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Scared Seriously Silly

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The screaming continues up and down the trail. Clutched between two bigger boys, one girl from the Poolesville group is pulled from scene to scene. At one point, she hears a loud snap, feels something against her legs, and drops to the ground, pulling the boys down with her. "Ohhh!" she shouts, kicking her feet. "Oh! Oh!"

"It was just a bunch of sticks," another boy says, and yanks the branch off the trail. At the Apocalypse Now village, she howls, "DON'T HURT ME!" By the chain-saw shack, amid the blare and smell of exhaust fumes, she's warbling, "No! No! Nooooo!"

"Okay," one of the boys exhales, when the chain saws fade behind them. "That is bad. I got scared."

Then there's an overturned bus full of shaking mummies.

The kids now are scared enough that they default to the ultimate human tactic -- getting together, doing something, which happens to be stomping their feet, as if, somehow, this will save them. This makes no sense. It makes all the sense in the world.

"Stomp your feet!" the kids shout in unison. They stomp. The mummies shake and shiver, but the kids keep it up.

Then they race past fireballs and sledgehammers, and through smoke to the end.

They cheer.

Katie says: "It feels like an accomplishment ."

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