by Kate Beasley
“Well,” Frederick said, considering. “He’s about my height. He has reddish hair.”
Ant Bite groaned and covered his eyes with his hands.
Nosebleed laughed so hard that chewed sausage spewed out of his mouth and onto the table.
“So,” Specs said, leaning in toward Frederick, squeezing his fork in his fist. “Is it true what they say about you?” he asked in a low voice.
Nosebleed, the Professor, and Ant Bite went still, and Frederick knew they were hanging on every word.
“Is—is what true?” Frederick asked.
“What you did with the iguana and the Cabbage Patch Kid,” Specs said eagerly. “Is it true?”
Frederick looked around at the other boys and shifted in his seat. It probably wasn’t right, taking credit for something he hadn’t done. But then he saw Specs lick his lips. Ant Bite was listening. The Professor had forgotten his book, and Nosebleed was ignoring his food. Frederick remembered that powerful feeling he’d had when he’d made them laugh, and now he wanted to see their faces light up again and know that he was the one responsible for that excitement.
“It’s the whole truth,” he said in a low voice. “And nothing but the truth.” He swallowed and crossed his fingers beneath the table. “So help me God.”
There was a moment of silence at the table, everyone holding their breath.
Then one word escaped Nosebleed, like a sigh. “Wow.”
7
For Whom the Bell Tolls
For the first time in his life, Frederick was popular. The boys in his group were eager to tell him stories and rumors about the other campers. Specs waited to see if Frederick laughed at a joke before he would laugh himself. The Professor put his book down so that he could listen to Frederick talk about his night on the river. Nosebleed kept trying to get his attention.
Only Ant Bite didn’t seem to be completely impressed by Dashiell Blackwood, but Frederick didn’t need him when he had three other admirers.
Frederick had always thought that being popular and having all the other kids want to sit by him and talk to him would be a great feeling … and he’d been absolutely right. It was the greatest feeling in the entire world. Frederick was warm and full of pancakes and confidence. If Benjamin had announced that there was a ticking bomb under one of the tables, Frederick would’ve been able to dismantle it, because of the power of his confidence. He wondered if this was what Devin Goodyear felt like all the time.
After breakfast, the groups split up and went off to different activities. The boys in Groups Nine through Thirteen followed their counselors around the main building and stopped beneath a lumber frame that was, according to Benjamin, twelve feet tall. White sandbags were thrown over the legs of the frame, and five evenly spaced ropes hung down from the beam at the top. Thick knots were tied at intervals along the length of each rope, and high up, at the top of every rope, hung a metal bell with a short pull. One rope and one bell for each group.
Group Ten’s counselor, whose name was Eric, stepped beside one of the ropes and spun around to face the assembled boys and counselors. He planted his feet wide and blew a shrill whistle.
Eric was a sports management major from Piedmont State. He wore the same blue polo and khaki shorts that all the counselors wore, but while Benjamin’s shorts would have fit a Transformer, Eric’s were sized for a Ken doll. He had tall white socks that stretched to his kneecaps, and he wore sunglasses so reflective the lenses looked like molten silver. In addition to being Ten’s counselor, he was also the head counselor for the entire camp.
Eric clicked the trigger on a battery-powered megaphone. “Listen up, maggots!” his voice growled mechanically through the megaphone. “This is a relay. That means TEAMWORK, maggots! Each group will send one man at a time up the rope.” He gave the rope closest to him a tug, just in case they weren’t sure what a rope was. “When you get to the top, you ring the bell. Then you come back down, and the next one of you goes up.
“If you don’t ring the bell,” Eric continued, “it doesn’t count. The first team to have all five people ring the bell … wins.” The last word reverberated through the trees.
Frederick stepped over to Benjamin. “What do we win?” he asked in a low voice.
Benjamin blinked at him.
“What do we win?” Frederick repeated. He was thinking they might earn points or get candy, or perhaps they would have the privilege of keeping possession of a special trophy until some other group won it away from them. Frederick hoped that he would be the one who got to carry the trophy around.
