just thinking the whole thing through.

The group was split fifty-fifty between the cool kids and the losers. There might have been slightly more loser kids but that didn’t really matter overall.

Because, as I realized at that very instant, even the losers themselves were split into cool losers and loser losers.

And the cool kids as well were split between cool cool kids and loser cool kids.

It was fractions all the way down.

Lardo was yelling that he was the leader and threatened everyone who said otherwise.

But even his henchmen were not convinced that Lardo would make a great leader.

One glace from Maria was enough to shut him up and she started talking.

For some reason, everyone was listening.

Even the losers.

The moment she realized that everybody was clinging onto her every word, she started to really own the place.

I mean, this girl was born to catch every ounce of attention.

She said:

‘Look, the leader will be extremely powerful and we can’t trust any of the boys with that power. It’s clear that the leader should be a girl. It’s doesn’t have to be me because I don’t really want it. But it needs to be a girl. Boys are too immature.’

She stared straight at Lardo now and made him flinch for a second.

I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle and boy, was I lucky that Lardo didn’t notice.

All the girls seemed to agree with Maria, even the loser girls.

But then Craig stepped forward, my best friend in this place and the unofficial leader of the losers.

By the way, I learned afterwards that Craig and Lardo lived in the same street, played in the same sports team and used to be best friends.

Until something turned them into arch-enemies.

Anyway.

Craig started talking:

‘If we pick a girl as our leader, only the boys will have to do chores and that’s totally unacceptable.’

All the boys were booing now and it was clear that every boy, even the popular ones, supported Craig.

And withing seconds, we were back to shouting again.

The battle wasn’t between the cool kids and the losers like I would have expected.

But between the boys and the girls.

Battle of the sexes.

Who would have thought.

Nothing interesting happened for a while.

We had already wasted half an hour when Craig had finished his ‘talk’ and now there were only twenty minutes left.

Some boys switched allegiances and started supporting Maria. And some girls started gathering around Craig.

Clearly hormones had something to do with that. You didn’t have to be an expert in that department to see that.

There was no way to achieve consensus because everybody was just arguing with everyone else.

And at one point Lardo, bored by the whole thing, grabbed a random girl and burned bits of her hair with a lighter.

As to prove beyond doubt that he was not fit to rule.

There were only five minutes left when a series of loud noises startled us and everyone immediately shut up.

It was Ayrton.

He was lighting up some firecrackers to get our attention.

And then, he started talking in a calm, deep voice:

‘There are only five minutes left and if we don’t come up with one name, we’ll all have to run the rest of the day in the woods until we puke. Does that sound like fun?’

We all started shaking our heads in disgust.

Ayrton had a way with the crowd, I would have never predicted that.

He continued:

‘We have been arguing for almost an hour now and that was exactly what the guards want. They don’t care who the leader is, they just want to see us fight. The only way to beat them at their game, is to come up with a name in the next couple of minutes.’

Everybody seemed to agree and listened in absolute silence.

‘Let me guess, the leader should be you!’

It was Lardo.

He had refrained from burning people’s hair long enough to realize what was going on and he didn’t like that. The confrontation earlier in the dining-room was clearly still on his mind.

Ayrton shrugged and replied:

‘I don’t want it. In fact, I think Byron should be our leader.’

Everybody was kind of shocked by that suggestion.

Lardo laughed and yelled:

‘Are you kidding me? Byron is a retard.’

Technically, Lardo was correct.

Byron was the least popular kid in the group, even less popular than me, because he was extremely overweight and mentally challenged.

Looking back, I think he must have had an IQ of around 70 and he almost didn’t get accepted in this camp because of the liability issues.

I found that out only a couple of years later.

Anyway.

Surely, nobody in his right mind could think that Byron would be a suitable leader.

Right?

But Ayrton was still calm as ever and continued:

‘We can all help Byron with assigning chores and he won’t use his powers for evil because, well, he’s Byron. And remember, all we have to do is to come up with a name. That’s how we beat them at their game.

For all we know, they’re just lying to us anyway and the so called leader will have no real powers.’

Crazily enough, everybody seemed to agree.

Lardo was about to yell something but one subtle gesture from Maria silenced him.

Everybody looked at Byron now.

He had been sitting in a corner of the plaza, away from everyone else and was extremely gripped by the sight of two mating butterflies.

Ayrton simply said:

‘So we all agree?’

One Sash To Rule Them All

The hour had passed.

Lucretia strode back into the middle of the plaza.

And for some reason, she wore her fanciest uniform with a red sash around her waist.

It was only later that I realized she had been wearing some kind of exercise outfit merely one hour before.

I didn’t get the implications at the time because I was too overwhelmed by her spotless uniform.

We all were.

Everyone was watching Lucretia in awe and I was even holding my breath for no particular reason.

We all felt that something momentous was about to happen.

