The Order of the Poison Oak

by Brent Hartinger

  “Oh, hi,” she said. She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about seeing me, which I guess made sense since she didn’t have anything to feel guilty about.

  I wanted to tell her what had happened with Web. After all, if they were just friends like he’d said, what difference would it make? But instead, I said, “How’d it go on Parent Visitation Day?”

  “Not bad,” she said. “I think it was a little weird for my kids to be reminded of their other lives. I kind of think most of them want to forget about that.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “I thought the exact same thing.”

  “Speaking of which, Mimi’s mom brought her a Game Boy. The sound is driving me crazy!”

  We went on like that, with both of us talking about whatever had been going on in each of our lives. Everything, that is, except Web Bastian.

  * * * * *

  Then there were my kids. They still hadn’t forgiven me for the gift shop incident. Which meant that unless I figured out some way to reconnect with them, I’d be picking burrs out of my underwear until the end of the session.

  That afternoon, in my free time before dinner, I looked around for Web but never did find him. As I searched, I tried to think of some way to get back into my kids’ good graces.

  I was walking from the lodge to my cabin when I suddenly had the perfect answer.

  * * * * *

  It was almost eleven o’clock when I woke my kids up from their sleep.

  “Huh?” Blake said, confused. “What’s happening?”

  “Shhh,” I said. “Don’t talk. Everything’s fine. Everyone just get dressed. And don’t forget your flashlights.”

  If this had been a group of adults, or even a group of teenagers, they would have complained that I’d woken them up in the middle of the night. But not one of my kids complained, and I knew it was because there is nothing like doing something out of the ordinary to get the attention of a ten-year-old boy.

  Once they were dressed, I led them out into the summer night.

  “Where are we going?” Julian said, still a little groggy.

  “You’ll see,” I said. “Just follow me. But be very quiet. Keep your flashlights turned off until we’re away from the camp grounds. And if we run into any other counselors, we may have to lie low for a second, okay?”

  For the record, I’d told the other counselors that I had something planned and not to worry if anyone found us missing in the middle of the night. But I knew my kids would be more excited if they thought we were doing something against the rules (for a ten-year-old boy, the only thing better than something out of the ordinary is when that something is also against the rules). And it was working. None of my kids were groggy now.

  We walked silently across the camp grounds to the trailhead of the Waterfront Trail. It led south toward Kepler’s Homestead, the abandoned cabin where we’d witnessed the smoke of that forest fire across the lake.

  Otto was waiting for us at the trailhead.

  “It’s okay,” I said to my kids. “He’s with us.”

  For safety reasons, I’d needed another counselor to help with what I had in mind. So I’d asked Otto and told him to meet us here. But I hadn’t given him any details about what I had planned.

  “Okay,” I said to the kids, starting down the Waterfront Trail. “Flashlights on. Let’s go.”

  “A hike?” Kwame said. “We’re going on a hike in the middle of the night?”

  “Not a hike exactly,” I said. “You’ll see. Just follow me.” My kids did follow, walking behind me in perfect single file, and no one pestered me with questions, not even Ian.

  We marched onward in the dark for about thirty minutes, with me leading and Otto bringing up the rear. We made it all the way to Kepler’s Homestead. But we didn’t stop there. And a few minutes later, we came to a giant tree along the left side of the trail.

  This was my marker. I’d planned this whole expedition earlier in the day, and I remembered this tree be cause some of the bark was loose and big strips of it had fallen off. (Only now, in the middle of the night, did I think to wonder why the bark was loose: maybe it was because a bear had been sharpening his claws on it!)

  I turned away from the tree, toward the undergrowth on the right side of the trail.

  “Here,” I said, pointing my flashlight into the woods. “In here. But this part gets tricky, so I want you to follow me very closely. Walk right in my footsteps. If you don’t, I promise that you’ll really regret it.”

  No one said anything, not even Ian. But I could tell that if they didn’t find out what was up soon, their curiosity was going to cause them to burst open like seedpods on a Scotch broom plant. Even Otto seemed pretty darn intrigued.

  I led everyone twenty or so yards off the trail, into a small clearing. I stopped at last.

  “Okay,” I said. “Gather in a circle and turn off your flashlights.”

  Right away, the kids and Otto assembled around mc. It took them a little longer to turn off their flashlights, but they did. The stars were blocked by the canopy overhead, so the forest fell into total darkness. (I had planned all this in my mind, hut even I hadn’t expected it to be so incredibly black.)

  I didn’t say anything for a second, just let everyone absorb the sounds and smells of the night. Finally, I pulled a candle out of my back pocket and lit it with a lighter.

  The darkness sprang back from us like vampires from a crucifix. Truthfully, even I was glad to have some light again.

  “We’re gathered here,” I said softly, “for a very important purpose. Now I promise not to hurt you, or make you do anything embarrassing, but before we go any further, I want you all to promise me that you’ll never ever tell another person what you’re about to hear.”

  I figured I should go right for the alpha wolf, so I looked at Ian and said, “Well?”

