“I’m sorry, what’s the point?” Jenny asked. “I asked why Steinberg needs me.”
Melman sighed. She tried yet another tact. “Do you watch Project Runway?”
“DO I WATCH PROJECT RUNWAY? IS MY NAME NOT JENNY?”
“OK, so think of it like a Project Runway challenge. You can be our Heidi Klum.”
“OK. When do we start?”
From that point forward, Jenny was Director of Everything, Jamie and Missi were her minions, Slimey was her makeup and costume designer, Melman was her mentor, Sophie took on the random task of singing Steinberg’s haftarah, and Scottie was working on something technical, To Be Revealed.
With Miss Rolling Hills in T-minus thirty hours, tomorrow was going to be a groundbreaking day in camp history. Or rather, herstory.
Melman shoved her hair under a bald cap, while Slimey put the finishing touches on Melman’s makeup. “Ugh. That’s digusting,” Jenny complimented Slimey, the two of them hovering over Melman on Slimey’s bottom bunk.
Melman’s stomach flipped. “Can I see?” she asked, kicking her legs over the edge of the bed and grabbing the handheld mirror. Holy Big Mac, I look amaze-balls! she thought, admiring the incredibly true-to-life, badass scar Slimey had drawn on her face with lipstick and eyeliner. She’d look perfect if it wasn’t for the bald cap that had now fallen off for the seventh time. It just wouldn’t stay put over her long, thick hair.
Slimey and Melman awaited Jenny’s stamp of approval on the scar.
Finally, Jenny’s grimace relaxed. “I approve!” she pronounced, fleeing to take care of Missi’s “bird’s nest of a head” in the bathroom. Melman and Slimey cheered like maniacs. Jenny had vetoed the makeup scar three times already, since it “didn’t align with her Beefy Bun Bros chic vision.”
Not much did align, though. Last night, Slimey had pitched her sketches of the costumes and was met with constructive feedback like “Ew.” Instead of giving up, Slimey had buckled down like a true sport—she’d gone back to the drawing board and re-pitched and re-pitched until Jenny finally approved. The process was exhausting, but Slimey could see herself becoming a real artist one day, so the whole thing was great practice.
Jenny saw this role as her destiny, Jamie called it Jenny’s fate, and Missi coined it “desti-fate” with a sigh, likely still daydreaming of Wiener and his invasive mouth. Sophie was just thrilled this was all happening under a full moon, the quintessential time for lunacy and strange behavior. And werewolves, too, though that was irrelevant.
Melman threw her hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck and then tried to secure the bald cap again. Yes! It was staying put . . . for now.
She looked around at the girls-as-boys and beamed like the proud captain of a star-studded team. Slimey sported Smelly’s baseball uniform, perfectly adorned with grass stains and dirt. Jenny had on Play Dough’s oversize T-shirt, precisely stained with pizza grease and EZ Cheez, and a pillow stuffed underneath it. Missi wore Wiener’s three-piece suit, with his signature dandelion taped to the front pocket. Sophie had on one of Steinberg’s inspired robot costumes. Jamie wore Dover’s Eagle Scout sash and was answering Scottie’s complex questions on world peace with one of the eight values of S.T.A.R.F.I.S.H., at random.
“Are we ready?” Jenny called to her designers-in-training.
“I need one minute,” Jamie begged frantically. In addition to answering Scottie’s questions, she was also on flat-iron duty, defrizzing Missi’s hair so it would actually fit under the bald cap. Watching them, Melman was grateful that her cap had finally stuck—until it popped off her head and fell to the floor. She stomped on it in frustration.
“We needed to be ready five minutes ago,” Jenny chirped. “And I shouldn’t see any bald caps looking bald. Use cotton balls, stuffed animal manes, paintbrush bristles, mop ends. Come on, people, show me creativity. The Hamburger Hillers aren’t middle-aged men.”
The cap would just not stay put, and there was no way she was frying her hair with an iron. Fed up, Melman grabbed Slimey’s scissors, held her ponytail over her shoulder, and chopped.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Jenny screamed as loudly as when her backup celly dropped in the toilet. “What did you do?!”
Melman’s heart began to race as she looked between Jenny and her fistful of hair. Jenny pushed her to the full-length mirror, like she was shoving a puppy’s face in its own accident.
