Samurai Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

stuff like he was sailing on some kind of ship. It was always the same thing.
    “Land ahoy!” he would shout out at three in the morning, imagining the whole camp was adrift at sea. Come to think of it, that wasn’t far from the truth. The camp was sort of cut off from the rest of the world. The only time there was any contact was when the moms and dads came to visit.
    To make it out of here to the big road, you had to move along secret paths through the forest, or follow the dirt road leading from the camp. But Matron sent out patrolswhenever she thought someone was trying to escape.
    We were planning an expedition through the woods anyway. We were going to make our way into town.
    But first, the castle.
    And before that, sleep. I turned over on my side for the zillionth time. Janne called out again like some lookout on a pirate ship, and I felt like getting up and going over to him and shouting, “Ship ahoy!” or something like that in his ear.
    Sausage had asked Janne what he was dreaming about when he talked in his sleep, but he could never remember.
    That was too bad because it seemed pretty fun to be sitting up in the mast bellowing away. A lot more fun than being here in our waking life.
    I fell asleep right in the middle of that last thought. I dreamt.
    A hand held out a bag to me and I looked down inside, where pieces of chocolate lay, only they were red.
    I was standing in the lake rubbing water into my eyes so they would stay open. It wasn’t a dream. I looked around and discovered that everyone else had already gone back up after the pretend morning wash. But I wasn’t pretending. The water was cold and I kept on rubbing. I could feel how it ran down my back. Then I heard something behind me. I turnedaround and saw Kerstin. She didn’t seem to be feeling cold.
    “Isn’t it cold?” she asked.
    “Not after a while.”
    “Looks like you’re trying to wash away something,” she said.
    “I’m washing away the sleep,” I answered.
    “What for?”
    “You can’t go around half-asleep all day.”
    “You can’t?” It looked like she smiled. “Sounds pretty nice to me. Dream yourself away.”
    “You can do that at night,” I said as I left the water and dried my face with the towel that had been lying in the grass.
    “I have trouble sleeping here,” said Kerstin. “There are too many people.”
    “Mm-hm.”
    “You think so too?”
    “Yup. Especially grown-ups.”
    “We’d be able to manage without them,” she said, looking sad, as though a cloud had just moved across the sun. I looked up at the sky, but there were no clouds. I rubbed my face again. This time it was to get dry.
    “Pretty soon you’ll have no skin left,” said Kerstin.
    I lowered the towel.
    “Why are you here?” I asked. “Here at the camp? Now, this summer?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Oh, come on.”
    “It was… so rowdy at home,” she said, and looked away toward the main building and the playground that lay below the gable end. The smaller kids had started to swing and spin on the merry-go-round and play in the sand. Everyone seemed to be shouting at the same time.
    “Yeah, plenty of peace and quiet out here,” I said.
    She looked back at me.
    “It’s not like you’ve got any choice,” she said.
    “That’s where you’re wrong,” I answered.
    The sun was in my eyes when I heard someone call my name. I was on my own in the lake. Kerstin had gone. It was Weine. He was another survivor from last summer. I didn’t like him. He didn’t like me.
    Last summer we had fought without weapons. Neither of us had won, but neither of us had lost either. He wanted to be in charge, but he couldn’t be in charge of me. This summer he had kept his distance. We hadn’t spoken to each other even once. He had a small gang of flunkies who did everything he told them to. They weren’t a proper unit—no band of warriors. They’d be useless in battle.
    I blinked in the sun and saw him standing at the edge of the water.