  I could tell that he, like everyone else, was dying to know what this was all about. So he nodded yes. A split second later, all the other kids nodded too. Even Otto nodded, which was perfect, because it meant he was taking this just as seriously as the kids.

  “Okay,” I said into the candle. “Do you all remember the story I told you about Rainbow Crow? And about how the Creator told Rainbow Crow that his new black feathers and his coarse caw were really special gifts?”

  Everyone nodded again.

  “Well, there’s more to the story,” I said. “Because those things—black feathers and a ragged voice—didn’t always seem like gifts to Rainbow Crow. After a while, the other animals forgot how Rainbow Crow had brought them fire, and they began to laugh and tease the bird. They called him ugly and a freak, and they misjudged him, and sometimes Rainbow Crow felt like he was all alone in the world.” The story I was telling now wasn’t part of the Native American legend I’d read about. I’d made it up earlier that day. But I figured I was keeping with the spirit of the original story.

  “But Rainbow Crow wasn’t alone,” I continued. “There were other animals who were teased for looking or acting different too. Like the stinky skunk.” My kids tittered. “And the ugly turkey. And the blind mole. So Rainbow Crow asked those other animals to join him in a secret meeting in the woods, just like this one. But he wanted it to be a private meeting, so they met in a place where no one would ever go. Does anyone know where that was?”

  No one knew.

  “Look around you,” I said. “What are those plants?”

  Everyone squinted into the shadows around us, but no one said anything for a second. Then Zach said, “Is it poison oak?”

  “Yup,” I said. “Rainbow Crow and his friends met at night in the middle of a patch of poison oak, because they knew no animal would come upon them there. And they so enjoyed themselves that night that they decided to form a secret society, which they called the Order of the Poison Oak. Then, if anyone ever overheard them talking about it, no one would ever ask to join. Because who would want to be a member of a group called the Order of the Poison Oak? But the name was misleading,
because the Order of the Poison Oak was a very special group, and the members all had magic powers. Rainbow Crow had the gift of disguise. Skunk had the gift of his stink spray. Turkey had the gift of speed. And Mole had the gift of digging.”

  I paused a moment, then said, as dramatically as I could, “And tonight I brought you here to induct all of you into the Order of the Poison Oak too.” Quietly, I added, “‘Induct’ means to admit someone as a member of a group.”

  There was another silence. Then Willy piped up, saying, “But how can we be members? We don’t have magic powers.” (For the record, this was exactly the question I’d wanted someone to ask!)

  I smiled. “But that’s just it. You do have magic powers. And it’s because of your powers, and the fact that you guys know what it’s like to be teased and misjudged, that you’re all perfect inductees for the Order of the Poison Oak.”

  “What powers?” Ian said, but he wasn’t being a jerk about it. He just really wanted to know.

  “Do you guys know what a scar is?” I asked.

  “It’s what happens when you get burned,” Trevor said.

  “Not just burned,” I said, thinking of Julian with his acne. “If your skin gets damaged in any way, it grows back thicker and stronger than before, so it can’t be hurt again. But when someone has big scars or lots of little scars like you all do, it doesn’t just change that part of their skin. It changes all their skin. It makes magic skin. It becomes thicker all over. The longer you have scars, the thicker the rest of your skin becomes. It won’t be noticeable, and it doesn’t protect you from physical stuff, like getting cut with a knife. But it does protect you from words. And that means when someone says something nasty about you, calls you a freak, the words can’t get through that skin. It can’t hurt you underneath.”

  I looked around in the candlelight; it flickered atmospherically.

  “Some of you don’t believe me that you have magic skin,” I said. “So I’ll prove it to you. I want everyone to hold out a hand.”

  Sure enough, they did. And I pulled some leaves out of my other back pocket.

  “I have in my hand some poison oak leaves,” I said. “I’m going to give each of you one leaf.”

  “But I thought you said that our scars won’t protect us from stuff like knives!” Kwame said.

  “Ordinarily, yes,” I said. “Even your thick skin can’t protect you from the poison of the poison oak. And you’re still not safe from the poison oak all around us. But these poison oak leaves are special. I needed to prove to you that I’m telling the truth about the Order of the Poison Oak. So I had one of Rainbow Crow’s descendants make a deal with the plant that these leaves came from. They won’t hurt you.

  I turned to the kid on my left—Blake. “By accepting this leaf,” I said, “you accept membership into the Order of the Poison Oak, and you agree always to be on the lookout for other members of the Order, and to help them whenever possible, but to never reveal to anyone except another member or inductee what you’ve learned here tonight.”

  Blake hesitated. Then he reached out and took the leaf. The other kids all stared at him, at his hand, watching to see if he would break out in a rash.

  He didn’t. So seven more times, I recited the same words and handed out leaves to the other kids.

  Of course, this is where I should confess that I was telling my kids a little fib. We really were in a patch of poison oak, but the leaves I’d been holding weren’t really poison oak leaves. No, they were leaves from a plain old oak tree growing back near camp. They were completely harmless. Poison oak looks like oak, and I knew my kids wouldn’t be able to tell the difference (they barely even knew what real poison oak looked like!).

  When I’d passed out leaves to all the kids, Otto said, “Do I get one?”

