Chapter no 99 – โ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€Œโ€ŒThe Fifth-Grade Nature Retreatโ€Œ

Wonder

Every year in the spring, the fifth graders of Beecher Prep go away for three days and two nights to a place called the Broarwood Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania. Itโ€™s a four-hour bus drive away. The kids sleep in cabins with bunk beds. There are campfires and sโ€™mores and long walks through the woods. The teachers have been prepping us about this all year long, so all the kids in the grade are excited about itโ€”except for me. And itโ€™s not even that Iโ€™m not excited, because I kind of amโ€”itโ€™s just Iโ€™ve never slept away from home before and Iโ€™m kind of nervous.

Most kids have had sleepovers by the time theyโ€™re my age. A lot of kids have gone to sleepaway camps, or stayed with their grandparents or whatever. Not me. Not unless you include hospital stays, but even then Mom or Dad always stayed with me overnight. But I never slept over Tata and Poppaโ€™s house, or Aunt Kate and Uncle Poโ€™s house. When I was really little, that was mainly because there were too many medical issues, like my trache tube needing to be cleared every hour, or reinserting my feeding tube if it got detached. But when I got bigger, I just never felt like sleeping anywhere else. There was one time when I half slept over Christopherโ€™s house. We were about eight, and we were still best friends. Our family had gone for a visit to his house, and me and Christopher were having such a great time playing Legosย Star Warsย that I didnโ€™t want to leave when it was time to go. We were like, โ€œPlease, please, please can we have a sleepover?โ€ So our parents said yes, and Mom and Dad and Via drove home. And me and Christopher stayed up till midnight playing, until Lisa, his mom, said: โ€œOkay, guys, time to go to bed.โ€ Well, thatโ€™s when I kind of panicked a bit. Lisa tried to help me go to sleep, but I just started crying that I wanted to go home. So at one a.m. Lisa called Mom and Dad, and Dad drove all the way back out to Bridgeport to pick me up. We didnโ€™t get home until three a.m. So my one and only sleepover, up until now, was pretty much of a disaster, which is why Iโ€™m a little nervous about the nature retreat.

On the other hand, Iโ€™m really excited.

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