But instead of shame, Melman had never felt so kick-butt. She ran her hands through her choppy, uneven, boyish cut. Her head was light as a balloon, and her whole body felt free. Melvin looked mighty fine.
Slimey rubbed Melman’s short-haired head like it was a stuffed bear from FAO Schwarz, and the others gawked judgmentally, mumbling under their breath.
Scottie crossed her arms nervously. “I did not OK this.”
“It looks good though, doesn’t it?” Melman asked her, trying to keep her focus off her cabinmates’ disapproving frowns. She waited for Scottie’s answer with nervous anticipation.
“Mighty good, oi, you troublemaker,” Scottie said, tossing Melman her green bandana—the final Melvin accessory. “But if I go down for this, you go down with me.”
Melman laughed with relief and was back to floating like a balloon. She tied the bandana as the rest of the girls tightened their bald caps. They were ready for Miss Rolling Hills.
“Wait! We need a picture,” Melman said, tossing Scottie her camera.
“We need a lot of pictures,” Jenny said, “for my portfolio.”
Slimey nodded in agreement.
Without any planning, the girls struck their first pose. Sophie as Steinberg threw her tinfoiled hands into a peace sign. Slimey as Smelly pretended to be up at bat. Missi as Wiener hugged Jenny as Play Dough, who held Jamie as Dover in her arms. Melman as Melvin stood on a bed behind them with her arms extended for a catch.
“One, two, three . . .”
“Beefy Bros!” the girls shouted as their photo was snapped.
The photo shoot continued, and Melman imagined the prints lining her bedroom wall in London. She may not have been able to make the Little Ealings understand that camp was the amazing, addicting, life-changing place it was, but these pictures would say it all.
Steinberg whispered his new mantra on repeat: “History is about to be made.” The more he said it, the more he believed it. Believing it gave him confidence. So much confidence that he was able to stand center stage, behind the red, velvety curtain, wearing the Princess Bethany dress. Georgina Whitefoot was on his left, and Melman—er, Melvin—was holding his hand on his right.
Steinberg hoped Totle wouldn’t be jealous. He didn’t want him to think he was moving in on his girl—but he doubted this counted, since at the moment, his girl was a guy and he was a princess. Plus, the handholding was purely a Let’s do this as a team sort of thing, not a Let’s make out sort of thing. He was about to simplify it all as a platonic Pythagorean theorem, but his thoughts were interrupted by the screaming cheer on the other side: “Miss Rolling Hills! Work it! Work it!”
Steinberg figured that TJ, who was dressed in the Captain’s Midsummer Dance skirt and heels for spirit’s sake, must have finished up his intro. Little did he know Melvin and the Beefy Bros had snuck backstage and were about to shake up the show. Prepare for your minds to be blown, he thought, and then felt one of their hands, either his or Melman’s, go clammy.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked her.
She nodded, which was fortunate, because the curtain was already opening to shrieks double the decibel count they’d been before. As the two of them took in the crowd, waving like a true celebrity duo, Steinberg grabbed TJ’s mic. He tapped it twice to settle the audience down but managed to get them only a decibel or two lower, so he shouted over them with his best impression of the girliest girl he could think of: Jenny. “Omigod, hi!”
Melman lowered her voice all pubescent-like to sound like Totle. “We are pumped to be here as your co-emcees of Miss”—she pa
used for ideal suspense—“ter Rolling Hills!”
The crowd went wild.
Steinberg looked to TJ and the Captain, worried they’d freak like last summer when the guys stripped down to dresses during the alma mater. But this time, their hands were slapped against their foreheads in amused shock. Man, this is spectacular. Steinberg soaked up the fans’ love.
Melman nudged him.
He guessed fame had thrown a wrench in his rhythm. Don’t let the spotlight steal your focus, he warned himself. He started in his normal Steinberg voice: “Omigod, we—” Oops. He cleared his throat and tossed it up two octaves through his nose: “Omigod, we have the bestest opening act for you. It goes a little something like this.”
Caught up in the moment, Steinberg dropped the mic like a rock star. Luckily, Melman’s agility was off the hook. She caught it before it fell to the stage. Good move, Mel, he told her with a slow blink of approval. Melman was a pro under pressure, and Steinberg was grateful to have her as his co-co-emcee. Especially since Georgina Whitefoot wasn’t saying anything—Sophie’s illegal cell phone could go only so many days uncharged.
