Slacker

by Gordon Korman

  But when I mentioned it to Cameron, he seemed reluctant, even alarmed. “So soon?”

  “Why not? The garden project was a hit.” I chuckled. “We can’t expect to save a life every time, but we’re on a roll. We have five times the members we had before. We can tackle something even more ambitious!”

  He turned positively green and started sputtering about not rushing into things. I swear, if I could figure this kid out, I’d win the guidance counselor equivalent of a Nobel Prize.

  What was his problem? Was he worried that the first outing was so successful that he’d never be able to live up to it? Cameron’s fear seemed more basic than that—like a swimmer who’d spotted a shark fin. But why? What did he have to be afraid of?

  It was frustrating in the extreme. The Positive Action Group was every guidance counselor’s dream. I’d been waiting my entire career for something like this. The new members were champing at the bit for the next challenge. The teachers and administrators wanted more. Audra Klincker had me on speed dial. I was even starting to hear from parents. Everybody wanted to push forward—except for Cameron.

  And then, one day, the problem solved itself.

  I was unpacking another carton of raffle tickets—sales were still slow, but I was hoping to recruit some of the new P.A.G. members as salespeople. The club’s web page was up on my computer, and I noticed something that hadn’t been there just a few minutes ago.

  My heart soared. Cameron had changed his mind! And, I thought, patting myself on the back just a little, I might have had a little to do with that, with my constant nagging—ahem, counseling.

  The next time I saw him, I pumped his arm in congratulation. “You’re the best, Cameron! Thanks for doing the right thing!”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Fan—uh—sir.”

  Maybe I’d misjudged the poor kid. He was just shy and superpolite. Nobody called teachers sir anymore.

  I was up nights brainstorming future projects to suggest. The Sycamore YMCA needed a paint job; the Village Green at the center of town hadn’t had a thorough cleanup in years; the local hospital and rehab center were looking for volunteers. There were food drives to be organized, charity fund-raisers to be staffed, fences and signs to be power-washed. Middle schoolers couldn’t do it all, of course. But with adult supervision, the Positive Action Group could be a real source of help.

  If there was ever a community that needed a boost, it was Sycamore. The word had just come from the Department of Transportation that the rumors were true: Sycamore was losing its freeway exit. It would be a huge blow to the local businesses in town, especially since the nearest ramp drew potential customers right into the big regional mall. I knew that Cameron’s family ran a furniture showroom, so for sure the stress of all this had to be affecting the Boxers. It would be practically therapy for him to do something for the town.

  I spent all of Tuesday in a state of anticipation. As I approached the small gym, I could hear the buzz of a good crowd inside. Sure enough, a section of bleachers had been set up, and it was almost completely full—seventy or eighty kids at least. That meant we’d attracted even more members than we had since my last count. Very satisfying.

  Xavier was there, and to my surprise, he was sitting in the front row, awake and alert. The McBean kid was, too, and this time he’d brought some of his former teammates from the Seahawks. Jordan was also back, with his campaign manager. On the other side of the stands, I spotted Kelly and Jordana, his opponents in the upcoming student council election. Daphne was in the company of several friends as well—hopefully, they weren’t all as passionate as she could be.

  I saw straight-A students and those who were just squeaking by; drama nerds and cheerleaders and yearbook staffers. What a turnout! Everybody was here—everybody except—

  Uh-oh.

  I scanned the bleachers again, certain I’d simply missed him. I peered from face to face to face.

  There was no Cameron Boxer.

  How could he call a meeting, post it on the web page, and then not show up himself?

  Heart sinking, I realized I already had the answer: Because he was Cameron Boxer, and with him there didn’t have to be a reason.

  I ran all through the school, scouring hallways and peering around corners. By the time I pounded up to the second floor, I was bathed in perspiration. I must have looked like a crazy person—hyperventilating, sweat-covered, eyes wild and seeking.

  And there he was, standing with Pavel and Chuck, stowing books in a locker that wasn’t his.

