The Other Normals

by Ned Vizzini

  “How are you two doing today?” he asks me and Ryu. “Getting along?”

  “Ask him,” Ryu says.

  “We’re fine,” I say, but Ryu gives me the death eyes and mouths, White Lotus Crew. I edge toward Ken. “Is there any chance I can change yurts?”

  “Just let me enjoy my protein. Don’t you want some food?”

  I look at what my yurtmates are eating: thin soggy waffles doused with syrup and flecked with hard butter on bright pastel plates with cloudy plastic cups of water and juice. I want fresh fish. I want crab.

  “This is the stuff right here,” JB says, grabbing the syrup dispenser, whose sides are caked in layers of hardened syrup, and dumping it on his eggs. I never understood how people can do that.

  “I’m going to talk to my friends in yurt three,” Ryu says, standing up.

  “No you’re not—get—Ryu!”

  He walks off without a look back. Ken sighs and refocuses on his shake. Ryu goes two tables away to confer with his henchmen, kicking a thumb at me.

  “Is that the White Lotus Crew?” I ask JB.

  “That’s right, son. Big one they call Tiny; the other one they call the Silver Eel. You shouldn’t have messed with Ryu.”

  “I still did? What did I do? Beat him up?”

  “Yeah. You don’t know about White Lotus?”

  “What are they, a gang?”

  “Yeah. They stabbed a taxi driver.”

  “What?”

  “Initiation rite. Put him in the hospital for three weeks. Aren’t you from New York? Everyone knows White Lotus.”

  “I go to kind of a—”

  “White school?”

  “Well—yeah. What do you mean, stabbed a taxi driver? Was he in on it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Was it like part of a performance-art piece?”

  “Nuh-uh. He got stabbed.”

  I watch Ryu discuss some plan with Tiny and the Silver Eel—his fellow gang members. He outlines a scheme on his palm like a football player.

  “Have you ever stabbed anybody?” I ask JB.

  “Pfff. Have you?”

  “What if I have? Would you respect me?”

  “I don’t know what you’d have to do to get me to respect you. Probably talk less.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “It’s the quiet people who get respect. You don’t know that? How come I’m even talking to you right now? Here I am giving out free advice. It’s because I like to talk. Don’t get it twisted.”

  “I don’t understand. I beat Ryu in a fight. Doesn’t that mean he’s supposed to respect me now? Isn’t that how it happens—you defeat the bully and then he’s nice to you?”

  “That only works with people who aren’t in gangs,” Sam says.

  “Sam! You’re talking to me! Thank you!” I nudge Sam’s shoulder, but he shakes his head and goes back to eating his eggs. My body sags. I finish eating breakfast without another word, trying to earn people’s respect.

  87

  AS DALE BLASWELL CHAIRS ANOTHER Hideaway Village powwow, I examine him for signs that he corresponds to Officer Tendrile. Besides his mustache and general imperious attitude, I don’t get any clues. He explains that we need to fill out sheets to select electives for the next week: camp activities like canoeing, nature studies, archery.... Clearly the best is archery. They don’t have sword fighting or hand-to-hand combat, so I put archery, archery, and archery as my choices.

  “You’re not getting archery,” my brother says, collecting my sheet. “They’re still mad at you about the fight. You’re gonna get nature studies for sure.”

  “Can you help me?”

  “I’ll try.”

  I get nature studies. It’s the worst: a thin woman with red hair brings me and ten other campers into a sweltering cabin by Lake Henderson, which is, like Anna said, now filled with water. (I wonder why—did I do something in the World of the Other Normals to change it? Maybe it was seeing that small creek turn into the Warbledash River.) While other kids swim and frolic in the lake, we stay in the cabin looking at books of lizards and frogs. A week ago I would have been thrilled to study lizards and frogs, I really would, but now I don’t want to read about them; I want to capture them, free them, feel them. And I want them to be on human bodies and have weapons and be able to talk.

  Next to me is Sam, who got relegated to nature studies too, but every time I open my mouth to speak to him, he shies away or finds something interesting to look at on his hands. He talks to Jaxson and Kolby, and when he catches me looking at them, he turns in, closing off their circle.

