“Hello, Gregor.” She held out her hand and I took it.
Firm but not too firm. Confident but not intimidating. Her hand was soft, but then of course it was—huge stars and their perfect skin care and all that. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a result of the exfoliating properties of dirt.
The internship was a ruse, Drill was never coming to visit, camp activities were a joke; at this point I was going through the motions at this camp, but this was a motion—this simple act of shaking Ashley’s hand—I could live with. Ashley was probably the weirdest thing about this weird camp. And yet, she didn’t weird me out anymore.
I smoothed my thumb over her skin as we shook, my eyes locked on hers. Somehow, impossibly, my time with Ashley had become my escape from this weird camp. Somehow, I now understood, Ashley was my closest friend here.
“So I’ll see you at the clearing later?” I said.
Ashley continued to shake my hand, her face set in a mode I could only describe as serious business. “Definitely.”
I couldn’t wait.
Really.
Like I said: fucking weird.
The third competition was moved up because this would be a busy week at camp, Jimmy explained. In a few days’ time our families would descend upon the Catskills for Visit Day, so we needed to get the third competition under way before then. And while I no longer cared about the competitions (knowing there was no prize to speak of), I especially did not want to participate in this one.
“You’re probably asking yourselves why I loaded the entire camp into buses and brought you all here, to the center of town,” Jimmy said to us. He stood in front of his hybrid, which he’d driven here separately. All of the campers were lined up in front of the buses, parked along Main Street in the sleepy town of Swan Lake. “You will be given a clipboard with a few sheets of paper. You’ll write your cause’s mission statement at the top of those papers. And then you will be unleashed upon the lovely people of Swan Lake to collect as many signatures as you can for a competition I like to call PETITION RELAY!”
See? Totally did not want to do this.
“Real activists often have the difficult task of getting in front of people’s faces and convincing them that it is in their best interest to sign a petition,” Jimmy continued over the excited murmurs of the campers. “You all have one hour to get as many signatures as possible. Two points per signature. Now let the games begin!”
Everyone swarmed Jimmy, diving into the backseat of his hybrid to get their hands on the clipboards. I just leaned against one of the buses and watched.
“Aren’t you coming?” Ashley asked, appearing suddenly at my side, as she so often did.
“You and I both know these competitions don’t mean anything.”
“Well, that’s one way to look at it. Another is that you’re being given permission to run around town without supervision. You have an hour to break free and do whatever you want.” Her eyebrows wiggled like dancing caterpillars, and beneath them her eyes twinkled with what could only be described as mischief. Sometimes you have a choice, and sometimes a girl will smile at you like that, and you know that you never actually did.
* * *
“So where are we going?”
“I have no idea,” Ashley said. “But we’ll know instantly when we see it.”
I didn’t know what we were supposed to be seeing. For now, Ashley and I walked down Main Street, farther and farther away from the mayhem of the competition. It’d barely started and already campers were ambushing passersby, cornering the unassuming people of Swan Lake at the grocery store when all they wanted to do was buy their milk in peace.
Ashley had explained to her bodyguard that we intended to have a fully unsupervised hour to ourselves, so Pika stayed back. We’d left Main Street behind for the less populated terrain of Swan Lake, where the cracked roads were hugged on both sides by overgrown weeds and the occasional bait shop.
“So why are you in a funk?” Ashley asked out of nowhere.
“I’m not in a funk.”
“I can tell when you’re in a funk, Gregor.”
I listlessly kicked a stray pebble down the road, which I guess seemed like the type of thing someone in a funk might do. “Doesn’t this all just seem like a joke to you?”
“Define ‘all.’”
“I mean literally everything. This competition. The fact that Robert Drill is a liar and there is no internship. It’s Visit Day in a few days and my family’s going to come here and I’m not going to have anything to show them. My biggest accomplishment this summer was sneaking into the counselors’ office to try to get Rights kicked out of camp, and I couldn’t even do that. It’s all a joke … I’m a joke.”
“I don’t think you’re a joke.”
I appreciated that but did not look up from the pebble I was now apparently playing a one-man game of soccer with. “This isn’t activism. This isn’t what I came to this camp for.”
“So why did you to come to this camp, Gregor Maravilla?”
“I’m here for the same reason as everyone else. To win The Prize.”
“The internship was announced after camp started. So that can’t be it.”
She was right. I’d almost forgotten there was more to this camp than just The Prize. “I came here to make a difference,” I said. “Or to learn how to.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’?”
“Lots of people want to make a difference. What made you want to come to this camp so badly? What drove you to start a Feed the Children fund?”
I shrugged, not sure of what to say. She was right, though—people were inclined to do good. But only a certain brand of us were so driven that we’d go to a summer camp to do it. “I think it really started my freshman year,” I said. “There was this kid in my school, his family lived really far out in Brooklyn, close to the water. And this superstorm hit and his whole house was basically destroyed. I didn’t even know the guy, because he was a junior, but his friend—this girl named Cherry—she started this campaign to help his family out. She rallied the entire high school for months, constantly asking people to donate just a dollar every day to try to help her friend rebuild his house so he’d have a place to live again. And she got people to do it. Even I donated a dollar every day. It became this big thing that everybody came together for. And at the end of that semester, the school held a huge assembly where Cherry announced that they’d raised almost ten thousand dollars for this guy’s family. And it was amazing. I’d never seen anything like it. Cherry had managed to bring people together to do something really good for someone. I guess that was when I realized I could try to do the same thing for a cause that was important to me.”