Lucretia stood there for a couple of minutes, simply basking in the attention. With every passing second, the silence became more intense.

Eventually she said:

‘I gather you all decided on a leader?’

Nobody answered at first but then Ayrton stepped forward and said:

‘Yes, Ma’am, it’s gonna be Byron.’

At this point, every single kid was now holding his breath, anxious to see what would happen next.

If Lucretia had been surprised at all by that choice, she certainly didn’t show it.

She turned to Byron and asked:

‘Is that true, Byron? Do you voluntarily partake in the righteous duty of sovereignty from now until the end of camp?’

Poor Byron.

Even I didn’t quite understand what Lucretia was saying and Byron, well, he just stood there staring at his feet.

But then he straightened his back, looked straight ahead and answered:

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

Lucretia still didn’t show any emotion and gestured Byron to come closer.

At first, he didn’t feel like it, but then one of the kids gave him a little push.

When he was close enough, Lucretia told him to kneel and bow his head.

Byron slowly did that.

Everybody was extremely nervous now. We all had been through enough in this place to know that violence was always an option.

I felt sorry for Byron because I thought he was about to get some crazy punishment.

Instead Lucretia took the sash from her waist and said:

‘This sash is the symbol of your leadership. Wear it at all times!’

She bend down and tied it around Byron’s waist.

Then she nodded at a guard who had a broom in his hands.

She took the broom and tapped Byron lightly on the left shoulder first, then on the right shoulder and finally on the head.

Finally, she proclaimed in a solemn voice:

‘By the power vested in me, I declare Byron leader of this pack. May his rule be prosperous.’

She signaled Byron to get up and ordered us to kneel instead.

I would have thought that some of the kids, especially the cool ones, would have refused.

But to my utter surprise, everybody got down on his knees.

It sounds crazy now but, at that moment, we could all feel something in the air.

Like this ceremony meant something.

Lucretia still had the broom in her hands. It looked like a spear the way she handled it.

She told Byron:

‘Since you’re the leader and chosen within the hour, the run in the woods is canceled. As promised.’

We all cheered and that caused her to address us:

‘Of course, someone has to clean up that mess in the dining-room. Byron, your first job as leader is to appoint two people. The rest will spend the day fishing on the lake.’

Her words caused a stir in the group.

Nobody had been really close with Byron, so there was no way to predict who would have to clean up the mess.

Byron stared at the ground again, a sovereign unworthy, and started stammering:

‘Nobody.’

At first I thought I misheard.

But no, Byron had actually said ‘nobody’ to the giant.

This didn’t unsettle Lucretia one bit. In fact, it seemed like she had expected this reply.

She smiled and answered:

‘In that case, you can clean the dining room by yourself and the rest of you can go to the lake.’

She handed the broom to Byron and left.

All the guards followed here inside and we were all alone in the plaza now.

Byron still stood front and center but didn’t look like a leader at all. The sash combined with the broom gave him a comical appearance.

Lardo was the first one to break the silence and shouted to his posse:

‘What are we waiting for? Let’s go to the lake.’

Nobody moved and you could tell he didn’t like that.

Belle, one of the popular girls went over to Byron and said:

‘I’ll help you, Byron.’

Aisha, her best friend joined her not even two seconds later.

That’s when I started to realize that Byron had the power to punish and reward people.

For the rest of the month.

And everybody seemed to realize that with me.

Within the minute, everybody had decided to join him in cleaning the dinner room first and then go fishing afterwards.

Every kid realized that it was in their best interest to be part of the clean-up team, even Lardo could understand that.

He went to Byron, took hold of his head and pretended to spit in his hair while yelling:

‘Of course I’ll help you clean. You’re a freak, but you’re my freak.’

Cleaning up the dinner room took us less than an hour.

Byron didn’t really have to do anything. Whenever he started a job, someone took it over.

He eventually just sat in the corner and started drawing on the bottom of his left sole.

Some of the kids rolled their eyes and I bet you that at least one person thought:

‘Byron’s gonna Byron.’

But nobody said anything.

In the past, someone would have definitely made some snippy remark but now, everybody was pretending Byron was the coolest kid ever.

And I was no different.

Since he was officially our leader, I had tried at least five different jokes on him. All of which had bombed miserably.

Byron was now the most important kid in camp.

And we all knew it.

Hell’s Week

The rest of the day was awesome.

All we did was fish and swim in the lake.

Just being kids was something we all had missed.

Although things had truly changed.

For one, everybody was trying to befriend Byron.

The cool kids gave him their cigarettes and Byron picked up the habit of smoking for free.

In fact, camp would saddle him up with a smoking addiction for life.

The loser kids, well, we didn’t have anything that enticing, but for some reason, Byron liked being around Ayrton.

That day, Byron decided that he would share a room with Ayrton and that’s how things stayed for the rest of camp.

