Camp Little Roar - Chapter One

“I can’t wait to get to the camp, this will be so much fun!” Luke said to his big brother. Luke was sitting on a bus next to his brother Alex, the two of them were on their way to summer camp. Luke and Alex were wearing matching yellow T-Shirts that said “Welcome to Camp Little Roar”, everyone on the bus was wearing the same thing.

“Yeah Luke, this should be a great trip!” Alex said with a smile, he had some pranks up his sleeve for his little brother.

The bus finally pulled up to the bottom of a hill and pulled into a welcome area, everyone was asked to exit the bus and wait in the area until a counselor arrived. Luke looked around, there were multiple small cabins lining the shore of the lake with numbers and animals adorned to them. Looking a little further there are a couple large buildings labeled, Kitchen, Theater and Classroom. Outside there are some picnic tables and other campers in the same T-Shirts as them. Luke saw his brother grabbing their bags from the bus. This was his brother’s third year at camp and his first, Alex told him what to bring. The camp sent out the shirts a couple weeks in advance as his brother mentioned they will be provided outfits when they arrive.

“Hey Luke, I got our bags.” Alex placed them on the ground and the both of them waited for the counselor. Eventually a couple teenagers showed up, a boy and a girl.

“Welcome to Camp Little Roar everyone, I want to thank you for being patient as we get things started on the first day, my name is Erica and my partner here is Marcus, we will be in charge of you this summer. First thing is to assign your camp groups and start some day one activities, you will be with your groups for the rest of the summer and you need to work as a team. If this isn’t your first year here we have tried to put you into similar groups as last year, we also have tried to include any family members in your group. Everyone will be put into teams of five and assigned a cabin number.” Erica continued and started handing out badges for the kids, the badge had their cabin number and a corresponding animal.

“Welcome back Alex, good to see you actually came back and we finally get to meet your younger brother Luke this time.” Erica smiled and pulled out two badges. Both had the number three in the center and had the face of a tiger on it. She gave them both a badge.

“Everyone should head to their assigned cabin. There are further instructions inside.

“Come on Luke, let’s go meet the others” Alex and Luke picked up their things and headed to the third cabin. The cabin was close to the beach and large fire pit, it had a small patio and on the door had number three with a cartoon tiger underneath it. Alex grabbed the door and pushed it open, the inside was a large room with three bunk beds, there were some tables and chairs in the center and some space for boots just inside the door. To the left was a small washroom. Luke noticed there wasn’t any light switch or power outlets in the room. There were three boys already sitting on a couple bunks who looked like they were waiting for them.

“Alex! Finally you made it, this must be you brother” one of the boys said.

“Yeah this is Luke. Luke, this is Greg, Simon and Phil, we have been in the same group for a couple years now.”

“Hello Everyone! Which bunk is ours?” Simon pointed to the empty bunk and Alex and Luke threw their bags on the bottom bunk.

“Well Alex, are you ready?” Greg asked his brother.

“Well let’s check out these instructions” Alex announced.

“We already know what the envelope will say, it’s the same every year!” Phil retorted.

“Well Luke, doesn’t know!” Alex said.

“You didn’t tell him! Yeesh what kind of brother are you!” The boys laughed, Luke had no idea what they were talking about.

Alex grabbed the envelope and started reading. “Welcome Campers to Camp Little Roar. There is a tradition at camp to lift team spirit and get everyone in the mood to participate. Your goal for the next couple hours is to assign your team a leader and a mascot. Your leader will act as a go between for the counselors and your group. Your mascot will need to cheer the team on during events and keep everyone’s spirits up! After your leader is selected they may have the team whistle. Please meet at the fire pit where a mascot costume contest will begin, the team with the best mascot will have the first pick of the canoe in tomorrow’s activity!”

Alex placed the letter on the corkboard on the wall. “Okay so I think I should be the leader this year since I’m the oldest!” Alex announced.

“You aren’t that much older” Simon mentioned.

“Well, Luke is eight, you three are nine and I’m ten.” Alex said smugly.

“I’m fine with Alex as leader.” Luke agreed.

“Well we figured you would agree with Alex, you are his brother.” Simon argued. “Fine, you can be the leader then. It’s just more work anyway.” The others agreed now that Alex had the majority vote. Simon took a whistle off the wall and tossed it to Alex.

“Now for the fun part. Who is the mascot?” Simon asked the group.

Everyone looked away from each other, clearly not wanting to do it. Luke didn’t really understand what it meant. “Luke should be the mascot, because he is the youngest.” Alex announced.

“Okay Alex, I can do that.” Luke wasn’t really certain what he would need to do.

“Perfect, let’s get started then. Thank you for agreeing, Luke, I thought I would need to convince you!” Alex happily said.

“Sure Alex, no problem.” Luke is now happy he is helping out his new camp friends.

