I don't really know where this came from. But anyway.

Holes isn't mine. Sigh.


Bump. Jostle. Sweat. Turn.

Those were the four things that were happening to Derrick Dunne at that moment. Oh, he supposed he could count staring at the desert something, or being lost in his thoughts, but these were the main four. He'd lost track of how long he'd been on the bus, riding through Texas to this Camp Green Lake. He figured that it would be a while still, though, because he didn't see how a lake could exist in the middle of a desert like this.

Derrick stared out the window. He didn't know what to think. His mind was scattered, remembering his "crime" and being on trial and getting a year and a half at this camp. It seemed to focus on his trial.

He never thought that he would ever be the kind of person that would ever get in trouble with the law. Yeah, he bullied, but that wasn't enough to get you thrown into a juvenile correctional facility. You know, unless the person you bullied killed themselves or something. But even though he thought he was safe, he still ended up in that courtroom. It just went so fast—being in the wrong place, his so-called "friend" accusing him, the policemen's pointed glares, the disappointed look on the judge's face, his mother's sobs. He was framed—framed by his friend, no less—and no one believed him when he told them that. Sure, his parents said they did, but he could see the look in their eyes asking each other where they went wrong.

And now here he was, on a bus with no one but a guard, a driver, and a pair of handcuffs to keep him company, heading off to his doom.

Wow, he was getting melodramatic.

The bus slowed and turned. Derrick could make out a few run-down buildings and tents, but there was no lake. The most prominent feature of the place, though, was the holes. There were hundreds: along the road they had just driven on, close to the buildings, and scattered as far as the eye could see. Derrick could make no sense of them.

As soon as he saw a group of boys in orange, he knew that they were in the right place. The boys all were extremely dirty, like they had been playing in the dirt all day. Maybe they had—they were all carrying shovels. Were they the ones that had dug all the holes? If they were, Derrick hoped that he wouldn't have to dig any. He wasn't very strong and holes weren't his thing—he had learned that when he tried to dig to China when he was five. On the contrary, however, these boys were all muscular and strong looking—the kind of people you wouldn't want to mess with.

Derrick looked around. There wasn't much.

The guard pulled him off the bus. Distantly, he could hear cries of "New Meat!" as he walked into what looked like the main building or office.

"Here's the new one," the guard said, not bothering with a hello.

Derrick wasn't really sure who the guard was talking to, as there wasn't anyone in the room. But then he saw the man in the corner, partially hidden by a large filing cabinet.

The man jumped at the guard's voice and turned towards them. He was short and skinny with a messy, unkempt beard. The whole left side of his face was purple and slightly swollen, like he had gotten hit with something not too long ago. His nose was bandaged.

"Ah yes, Derrick Dunne, right?" he said, looking at the guard rather than Derrick.

The guard nodded.

"I'm Mr. Pendanski and I'll be in charge of your tent. And I want you to know that you may have made some bad choices in the past, but they don't necessarily make you a bad person. You can overcome this, Derrick. Mr. Sir will give you a tour and I'll see you in a bit."

Derrick snorted. Mr. Sir? That couldn't be his name.

Mr. Pendanski left the room and a few minutes later another man came in. He was taller and more, shall we say, rotund than Mr. Pendanski, and he also looked a whole lot scarier. Like Mr. Pendanski, his face was a bit swollen and pinkish too, but Derrick knew better than to ask what happened.

"Derrick Dunne," he said, spitting a sunflower seed onto the floor. It wasn't a question. Without waiting for Derrick or the guard to acknowledge him in any kind, he said, "My name is Mr. Sir. You will call me by that name. Got it?"

Derrick nodded.

"This ain't the girl scouts anymore." Mr. Sir got up and handed a soda to the guard, who left. Derrick could see the bus pull away. "Let's go," Mr. Sir said, heading out the door without a backward glance. Derrick followed uneasily.

He wanted to know what this camp was like, but he also wanted to stay inside, because he could see the harsh sunlight beating down on the compacted-dirt ground then refracting and heading towards everything—the tents, the buildings, the people.

Mr. Sir took him to another building that was full of clothes. They were all the same kind of clothes—the orange jumpsuits he had seen the other boys wearing. Derrick swapped his jeans, sneakers, and T shirt for two jumpsuits, a hat, a canteen, and sturdier shoes, all the while learning about how laundry was done and what the showers were like. They left soon after that and Mr. Sir showed him more of the camp.

