Sun Chasers Saga

Chapter 1 The Beginning-3

So Lizzie got into the fifth seat, and I was right behind her. We got into position, we were in the middle; the three groups on our left looked confident, I could see a lot of athletes over there, the other four on our right looked nervous, the group distribution wasn’t exactly fair, and they looked defeated already. But hey, nothing’s decided yet, nobody knows what will happen next. We just have to give it our all and I’m sure it’ll work out. Right before the race started, Lizzie looked back and said to me:

“Don’t worry, we got this”, with a little smile on her face. I guess everyone got nervous, even Lizzie.

The teacher blew the horn, and the second round started. Lizzie rows to the left and I rows to the opposite; we hold the paddle tightly, and we row the paddle as hard as we can while keeping it synchronised. We switched sides every 10 seconds to keep up the pace. The first person in every group sets up the tempo of the rowing for the rest of us to follow, while the last person makes sure we are going into a straight line.

We were going head to head with each other, and every student puts everything they have on the line. Adrenaline kicks in, and everybody focuses solely on the finish line. Our arms were sore, our breath turned heavy. The cheers from our classmates behind us boosted our morale, we felt invincible. What was supposed to be a few minutes felt like hours. Our arms were getting weak, and after what felt like thousands of strokes we finally reached the finish line.

Everyone stops almost all at the same time. We let out sighs of relief, catch our breaths, and we’re glad the race is finally over. The student organisers along with a couple of students from the first round came over quickly, they helped us out of the canoe and carried us somewhere we can sit and lay down and catch our breaths. I got out of the canoe and immediately gave them a signal that I’m fine; I hurried over to Lizzie and helped her out. I took her to a bench nearby and let her catch her breath. Lizzie turned to look at me, and said:

“That was fun!” while panting, “Thanks for helping me out”. She said while smiling.

“Yeah, that was fun. You did great back there”. I responded. And we started to laugh. It was fun. We lost the race, of course.. But that was fun!

We moved over and joined Trevor and Danny with the other classmates with the rest of the group members. Round 3 started and we cheered on with the others despite still out of breaths. Round 4 was hilarious, 2 groups crashed into each other. And on Round 5 a group moved out of their line and their boat capsized after crashing onto the shore.

The race ended, and Trevor’s group came out as the winner based on performance time. We celebrated by throwing several baskets full of flour at the winner. It quickly turned into a flour fight; and flour fight into a water g*n fight. I’m not sure how it came to this, but my class sure is prepared; it was our last summer camp after all.

We worked together to clean up the mess after the celebration was over, and got into our dorms to clean ourselves up. It was like a group bath, we were only separated with cubicles; no doors, just curtains. Naturally, boys being boys. We peeked and annoyed each other.

The boys from the Boy Scout started some fire in the middle of the campground. Everyone gathered around the fire and started to work together to prepare for dinner. We had barbecue and hotdogs. We enjoyed our dinner over chat, jokes, and we sang songs. We finished the dinner with some marshmallows while Mr. Kim gave us a big speech for our last summer together before going into college. We have made a lot of memories over the past years, the good ones and the bad ones, and his speech moved all of us to tears.

Mr. Kim closed his speech and then discussed the recent news headline about the mysterious disease. He was making arguments against the rumours of the disease saying that there is no reason for us to believe everything the social media has because more often than not news that spread through social media are just baseless rumours and sometimes even hoaxes.

He also explained that the WHO has recently made a statement that we should rest assured because it was just a normal flu. Although he insists that we should get enough sleep and take care of our health more as teenagers. We were sent to bed afterwards, none of us really put into thought about what Mr. Kim had just said. They were rumours, they filled the internet and they are trending right now. But just like the trends, they died down after sometime, so I didn’t really give it much thought.

It started drizzling as we were cleaning up. The air got colder and the winds blew harder, I could hear thunder rumble far in the distance. Shortly after, the rain turns into a downpour. The teachers instructed us to get some rest since we will start our morning activities very early tomorrow and we’re all ready to settle down for the night. I got into my bed and tucked myself under my warm blankets, but I couldn’t fall asleep. I was excited, I got to spend the whole day with Lizzie today and I couldn’t wait for tomorrow!

As I was imagining how our activities would turn out tomorrow, Trevor snuck beside my bed and whispers:

“Bud, we’re going outside, come with us”.

I jumped a little, luckily I didn’t make any sound,

“You NEED to stop that. Don’t keep sneaking up on me, you’ll give me a heart attack one of these days”. I grunted. “Where are we going anyway?”

