Charlie Joe Jacksons Guide to Summer Vacation

by Tommy Greenwald

“I know,” Jack agreed. “It’s kind of insane.”

  “But what about what you said at the Camp Jockstrap game?” I asked him. “When you said that secretly, you wished you could spend your entire life sitting on the couch watching TV and stuff.”

  Jack laughed. “Like that could ever happen.”

  “Dude, you’re just a kid!” I said, practically yelling at him. “You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. Just tell your parents that you’re tired of being so busy. Take a stand.”

  He smiled a little sadly. “You mean like Lech Walesa? And Charlie Joe Jackson?”

  “Yup!” I smacked him on the back. “Exactly! You could do it, seriously.” I pointed at his T-shirt. “And you could start by getting some new clothes.”

  He looked down at his shirt. “Yeah, I suppose.”

  We were interrupted by Mrs. Domerca, who clapped her hands loudly right behind our heads.

  “I can’t hear you two! Come on now, sing!”

  I looked up at her. “Can we sing ‘Bingo’ next?”

  “Oh, I love that one,” said Jack. “B-I-N-G-O!”

  “Please?” I asked Ms. D. “Pretty, pretty, pretty please?”

  She threw up her hands. “Fine,” she said, “but first things first.” She dropped a letter in my lap. “Last mail call of the year!”

  I looked at the handwriting and my heart skipped about four beats.

  Finally.

  Jack leaned over. “Is it from Zoe?”

  “Yup.”

  “It must be so cool to get a letter from a girl.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll let you know in about thirty seconds.”

  Dear Charlie Joe:

  I’m sorry for not writing sooner. I guess I was nervous or something, but that’s no excuse really. Like I said, I’m sorry.

  I don’t know if you heard from anyone else, but I’m moving back to my dad’s house this week. My parents are getting back together, if you can believe it. We’ll see what happens. Anyway, I wanted to tell you before you got back home and I was gone.

  I’ll only be a couple of hours away, so I really hope we can still be friends and see each other and hang out, if you want to. Let me know.

  I hope you’re having a great time at camp, even though it’s all about reading and writing and studying and stuff. If I know you, you’ll figure out a way to have fun anyway.

  I miss you.

  xox

  Zoe

  38

  I read the letter in about five seconds, then re-read it about fifty-five times.

  So it was official: Zoe Alvarez would not become my first real girlfriend ever.

  The girl who taught me how to stand up for myself, and how to stick things out when they weren’t going so great, was moving away.

  I was really looking forward to seeing her after camp ended, and hanging out with her at school, and maybe going out with her for real.

  And now that wasn’t going to happen.

  * * *

  Sitting there on the bus, I started to get mad. I wished I’d gotten kicked out of camp after all. Then I’d be home, and even if I’d been grounded I could have snuck out of the house and gone to see Zoe at least once before she moved away. But instead, I was stuck on this bus, heading to some annoying schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere. By the time I got home from camp, Zoe would be gone. And “a couple of hours away” might as well be “on the moon.” I’d probably never see her again.

  But then, the more I thought about it, the more I started to change my mind.

  I realized that maybe it was a good thing that I went to camp. If I’d been home, I might have started to like Zoe more and more, and then it would have been even worse when she moved. And instead of hanging around the same old people at home, I made some new friends. Obviously I would never, ever, EVER become a big book lover like Katie predicted, but I’d actually discovered one or two that weren’t terrible. And I found out that I could go to the strangest place on earth and still figure out a way to fit in.

  So yeah, by the time we pulled into the campsite, I’d decided that Camp Rituhbukkee was the greatest place on earth, and that going to camp was the best decision I’d ever made. And I was going to prove it to the world—and Zoe—by paying attention at Final Workshop and nailing the test!

  Rule number one about love: Finding out that the girl you like is moving away can really do strange things to a guy’s brain.

