Sports Camp

by Rich Wallace

  For my parents, who sent me to camp

  CHAPTER ONE

  Facing the Wall

  Riley Liston’s first glimpse of the lake came as the bus wheels screeched around a tight turn on the rural highway. He could see the water shining in the sunlight beyond the trees. The driver braked hard, and Riley lunged forward. The minibus made a sharp right onto a narrow dirt road and rattled past the CAMP OLYMPIA sign.

  The sign—featuring a painting of a giant snapping turtle—looked considerably shabbier than it had in the brochure. From what Riley could see of the buildings up ahead, the rest of the camp looked run-down, too.

  “That thing had my foot in its mouth last year, I swear!” said Barry Monahan, the pudgy kid in the seat in front of Riley. “I’ve still got a scar.”

  “That thing” was Big Joe, the legendary resident of Lake Surprise. Said to be as wide as a wheelbarrow and as fierce as a mountain lion, the snapping turtle had been the subject of all kinds of stories from the older guys on the three-hour ride from the city. They told of kids who’d lost fingers and toes, and of others who’d barely escaped.

  “About ten years ago he bit some kid’s leg off!”

  Riley squirmed and looked toward the lake again, but the bus had turned uphill and was approaching a ring of cabins.

  When the bus stopped, a counselor stepped on board and introduced himself as Shawn. “You guys are in Cabin Three,” he said.

  “Who’s in those other cabins?” somebody asked.

  “Your rivals.”

  Riley swallowed hard and grabbed his backpack from the rack above his seat. He’d done well at sports in the past—Little League baseball, YMCA soccer—but he’d be one of the youngest kids at this two-week sports camp in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Most of the guys on the bus were twelve, and a few—Barry and Hernando—had already turned thirteen. Riley’s eleventh birthday had been in April.

  “Move your butt,” said the guy behind him as they stood in the aisle.

  Riley looked back. Tony Maniglia, who towered over Riley, was smiling as if he’d been joking—there was no way Riley could go anywhere until the line started to move.

  Riley could sense that these older guys would be picking on the smaller ones like him. He knew most of them from their neighborhood in Jersey City, but not well. They’d been to camp before; Riley hadn’t.

  The only other eleven-year-old in the group was Barry Monahan’s scrawny little brother, Patrick. He wasn’t much bigger than Riley, but Patrick could have kicked his butt in two seconds. Riley had seen him working in the alley behind Monahan’s Tavern, lifting beer kegs that Riley wouldn’t have been able to budge.

  Riley took a lower bunk against the wall, below Patrick. The inside walls of the cabin had been painted a pale yellow many years before, and the floor was bare gray boards. There were also ten lockers but no locks.

  Riley spread out his sleeping bag, shoved his backpack under the bunk, and hung his sweatshirt and rain jacket in the locker.

  “Cabin Three …,” Barry was saying. “I seem to remember that this is the haunted one. I stayed in Cabin Six last year, but the guys in this one were always scared to be in here alone.”

  Riley looked around. It didn’t look spooky in the daylight. He read the sheet of paper that had been sitting on every bunk:

  CAMP OLYMPIA BULLETIN

  Saturday, July 31

  BASKETBALL ACTION BEGINS TONIGHT

  Triple-header on Tap

  Who: Cabin 1 Wonders vs. Cabin 2 Tubers (Cabin 3 Threshers vs. Cabin 4 Fortunes and Cabin 5 Fighters vs. Cabin 6 Sixers to follow)

  When: 6:30 p.m.

  Where: The spacious and modern Olympia Arena

  What’s at Stake: Team points toward the Big Joe Trophy!

  Softball, Water Polo Get Under Way Tomorrow

  Softball: Sunday morning at the Arthur Drummond Memorial Stadium

  Water Polo: After lunch at the Lake Surprise Aquatics and Fitness Center

  Each camper must play at least one quarter of every basketball game and one half of each water-polo event

  Upcoming: Two-man canoe races, a cross-country running relay, the tug-of-war, and lots more, including the camp-ending Lake Surprise Showdown (a marathon swim race)

  Best of luck to all Camp Olympia athletes!

