Summer Camp for Werewolves
by Damien Casey
Out now!

Chapter 1-The 5 O’Clock Report Has Got Nothing On Me 

 

Any reporter worth their weight in salt will tell you it’s super important to get out of your comfort zone. Do you think Connie Chung became a household name by playing it safe? Did she only write stories about cats in trees? Did she never leave her hometown?

 

I’ll be honest with you.

 

I don’t know.

 

I did a report about her in the fifth grade, and I’ve forgotten most of it. I’m a freshman… well, I guess a sophomore now… at Colony High School, and I’m usually too busy with the mountains of homework the teachers give us to have any time to sit around and pleasantly reminisce about how nice things were in elementary school.

 

Oh, to have recess again.

 

Thanks to my new problem, I really could use recess.

 

More on that later.

 

That's another thing about a good reporter. They never give away the best bit. If a reporter is bad, they will give you the whole story in the first column. I want you to see “turn to page A7 for the rest of the article.” I want to leave you with something so interesting you turn to page A7 and physically cannot stop for the comics page. If this were the nightly news, you wouldn’t channel surf during the commercial break; too much risk of missing every word of the story.

 

I was eight when I realized this was my life’s dream. She had a black blazer, curly red hair that was so big you could sneak a buffet into a movie theater inside of it, black pants, and pink cowboy boots. There was something about those boots that fascinated me. She was so put together and professional that I would have believed she owned a bank; but those boots told me that maybe she owned it because she robbed it. We were on our fifth-grade field trip to Columbus, Ohio. We were visiting this museum where you could ride a bicycle across a high wire in the middle of the building. The death-defying bicycle held up by physics seemed boring in comparison to this woman talking to everyone she could. She never stopped; she was a social butterfly covered in smiles. She was like a conversational lamp bringing in all of the shy moths.

 

You get it.

 

Sorry, I get a little flighty when I write.

 

I have always been shy. My mom has accused me of being so shy that I would make a really good cryptid. I didn’t know what she meant, so I looked it up one day. Very funny, Mom.

 

This woman wasn’t like that. She was sad when she wasn’t talking to someone. You could literally see the energy drain from her body when she wasn’t yapping. I wanted to be like that. If I could have one superpower, it would be to make everyone feel talkative. Super-friend-girl or something. Really, I love people, and I wish I could talk to them more. It turns out that talking to people is a super crucial part of being a reporter and making friends.

 

I followed her around all day; she started to call me her little assistant. I didn’t talk to her still. No way. The cameraman even let me hold the camera for a little while; I couldn’t even say thanks. I just followed her and listened to her talk to kids about how fun this place was. She even did an interview on this piano that you had to walk on to play! It was amazing!

 

“Hey,” she said to me after I followed them to the exit of the museum. “You probably shouldn’t go with us. Your parents and teachers would freak!” Her voice was southern. When I say southern, I mean the kind that you would see in a movie where everyone wears a button-up shirt. The movies with a lot of denim, fishing, and people with two names like Bobby-Sue. She walked me back, patted me on the head, and turned to her cameraman.

 

“Hey,” she said, fixing her blazer. “Want me to interview you?”

 

I nodded my head.

 

Of course I did!

 

“When we start recording, I’ll just ask you what your name is, and what you want to be when you grow up. Is that okay?”

 

I nodded again, trying to find the courage to talk. In my head it was as if words were currency, and I didn’t want to waste all of my money on chocolate before I could get a new comic.

 

“Hello, Columbus!” As soon as she started talking, the world lit up. I was fine, I wasn’t afraid to talk anymore. Being in close proximity to those cowboy boots really helped me. That must be how she had her power and just being near them was affecting me in a small way!

 

“I’m here with another student traveling to COSI. She’s a cute little thing too! Why don’t you tell me and the people your name, and what you want to be when you grow up?”

 

I froze because of course I did.

 

I sighed, knowing I had ruined my whole entire life right there on TV. People in Alaska would see this; I wouldn’t even be able to go live a life of solitude in the frozen tundra. I would be out fishing when all of a sudden, a polar bear would say, “hey, there's that girl that totally blew it on live TV!” The bear would probably take pictures then. Polar bears do carry around cameras; it’s a super rare trivia fact.

Tangent about bears with cameras aside.

 

I looked at her boots and felt the power. I could do this.

 

“My name is Marsha White,” I said. “And I want to be a reporter!”