  39

  The campsite was pretty cool. We set up our tents in the woods, with a huge fire pit right by the lake. Afterward, we ate a delicious snack of peanut butter crackers, popcorn, and juice—three of my favorite things. It was like Dr. Mal had heard I’d decided to love camp and wanted to help convince me I’d made the right decision.

  Then we piled back on the buses and drove to Old Bridgetown, which was much less convincing.

  Everything looked as if it were from Revolutionary times. There were a bunch of little houses where shoemakers were making shoes, glassblowers were making bowls, and blacksmiths were making whatever it is that blacksmiths make. People were walking around in those really uncomfortable-looking costumes, which made me have a quick, scary flashback to last year, when I had to dress up like Byron Chillingsworth, the famous English boy fox hunter. (Long story.)

  Anyway, I’m not exactly a huge fan of these kinds of places. People are way too friendly, and there’s no cable TV. And I’m not all that interested in how people had to read by candlelight. (Seems like a lot of extra effort, if you ask me.) But whatever. The point is, I was a little creeped out, and we hadn’t even gotten to the Little Yellow Schoolhouse yet.

  Then I saw Ye Olde Fudge Factory.

  It was glorious.

  Zoe’s moving away became a distant memory, at least for a little while, as I ran to the store and immediately began drooling. It was full of the most delicious-looking fudge I’d ever seen in my life. And all sorts of flavors, too—regular fudge, peppermint fudge, peanut butter fudge, white chocolate fudge. I wanted to try every last one of them. But that’s not all; they had more than just fudge. Way more. Rows of caramel apples, peanut brittle, chocolate-covered raisins, almond bark, and more of my favorite kinds of candy. Plus, big barrels full of penny candy, like Mary Janes, root beer sticks, and rock candy.

  Have I gone on long enough about Ye Olde Fudge Factory?

  I was staring, with my tongue somewhere around my shoelaces, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around.

  Ms. Domerca.

  “Gotta go,” she said. “Lunch.”

  I ignored her and turned back to the window of happiness. Ms. D. let me stare for two more seconds, then gently steered me away.

  “We’re coming back later,” she promised.

  “For fifteen minutes,” I reminded her. “That’s just so wrong. We should think about reversing the schedule; spend fifteen minutes at the schoolhouse, and two hours at Ye Olde Fudge Factory. That’s how normal American people do it.”

  Ms. Domerca sighed. “Charlie Joe, that attitude is exactly what’s wrong with this country. Too much eating, and not enough reading.”

  Oh, Ms. Domerca. Will you never learn?

  40

  “Children, my name is Schoolmistress Prudence Moffitt. Please have a seat.”

  Schoolmistress Moffitt, whose real name was probably Sheila Johnson or something like that, was standing at the front of a really old-looking wooden schoolroom, which was the entire Little Yellow Schoolhouse. She was wearing a huge blue skirt that puffed up at the bottom and a white hat that was pulled tightly around her face. I hoped she was getting paid a lot of money to wear that outfit, but I doubted it.

  We all sat in our usual places: Nareem next to Katie, George next to Cathy, and Jared next to Lauren. The three happy couples of camp, together for two more days.

  Except for Nareem and Katie, of course, who’d be together for the whole next school year. How nice for them.

  I sat quietly at a tiny desk, with a strange-looking
book and an even stranger-looking pen in front of me. Hopefully no one would notice that I was actually paying attention. I hadn’t told anyone about my plan to ace the test. I wanted it to be a nice, big surprise.

  “Children who sat in desks like these were the lucky ones,” Schoolmistress Moffitt said. “They were from homes wealthy enough to afford schooling. Many children in the seventeen-hundreds were working in the fields and farms and couldn’t go to school. In the early colonies, children’s literacy rates were only seventy-five percent.”

  “I totally would love to be one of the twenty-five percent,” said George, cracking everyone up.

  “Stop trying to imitate Charlie Joe,” Jared told him. “You love reading. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Mind your own business,” George said, turning red.

