A noise startled both of us. A ringing coming from the open laptop on Jimmy’s chair. The screen was on. I went to see if I could turn it off before any of the other counselors milling around outside or upstairs heard it and came in, but then I saw that it was a Skype call. And then I saw who it was from.
Robert Drill.
My heartbeat ticked up. Robert Drill was, for all intents and purposes, just an arm’s reach away. If I answered the call I could practically say I was in the same room with the guy. But obviously I couldn’t do that. “We have to get out of here.”
I looked up. Boycott Camp was already gone. I ran for the door, but then the knob started turning. Thinking quickly, I hid behind one of the filing cabinets, crouching down low.
Jimmy walked in. When he heard the ringing he rushed to the laptop and pressed a button on his keyboard. “Hey! What a nice surprise,” he said.
“Please hold for Robert Drill,” came a female voice from the computer.
“Of course, right.”
“Jimmy?”
“Dad! I mean, Robert. I mean, hey, how are you?”
“Fine, great, look, I don’t have that much time to talk, but I wanted to return your call. What is it?”
“Of course, thank you,” Jimmy said. He was bent over the laptop in an awkward position, since it was still on his chair. “I just wanted to give you an update on what’s been going on at the camp for the past week. It’s been a little unusual.”
“Unusual how?”
“Well, there have been a few … incidents, between the campers. Pranks that have been … escalating in scale.”
“It’s camp. Pranks are to be expected.”
“Of course, Robert. Wise words. So true. I just wanted to ask you again about the unpaid internship—”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Jimmy?” Drill’s voice said, stern, scary. “There is no unpaid internship. Now find a way to keep those campers in line. There’s barely a month left.”
“Of course, sir, I mean, Robert. Thank you so much for calling.”
I watched Jimmy’s reaction, trying to gauge what just happened. And then the crying began. It was coming from outside, and through the window I could see Ashley there, bawling her eyes out. She was acting up to start another distraction. She must’ve known I was still in here when I didn’t meet the team at the assigned rendezvous.
Jimmy looked faint and ran out of the room.
Through the window I could see that Ashley was already leading him away. But I couldn’t move.
Had I heard Robert Drill right?
There was no internship.
“Welcome to your second Camp Save the World competition!” Jimmy said.
It was after dinner, hardly any light left in the sky. Everyone in camp was gathered on the playing fields, sitting on the grass in random groups and clusters looking up at Jimmy, who had a golden retriever’s enthusiasm for this announcement.
“Like I’ve already hinted at, this will be an endurance challenge. And now I can tell you that you will all partake in what we in the activist community call a sit-in. Sit-ins gained popularity in the sixties, when they were an effective method of protest for the civil rights and women’s movements. Protesters would come together and occupy a space, sitting down and not budging for as long as it took to get their message heard. So tonight you’ll all be sitting down for as long as you can. No getting up. No bathroom breaks. No sleeping. The camper who sits the longest will be awarded thirty-five points. So good luck, campers. The competition starts now!”
Boycott Camp was the first one up. He practically jumped at Jimmy’s whistle and began marching around the playing fields. He hadn’t had time to make a picket sign, but he already had a chant. “Competitions. Are. For. Fascists! Sitting. Is. For. Fascists!”
I followed him with my eyes as he circled around us, providing the soundtrack to this competition. I looked at him in a new light. Boycott Camp was no longer just a nonconformist arsonist. He was also a mural vandalizer. When I’d told Jimmy what I discovered on the tapes in his office, he’d awarded Boycott Camp ten points for what he called “an inspired act of outside-the-box activism.” He then docked me another two points for breaking into his office. I tried to appeal, bringing up the fact that Feminism had broken into the counselors’ office just last week. “And you practically threw her a party for it,” I’d told Jimmy. “She broke in through the skylight, Children,” Jimmy had said. “She broke the glass ceiling.”
So I was still in the negative-points range. Not that it mattered at this point. Thanks to that video call, I now knew that these competitions were bullshit.
Ever since I’d overheard that call I kept thinking back on the time I met Drill at that book signing when I was thirteen. He’d told me I had the potential for greatness. He’d told me I could feed the hungry children of the world one day. I never forgot those words. But for the first time they sounded wrong. This time I knew they were coming from a liar.
“Are you sure you heard him say that?” Ashley asked. She sat beside me. She’d come dressed for an endurance challenge, wearing a dugout T-shirt with yellow sleeves, knee-high socks, a sweatband like a crown tamping down her wild hair, and bright red short shorts. Pika sat beside her, wearing an identical getup, though he faced away from us. Ashley used his back as a leaning post.
“I know what I heard, Ashley. Robert Drill admitted that there was no unpaid internship.”
I tried to go over all the possibilities of why he’d lie. Was it to build character? To make us work harder than we otherwise would have and then make us realize that it wasn’t for a prize after all, but for our own good?
But if that was the case, then Drill had turned what should’ve been a nurturing and inclusive place for like-minded young people to come together into a total cutthroat environment where everyone was out to get each other.
