“I have an announcement!” Jimmy said. “Tomorrow will be the second competition, so get ready! I won’t tell you what it is just yet, but here’s a hint: It’s an endurance challenge! Exciting, right? So eat right and make sure to get your strength up! Anyway, you guys have been doing so well at this camp that I think you all deserve something special. What do you say, d’ya think you deserve a special surprise?”
A few campers answered him and cheered.
“Do you think Drill’s here?” Win asked me.
“No way.”
I couldn’t trust Jimmy and his surprises anymore. But still, I hoped.
“We’ve got a very special visitor today!” Jimmy said.
“It could be Drill,” Win said. “Today could be the day.”
“No way.”
Win, despite his better judgment, seemed to believe. And despite my own better judgment, I was letting his excitement get to me. I mean, was it really that hard to believe that Robert Drill could be here? A visit from him was way past due.
“Yes, boys, girls, and non-binaries,” Jimmy said. “It’s none other than … Mr. Robert Drill …” Jimmy pressed a button on a remote I hadn’t noticed him holding. And suddenly, Robert Drill appeared before all of us, flickering, staticky, and completely transparent. “… the hologram!”
“No way,” I said, but Win was laughing.
The hologram of Robert Drill shimmered before us, and the murmurs among the campers took on a tone of awe rather than disappointment, which explained why Jimmy looked pleased.
“Hello, everyone!” Robert Drill the Hologram said. “I’m so glad to be joining you on this glorious day.” It was obviously a prerecorded hologram. He wasn’t coming to us live from anywhere. “Here at DrillTech we’re constantly improving the way people communicate, and that includes pioneering hologram technology.”
Someone took off their shoe and threw it at the hologram. It went right through him.
“Amazing,” Win said.
“Amazing” was one word for it. “Bullshit” was another. I raised my hand but didn’t wait for Jimmy to call on me. “Uh, Jimmy, any word on when the real Robert Drill will be visiting the camp?”
“This is the real Robert Drill, Gregor,” Jimmy said. “He personally sent this hologram over for us. He doesn’t do that for just anybody, you know.” More kids started throwing things, and Hologram Drill began flickering more than usual.
“I mean in the flesh,” I said. “As in, a real live human person.”
But Jimmy ignored my question. He was too busy pushing buttons on his remote, trying to fix the hologram, which had frozen, leaving us with an image of Robert Drill that looked like he was midsneeze.
“This blows,” I said.
“It’s kinda funny,” Win said.
“Funny? That we’ve seen every possible version of Robert Drill here but the real one?”
“It’s a little funny.” He took a stick of gum out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth. Win wasn’t totally wrong. Most of the campers seemed to at least enjoy this version of Robert Drill, as opposed to the other versions we’d seen. They’d started up a game, throwing any object they could find at the hologram. Getting something near Hologram Drill’s mouth or crotch elicited the most laughter.
“Hey, Win? I’m thinking about sneaking into the counselors’ office.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to check the security footage to find out who destroyed I Like Paint’s mural. He still seems pretty upset about it.”
“Really? He seems pretty fine to me,” Win said, smirking.
“Well, whatever, somebody’s gotta look out for him.”
“And you’re that somebody,” Win said, chewing.
“I guess.”
“Noble of you, Gregor, but if you’re looking for help breaking into the counselors’ office, you can count me out.”
I nodded slowly, slightly bummed but not totally surprised by Win’s response. “Is this because of what happened at Ashley’s campfire? Rights said a lot of stuff about me, but none of it’s true. I mean, yeah, that book about how to get a girlfriend was technically mine. But it was a gift. Anyway, the rest of it wasn’t true. You have to know that I’m not a bigot.”
Win laughed. He actually doubled over laughing. “I don’t think you’re a bigot, Gregor. Even if I am your only black friend.”
“You’re not! I mean, at this camp you are, but that’s only because I’m not really friends with a lot of people—”
“Calm down, Gregor, I was kidding. I’m not going to help you because if we get caught we’d probably get kicked out. And I’m in a really good position on the scoreboard right now. Can’t risk it.”
Win had a point. As ridiculous as this camp was proving to be—Hologram Drill was flickering in and out of existence at this point—I still didn’t want to get kicked out.
Win shot his chewed-up gum straight from his mouth at Hologram Drill. It soared through the air in a perfect spiral and went right into the middle of the hologram’s mouth. The campers erupted into cheers, and Jimmy was finally able to shut the hologram down.
“If you’re really looking to assemble a team, it shouldn’t be that hard,” Win said. “There are people at this camp who hate it. They’d probably help you out.”
* * *
As always, Win had been right—finding someone to help me break into the counselors’ office turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. I knew just the person to ask.
I found Boycott Camp picketing his Outdoor Cookery activity. His picket sign read COOKING IS FOR FASCISTS, and I hadn’t even gotten my full request out before he agreed to help.
“Will arson be involved?” he asked.
“What? No, of course not.”
“We’ll have to find another way.”
So the team was assembled. It was me, Ashley, Boycott Camp, and ILP, who was not actually part of the team but endured us having our first meeting by his revamped mural as he painted.