He also managed to get me out of the basement and into a room together with Craig and Christopher.

That evening, when we came back from the lake, one of the guards told us that Byron needed two assistants.

I expected that this would turn into yet another shouting match but to my surprise, the decision was easily made.

Byron’s two assistants would be Craig, my best friend, and Maria, the hottest girl in camp.

One popular girl and one loser boy, that made sense to everyone.

Everyone, except Lardo.

Since he had the hots for Maria and Craig was his childhood enemy, he didn’t like things were going.

But there was nothing he could do.

You could tell he was planning something though, that much was definitely clear.

What he was planning exactly, well, that would turn out to be mind-boggling.

But anyway, at least at that moment, things were going great for me.

Byron being leader instead of, say Lardo, and Craig being his assistant felt like it would help my precarious situation a great deal.

And it did for a couple of days.

Craig had now become the official leader of the losers and that glow rubbed off on me since Craig and I were very close now.

I was slowly becoming friends with all the losers.

Even some of the popular kids started to talk to me and some of them even wanted to know my real name.

Of course, nobody stopped calling me Four-Eyes ever. That name would stick till the end of camp.

Even Craig called me Four-Eyes sometimes when he wasn’t paying attention.

But I didn’t really mind.

For a very brief period in time, I was kind of having fun in this crazy place.

And I wasn’t alone.

It seemed like the others kids were also starting to enjoy this place and their role in the pecking-order.

Crazy as it seems, Byron was actually a great leader for a while and frankly, I don’t know why the reign of Byron The Peaceful had to end.

Looking back, I honestly believe that Lucretia and the guards decided to throw a wrench in the machine.

I think they just didn’t like the whole ‘love and peace’ vibe.

So one day, past the halfway point, they ordered us in the central plaza.

Things had gone so well for a while that nobody was expecting any trouble.

Yet trouble was ahead.

We soon found that out.

We were very loud.

And nobody was paying any attention to the guards, we were all too busy talking to our friends.

Even when Lucretia arrived and positioned herself in the middle of her guards, we would not shut up.

We just kept talking and talking while Lucretia just kept waiting and waiting.

But eventually she was fed up with the whole thing and yelled at the top of her voice:

‘Silence!’

A couple of weeks ago, this would have immediately resulted in a dead silence across the center plaza.

Now however, a couple of kids kept on talking. Among them Lardo and his henchmen, as you can probably imagine.

Lucretia yelled again, a tad softer now:

‘If you don’t shut up right now, I’ll lock you up in the basement for the rest of this camp.’

That worked.

Every single kid was quiet now because the giant had turned into a menacing figure once again.

Unbelievably tall, straight as an arrow and piercing through the crowd like she was hunting for easy pickings.

Everybody was now staring at the ground because you didn’t want to catch her attention.

Lucretia ordered Byron and his assistants to come forward.

When the three little figures stood before here, she said:

‘As of now, you’re all relieved of your duties. You’re all equal again. Thank you for efforts.’

The three turned around and rejoined the group.

Byron looked extremely relieved. Craig and especially Maria, showed a touch of disappointment.

Lucretia continued:

‘Hell’s Week is fast approaching. That’s why you need to be properly trained in order to survive that last week of camp. Honestly, this is not going to be fun from now on…’

She continued for another five minutes but I had stopped paying attention. The mentioning of Hell’s Week had distracted me.

Ayrton had been talking about it on a number of occasions since he had been here once before.

Unfortunately, I never paid any attention to Ayrton’s stories about Hell’s week because Craig and I were always talking about the NBA.

Michael Jordan was our favorite player and we never seemed to run out of MJ stories.

Of course, now that Lucretia was talking about Hell’s Week like it was the worst thing ever, I wished I had listened to Ayrton before.

Next thing I know, Lucretia had finished her talk and was gone.

The guards were dividing us in two groups. When I asked Craig what was going on, he smiled at me and said:

‘I thought Byron was the slow one. For the rest of the time until Hell’s week, the boys and the girls will be separated. Both groups will camp in different locations, a hundred miles apart.’

I thought he was joking at first and looked at him in disbelief.

He was frowning now and said:

‘Dude, haven’t you paid any attention? We’re about to embark on a fifty mile hike to our camping spot.’

I now finally realized he wasn’t kidding.

Things were getting serious.

All By Myself

The hike was tough.

Our fort was surrounded by mountains on every side. So whatever direction you went in, you always had a crazy climb to look forward to.

Three guards were guiding us.

Their vibe was totally different than before.

During the first weeks, they had been distant and aggressive.

I suspect Lucretia had something to do with that.

But now, while guiding us on this dangerous hike, they were friendly and helpful.

They repeated over and over again that we were all in this thing together, and that he only thing that mattered was for all of us to arrive at our campsite in one piece.

On multiple occasions, I tried to get a conversation going with Ayrton about Hell’s Week.

