A/N: Not sure how many chapters it will be, but I will hopefully get through the whole novel. Thanks to my Beta, Claudia (claudiaw), who is my best friend in real life. Enjoy.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Holes.

All my life I've seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. My grandpa Stanley Yelnats the second says it's all because of this 150 year old curse. Now, I don't really believe in the family curse but when things go wrong… it kinda helps when you can blame it on something. And for me, things went wrong a lot.

My name is Stanley Yelnats. Despite my unfortunate name, I am in fact a girl. If you wanted too, you would be able to find three men who share my name, because my full name is Stanley Yelnats the forth. It's a kind of tradition that my father's side has picked up. Stanley is Yelnats spelled backwards and that's why, regardless of my gender, I was named after my father, my grandpa and my great grandpa.

My grandpa was the one who named me. He, my father and my mother had a bit of a competition in naming me, and he won. My father doesn't mind my name and calls me Stan. My mother, however, isn't very keen on my name, so she suffices by calling me Stacy.

I look a lot like my mother. My hair is the same colour of hers; a lightish brown with dark hues. My hair is a lot shorter than hers though, and its very curly. I got the curls from my father. I inherited my eyes from my grandpa. They're an emerald green, but they don't sparkle the way his do, unfortunately. I'm of average size, and prefer to wear boyish clothes. Perhaps that, and the fact that my name is a boys name, is why so many people assume that I am a boy when they first meet me.

The start of my story begins on a completely normal day. Well, it was normal at first. I had been walking under an overpass, when suddenly a pair of shoes hit me on the head. They were mens shoes, so pretty useless to me, but my father is an inventor who is trying to cure the smell of bad feet, so I picked up the shoes with the intention of giving them to him.

Excited, I began to run home. I figured that the quicker I got them home, the faster my dad would be able to start working on them. On the way home, though, I heard sirens. I slowed to a stop, as a police car quickly pulled up in front of me. Sooner that I could believe, the police officers were shouting at me that I was under arrest.

Turns out these runners belonged to Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston. He had donated them to an orphanage, so having them in my possession was a big deal. I was brought in front of the court, found guilty of stealing, and given the choice of jail or Camp Green Lake. Naturally I chose the camp.

I was taken to camp in a big yellow school bus. The only people who were keeping me company were the bus driver, and an officer with a gun. I decided not to talk to either of them. To pass the time, I observed my surroundings. All I could see outside the windows of the bus was a vast desert. There was no sign of a lake and nothing visible was green. The only thing strange about the place was the many holes in the ground. Holes in the ground mightn't sound very weird, but these holes were perfectly round, and we passed hundreds of them.

Eventually we came into view of the camp, which was, to be honest, looking pretty run down. There were five or six large tents set in a sort of circle, with a few permanent buildings amongst them. Outside were a few boys, but so far I hadn't seen any other girls.

I pulled my red cap on, brushing my hair out of my eyes, as the bus slowed down to a stop. The officer with the gun stepped off the bus first and I followed soon after, muttering a "Thanks for the ride" to the bus driver. I got no response.

I heard a yell of "fresh meat" as I looked around at what would be my home for the next 18 months. It wasn't much to look at.

"So where's the lake?" I asked the officer. Ignoring me, he led me into the closest building where I was told to sit down by the man who was in there.

The man was old, sweaty, chewing on sunflower seeds and definitely looked mean. He and the officer exchanged a few words before he turned to me.

"My name is Mr Sir," he said gruffly, which caused me to laugh a little. He evidently didn't like this, as he spoke in an even gruffer voice to me for the rest of his speech.

He then took me to another room filled with boots and clothes. A boy in an orange jumpsuit and white shirt was working there and stared a little at me. Unnerved I turned my attention to Mr Sir. He had pulled out a pair of boots and had chucked them on the ground.

"Undress," he spat out.

"Excuse me?"

"You get two sets of clothes here. One set is for work, the other for relaxation. After 3 days your work clothes are washed, and your relaxation clothes become your work clothes. Here," he said chucking me an orange jumpsuit.