  Shawn, the counselor—a physical-education major from East Stroudsburg University—took them on a quick tour of the facilities. The “arena” turned out to be an old barn with a cement floor, and the “stadium” was a softball field with a chain-link backstop.

  The Camp Olympia Institute for Sports Nutrition smelled greasy and kind of smoky. It consisted of long folding tables with wooden benches in a metal-sided building. Riley noticed an old sign leaning against the building and partly obscured by weeds. It said MESS HALL.

  They were also shown the bathhouse and latrine, affectionately known as the Larry. Tony Maniglia, walking next to Riley, whispered, “I’m surprised they haven’t renamed it the Center for the Study of Urination and Hygiene.”

  Dinner consisted of hamburgers, pasty mashed potatoes, and soggy green beans, gathered from a cafeteria line. After eating, they met up back at the cabin and were issued their uniforms—orange shirts with black numbers (Riley got number 5) for the basketball and softball games and matching orange sweatbands to wear for water polo and races.

  Very cool, Riley thought. There was nothing like a team uniform, even if it was just a cotton T-shirt.

  They walked back to the arena for their first basketball game, against Cabin 4. Shawn watched his Cabin 3 guys shoot for a few minutes and picked five players to start the game. Riley took a seat on the bench with Eldon, Kirby, Patrick, and Diego. He definitely wasn’t one of the best five.

  “You others stay alert,” Shawn said. “You’ll be out there soon.”

  Riley did some stretching and passed a ball back and forth with Patrick. The starters did well and built a three-point lead after one quarter. But Cabin 4 had taken an opposite strategy, putting its five least skilled players on the floor at the start to get their mandatory time over with.

  So in the second quarter, Riley found himself being covered by the best point guard in the camp. He had the ball stolen the first two times he handled it and got beat three times for fast-break layups. Eldon and Kirby were totally outsized at forward. At halftime Riley’s team trailed 21–12.

  “You guys stink,” said Vinnie Kazmerski, Cabin 3’s tallest player, who’d mostly been responsible for the first-quarter lead.

  “Yeah,” said Barry, staring right at Riley. “You looked like you were afraid of them. We need athletes on this team, not wimps.”

  So Riley sat between Eldon and Kirby and watched the second half as his team tried in vain to overcome the deficit. They wound up losing by two.

  Shawn gathered the team around him before sending them back to the cabin. “My fault,” he said. “I should have paid more attention to how they were lining up.”

  “We’ll slaughter them next time,” said Barry. “In the play-offs.”

  “The Trading Post’s open,” Shawn said. “Hit the showers and hang around camp, but don’t wander off. Lights-out is at eleven.”

  Despite the loss, guys were snapping towels and laughing in the shower room. Riley tried to face the wall the whole time. He had no muscles to speak of, and only a few thin hairs were growing anywhere besides his head.

  He was scrubbing his face when the water suddenly went ice-cold, and he jumped back and opened his eyes.

  Patrick was standing there with a big grin. Riley frowned and reset the faucet, then he rinsed quickly and got out of there.

  His teammates set off for the Trading Post in groups of two or three. Riley followed by himself.

  The Trading Post was up a s
teep path next to the dining hall. It was about the size of the cabins, and two counselors stood behind a counter midway through the room. Camp Olympia T-shirts and sweatshirts hung from the walls, and there were rows of candy bars and gum and a large cooler of drinks. On a table were craft items like a fat dowel with indications of where to carve a totem pole. Riley picked up a whittling knife and looked it over.

  “Just get drinks,” Barry Monahan was saying to his brother and some of the other guys. “We’ve got a stash of food at the cabin.”

  Riley didn’t think that included him, so he bought a Crunch bar and sat at a picnic table outside in the dark to eat it. The guys from Cabin 4 had arrived, and the kid who’d eaten Riley alive in the second quarter gave him a nod.