But as talkative as had been before, he had stopped talking all together now.

Craig later told me that Ayrton had been blackmailed by Lardo about Hell’s Week and that’s why Ayrton had decided to zip it.

When Craig and I compared the few little clues we had on Hell’s Week, we both realized that we had nothing but gossip and urban legends.

It was supposed to be extremely hard for your body and mind.

But that left us with more questions than it solved. Especially when you’re a thirteen year old boy with an overactive imagination.

I started befriending one of the guards.

This guard, Joshua, was a skater and could have been an older brother or nephew in another life.

He said that Hell’s Week is though for everyone, kids and guards alike.

I didn’t know what to do with that information.

When I pressed him for more, he stopped talking and said he valued his job above all.

It was a time of evolving friendships.

Because the forced separation from the girls totally changed the group dynamics.

The divide between cool boys and losers was practically gone. Everybody helped everybody else and multiple friendships crossed the earlier impossible chasm.

Only Lardo and his henchmen had not really softened up to us losers, and especially my presence seemed to infuriate him beyond reason.

At one particular hot day, he started walking besides me without saying a word and continued to do so for about a mile or two.

It didn’t bother me at first because were in the middle of the pack, surrounded by others.

But then, one by one, his henchmen started surrounding me too.

And then, during a very steep climb when the group was stretched out over miles on a narrow path, he finally made his move.

They all grabbed me and forced me to stand still. Whenever a kid was passing by, they motioned that kid to move along, pretending to enjoy the view.

There was always one guard at the back, so I didn’t really worry at that point. I knew that rear guard would not leave us behind.

So I just stood there.

The last guard arrived eventually.

He was accompanying some of the slower kids, making sure nobody got left behind. Among those kids was of course a certain Byron.

Obviously.

The guard spotted the six of us and asked what we were doing.

‘Just taking a break and enjoying the view.’

Lardo said this with an innocent smile on his face. He was great at manipulating people and would make a decent used car salesman some day.

The guard was hesitant for a second and said:

‘OK, that’s cool. But let’s get going. Nobody can end up behind me.’

Lardo smiled again.

‘That’s great. Go ahead. We’ll be right there behind you. Promise.’

He winked.

At this point, the guard seemed to lose all interest in us and resumed climbing because Byron had ventured into the woods apparently and the other kids were searching him while panicking.

I could have yelled something to grab the guard’s attention but Lardo covered my mouth with his hand.

When the guard was out of sight, one of his henchmen took my water bottle and emptied the whole thing in one gulp.

Lardo then reached for some rope in his backpack and started tying me up against a tree.

Again.

Another one of his henchmen opened a jar of honey and started rubbing it on my face and hands.

They apparently thought it would entice bears to come ‘eat’ me.

These kids were not the sharpest tools in the shed, to say the least, and that probably saved my life.

Then, the five of them hurried up the mountain before the rear guard could get suspicious.

I was all by myself.

It was crazy hot and I was getting insanely thirsty.

But frankly, the upcoming cold scared me more.

We had already slept a couple of nights in those woods at that point, and well, it always got freezing cold at night.

And I was only dressed in a t-shirt and a short short.

I started yanking my ropes and unfortunately, they had done a much better job than the first time.

Some of the knots were extremely tight and there was no way I could free myself in time.

I stopped moving my hands and legs because the rope was cutting my skin and I figured that harming myself was not going to help one bit.

At that moment, I still wasn’t really worried.

I thought the guards would notice my absence any time now and surely one of them would come back down looking for me.

But a couple of hours later, I started to become suspicious.

Nobody had come down and that was quite strange.

Surely one of my friends would have figured out by now that I was gone and would have sounded the alarm?

But nobody had come.

And it was getting cold.

I woke up the next day in an unfamiliar tent.

Ayrton was sitting next to me, patiently waiting for me to wake up.

I wasn’t ready to digest a lot of information at first, but as time progressed, Ayrton and especially Craig, managed to get me up to speed.

The group had noticed my absence when they had arrived at their camping spot high up in the northern peaks.

Light was fading fast at that point.

At first, everybody assumed I was still looking for Byron because that’s what they all had been doing too.

But a couple of hours later, it was clear that I was missing.

The three guards were now in a difficult spot because it was pitch black and making the descent in total darkness was basically suicide.

And they were also responsible for the lives of the other boys.

So they decided to stay put and start the search first thing in the morning.

At that point, they still thought I was safe.

Cold yes, but probably safe.

But then Lardo must have gotten a guilty conscience because he decided to come clean.

He told the guards that I was tied to a tree wearing nothing but a t-shirt and shorts.

That totally changed the situation.

Still, going down the mountain in total darkness was extremely dangerous so nobody was eager to do that.

But then Joshua, one of the guards, offered to go look for me.

And since the other guards had to stay with the rest of the kids, he was forced to look for volunteers among the kids.