Steinberg cued Dover in the sound booth with a two-fingered snap and, just like that, the beats were dropped. The beats being the GarageBand karaoke version of his haftarah that Rabbi Gewurz had put together for him to practice with while at camp.
Steinberg pulled a yarmulke with Hebrew letters out from under his left balloon boob. It looked just like the one drawn over the caught-in-the-act picture from Ghost Court, except this one also had Manhood written in Japanese characters along the rim. Yoshi had stayed up all night stitching it with floss. As Totle pointed out, celebrating his manhood in a dress seemed ironic, but Steinberg dug it anyway.
Seeing the yarmulke, the audience went ballistic. “Stein-berg’s haf-ta-rah!” they chanted, begging for the performance he owed them. Even TJ, who’d long ago caught on that Steinberg knew diddly, was clapping like he believed a miracle was about to happen. Now it was up to Steinberg to surpass his fans’ expectations.
The vamp was a measure away from where he had to come in. Steinberg took a breath and waited anxiously for Sophie’s muffled voice to come through his headpiece from backstage. With not even a quarter note to spare, she delivered. Line by line, she fed him his haftarah, at times invading the rhythm of it with a correction. Steinberg chanted what he heard, verbatim: “Baruch atah Adonai—Wrong! Your pitch went up on atah but it should go up on Adonai—Eloheinu, Melech haolam . . .”
The mix of Hebrew and Sophie-isms was weird. But the truth was, Steinberg could have been chanting gibberish, since over the clapping, Play Dough had moved the crowd to an overpowering chant: “Sick haf-ta-rah!” followed by three fast claps.
Just when everyone thought the act had reached its peak, Melman cued the wings. Out came the Faith Hill girls, dressed as each of the Hamburger Hill guys, dancing and . . . eating hamburgers.
The Faith Hillers as the Beefy Bros busted out classic bar mitzvah moves. The Sprinkler? Check. The Grocery Shopper? Check. The Lawnmower? Check. The Running Man? Double check. Even Sophie was dancing, doing the robot as a robot, all while whispering Hebrew into her headpiece.
And then, for the cherry on top, Steinberg, as a bat mitzvah princess, suddenly flew into the air. The climbing rope had been there all along, as was the harness he was sporting like a diaper underneath the poof, but thanks to his blinding pink dress, no one had noticed. Scottie had rigged it, and she was using her strength now to keep him suspended.
At this point, the crowd couldn’t cheer any louder. So they rose to their feet atop the Social Hall benches and stomped. Steinberg tossed his headpiece to the stage floor. He didn’t need to cheat—as promised, he’d deliver his haftarah ON HIS OWN. So what if it was 75 percent wrong?
Melman performed a series of soccer tricks that Steinberg hadn’t seen anyone on the fourteen-and-up boys’ team be able to do, and then she punted the ball up toward him. Steinberg caught it smack against his belly. He slowed the haftarah down, took in just the right amount of O2, and chanted the very last phrase: “Baruch atah Adonai, notan HaTorah!”
He nodded at Wiener in the booth, and as the GarageBand background track faded out, the lights strobed to black.
And that’s what you call an opening act, Steinberg thought, too high on life to pay attention to the pain of the harness wedgied up his butt.
Steinberg and Melman stood backstage with their cabinmates in one huge, sweaty, itchy circle. They clasped each other hard, the guys forgetting their rashes, and the girls trying to avoid them, as TJ began announcing the final scores.
They collectively sunk in defeat as TJ gave away Best Costume to Bunker Hiller Raquella Bubblegum, Best Makeup to Wawel Hiller Frederica Pretzel-Schnauzer, and Best Talent to Highgate Hiller Bella Ariella. They unlatched from their unhealthily tight huddle in major disappointment. That is, until TJ pulled out one final envelope from under his matted wig. “Oh! What’s this?” he said, pretending to be surprised. “A new category?” The crowd rumbled with anticipation.
“It’s called ‘The Wow Factor,’ ” Sara interrupted, in a voice that sounded completely un-wowed.
TJ nodded a thanks her way and slowly tore open the envelope. The Faiths and Hamburgers perked up.
