Lions & Liars

by Kate Beasley

  Frederick thought about trying to explain his situation to Eric. But he suspected that the head counselor wasn’t going to be understanding or sympathetic. And he’d probably say Frederick was just at the fear stage of the transformational process.

  Frederick waded out into the river up to his knees and then stepped off into the deep. The river was cold, and being in its dark water felt familiar. When Frederick closed his eyes, he could almost imagine that it was just like the times his dad had taken him to the public section of the Omigoshee back home.

  When he opened his eyes, he could imagine the same thing. The other boys were swimming and splashing. Two were racing for the opposite bank. To someone who didn’t know any better, they were acting just like regular boys.

  But Frederick knew that they were acting that way because they thought they were all equals. If they knew that they had a law-abiding citizen in their midst, they’d probably attack. It was like how if you had a school of sharks sharking around in the ocean, they would just peacefully swim around in circles, but if you threw in a flounder—WHAM!—they would surge into a feeding frenzy, slashing with their teeth and tearing the flounder to pieces, leaving a murk of blood in the water.

  Frederick was the flounder in this scenario. He was a flea on the butt of a meerkat and a ding-a-ling and a flounder. He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He was just being realistic. And now that he was being realistic, Frederick admitted to himself that he just wanted to get away from here and get back home where he was safe.

  Frederick paddled over to where Nosebleed was floating.

  The other boy’s face and feet bobbed above the surface of the water. Everything in between sank.

  “Hey,” Frederick said. “Do you think I could borrow your phone when we get back to the cabin?”

  Nosebleed didn’t open his eyes, and Frederick thought maybe he’d fallen asleep and hadn’t heard, but then he said in a lazy voice, “Sure thing, Dash.”

  “Really?” Frederick asked in surprise. “That’s great.” He hadn’t expected it to be that easy. He would just use Nosebleed’s phone to call his mom, and she would drive like a NASCAR racer to pick him up.

  “Of course,” Nosebleed said, opening his eyes and rolling over in the water, “you can’t make a call with it.”

  “What?” Frederick’s vision of his mother speeding toward him vanished.

  “There’s no service out here. You can’t make a phone call.”

  “There’s a little bit of service,” Frederick argued.

  “Nope,” said Nosebleed.

  “Yes,” Frederick insisted. “There’s always a little bit of service. There can’t be none.” It wasn’t possible that there was a place where you couldn’t make a phone call. Because this was America and the twenty-first century, and things like that didn’t happen anymore.

  Frederick swam over to the Professor. “Hey,” he said. “Is it true you can’t use a cell phone here?”

  “Yeah,” the Professor said, and he started swimming away from Frederick.

  Frederick kicked after him, his need for answers greater than his fear of alligators. “Like you can’t can’t?” Frederick called after him, spitting out a mouthful of water. “Not just that it’s against the rules?”

  “Listen,” the Professor said. “I’m swimming by myself right now, okay?”

  Frederick’s arms churned the surface of the water. “Okay,” he said. “Sure.”

  A few of the boys swimming nearby had overheard, and they were looking over at Frederick with bright, interested eyes.

  “Who are you going to call, Dash?” one boy asked.

  “Someone on the outside?” a voice suggested.

  “Are you sneaking something in?”

  Just then, Specs’s head emerged from the river right in front of Frederick. He spit a mouthful of water into Frederick’s face. Frederick sputtered and reversed in the water as far as the ring of boys would allow.

  Specs laughed. “Gosh you’re funny, Dash,” he said. Specs’s laugh didn’t sound like the one from breakfast, though. This laugh made Frederick flinch. “You know,” Specs said, “my brother always talked like you were some kind of legend. But you’re just a normal guy.”

  Frederick’s feet kicked to keep his head above the surface. He didn’t say anything. He was aware of the other boys, listening in.

  “Maybe that’s always how it is with legends,” Specs said. “Maybe they’re never as cool in real life.” His tone was philosophical, but the gleam in his eyes was steely.