“The truth is Luke, this whole summer is really a big competition. All the cabins get scored in all events and every morning they update a scoreboard in the main hall. These first two events are important to win, the mascot contest is worth a decent chunk of points for the first few days and the canoe race tomorrow.” Alex explained to Luke.

“Yeah, so step one is to make the best mascot outfit we can. Since we already knew which cabin we were going to be in we did some prep work and prepared a costume for you ahead of time Luke.” Phil told him.

“Oh I see, well you should have just said. I want to win too!” Luke is trying to sound excited.

Alex walks over to his bag and starts pulling out some materials, there were markers, needles, thread, a bunch of tiger fabric and more. Alex arranges things in the order he wants and finally starts making orders. “Phil, I know you are good at drawing, do you think you could draw a tiger face on Luke’s?”

“Yeah I can do that.” Alex hands Phil a pack of brightly colored markers.

“Simon, you’re good with crafts, I want you to work on accessories for the mascot.” Alex demanded.

“Sure thing Mr. Leader” Simon started collecting items from the pile of craft supplies.

“Greg, you and I are going to work on the main outfit, it isn’t complete.” Alex told Greg. Greg nodded and the two of them started measuring.

Phil led Luke to one of the chairs and pulled out a few markers. He started working quickly painting Luke’s face, every so often he would switch markers, mostly using orange, black, white and sometimes a red. Luke had medium length brown hair, so Phil also colored his neck and ears as well. The whole process took some time. “These markers make this process a lot easier, Alex are these made for painting faces?” Phil asked inspecting the Markers.
“Yeah something like that at least.” Alex said smiling. He looked over at Luke. “Luke, you look great, Phil is really good at this.”

“Let me see.” Luke got up and went over to the mirror to see. He saw his whole face looked like a tiger, the pattern of the lines and colors even matched the cartoon tiger on the cabin, when he closed one eye he noticed his eyelids had tiger eyes on them, there was no area of his face not painted. “Whoa, you did a good job.”

“Luke let’s do your arms and legs too, I bet the other cabins will just draw whiskers or something.” Phil suggested.

“Okay let’s do it.” Luke really wanted to win for his team. Phil spent some time coloring his arms orange and white with black stripes, he even covered his hands, he even included paw pads on his hands for a more authentic look. He asked him to remove his shorts to paint his legs, Luke complied and took off his shorts and socks. Phil then did the same to his legs and feet. Luke took a moment to look at his hands and feet. “These look great!”.

Alex and Greg then came up to him with the costume they had been working on, Greg looked a little frustrated. “I hope this works out Alex, you are missing some important components to a costume.” Greg mentioned.

“I said I hadn’t finished it yet, I’m sure it will work out, let’s just get it on him and deal with it later.” Alex casually mentioned. “Okay Luke take off the rest of your clothes and put this on.” Luke pulled off his shirt, now just standing there in his underwear a little embarrassed. He took the outfit and stepped into it. The costume was a short sleeve jumpsuit, it had a tiger pattern and an attached tail. Luke put his arms through the sleeves. “You look great Luke, let me just finish some details on the back and I’ll close it up.” Alex then took a needle and thread and worked on the back of the outfit. Eventually the outfit was sealed up.

Alex stepped back admiring his work. “I think we just might win, we went all out on this.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “Yeah but it’s not really perfect though, you had to sew up the back. How will Luke get out?” Greg asked.

“What?” Luke asked as he reached behind him running his hand over what he thought would be a button of tie and there was nothing.

“Don’t worry! Luke is our mascot for the summer, we will find a fastener in one of the halls later and fix it then. This place has to have some buttons somewhere.” Alex waved them off.

Luke tugged at the outfit a little realizing he wasn’t going to get out of it without ripping it. “How will I go to the washroom then?” Luke asked.

“Well that part I figured out before we got here since I thought once we were in an activity you wouldn’t want to have to take it all off. There are some snaps in the crotch and butt to open it enough to let you go.” Luke reached down and found the snaps, he was getting nervous about everything, he thought the outfit was just for tonight.

“Isn’t this just for tonight anyway?” Luke asked

“No.” The four of them said in unison.

“Every event has a category for leadership and spirit which directly lines up to you and Alex. The counselors will only relay information to the team leaders so every event is an effort in communication and teamwork. The mascot is responsible for the team morale and how well we work together, so that’s your job. I would imagine since this is the first challenge and we all worked on this we will win, most teams don’t prepare as well as Alex did for this event.” Simon explained to Luke.

“But I won’t need to wear this everyday for that.” Luke mentioned.

“Technically no, but it will give us the edge over other teams.” Alex said.