The Captain rose to explain Sara’s nonexplanation. “I just want to say one more thing. The winner of this season’s ‘Wow Factor’ wowed us harder than we’ve ever been wowed before. We have decided that, from now on, the competition will be open to boys and girls. We feel it is necessary to tweak the tradition because we were so—”
“Wowed,” Rick cut in, ruffling his shaggy hair in amazement.
The Captain smiled in agreement and gave TJ the go-ahead. He pulled out an index card, drew in a dramatic too-close-to-the-mic breath, and spat out, “The Wow Factor award and the overall winner of tonight’s Miss/Mister Rolling Hills goes to . . .” The audience produced a stomping drumroll. “Princess Bethany, Melvin, and the Beefy Bros!”
The Hamburger and Faith Hillers broke through the break in the curtain and jumped up and down on one another to the screaming, stomping, maniacal, wowed crowd.
“I did it, I did it, I did it, OMIGOD, I did it!” Jenny screeched, elevating herself on Jamie’s and Slimey’s shoulders.
Wiener swaggered over to Missi. “You look hot in my suit.”
“What?” she asked, either because she couldn’t hear him over the crowd’s shouting or was confused by the compliment.
“In my suit,” he said louder. “You look hot.”
“Oh. Yeah, it’s really hot in here,” she agreed, fanning herself under her bald cap.
Play Dough and Totle swung their arms over Steinberg’s shoulders. “I can’t believe you pulled this off,” Play Dough said.
“I know! Ever since I let you guys down at the Robo-Hills Challenge—”
“Let us down?!” Play Dough cut in. “Dude, you made a robot EXPLODE.”
Steinberg laughed. “That’s actually pretty easy. But you know what’s not easy? Making a robot fly.”
“No kidding,” Totle said. “It took Yoshi four years and two hundred and forty-three prototypes.”
“WHAT?!” Chaim was blown. In four years and two hundred and forty-three prototypes, surely Steinberg could make a robot fly. He could make ten robots fly! He glanced over at Yoshi collecting high fives from the few who would give them, mooching off the fame and glory of his campers. “Well, maybe I could be the resident robot expert, then . . .”
“You’ll always be our weird robot friend,” Play Dough said, bringing Steinberg into a headlock.
“Thanks,” Steinberg said, overwhelmed with relief. “I guess I’m not a broken cog after all.”
“I don’t get it,” Play Dough said, releasing him.
Chaim broke it down in layman’s terms. “You know how our cabin has this magic to it?” Steinberg explained. “Well, for a while, I thought I’d made us lose that magic when I lost the robotics contest.”
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“That’s crazy talk!” Play Dough said. “Our magic can’t be broken!”
“Yeah, man,” Totle chimed in. “Even if robots became illegal and you lost your hands and couldn’t build them, us six would still be tight.”
“Really?” Steinberg asked.
Play Dough nodded. “Duh. It’s cool you like robots, but we like you for you.”
Steinberg felt every muscle in his face work a smile. He could be anything. He could do anything. Or he could fail a hundred times over. At camp, he would be awesome either way. Especially when his recovering, insane, ballsy friends had his back.
Soon, he’d even have a plaque to prove it.
TJ filled Melman’s bowl with two scoops of Rocky Road. She grabbed it from the Canteen counter and took a bite. “Mmmmmmm!” she said, high-fiving TJ, who’d been cool enough to put together the ice-cream party for the Faith and Hamburger Hillers, even though technically, Melman had completed only two of the three days of the Ghost Court challenge. “Moo-Moo’s is my LIFE!”
“I’m on my third bowl,” TJ said. “Please don’t tell the Captain.”
Melman smirked. “So, see you tomorrow at Rest Hour for practice?” she asked. She’d been beaming ever since TJ had decided to let her co-coach the fourteen-and-up boys’ team. TJ had his reasons: Melman wanted preseason practice, and he (a) felt bad about the whole dress drama, (b) was impressed by her trendsetting at Miss Rolling Hills, and (c) admired her soccer talent. She was grateful for the opportunity, though she felt far less freaked about Little Ealings training now that she’d gotten Lucy Evans’s letter telling her that her position as goalie had been secured.
“See you there, Coach Melman,” he said.
Melman smiled and nodded, then slid her bowl to the part of the counter where the toppings were. She was about to go sprinkle-crazy, but Wiener intercepted her with his swagger-sidle move.
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