I could never expect what was going to happen to me in a life-time being how unusual it was. It’s not everyday when you become the same breast size as your guidance counsellor when just a day before you were a 16 year old boy. My name is….was Ryan and I’m going to tell you how my life was changed forever. 

It started exactly one year ago when me, my Aunt Lizzie and my guidance counsellor July sat down in July’s office in the school discussing my ‘aggressive’ behaviour. 

“Mrs. Moir I’m afraid Ryan’s progress has been slowing up dramatically over the past month, and also every one of his teachers have complained about him saying that he’s been aggressive towards them and the other students” 

Aunt Lizzie looked disappointingly at me and tutted, when she did I felt like smacking her that is such a rude thing to do I hate that! 

She turned to July and began to express her own concerns for my apparent built up rage.

“I understand July Ryan has been acting strangely the past month or so, I too have noticed it, saying that though it was around the anniversary of Donald and Mary’s death that his anger flared up”

 Now I felt like tutting, my parents had died in a car crash only a year ago and around April that year was the anniversary of their death, I admit that it made me angry but it certainly wasn’t the reason that I was being so negative at the time. Because really that was all I was being was negative the worst thing I did that whole time to someone was convince a buddy that the film he wanted to see so badly was the biggest load of crap ever and he never saw it, seriously that was the worst. I had, had no problem with any of my teachers other than my germen but in my class it was normal to have your arguments with Mrs. Gussenbammer. However I kept my mouth shut, they could believe what they want to believe I don’t care. (Oh how I would dread those words)

 “There is one programme that may be able to help Ryan deal with all of that anger” July queried.  

Aunt Liz looked at July with anticipation. 

“What kind of programme?” 

“Who cares?” I said finally and I was replied with a double “Shhhh!” from the two women. I just shook my head and listened to what I would most likely be expected to get up to for the next two weeks. 

“Well” July continued “This programme takes teenage boys who have problems with controlling their rage and anger, there will be a few other students there but not a lot as the numbers were pretty low this year, however I’m sure Ryan would learn discipline and self respect and also respect for others while he’s there” 

“So is it like some kind of military thing or a boot camp or what?” I asked. 

July looked at me quite evilly, “Yes, I guess you could call it a boot camp of some sorts” she said with a grin.

 “Whatever” I said.

 Aunt Lizzie had been reading the leaflet for a while now which I wasn’t allowed to get a look at because it would spoil the surprise apparently, there was a picture of some women on the front which is all I saw I just thought they were staff or something. Aunt Lizzie signed me up to this mysterious boot camp type thing and I accepted I wasn’t really caring either way to be honest it wasn’t like I was going to do anything that I didn’t want to and if it was a military type thing then there was bound to be all the usual canoeing and rock climbing stuff which I‘d happily volunteer for. 

  A week passed and it was time for me to go to this place which still remained nameless every time I had asked for some sort of explanation Aunt Lizzie had brushed me off or changed the subject which bugged me but I didn’t want to add insult to injury because she looked genuinely disappointed in me for some reason, I hadn’t done anything but I didn’t want her to feel any more miserable than she already was I mean I don’t care usually but I’m not a monster. Also she had been doing her best trying to be a parent to me since my mom and dad died and I completely respected her for that, I just had trouble showing it most of the time. 

I headed down to the bus station where I saw July standing in front of a bunch of nerdy looking kids, some I knew from my classes and most of them were smart-asses and deserved to be here but I guess they got enough punishment from my friends getting their heads flushed down the toilet now and then. I wasn’t a bully I was more a bully’s associate I watched from the sidelines. 

And some of them were actually nice guys who I talked to now and then. We all got on the bus and it was then I noticed that there weren’t many girls, I mean I wasn’t expecting many anyway but there was only like three compared to a surprising bus-full of boys. I was the last to get on and I was walking down the long isle of this bus. I had seen this scenario many times before with these very people being refused a seat next to someone due to their social status or the amount of spots they had compared to the jocks. But in my version they were disallowing me a seat because they were afraid of me, I don’t know why though I never did anything to them I just laughed when it happened. Still if you encourage bullying your just as bad right? 

Well I found an empty seat next to a kid I had never seen before, he was looking out of the window and hadn’t noticed my recurring rejections. So I sat down next to him. He looked at me for a second and went back to the window. I have a very short attention span and I guess sitting next to a guy who you won’t talk with the whole trip would be boring so I introduced myself which wasn’t like me at all. 

“Uh hey I’m Ryan” I said a bit uneasy at this situation. He looked at me again he had similar features to me longish hair and light colouring only his eyes were green not blue. “Hi I’m Francis” he said to me and held out his hand and I shook it. 

“Nice to meet ya, I haven’t seen you in school before are you new?” 

“Yeah I just moved here two days ago, if you’re thinking I must be pretty screwed up to get on a trip like this within two days well it wasn’t, I had this sort of stuff back at my old school too”

 “Oh okay….” I said kind of nervous. However the rest of the trip me and Francis talked a lot and I found out that he used to live in Canada which became really apparent to me when he started saying “aboot” instead of “about” which reminded me of my Scottish relative. He also learned of my parent’s death and he told me of a similar situation as his dad had died not to long ago.