  “Cameron!” I rasped in a voice my own mother wouldn’t have recognized. “What are you doing here?”

  He slammed the locker door quickly. “Oh, hi, Mr. Fan—uh, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me! Why aren’t you at the meeting?”

  He seemed completely mystified. “Meeting?”

  I lost it. “The Positive Action Group meeting! You can’t tell me you don’t know about it! It’s your meeting! You yourself posted it on the web page!”

  I went on for a while, venting and raving. I probably would have screamed my head off, except we had a gym full of kids waiting for us. If they gave up on the P.A.G. and walked out, we’d never get them back.

  So I dragged the three of them down to the small gym, where all those members—paggers, they called themselves now—were sitting expectantly. The instant Cameron walked through the door, they leaped to their feet and cheered.

  And how did the P.A.G. president respond to the adoration? He walked a little shorter, his head sunk a little deeper into his shoulders. Almost as if he was hoping that this giant ovation was for somebody else.

  I thought back to my college days, when I was training to be a counselor. I’d always envisioned my future students just like this—energized, motivated, united.

  Never in a million years could I have imagined anyone like Cameron Boxer.

  I never thought Cam could get as worked up about anything as he got about video games.

  I was technically wrong about that.

  “Of course it was you!” he exclaimed right in my face. “You’re the one who hacked into the school site in the first place!”

  He was talking about the post on the P.A.G. page setting up the second meeting. I was innocent, but I understood why he would suspect me. My web skills were legendary. And besides, who else would it have been?

  “I didn’t do it, man.”

  He was red-faced, his eyes practically bulging. This was a guy who got so in the zone that he could ignore a truckload of firemen until they’d axed his door down. “It had to be you! You’re the only one with the login information!”

  “If I figured it out, other people can, too.”

  Chuck had a suggestion. “Maybe it was the Friends of Fuzzy. We already know Jennifer Del Rio plays hardball.”

  Cam shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Jennifer wants the P.A.G. to stop. Why would she call a meeting so we could plan to do more stuff?”

  We had a mystery on our hands. The fact that I hadn’t made the post scheduling the new meeting didn’t change the fact that somebody had. Who? Mr. Fanshaw? Impossible. You couldn’t fake the kind of freak-out he’d gone through after Cam didn’t show up in the small gym.

  But if not him, then who? Jordan, to win votes? String, so he could work his way back onto the football team? Xavier, so he’d have community service to perform? Daphne, because she believed the P.A.G. could help that beaver she was so nuts about?

  I was no closer to an answer as Cam’s dad drove the three of us and Melody to the P.A.G.’s second project that weekend. Mr. Boxer wasn’t in the best mood. The replacement front door had arrived that morning, and it didn’t fit.

  “It’s not advanced science,” he seethed. “All you need is a tape measure!”

  Technically, measurement was a fairly advanced science, but I didn’t get the feeling that Mr. Boxer wanted to hear it.

  “At least the P.A.G.’s going great,” Melody put in sweetly. “Cam, why don’t
you tell us about—”

  Her brother silenced her with an elbow to the ribs.

  We stopped to pick up Katrina. She ignored the open seat with Melody in the middle row and made a point of squeezing in next to Cam in the back. “This is going to be so fun!”

  “Picking up garbage,” Cam grumbled, leaning into me to get away from her. “Yeah, fun.”

  As we approached the Village Green, I could see right away that this was very different from our mission at the senior citizens’ garden project. A long line of cars stretched ahead of us, dropping off paggers. Daphne greeted the volunteers, checking names against a list on her clipboard. Jordan and Felicia were at her side, handing out trash bags and pointed sticks. When I got mine, I noted that each spike pierced a printed paper that read VOTE TOLEFFSEN.

  Audra Klincker was there, too, standing with Mr. Fanshaw next to the gazebo. She’d brought a photographer with her this time, so we were definitely going to be in the newspaper again. Cam wasn’t going to like that.

