The storm didn't give a warning.
It hit like a slammed door—sudden, loud, final. One minute the counselors were leading songs under the tarp-covered eating area, and the next minute, rain was falling sideways and kids were screaming as the wind shredded tents like paper.
Rafi ducked low, gripping the splintering picnic bench with both hands as water poured down his back. His heart thundered in his chest. Somewhere behind him, a counselor yelled something, but the words got swallowed by the howling wind. He turned just in time to see the supply tent lift into the air like a ghost and vanish into the trees.
People were running. Crying. Huddling. Someone tripped in the mud and didn't get up right away.
"Rafi!" a voice shouted—one of the counselors, maybe?
He turned again. But the faces were blurs. And then he saw something worse: a flash of light, a tree cracking and tilting toward the far side of camp—right where the little kids' cabins were.
Without thinking, Rafi took off, feet slipping in the thick muck, lungs burning as he sprinted past the mess area, past the firepit now drowning in rain, past a kid holding a broken flashlight and crying out for his sister.
He didn't stop running until he got to Cabin Three.
It was empty.
Or, no—it wasn't.
A boy, probably eight or nine, was curled up on the top bunk, clutching a soaked stuffed animal and whispering, "I want to go home, I want to go home."
Rafi's voice came out louder than he meant. "You can't stay here!"
The boy just stared, frozen in fear.
Rafi scrambled up the ladder, grabbed the kid by the arm—not hard, just enough to shake him—and said, "We gotta go. Now."
Thunder cracked directly overhead. The whole cabin shook.
And still, no adults.
Just Rafi. Just this little kid with too-big eyes and wet socks. Just rain, and wind, and fear curling in his gut.
He didn't wait. He hoisted the kid onto his back and ran.
By the time he got back to the dining shelter, it was almost empty. A few counselors were huddled with a walkie-talkie that wasn't working. The generator was out. The roads were washed away.
And then someone said it—what everyone had been thinking but no one had said out loud.
"We're cut off."
Rafi stood there, soaked, shaking, staring out at the flooded trails.
No parents. No phones. No way out.
Just him.
And the kids.