Camp Canoa // Luke Hemmings

The One With The Kidnapping

[Day +50]

When I knock on Michael and Luke's door, down the veranda from our own at seven pm on Friday night, it is answered by Michael himself in extremely tight black boxers and a towel wrapped around his neck. He's eating a snickers bar.

"Ya?" he asks.

"You and Luke coming out?" I asked, looking around the doorframe to see Luke leaning over his bed to reach his t-shirt, the taut muscles of his back rippling. I swallow thickly.

"Yeah go and get Ash and Calum." Michael says.

Once I have collected the entire group we set off. We reach Alben in good time, the sun still with a few hours left in it, and the waterfront is busy. There is a man juggling apples who mesmerises Luke and a woman who charges twenty bucks by the hour is especially interested in him, but I yanks him away, and he throws an arm around my shoulder as we walk. 

There is a funfair at the end of the pier but we get thrown off the bumper cars because apparently Michael was 'too Fast and Furious' for the other kids; Calum claims that the Monster-o-matic weight-lifting game is bust, because he scores a measly thirty-five, while Danni gets fifty-six; Ashton and Luke spend at least fifteen minutes avidly fishing for floating ducks and when they win a giant penguin plushie, I have never seen Luke happier. 

We cycle back down the pier as the funfair coloured lights come on for the night ahead.

The café welcomes us as usual and we order our usual coke floats.

By the time we leave the café, the sun is blurring the Atlantic horizon and the whole pier is cast in a glitzy, movie-star orange. There are the distant shrieks of teenagers who weren't thrown off the bumper cars; the fizz of fluorescent lights turning on over bars and restaurants.

"Look!" Nora says, pointing towards a small, buzzing sign that reads ALL-NITE MOVIE THEATRE. "The Horror of Slorr 2: Slorr Strikes Back!"

We laugh, and we don't waste any more time. Tickets are two dollars each – clearly the movie theatre doesn't get many visitors this time of day, or many visitors at all, judging by the state of the ticket booth – the theatre screening The Horror of Slorr 2 is completely empty. I suspect that the movie's unpopularity could be for one of many reasons: the most pertinent of which are that the movie is absolutely shit, and that it is entirely in German, except for one scene where a very fat, stereotypically American tourist is eaten whole by Slorr himself.

By this time, the sugar from the coke float has kicked in, and we are laughing at everything. We laugh at the death scenes; we laugh at the slapstick comedy of the detective trying to overcome Slorr; and I nearly pee my pants when Luke and Michael get up to jump over the seats and perform a parody of one of the particularly bad fight scene, using rolled-up movie magazines as swords.

I wonder how we are getting away with such ridiculous behaviour until I peek into the tape booth at the back where the guy in charge of the film reel is fast asleep on the deck. After about forty minutes, the current reel runs out and the guy doesn't change it over, so the screen is left flickering white and eye-searingly bright. Michael screeches that he's going blind and Calum, Ashton and Luke make obscene shadow-puppets out of their hands.

Our bikes are still chained outside the café when we come out and the sky is black and crystal. We cycle back, laughing and chatting before falling onto our beds filled with sugary coke and ice cream.

[Day +45]

"Kill him!" Calum's voice is a hoarse rasp in the back of his throat after half an hour of us trying to motivate our group, but I have to admit, as sucky a game as it might be, ultimate Frisbee is pretty freaking hard. I think Calum likes to think he's doing an okay job of encouraging them – compared to Luke at least, who has brought his group from the basketball court to join our group.