“First order of business: sneaking into the counselors’ office,” I said to my team. “How do we do that?”
“I thought you had this whole thing planned out,” Boycott Camp said.
“I thought we could brainstorm together to come up with the best idea.”
“In that case I think we should embark on a spiritual journey,” Ashley said. “The answer will come to us.”
“No spiritual journeys, Ashley,” I said. “We need to be in and out of there quickly, without being seen. Maybe you can tell us how you broke into the pet store on your show.”
“I had the key.”
I stared at her blankly. It took a few moments for a range of emotions to wash over me. Confusion. Frustration. Impatience. And worst of all, the realization that I’d hinged this entire endeavor on the experience of an actress playing a character on a scripted television show. I wanted to throw something. I wanted to quit. But Ashley smiled and continued.
“But!” she said. “I was in a movie with Sean Piss called Cold Dark City. Any of you saw it?”
We shook our heads.
“That’s understandable; it came out ten years ago and was rated R. I was only six or seven when we filmed it, so I didn’t even watch it myself until recently. I played Sean Piss’s daughter. I remember him being quiet but nice—a very talented actor. Truly, I was lucky to be able to share some screen time with him. Though he did reek of alcohol, which was kind of unpleasant but also weirdly intoxicating in a way? It gave me some very confusing feel—”
“Get to the point,” I said.
“Right. Anyway, there’s a scene in that movie where Sean Piss has to sneak into a private detective’s office to steal something. What he did was use a commotion outside as a distraction.”
“A distraction,” I said, nodding. “So what could we distract Jimmy with?”
“I could start a fire in the rec room,” Boycott Camp said.
ILP must’ve understood the words “fire” and “rec room,�
�� because he suddenly looked at us warily, placing a hand protectively on his artwork. I was beginning to wonder if Boycott Camp wasn’t actually against camp so much as for arson. “Let’s just hold off on all fire-related ideas for now,” I said. “But getting Jimmy to come all the way to this side of the camp is a good idea. How do we do it?”
“Leave it to me,” Ashley said.
* * *
Half an hour later, as I crouched in the bushes next to the counselors’ office, I wondered if leaving it to Ashley was really such a good idea. The plan was simple: Boycott Camp would stage a fake fight with ILP down by the rec room, and Ashley would make sure to get Jimmy there. Though the more I thought about it, the flimsier this plan seemed. I only now realized that ILP really had no clue what we were up to, and Boycott Camp staging a fight with him could prove traumatizing.
Well, there was no turning back now.
“You ready?” I asked her. Ashley was crouching beside me, and Pika was crouching beside her, though I don’t think the bushes did much to camouflage him.
“As I’ll ever be,” Ashley said.
“Be convincing.”
“Gregor, please,” she said. “I’m an actress.”
I watched as she took off, followed by Pika. The two of them stopped just in front of the counselors’ office. She winked at me. Ashley looked way more cheery than I needed her to be, and the winking certainly didn’t help. Jimmy would never believe there was an emergency that needed his immediate attention if Ashley Woodstone looked like she’d just baked him a birthday cake. But then she twisted her face up suddenly, her forehead crinkling, her eyes getting shiny. Her mouth drew open, and a giant sob wrenched itself out of it. “Jimmy!” she cried. It was a real, bloodcurdling cry, and I suddenly wondered if she’d ever played the victim in a horror movie before.
The scream was enough to get Jimmy to burst out of the office. “Ashley! What is it?!”
“Boycott Camp is setting fire to I Like Paint’s mural! Only you can stop him!”
I thought “Only you can stop him” was a bit much, but it worked. Jimmy ran immediately in the direction of the rec room, Ashley and Pika close on his heels. Ashley needed to be there to convince Jimmy to stay when he saw that no real emergency was occurring. Unless Boycott Camp really was setting fire to an unsuspecting ILP’s mural. Which, come to think of it, was a very real possibility. But I had no time to worry about that now. The door to the counselors’ office was open and waiting for me.
“Come on, let’s go!”
I spun around at the voice. Boycott Camp was right behind me, eyes laser focused on the door to the counselors’ office.
“Dude, what are you doing here?!” I said.
“I thought you might need backup.”
“If you’re not at the rec room, then Jimmy has no reason to be there!”
“We better hurry up, then.”
I bit down hard, but there was no time to be angry, because Boycott Camp—who wasn’t even supposed to be here—was right. Jimmy would be back sooner than anticipated. We had to act fast. When we got to the door we were met by Blake, the sports counselor. “What are you doing?” she said.
“I … I …” I couldn’t think. I was caught. It was for nothing. This whole plan was for nothing, and now I would get kicked out. “I’m sorry—”
“Just close the door on your way out,” Blake said. She left the office.
I stood frozen for a minute, wondering what just happened. But Boycott Camp ran inside and I followed him.
The office was even messier than the last time I was here. There were documents everywhere: on filing cabinets rather than in them, posted to the walls, overflowing in the wastebasket.
“What the hell is this?” Boycott Camp said.