Even now, there were a couple of campers who’d quit the competition but had come back to throw water balloons on people to get them to stand up. The only reason I hadn’t been hit by a water balloon yet was by virtue of sitting next to Ashley, whom nobody dared bother because she was a celebrity. In fact, I think there was a balloon meant for me, but since I was so close to Ashley, Pika caught it in his hand as delicately as if he were catching a raw egg. He hurled the balloon right back at the assailant and it exploded in his face with enough force to knock him down to the ground.
Not to sound too petulant about it, but Drill not giving us an internship just wasn’t fair. We were promised something. And it wasn’t right to promise something and then just take it away to teach us a lesson.
“I can’t believe Drill would do that,” Ashley said. “But I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Of course I do.”
My small smile mirrored hers. “Thanks.” With all the shittiness I’d discovered about this camp in the office, it was nice that somebody was there to listen, and to believe me. “That means a lot.”
A group of people were getting up, distracting me from Ashley. It was the camp’s resident cool kids—Poe, Win, Balthazar-Adriano. Even Rights had joined them. At least ten of them had gotten up together and slinked away, arms draped over each other’s shoulders and waists and laughing like they were in a Levi’s commercial. “Why are they leaving?” I asked.
“Pika,” Ashley said, “can you find out why they’re going?”
Pika dutifully left, and Ashley and I watched as he followed the group and then came back to us moments later. He whispered in Ashley’s ear so low that I couldn’t hear his voice.
“They’re throwing a party!” Ashley said. A few people sitting close by turned to look at her, suddenly interested in our conversation. “Since all of the counselors are tied up here, they’re free to throw a shindig. Come on, Gregor, let’s go!”
With one spritely jump to her feet Ashley effectively shook off the last half hour of this competition. “What about the sit-in?” I said.
“Who cares about the sit-in? It’s not like they’re giving out points for every hour you remain seated. Only one person is going to win.”
“And that person will be me!” Anti-Robotics shrieked, eavesdropping on us. “I will piss myself if I have to.”
“A real, underage, and unsupervised party, Gregor,” Ashley said. “Like in the movies.”
The way Ashley said “movies” was the way other people said “magic,” though I guess for her those two things might be synonymous. I watched her go. It didn’t take long for others to follow her. The rumor of the party was spreading through the field like a brushfire. Slowly and looking slightly uncertain, campers began to rise and follow the path that the cool kids had paved. By throwing this party, Poe and Win and all the other first-namers were engaging in their own kind of sabotage. It may have been unintentional—or not—but this party was luring everyone off the field, because why stay in a competition when you could party with the cool people?
Wait a minute, why was I still here? I sat in the grass like an idiot when I knew there was no internship. Who cared about points anymore?
I stood, patted my jeans down, and walked away.
“It’s alright, Children,” Jimmy called after me, sitting so erect and cross-legged it looked like he was meditating. “Not everyone can sit still for long periods of time.”
No, not everyone could. Sometimes you had no choice but to get up and move.
* * *
The party was being held in the rec room. There wasn’t music blasting from a stereo, but I could hear Save the World With Song strumming on his guitar before I even walked in. I didn’t do parties. I’d never been invited to any house parties in school, but this was my summer of firsts, so here I was.
Unity came at me so fast he didn’t have time to properly stop, and full-on bumped into me.
“Children, you made it!” He handed me a plastic cup. I really hated that nickname, but I let it slide and sniffed the contents of the cup he’d just given me.
“Does this have alcohol?”
“No!” Unity cheered. “This party was last-minute. No time to sneak in contraband.”
“Then why is everyone acting drunk?”
The room was getting pretty packed, and people were bumping into each other more than seemed strictly necessary. A few people were bopping up and down, and others were full-on dancing even though Save the World With Song’s music output was more of the indie-acoustic variety. I Like Paint was one of the people dancing, and it instantly lifted my mood, seeing him out, socializing, being happy.
“Everyone’s just having fun,” Unity said.
I nodded, embarrassed that that needed to be explained to me. “Have you seen Ashley?”
He shook his head. “I think she was signing Free the Nipple’s nipple.”
“That’s a little on the nose, isn’t it?”
“No, it was on his ni—”
“Never mind,” I said quickly. I scanned the crowd for Ashley. Farmers of America was in the corner making out with Underwater Noise Pollution. Recycle collected empty bottles, trying to make it look fun. Diabetes Awareness and Men’s Rights were talking intensely on one of the couches. Finally, I spotted Poe next to Win. She was lounging back on the armrest, her legs dangling over Win’s knees. She played with his hair. Both of them were laughing.
“Tonight’s the night to make a move.”
“Huh?” I turned to Unity. He was talking to me but he wasn’t even looking at me. All of his focus was trained on the beautiful girl across the room.
“Me and World Peace,” Unity said. “Tonight I’m going to talk to her.”
I took a gulp from my cup. It was Mountain Dew. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, Children. I hear it in your voice—your doubt.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You think a girl like that can’t like a guy like me?”
“Dude, I didn’t say anything. I think you’ve had too much Mountain Dew.”