  “Maybe I’m even wilder than you are,” said Specs. It was a challenge. Frederick wanted to know when being “wild” had become such a great thing. It suddenly seemed like being “wild” was just the best thing ever, and Frederick hadn’t been part of the committee that voted to make it that way. He hadn’t had a say in it, and now he just had to go with it.

  “Maybe,” Frederick said. “But maybe you’re not.” He didn’t know why he was challenging Specs back, except he had to say something, and it felt like the natural thing to do.

  Specs sank low in the water, all the way to his eyes. Then he lifted his chin up. “So who did you want to call?” he asked.

  “It’s personal business,” Frederick said, trying to sound tough, but he thought it came out sounding fussy. He tried again. “It’s my personal, private business.” It was hard to sound tough while your legs were kicking furiously and your arms were treading water.

  As more and more of the campers gathered around to listen, Frederick realized his mistake. Whenever people found out that you had a secret, they worked to shake it out of you like a Butterfinger caught in a vending machine’s coils.

  Frederick needed to give them an answer fast so they would leave him alone. He tried to think of someone the scary Dashiell Blackwood might reasonably call, but the only people he could think of were his mom, his dad, his grandma Sue, Sarah Anne, and the police.

  “Anyway,” he said, “it doesn’t matter because Nosebleed says there’s no service.” He hoped that would settle it.

  “Are you calling your glasses-wearing friend, Raj?” Specs asked.

  “No,” said Frederick. He felt a pang of guilt that he’d given Raj’s name to a criminally evil boy. He could imagine one day, months from now, when Specs tracked Raj down, broke into his bedroom at night, and snapped his eyeglasses “in twain” while Raj slept. And it would be Frederick’s fault. When the investigators questioned how Specs had found out about Raj, Frederick was going to have to act just as confused as everyone else.

  “Well, there’s a landline,” Specs said casually. “You could use that to call out.”

  “There is?” Frederick said cautiously.

  “Yeah,” said Specs. “But it’s in Eric’s office. And we’re not allowed in there.”

  “Oh,” said Frederick. His arms and legs churned.

  “I’ll help you break in, though.” Specs flipped over in the water, twisting like an eel. “If you’re not scared.”

  10

  A Little Horse’s Toothbrush

  Frederick didn’t want to break into Eric’s office. He really didn’t want to break into Eric’s office with Specs. What he wanted was to just drop the whole breaking-into-the-office thing and forget about it. Unfortunately, that was impossible.

  “Let’s do it now,” Specs kept saying throughout the day.

  It seemed like he was at Frederick’s elbow every second—during lunch, on the “character-building” afternoon hike, while they were learning to tie knots and do other “aggression-relieving” crafts. Having Specs hiss into his ear, his breath hot on Frederick’s neck, was annoying and a little frightening, and it made it impossible for Frederick to figure out how he was going to get out of this situation and back home, where he belonged.

  “Now,” Specs whispered at dinner. “It’s a golden opportunity.”

  “No,” Frederick whispered back. “Later. Too many people watching.” He stabbed a Vienna sausage on a bent-tined fork and looked
sadly at it. Miss Betty was gone, and Merle, the cook who had replaced her, didn’t arrange all the food neatly in the serving trays. Frederick didn’t think there would be s’mores.

  “Nobody’s watching,” Specs said. “Everyone’s right here. Eric’s cabin is deserted.”

  “He’ll probably go to his office after he eats,” Frederick said, inventing yet another reason why they couldn’t break in to use the phone.

  The Professor, Nosebleed, and Ant Bite were silent. They had been silent on the matter ever since the river. They looked at Frederick with pity but kept their mouths shut. He didn’t blame them. He thought they were smart. He should’ve kept his mouth shut a lot more in his life, and maybe he wouldn’t be here right now.

  “I’ll go with you,” Specs said. “I’ll be your lookout. And then you can call your buddy on the outside.”

  Frederick knew that Specs knew that he wasn’t going to call some “buddy on the outside,” that he wasn’t going to call some contact who would sneak him in contraband. Frederick suspected that Specs also knew that Frederick really did want to call his mommy. Frederick knew that Specs knew, and Specs knew that Frederick knew that he knew. Everybody knew, and yet they kept pretending that they didn’t.