Luckily, two kids stepped up eventually: Ayrton and Joshua.

Truth be told, Lardo volunteered as well but everybody agreed that that was not a good idea.

And so the three went off on what basically amounted to a fool’s errand.

But they managed to find me.

Obviously.

I was still tied up to the tree but unconscious now, so they had to carry me up the mountain.

Looking back, my survival had been nothing but miraculous because I came withing hours of freezing to death.

But I survived and that’s what matters.

I don’t remember anything about being carried up the mountain.

In fact, the only thing I remember from the rescue operation is flashlights piercing my face at some point.

The first few days I stayed in my tent because I was too weak to do anything else but rest and read.

The boys had worked out some kind of schedule where everyone had to keep me company for a while.

Of course, I wasn’t supposed to know that, but I figured it out soon enough. It was just too obvious.

Even Lardo visited me a couple of times and offered me his sincere apologies every single time. He told me he didn’t mean to get me in serious trouble.

I believe and forgive him.

Not that that mattered though, because he would be expelled anyway upon arrival at the fort.

At least, that’s what the guards told me. It sounded like that dude was in a lot of trouble.

Lucretia would see to that.

The Loser’s Button

And then, I was healthy again.

Nobody saw it coming.

One day, about two or three days after ‘that’ night, I got up and felt perfectly fine.

I was extremely happy of course because I had been aching to join the other kids.

They could not stop talking about all the different things they were doing while I was busy recovering.

It was survival in it’s purest form.

The other kids had been building their own buildings, water catchment systems and whatnot. They even had to hunt down their own food.

Everybody told me it was extremely hard but they all enjoyed it. The infighting had stopped and everybody was united in the battle against the elements.

I got to experience the whole ‘back to nature’ thing for myself during those last few days.

Believe me, it was actually amazing.

The guards didn’t act like guards but were more like your older brothers or nephews.

And yes, all the boys had kind of blended together into one group. Nobody was considered a loser or a popular kid any more.

Maybe the reason for that was that nobody was allowed to smoke up here, I don’t know.

Anyway, those few days camping up the northern peaks were probably the best days of summer camp.

Food was basic at best, there was no music or television and our toilet was in the woods.

But we didn’t care.

We had a bonfire everyday and for a while, we felt like a band of brothers.

But then, unfortunately, the day came for us to pack things up and head back down.

Hell’s Week was waiting for us.

By now, I had asked Ayrton over and over about Hell’s Week and since I almost died, he couldn’t really refuse me anything.

So he told me and everybody else, all about Hell’s Week.

It was basically a week without sleep, filled with mental and physical tests.

There would be a button in the middle of the plaza, called the Loser’s Button and you were at all times free to push that button.

If you did that, you were immediately separated from the other kids and Hell’s Week was over for you.

I asked Ayrton whether he had pushed the button last year but he didn’t answer. He just told me that last year, half of the kids were gone after two days.

If someone ever survived Hell’s Week, the guards would double the difficulty the next year.

At that point I didn’t know what to think anymore.

I refused to believe that human beings were capable of designing something so difficult that half of the kids gave up after merely two days.

But I was soon about to find out.

Because after a two day descent back into the valley, we saw the dreaded fort appear in the distance.

When we arrived at the gates, the girls were already there.

I didn’t recognize them at first.

They had totally changed.

All of them were wearing mud streaks on their face, helmets on their head and camouflage gear on their frames.

I guess they had their share of survival fun as well.

Lucretia was also waiting for us with the other guards.

As soon as we entered the gates, some kind of military battle-hymn started playing and the girl began yelling some weird battle-cry.

This made us boys giggle and laugh.

But the laughter stopped immediately when we noticed the red button in the middle of the plaza.

The Loser’s Button.

That’s when we all realized that things were about to get serious now and that our camping trip with the bro’s was basically over.

We joined the girls and waited for the spectacle to begin.

The first thing Lucretia did, was heading over to Lardo. She whispered something in his ear and he followed her to her office.

That was the last time I ever saw him and to this day, I don’t know what happened to him.

When she returned, she waited for a couple of seconds and started her speech:

‘Welcome back to the fort, boys and girls. I hope you all had an excellent preparation for Hell’s Week. You probably noticed the red button. From this moment on, you can push it any time you wish. Doing so will immediately end Hell’s Week for you.

That’s the only rule from now on: push the button and you’re free.

Remember that rule.’

She smiled to all of us, placed her hand on her heart and said:

‘Best of luck to all of you. You’re my favorite pack ever. If it were up to me you would all graduate.’

She took a bow and was gone.

A couple of minutes later, some guard announced that we would start Hell’s Week by jogging around the plaza until told otherwise.

It was kind of an easy challenge to begin with.

And clearly, I wasn’t the only with that thought. Some kids were looking around like they expected some kind of trap.

