After about an hour of following a trail that turned out to go in a circle, we heard Mike, Seth, and Pinky calling for us. Nina and Mike had made all the kids hike down and help look for us. It was so humiliating. Now everyone had to do that grueling hike back up to the lake in the drizzling rain. To make matters worse, no one had had breakfast yet. Of course, it was much easier and faster without our packs, since we all knew the drill from the day before. But that didn’t make anyone cheerier being in the situation.

I couldn’t quite figure out why, but no one seemed to blame Layla at all for the unfortunate turn of events—I mean it was her idea to go out at dawn, even if I was the one who wanted to pan for gold! As we hiked back, the girls were all sharing makeshift umbrellas, chatting with each other and Layla. Seth, Tomo, and Pinky were goofing around, too. But no one, including Layla, was speaking to me. Somehow everyone seemed to know that the pre-dawn adventure gone wrong was my idea, and that I was the loser who fell in the stream and ruined the map and got us lost. I heard some snickering about the fact that I wanted to find gold.

Actually, I was bummed that we hadn’t found more than a fleck or two of gold. I thought we would really find a nice nugget. I didn’t go panning to make trouble. I really wanted to see if we could find a nice piece of gold. I just thought it would be fun. How was it possible that in a camp of screw-ups, I was the first one screwing up?