  I smiled. Sure enough, I had one leaf left. I’d brought it for him, even though I hadn’t been sure he’d get into the spirit of it all.

  Now I inducted Otto into the Order of the Poison Oak too.

  When I was finally done passing out the leaves, I went on. “Now, when we get back to our cabins tonight, I want you all to press your leaf between the pages of a book. Then, when it’s dry and you get home, I want von to take it and put it somewhere where you’ll see it every day, as a reminder of what it means to be a member of the Order of the Poison Oak. Does everyone promise they’ll do that?”

  The kids and Otto all nodded. I’d never seen a group of ten-year-olds look so serious in my whole life. But that was good. Again, it was just what I’d wanted to happen.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m now going to blow out the candle. I want everyone to count to ten before you turn on your flashlights. Then we’re going to turn around and walk back to our cabin.”

  As the kids filed out of that patch of poison oak, Otto walked by me too. I expected him to look at me and wink or smile. And he did look at me, but he wasn’t smiling. Even in the feeble light of the flashlights, I could see there were tears in his burgundy eyes.

  I’m not much of a baseball player, but earlier that year I had joined the high school baseball team for a few weeks (long story—it had to do with the “bad boy” baseball player I mentioned earlier). Anyway. once I actually hit a home run and won us a game. It had been one of the best, and proudest, moments of my life.

  As I led everyone back to camp that night, I listened to the kids buzz with excitement over their induction into the Order of the Poison Oak, and I thought about the tears in Otto’s eves. That’s when I realized I had just hit my second home run.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning, I was all smiles. Who wouldn’t be? First there was my night with Web two days before. Then there was the thing with the Order of the Poison Oak last night, which would easily win mc Counselor of the Decade in any reasonable camp counselor grading system. But when I joined Min for archery, she was all smiles too. In fact, she was so all smiles that she didn’t even notice that I was all smiles. Which kind of annoyed me, because it meant that her reasons for being all smiles might be even better than my reasons, and I was still a little sore at Min.

  Is all this clear?

  Anyway, I said to Min, “You look happy.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. There is dreamy-eyed, and there is dreamy-eyed. Min was definitely dreamy-eyed.

  “Why?” I said.

  She—of course!—smiled. “Guess.”

  I didn’t want to guess. I wanted her to tell me. And I wasn’t all smiles anymore. Because I had this sudden fear that what was making her happy might be the same thing that was making me happy.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Web,” she breathed.

  Bull’s-eye! I thought to myself.

  “What about him?” I asked awkwardly.

  She giggled and leaned closer to me. “We got hot and heavy.”

  “What?” I said. “When?”

  “Last night.”

  Min was lying—she had to be! Web had said he was gay! Or had he? Maybe he’d just changed the subject. But he had said that he and Min were just friends. I was sure of that.

  “How hot?” I said. “How heavy?”

  “Pretty hot, pretty heavy,” Min said. “I mean, we didn’t do everything. But we did stuff. Well, mostly he did stuff. Which I guess means I’m a slut, but not a whore.”

  Min and Web couldn’t have gotten hot and heavy last night, I thought to myself. But the night before, I’d been busy getting things ready for the Order of the Poison Oak, so I had no idea whether Web had been down around the campfire with the other counselors or not.

  “So you and Web are still together?” I asked Mm.

  She looked at me funny. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we still be together?”

  On the one hand, I wanted to tell her the truth. Something was going on here, and we both needed to figure out what it was. On the other hand, telling her the truth meant telling her something that made me look really, really bad. Web had told me that he and Min were just friends! But I wa
s pretty sure that wouldn’t make any difference to Mm.

  Before I told Min the truth, I needed to talk to Web. There were all kinds of possible explanations as to why what happened had happened. Maybe Min and Web broke up three days ago, then he and I got together for a night, then he and Min got back together again. Or maybe Min and Web had been together all along, but they’d also agreed to see other people. But the problem with both these explanations was that Web had told me that he and Min had always only been just friends.

  It was Min. I was back to thinking she was lying about Web. But why? That was another thing I needed to talk to Web about.

  “Russel?” Min said.

  “Huh?” I said.

  She repeated her question from a couple of seconds before: “Why wouldn’t Web and I be together?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Nothing. I just hadn’t heard you talk about him in a few days. But that’s great. I’m happy for you. Really.”

  The instructor called to us right after that, and I suppose this would be a good place to make some archery reference about how I’d finally felt the pain of Cupid shooting me with his arrow. But that seems stupid. So I’ll just end by saying I’d gone from being all smiles to feeling like absolute shit.

  * * * * *

  Have you ever really needed to pee, but you’re in some place—an airplane during landing, a freeway with no exit—where going to the bathroom is impossible? That’s the way it felt with me wanting to talk to Web. I really, really needed to talk to him. But I couldn’t leave the archery session, and I knew Web couldn’t leave beadworking. So I tried to put the whole me-Web-Min thing completely out of my mind, which was about as easy as ignoring your bladder when you really need to pee.

  But lunchtime came eventually, and I hurried back to my cabin to meet my kids, then hustled them all over to the lodge.