Free The Order of the Poison Oak by Brent Hartinger

barely even talking to me. I was not having a good week.
    * * * * *
    That Friday, we took the kids on another all-camp hike. We went south along the water on something called the Waterfront Trail, which mostly followed the shoreline of the lake. There was still a haze in the sky from those distant forest fires, but the real fog was in my mind, from the fact that I felt so at odds with my two best friends and I had no idea what to do about it.
    We’d been walking for thirty minutes or so when I came upon Otto on the trail. My kids were overtaking his. For the time being, I was hiking right behind him.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Oh, hey!” he said, turning to me. Somewhere in the branches overhead, a crow cawed.
    For the record, ten-year-old boys don’t have a lot of patience or tact, especially when it comes to passing other kids on a trail.
    “Hey!” I said to my kids. “No pushing! If you guys want to pass someone, wait your turn.”
    Sure enough, my kids actually waited their turn.
    “Hmm,” Otto said. “I guess things are better with your kids, huh?”
    “What?” I said.
    “When we talked before, you said you were having trouble.”
    “Oh, yeah.” I had been having trouble with my kids. But not anymore. Things were so good, I’d almost forgotten about my problems before. “Well, that was good advice you gave. It worked. Thanks.”
    Up ahead, our kids were stopping and gathering around a ramshackle old cabin by the edge of the lake. It had to have been built and abandoned years ago, and now the roof had mostly fallen in. It looked like a game of Jenga after the blocks had collapsed. In the long grass alongside the cabin, there was the scattered rubble of a fallen stone chimney, and even a bent and rusted metal trough of some sort.
    “What is it?” one of Otto’s kids asked him.
    “Kepler’s Homestead,” he said. “Built by one of the early lake settlers. It’s over a hundred years old.”
    There was just enough of the front of the cabin left standing that you could step inside for a few yards. So of course, all our kids immediately wanted to go in. They sounded like a bunch of squeaking mice.
    “No!” Otto said. “It’s not safe. And I don’t want anyone getting any ideas about coming back here alone.”
    “What would you do?” Ian asked.
    “Kick your butt. And then call your parents and have them come take you home. Trust me, you’d be in big trouble, and your parents would not be happy.”
    “What’s that?” said one of Otto’s kids. He was pointing beyond the cabin, out across the lake.
    We all looked.
    There was gray smoke billowing up from behind the wooded hills on the opposite side of the water. It was the kind of smoke that could only be coming from a forest fire.
    I had known there were fires burning somewhere—I’d seen the haze in the air for days now. But I hadn’t known they were so close to camp. I’m not sure what was different here—the angle from the Waterfront Trail or the fact that the lake was so much narrower here, barely a quarter mile across.
    But even with the new view, it was impossible to know exactly how close that fire was, or even how big it was. It could have been burning right on the other side of that hill, or maybe it was miles and miles away and the smoke just made it look close. And it could have been the smoke of an isolated little fire already burning itself out—or maybe it was the result of some great conflagration burning out of control.
    “It’s nothing,” Otto said at last. “Let’s keep going.”
    “It’s not nothing!” Ian said. “It’s a fire!”
    “Way on the other side of the lake,” I said. “We’re perfectly safe here. And look, the firefighters are already putting it out.” Sure enough, there were helicopters approaching, no doubt preparing to dump water on the blaze. Why hadn’t I noticed the copters before? I guess I had, but I’d assumed they were tourists out sightseeing.
    “But what about the trees that are