by Jeff Norton
‘Did you see the lake?’ asked Nesto. ‘I’m totally taking the chupa for a swim tonight.’
‘We may be away from Croxton,’ I cautioned, ‘but let’s keep our weirdness to ourselves. We don’t want to arouse suspicion.’
‘Aren’t you tired of hiding, Adam?’ asked Corina.
‘You’re the one who said people were afraid of different,’ I said. It was a chore to make myself up every morning to look vaguely human, and I did sometimes fantasise about living out in the open as a zombie. But the world, or at the very least our little corner of it, didn’t quite seem ready for the undead, let alone a vegan vampire or tweenage chupacabra.
I remember how upset Corina was with me when I first decided to go back to school. She made me promise not to reveal my undead nature, for fear of being discovered and dissected.
‘I think that’s what this year’s vampire convention is all about,’ she told us. ‘Our kind is growing tired of living in the shadows of humanity. They want their time in the, well, not so much sun for obvious reasons, but in the spotlight at least.’
As a guy who yearned for Broadway fame but was always relegated to the lip-synching chorus, I could kind of feel for the vampires.
‘I just wanna run free,’ said Nesto. ‘I think I can do that here.’
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘under the cover of darkness, though.’
‘Maybe one day we won’t need to hide who we are,’ pondered Corina.
‘Maybe,’ I said, trying to be supportive. ‘But probably not today, or the next day, or the day after—’
‘I get it,’ she interrupted.
‘Okay campers!’ called Growl. ‘Time to get your summer on! I’ll show you your tents and then we have a big dinner to welcome you and say farewell to the departing campers. Then, and this is awesome, they’ll put on their big talent show! Welcome to the Camp Nowannakidda experience. I want you to enjoy this summer like it’s your last! C’mon!’
Another camp counsellor, who was really tanned in a sleeveless T-shirt and ripped jeans, helped us unload our gear from under the bus.
‘Name’s Duke,’ he said with a smile, ‘and I’m here to help.’
Growl high-fived his fellow counsellor and then led us into the fields to show us our tents.
Rows of beige canvas triangles were arranged in a grassy field at the edge of the evergreen forest. I was paired with Nesto, and worried that he might transmutate in his sleep. On the girls’ side of the field, poor Corina got saddled with Amanda. Jake got a tent to himself because apparently his parents paid extra, but I think it was probably because the camp was concerned about the legal liability putting someone in a closed environment with the foulest farter in the Midwest.
We were assigned an LIT, a ‘Leader in Training’. Our LIT was a bubbly girl who looked like she was in high school. Her name was Petal and she had long brown hair tied in a braid. She wore short ripped shorts and a white, red-rimmed T-shirt that read: Camp Nowannakidda! No Kiddin’!
‘Yippy day, campers,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled in, then bring you over for dinner in the mess hall. Later, campfire and ghost stories, maybe a midnight swim if you feel up for it. Any questions?’
I raised my hand.
‘Yes, you can wear make-up here,’ she said. ‘We’re very tolerant of your lifestyle choices.’
‘It’s not a lifestyle choice,’ I shot back. ‘I’ve got extremely dry, and pale, skin.’
Hey, I wasn’t lying.
Corina patted me on the back. ‘He’s very sensitive.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Amanda.
I kept my hand raised – I really did have a question – but Amanda just rolled her eyes and said, ‘It’s a figure of speech, Adam. You don’t actually need to say it again.’
‘Um, Miss Petal,’ I asked, ignoring my sister. ‘Where are the showers?’
She laughed. And then she laughed again.
‘This is the great outdoors,’ Petal said. ‘We bathe in Mother Nature’s bosom.’
‘He-he-he.’ Nesto giggled. ‘That means boobs.’
‘He’s eleven,’ I explained. ‘But seriously, I’d like to get cleaned up before we eat.’
‘We like to keep things natural here,’ she explained. ‘No showers, no flushing toilets, not even—’
‘I’m with Mr Clean‡ here,’ said Corina. ‘I don’t do outhouses.’
‘You kids’ll get used to it! And whatever doesn’t kill you makes you tastier.’