Trevor replied, “It’s not my fault you get surprised so easily besides, you were the one who was smiling looking like an i***t in your bed. I can’t help but to sneak up on you”.

I wasn’t smiling like an i***t. I got up thinking I cannot fall asleep anyway and followed Trevor to the Dining Hall where Danny was waiting in his yellow raincoat.

“I got raincoats for both of you”, Danny said excitedly, holding a bright orange and green raincoat one in each hand.

“Danny, you look very bright..” I paused for a moment, “and ours seem to be just as bright”, I said to Danny jokingly. “Where are we going anyway?” I continued.

Trevor responded “We’re going exploring!” as he snatched the green raincoat from Danny’s hand.

“Exploring? There’s nothing around and it’s 10 pm already. Besides, are we really going to go out in this weather?” I said to Trevor while I took the other one from Danny’s hand and put it on.

“You mean it’s ONLY 10 pm. That’s why we’re putting on raincoats. Danny prepared it beforehand, so we might as well use it”. Trevor replied

I turned to Danny and he gave me a big smile, well at least he’s excited. “Alright, alright, you better have a plan”. I gave in to Trevor’s idea.

We sneaked past some of the teachers who were still up. They were sitting on the porch chatting and drinking beers. They weren’t supposed to, at least not in front of the students. Which is probably why they chose to drink outside despite the bad weather. Slipping past the teachers was easy because of the heavy rain.

Trevor took us up the hiking trails. The road was slippery because of the rain, and some parts were even flooded. We tried our best going around it, but our vision and action were very limited due to the heavy rain. After following the trails for about 5 more minutes, we came across a dam. The dam was flooded, water was flowing fast from inside the dam. The rain got worse so Trevor insisted that we should take shelter in the security post right above the dam.

Luckily the door to the security post was not locked, so we managed to get inside and take shelter. We decided not to turn the lights on in case someone might notice. Danny and I were busy taking off our boots and trying to get as much water out as possible while Trevor’s attention was turned to the security’s equipment. He was rummaging through them despite my constant scolding, he would not listen and continued to ransack the whole place. While I was busy getting furious at Trevor, Danny suddenly screamed:

“TIGER! THERE’S A TIGER!” Danny looked pale as he was pointing toward the hiking trails on the other side of the dam.

Both Trevor and I jumped and turned over to where Danny was pointing. We didn’t see anything, it was too dark. The rain made it worse, I could barely see 10 feets away from the window.

“Danny calm down”, Trevor said as he looked around.

“You saw a tiger? Are you sure?” I asked Danny, while I looked around nervously.

Danny was trembling, it was bad enough that he looked pale as soon as he screamed moments ago, but now he looked like he could faint at any moment.

Trevor noticed how bad Danny’s condition was, he immediately helped Danny to sit on a chair away from the window. He said

“It’s Okay Danny, there’s nothing around. We’ve both looked and there’s nothing outside”.

Danny was shaking, he was looking down the whole time and he stuttered “NO.. I definitely saw one.. I see it..”.

Trevor looked at me anxious, he didn’t know how to calm him down, and he was worried about him.

I tried to talk Danny out of it,

“Danny, I looked through the campsite’s guide and I can guarantee there’s no tiger around here”. I paused, Danny wasn’t responding, so I continued,

“Well, they might have some cougars or coyotes but encounters are very rare. Besides, they are way smaller than a tiger, they are the size of domestic dogs, there’s nothing to worry about especially in this weather”.

Danny finally looked up, he looked terrified and he shrugs his head weakly and said,

“I know.. I read it too.. that’s what I was afraid of.. that was definitely a tiger.. or something as big as one. No, even bigger..”. Danny was a little cowardly, but he wasn’t always like this.

A mere sight of a tiger, even if there’s one, would not have terrified him this much. Both Trevor and I were in a loss for words, we don’t know what could have surprised him that much. We decided to wait for a little longer until the rain subsided a little before we went back to the dorms.

Danny was restless the whole trip back. Trevor and I would have to take turns trying to calm him down, and make sure he’s safe. We got caught by Mr. Kim on our way back, we bumped into him right outside the door. It looked like he was smoking behind the students and other teachers. So he promised that he would overlook us if we promised not to tell anyone that we saw him smoking. We agreed, and quickly got inside. We cleaned ourselves up in the dining hall’s toilet so we wouldn’t wake anyone. After we got changed into our pyjamas, we tucked ourselves in our bed and got some rest.