Other kids started way too fast.

I on the other hand, remembered something Ayrton had said:

‘There’s no points for first place, the only goal is to survive.’

That’s why I started very slowly.

Some took that idea even further and just walked around.

After all, was there even a formal definition of ‘jogging’?

We found out soon.

A couple of guards came out holding megaphones and started targeting the walking kids.

Frankly, that shocked us all back to life and everyone started picking up the pace.

We were jogging for a couple of hours when an alarm went off, I was a little tired at that point but still quite OK.

I remember thinking that I would be able to survive Hell’s Week this way.

But that’s when things started to heat up of course.

Hell’s Week shifted into a higher gear.

Challenge After Challenge

Looking back, it’s hard to give a perfect account.

We were given no sleep at all and forced into challenge after challenge.

Said challenges would have been quite fun in a normal context, because they were your typical child’s games.

But the sheer exhaustion made things totally different.

Nobody pushed the button in the first twelve hours.

Yes, that much is true.

But after a night in the freezing outdoors, five kids had already pushed the button before the sun even came up.

It was the same pattern every night.

The cold, dark nights did something to the psyche and not pushing that button in the middle of the night took a lot of willpower.

Sometimes we would brainstorm out loud about what happened once you pushed that button.

Some kids said you would get food, sleep and a warm bath or something.

Other kids claimed that all our parents were on site and watching our every move.

I never believed those fever dreams.

In fact, I had the weird belief that once you pushed the button, you would be thrown into an even worse reality than the one we were facing now.

And we were already facing hell.

You were not allowed to sleep unless you were competing against someone in a direct duel and won that duel.

In that case, you were allowed to sleep until the other had finished his penalty assignment.

That of course benefited the more lucid kids.

You could actually predict when a kid was about to collapse because they would lose contest after contest through sheer exhaustion.

And that allowed their direct competitors to take multiple minutes of sleep on them and expand the sleep gap even more.

And yes, I’m talking ‘minutes’.

That’s what it amounted to in the end, you just slept whenever you could.

One full minute of sleep had become a luxury.

Not the strongest or brightest kid would survive this madness, but the kid that was best at taking sleep whenever they could.

It was hard to tell who that kid was going to be.

In fact, the first few kids who had pushed the button were among the most athletic ones.

And some of the skinny, nerdy guys just hung in there.

It was not a gender thing either.

The boys were not at all better at this thing. If anything, it looked like the girls were slightly outperforming the boys.

Around noon the third day, we were playing some elaborate role-playing game.

I can’t remember the rules but we basically had a private identity and a public one.

And you were forced to switch between both depending on the context.

It was especially demanding for me because I lacked social skills back then.

But the first prize was thirty minutes of solid sleep and that was worth more than gold to us at the time.

I didn’t fancy my chances at first.

But to my surprise, I kept switching between identities without fail and ended in the final stage of the game.

Only me and two girls were left.

That final stage was brutal.

We all would have killed to win that thirty minutes of sleep and the two girls brought all their charm to the table.

I wasn’t used to girls acting that way towards me and it confused me for a while.

But luckily, I was machine like at the time.

And in the end, the two girls ended up revealing their secret identity to each other and I seized the win.

The two girls started crying on the spot, and I was so exhausted and/or surprised that I started crying as well.

And then I went straight to panicking.

It was the middle of the day and I feared that I would not be able to fall asleep.

But when the guards took me to a darkened room, I was already sleeping before my head even hit the pillow.

When they woke me up thirty minutes later, it felt like I had slept for twenty hours straight.

The guards told me that another five kids had pushed the button in those thirty minutes.

Pushing that button usually resulted in an alarm going off but I never heard anything.

That’s how I far gone I had been.

When someone pushed the button and sounded the alarm, a guard came and took that kid away.

Some kids would be in tears, but most of the time the particular boy or girl would just be waiting there, ghost like, until the whole ordeal was over.

Hell’s Week took the life right out of you.

There’s one challenge I will never forget for the rest of my life.

It was almost near the end of Hell’s Week when there were only eleven kids left at the time.

I had fantasized about pushing the button on a couple of occasions.

In fact, the thought of giving up was always present. Sometimes very faint, but most of the time front and center.

You just learned to live with that thought.

The other ten kids had been part of the so called popular kids and there were no losers left but me.

The challenge was a sprinting contest between couples.

Since there were eleven of us and the other ten kids were all friends, I ended up all alone.

Of course.

The guards didn’t register that fact and I had to sprint on my own.

We had to sprint from one side of the plaza to the other, tag our buddy and he or she would sprint back.

The slowest duo would be eliminated.

We would keep sprinting until there was one team left and that team was granted one full day of rest.

One full day of rest.

Being able to rest that long was a game changer and everybody knew it.

At that point, I realized that complaining about being alone would not help one bit. It would have been just a waste of time and energy, so I didn’t even bother.