Huh? Did she just say—
‘Stronger,’ Petal said, with a sheepish look. ‘I must be hungry. Yep, almost dinner time. Stronger. I meant stronger.’
* Government health warnings suggest that a concentration of fart particles in the atomosphere of more than 350 parts per million will lead to global smelling.
† It’s pronounced Tox-Sis-City, not Toxi-City, which would be a really cool name for a city in NinjaMan comics. I might write to the publisher on that. Wait, don’t steal my idea!
‡ Mr Clean was the bald, buff face of a cleaning product. He wasn’t so much a superhero as much as he was a god. I kind of loved Corina even more for calling me Mr Clean.
8
In Which I Eat a Feast
They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. While I think that phrase shows a gross misunderstanding of basic anatomy, there is something about good food that makes everything else seem bearable.*
Whatever doubts I had – and they were many, and outlined in a strongly worded letter to my parents – quickly faded to minor annoyances when we entered the dining cabin they called the ‘mess hall’.
I must admit my expectations were low. Any place called a mess hall was bound to be messy, and I feared the food would be crueller than gruel. But as we entered the large log cabin propped up just above the ground on concrete struts, we joined about a hundred other campers at long wooden tables and benches, already laid out with juice, bread baskets, and bizarrely, bowls of candy.
‘I’m in heaven,’ said Nesto.
‘Not yet.’ Growl laughed, suddenly behind us and putting his hands on our shoulders. ‘Wait ’til you taste it! And you get to eat like this for two whole weeks!’
An overflowing buffet ran the length of one wall. I noticed piping hot pizza, roast chicken, a roast beef carvery, a French-fry station and a freezer counter filled with at least twenty different ice-cream flavours.
It had been a long bus ride and despite the doughnut break, I was famished. I was ready for a feast.
‘I actually can’t wait,’ I said, salivating over the spread.†
‘You can eat as much as you like here,’ Growl said.
Nesto actually jumped up and down. ‘Keeps. Getting. Better!’
‘I don’t see anything vegan,’ complained Corina.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Growl. ‘We cater for all tastes here. We don’t want you to be hungry, so I’ll check with the chef.’
Petal pointed to the trays and cutlery. ‘As the new arrivals, you campers get to eat first.’
The new campers cheered.
‘I love this place,’ said Nesto. ‘So much food!’
‘I hate this place,’ countered Corina. ‘Too much good cheer.’
For me, I wasn’t sure what to think. The food looked amazing, but something felt strange. I grabbed a tray and wiped it down with a fresh wet wipe straight from the packet.
Never leave home without ’em.
Seriously, never.
Ever.
Ever.
I couldn’t believe it, but I was actually missing Mom and Dad. I wondered how they were faring on their road trip. Turned out I’d been right about the Founding Fathers, but Amanda had reneged on our bet. But the joke was on her. Even though we weren’t in the wilds of Montana, she couldn’t get any mobile coverage up here in the sticks of Ontario.
While I certainly didn’t wish to be squished in the back seat of a Meltzer family road trip, I did miss Mom a
nd Dad. So, in honour of my money-grubbing parents, I opted for the pizza and scanned the buffet for meatballs.
‘Something missing from the spread?’ The guy behind the counter must’ve noticed my glancing. He was skinny, pale, and wearing a hairnet, which I totally approved of, and his arms were inked with circular tattoos. His name tag branded him as Crow.
‘I was hoping for meatballs, Mr Crow,’ I said.
‘With pizza?’ he asked. ‘What a great pairing. Oh, and it’s not Mister.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ I said. ‘Señor Crow.’
‘Just Crow,’ he said. ‘Meatballs with pizza, pretty great.’
‘Actually on the pizza,’ I clarified. ‘It’s my dad’s recipe.’
‘Homesick, eh?’ Crow asked, serving me a couple of slices.
‘Maybe a little bit,’ I said. ‘Okay, a lot.’
‘Well, I’ll be sure to have meatballs for ya tomorrow. Until then, you ever try poo-teen?’
I stared blankly. ‘Poo what?’
