Frenzy

by Robert Lettrick

  “He’s a show-off,” Dunbar grumbled, clearly envious of Sylvester’s popularity.

  “I don’t know,” Heath disagreed. “Looks to me like he’s just really good. You can’t hold that against him.”

  Dunbar pouted. “I guess.”

  “I like him. He’s a cool guy,” said Cricket, which Heath understood to mean that Sylvester was one of the few older boys who didn’t pick on him for his diminutive size or his obsession with bugs.

  If any of the targets had been free, Heath would have opted to join Sylvester, but since they were all occupied, he continued on with his friends to the stables, where they found Mr. Soucandi, the camp’s horse trainer, in an especially irritable mood.

  “It’s about time you three arrived!” the old man growled over the white corral fence, yanking off his rawhide riding gloves and stuffing them into his vest. “I called you over an hour ago!”

  Heath, Cricket, and Dunbar exchanged looks of confusion.

  Mr. Soucandi was the stable manager’s real name, but the kids called him Soup Can behind his back because he had a noticeable dent in the side of his head like those banged-up cans of soup you find in the bargain bin of any supermarket. Rumor was that Mr. Soucandi had been kicked in the head three times, twice by horses and once by a mule during a pack trip into the Grand Canyon. The mule had been the one to put the dent in Mr. Soucandi’s noggin, but the other two kicks had no doubt softened the spot and contributed to the man’s occasional delusions.

  “Don’t just stand there gawking at me,” Soup Can said. “Tell me what you plan to do about those!” He pointed at a cluster of chickens that had settled into roost-mode on top of a stack of tractor tires leaning against the side of the stable.

  “Um,” said Heath. “What do you think those are, exactly?”

  “What do I think—?” Mr. Soucandi threw his hands up in the air. “Are you pulling my leg or are you just stupid? Now quit fumfering and get those dang dragons out of my corral! They’re spooking the horses!”

  “Ohhhhh, the dragons.” Heath played along. He tried to determine which of the chickens’ features might seem dragon­esque to Mr. Soucandi’s dented brain. Strangely, Soup Can’s delusions were always temporary, as if his mind had a reset button that would go off every few minutes. The old man was the previous camp owner’s father. He’d been tending the stables since the seventies and loved his job and the horses. His feelings for the campers, however, were debatable. He wasn’t that great with kids. When Uncle Bill bought the camp a decade ago, letting the old man stay on had been part of the deal. He was harmless enough, even if he was a bit of a loon.

  Dunbar leaned in and whispered to Heath, “Since it wasn’t us, who do you think Soup Can did call about the dragon-chickens?”

  Heath shook his head. “I dunno. The humane society? Pest control? Gandalf the Gray?”

  The boys forgot all about Mr. Soucandi’s problem when the Ems galloped up to the fence on their horses, Sweet Pea and Rusty. Heath had to admit the twins looked pretty great in their tan riding breeches and knee-high leather boots. He especially liked their acorn-shaped helmets with the chin strap and the cute bow on the front. He wondered how they managed to tuck all of their long brown hair up under them without getting a headache.

  “Hey, losers,” Emma said, although her friendly smile put everyone at ease. “Back again, Cricket and Dunbar? You two are here almost as often as Em and me. Think you might actually get on a horse this time?”

  Dunbar’s face turned an interesting strawberry color. Cricket, on the other hand, smiled widely like one of those toy cymbal-banging monkeys Heath had seen in toy stores and horror movies. “Horses are cool,” Cricket said dreamily.

  Emma looked over at her twin, and they both giggled.

  Dunbar elbowed Cricket in the ribs to snap him out of his moony trance.

  “Hey, Heath!” Emily said, brushing Sweet Pea’s mane with her fingers. Her smile was just as warm and disarming as her sister’s.

  “Hey, Emily.” Heath tried to sound casual, but he was annoyed at how pleased he was that she knew his name.

  “Looks like those chickens chased the dragons off,” Mr. Soucandi said, scanning the arena to be sure. His brain had come back online. He also seemed to recognize them as campers now that the “dragons” had vanished. “You three ready to ride?”

  “Who, us? N-n-now?” Dunbar stuttered.