“Well let’s at least get ready for the event, here are the accessories.” Simon showcased a baseball hat that had tiger ears sewn to the top as well as his badge from the morning. He placed it on Luke’s head. He then tied a scarf around his neck, this was a camp scarf they all had. “I spent most of the time modifying your shoes.” He pulled out Luke’s shoes which had been covered in fabric and stuffing to look like tiger paws. Luke quickly realized even if he wasn’t wearing the costume they would still want him to wear his shoes and hat, he was getting embarrassed thinking he would be dressed as a tiger all summer.

Luke stepped over to the mirror now in his full outfit, head to toe he was wearing some type of tiger outfit. His face, arms and legs were all painted to look like a tiger. He was essentially wearing a tiger romper with an attached tail that dangled between his legs. His hat had tiger ears on top completing his look and his feet looked like tiger paws. He looked like a good mascot but he didn’t want to be dressed like this all summer, he thought it would just be for tonight.

“Well I can at least wash the face paint off tonight, I can wear the hat and shoes the rest of the time.” Luke told the group who were getting ready for the fire pit.

Alex started grinning like he had already thought of that. “Well you can try, I think it will be hard though.” He handed his brother the package of markers. Luke flipped the package over and read, “SEMI PERMANENT TATTOO MARKERS, LASTS 4 TO 8 WEEKS”.

“Where did you get these!” Luke rubbed his arm now realizing he couldn’t feel the face paint at all, his skin was dyed these colors and it would take time to wear off.

“I ordered them from a school catalogue and saved them for the trip, I figured this way we won’t need to paint your face every day.” Alex said, winking at him.

Luke now understood that this was orchestrated by Alex since before he came to camp. Alex had hyped it up all year and convinced his parents to send them to the same place.

Everyone started to leave the cabin and head for the firepit, Luke slowly followed. As they got out he noticed there were six other camp groups each with five campers as well. Everyone turned and saw Luke in his outfit, some laughed others realized they were about to lose. There were six cabins in total, each with their own mascot in order it went lion, monkey, tiger, elephant, moose and owl. Luke kept a look out for the other mascots, he saw a girl with lion whiskers and lion ears on her hat. A boy was wearing a monkey tail and large monkey ears on his head. Someone was wearing a grey tracksuit with an elephant trunk. One boy had massive moose antlers and his head trying not to run into anything and the only person wearing anything close to his outfit was a boy covered head to toe in feathers from the sixth cabin. He was strutting around the place with confidence.

Marcus the camp counselor waved everyone closer, the firepit was already lit. Once everyone had gathered Marcus made an announcement. “Let’s see all the Leaders come up here.” six kids including Alex collected themselves beside Marcus, each was given a large envelope. “These are you leaders for the summer, please refer to them for camp rules. These six will take care of you for the rest of the summer. Now let’s see these costumes, stand up Mascots.”

Luke stood up and looked at the other five, the crowd clapped for them. Marcus clapped and announced “These five will make sure our competitions stay fierce and keep everyone’s moods up. I can see a few of you went all out in your outfits!” Luke started blushing, so did a couple of other kids. “Now let’s hear your animal noises!”

Luke didn’t realize he would need to pretend to be a tiger as well, he felt a nudge against his leg, Simon whispered to him. “Just be loud, a big roar and we got this in the bag.” Luke stood there nervous as the kids started.

The girl gave a soft roar, her cabin clapped for her. The monkey then gave a monkey howl and danced around a little. While Luke was nervous standing around in an embarrassing costume he knew it would be worse if he didn’t at least try, his cabin mates needed him to help win the competition. Everyone turned to look at him increasing the pressure, he took a deep breath and shouted as loud as he could “ROAR!”, he even brought his hands up into a clawing motion. Marcus clapped loudly and Luke could see Alex smiling ear to ear. The boy in the tracksuit did his best to imitate an Elephant, however the boy with the antlers didn’t know what sound a moose made.

The boy in the feathers made the biggest contest, head to toe in feathers he shouted a loud “Who”. After some time it was announced that cabin three and six were the winners, Luke was relieved. The rest of the evening was hearing stories around the fire and eating snacks with his friends, after some time they were allowed to head to bed.

Alex caught up with Luke when they got to the cabin. “Nice roar, tiger!” he said.

“Thanks Alex, but this is still pretty embarrassing. You should have told me about this beforehand, I could have done something less silly.” Luke asked his brother.

“You wouldn’t have agreed to it and been lame like the other cabins, we need to take this seriously if we want to win the summer.” Alex told his brother.

“The tattoo pens are too much, it’s going to be embarrassing for the rest of the summer.” Luke complained.

“You will get used to it. Besides, I'm the leader so we need to work together.” Alex retorted. He opened the door and pulled out a flashlight, the cabins didn’t have power so they needed to use portable lights. The other four changed into some pajamas and started heading for bed. Luke just tugged at the tiger suit, there wasn’t any way to take it off so just untied the scarf and put his hat on the table. He lied in bed and realised it’s going to be a long summer.