  “Knock it off,” Dr. Mal said. “Both of you.”

  As they knocked it off, I thought about the weirdness of what had just happened. George Feedleman—the kid who was too scared to even utter one word during Ms. Domerca’s workshop way back on the first day of camp—was being yelled at for making jokes about not reading. Meanwhile, I was sitting there like an angel, trying to get a perfect grade on a test.

  Things had sure changed.

  “As I was saying,” Schoolmistress Moffitt continued, “children attending school were the lucky ones. What you see in front of you is the kind of book they wrote in, called ‘copybooks,’ because paper was so expensive. The pens are called ‘quills,’ which were dipped in ink. Go ahead and try it. Write your name on the first page.”

  I dipped my quill in the ink, then wrote Charlie Joe Jackson on the first page. It actually looked more like CHARLIE JOE JACKSON. It was hard to write with that quill thing, but it was pretty cool.

  Then Dr. Mal stood up in front of the class.

  “For the next two hours,” he said, “Schoolmistress Moffitt will take us on a wonderful reading tour of the books, speeches, and other writings of the Revolutionary War period. Tomorrow morning, for our Final Workshop, you will answer a forty-question worksheet on what we’ve learned today and then compose your own essays in the writing style of the time. The topic of the essay will be, ‘The most important thing I’ve learned at camp this session.’ This essay will conclude our workshop schedule for the summer. I’m very proud of all of you.” He smiled. “And now, I leave you in the good hands of Headmistress Moffitt. Have a wonderful workshop!”

  As Dr. Mal walked out of the room, I thought I saw him nod at me.

  Just in case, I nodded back.

  * * *

  Two hours later, I’d learned everything about how hard it was to live in 1770. I was ready for that test.

  But first, it was time to take advantage of one of life’s modern conveniences.

  During our absurdly short, fifteen-minute visit to Ye Olde Fudge Factory, I asked the guy who worked there, whose name was Bart, how he got the job.

  “I just applied.”

  I was shocked. “You didn’t have to go to fudge school, or do some intense training program or anything? They just took you?”

  “Yup,” said Bart. “It’s not that hard to make fudge. You can learn in like three hours.”

  I took an extra-large piece of a free sample and smiled to myself.

  From now on, when anybody asked me that annoying question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d finally have an answer.

  41

  The weather was perfect for the campfire. It had been really hot and humid most of the summer, but that night was kind of cool, with a nice breeze. The most amazing thing was that there were no mosquitoes, even though we were by a lake. The tents were up, the sleeping bags were out, and the marshmallows were ready to go. Everything was just right.

  But sometimes, the only problem with “just right” is that it makes you think of the one thing that would make it even righter.

  Zoe. Moving-away Zoe.

  I guess that’s why I was feeling a little weird when Katie came over and sat down next to me at the fire. I hadn’t really seen her all day, busy as I was with the quills and the copybooks and the memorizing of seventeenth-century farming techniques. But I’d seen her with Nareem a few times. They were holding hands, in a way that kind of looked like they’d been holding hands forever.

  I would even go so far as to say they were experts at holding hands.

  I tried to give Katie my friendliest smile. “Hey!”

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  She hesitated for a second, then said, “I just wanted to say that I think it’s great how well you’ve done at camp. I’m really proud of you.”

  “Cool,” I said. I appreciated what she’d said, but I wasn’t feeling very talkative.

  “I know I tease you, Charlie Joe,” Katie said. “And maybe even sometimes I get you a little mad. But that’s only because we’ve known each other for so long that I feel like I can say anything to you. I hope you know that.”

  I nodded.

  “Nareem might be my boyfriend,” she added, “but you’re my oldest friend.”

  “Thanks for saying that.”

  “And I hope you feel like you can say anything to me, anytime,” Katie continued. “It’s more important than anything in the world that we’re honest with each other.”

  “I totally agree,” I said.

  “Okay, good,” Katie said, but she didn’t seem satisfied. She was looking at me like the therapist she would probably become one day.