I stared at him. "I'm not changing in front of you."

Rolling his eyes, he turned around as did the boy. I quickly changed into the jumpsuit, putting a white tank top on underneath. Giving them the OK, Mr Sir turned back around and continued his speech.

"You dig one hole a day. 5 foot deep, 5 foot in diameter. Use your shovel as a measuring stick," he said. He then went on to explain about the rattle snakes and the yellow-spotted lizards that I would need to keep an eye out for.

All of a sudden another man wearing knee high blue socks with shorts came in.

"Stanley Yelnats, you have done some bad things, but that does not make you a bad kid. I respect you Stanley," he announced, sounding as if he had said it a hundred times before.

"Thanks," I said, unsure of him.

"Welcome to Camp Green Lake, I'm Dr Pendanski, your councillor," he said reaching out to shake my hand. Once again I was led outside, Dr Pendanski showing me where everything was. Suddenly three boys came up.

"Hey mum," said the guy on the right. He was dark skinned, and wore dusty glasses. "Who's the chick?"

"This is Stanley," replied Dr Pendanski.

The other larger dark skinned boy spoke up, "so what's happening with Barf Bag?"

"Oh… Louis won't be returning. He's still in the hospital," Dr Pendanski said, and then he turned to me. "Stanley, this is Rex, Alan and Theodore."

"Hi," I said shyly.

"Yo, my name is X-Ray," the first boy said, a bit angrily. "And that's Squid and that's Arm Pit."

"And he's mum," added in 'Squid'.

Dr Pendanski explained that they all had nicknames for each other.

"Theodore, why don't you show Stanley her cot?" He added on.

"What?" he questioned, exchanging confused looks with Squid and X-Ray.

"Stanley will be staying here for the next year and a half. Make her feel comfortable," he said before walking off.

"Come on," X-Ray said, walking off with the other boys.

When we got to our sleeping quarters, X-Ray led me to a bed telling me that "Barfbag used to sleep on it." I put my stuff down, and the three boys stood around me.

"How come you're here?" X-Ray asked.

"Oh, I stole a pair of shoes," I explained.

"No. Why are you here?"

"I… don't understand. I had a choice of prison or camp, and I chose camp," I replied.

"Yeah, but this is a boys camp," put in Squid.

"What?" I asked sure I'd heard them wrong.

"Yeah, there aren't no girls here," said Armpit.

Suddenly two more boys came in. They introduced themselves as Magnet and Zig-Zag before questioning why I was here.

"I'm here to dig holes, apparently," I answered off-handily wondering why I, a girl, was sent to an all boy camp.

"Aren't we all," asked X-Ray to laughter.

Magnet and Zig-Zag walked off, Zig-Zag giving me a distrustful look.

Once again, someone entered the tent. This time it was Dr Pendanski.

"Hey," I said loudly, gaining his attention. "What the hell am I doing in an all-boys camp?"

"We're trialling having girls here. Don't worry about it, you'll be fine," he said before introducing me to the two boys I had just met. Then he turned to a third who I hadn't noticed. "This here's Zero. He's called that, 'cause he's got nothin' in his stupid little head. Ain't that right, Zero?"

"Did ya tell her about the lizards?" Zig-Zag asked.

"Ricky, let's not scare Stanley," Dr Pendanski answered.

"His name's not Ricky. It's Zig-Zag," put in X-Ray.

Sighing, Dr Pendanski walked towards Armpit. "Stanley, you got any questions, just ask Theodore here, he'll be your mentor. Isn't that right Armpit?"

Armpit made a non-committal shrug saying, "Yeah, whatever dude."

Tuning Dr Pendanski out, I looked over towards Zero, having noticed that he was looking at me. Seeing that I was looking, he quickly turned over to face the other way.

So that's the first chapter down.

Hope you enjoyed, if so please R&R to let me know that people still actually read Holes fanfiction.