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But by the time we figured out who the bag actually BELONGED to, the owner was standing in our doorway. I thought Mrs. Graziano found us because of the baby powder, but it turns out it was even easier for her than THAT. As soon as she opened her cabin door, she found Emilio stumbling around in the dark. Which just goes to show, you should never leave a man behind.

Mrs. Graziano chewed us out for our "immature shenanigans." She said we couldn't be trusted on our own for the night, so she was gonnd get on the phone and find an emergency chaperone. I couldn't imagine who would be willing to drive all the way out to this place in the middle of the night, but I knew that WHOEVER it was, he wasn't gonna be HAPPY about it. And it turns out I was right.

Sunday I really wish Mrs. Graziano had just sent me HOME instead of calling Dad to chaperone us for the last day. Dad was already mad ENOUGH about the CAR, and now he had to babysit a bunch of unshowered middle schoolers. And it wasn't fun breaking the news to him that we didn't even have a working bathroom in our cabin. I figured I owed it to Dad to at least give him a basic rundown of the camp, but he seemed to already know everything I tried to tell him. Somehow he even knew about the STEW, because when somebody put a serving on his plate, he scraped it right back into the pot.

At first I thought Dad must've been a chaperone when RODRICK went to this place, but when I saw one of the other chaperones greet Dad, I put it all together. WELCOME BACK, FRANK! Dad went to Hardscrabble Farms when he was MY age. No WONDER he wasn't happy to be here. If his experience was anything like MINE, I'm sure he never imagined in a million years that he'd be BACK. Me and my cabinmates spent the day trying to set up our camp for the overnight. And it was pretty clear Dad had no intention of helping out.

Half the time he was off somewhere else doing who knows what. And when he WAS around, he didn't lift a finger. So we set up our shelter without him. Luckily, Grandpa's book had a chapter on how to build a waterproof lean-to, so we didn't NEED Dad's help.

At dinner some kids from another group seemed really shaken up. They said they were gathering firewood and came across an old shack that they were 99% sure belonged to Silas Scratch. This is where I was hoping Dad would tell everyone Silas Scratch was just a made-up story to keep kids from leaving their cabins at night. But he DIDN'T. He said that when HE went to Hardscrabble Farms, a couple of kids went poking around Silas Scratch's shack and were never heard from AGAIN.