“That’s very noble of you,” Ashley said. “Do you know why I came here?”
I shook my head. I’d wondered that. A lot.
“To make friends,” she said simply.
Ashley Woodstone may have been a lot of things. Advocate of the all-dirt diet, megastar, nighttime nude swimmer. But there was no way she was lacking in friends. There was only one reasonable explanation for this. “Are you one of those people who loves to collect friends? Because there’s a kid in my school like that. He bends over backward trying to get people to join his ‘squad.’ Especially the people who don’t like him. He’s even got three pen pals.”
“No,” Ashley said. “I don’t collect friends. Making friends in Hollywood isn’t as easy as you might think.” She got to the pebble before I did and kicked it herself, watching as it skidded down the empty road. “People in LA love to inject fat into their lips and surgically implant muscles in their bodies, but the idea of eating dirt is really weird for them. Go figure. Plus, it’s kind of hard to meet kids my own age sometimes. My costars are almost always older than me.”
“But you were on those kid shows.”
“You never watched them.”
“No.”
She nodded knowingly and smiled. “Anyway,
I realized I’ve got less than a year left before I officially turn into an adult, and I’ve let so many milestones of childhood pass me by. I’ve never been to anyone’s birthday party—which is a real bummer, because I’ve always wanted to bust open a piñata. I’ve never played tag with anyone. I’ve never even skinned my knee. So I thought, Hey! I’ll go to camp! It seemed like the perfect solution to all my problems: Do a bunch of fun activities that normal kids do and meet people my age who share similar interests with me. That’s why I came here. And I think that’s why you came here too.”
“I’ve skinned my knees before.”
“Yes, but do you have many friends, Gregor?”
I thought of school. Of lunch sitting at my foldout table to collect money for my Feed the Children fund. I knew I was trying to do some good, but it also preempted sitting alone at one of the regular lunch tables. “No. I guess I don’t.”
Ashley jumped, surprising me with her abruptness. “Rejoice, Gregor Maravilla! For we are at an amazing place, enjoying each other’s company and living magnificent, blessed lives. We should not feel sorry for ourselves. Plus, we just found exactly what we were looking for.”
I stopped, taking in our surroundings for the first time. In front of us was an abandoned store. You could tell it was abandoned because some of the windows were boarded up, while shrubbery obscured the rest of them. Also, you could tell it was abandoned because it was a Tower Records.
“The town’s eyesore is what we’ve been searching for?”
“Trust me, Gregor. It’s perfect.”
* * *
Nobody bought CDs anymore—nobody even wanted them—and we knew that, because as soon as we snuck in through the unlocked front door, we saw that the abandoned music store still had CDs on display. Not many. Most of the popular stuff was gone, but there was still a pretty good selection of ’80s-era jazz-rock collecting dust on the shelves.
“Isn’t this amazing?” Ashley said. She stood with her arms spread out in the center of the store, where the light coming through the cracks in the shuttered windows haloed her in sunshine.
“Define ‘amazing.’”
I picked up a CD and wiped the dust off the plastic. A spiky-haired blond guy holding a saxophone was on the cover. He was wearing a braided headband across his forehead. And he was winking at me. Ashley plucked the CD out of my hands. “I think I see a CD player back there.”
“I don’t actually want to li—” But she was already gone, collecting more CDs on her way to the back of the store. I turned my attention to the shelves, searching for more bad music, when a shadow darkened the music display.
“What’s the matter, Superman? Not a fan of jazz-rock?”
Rights stood in the doorframe, and I couldn’t help but wince upon seeing him. It was only when he showed up that I realized how nice it was to get away from the rest of the camp for a while. “What do you want, Rights?”
“I just wanted to show you my list of signatures.” He held up his clipboard, covered in scribbled names. “It’s amazing how many people will support the Men’s Rights cause once you explain to them that it’s all about equality. I’m so winning this comp.”
“I’m elated.”
“Thank you. I’m also here to lock you in.” He stepped back outside and closed the door before I had time to react.
“You can’t lock me in here!” I said, pounding the side of my fist against the door. It was made of glass, so I could see Rights laughing as he stuck a pipe though the handles of the door. Where the hell had he gotten a pipe?
“Well, actually, I can.”
I tried the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. “What the hell is your problem?”
“I told you I’d get you back for docking my points.”
“It was two points, Rights!”
“We’re even now, Superman.”
I threw my shoulder into the door a few times, but the pipe wasn’t moving. The uselessness of my attempts were punctuated by Rights calmly retrieving his wallet from his pocket and smashing a five-dollar bill against the glass. “How do you like dem apples?”
“That really doesn’t mean anything!” I yelled back at him.