"There's the mess hall, the showers, the tents, the Wreck Room, and the library," Mr. Sir said, pointing out each thing as they passed it. "The Warden's cabin." He gestured to the largest building on the grounds barring the mess hall.

Derrick nodded.

"There you are, Derrick!" Derrick turned around to see Mr. Pendanski. "Thanks, Mr. Sir, I can take him from here," Mr. Pendanski said to Mr. Sir.

Mr. Sir spat out another sunflower seed and walked away without a goodbye.

"Did he show you everything?"

"Everything but the tents," Derrick affirmed.

"Then let's go to the tent." They walked in silence for a bit before they came to a tent with a big black D on the front of it. Derrick could hear voices inside it.

Mr. Pendanski opened the tent door and they walked in.

"Mom! Who's the newbie?" one of the boys asked. Derrick didn't know who they were calling Mom, since there weren't any girls at this camp, but if he had to guess, he would say that they were probably talking to Mr. Pendanski.

"This is Derrick, Alan," Mr. Pendanski said to the kid.

Alan rolled his eyes. Derrick was a little offended; was he really that unwanted?

"My name is Squid," Alan said to Mr. Pendanski.

Mr. Pendanski ignored him and turned to the other boys. "This is Derrick," he said to them. To Derrick, he said, "This is Alan, Theodore, Rex, Ricky, Brian, and José. You guys can tell Derrick how we do things here, right?" He stared at them. They weren't paying attention.

"Yo, Derrick, I'm X-Ray," the one Mr. Pendanski called Rex said. "This is Squid, Armpit, Zigzag, Twitch, and Magnet. And that's Mom," he added, pointing to Mr. Pendanski.

Mr. Pendanski—Mom—looked a bit exasperated, like the name thing wasn't anything new. "They all have nicknames, but I prefer to call them by the names their parents gave them, the names society will recognize them by."

"Yeah yeah, society, parents, whatever," the one X-Ray called Zigzag said, waving an arm in Mr. Pendanski's direction.

Mr. Pendanski didn't seem to acknowledge Zigzag and just asked, "Where's Stanley's stuff?"

"There," X-Ray said, gesturing vaguely to a stack of crates along one wall of the tent. "He slept there," he added, pointing at one of the beds.

"So they really think the Caveman's not coming back?" Twitch asked. Derrick noticed that he was the one that seemed the most interested in him, but he couldn't figure out why.

"Who's the Caveman?" Derrick asked, feeling a bit stupid.

"Stanley was the previous seventh D Tent boy. He ran away into the desert a few days ago," Mr. Pendanski explained.

"Two. Two days ago. And already they have a new guy," X-Ray said. "There's nothing that we've gotten that says that he's dead."

"X, you're buzzard food after three days. How could he still be alive?" Magnet asked rhetorically. "But maybe he and Zero are havin' a party over a couple of hot fudge sundaes and laughing at our stupidity for staying here."

Now Derrick was even more confused. "Who's Zero?"

"He ran away a few days before the Caveman did. Apparently they were friends," Twitch said. He looked a bit uncomfortable. Derrick wondered if he was the one that got Zero's vacancy. That would explain his fascination with him—Twitch was the newest, so he hadn't had a chance to know what it was like to not be the newbie anymore.

Derrick nodded. "By the way, what's the library? It didn't look big enough for books, and this doesn't seem like the place for one."

They laughed. "It's not books. No one reads here. It's shovels," Armpit said.

"Shovels?"

"Yeah. They didn't tell you? We have to dig a hole every day."

"Why?"

"To 'build character,'" Zigzag said. "But they're looking for something. Remember when you found that shotgun shell, X, and the Warden flipped out and made us dig an underground city looking for something else?"

X-Ray snorted. "But we never found anything. I was almost happy when Mr. Sir told us to go back to digging our own holes."

They passed the night talking (though Derrick did more listening than talking) and not doing anything productive.

That night, as Derrick was lying in bed, psyching himself up for the next day, when he would have to dig his first hole, he was thinking.

There was something that hit him every time someone said the name Caveman. It couldn't be anything to do with the nickname—more likely it was the name that Mr. Pendanski said, Stanley. Derrick knew a Stanley. He had been put on trial, like Derrick, and framed, like Derrick, and sent somewhere to clean up his act, like Derrick. Was it possible that this was the same Stanley?


Tadaaaa! Chapter one! Next one is when Derrick digs his first hole.

By the way, does anyone have a good idea for Derrick's nickname? I have one, but I don't know if it fits just right. I will take anything you can give me.

Review please!

Rynni