  Speaking of Cam, everybody wanted a piece of him. They shook his hand, high-fived and fist-bumped him, slapped him on the back, congratulated him.

  “Yeah, Cam, this is awesome,” Chuck enthused, stabbing wet newspapers and filling his bag. “What a great idea!”

  Cam glared at him. “This wasn’t my idea. It was Mr. Fanmail’s. I didn’t even know about the meeting until we got dragged there.”

  One voice rose above all others. “Bag’s full already! No one picks up garbage like The String!”

  His football buddies raced to keep up. The air was a blur of trash and pointed sticks. Coach Branson would faint if he saw it—two-thirds of his precious team poking needle-sharp spikes at each other.

  There were a few minor injuries when kids stabbed feet instead of litter. Katrina fell out of a tree she’d climbed to get a plastic bag off a branch. But, luckily, she landed right in Xavier’s arms.

  A shouting match broke out between some paggers and a group of gardeners with leaf blowers, but they eventually agreed to come back later.

  “What a waste,” Cam lamented. “A whole day of Rule the World training down the drain. And for what?”

  That was when I noticed something I honestly hadn’t expected to see. The lawns were lush, green, and well kept. No soda cans or candy wrappers floated in the fountain. The flowerbeds and bushes were litter-free. So were the walkways, the playground, and the band shell.

  “Check this place out,” I said. “I never realized what a dump it was until I saw it all cleaned up. We did that. It wouldn’t have happened without us.”

  “So what?” Cam grunted. “You think all the other contestants spent the day garbage-picking? They were practicing, like we should have been. Evil McKillPeople is going to merc us.”

  “Maybe,” I acknowledged. “But you can’t technically call it a waste. It wasn’t what we would have chosen on our own, but it was something good.”

  He looked at me like I’d just run over his dog.

  The Klincker Kronicle

  … In the past three weeks, these wonderful, selfless young people have restored our Village Green to its former glory, run a successful toy drive for Sycamore Children’s Hospital, and volunteered in the kitchen for Meals on Wheels. If you need proof that there is hope for the next generation, look no further than Cameron Boxer and his Positive Action Group …

  I heaved the paper across the room so violently that it knocked the Red Bull out of Tony’s hands, spraying him.

  “Hey, what was that for?”

  “The Positive Action Group, the Positive Action Group!” I snarled. “Every toilet in this town is plugged up with the Positive Action Group! If I hear the name Cameron Boxer one more time, I’ll scream!”

  “You’re already screaming,” he pointed out.

  Poor Tony. He’d been putting up with a lot lately.

  I was stressed to the limit. Writing college application essays did that to a person. Especially when that person’s number-one accomplishment—being Grand Pal of the Friends of Fuzzy—was now totally meaningless thanks to a bunch of middle schoolers. They didn’t have Harvard to impress. Their lives were all about Girl Scout cookies and Bat Mitzvah lessons and zit cream! Oh, what I wouldn’t give to go back to those simpler times—except I was never a Girl Scout, I’m not Jewish, and my skin has always been fine-grained and perfect.

  “I explained to Cam Boxer exactly how things work around here. He said he understood me. And what does he up and do? The Positive Action Group is ten times bigger than before! They’ve got so many kids they have to break them up into separate work crews! How do you compete with people who can paint three different orphanages in the same day?”

  Tony had a suggestion. “You know, Jen, why are you getting so bent out of shape about the middle school kids? Wouldn’t it be smarter just to come up with some great new stuff for the Friends of Fuzzy?”

  I blew my stack. “Name one thing! They’ve got it all covered! The P.A.G. has cornered the good-deeds market around here! You think I haven’t tried? Every time I go to a place to offer our services, it’s like, ‘No, thanks. The paggers are coming for that.’ They’re like a disease! I hate them so much!”

  “Don’t say that,” Tony pleaded. “My little brother’s in the P.A.G. He doesn’t mean any harm. He loves it.”

  I could not have been more wounded. “And you let this go on? Under your own roof?”