‘Poutine, pee-oh-you-tee-eye-en-ee,’ he said, in a type of French accent that reminded me of Professor Plante, the mad scientist who tried to unleash a swarm of zombees on Croxton. Even though I missed my parents, I was actually happy to be far from my weird town, which on a normal day was an epicentre of weirdness, but right now, with a convention of thousands of vampires taking over, was at least vamp-point-eight on the Richter scale.
Crow scooped up a plate of fries and doused them with steaming gravy. My mom had a thing for gravy fries, but Crow took it one step further. He suddenly covered them in something called cheese curds.‡ ‘It’s a big thing up here. I think you’ll like it.’
I wasn’t sure whether to drool or retch.
I enjoyed a good French fry, a staple of the American diet, and I’d snuck a few of my mom’s gravy fries from time to time, so I was no purist, but the addition of cheese (and cheese curds at that!) was either genius or sadistic. Either way, I was certain the plate of gravy-and-cheese-slathered fries would push me way over the suggested calorie intake of a boy my age. I might be the walking dead, but I did not need to be the rolling dead.
‘Go on,’ said Crow, ‘you only live once!’
If I was out in the open about being a zombie, I would have debated this, but I wasn’t, and he continued, ‘Trust me. You’ll love ’em!’
So I took my pizza and my poutine (which had nothing to do with either poo or being a teen) and added a generous helping of salad on the side plus a glass of milk, and found my friends at our table.
Corina pushed a few peas around her plate while Nesto had three plates all heaving with meat. A lot of animals died for his dinner.
‘Looks like you’re a hungry hippo,’ said Corina, eyeing my tray.
‘I’m trying the local delicacy,’ I said, spearing a soggy fry and cheese curd with my fork. As I popped it into my mouth, the grease and salt awoke my taste buds to this northern sensation. ‘Oh Canada! It’s really good,’ I said with my mouth full.
‘You boys just don’t have self-restraint,’ she said, popping a pea into the air and catching it in her mouth.
Corina opened her black leather jacket and teased a plastic bag of Pop Rocks out of her inside pocket.
‘Self-restraint’s for losers,’ said Nesto.
‘And for people who wear seat belts,’ I added. ‘They tend to be winners in Darwin’s eyes.’§
I inhaled most of my sopping fries and saved a few at the end for an experiment with my pizza. I laid six gravy soaked fries and three cheese curds on top of the pepperoni slice. At first I felt bad that I was cheating on Dad’s meatball pizza. But then I didn’t care. It all tasted so good. As I gulped my glass of milk, Petal glided between the tables and stopped behind us. She was carrying a tray with different-coloured squeezy bottles: brown, pink, red, yellow, even green.
‘That milk is missing something,’ Petal said.
‘Yeah,’ said Corina. ‘The baby cow it was intended for.’
She gave a half laugh and raised the brown squeezy bottle, offering me ‘a splash of chocolate?’
Dark brown syrup slipped out of the nozzle and turned my white milk into a cloudy, then chocolaty treat.
Nesto held out his glass, excitedly. ‘I’ll take them all!’
Petal turned Nesto’s milk black with her colourful cocktail of syrup. ‘And you?’ she asked Corina.
‘I’m vegan,’ Corina announced.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the LIT said, suddenly a lot less bubbly. ‘Well, I suppose there’s always one.’
At that, she rushed away, down the long table and stopped at another group of campers, dousing their milks with sugary syrup and making them really happy campers.
‘I never want to leave,’ declared Nesto.
Corina rolled her eyes and popped a Rock. She seemed distant, aloof. I mean, those were her normal characteristics, but since this whole camp thing came up she seemed even more detached.
Nesto stuffed his face and I polished off my plate in record time. I was hungrier than I thought and happy to know that my zombified digestive system was still ticking. I had no idea if the food I was eating these days would help me to grow, or whether I’d be stuck in a twelve-year-old’s decomposing body for the rest of my life. But what I really felt was full. And it felt really good.
I leaned back in my chair to give my stomach a bit of extra room and relished the sensation of feeling stuffed.
‘Just look at them all,’ said Corina, gesturing to the mess hall full of carnivorous campers. ‘They’re gobbling everything in sight.’