  “Don’t be a lily liver, son, of course now. We’ll start with the little one.” Mr. Soucandi waved Cricket over. “You ever ride before, Short Pants?”

  “Not once,” Cricket admitted. “The only horses we have in the city are the ones the cops ride in the parks.”

  “All righty, we’ll start you off easy. You can ride with Emma here.”

  Cricket shot Heath and Dunbar a cheesy grin as Mr. Soucandi hoisted all seventy-five pounds of the boy into the saddle behind Emma. Cricket wrapped his arms tightly around her waist. He pressed himself against her back like a turtle shell and flashed one more impossibly obnoxious smile, which quickly vanished when Emma elbowed him in the gut. “Not so tight, Squid Boy,” she warned as they took off into an easy trot around the arena.

  Turning to Dunbar, Mr. Soucandi weighed him with his eyes. “Big one, aren’t ya? How about it, Lead Bottom? You a rider?”

  “I’ve ridden a few times,” Dunbar admitted, then cringed when he realized that telling the truth meant he’d probably just ruined his chances of sharing a saddle with Emily. “Wait, what I mean is—”

  “Good! You can ride ole Onyx over there.” Mr. Soucandi pointed at the huge black stallion drinking at the water trough near the fence. He fished inside his pocket, pulled out a set of car keys, then handed them to Dunbar. “Here, you’ll need these to start ’er up.” Clearly his mind had hit the reset button again.

  “Um…okay,” Dunbar said, but as soon as Mr. Soucandi wasn’t looking, he stealthily slipped the keys back into the old man’s pocket.

  “Now let’s see about you, Sunny Jim….” The trainer looked around for a free horse for Heath, but they were all occupied. He shrugged. “Looks like you’re out of luck, son.”

  “You can ride with me,” Emily offered. She held her hand out to him.

  Heath felt the zombie-ant fungus creeping into his brain. The last thing he wanted this summer was a girlfriend. In his opinion, there was no greater time-waster than romance. Heath felt sorry for the camp’s couples. They spent all of their time bickering over the stupidest things, writing mushy cabin-mail, breaking up and making up, and worst of all, staring dreamily into each others’ sweaty faces as the summer slipped unnoticeably by them. And in the end, they’d just get their hearts stomped on anyway. That’s why it’s called a crush.

  “No, thanks anyway.” He pushed aside the urge to climb into the saddle behind Emily. “I have some things I need to do back at my cabin.”

  Emily continued to smile, but Heath thought he saw a glint of something in her eye that might be…what? ­Disappointment? He decided he was playing tricks on himself, treading on dangerous ground.

  “It’s probably for the best,” she told him. “Sweet Pea is a little fidgety today. She’s not her usual self.”

  Heath pondered this. “Soup Can…uh…I mean, Mr. Soucandi said those dragons…er…chickens by the stable were spooking the horses.”

  “Those stupid hens? Sweet Pea isn’t afraid of them. I’m not really sure what’s wrong. It’s not just her, though—the other horses are acting up, too. It gets worse the closer we get to the north end of the arena.”

  Closer to the mountains. Heath thought about it, and then he remembered the howling earlier. He wondered if maybe it had come from a wolf after all. Had Sweet Pea heard the howling, too? Heath observed the other horses and noticed they were glancing up at the mountains every few seconds. They fought against their reins like cars with bad alignment whenever they neared t
he north end of the arena. They definitely sensed something out there, Heath was sure of it.

  He wasn’t too worried though. Wolves preferred to stay away from human settlements. Once upon a time, there were over two million wolves in the world. Then humans killed off ninety percent of them, because that’s what humans do. We’re bad news, Heath thought. The worst kind.

  “She’ll be okay,” Emily said, lovingly stroking the side of Sweet Pea’s neck. “I just have to keep her attention on me and let her self-soothe. She’ll calm herself eventually. She’s a great horse. You sure you don’t want to ride with me?”

  “No, I really do have some things I need to do,” he fibbed again. Telling her the truth—that she made his head swim—was unthinkable. His summer policy was firm: no shoes, no shirt, no girlfriend.

  “Suit yourself. See you later, then.” She turned her horse and cantered after Emma.

  Heath was proud of himself; he’d stuck to his guns. He stayed at the fence just long enough to watch Dunbar ­struggle comically up into Onyx’s saddle. Onyx didn’t look any happier about their pairing than Dunbar did.