 

“Wow! A girl after my own heart. You’ll be stealing my job one day kid!”

 

I don’t know why she did it, but she picked me up and sat me on her shoulder. I don’t know how she did it with one arm, but I knew she had to be able to. She was a superhero after all so why couldn’t she pick up a little kid?

 

“And with that,” she said. “Thank you for tuning in, Columbus. Anne Ambrose hoping you’ve had a good dinner and aren’t missing bedtime!”

 

She sat me down, hugged me, and gave me a pin the size of a quarter from her jacket pocket. It had her face, her name, and her TV station in pink with a white background.

 

“I don’t give these out much,” she said. “But you deserve it.”

I wear that pin on my denim jacket still to this day.

 

She gave me a hug, waved goodbye, and left me with the class I came with. I don’t know how she knew that was my class either. I chalk it up to assuming a misplaced little kid will make her way back to the kids she’s supposed to be with… but honestly, I know it’s because she’s some all-knowing entity that was sent to save me from the boredom of watching kids ride that dumb bicycle. I know, I know, but really, see it one time and you’re good!

 

I didn’t want to go hang out with my class. I had watched the class clown, Jack Kessler, pretending to eat his boogers for ten minutes on the bus ride here. Jack is still annoying, unfortunately Jack is the only person who wants to talk to a girl who barely talks back. He’s sort of my default best friend… I guess. He doesn’t do the booger eating thing anymore because he’s more interested in the new girl, Jennifer Stirba.

 

Let me clear that up, she was the new girl, that was the middle of last year. She’s the source of all my new problems.

 

I’ll get to that, I promise.

 

Jennifer, or Jenny, or Jen, or “whoa...” depending on who is talking, is tall and blonde. She looks exactly like every girl that every annoying high school boy that used to pretend to eat boogers would be totally in love with. When she first moved to our hometown, Cohen, Ohio, I made faces at her behind her back all day. She was the kind of person Anne was, and it bothered me. People gravitated to her; she was the sun and everyone else was waiting for her to decide if they would be a planet or moon in her galaxy. That was supposed to be my role in the public school ecosystem. 

At the end of the year, I had my fill. Jack and I had waited all year to go see the new Godzilla movie after the last day of school ended. We would walk home, Mom would make us one of her famous Hawaiian pizzas, and then we would go to the theater. I’m lucky, I live just two blocks from the movie theater. If I get bored, I can gather together enough change and go see something. My dad is a bit of a space movie nerd; I don’t mean good ones either like Star Wars. He likes these really dumb ones where the spaceship is basically a painted cardboard box and there’s always some woman wearing silver shooting lasers at monsters made of clay.

It’s not a very college science professor of him thing to like, is it? But I guess maybe those movies are his Anne Ambrose in a way, so I let it slide.

 

Jack asked if it would be okay if Jenny came to the movies with us. Apparently, she loved giant monster movies and had a complete VHS collection of Gamera. Okay, I can admit it, that’s really cool… but not cool enough to steal the only friend I have!

 

I said “no.”

 

Only I didn’t just say “no.”

 

I took a signed picture my dad has from some actress from a movie called Battle Beyond the Stars and put it in front of my face like a mask. I then walked around in front of Jack talking about how sweet, cool, and pretty I was.

 

I wasn’t really proving a point other than why Jack would want her to go with us.

Jack decided two could play at that game and picked up another one of my dad’s signed pictures. This one was for that dumb Jane Fonda movie I refuse to watch. He started making fun of me by just not saying anything and walking around with the face as a mask.

 

It was pretty funny, and I was happy he chose that picture. My mom always said I looked like her. I liked that compliment so much that I started styling my hair the way she did in Klute when I was in seventh grade.

 

My mom thought that was cool.

 

My dad said it was very progressive of me.

 

I just think it’s a good haircut.

 

We laughed off the insults and went to the movie.

 

Yes, Jenny was there.

 

No, she wasn’t as terrible as I remember.

 

Actually, she was pretty cool.

 

The movie, I don’t know, maybe people will like it in thirty years.

It was dark when we left the theater. It was muggy and warm, just a typical Ohio evening in a river town. You could feel the moisture in the air, and it made everything feel like a warm bath. Old people always say, “It’s not the heat that’ll geetcha, it’s the humidity."

 

Jenny said her parents were at a friend’s house down the street and left in the opposite direction.