She looked at us both. ‘And you two are no better.’
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘What’s wrong is that you are all going to get really fat.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and downing nothing but Pop Rocks is the diet of champions?’
Corina leaned in. ‘I’ve got a vampire’s metabolism,’ she whispered.
‘Well, there’ll be more of us to love,’ joked Nesto.
‘No, lizard brain,’ she said, rising to leave. ‘There’ll be more of you to eat!’
She kept her mouth closed. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because she had nothing else to say but because her fangs were fighting to come out.
Corina had a bad case of the munchies and I worried that Pop Rocks weren’t going to cut it.
* You know, I actually have no idea who ‘they’ are, but I’m pretty sure (and my mom’s a doctor, okay) that you cannot get to anyone’s heart through their stomach. Intestines, yes, but heart, I don’t think so.
† Note: I did not actually salivate on the food as my sister was prone to do when she wanted to claim something for herself, like a cookie or piece of cake. She’d literally lick the food, her germs festering on the top of the cookie and thus warding everyone else off.
‡ From what I remember from nursery rhymes, Little Miss Muffet liked to eat them with whey. She also sat on a tuffet which I can only assume is an old-fashioned word for her tush.
§ Charles Darwin is the guy who put forth the idea of evolution, which means he wouldn’t be welcome in most of Ohio’s churches. But I think he’s amazing.
9
In Which Corina Tastes Blood
After dinner, the LITs filed us out into the fields and brought us down to the outdoor theatre for the big talent show.
‘It’s a Nowanakidda tradition,’ cheered Growl. ‘The campers on their last night put on a show for the newcomers. That’s you!’
The theatre was more like a large hole dug out of the gravel, with a semicircle of tiered ‘seating’ looking down on a flat gravelled stage area.
‘Can I get a cushion?’ I asked.
Growl laughed. ‘Hey Adam, this is open-air theatre, Greek style.’
‘Like the yogurt?’ asked Nesto. ‘So creamy, so tasty.’
I’d seen pictures of Greek amphitheatres filled with toga-wearing ancients watching a play about men gouging their eyes out while what they called a Greek chorus* looked on (not
helping).
‘Nesto, you can’t possibly be hungry?’ snarked Corina. ‘Ever.’
Growl crouched down to our level. ‘Hey, if it’s good enough for the ancient Greeks, it’s gotta be good enough for us.’
‘It didn’t exactly end well for them, did it?’
‘You’re not really a normal twelve-year-old, are you Adam?’
I shook my head. ‘Nope.’
‘And Ernesto, if you’re still hungry, we’ve got s’mores later.’
‘S’more of what?’ he asked.
‘Exactly!’ Growl replied. ‘Ah, here comes tonight’s entertainment.’
Fifteen campers bounded onto the stage and took a bow. They were tanned, enthusiastic, and full of energy. But something else struck me. They all looked a little, well … well fed.
I spotted Corina inhale and then bite her lip.
‘You okay?’ I asked, quietly.
She shook her head, now licking her lips. ‘Now I’m hungry.’
‘You can’t get by on Pop Rocks alone,’ I said, sounding a bit too much like Doctor Mom, urging me to eat up at dinnertime.
‘I can’t take it,’ she said, looking down at her patent leather. ‘I need to feed.’ Suddenly she looked up, eyeing the kids on stage they way I sized up the buffet … just there for the taking.
Onstage, a girl with a chubby face and wild, curly red hair stepped forward and introduced herself as Sarah.
‘This may be our last night here,’ Sarah said, ‘but we’re going out with a bang.’
And suddenly, BANG, a puff of smoke erupted onstage and the players filed behind the wooden boards. It was a bit lame as special effects go, but in this hinterland, I had to applaud their effort.
‘How long have they been at camp?’ I asked Growl.
‘Two weeks.’
‘And were they always so substantial?’ asked Corina.
‘Huh?’ grunted Growl.
‘I think she means pleasantly plump,’ I clarified.
‘Well that’s not very nice,’ said Growl.
‘She’s not a very nice person,’ Nesto and I replied in unison.
‘They’re my Greek chorus,’ Corina said. ‘And they’re right.’