Disruption
Authors: Steven Whibley
Tags: #Young Adult, #YA, #Summer Camp, #Boy books, #Action Adventure, #friendship
Table of Contents
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Disruption
by Steven Whibley
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Steven B. Whibley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact Steven Whibley at [email protected]
Published by Steven Whibley Publishing
Victoria, British Columbia
www.stevenwhibley.com
Publisher: Steven Whibley Publishing
Editing: Maya Packard; Ricki Ewings
Cover Design: Pintado ([email protected])
Interior Layout and Design: Tammy Desnoyers (www.tammydesign.ca)
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Whibley, Steven, 1978-, author
Disruption / Steven Whibley.
(The Cambridge files ; bk. 1)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-927905-03-6 (bound).--ISBN978-1-927905-05-0 (pbk.).—
ISBN 978-1-927905-04-3 (pdf)
I. Title. II. Series: Whibley, Steven, 1978- . Cambridge files ; bk. 1.
PS8645.H46D57 2014 jC813'.6 C2014-900207-6
C2014-900208-4
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Steven Whibley was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters.
For Isaiah and Aubree
Chapter 1
Every year, Marksville Middle School’s graduating class puts on a farewell talent show, and every year there are dorks who sing, dorks who dance, and dorks who juggle or do magic. Some of the really dorky dorks recite poetry or act out scenes from something stupid and Shakespearean.
The show was a tradition that me and the other non-dork students had to endure. For three years, we’d sat on the gym’s bleachers and watched as untalented fourteen-year-olds performed and thought they were special. But there we were, at the last talent show I’d ever have to sit through. There was only one thing I needed to do to this tradition before I left.
Destroy it.
My best friend, Jason and I stood like rock stars, bumping fists, and making
hand signs at the crowd in front of us. We wanted to start already, but clearly Principal Bartlett needed a bit more time to realize his attempt at a humorous introduction to the talent show was failing. It didn’t matter because no one was going to remember his monologue after we were done. He cleared his throat and glanced over his shoulder at us to see if we were ready.
Jason held his cardboard guitar in the air to signal that we were.
“I’ve made you all wait long enough,” Principal Bartlett said into the microphone. “I present the first act by two of your graduating eighth graders, Jason Cole and Matt Cambridge!”
The kids in the bleachers erupted with cheers, and Jason nodded to the seventh grader at the control box. A rock song I’d never heard blasted through the speakers, and Jason and I started jumping around pretending to sing along.
Fifteen seconds in, just as we’d planned, I dropped to one knee, lit the match that had been taped to the back of my cardboard guitar, and dropped it into the bucket.
Before I’d taken three steps back, there was a whoosh, and a funnel of thick white smoke rose up from the bucket like a giant twisting snake. Everyone in the gym went silent, then all the teachers suddenly lurched to their feet. I stopped moving and gave Jason an
is it supposed to do that?
look.
When the smoke column hit the ceiling of the gym and spread out into a giant cloud, the cheers of the student body were reignited. The teachers looked around at their colleagues, uncertain, it seemed, as to whether they should evacuate or sit back down. That uncertainty lasted only a few more seconds.
The heavy white cloud hovering below the ceiling thirty feet above us started to fall. At first, people thought it was fun. Quite a few started cheering. But then they started to cough, and the cheers became screams and cries for help.
“I can’t breathe!” someone screamed, which was stupid since you need to breathe in order to scream. The smoke didn’t sting my eyes or throat, and it wasn’t so thick that you couldn’t see. Still, that bit of panic, combined with the white smoke circulating through the air, was enough to send the entire place into a frenzy.
Panic, in that tightly packed gym, spread like flames, and in seconds, students rushed for the exits in a mad stampede, which caused even more panic. Everywhere I looked people were running or crying or both. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the fire alarm clanged overhead and the sprinklers burst to life.
Jason stepped up beside me and after a few moments of watching the mayhem, said, “This isn’t going
exactly
like we’d planned.”
By then the sprinklers had managed to pull the remaining smoke out of the air, and a milky liquid dripped off everything around us.
I took a deep breath and sighed as the mob thinned out and the remaining students hobbled for the exits.
“Yeah,” I said, “we might have overshot a bit.”
We thought our prank would simply end the talent show and that we’d all be sent home. We really hadn’t intended to hurt people. But people
were
hurt, and the police showed up and hauled us to the station to call our parents. Jason’s dad showed up first with a couple of lawyers in tow. Jason and I sat outside the conference room and watched through the windows as the adults in suits and the men in uniform talked it out. “It’ll be okay,” Jason said.