 

Jack was ranting about how Godzilla didn’t even look like Godzilla. How his roar didn’t even sound like Godzilla’s roar. I wasn’t too worried about that; sometimes Superman looks different too and people don’t complain.

 

“SKKRREEEEOOOONNNKKKKKK,” he yelled at the top of his lungs to make sure I remembered what Godzilla sounded like. Boys are always explaining things to girls that girls already know. I think they enjoy the sound of their own voices. I don’t think Jack needs to tell me that the singer of Oingo Boingo is Danny Elfman’s brother every time I wear the shirt, but he does.

 

“SKRREEEEOOOONNNKKKKKK!” He yelled again.

 

“HARRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” something responded.

 

“No,” Jack said. “Good try, Marsha. But Godzilla does not sound like a werewolf.”

 

“ARRROOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” The voice yelled again.

 

“I’m telling you,” Jack said. “I like that you’re talking more… but that’s just not right at all.”

 

“Jack,” I said. “It wasn’t me.”

 

As soon as I said it, a figure appeared before us on the sidewalk. It stepped out of the tall bushes between the two houses and stared at us. The streetlight was behind it so we couldn’t make out who or what it was. All I could see was the silhouette. It was seven feet tall, it had long spindly limbs, its arms and legs were faintly muscular, there were two pointy ears on top of its head. It smelled so bad; I’ll never forget it. It was a mix of wet dog and burnt wood.

 

It fell forward on all four limbs and ran toward us. We turned and ran as fast as we could, screaming all the way. The thing nipped at my foot and bit into my heel a little bit which sent me flying face first like Superman learning to fly (in his normal outfit so not to make anyone get picky). I landed stomach first on the ground. The only thing that stopped me from smashing my face into the concrete was Jenny’s pink Fila shoes.

 

“Get out of here!” she screamed at the beast. “Go home, Marty!”

 

I closed my eyes because I didn’t want the last thing I saw before I died to be faded pink Fila’s. I could hear whatever it was behind me breathing. It was growling low and slowly approaching us.

 

“Marty, I’m not joking,” Jenny said as calm as a math teacher handing out a pop quiz. “If you don’t go home right this very instant… I’ll tell mom you got loose. You know how mad she’ll be. Downright pissed.”

I could hear the embodiment of death taking a few steps backward. Its breath slowed down, and it stopped growling.

 

“Marty, I am not kidding around here,” Jenny said as she took a step forward. “GO HOME!”

 

When she yelled that time, she lifted her hand like she was going to strike. I don’t know what kind of witchcraft Jenny is working with, but I need an ounce of it because that… thing… ran away whimpering in fear.

 

“Sorry about Marty,” she said as she helped me up. “He’s not a good dog. He was until the vet gave him the wrong medicine. Now he’s really temperamental all of the time. Can’t even give him a treat without him being mildly annoyed.”

 

“That was a dog?” I asked, the fear forcing the words from my mouth.

 

“Yeah. A German Shepard actually. My dad used to be a police officer before we moved here. Marty was his K-9. He got injured when a burglar broke into our house. That’s how dad got hurt too. He had to retire.”

 

“I’m sorry. That has to suck.”

 

“Living with Marty? No, it’s okay! He’s really sweet with me. That’s why he’s afraid of me hitting him. He’s righteously afraid of mom though. I mean, who isn’t?”

 

“Yeah… ha.”

 

If Marty was afraid of Jenny, and Jenny was afraid of her mom… I didn’t want to meet her mom anytime soon. I don’t think anyone would try to tell her what Godzilla sounded like.

 

“What was that?” Jack said. He stepped out from around the corner he ran around. Some bravery, Jack.

 

“Oh, no,” Jenny said. “You’re bleeding a little. He doesn’t have rabies or anything like that, so let’s go to my house and my mom will clean it up. She’s a nurse!”

 

Oh, cool, I thought, I’m going to meet the scariest thing alive.

 

“What’s your mom like?” Jack asked. He must have overheard the conversation and wanted reassured that maybe she wasn’t as scary as Jenny said she was.

 

“She’s totally cool!” Jenny said. Her smile grew, and that was enough reassurance for me. She was happy to take us; that’s not what people who live with Jason Voorhees do.

 

We walked down the street with the promise of a phone to call home from and threats of Ale8 brought from Kentucky last weekend.

 

That was the first time I saw a werewolf.

 

Turn to page A7 to read more.

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