  There was some trash-talking between Barry and Vinnie and some of the players from Cabin 4; just ranting about the unfair mismatch in the second quarter and how they’d be getting revenge in the water-polo game in a few days.

  But soon Riley’s cabin mates were walking back. They walked right past Riley and didn’t even notice he was there.

  Riley could see the cabins in the distance, and he waited until he saw the Monahans and the others go inside. And even though he knew everyone in the cabin, it hit him that he didn’t have any real friends at Camp Olympia.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Off the Path

  Two jumbo red and white cardboard buckets from Jersey Chicken were sitting on a bench in the middle of the cabin when Riley finally walked in. The place was famous back in their neighborhood in Jersey City; Riley and his dad went there at least twice a month to bring home a bucket. The Monahans must have picked some up and brought it with them.

  Riley’s mouth watered, but he didn’t look into the buckets to see if there was any chicken left. Big Vinnie was licking his fingers; Barry was chawing down on a leg.

  “Goo-oood,” Hernando said, tossing a bone into the garbage can.

  “Lights-out!” one of the counselors shouted from somewhere outside. Riley climbed into his sleeping bag.

  “Story time,” Barry said. “Let me fill you guys in on a little of what we’re up against here.”

  Riley had always pegged Barry as a jerk, but he did turn out to be an especially good storyteller. He told them about the kid who disappeared from camp in the middle of the night “about fifteen or sixteen years ago.” He was never seen again, but the rumor was that you could still hear him giggling in the forest late on summer nights. The laughs always ended with a terrified scream.

  Things were quiet for a few minutes. The only light was from Barry’s flashlight, muffled by a black T-shirt he’d placed over it.

  Riley stared up at the bunk above him. Over the years, dozens of kids had carved their names or written them in pen on the wooden slats:

  JOEY DIPISA, ’07

  M.R. WAS HERE!

  KENNY V. 2006

  “Cozy sleeping quarters,” Barry said. “Only thing missing is my girlfriend.”

  “What girlfriend?” asked his brother, Patrick.

  “Any one of them would do,” Barry replied. “A little making out before bedtime would be just the thing, don’t you agree, Vinnie?”

  “You said it,” Vinnie replied.

  “So how many girls have you made out with, Liston?” Barry said with a laugh.

  “I don’t know,” Riley mumbled. He’d been hoping to stay out of this conversation.

  “Can’t count that high, huh, Riley boy?” Barry laughed again, and everybody else laughed with him. “Don’t worry, twerp, it’ll happen one of these years.”

  “Leave him alone,” Tony said. “He can’t help it if his hair hasn’t sprouted yet.”

  Riley blinked hard and rolled over to face the wall. This could be a tough two weeks; these guys had lots more going on than basketball. He was the smallest kid in the cabin, maybe in the whole camp. He threw back the top of his sleeping bag and sat up. He pulled on a pair of shorts and his sneakers, picked up his flashlight, and headed for the door.

  “Where you going?” Barry asked.

  “To the bathroom.”

  He slipped outside. A light was on in the counselors’ cabin, but no one was around. Riley followed the path toward the latrine, but he had a different destination. In the distance he could see a single lightbulb burning by the boat house, so he quietly made his way down the hill toward the lake.

  A breeze was coming off the water, and it smelled faintly of fish and algae and weeds.

  They’d been warned that any camper caught in the water or on the dock after hours would be sent home, so Riley followed a narrow, wooded path along the shore.

  The lake wasn’t huge—about three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter mile wide—but it was dark and said to be deep. It could get choppy in a hurry when a storm came up.

  Riley walked slowly, keeping his hand over the flashlight beam so he wouldn’t attract attention. The path seemed to circle the entire lake, but he had no intention of doing the whole loop at night. There were bears in the woods and probably snakes, and maybe that creepy missing kid, too. And one wrong turn would have certainly got him lost.

  So he stopped about a hundred yards past the dock and stepped to the edge of the lake. The moon was high in the sky, but it was only a crescent, so it wasn’t providing much light.