Ashley must’ve found the CD player, because just then the sound system broke into “The Final Countdown.”
“I could just break the glass, you know!” I shouted at Rights.
He laughed. “We both know you won’t.”
I turned and knocked the back of my head against the door. When I opened my eyes, Ashley was standing in front of me. “What just happened?”
* * *
Ashley and I spent the next half hour debating whether or not to break down the door. Although it wasn’t much of a debate. I was adamant that we not break anything. If we broke something, someone would hear it and call the police, and yes, we’d get rescued, but then we’d also go to jail for breaking things after breaking in here, and if we went to jail my chances of getting into a good school would plummet. But then again, I didn’t want to spend all night in here either. Basically it was a debate I was having with myself. Ashley just wanted to smash something. But if she couldn’t do that, she was perfectly content surrounded by the world’s worst music castoffs.
At the moment, a tune that sounded like it should’ve been a family sitcom theme song played throughout the store. I sat slumped against the wall. I wondered if the buses would leave without us. Nobody would notice me missing, but Ashley’s disappearance could warrant a full-on search. “Bet you regret telling Pika to stay behind. He probably could’ve helped in this situation.”
“Nope, no regrets,” Ashley said. “I think we were meant to get stuck in this place. It was fated.”
“What’s the deal with him? Why do you need a bodyguard?”
“Oh, lots of reasons.” Ashley sat on the floor, against the wall next to me. “He’s been working for me for three years. At first he was assigned to me on Smarty Pants. We shot on location a lot, so I needed someone to accompany me from my trailer to the set. You’d be surprised how many people will come at you out of nowhere if you’re walking alone on the street.”
“That doesn’t sound too pleasant.”
She took a little baggy out of her pocket. Not dirt. Chia seeds. “That’s why I have Pika.” She held up the bag in offering, but I shook my head.
“Can I tell you something?”
Ashley’s eyes lit up, just as I knew they would. “Yes.”
“Pika kind of terrifies me.”
She laughed. “Pika’s a teddy bear.”
“I don’t know what kind of teddies you had as a kid, but …”
“He’s just trying to keep me safe,” Ashley said. “He was the only one who saw that this guy on the show a couple of years ago was bad news.”
“Bad news?”
“Yeah,” she said, munching on a pinch of seeds. “A costar. Anyway, Pika was there when no one else was. He’s my protector. My own private Superman.”
I knew she’d brought up Superman for my benefit, a buzzword to distract me. But I was stuck on her. Stuck on “bad news.” A couple of years ago Ashley was fifteen. What kind of bad news could she have seen at fifteen? At sixteen I still hadn’t yet lived enough life to garner a single headline. Not even a byline. Not even a paid classified. “What was the bad news?”
“Just a guy,” she said through her smile. “Now you tell me something.”
“Me?”
“Tell me something true.”
Tell me something true. It sounded like a movie quote or something, but then Ashley had that quality that made little things feel bigger than they were. I racked my brain for something to say. Something that would make me sound interesting and deep. But you were hardly ever interesting and deep when you were honest. Honesty meant being stripped bare, exposed, showing your real self. My real self was the opposite of interesting and deep. Not that it mattered what I said. The way Ashley looked at me I was already stripped bare.
“Remember when I told you earli
er that I wanted to come to camp to make a difference? That was only partially true. I also came because of my brother.” My honesty made me petty. But it was real. “Anton is kind of famous on the internet.”
“Have I heard of him?”
“Not unless you play Minecraft.”
Ashley, thankfully, shook her head.
“He’s got this YouTube channel where all he does is broadcast himself playing this video game. It sounds ridiculous, but people actually tune in. A lot of people. People care. My parents care. They’re so proud of him for figuring out a way to make ad money out of his dumb gaming hobby. To them, if people care enough about something, then that makes it worthwhile. So I thought, People care about this camp. I’m going to show my parents what I could do with my passion. And then they’d see that I was good at something too.” I looked at Ashley. “I came here for superficial reasons.”
“Nah,” Ashley said. “You shouldn’t be jealous of your brother. Being famous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And you definitely shouldn’t do something just to make your parents happy. It’s the opposite, Gregor. Whatever you choose to do should make them happy. My general philosophy on parents is, if they’re not supportive of you, screw them.”
“Screw them?”
“Screw them.”
“Is that how it is with your parents?” I asked.
Ashley opened her mouth for a second, not saying anything. I could tell that she didn’t want to, and that when she did say something, it wouldn’t be in answer to my question. But then she was saved when a new song started playing. Her eyes went wide and she jumped up. “I love this song!”
* * *
I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, watching Ashley dance. Her moves were much the same as when she’d done her moon dance in the woods. She languidly swayed and dipped in and out of the window’s light beams. It looked like the sun was dancing with her. Even the dust played along, swirling around her, sparkling like suspended glitter in the rays of light. This new song was something foreign, which felt appropriate. Watching a girl dance was a foreign experience for me. I was frozen, watching her. Utterly ineffective. But I couldn’t say I wasn’t enjoying it.
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