Being in the middle of nature, it gets so dark that once they turned out the cabin lights, you can’t see your hand right in front of your face. There was a small green light in the bathroom, but the door was always closed since there was always an endless stream of people going in to relieve themselves. I figure I was out for about two hours or more when I woke up to my bed shaking.
To say I was scared from the shaking of my bed would be an understatement. I was so scared, I could not move. I had images of being initiated since I was one of three new kids in our cabin. But after a moment, the bed stopped moving and after another moment, the bathroom door swung open. I briefly saw that the kid going into the bathroom was the same kind from the bunk above me. I calmed down after that and didn’t think anything else about him until he came back out of the bathroom and started to climb back up to the top bunk. That is when I heard that unmistakable crinkle sound.
I bolted up in my bed and reached out into the darkness and caught him by the leg. I must have scared him nearly to death because I heard a small audible gasp as his whole body went completely ridged.
I think I was just as scared as he was at that moment and my mind was racing to find a way out as I heard my own voice whisper into the darkness, “You didn’t flush.”
I was still holding on to his leg and he was still not moving at all. It seemed a long dead pause before he whispered down, “I was getting a drink of water.”
Now he knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and I could have said that the water never turned on, but for some reason I let go of his leg and whispered, “Oh . . . ok then . . . sorry.”
Though I couldn’t see him, I could tell by the way the bed suddenly shuttered that he swung himself up into the bed. I lay there, my heart beating so hard I thought it was going to explode through my chest and I noticed he was either breathing really hard or he was trying to muffle the sound of himself crying; I wasn’t sure which.
The second night played out the same exact way except everyone was so worn out from the lack of sleep the night before and from the three hour nature hike they took us on after lunch that most everyone collapsed into their beds and were sound asleep within minutes. I couldn’t go to sleep. Although I was so very tired, I had spent the entire day thinking about my bunkmate, whom I found out at breakfast was named Buz.
Buz did his best all day to avoid eye contact with me. He was obviously scared I was going to tell everyone his secret but I had no intention of going around blabbing. As a matter of fact, I wanted to talk to him and let him know that I was willing to help him hide it from everyone, but I couldn’t get close to him all day. Even if I could have, there were too many other kids around that I couldn’t have brought it up.
So, I lay there in my bed wide-awake and sure enough, I felt the bed start to shutter just a bit. I could tell he was being even more careful not to wake me this time. I let him get all the way down and I pretended to be sleeping when he opened the bathroom door. I had my eyes closed, just enough that in the dim green glow from the bathroom, I would look to be out cold, yet I could still faintly see him. He looked over at me to be sure I was sleeping and then stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. I wanted to get up and go into the bathroom too, but I didn’t want him to think I was cornering him, so I waited for him to come back out.