“Oh,” Benjamin said brightly, understanding. “I’ll find out.” He waved his hand. “Eric!” he called, interrupting Eric’s instructions about when the relay would begin and what various blasts on his whistle meant. “Eric!”
The sun flashed off Eric’s silver lenses, reflecting blue skies and puffy white clouds. Everyone turned to look at Benjamin and Group Thirteen. Frederick sidestepped behind his counselor.
“What do the boys win if they’re the first team to finish?” Benjamin asked.
There was a moment of silence. The campers looked from Benjamin to Eric.
“The boys who win…,” Eric said slowly, “win.” And the way he said the word win, like he was squeezing the life out of it, made it sound like winning was the most primal and satisfying thing a person could do.
“Oh,” said Benjamin, and he turned around to look at Frederick. “You don’t get anything if you win,” he said, sounding disappointed.
But Frederick realized that Eric was right. He didn’t need a trophy or a prize. Winning—winning something for his team—his teammates looking at him with happiness and awe … that was the only thing in the world that Frederick wanted.
“You have sixty seconds,” Eric said into his megaphone. “And then on my whistle…”
Immediately all the boys started talking, forming tight clusters around their counselors. Frederick turned to his group, eager to discuss their plan. He was about to ask the other guys if they had any ideas, but Nosebleed was already talking.
“Are you going to break his glasses?” Nosebleed jerked his head at Eric.
“Those are sunglasses,” Specs said.
“So you can see that they’re sunglasses all the way from here?” Nosebleed asked.
“Who’s going first?” Frederick asked, wanting to get them on track so they’d have time to make a plan.
Frederick was a little nervous about the whole situation. He definitely wanted to do the relay and win, but he had never climbed a rope before. He was sure that he could climb it; he just wished he could do a practice run in private.
None of the others seemed anxious. Nosebleed and Specs weren’t even paying attention to the rope. The Professor was gazing up at Group Thirteen’s bell with a grim but resigned expression. Ant Bite was standing apart from the group and kicking rocks at Group Eleven.
At this rate, they were going to be the only ones who weren’t ready when Eric blew his whistle.
“Hey,” Frederick said, trying to talk over Nosebleed and Specs’s bickering. “Come on. We need a plan.”
“Okay,” Benjamin said, squeezing into the loose circle the boys had formed. “What order are you guys climbing in?”
“It’s a relay. It doesn’t matter who goes first,” the Professor said, bending his paperback in his hands.
“This matters,” Frederick said in annoyance. The Professor sounded like he didn’t care.
“No, no,” Specs said eagerly, turning away from Nosebleed and finally focusing on the matter at hand. He lowered his voice so the other groups wouldn’t overhear him. “We put our best climbers first and strike icy fear into the hearts of our enemies.”
Ant Bite still hadn’t joined the group. He was frowning at a rock on the ground, then at a boy from Group Eleven. His face was scrunched in concentration, like he was calculating the trajectory between rock and boy.
“Okay, who are our best climbers?” Nosebleed asked,
drawing himself up and looking at each of the other boys as if he was expecting one of them to say, Well, I’m the third-ranked rope climber of all boys, aged ten to twelve, in the Southeast.
No one said that. It would’ve been surprising if anyone had.
“You could go in alphabetical order,” Benjamin suggested. “Or you could go in order from oldest to youngest. Or youngest to oldest.”
Nosebleed dabbed his nose and checked his fingertips to see if there was any blood. “Dash, do you want to go first?” he asked.
Panic punched Frederick in the chest.
The others looked at him, waiting for him to answer. He made a noncommittal noise in his throat and shrugged, spreading his hands open in a vague gesture that might have meant No, I don’t want to climb the rope first, but it equally could’ve meant Yes, I would love another canapé.
“What’s this mean?” The Professor wrinkled his forehead and mimicked Frederick’s shrug. “What’s that mean?” he asked the others.
Nosebleed shrugged back at him.
The group next to them had finished their planning and formed a line and was doing a synchronized battle chant that involved clapping and stomping.