Jimmy’s desk held a gigantic papier-mâché construction of what appeared to be a full-scale kingdom. There was a castle on a hill, barracks, a granary for food storage, stables, practice rings for swordplay and archery. A dog kennel. I knew what everything was because there were tiny signs next to every edifice, describing its role. A flag protruding from the highest tower of the castle told me that this kingdom was called JIMMYWORLD!™, with a subtitle explaining that JimmyWorld!™ was an “ideal utopian society of the future!”
We didn’t have any time to waste, but also I seriously could not look away. The detail in it was staggering, and I didn’t know whether to be saddened by Jimmy’s pastime proclivities or deeply impressed. There was even a mini Jimmy standing in the middle of the castle grounds, with tiny yellow strips of paper curled like ribbon for his hair. Mini Jimmy’s mini arm was frozen in a mini wave. He appeared to be looking right at me.
But the most surprising thing about JimmyWorld!™ was the writing on the wall. Literally. The castle walls were made of whole sheets of paper, so I could still read the writing beneath the glue.
The world is ugly right now. My biggest hope is to make it beautiful again. That’s why I want world peace. Only after we achieve world peace will the world be the beautiful person I know she can be. Because beauty is important.
If I didn’t know any better I’d say this was World Peace’s admissions essay for camp. I looked at the stack of papers next to JimmyWorld!™ There was an essay on top of the stack. Either Jimmy was big on recycling or he really didn’t care about our essays. I didn’t mean to start reading, but the word “rights” stuck out at me. Men are the only people on the planet who aren’t allowed to ask for rights. And why is that? Well, let me explain it to you so that you understand. Rights’s admissions essay. I checked the name at the top of the page to confirm it. And then I started to laugh. Rights’s name was legendary.
“What’s so funny?” Boycott Camp asked.
“Nothing,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek. I filed Rights’s name away for later use and kept going through the essays.
I’ve struggled with diabetes nearly my whole life, so this cause is personal to me. The next essay started with Where will you be when the robot apocalypse is upon us? And the one after that read, Why pot? I say, why not? That was the only line in that essay. And it was written in crayon.
I’d spent three weeks working on my admissions essay, rewriting every word dozens of times, tweaking it over and over again with new statistics, all in the hope that my words would stand out. For the longest time I thought all that hard work had paid off, but now it appeared I could’ve just sealed it with a piece of chewed-up gum and that would’ve probably been attention-grabbing enough.
I picked up the Moleskine off the desk. I knew it was Jimmy’s journal before I even laid my hands on it, because written across the cover was JIMMY DRILL’S JOURNAL. I had to take a peek.
I flipped through some early pages, scanning quickly until my eyes found the word “camp.”
Gotta make Robert Drill proud. I mean, my new dad. He’s my DAD!!! It feels so good to say that. I think this camp idea is really going to blow him away.
And then:
So many applicants. Really amazing response. But can’t read it all. Considering choosing campers at random. Every cause is valid. Every potential camper deserves a chance. Pick applications out of an XL hat?? Procure a bingo cage?? Really must put effort into finding the perfect instrument with which to randomly draw names of campers for acceptance into CAMP SAVE THE WORLD.
Random.
All of it was random.
Maybe if Jimmy had put more effort into reading the applications instead of finding the perfect bingo cage to pull names out of it, I wouldn’t have felt so let down right at this very moment. All of my hard work to get into this camp was for nothing.
Now I was starting to understand how people like Men’s Rights or Save the World With Song had gotten in.
Speaking of people who didn’t deserve to be here … “There’s so much paper here,” Boycott Camp said, a strangely awed look on his face. He shook me out of my thoughts. We were wasting too much time, and I had a mission. I headed for the TV and the tapes that were stacked by
its side. There were only three tapes, and they’d been labeled even though nobody knew how to watch them. Using a VCR was a lot simpler than I’d thought. I popped a tape in and pressed play. It was the outside of the rec room. All of the footage just showed ILP painting his mural. I had to fast-forward for what felt like a really long time. There were hours left on the tape, and I didn’t know if I’d have a chance to look through everything before we had to get out of there. But then I saw it. ILP slowly turned around to face someone out of the frame. And then he appeared. Just his back, so I couldn’t see who he was. He held a bucket of paint in his arms and flung it at ILP, who threw himself against the mural, spreading his arms wide. The assailant turned to go, and I hit pause. I could finally see who had ruined ILP’s mural.
“It was you,” I whispered. I turned around to face Boycott Camp, but he wasn’t even paying attention to anything on the TV. He was too busy sparking his lighter, trying to set the papers on the floor on fire.
I lunged at him, taking the lighter from his hands, though one paper was already lit. I stomped the small fire out as quickly as I could.
“What are you doing?!” we both asked simultaneously.
“Why are you putting out my fire?”
“Why are you burning this place down?!”
“This camp is—”
“Fascist, I know,” I said. “Is that why you ruined ILP’s mural?”
“I didn’t.”
“You were caught on tape!”
“Okay, fine, I did,” Boycott Camp said. “Is that what this is about?”
“Yes! That’s why we snuck in here!”
“Well, you never told me that,” he said. “I just thought you wanted to cause some trouble.”
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