At 6:30 in the morning, Coach gets out of bed and goes to the mirror hanging on the wall to the left of his bed and combs his hair, which doesn't take very long since it's only an inch and a half long.
He puts on his Red Sox cap, covering his gray hair, which is rather thin toward the front.
Coach brushes his teeth, puts on a short-sleeved olive green shirt, camouflage pants and combat boots. As he's walking out the door of the Manager's Cabin, he picks up his trumpet.
He walks out onto the front porch and mutters to himself, "Now... what to play today? Hmmm... oh, perfect."
Coach lifts his trumpet and begins playing When The Saints Go Marching In. And hits all the wrong notes.
Rod covers his head with his blanket and groans as soon as Coach starts playing.
Everyone else gets up and starts getting dressed and eventually Rod throws his blanket off and starts getting dressed too.
As one of the other Red Cabin team members pulls his shirt on, he says, "I didn't know you could play When The Saints Go Marching In, in C minor."
Billy, a well-muscled kid with dreadlocks and a Jamaican accent, replies, "That's because you're not supposed to!"
Everyone in Red Cabin One starts laughing uproariously.
The only dress code requirements at camp is a pair of combat boots and an armband in your team's color. Other than that, the kids can wear whatever they want, within reason.
Rod, thirteen years old, four-foot-eight, with longish red hair and gray eyes, is wearing jeans and a red t-shirt.
Mark, a five-foot-six African-American kid of sixteen with short black hair and brown eyes, is wearing dark gray cargo pants and a red sleeveless shirt.
And Leo, four feet and one inch tall, has short brown hair, blue eyes, a mole on his chin and wears a pair of rectangular glasses, a dark green button-up shirt and red shorts.
The reason behind why each of them is wearing at least one red article of clothing, is that after spending as much time at Camp Adanarg as they have, one starts always wearing team colors whether as a conscious decision or not. Those who have gone there the longest can be picked out easily as they wear nothing but red, blue, yellow or green respectively at all times.
As each of the Reds gets dressed, they start slowly spilling out of their cabins and going over to the obstacle course.
Rod, Leo and Mark get there, and see that the others are, rather than running it, rearranging it!
Rod quirks an eyebrow and asks Mark, "Why are they moving stuff around?"
Leo replies, "Oh yeah, the first day we got here, Coach said that the course gets rearranged every Sunday, but you were so late that day," Leo suddenly stares off into the middle distance, as he is prone to do, "that you almost got locked out."
Rod's face turns a faint shade of red and he practically growls, "It wasn't my fault that that Bus broke down like, twice, on the way here!"
Then they hear Mark say from over by the climbing wall, "If you two are about done," Mark breaks off mid-sentence with a grunt as he and a few others start tipping it on it's side and continues saying, "we could use some help here!"
At the Cafeteria, everyone from the Red is rubbing sore muscles or cradling bruised limbs. Rod and Leo are shuffling along the line at the food counter.
The first of the three aging lunch ladies, Beatrice, with her gray hair pulled back into a bun at the back of her head so tightly it's pulling the skin of her face taught, making her wrinkles barely noticeable. Which also increases her already commanding presence.
Beatrice always wears a cold, calculating look. When you combine that with the fact that when she talks to you she has her head inclined so that she's looking down her nose at everyone, you feel as if she is a queen in her court, rather than a cook.
She asks in her high, though still intimidating, voice, "Pancake or waffle?"
"Pancake." Rod squeaks as though he's being interrogated.
Then they get eggs from Marge, Beatrice's younger sister, whose hair still retains a little blond in it. Though she's the younger of them, Marge is almost always falling asleep, and often forgets where her glasses are even though they are usually perched on her head.
And finally, they pass by Auntie, who is stirring soup for later. No one really knows what her name actually is, they just call her Auntie.
As soon as they sit down, Mark tells them to finish their breakfast quickly.
"Why?" Leo asks around a bite of pancake that could easily pass for a hockey puck.
"Because us and the Yellows have to go clear out the backwoods for the battle tomorrow."