“I know!” said Benjamin. “We could find out what month your birthdays are and do it in order of whose birthday’s soonest. That’s a good idea. When’s your birthday, Ant Bite?”
They all turned to look at Ant Bite just as the younger boy swung his foot and sent a rock stinging into a boy’s calf. The kid yelped and spun around to glare at them.
“Ant Bite,” Benjamin said in a shocked voice. “We don’t kick rocks at people.”
“I’ll go first,” the Professor said, shaking his head. He set his book on the ground, looked at the rope again, and took a deep breath.
“Okay,” Frederick said, the tension in his chest easing. “Who’s going to—”
Then Eric’s whistle sounded, and boys from the other groups ran to their ropes. The Professor turned to the others, spreading his hands like he was waiting on a decision.
“Go!” Frederick yelled.
The Professor strode over to the rope, gave a jump, and grabbed on. Then he started to climb. He didn’t make it look easy, but he moved, hand over hand, up the rope at about the same speed as the boys from the other four groups, the whole time wearing the same grim, kill-or-be-killed expression.
On the ground, the boys called up useful advice that the climbers might not have thought of by themselves.
“Use your arms!”
“Use your legs!”
“Climb faster!”
“You need to be higher!”
Frederick found himself clapping his hands together like a seal and barking, “Climb faster! Climb higher! Use your legs!” because even though he had never climbed a rope before, he suddenly knew—as if the knowledge of how to climb a rope had been passed down from his vine-climbing ancestors and had been waiting in his cells to be activated at this very moment—that these were helpful and good things to shout at someone who was climbing a rope.
“Climb higher!” he yelled, and he was sure it was his shouts that encouraged the Professor upward.
The Professor was the second boy to ring a bell. Clinging to the rope tightly with one hand and his legs, he reached out and gave the bell a good pull, making a clanging sound that had to satisfy even Eric of the Teeny Shorts.
Then he climbed back down the rope, sliding the last few inches.
“Go!” Frederick said, giving Specs a shove in the shoulder before the other boy could suggest that Frederick go next.
Specs didn’t climb as fast as the Professor. He wasted a lot of time trying and failing to wrap the rope around his legs. His legs flailed so much that Frederick and Nosebleed started yelling, “Don’t use your legs! Don’t use your legs!”
By the time Specs finally rang the bell, Group Ten and Group Eleven had already sent their third boys up. Group Nine was struggling.
On the ground, Frederick was gripping handfuls of his hair and jumping up and down. Specs was just as slow coming down as he had been going up. When he finally made it back to the earth, Frederick spun around to see who was next and found Ant Bite looking right at him.
Frederick froze, sure that the other boy could see the fear that must be flashing out of his eyes like Morse code. Was Ant Bite going to tell everyone that Frederick was scared? But he just shook his head at Frederick. Then he ran for the rope and started up it.
Frederick sagged with relief. He needed a little more time to prepare. He needed to limber up and figure out how he was going to climb the rope and still look cool. There must be a special way cool people did things that made them look cool. How would Dash climb the rope? Frederick asked himself.
“Oh my gosh,” Benjamin said. “Look at him go.”
“He’s like Tarzan,” Nosebleed said. “Only angry. And he’s wearing a shirt … and shoes.”
Their talking distracted Frederick from his thoughts. He looked up.
Ant Bite was moving twice as fast as anyone else. His hands snatched at the rope. His face angled upward, and he glared at the bell, looking like once he got to the top he was going to murder it.
“Whoa,” Frederick muttered.
All the other campers on the ground were gazing at Group Thirteen’s rope, too. Even Eric was watching Ant Bite, the small boy reflected twice in his sunglasses as he rang the bell at the top.
Ant Bite skimmed down the rope so fast that Group Thirteen was level with Group Ten again. They were still in this thing.
Frantic, Frederick turned to Nosebleed, and he was opening his mouth to encourage the other boy and yell at him to “Climb! Climb higher!” but Nosebleed reached out and pushed Frederick toward the rope just as Ant Bite ran up and tagged his arm, signaling it was his turn to climb. Frederick knew that the moment had come. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
He jogged over.
