The Great Tidal Wave of ‘08

By Harvey Van Blerkom

We are sitting in a room, all with our fantasy football books in hand, thinking about our next pick. All of a sudden a huge burst of water comes surrounding our bunk, it’s at least 4 ft. high. We are all scared to death. We thought that we would have a bigger chance of surviving by huddling together in the center of the room because we are the farthest from the wall. The center of the room happened to be my bed, there were 12 kids on my bed, that bed was smaller than a twin bed. It was like a 3 rhinos on a bed. We are all freaked out, we were looking all around the camp but it was all covered in water. Our counselors came in and were acting almost the same as us. They were all really freaked out. We were so scared we were still as a pile of rocks. Then, my friend Alex Goldbottom has an idea, (Alex is not very bright) he walks out of the bunk and starts to swim in all of the water, he starts flowing with the current like he’s in a lazy river, he then starts floating over to the lake. At this point, we are all on the porch of the bunk watching Alex float. We start yelling but the rain and water splashing around is too loud for him to hear. He is floating farther and farther from the bunk. He’s relaxing and waving, while we are all yelling at him to start swimming back to the bunk. He’s floating and floating, it’s as if he thinks that we are going to join him in the water. He keeps on floating along, and next thing he knows he’s in the middle of the lake. He is trying to swim back to the bunk but the current is too strong. He is struggling so hard to keep himself afloat, when the water suddenly comes out below him, a giant purple fish jumps out of the water. It jumps at least 20 feet in the air and goes back in the water. At this point Alex is really freaked out. We tell our counselors to come outside and try to get help but they don’t believe that what we saw actually happened. Then the purple fish jumps out of the water again the loud splash makes one of my counselors finally come out. But, by that point Alex was gone. In that jump, the fish took him and that was the end of Alex Goldbottom. The next day, the water died down and his family and friends from home come to camp to have a funeral for him. It was a very sad day for the whole camp especially for us because we were his bunkmates and good friends. When we got back to the bunk Jake. One of the 12 remaining campers in the bunk has an idea. The idea involves getting into the kitchen to get a really big knife, 12 sets of scuba diving equipment. That’s all he would tell us to do for now. He had a plan and he said that it was impossible to fail. That night, we went to the kitchen as a bunk. We were trying to find a way into the kitchen. That was when we heard the giant splash. We went running to the waterfront only to see a big purple tail. We all gasped. We were as determined as ever to find that knife. There was no way that we were going to ever going to let our friend die and not try to find out the mystery of his death.

This is my fact to fiction writing piece. It was really fun and interesting to write. It was also really challenging to write because at one point while writing it, I got stuck on how to keep the story interesting. I am really proud of myself for persevering through those challenges that I faced.