  It was like they were playing some complicated game where Specs and Frederick both had to pretend that Frederick was going to make a potentially illegal phone call. Frederick would lose the game if he admitted that he wasn’t calling someone scary or shady. He would also lose if he told Specs to drop it because he had decided not to make a phone call after all. And Specs would win when he helped Frederick break into the office and listened in on Frederick’s phone call with his mommy.

  Basically, there was no way for Frederick to win, so really, all he was doing was postponing the moment when he lost. It was a horrible game, and Frederick didn’t know how he’d wound up playing it, but here he was.

  “Well, when are you going to be ready, Ding-a-Ling?” Specs asked.

  “Later, Specs,” Frederick answered.

  “Yeah, right,” Specs said.

  “That is right,” Frederick said, putting an end to the conversation.

  “You’re not going to do it,” Specs said.

  “Yes,” Frederick said. “I am, too.”

  “Not,” Specs muttered under his breath.

  * * *

  After dinner, when the sun was sinking behind the pine trees, the campers went to their sleeping cabins.

  It was the first time Frederick had seen the inside of Group Thirteen’s cabin. It was one large room that smelled like fresh air, cedar, and barf. A moth fluttered against the bare lightbulb in the middle of the low ceiling. There were three beds on one side of the room and two on the other. Four of the beds already had sheets on them. Nosebleed, the Professor, Ant Bite, and Specs each went to one of the made beds and collapsed.

  “Urgf,” Nosebleed groaned.

  The Professor’s feet hung off the end of his bed, and his head bumped the wall. He didn’t seem to care. He opened his book and put it over his eyes to block out the light.

  Specs picked dead beetles off his bed and flung them at Ant Bite.

  The fifth, unmade bed had a folded stack of threadbare sheets on top of a stained mattress. The stain was shaped like a face with its mouth open, screaming in terror. At the end of the cabin was a porcelain sink with a dripping faucet. Frederick walked over to it and fiddled with the single tap. A slick of red algae rimmed the drain. While Frederick was taking all this in, Benjamin’s voice called from outside.

  “Dash! I found you some stuff in the lost and found!” Their counselor lumbered into the cabin, carrying a cardboard box that he dropped on Frederick’s bed.

  Frederick went over to the box. He pulled out an extra-large red jersey and sniffed it gingerly. It smelled like cabbage. He dropped it on the mattress and peeled off his own nasty shirt. The jersey’s sleeves were so big they went past his elbows. The tail fell almost to his knees, like a dress. But at least it didn’t have blood on it.

  Then he looked back into the cardboard box and pulled out a yellow flashlight just like the one they had at home, only this one contained dead batteries. He also found a pair of men’s loafers, mismatched socks, a book about girl spies, and a green-handled toothbrush.

  “You don’t have to use that,” Benjamin said, pointing at the toothbrush Frederick was holding. “I just saw it and thought of you.” He laughed. “How you were worried about your teeth,” he added.

  The toothbrush’s bristles were not tight and straight like a fresh-out-of-the-package toothbrush. They were gray and splayed and flattened.

  “Whose toothbrush was this?” Frederick asked. “It looks like someone brushed a horse’s teeth with it.”

  “Why would anyone brush a horse’s teeth?” the Professor mumbled behind the pages of his book.

  “A horse would have a bigger toothbrush,” Ant Bite said, sitting up on his bed.

  “What would you know about it?” Specs said, flicking another beetle at him.

  Ant Bite glared at him and lay down, rolling over to face the wall.

  “Maybe it was a little tiny horse,” Nosebleed said. He lifted his arms and held his two pointer fingers apart to indicate a three-inch-tall horse.

  “Yeah, you don’t have to use it,” Benjamin said again, turning pink. “Like I said, I just thought of our earlier conversation.” He gave another laugh. “Actually, maybe you shouldn’t use it.”