The rope was rough and prickly, almost splintery. Its tiny bristles pricked Frederick’s palms, but he clung to it, picking his feet up. He put one hand higher up, grabbed a knot, and with a mighty effort, hoisted himself. He looked up the rope and saw the bell, a speck in the distance, outlined by blazing blue sky. He looked back down the rope. The bottoms of his tennis shoes were six inches off the ground. “Oh, shoot.”
“Come on, Dash!” Nosebleed yelled. “Climb higher!”
Frederick growled through his teeth as his arms shook. Obviously he needed to climb higher. Did they think he was stupid? Did they think he had somehow forgotten why he was on the rope?
“Use your legs!” the Professor called.
Frederick was trying to use his legs. Didn’t they see him trying?
He pulled himself six inches higher. Sweat oozed out of his hands. This was impossible. But Frederick couldn’t let his team down. The Professor had climbed. Specs had climbed. And Ant Bite. He had to get to the top of the rope, to reach out and grab the bell pull. Frederick let go with one hand and grabbed higher. He hauled himself up. He tried to put his feet against a knot, but the rope snaked out from between his shoes, slithering away from him. Why, Frederick wondered, did everything have to be so hard? Why couldn’t something be easy, just once?
Somehow, Frederick slowly made his way up the rope. He heard the bells ringing all around him. He heard the campers shouting. Then he heard cheering, and he knew that some other group had gotten all their boys to the top, and Group Thirteen wasn’t going to win. But still Frederick climbed. He wasn’t going to quit. He wasn’t going to go back down that rope and see his team’s disappointed faces. Not without ringing that bell first. It would be okay if he could just ring the bell.
Then Frederick had made it. He reached out with one burning, spaghetti-noodle arm and grabbed the short rope beneath the bell and gave a sharp tug. The bell sounded—clang-a-lang—and for one glorious moment it was as though Frederick’s heart was clang-a-langing back. He’d done it!
But then his arm—the arm that was hanging on to the splinte
ry climbing rope—cramped, went limp, and let go. Frederick now swung from the bell, clutching the pull with only one hand.
He screamed and grabbed with the other flailing hand, catching the bell’s short rope and squeezing it for dear life.
Frederick’s arms were straight. He was hanging from the bell like a giant, Frederick-shaped bell pull. His legs kicked out, scrambling for purchase. There was nothing but air.
Beneath him the other campers were shouting—he couldn’t hear what they shouted because his ears weren’t working properly. His brain wasn’t working properly either, because Frederick had two thoughts as he hung there. And they weren’t helpful thoughts, like how to grab the other rope or ideas for how to save himself. No, the first was I really hate this, and by this he meant the entire situation. He hated ropes and he hated bells and he hated that guys named Eric with tall socks and short shorts scared him. His second thought as he swung there was actually a vision—a vision of Raj and Joel shaking their heads. Let’s look at the facts, Joel had said.
Then the short rope slipped out of his hands, and he hurtled toward the ground.
8
Ding-a-Ling
Frederick was on his back, his eyes squeezed shut. His hands burned. His arms ached. His heart, which had just been clang-a-langing like a bell, was now thunk-a-lunking like a peg-legged pirate tumbling down a flight of stairs.
Through his haze of panic and pain, Frederick became aware of a heaviness filling his chest, threatening to overflow like a dam. His eyes stung, and he realized with horror that he was about to cry.
His eyelids snapped open. Nosebleed, Specs, the Professor, Ant Bite, and Benjamin were all leaning over him, blocking out the sky. When they saw he was conscious, they let out their breath.
“We thought you were dead!” Nosebleed said.
“Don’t move a muscle—” Benjamin began.
Frederick ignored them and scrambled to his feet. He pushed between Benjamin and Nosebleed and started walking as fast as he could through the groups of campers and around the climbing frame. He walked this way and then changed direction and walked that way.