Name: Aidan Ordway
Teacher: Mr. Jockers
Class: Period 8
Date: 2/1/18

The Bull In The Water

Passing everybody as I slither toward the middle side of the lake but as I’m swimming I feel a long, slimy thing caress my leg…

I arrived in a yellow school bus but the seats weren’t all the way bolted to the floor so I was smacking my my head against the window like a bird seeing its reflection. Walking off the bus and seeing the Boy Scout Camp sign, I peed myself. I stepped quickly clear of it, thinking it would fall with the old rusty chains barely holding it up between two ancient oak poles. I find my tent and start setting up my bed with the sheets and pillow I brought from home. I see something out of the corner of my eye following a blow on my left temple. I turn around cursing under my breath and I see Lucas Farmer standing there giggling in the creepy Lucas giggle thing he does. He runs out of my tent and I try to chase him but with my head pounding, I decide to just sit down. Later, after I’m done inhaling advils I try to go to sleep. After just five minutes of me getting into my dream about going home, I hear ruckus outside of my tent. The way our tents are positioned ate so that they all face in a circle toward each other and there is about twenty of them. Anyway, I rise from my cement block and peer outside and see a light behind one of the juniors tents.These kids are way cooler than me with their Nike Elite socks and Vineyard Vines long-sleeve shirts, while I’m over hear with a polo shirt and khakis anyway, I run behind of neighboring tents to not be seen. And when I peek around the corner of a tent where there’s garbage all over the ground, what I see is a shock. Three or four of them are huddled around an insanely big, hairy, long legged spider. They are torching it with an aorsol bug-spray and a lighter, laughing their heads off as its body shrivels up into a crispy black potatoe with grey fishsticks. I sprinted back to my tent and wrapped myself in my blankets and eventually fell asleep. I woke up the next morning feeling amazing and sprung out of my tent like a baby woken up from a long nap (if only they woke up softley) STRETCHING long and yawning. I walk over to the middle of the flag pole that’s positioned in the center of the twenty tents and see a poster, it reads that whoever can swim across the lake at four o’clock in the morning will get a VIP pass all around camp.
“What’s that?” Shawn Stryker says with a bear like scraggly voice
“I don’t know but I kind of want to do it” I say
“ I wouldn’t if I were you”
“Why?” I question
“Well the old camp counselors say that there is a freshwater bull shark that swims up and down the lake. It was put in there by some kids like five years ago and grew. It now lurks the depths and only comes up when the mud is murky and the water is black.”
“Oh your cool, scaring me like I’m four and making up some story about a dumb dead shark” I say
Storming off into the other direction I think to myself, What if he’s right? Is this shark still out there and ready to feed on dirty feet and crusty bathing suits?…
“Naw”
After I shoot some shotguns and play gaga ball and fall asleep under the chirps of crickets, I wake up at 3:30 with the my phone singing my alarm. “My milkshakes bring all the boys to the yards” and before the song could finish I jump up out of my bed change into my swimsuit and grab my towel and snatch my goggles and high tail it all the way down to the pond. As soon as I get there, there are already kids in the water preparing for the long swim. I waddle across the crusty, rickety dock (my legs still half asleep even though I ran down here). I enter the water with a splash, no putting my toes in first, no saying “ooo too cold”. Just like quickly pulling off a bandaid so it doesn’t hurt as much. I pop back up out of the water with a yelp and goosebumps flying down my arms and back. They yell at us to line up on the docks with one hand in the water and one on the dock edge. Still a little dusky out, I peer out at the water in front of me and feel insanely nervous about drowning, of whatever else crosses your mind when your terrified about something. Then the old man we called “Old Man Jenkins” lifts his shriveled wobbly hand and fires a blank out of the sleek silver gun, while he cringes as the sound echoes across the camp. My legs spring into action and are kicking at light speed my hand form into cups and start propelling me forward. But I’m not alone all of the others are starting to gain on me, as I cut people off I start passing them, slithering toward the middle of the lake as I’m swimming I feel a long, slimy thing caress my leg and my mind starts spinning with all these insane thought on what it could be but then my brain focuses on what Shawn had told my earlier.
“OH HECK NO!!!”
Kicking faster than a motor boat, and my arms rotating like a plane propeller I hydroplaned on top on of the water and got to the end before I even knew it. Later, I found out that it was just seaweed but that didn’t stop me from thinking that a bull shark just brushed against my leg and was about to go full JAWS on me and mess me up good.
Definitely next time I will not believe the things that I hear from other people thanks goodness this time I didn’t pay for the price.