  After nature studies I check out the canoe shed by Lake Henderson. This is where I’m going to steal a canoe in six days to travel to Anna. It’s a six-foot-tall wooden shack, long enough to keep ten canoes stacked on one another, next to a short pebbled beach in front of the lake. A rusty padlock holds the shed’s door shut. I remember Ada, in jail: These local locks, cheap.

  I grab a paper and pen from nature studies. In our yurt after lunch, lying on the floor between Jaxson and George, I write out my best guesses as to what’s happening.

  1) Mortin Enaw = Jake

  They both have substance-abuse problems that they now seem to be overcoming; they both have chaotic, seesawing issues with authority; they both think they’re intelligent. The thing is, if Mortin’s my brother, who does that make Leidan? Me? That’s not possible, because Mortin told me that if I met my correspondent, everything would go haywire for me. Also, Jake is seventeen; Mortin seems forty-five. But the fact is, Mortin changed and then Jake changed. They have to match. I just hope the change lasts.

  2) X = you

  Somebody corresponds to me, and I have to have caused some big changes in that person’s life, because I erased my actions with Anna and apparently made it so I don’t play Creatures & Caverns anymore, and I have another hair. I can’t think what I did, or what was done to my correspondent, but the answer feels like it’s at the tip of my brain. It’s maddening.

  3) Where are the book and the miniature?

  If I don’t play Creatures & Caverns now, did I ever play it? And are the Other Normal Edition and Pekker Cland mini disappeared, or are they still in Dale’s cabin? Something tells me there’s a clue there—especially since Mortin was a special consultant on the book....

  “Mail!” Ken says, tossing a letter at me.

  “Already?”

  “Guess somebody loves you.”

  “Pussy,” says JB.

  The envelope is addressed in Dad’s blocky script.

  Dear Perry,

  I write you from home, having left you and your brother at camp. Thank you for spending time with him these past few months. I don’t know what you did, but when Jake said that he wanted to be a counselor’s assistant, that was a big turnaround, and I know it had something to do with you.

  Love,

  Dad

  PS If you can, get a picture of yourself with a girl and send it, please, so that your mother will get off my back about you doing well at camp.

  I fold the letter up and put it in my pocket. If Dad wants a picture, he’ll get one.

  88

  KEN RUNS THE CANOEING ELECTIVE, which I wheedle my way into by the end of the week. I’ve never been in a canoe before, but Ken makes it easy: he shows us bow (sitting in the front of the canoe) and stern (sitting in the back, where you have to steer); he explains port for left and starboard for right; he demonstrates back strokes, J-strokes, and sweeps. The main thing he emphasizes is that canoeing is a two-person activity. “It’s deadly to canoe alone unless you have lots of experience,” he warns.

  Well. That’s where Sam is going to come in.

  Canoeing takes place on Lake Henderson at two p.m. every day. At the end of each session, as we boys watch the girls across the lake swim and wave and call out and be unattainable, Ken always asks for someone to help him put away the life preservers; I always volunteer. The other kids make fun of me for being a kiss-ass (a “white
kiss-ass,” specifically), but this is what allows me to further reconnoiter the shed where the canoes and life preservers are stored. The rusty lock opens with a key that Ken keeps on a chain of official camp keys, including keys to magical places like the storage room in the dining hall (where soda is reportedly stashed) and the female counselors’ cabins on the other side of the lake.

  On day eight (12.5 percent of my full sentence at camp), after putting away the life preservers and locking the door, I slip the key off and pocket it. Ken doesn’t notice when I give him back the key chain. It’s the first time I’ve used any of my RPG skills at camp, and it feels good; I grin all the way through dinner with the stolen key in my pocket. When I’m done with my plan, I figure, I’ll leave the key in the lock, wiping it for fingerprints, and someone’ll find it the next morning.

