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You are reading from:
SECRET OF THE DEEP WOODS
(BOOK 17)
by Roy MacGregor
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"HE'S GONNA HURL!"
Nish didn't even bother cracking back. For once he was sure he was
going to hurl - no joke this time, no outrageous stunt intended to break
up the team and make him, as usual, the centre of attention.
The only attention Wayne Nishikawa wanted at the moment was medical.
And not just one doctor, but a whole hospital if possible, with
specialists around the world linked up by the Internet.
Whatever it took to make these hideous cramps go away!
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It felt like a hockey game was going on down there. He could feel skates
slicing through his churning gut. It felt, at times, as if a Zamboni
were being driven through his intestines.
He touched his swollen stomach. It seemed distended, the skin about to
split. Something moved beneath his hand. It felt just like his Aunt
Lucy's stomach when she'd been pregnant with his cousin, Sydney. Nish
had been asked if he'd like to feel the baby move. He'd never been so
disgusted in his life! But his mother had forced his shaking, clammy
hand onto her sister's big beachball
of a belly and . . . yes . . . it
had felt just like this.
He couldn't be? Could he?
Nish ran the back of his hand across his brow. It was soaking wet. The
sweat was rolling into his eyes and the salt was stinging and making him
blink, faster and faster.
What if he was pregnant?
He'd be a freak of nature if he were. They'd have him on Ripley's
Believe It or Not! He'd be on the front page of those stupid newspapers
his mother always flicked through when she was stalled in the grocery
checkout line:
PEEWEE HOCKEY PLAYER BENCHED FOR BEING PREGNANT!
THIRTEEN - YEAR - OLD BOY HAS BABY!
CANADIAN BOY GIVES BIRTH TO GIANT PUCK!
He couldn't be pregnant, could he? How could it have happened? You
couldn't get pregnant from showing up at a nudist beach - could you?
Nish knew he was thinking crazy. But his stomach was killing him. He
tried to calm himself down. He began breathing slowly, deliberately. He
bent over to ease the pain and tried to think it through. What had he
eaten?
The Screech Owls were on a canoe trip into the interior of Ontario's
Algonquin Park, a wilderness reserve bigger than the Canadian province
of Prince Edward Island, and at the gate he'd been made to hand over his
precious food supply - licorice twisters, Double Bubble gum, jujubes,
Hot Rods, Cheesies, and Mars, Aero Mint, Sweet Marie, and Crispy Crunch
chocolate bars - after the rangers had warned the Owls about the danger
of marauding bears.
Black bears had been seen at a number of campgrounds in the park. In
one case, a bear had ripped a pack right out of the tree where it had
been tied for the night and made off with the campers' food. In another,
a big bear had trampled a tent down on a terrified older couple, sending
them screaming for the lake while the animal ripped apart their sleeping
bags in search of some popcorn they had brought to bed as a late-night
snack.
That spelled the end of any hope Nish had of surviving in the wilds on
his usual diet of sugar, chocolate, licorice, peanut butter, and more
sugar - or, as he preferred to call it, a healthy, balanced diet. "A
little dairy in the Hershey bars, fresh fruit in the jujubes, and I even
make sure I get my greens - green licorice, that is."
Muck and Mr. Dillinger had insisted the kids empty out their candy
supplies, and they had begun with Nish's pack, which held little else
but junk food. They'd taken all this wonderful, healthy nourishment and
thrown it into the animal-proof dumpster at the Lake Opeongo
outfitters.
Since then, Nish had eaten nothing but the awful, tasteless, boring
dried food packs that Mr. Dillinger had brought along and was cooking up
for everyone. And that was an important point - in fact, the most
important point he'd come up with since he'd been stricken with this
terrible pain. Same for the blueberries they'd picked and eaten along
the first portage.
If everybody had eaten exactly the same food since they started out on
Sunday, and this was late Tuesday night, then he shouldn't be the only
one about to hurl. If it were indeed food poisoning, then all the
Screech Owls would be affected. Travis Lindsay and Sarah Cuthbertson
would be out of their tents, too. And Dmitri Yakushev and Fahd
Noorizadeh. And Wilson Kelly and Willie Granger and Jenny Staples and
Jeremy Weathers. And Samantha Bennett and Gordie Griffith and Lars
Johanssen and Andy Higgins. And Derek Dillinger and Liz Moscovitz and
Simon Milliken. And Jesse Highboy and his cousin, Rachel. Mr. Dillinger,
the team manager, would be out here hurling. And so, too, would coach
Muck Munro, whose idea it had been in the first place to head into the
bush during the week between the end of lacrosse season and the opening
of the Tamarack rink for the upcoming hockey season.
Nish would rather have passed on the whole stupid trip, thank you very
much. When Muck and Mr. Dillinger had talked about the joy of canoeing
and the pretty sunsets and the chance of seeing moose and deer in the
park, Nish had raised his hand and suggested they rent a National
Geographic tape and order in pizza and pop while they all sat around
Fahd's big-screen TV and watched it.
But now here he was, a hostage to Mr. Dillinger's suggestion that the
team would "bond" on such a trip - and it was beginning to look like he
mightn't survive long enough to watch even one more television show or
eat one more string of green licorice.
His stomach was absolutely killing him.
It couldn't have been the ridiculous trick Lars and Andy tried to pull
on him, could it? Andy had smuggled in an empty Glossettes box, and he
and Lars had filled it with rabbit droppings; they looked just like real
chocolate-covered raisins through the little cellophane window in the
box. They'd come up to Nish and tried to get him to hold out his hand to
take a share. But he hadn't fallen for it. He was too smart for them. He
hadn't touched the rabbit "raisins." So it couldn't have been that. He'd
eaten some blueberries, but everyone had been picking and eating
blue-berries, so it couldn't have been that, either.
There was no further sound from the tent Nish was sharing with Travis,
Fahd, and Lars. Whoever had whispered "He's gonna hurl!" was now snoring
with the rest of them.
How long had he been out here?
Nish straightened up. He felt his brow, dry now and no longer cold to
the touch. His stomach wasn't churning and twisting quite as sharply as
it had been.
He lifted his beloved Lake Placid T-shirt and ran a hand over his
stomach.
No movement. No hideous, slimy, three-headed monster about to burst
through his belly button and turn screaming on him with razor-sharp
teeth in all three heads.
I need some water, Nish thought.
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