 We eventually arrived at this place after an exsaughsting 6 hour drive from the bus station into a small town north of our own. I had barley looked outside because I wasn’t at the window but when I got out I was surprised to find a group of women standing there getting ready to welcome us to our temporary home for the next month. Wait???!!! A month I got told it was only two weeks? We were originally getting the two weeks off school which was an added bonus but a month that wasn’t just a change in the time that was a month off of our education, I mean I wasn’t complaining I hated school as much as the next person but even I was startled at this prolonged stay.

  A woman then stepped forward and hushed us up as we talked about the new month to each other. The woman was middle aged but extremely good looking I felt tingly just looking at her, it was also strange because I never usually ogled at women who were just as old as my Aunt Liz but my god she was stunning. She had blonde hair tied in a pony tail and she was wearing a flowery green dress. I thought it was strange though she seemed to be wearing stuff you’d expect a housewife from the early 50’s to wear but hey she was still hot!

  “Hello people my name is Susan and I’m going to be your Camp Captain for the next month! Now all of you are here because you have some problems dealing with your emotions and that’s okay but hopefully here at Home Acres we could help you out on that!” she said really bubbly and stupidly like a kids cartoon. And I finally knew the name of this place “Home Acres” I thought it was pretty catchy being the way the staff were dressed, god help us if we have any women’s rights activists in the group. Then she blabbed on for a while about cabins and stuff I kind of zoned out at that point, she just said to pick a bed for yourself and find a room all cabins are available.

  Well me and Francis agreed early on we would be in the same cabin. So we went to Cabin 6. In there we were met by a girl named Danielle and some nerdy guy named Brent. I knew Danielle from my English class I thought she was always pretty I had even considered asking her out but despite her good looks and fashion sense she was political which drifted her away from the cheerleader girls whose closest thing to a debate was which guy was hotter, and she wasn’t the kind of girl to be involved with THAT kind of discussion. Brent I knew through my friends unfortunately, he was a regular for a dunking but I had always liked the kid and in fact whenever my buddies would try and mess around with him I would tell them to leave him alone and for that he stuck to me like glue which was really annoying.

  “Ryan! Hi Ryan I didn’t know you were here too, this is going to be so much fun!” Brent said.

 “Who’s the fan?” Francis asked jokingly.

 “That’s just Brent, he’s always like that” I said trying to defend my numero uno fan.

 “Hey Ryan so I guess you’ve got issues to then huh?” Danielle asked.

 “Yep pretty much” I said laughing.

 Then as we were about to all get ready to set up shop an announcement was broadcast over the speakerphones.

 “Ahem attention tonight we will be holding a special relaxation session so that we can get a good head start on our work, would all um….…..‘angry people’ please come to the main hall which is located at just behind cabin 6 at 8’oclock tonight thank you”

 “Angry people?” Danielle asked herself.

 “8 o’clock!! We haven’t had something to eat yet I’m starving!” Francis shouted, we heard mumbling agrees from the other side of the walls, everyone was hungry. But maybe we’d get something to eat while we were there I thought. So at 8 the occupants of Cabin 6 including myself joined the rest of the angry people as they called us at the main hall I also noticed a greater number from us all, Danielle later informed me that there were kids from other schools and we had come in late. Cabin 6 was the only all empty cabin left at the time we took it. We all entered the massive hall and there were mats everywhere for some reason, I guessed we were doing yoga or something that I was definitely sitting out of. Then a new woman appeared in front of us, and began to speak. As she did I noticed that all of the female staff were standing at the sides watching us like hawks. It creeped me out a bit. The new woman called herself Amy and she explained what we were going to do, it wasn’t yoga but something like it. She played the usual yoga type relaxation crappy music and told us to shut our eyes and lie down on the mats and that was all we had to do, just lay there in silence and listen. So I did that, that wasn’t too bad I might have even got a nap if it wasn’t for the crappy sounds of the rainforest CD on. As I lay there in darkness I felt myself drifting off to sleep, and then “OW!” I felt a large nip in my back, Amy quickly told us to keep our eyes shut as it was all part of the process. I could hear all of the other kid’s screams of pain aswell, what the hell was that?

She told us to expect more and I didn’t like it. After the whole session was finished we were made to endure 5 nips each, 2 in the neck, 2 on the back and 1 in the stomach. We all staggered back to our cabins to get some rest and me Brent and Francis were shocked to discover that Danielle didn’t get nipped. The next morning I woke up feeling strange I moved my hair out of my eye and that’s when I noticed it was longer than it was before, I just regarded it as my hair growing fast but Francis also woke up the same and Brent had the same length of hair that I had, had yesterday this was strange as he had very short hair before. I also thought I was putting on weight but it was more like puppy fat than anything else, which was just as bad in my opinion. Then we got a second announcement it was time for breakfast......