  I’m not going to steal a canoe. I’m just going to borrow one. I can barely get through the day, I’m so excited. I want to explode and tell everyone what I’m up to. I’ll have to settle for telling the one person who I hope will get it. Time passes slowly at camp; the sun lounges in the sky, and clocks in cabins (old, cookie-cutter clocks with dust on top like at school) take breaks to go backward when you aren’t looking. It’s the sort of pacing adults say they love, but I can’t stand it. I prefer slowed-down adrenaline time.

  Finally, night covers Camp Washiska Lake a week after the square dance, and we all go to our yurts to sleep.

  89

  I WAIT UNTIL NINE. MY YURTMATES AND I lie on the floor in our sleeping bags. This is when you’re allowed to read, but nobody in our group reads. Maybe I’ll be reading, soon, if I get my Other Normal Edition back, but the funny thing is I don’t miss it. Anytime I want to read Creatures & Caverns, I think back to the real creatures and caverns I’ve fought in and escaped from. My memories are crystal clear—Ada was right; they did me a favor by not giving me an “orbitoclasty”—and they make me smile to myself with a kind of satisfaction I haven’t felt before. Even if no one knows what I’ve done, they can’t take away that I’ve done it.

  I try to do mind-over-matter to deal with the developing boy-sweat smell. Ken is off at a counselor meeting with Dale; he’ll come in later. I have my clothes on inside my sleeping bag, but no shoes.

  The plan is simple: the other kids in my yurt might be cooler than me, and better with the lyrics to rap songs, and more knowledgeable about New York City gangs, but they haven’t encountered creatures like I have. I’m going to bet on their fear of creatures.

  “Yo, that’s what I’m sayin’,” Kolby says. “When we gonna have another dance?”

  “Next week, I heard.” Jaxson.

  “I liked that one girl I was talking to, remember?” JB. I know all the voices now. “She’s got what you call the ass shelf. You could put a Dr Pepper on that shelf.”

  Quietly, carefully, I reach out of my sleeping bag and run a fingernail across the floor. Skkkkkkkkkkritch!

  “What’s that?” JB sits up in his sleeping bag. Moonlight comes through the screen door and illuminates his chest, which is strangely concave. “You hear that?”

  “What?” George asks.

  Wait for it … wait for it … skkkkkkkkratch.

  “That’s a raccoon! Right Jaxson?”

  “I dunno!”

  “Don’t they got rabies?”

  I lie very still, controlling my breath to keep from laughing.

  “It’s not a raccoon,” Ryu says.

  Skkkratch. Skritchskritch.

  “Yes it is! Damn! It’s coming in here to bite us! We gotta get it! Sam, you awake? Wake up Perry-bitch. Call Ken. This is an animal attack!”

  Sam looks at me. I wink. It’s a dangerous move. He could switch right then and report me. He avoided me all week. I didn’t bother him, and he didn’t bother me. I have to rely on the wink to bring back memories from home, from when we were lost in our own world by the fire stairs, because I know those memories and I can’t believe they’ve been entirely erased.

  Sam shakes me lightly. “I can’t wake him up,” he says. “You really think it’s a raccoon? What are you gonna do?”

  “Kill it! C’mon!” JB rounds up Jaxson, Kolby, George, and Ryu. “Get sticks. We gotta kill it before it gives us AIDS!”

  “I don’t hear it anymore,” Ryu says.

  Skkkkkrrrrratch.

  “That’s it!”

  All the campers besides Sam put on their clothes and head out of the yurt. “I’ll stay here and protect our stuff,” Sam says.

  “Yeah, and if he wakes up, tell him he’s missing out. We’re gonna kill something!”

  When the last of them is out the door, Sam grabs me. “What are you doing?”

  “Shh.” I unzip my sleeping bag. “Put your clothes on and get your backpack. We’re going.”

  “Where?”

  “On an adventure. Unless—am I not cool enough for you?”

  “Well, you just did one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

  Outside, JB yells, “There it is! Get it!” We hear the thud of sticks pounding the forest floor as we escape the yurt and head around the edge of Hideaway Village.

  90

  “ARE WE GOING ON A RAID?” SAM ASKS. His backpack slaps against him as we hustle through the trees. I showed him how to step on roots and rocks.