  “You think?” said Specs.

  Benjamin took the toothbrush out of Frederick’s hand and tossed it at the metal trash can by the door. He missed, and it clattered to the floor.

  “Good night, campers!” Benjamin said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He walked out of the cabin with a bounce in his step and closed the door behind him.

  They could still hear Benjamin’s humming when Specs rolled off his bed and took a step toward Frederick.

  “Now,” Specs said, narrowing his eyes.

  At some point that day, Frederick had realized that the reason Specs squinted all the time was because he couldn’t see clearly, because he really did need “spectacles,” so it was a shame that he’d snapped his in twain.

  “Not now,” Frederick said.

  “Then when?” Specs said. “You’ve put it off all day. You’re not going to do it.”

  “When everyone’s asleep,” Frederick said, and he deliberately rolled his eyes. That was how fed up he was with Specs. He was so sick of him that he was forgetting to be scared.

  “One hour.” Specs tapped the face of the digital watch he wore.

  “One hour,” Frederick agreed, not because he thought that was a good time but because he was tired of arguing.

  After sleeping for only a few hours in a boat and then spending the day climbing a rope, swimming, hiking, and being scared out of his mind, Frederick was too exhausted to put the sheets on his bed properly. He dropped the fitted sheet on the floor and spread the top sheet so that it mostly covered the stain. Then he picked up his feet and fell face-first on the bed. He was asleep before his eyelids were all the way closed.

  * * *

  The next thing Frederick knew, someone was slapping the back of his head. Frederick groaned and tried to turn away from the slapping.

  “It’s time, Ding-a-Ling,” Specs said. He held his watch right up to Frederick’s nose. According to the green-glowing face, it was ten thirty.

  Frederick wanted to go back to sleep more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. But he put his hands on the bed and pushed himself up.

  Later, Frederick would marvel at the superhuman strength it took to wake himself from the deepest sleep he’d ever experienced to sneak across a camp for not-yet-transformed boys to try to break into a seriously creepy dude’s office. And he would know that he found that strength deep within himself not because he was afraid of Specs (though he was afraid of Specs), and not because he wanted to call his mom to come pick him up (though he really, really hoped that he would g
et to do that). No. He was able to get up because he knew that if he didn’t, Specs would say he had chickened out, and Frederick didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  He stood up with his knees bumping into the edge of his mattress. He patted himself like he was checking his pockets. His tennis shoes were still on his feet; he hadn’t taken them off before falling asleep. He was wearing the baggy red jersey. He had no other possessions except some loafers, a dead flashlight, and a girl spy book, so he decided that he was ready to go. He stumbled through the dark cabin, past the others’ beds. He opened the door and stepped out into the night, catching his shoulder on the doorjamb.

  “Dang it,” he muttered, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Dang it,” Specs mimicked Frederick, and snickered. “Is that the best you can do?”

  “You kiss your mama with that mouth?” Nosebleed chuckled at his own joke.

  The Professor, Nosebleed, and Ant Bite had also risen and were now following Frederick and Specs out of the cabin. Apparently, they were going with them to Eric’s office, and that seemed right to Frederick. They were a group. They were going to do this together.

  Specs was right on Frederick’s heels as he crossed the camp, sticking to the dark patches and staying out of the yellow glow beneath the floodlights attached to the buildings. The moon was bright tonight, and Frederick was able to make out his feet and a bit of the ground in front of him.

  The head counselor’s office was a tiny cabin that was just off the main building. It faced the small parking lot where Frederick had first spotted the school bus and the campers. It was brighter here because the parking lot didn’t have so many trees blocking the moonlight.

  Group Thirteen huddled close together in front of Eric’s office. The lights were off inside. The head counselor must’ve already gone to his sleeping cabin … Frederick hoped.

  Specs and Frederick were the only ones still in their day clothes. The other three were wearing pajamas. Nosebleed and Ant Bite had put on tennis shoes with their striped pants. The Professor was barefoot.

  Specs reached out and shoved Frederick’s arm. Frederick stepped away from the group.