On Monday, she got the call that they were being shut down. Tabitha had been going to Camp Bloom since she was eight years old, and now that she was 20, it had been five years since she had been to the camp at all. She had helped out once she aged out of the camp because she loved the carefree atmosphere so much. To her surprise, it was now being permanently closed due to the extreme doses of caffeine that were offered with breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. Apparently, simply offering it was grounds for termination of the whole camp. Tabitha was devastated. She was thinking about going back one last time to say goodbye to the camp she spent her summers at for so long. Thinking back to when she had been there, they would have never even had the option to drink caffeine. Tabitha herself wasn’t a huge caffeine addict, she managed to only drink a cup of coffee a day, sometimes less. So that night, she planned out a road trip to Camp Bloom for the next day, August 28, 2025. She would go reminisce, and then go out on the town to see what else it had to offer.

The next day, Tabitha pulled into the parking lot of the camp after about an hour of driving, as it was on a beautiful lake surrounded by a small but popular town in Northern Maine. She was feeling nostalgic as she got out of her car at the camp where she had so many fond memories of swimming with her friends, making s’mores by the campfire, and telling each other what they thought were scary stories late at night. She missed those days, when she was outgoing, happy, and stress free. Going to camp and seeing her “camp friends” was her favorite part of the summer. She hadn’t noticed while she was thinking about her own memories here that there were police cars outside, but she figured they were probably just questioning the owners and helping move furniture out. Tabitha walked in the front doors that she knew so well, and immediately was met with a disturbing scene, almost a different air than she was used to. Police tape, tarps, detectives, and what looked like several children being carted out of the place on stretchers.

There was an eerie and upsetting manner about the way everyone was moving about. Tabitha realized she probably wasn’t supposed to be there when she saw a teenager being restrained and put in handcuffs. He was screaming something about how they were taking away his medicine as he lashed against the officers. Unfortunately for him, he was thrashing around so much that the officers lost their grip on him, and he fell and hit his head, knocking him unconscious.

That’s when the officers saw Tabitha and her horrified expression, and they immediately yelled, “Hey! What are you doing here?” Then the officers who weren’t putting the boy on the stretcher started chasing her. Tabitha sprinted out to the car feeling lucky that she hadn’t gotten any further into that mess, but wishing she hadn’t gone at all. She started her car and screeched out of the parking lot, her extreme desire to get out of that place taking over her mind.

That night, Tabitha had nightmares of what she saw in that place. She knew that she couldn’t talk to anyone about it, not even the police in her hometown. They had been trying to downplay what had happened so there wouldn’t be lawsuits, and now she understood why. Tabitha decided that she would keep this to herself for the rest of her life, this way nobody else would have to see what she saw.

The next day, Tabitha woke up to those same officers at her door, and they looked ready and to ask her questions.

They said, “Look, you aren’t in trouble, but why in the world were you at our crime scene?”

“I heard it was being shut down, and I went there for such a long time as a kid, so I wanted to reminisce a final time before they tore the place down,” Tabitha replied, hoping the officers would understand.

The officers accepted that answer, but then Tabitha decided that it was her turn to ask some questions. Basically, she wanted the whole story, why they were giving kids energy drinks, why they became addicted to it, and how it got so out of control that they were being sent to the hospital.

The officers broke it down for her, and said “The camp has new, young owners this year, and they were obsessed with energy drinks themselves so they thought it would be acceptable to share that obsession with the kids they were in charge of.”

“Obviously,” the second officer chimed in, “this was a terrible idea, because it started out with a limit of 1 per week. The kids became addicted, because caffeine can actually cause withdrawals if you drink it consistently enough, and suddenly stop. The sudden stop came when the owners were tired of kids bouncing off the walls all day. But the kids wouldn’t take no for an answer. These kids were consuming over twelve times the amount of caffeine that’s recommended per day for adults, let alone kids.”

“Symptoms varied, some were just jittery, nonstop shaking, while others now have permanent heart problems because of this incident,” the first officer said, trying to reassure Tabitha after seeing the look on her face

“Luckily,” he said, “there is a requirement that the kids get bi-weekly checkups by a doctor that comes to the camp,” he added. Tabitha remembered that from when she went there.

“The doctor was overwhelmed by the large number of children with tachycardia, a heart condition where your heart beats over 100 times a minute even while resting. The doctor immediately called the police, and ambulances to come to the camp,” said the second officer, who seemed to be impressed by the doctors quick decision under pressure.

When Tabitha had got there, she didn’t realize the camp had only been shut down for just under 24 hours. They had still been cleaning up and sending kids to the hospital while others were being treated there at the camp.

Tabitha felt ashamed that she had intruded, but the officers reassured her it was okay, just an honest mistake. She realized that what she had seen was still horrible, but it wasn’t some horror story about kids gone crazy. It was just kids consuming way too much caffeine, but Tabitha’s mind was cleared now that she knew the kids were getting the proper treatment, even if there was lasting damage. After the officers left, Tabitha went about her day normally. Tabitha decided that after that scary experience with caffeine, she would stick to her one cup of coffee a day!