And it was . . . sort of. I’m not sure what Jason’s dad said, but he’s disgustingly rich, and I guess the kids of rich people get away with stuff. The fact that I was
with
a rich kid meant I got away with stuff too.
My mom showed up at the station a few minutes after we’d been released. She talked to the officer in charge and then marched me to the car. She didn’t speak to me the whole way home, though she tried to a couple of times. Her mouth would open, and she’d inhale, but then her lips would become thin lines and she wouldn’t speak. That’s how my mom was. She never yelled and never lost her temper. She taught first graders; maybe that was why she always seemed to have so much patience.
She pulled the car into the driveway and shut off the engine. I could tell by the way she was breathing that I wasn’t supposed to get out yet.
She turned. “I’m so disappointed in you,” she said finally. Moisture had gathered in her eyes, and I thought she might actually cry.
My stomach knotted. “We didn’t think—”
“That’s right,” she snapped. “You didn’t think. You didn’t think at all.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and took a long, slow breath. “Go to your room. I don’t want to see you right now.”
When my dad came home later that evening, things really went downhill. My dad was a janitor for a company called Sledge Industries. He was bald and nearly six feet tall, with rope-like muscles and broad shoulders. He always walked a bit hunched, not like he had bad posture, more like he was always a second away from charging at something. My friends said that in another life my dad had probably been one of those Italian mob enforcers—you know, the guy you get to break legs or threaten people. Usually Dad was a pretty peaceful guy, unless I did something wrong. Then he became a rottweiler.
As he stood in the doorway of my room, I realized that he actually kind of looked like a rottweiler too—only scarier. He spent the better part of an hour screaming at me about stupidity and damages and recklessness, and then he just stopped.
And that was it. For nearly two days.
I’d said I was sorry. And I was kind of sorry. I mean, no one had been seriously hurt. It was all just skinned knees and a few bruises. Yes, a few kids had asthma flare-ups, but they’d be fine. I
was
sorry, but I also felt like everyone was kind of overreacting. It was just smoke.
So when my dad stepped into my room on that last day and told me what my punishment was, I wasn’t sure how to react.
“It’s going to strengthen my moral compass?” I asked. “What kind of Kool-aid- drinking camp is it?”
“I told you not to speak,” my dad said in a low warning tone. “Don’t argue. Don’t whine. Don’t say anything. Or I swear, Matt, I’ll send you to Alaska. It’s this camp, or it’s Alaska with your aunt, because clearly we’re not getting through to you.”
I swallowed. I’d seen my dad angry before. He’d even threatened to send me to my aunt’s place in Alaska before, but this was different. This was some kind of angry desperation I’d never seen before.
“You’ll go to this camp,” he said. “You’ll listen. You’ll learn. Because it wasn’t easy getting you into this place.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from me, almost as if he was ashamed about something. “You’re not… exactly supposed to be there. So for three weeks, just blend in.”
“Blend in how? What does that even m—”
His fist slammed against the surface of my desk, knocking everything on it to the floor. “Do. Not. Talk.”
I put my lips together.
“You leave the day after tomorrow.” He shook his head, then turned and stepped out of the room looking very tired.
And as much as I didn’t like the idea of losing three weeks of summer to this stupid camp, I liked the idea of Alaska even less. It could’ve been worse.
I was such an idiot.
Chapter 2
“Summer camp?” Jason asked while we walked home after school. “I mean,
that’s
your punishment? Camp? And you thought my parents were soft.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “It’s not going to be a sit-around-the-campfire-and-eat-marshmallows kind of camp,” I said. “It’s probably some kind of military camp. My dad keeps saying I basically tried to kill a couple hundred middle schoolers.” I hadn’t told Jason about my dad acting weird about it, or warning me to blend in. If there was a chance he could get in trouble over it, I figured it would be better if I didn’t tell anyone else.
Jason laughed. “Please. We did everyone a favor, and we made the last week of school a memorable one.”
He held out his fist and I bumped it with mine.
“The good news,” Jason added, “is I did some digging online, and there’s only a handful of camps just outside the city. They’re all your run-of-the-mill, let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya type places. So I don’t think you’re gonna be doing any marching drills.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” I said. “Not if it was my dad’s idea.” No way he’d let me off that easy. “He’s really mad,” I said after a few minutes. “He just keeps telling me that if I mess up at camp, he’s sending me to live with my aunt next year. In Alaska.”