  As Heath was walking away from the arena, he heard Emma shout, “Watch where you put your hands, Cricket!” and Mr. Soucandi scolded after them, “No fighting on the bus!”

  Heath found the Grosbeak Cabin empty, except for Will, who was lying on his cot, writing in a journal. He remembered he owed Will the book about Genghis Khan. He reached under his bed and dragged his duffel bag out across the plank floor, then hefted it up onto his mattress.

  “Hey, man,” Heath said, rifling through the bag. “Chess was fun. Anytime you need someone to play against—” A translucent orange vial of pills fell from the duffel bag, hit the floor, and rolled across the aisle to Will. Heath chased after it. It came to a stop beneath Will’s toes.

  “Give me that,” Heath demanded, holding his hand out.

  Will picked it up and read the label on the side of the vial. “OxyContin?”

  Heath eyed him warily. “Yeah…it’s—”

  “I know what it is,” Will said quickly. “It’s to relieve ­serious pain.”

  There was a long pause as the boys studied each others’ faces. The air inside the cabin was stiflingly hot. The three ceiling fans rotating slowly above them did little more then churn the humid air inside the cabin like a spoon in a pot of soup. Heath could feel beads of sweat forming on his brow. Will, on the other hand, may have been carved from a block of ice.

  “Look…” Heath started. “Don’t say anything to Uncle Bill, okay?”

  “Why not?” Will asked.

  “Seriously?” Anger flooded Heath’s face. “Fine! I’ll see what else I have in my bag besides the book. Did you want my sunglasses or not?”

  Will frowned. “I’m not trying to blackmail you, stupid. I just want to know why Uncle Bill isn’t aware that you have OxyContin. I thought all medications were supposed to be administered by the camp nurse.” This was true. With seemingly half the kids on the planet diagnosed with ADHD, gathering up behavior modifying medications like Ritalin was Nurse Winston’s first duty at the start of each year. “Why didn’t your parents give—?”

  “Because I asked them not to,” Heath said firmly. The idea of talking about his situation with Will was ­unbearable. The kid was not someone Heath felt he could trust to safeguard a secret, especially one so personal. He imagined Will would probably use it to control him, like he did to Thumper. “I don’t want anyone to know. Okay? Not even the camp staff. I don’t want anyone to treat me differently. That’s all.”

  Will held the vial up to the sunlight streaming through the window and examined the pile of little pills inside. Heath wanted to snatch it back. He decided he was ­willing to fight Will for the medication if it came to that. He clenched his teeth and fists, ready to pounce, but he waited to see what his cabinmate would do.

  Surprisingly Will just handed the vial back to Heath, returned to his cot, and resumed writing. Probably adding Heath’s OxyContin to a long list of ways to manipulate his fellow campers.

  Heath, still furious, carefully rolled the vial up in a sock, stuffed it inside another sock, and then stuffed the whole ball into his duffel bag.

  “That sucks,” he heard Will mumble in a tone that sounded almost compassionate.

  Heath took a deep breath. “Yeah…it does.”

  Then, as if the discussion had never happened, Will said, “Don’t forget the book you owe me.”

  It’s time to get nuts! (snap fingers twice)

  It’s time to get nuts! (snap fingers twice)

  Like a squirrel in the fall,

  Let’s gather them all.

  Let’s go, ’cause it’s time to get nuts! (snap fingers twice)

  A HALF HOUR LATER, despite the oppressive heat, or maybe because of it, Heath had drifted off to sleep. He’d been taking short naps to recharge his batteries, usually in the early afternoons. After Will had collected the book about ­Genghis Khan, he’d left the cabin without saying a word, which was fine by Heath. There was something unsettling about the kid. Whenever Heath interacted with Will, he felt like he was being analyzed. It was the same uneasy ­feeling he got at airports when the guards scanned him with their security wands. Heath was relieved to have the cabin to himself.

  He dreamed he was floating on his back in the Dray. A welcomed tranquility seeped into his body as the river quietly stole him away from camp. The green waters widened out until the banks became floss-thin lines and vanished. There was nothing else, just Heath and the river. And blessed peace. He was a leaf, content to let the Dray carry him toward the sea on the back of its meandering current.

