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The first guy filled up his bucket and then poured it in the next guy's bucket, and so on. But we spilled so much water along the way that by the time we got to the cabin, there was almost nothing left to put in the metal tub we were supposed to fill. We realized if we were ever gonna finish the activity, we needed to find a better way to fill the tub. So we wrung out our sweaty clothes.

After that we did an activity where we had to tie our wrists together with scarves and go through an obstacle course made of ropes. But when it came to physical activities, our group was pretty hopeless.

After the ropes course, we couldn't untie the scarves because we'd knotted them too tight. And THAT wasn't good, because Timothy Ames needed to use the bathroom in the cabin. By the end of the day everyone was totally worn out, and I was really glad when Mr. Jefferson told us it was time for dinner. The meal was chicken patties, corn on the cob, and stew. I passed on the stew, and I was really glad I did when I saw Jordan pull an entire taco shell out of his bowl. Who KNOWS what year that thing was from.

After dinner we went back to the cabin. Mr. Jefferson said that since we had been in the woods, we needed to check one another for ticks. Each person was responsible for his bunkmate, which meant I had Mr. Jefferson. But Mr. Jefferson's got a lot of hair, and I wasn't gonna go poking through it. For all I knew, there could be a whole COLONY of ticks living in there. Everybody's always saying how great the outdoors are, but there's all SORTS of creepy-crawlies you need to worry about.

I used to play in the woods all the TIME, until I swallowed a live spider. But in a place like Hardscrabble Farms, there are just as many bugs INSIDE as OUTSIDE. Some sort of beetle burrowed into a kid's ear at dinner, and he had to go to the nurse's station to have it removed.

Jordan found a tick on the back of Julian's neck, and everybody freaked out about it. But Mr. Jefferson said Julian would be fine, and he took him down to the nurse. The second Mr. Jefferson and Julian left, the rest of the guys in my cabin went totally NUTS. I stayed out of everybody's way because I didn't wanna be the fifth person from my group to get seen by the nurse on the first day. By the time Mr. Jefferson got back, the cabin was a wreck and everyone was FILTHY.