The ten kids left in the race were the toughest kids in camp and I didn’t think I had a shot at all.

Besides, I was all alone.

The contest started.

I had already figured out that it was all about not finishing last and conserving energy throughout the runs.

That’s why I paced myself when I saw a couple of slower kids to my right and I touched the other end of the plaza in fifth place.

The other teams switched runners of course but I had to turn around and sprint back.

That was quite exhausting.

And even though I still managed to finish that run in fourth place, I was definitely convinced now that I had no chance at all.

The couple that was eliminated seemed truly disgusted that they couldn’t beat me.

There was nothing they could have done though, because it was all about raw speed and apparently, I had that in spades.

On top of that, I seemed to recuperate faster than the others.

We had five minutes between runs and I was extremely efficient with my time.

At that point, I already knew that almost nobody was faster than me in a straight line.

The only problem was of course that I had to sprint twice as much as the other kids.

But I managed to hang in there, crazily enough.

I never won a run but I was always in the mix. Even better, I was never really in danger throughout the first four runs.

And then, it was only me and one other team.

The two boys from that team were basketball players and had managed to win every single run.

Their strategy was simple yet effective. The first runner started extremely fast and built an insane lead and the second runner just kept that lead.

At this point, I half expected the guards to step in and turn this into a fair contest.

They never did.

And again, I realized that complaining was not going to make any difference so I just kept my trap shut.

I used my five minutes to mentally prepare for the final run and came up with a reasonable tactic.

The first kid was probably faster than me and trying to keep up with him would kill me.

I didn’t know how fast the second runner was because I had never seen him run at his peak.

My gamble at the time was that the second kid was not really fast and that their unusual strategy was built on hiding that fact.

Don’t ask me how I came up with that stroke of brilliance.

As Hell’s Week progressed and I was getting truly exhausted, I also seemed to become more lucid and intuitive.

My insight about the second runner being slow was a result of my almost superhuman intuition.

Something deep down told me that if the second runner would have been a sprinting machine as well, he would have tried to show off his insane speed.

At least once.

Anyway.

Just like that strategizing was over and the three of us had to sprint one final time.

Two kids on one side.

One kid on the other.

The Final Stint

The pistol sounded.

What happened next could not have taken more than a minute.

At best.

But it felt like a lifetime at that moment.

The first kid started unbelievably fast, as I had expected.

Even faster then usual in fact.

And even though my tactic was to let him get away, my nerves got the better of me and for the first couple of seconds, I almost matched his speed.

But I instantly felt that that pace was killing me and I slowed down a bit.

When he finished his part, I was probably twenty paces behind.

The kid tapped his partner and they were already celebrating, that’s how victorious they felt.

And who could blame them?

When the second kid crossed me, I was still ten paces away from the wall.

But then I stretched my arm, tapped the wall and turned around without losing too much momentum.

It took me a couple of seconds to get back to top speed and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the race would have been run.

Right there and then.

But when the second kid had crossed me and we looked each other in the eyes, I saw something that rekindled the fire in my belly.

He was clearly afraid.

And now, for the first time in five runs, I saw him sprinting at top speed.

What I suspected before turned out to be true:

This kid was not that fast.

He wasn’t slow either, but he was nowhere near as fast as the first kid.

When he crossed his halfway point, I was way behind.

But closing on him. And fast.

That’s when he made the crucial mistake:

He looked around.

And what he saw must have scared him to death because it instantly sucked all the speed out of him.

He even struggled to stay on a straight line.

I on the other hand, was reborn.

During that final stint of the race, I took all my anger and frustration, submerged myself in it and then turned it into raw speed.

It was downright cathartic.

The other kid was now almost standing still compared to me.

My focus was now so narrow that I could only see the small back of his neck.

And then it happened.

I overtook him when we both had only ten paces left.

That exact moment when I overtook that kid was the happiest moment in my life.

Ever.

Almost one month of frustration was instantly gone.

And all I had to do now was close the race.

But then, to my own horror, my left leg started cramping and I fell to the floor in horrible pain.

There was nothing I could.

When the spasms were finally gone, the other kid had crossed the finish.

Kind of crawling himself to be totally honest.

That’s how hard this race, and Hell’s Week in general, had been.

I mustered all the energy I had left and limped towards the kid.

Then, I shook his hand.

I was determined to stay in Hell’s Week.

Believe me.

But one of the guards, a medic, believed my cramps were a symptom of something worse.

And after running a couple of tests, it was clear that my kidneys were shutting down because of extreme fatigue.

When I went to the bathroom, my pee was red.

I had noticed that before but choose to ignored it, that’s what Hell’s Week did to you.

One of the guards then told me that they could not force me to quit, but she really made sure I understood how dangerous going on would be.

She told me that I desperately needed to sleep.

The guards gave me some time to decide but I didn’t really need it.