  He stared up at the sky and was instantly startled by how cold it looked. It was near white, with just a hint of pale blue that seemed so familiar. It took him a moment to match it up with the hue of Will’s eyes. Then, absurdly, the sky blinked at him. In the next moment Heath felt a set of hands clamp tightly around his throat, throttling him, plunging him downward beneath the surface. He thrashed hard, desperate to free himself, but there was nothing to grab hold of. A head formed above him, disembodied and out of Heath’s reach. Through the watery window between them he could make out Will’s visage grinning widely, his cold eyes ­sparking with mad glee. He tried to fight back, but Will was impossibly strong. Heath struggled to hold what little breath he’d managed to inhale before ­submerging, but it was no use. He gasped for oxygen, but instead chilled water rushed into his mouth, pouring copiously into his starving lungs. “You shouldn’t have followed me here,” his cabin­mate hissed from above.

  Heath awoke gasping for air but found that he was still unable to draw a breath. Because Cricket was sitting on his chest.

  Heath shoved him off and sat upright. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”

  “I was trying to wake you up!” Cricket explained. “How about some gratitude?”

  “Gratitude?” Heath was confused.

  “You were mumbling in your sleep, dude,” explained Dunbar. “Mumbling about drowning. Must have been a doozy of a nightmare. You okay?”

  “Yeah….” Heath tried to shake off a lingering feeling of dread. “I’m fine.” He noticed that his friends were soaked to the bone, holding plastic water guns in their hands. “What’s going on?”

  “Get up!” Cricket held out a spare gun to Heath. “We need you. Uncle Bill and the counselors started the annual water fight. Our cabin is getting its tail kicked. C’mon, get up and let’s go, soldier.”

  Heath glanced at his watch. It was only one thirty. He’d hoped to sleep at least another hour, but was grateful to have been rescued from Dream Will’s clutches. “Why aren’t you guys at the stables? I can’t believe you left Em and Em for a stupid water fight. Especially you, Cricket. You looked pretty comfy in the saddle behind Emma.”

  Cricket pouted. “She kicked me off her horse right after yo
u left. She said I was too clingy. I told her I was just afraid of falling off.”

  “Sure, you were,” Dunbar snorted. “You’re just lucky horses don’t have eject buttons. Anyway, that’s not why we left. Soup Can canceled the rest of riding today.”

  “That’s weird,” Heath said. “How come?”

  “The horses were acting…jumpy. Soup Can decided to bring them all back into the stable.”

  “Emily’s horse, Sweet Pea, was the worst,” Cricket added. “Mr. Soucandi had to blindfold her to calm her down, not that it helped much. When we left, he was still trying to get her into the stable.”

  “Sweet Pea wasn’t going easily,” Dunbar said. “The Ems stayed to help.”

  “It’s ancient history.” Cricket smacked Heath on the sole of his foot. “Get up, lazy bum! We’re missing all of the fun!”

  Heath slid his legs over the side of his cot and shimmied his feet into a pair of rubber aqua-shoes, the kind with a pocket for each toe. He wore them everywhere. They were the first thing that had entered his mind when Will asked for his wager, and the last thing he’d be willing to part with besides the orange vial of pain pills.

  “Here, you have to wear this,” Dunbar said, draping a necklace over Heath’s head. It was made of light green sugar candies strung together on a thread. Dunbar and Cricket were wearing necklaces, too, but their candies were smaller, misshapen, and some were missing, like a mouthful of hobo teeth.

  “What’s this for?” Heath asked.

  “Every cabin gets different colored candy,” Dunbar explained. “Water melts sugar. When there’s no more candy on your string you’re officially dead.” He did air-quotes around the word dead.

  “The last kid standing wins the fight for their cabin,” said Cricket.

  “Cool. What does the winning cabin get?” Heath asked.

  “Respect,” Dunbar answered, heading for the door. “Let’s do this.”

  The three boys stepped out of the cabin and into a war zone. Campers were whooping, hollering, and laughing as they chased one another with water guns, buckets, and water balloons. The ground was littered with colorful bits of exploded rubber. It seemed that everyone had abandoned the scheduled activities, and now the campground was overrun with lunatics.