Rod's voice, muffled by scrambled eggs with strange black flecks that he has already learned to ignore, says, "What are we supposed to be clearing out of there?"
Mark, finishes swallowing a gulp of milk and replies, "You know, gathering acorns for ammo and pinecones for the Doc to make into grenades. Also, getting rid of thorned vines and thistles."
All Rod says in response is, "Ah."
Mark finishes explaining that they do this every week the day before a battle, and that the Blue and the Green Cabins did it the last time. The Greens doing more of the work than the Blues, under the tyranny of Mo.
After finishing their breakfast, they all meet up with the Yellow team outside of the fenced off area that takes up twenty of the twenty-five acres of the camp, where they have their battles with acorn firing guns and itching powder grenades and other things like that. The rest of the time, they go hiking back there or go swimming in the lake.
Joe Spivy, leader of the bullies and hooligans which make up all of the Yellow Cabins, one through four, says in his voice as deep as an avalanche, "About time you got here. I was starting to think we'd have to do this ourselves. And if we did, then I'd have to give you a black eye."
Joe's face looked a lot like a looming thunderhead when he said that last part.
Mark's responds, "Yeah well, unlike you guys, we didn't inhale breakfast."
Joe stands there for a moment with a foreboding look on his face. Some of the Red cabin boys start worrying that they're all going to get pummeled, though none of them voice their concern. Then suddenly Joe starts shaking with laughter, a noise very similar to the sound hippos make.
"You got us there, Mark. Especially in Glen's case." Joe says, still laughing, and pointing over his shoulder at a guy even bigger than himself, who then gets an embarrassed look on his face.
Joe continues, saying, "The way he eats, you'd think he has a black-hole in his stomach!"
Now, Joe is seventeen years old and is six and a half feet tall, weighs three hundred pounds, and can lift four hundred! He is very well tanned, has short, spikey orange hair and likes wearing leather, denim, and his barbed golden chain necklace.
Eventually they all get to collecting acorns and pinecones and clearing out unpleasant plant life.
A few hours later, the two teams are just wrapping up, when one of the Yellow Cabiners comes running over to Joe and says, "Um, Jozer?"
"What?"
"Phil's gone."
"What do you mean, gone?"
"Gone as in, he was there one moment, then he wasn't."
"Alright, show me where you saw him last. Sam! Eric!"
Two of the Yellow Cabin boys stop trying to pull a large thorn bush out of the ground and run over to stand in front of Joe. They are completely identical in appearance, short blond hair, pale blue eyes and freckles. Complete pretty-boys, and they're even dressed the same, denim shorts and white tank-tops. The only way to tell them apart is that rather than wearing their armbands on their arms, they wear them like headbands, each with their name written on it.
"You're coming with me. Phil's gone."
"Yes, Joe." The twins say at the same time.
"It was here." The Yellow Cabiner says.
"Good, now you go take everyone back to the cabins. We can handle finding him."
"Got it!" He shouts over his shoulder as he runs back to where everyone's waiting.
He had led Joe and the twins to the edge of the fence surrounding the camp. A place Sam and Eric know all too well.
Sam starts saying, "Uuuh, I don't think..."
"...this is such a good idea." Eric finishes.
Joe grunts, then climbs over the fence. Sam and Eric cast baleful looks at each other then follow Joe.
They keep walking through the forest and shouting Phil's name. Then Joe trips on a large root and lands in a bunch of leafy plants.
Joe gets up and brushes himself off, muttering, "Stupid tree."
Then Sam says, "Hey uh, Joe..."
"Yeah?"
Eric points at the ground where Joe landed and says, "That's poison ivy."
Joe shrugs and says, "I'll be fine so long as I don't scratch."
The twins give each other quizzical looks and follow Joe as he continues walking. They finally reach a clearing, with a small cliff rising over the trees on the other side.
Joe, already starting to look blotchy from scratching without noticing, walks into the clearing, raises his hands, cups them around his mouth and shouts, "Phil! Where are..."
Joe stops when he hears something climbing out of a horridly polluted looking pond.
"Phil?"
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