Endangering my health was always going to be my personal red line.

I tried to put on a brave face but started crying nevertheless when I told the guards the following words:

‘Hell’s Week is over for me and I’m ready to push that button.’

Now that the decision was made and the dam was punctured, I could feel the exhaustion flood through my system.

Two guards had to support me as I limped towards the button.

I tried to keep my cool but, again, that was not really working. When I pushed that button, tears were streaming down my face.

As the alarm was sounding, there were seven kids left and they all put one fist in the air.

That had become our sign whenever a kid pushed that dreaded button.

I was dragged into the sickbay and slept for two days straight.

And as the medic had predicted, my health improved as soon as I rested.

My pee turned yellow again and with it, my lucidity also returned.

There were a couple of other kids in the sickbay and we all had ample time to think all of this through.

Nobody had any clue what Hell’s Week was all about.

Even now.

There was no special prize for first place and nobody really forced us to compete, yet all of us had almost killed ourselves to stay in the game.

I didn’t get it either at that point.

In fact, it wasn’t until much later that I realized how important Hell’s Week and this camp in general would be in influencing the rest of my life.

For example, I would often take sleep for granted in the past.

But ever since that summer, I never did that again.

When I was back in reasonable health, I was allowed to join the other kids. They were all grouped together in the oversized dinner room and watching the action on some kind of screen.

To my surprise, there were only two kids left in the game.

Two girls.

They were both hanging upside down while doing incredibly difficult calculations. Whenever someone missed, the other girl was given a five minute sleeping break.

It looked even more brutal from a distance.

Now that I was sitting in this comfortable room and watching the action from a safe distance, it all felt extremely surreal.

Then I spotted Ayrton.

And waved him over.

One Last Lecture

He high-fived me.

‘Are you all better now?’

He seemed genuinely interested.

I nodded and said:

‘All better now. The moment I pushed that button, I was already getting better.’

He nodded.

‘That’s what happens to everyone.’

I looked him straight in the eyes and asked:

‘So what’s the point of Hell’s Week?’

He hesitated for a second but then answered:

‘Since you’re out, I can tell you the truth. The point of Hell’s Week is learning to give up. It ends when everyone is out.’

I stared at him in disbelief but it was clear he wasn’t kidding.

‘They could have said that at the start and I would have pushed that button in a second.’

Ayrton shook his head:

‘It doesn’t work that way. You have to earn your defeat.’

All we could do now was wait for the last two kids to push that button.

One girl almost immediately pushed it after missing a simple calculation. The last girl hang in there for a couple of hours longer.

But eventually she pushed the button as well.

I don’t know exactly what challenge she was going through and frankly, I didn’t really care at that point.

All I wanted was to go home.

Our parents would come get us the next day at three in the afternoon and we had some kind of farewell ceremony at two.

So we all lined up in that central plaza for one more time.

It’s crazy how much difference one month makes. A month ago I had been all alone and now, I had made some friends for life.

Or so I thought.

Because real life would soon dissolve the intense friendships. That’s how it always goes.

Lucretia stood before us one last time.

Towering above us as usual and wearing her shiniest uniform.

And then, she started talking about friendship, discipline and life. She even gave some advice on how to be a good person.

Of course she had to recite some statistics, apparently proving beyond doubt that some of us would end up in jail or worse.

As you can imagine, nobody was really impressed.

But then she came forward and scanned the group, looking for someone.

Her eyes landed on me and to my shock, she started addressing me.

‘All of you have gone through an amazing transformation. You were all petty, soft and obsessed by the pecking order.

That’s no longer the case and you’ve all proved that you’re capable of much more.

Especially Four-Eyes. When he entered this place, he was without friends and without self-esteem. But over the course of this month, he became the nerve center of this pack.

He has proven himself over and over and I’m sure he will grow up to make a difference.

I’m absolutely positive that he, and all of you by the way, needed this camp to turn life around.

By the way, don’t think that ‘Four-Eyes’ is an insult. His four eyes make him double as wise as the rest of us.’

She then knelt down and the other guards followed her example, even the kids knelt down.

I felt like someone was chopping onions next to me but this time, my tears were all pride and joy.

A couple of hours later, on the way home, my parents asked me how camp had been.

I thought about it for a second and all I could answer was:

‘I’m sure I’ll write about this one day.’

Innocence Lost

The One Summer I’ll Never Forget

Locked In A Crappy Bus

Off To A Crappy Start

The Birth Of Four-Eyes

Live Action Role Play

Picking Through The Left-Overs

The Magical Bullet

Escape From Alcatraz

The Clash Of The Titans

Gorging On Ice-Cream

Battle Of The Sexes

One Sash To Rule Them All

Hell’s Week

All By Myself

The Loser’s Button

Challenge After Challenge

The Final Stint

One Last Lecture

Written by MR. Molly Maguire