Unity shook his head and bounced on the balls of his feet like a boxer getting ready to spar. “Naw, man. Tonight’s the night. I think World Peace could be the one.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Like … your first?”
“No,” Unity said. “Well, yes, eventually, but like the girl I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with.”
Funny there could be such a difference between “the first” and “the one.”
“I’m going to talk to her tonight, and then we’ll get together, and after camp’s over, we’re going to FaceTime every day and I’m going to send her flowers on the weekends. We’re going to try to go to the same college, and if that’s not possible, then we’re going to go to college as close to each other as we can. We’re going to have a rough patch after we graduate—I’ll get a job on the West Coast, but she’ll want to stay close to her family in the South, and I’m going to let her go because I care about her so much. But then we’ll come back to each other, like in that movie The Notebook? We’ll compromise and it’ll be beautiful. It’ll be the best it’s ever been between us—better than it was in the beginning. After a year we’ll get engaged. We’ll get married in Central Park, like in all the best movies. I’ll invite you to the wedding. And Ashley too. She could be your date.”
“Why would me and Ashl—”
“Ashley will sing at the wedding.”
“Ashley’s not a singer.”
“She’ll sing anyway. It’s going to be perfect, Children. And it all starts tonight with me talking to World Peace.”
“Do you know what her real name is?”
Unity looked at me openmouthed, his bottom lip glistening with the very nonalcoholic sheen of Mountain Dew. “That’s the perfect opening. Thanks, man. Real quick, do I have any dirt in my teeth?”
He flashed his teeth at me. “What? Why would you have … dude, have you been eating dirt?”
“It’s just dirt, man.”
“Exactly, Unity. It’s dirt.”
“It’s actually not that bad. Plus, it’s supposed to be great for your hair and nails.”
I was too stunned to even respond to that. What the hell was happening at this camp? Was everyone eating dirt but me?
“You need to loosen up, Children. Live a little.” Unity patted me on the shoulder. “I’m about to go live a little myself.”
He went to talk to World Peace. As ridiculous and drunk on love (and dirt) as Unity was, I was jealous of his nerve. He was going to go talk to the girl that he liked—even if he didn’t know her real name. I knew Poe’s name and I couldn’t even do that. But this was my summer of firsts. Like Unity had said, tonight was the night, and I needed to loosen up. I took one last swig from my Solo cup and turned toward the couches, but Rights stepped in front of me, blocking my way.
“Who invited Superman to the party?”
At that moment, Save the World With Song started playing a new tune. “I Kissed a Girl.” ILP stood on top of the Ping-Pong table and started singing it. He knew every single word. Count on Katy Perry to crush the language barrier. The crowd went wild. They were so loud that I couldn’t hear the rest of what Rights was saying to me, but the expression on his face made whatever it was seem threatening.
“Get out of my way, Rights.”
“Don’t think I won’t get you back for getting my points docked.”
“It was two points. I think you’ll survive.”
“I know that two points means nothing to you because you’re so out of the running at this point, Superman. But for me two points could be the difference between spending the next summer at home or spending it in Tampa.”
“Aren’t you from LA? I’d think LA trumps Tampa.”
“Whatever, Superman. I’m onto you. When you least expect it I’m going to get you back. In the meantime, you know what to do with this, dumbass.” Rights shoved me out of the way while pressing several bills into my chest. He walked away and I caught the money before it fell to
the floor. With him out of the way I could finally make my way to Poe. I had a clear view of the couch she was still sitting on. Win was nowhere in sight. Someone new had taken his place, and this time Poe wasn’t just sitting next to them playing with their hair. Poe and Ashley Woodstone sat together, kissing. All I could do was stand there and stare, holding Rights’s money to my chest as ILP provided the perfect soundtrack to my heartache.
Hello, Mother, hello, Father, here I
am at Camp Save the World.
I know that you guys never really
believed in this camp. You didn’t
understand it. You didn’t get the
whole activism angle. And you
definitely didn’t understand how/if it
would help me become a better
person.
I just wanted to let you know that I
see your side of things now.
P.S. Ashley Woodstone is an
amazing actress. I never should have
trusted her.
Anti-Robotics won the sit-in, and he didn’t even need to piss himself to do it. It shot him up to sixth place on the scoreboard, behind Win, Poe, Ashley, and Men’s Rights. That same night, Anti-Robotics was thrown into the lake. He held the distinction of being the first camper to be thrown in twice. The next few days saw Save the Trees and Anti-Globalization join the lake-throwings club. Jimmy’s response to the lake-throwings was to introduce pacifist activities to quell our violent tendencies. Arrowless archery was about as exciting as it sounds, though two people were still sent to Nurse Patrosian with bow-related injuries.
Throughout this time I avoided Ashley. Or tried to. But it was a small camp, and I knew our next meeting was inevitable. It happened when I went to see ILP’s mural. Before it’d been destroyed I’d liked to watch him paint. It had helped clear my head. Now that he was working on it again, it seemed like the perfect thing to do. I just didn’t know Ashley would be there helping him.
“Gregor Maravilla!” she said when she saw me. “What a nice surprise!”
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