  He shrugged. “My folks support it a thousand percent. What am I going to do? Tell them it’s keeping my girlfriend out of Harvard?”

  Tony was a great guy, tall and easy to look at, with shoulders that seemed to go on forever. But he obviously had a lot to learn about being in a relationship.

  Still, this little-brother thing could work to our advantage. It was almost like having an inside man—a spy. We could pick his brains to find out what the P.A.G. was up to next.

  That’s why, a few days later, Tony was pulling the Charger into a grove of trees at the edge of Ravine Park, a nature preserve that divided the town into East and West Sycamore. We ducked our heads as three large school buses roared past us into the park. The Positive Action Group had gotten so big that it created a traffic jam when parents dropped all the volunteers off. The middle school had to provide buses to get everybody where they needed to be. Didn’t that burn your microwave popcorn?

  We got out and stole through the underbrush, the whipping branches and jutting twigs scratching at our faces and arms.

  “This is crazy, Jen,” Tony complained. “Why don’t we just walk up to them and ask what they’re doing?”

  “I refuse to give them the satisfaction. The Friends of Fuzzy were here long before anybody thought of the P.A.G. Farley J. Peachfuzz must be spinning in his grave.”

  “I don’t think Farley J. Peachfuzz was actually real,” Tony offered.

  “Get down!” I hissed.

  We ducked behind a bush overlooking the clearing where the buses were parked. I could see Audra Klincker already waiting there, and—was that the mobile unit of Sycamore Channel Four? Who was next—CNN? Just how famous was the P.A.G. getting? The Friends of Fuzzy practically had to beg for a double-page spread in the high school yearbook.

  Then the doors folded open and out poured battalions of middle schoolers, all carrying picks, shovels, sledgehammers, buckets, and wheelbarrows.

  I actually felt my jaw drop. “What are they doing? What did Robbie say?”

  Tony shrugged. “I didn’t get it. Something about Elvis.”

  “The singer? Is he buried here? Why are they digging him up?”

  Eventually, I got so bewildered that I gave up on secrecy and sent Tony down there to ask somebody. He was gone a long time. In the distance, I could hear kids talking excitedly and even laughing. I don’t remember myself in middle school but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t ever dumb enough or immature enough that slogging through a swamp was my idea of a good time.

  I don’t know what irritated me more: The fact that the P.A.G.
was eating our lunch or the fact that they were having so much fun doing it. Fast-forward to when they were the ones slaving over college applications, and we’d see how much fun they were having.

  A giddy voice, louder than the rest, cackled: “You losers might as well go home right now! Nobody digs mud like The String!”

  Middle school.

  When Tony finally came back, he was splattered with grime. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.

  “Well?” I prompted.

  “They’re building a beaver habitat,” he told me.

  “No, seriously.”

  “I am serious. That’s Elvis—the beaver who’s been chewing stuff up around town. He’s going to live here.”

  I started to laugh—not because I thought it was a joke, but because I was really, really happy. Finally the Positive Action Group was making its first mistake. I’d been in the Friends of Fuzzy long enough to recognize a bad good deed, and this was a real stinker. It took a ton of time and man power and resources, and it helped no one except a big rodent with a taste for fence posts. When this got around, Cam Boxer would be ruined, and the P.A.G. with him.

  Or so I thought.

  When the story came out on TV and in the Klincker Kronicle, it was like a beaver habitat was the greatest thing in the world, and any town that didn’t have one might as well set itself on fire.

  I DVRed the news and watched it over and over again, each time expecting it to say something different. It never did. The Positive Action Group wasn’t dead. It was stronger and more alive than ever!

  Tony put a sympathetic arm around my shoulders. “So you were wrong. So what?”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from the TV screen. “A beaver lodge! They haven’t even got a beaver to live in it. Didn’t you hear the announcer? Nobody’s seen Elvis for weeks! But, hey, Cam Boxer did it, so it must be perfect.”

  “When I saw him in Ravine Park, he didn’t seem too into it,” Tony offered.