  “What’s a raid?”

  “A raid’s when you sneak into one of the other yurts at night and trash everything. Usually you wait until they’re doing a campout. And sometimes you do it to the girls. It’s a Washiska Lake tradition.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “I’m not saying we should do it. I’m asking you. Or maybe we’re going the dining hall to steal soda? I heard they got soda in the storage room. Cigarettes, too.”

  “No. We’re going to Dale’s cabin.”

  “Why?”

  “Sam.” I stop. He pushes his glasses up his nose. The night is calm and warm around us; crickets buzz. Through the trees, I see the bathroom and the clearing with the picnic benches. “Did we ever play Creatures and Caverns together?”

  Sam seems worried that spies in the trees will report his answer. “Yes. We used to. You don’t remember?”

  “Remind me.”

  “You stopped when we came to camp. You said you didn’t need it anymore. We used to play near the fire exit at your school.”

  “Yes!” I hug him. He isn’t quick enough to resist. I squeeze him tight and feel his cheek against my hair.

  “What’s wrong with you? You know we used to play that!”

  “Hold on, I’m not done. How come you treat me like crap at camp all the time?”

  “What do you mean? I don’t—”

  “Yes you do. Maybe I’m just your home friend and not your camp friend, but what’s the deal? It’s confusing.”

  Sam sighs. “You’re kind of …”

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah, Perry. You’ve always been like that. I don’t mind—I like it—but around other people you could just, you know … hold back a little.”

  “Dial it down.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. I’ll dial it down if you stop treating me like crap.”

  “Deal.”

  We shake. “Now come with me; we’re going to get my Rule Book and my Pekker Cland miniature.”

  “That’s dialing it down?”

  “Wait until you see what I have planned for the rest of the night!”

  91

  WE SNEAK AROUND THE BATHROOM toward Dale’s cabin, which is not a yurt. The camp director doesn’t sleep in a yurt. He gets a place that looks like a stylized house drawn by a preschooler: single door, two windows to either side, slanted roof. It’s quiet; the lights are off.

  “We could get in a lot of trouble for this,” Sam says. “The dining hall is one thing. You’re talking about the guy who runs the whole camp.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve done more dangerous things.”

  “Yeah? When?”

  I smile
at him. “In another universe.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I went to another world.” I can’t not tell him. I have to let it out. “It’s better than Creatures and Caverns. I think it’s why I stopped playing, because it’s like Creatures and Caverns, but real.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Perry.”

  “It’s true. If you stick with me, I’ll tell you all about it. After we get my stuff, though, we’ve got to go down to the lake and get a canoe.”

  “What?”

  “You know how to canoe, right?”

  “I can be bow, not stern.”

  “No problem. We’re going across the lake to meet Anna Margolis.”

  “No! You and her?”

  “Yes. We arranged a date.”

  “What am I gonna do while you’re macking it to her?”

  “‘Macking it’?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know, stand guard? I’m not gonna hook up hard-core with her. I just want to kiss her. That would be a personal victory for me.”

  We creep closer to Dale’s cabin. There’s no movement inside. Sam chuckles. “You and Anna hooking up is harder to believe than you going to another universe.”

  “Very funny. I already talked to her. I would’ve told you about it, but you were being a dick. If you want out, tell me; I’ll canoe over by myself.”

  “No, no. You’ll drown.”

  Inside the cabin, through the window, we see a tidy bed and a fold-out table holding milk crates full of confiscated goods. “I bet they got my comics from last year,” Sam says.

  “Don’t get distracted. We’re looking for my backpack.”

  Sam picks up a rock and rears back—

  “Stop!” I grab his arm.

  “What? How we gonna get in?”

  “I can pick locks.” I go to the door, shaking my head. If Sam’s going to be the impulsive crazy adventurer, I have to be the smart leader. This lock is my first test. I don’t have any tools like last time with Ada, but I’m counting on all the movies I’ve seen where people pick locks with credit cards. Step one: stick a credit card in the seam of a door. Step two: slide it up and down. Click. The universal metaphor again.