Louis Sachar - Holes

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LOUIS SACHAR is the popular author of Small Steps, Stanley Yelnats Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake, Theres a Boy in the Girls Bathroom, Dogs Dont Tell Jokes, and the Marvin Redpost series, among many others. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York

Text copyright 1998 by Louis Sachar
Stepback illustration copyright 2000 by Bagram Ibatoulline

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eISBN: 978-0-307-79836-7

Published in association with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC

v3.1

TO SHERRE, JESSICA, LORI, KATHLEEN. AMD EMILY

AMD TO JUDY ALLEN,

A FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER FROM WHOM WE ALL CAM LEARN

There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. There once was a very large lake here, the largest lake in Texas. That was over a hundred years ago. Now it is just a dry, flat wasteland.

There used to be a town of Green Lake as well. The town shriveled and dried up along with the lake, and the people who lived there.

During the summer the daytime temperature hovers around ninety-five degrees in the shadeif you can find any shade. Theres not much shade in a big dry lake.

The only trees are two old oaks on the eastern edge of the lake. A hammock is stretched between the two trees, and a log cabin stands behind that.

The campers are forbidden to lie in the hammock. It belongs to the Warden. The Warden owns the shade.

Out on the lake, rattlesnakes and scorpions find shade under rocks and in the holes dug by the campers.

Heres a good rule to remember about rattlesnakes and scorpions: If you dont bother them, they wont bother you.

Usually.

Being bitten by a scorpion or even a rattlesnake is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You wont die.

Usually.

Sometimes a camper will try to be bitten by a scorpion, or even a small rattlesnake. Then he will get to spend a day or two recovering in his tent, instead of having to dig a hole out on the lake.

But you dont want to be bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard. Thats the worst thing that can happen to you. You will die a slow and painful death.

Always.

If you get bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard, you might as well go into the shade of the oak trees and lie in the hammock.

There is nothing anyone can do to you anymore.

The reader is probably asking: Why would anyone go to Camp Green Lake?

Most campers werent given a choice. Camp Green Lake is a camp for bad boys.

If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy.

That was what some people thought.

Stanley Yelnats was given a choice. The judge said, You may go to jail, or you may go to Camp Green Lake.

Stanley was from a poor family. He had never been to camp before.

Stanley Yelnats was the only passenger on the bus, not counting the driver or the guard. The guard sat next to the driver with his seat turned around facing Stanley. A rifle lay across his lap.

Stanley was sitting about ten rows back, handcuffed to his armrest. His backpack lay on the seat next to him. It contained his toothbrush, toothpaste, and a box of stationery his mother had given him. Hed promised to write to her at least once a week.

He looked out the window, although there wasnt much to seemostly fields of hay and cotton. He was on a long bus ride to nowhere. The bus wasnt air-conditioned, and the hot, heavy air was almost as stifling as the handcuffs.

Stanley and his parents had tried to pretend that he was just going away to camp for a while, just like rich kids do. When Stanley was younger he used to play with stuffed animals, and pretend the animals were at camp. Camp Fun and Games he called it. Sometimes hed have them play soccer with a marble. Other times theyd run an obstacle course, or go bungee jumping off a table, tied to broken rubber bands. Now Stanley tried to pretend he was going to Camp Fun and Games. Maybe hed make some friends, he thought. At least hed get to swim in the lake.

He didnt have any friends at home. He was overweight and the kids at his middle school often teased him about his size. Even his teachers sometimes made cruel comments without realizing it. On his last day of school, his math teacher, Mrs. Bell, taught ratios. As an example, she chose the heaviest kid in the class and the lightest kid in the class, and had them weigh themselves. Stanley weighed three times as much as the other boy. Mrs. Bell wrote the ratio on the board, 3:1, unaware of how much embarrassment she had caused both of them.

Stanley was arrested later that day.

He looked at the guard who sat slumped in his seat and wondered if he had fallen asleep. The guard was wearing sunglasses, so Stanley couldnt see his eyes.

Stanley was not a bad kid. He was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Hed just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!

He smiled. It was a family joke. Whenever anything went wrong, they always blamed Stanleys no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.

Supposedly, he had a great-great-grandfather who had stolen a pig from a one-legged Gypsy, and she put a curse on him and all his descendants. Stanley and his parents didnt believe in curses, of course, but whenever anything went wrong, it felt good to be able to blame someone.

Things went wrong a lot. They always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He looked out the window at the vast emptiness. He watched the rise and fall of a telephone wire. In his mind he could hear his fathers gruff voice softly singing to him.