  “I’m not that bad at basketball,” he said to himself, barely above a whisper. It wasn’t his best sport, that was for sure, but he could dribble. He could outshoot his father sometimes when they played one-on-one in the driveway at home. With a more reasonable matchup than tonight’s, he could play good defense.

  He knew he’d do better at water polo—he was a strong swimmer—and would probably hold his own in softball. But tonight’s game had been a setback, for sure. The rest of the guys in the cabin already considered him a weakling.

  He thought about that marathon swim race, the last night of camp. The length of the lake and back. Swimming for nearly an hour. Not just swimming, but racing. He could do that.

  He’d been swimming since he was two.

  But that race was a long way off. Almost two whole weeks. Two solid weeks of crappy food, group showers, Barry’s stupid insults, and—worst of all—nobody his age to hang around with.

  “Geronimo!”

  A shout back at the dock made him look that way with a start. In the dim light from the boat house he could see several of the counselors. One of them dove off the dock and the others jumped in, too. They started tossing a water-polo ball around, slapping at the water and laughing.

  He’d surely be seen if he walked past the dock. Nobody said he couldn’t walk by the lake at night, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to. Certainly not after lights-out, when the only excuse for leaving the cabin was to use the bathroom.

  And he was getting very sleepy. The only choice he had was to walk around the lake—either that or make a roundabout circuit through the woods to avoid the dock. But the terrain on this side of the lake was steep and rocky, and there was no way he could leave the path without shining his flashlight. That’d be a dead giveaway, too.

  So Riley set off on the path again, praying that it would bring him all the way around the lake.

  Stupid, he thought. Why didn’t you just stay put and go to sleep?

  The walk was easy until he reached the far end of the lake and started to loop around the edge. Then the footing began to get mucky, and suddenly he’d reached the brook that provided the lake’s outlet. Somehow he’d gone off the path.

  “No!” he said in frustration.

  The brook was about ten feet wide where it exited the lake, but seemed to narrow as it moved farther downstream. The woods were thickest down at this end, and Riley was scared.

  He looked back down the lake. The counselors were still in the water near the dock, and from this vantage point Riley could see other lights—at the dining hall and the Larry and the gym. They seemed very far away.

  He slapped at a mosquito and felt it squash against his n
eck.

  Somewhere out in that lake a giant snapping turtle waited patiently, perhaps for a bass to swim by. Maybe for a camper.

  Riley followed the brook, shining his light fully now. He breathed a sigh of relief as the light caught his escape route—a simple wooden bridge about thirty yards downstream. He could also see where the path resumed on the opposite side.

  He rapped his fist against his thigh and stepped onto the bridge. It was sturdy. He’d be back in bed in fifteen minutes.

  The path was wider on this side of the lake and less bumpy. The moon was higher now and the sky was clear, so he shut off the flashlight and walked more carefully. He stumbled a couple of times but didn’t fall, and soon he was climbing the grassy hill that led to the open area between the cabins.

  Everyone seemed to be asleep. Riley pulled open the squeaky screen door and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darker room. Then he sat on his bunk and took off his sneakers.

  Patrick Monahan peeked over the edge of the top bunk at him. “That must have been some long whiz.”

  “I just wanted some air. I was looking at the stars for a while.”

  “See any UFOs?”

  “Not even an airplane. No ghosts yet, huh?”

  “Not one. Eldon threw up.”

  “When?”

  “About a half hour ago.”

  “In here?”

  “No. He got outside. Over by the woods.”

  “Oh.”

  Riley crawled into his sleeping bag. Barry was snoring, but everything else was peaceful.

  Eldon was a year ahead of Riley in school. He was on a lower bunk across the way. Riley looked over and could see that Eldon was looking back.

  “I felt sick ever since that bus ride,” Eldon said. “That greasy hamburger didn’t help any.”

  “You better now?”

  “Much. I’ll sleep it off.”

  Barry let out a big snorty snore and sat up. “Hey, everybody shut up, huh? Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  “You shut up,” said Patrick. “You sound like a buzz saw.”