  I sighed. “What?”

  “Do you?” Katie asked. “Do you feel you can say anything to me? Because if you didn’t, I don’t know what I would do.”

  “What are you asking me, Katie?” Thoughts of Zoe and Katie and Hannah got all jumbled up in my mind, and I started to get that annoyed feeling again. “Is there something you think I’m not telling you? I am always honest with you. Like when you accused me of secretly wanting to be a nerd, I was completely honest when I told you that was the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Katie said, sounding a little annoyed herself. “If you really want to know … I just want to make sure you’re not upset with Nareem and me for going out. Especially now that we’re about to go home and head into the rest of the summer and the school year and stuff.”

  Ahhh, so that was where this was headed.

  “I’m totally cool with it!” I insisted. “Why wouldn’t I be cool with it? I’m totally cool with it!”

  Katie shrugged. “Well, I don’t know, you’ve acted kind of weird about it all summer. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t jealous, I guess.”

  Wow. There it was. She’d said it.

  The J-word.

  I thought for a minute, trying to figure out what to say.

  Part of me wanted to tell her that maybe she was right, that maybe in some weird way I was a little jealous, not to mention a little irritated that she and Nareem took forever to decide to become boyfriend and girlfriend, which combined with the fact that she thought I secretly wanted to be a nerd, made me act a little bit like a jerk sometimes, and I was really sorry.

  And another part of me wanted to tell her that by the way, I just found out Zoe was moving away, and even though I was trying to make the best of it, maybe this wasn’t the best time for her and Nareem to be all lovey-dovey all the time, right in front of me.

  But instead, I just said, “Like I already told Nareem, I think it’s awesome that you two like each other. Seriously, I’m totally happy for you!”

  Katie looked at me like she was trying to decide if she believed me or not.

  “Besides,” I added for some reason, “I’ve never liked you that way, you know that.”

  I thought I saw a flicker of disappointment flash across Katie’s face, but I might have imagined it.

  “Great!” she said, hugging me.

  I kind of hugged her back.

  “Great!” she said again. “I’m so happy!”


  I wasn’t sure if she meant she was happy because of me, or because of Nareem.

  I decided not to ask.

  42

  So the drama between me and Katie was over, at least for now.

  But the excitement at the campfire was just beginning.

  After my fun little chat with Katie, I walked around looking for a marshmallow to roast, when I ran smack into Lauren Rubin.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said.

  She was crying.

  “Lauren, what’s the matter?” I said, as we walked down to the lake. “What is it?”

  “I’ve been an idiot.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said. There were definitely no idiots at Camp Rituhbukkee. Nerds, yes. Idiots, no.

  “Trust me, I have. This whole thing has turned out to be a complete joke.”

  “What whole thing?”

  Lauren tried to dry her tears, but they were just replaced by new ones. “The Jared thing.”

  “What Jared thing?”

  “He’s a jerk.” Lauren sat down on a bench and started throwing rocks into the lake. I watched her, but didn’t say anything. I just waited for her to be ready to explain what she meant. Finally she turned back to me.

  “Jared was just pretending to like me all summer so I’d do all his work for him.”

  I stared at her. “Holy moly. Seriously?”

  Lauren nodded. “Seriously. This whole time I’ve been helping him with his work. Helping write a lot of his papers. I think that’s the only reason he’s been hanging around with me.”

  Even I wouldn’t have thought Jared could stoop that low. “That’s insane,” I said.

  “Insane but true,” Lauren said. “It turns out he actually hates reading and writing.”

  I had to sit down to take that one in.

  OMG. Jared sounded like me.

  Which might have been the most upsetting news I’d ever gotten.

  “So then what’s he doing at Rituhbukkee?” I asked.

  “Good question,” Lauren said, sniffling. “I guess his older brother went here and he’s some kind of genius, or something like that, and so Jared feels a lot of pressure to be like his brother.”