by Beth Vrabel
He sighed and sat back down. “It was a bad year. The worst. My wife … well, she passed on. Cancer. She was a planner, Elise was. She had gone out and gotten a life insurance policy. When she knew … when we realized she wasn’t … well, she made me promise I’d take some time for just me and Alan. Make sure that we were okay.”
“I sort of get that,” I said. “Sometimes things don’t turn out how you planned. You have to make the most of what you’ve got, right?” I shook on some generic A-1 to sort of prove my point. “Bet Alan loved it.”
Mr. Bosserman nodded. In the soft, orange glow of the stringed lights, I could see a small smile tugging at his mouth. “We did it up, best we could. We’d get off the train at different spots for a few days, find a campground, and spend the night under the stars. Just following the rails from campsite to campsite, making our own grub and livin’ on the land. Once found a real dinosaur bone in Montana!
“But Alan, it was the engines that fascinated him. Had to know how they worked.” He chuckled softly. “Always a mind for machines. By the time he got to high school, he had signed up for every tech summer class he could find.”
After Alan discovered computers, Mr. Bosserman said, he didn’t want to spend his summers on rails around the country. “I forced it for a while, making him go places with me. And if he wouldn’t get on a train, I’d make him go camping with me around here. But his heart wasn’t into it. Just made us both mad.”
Mr. Bosserman rubbed at his bristly cheeks with his thick hand. “I always told him: got to learn from the past, too. Tried to get him to love nature as much as he loved pushing those dang computer buttons. Didn’t think he got it, though. Not ’til he went and bought this camp. Can still hear him telling me about this place. Sounded like a little boy again.”
“Did he make you Paleo’s camp director right away?”
Mr. Bosserman rested his elbows on the table, facing out toward the woods instead of at me. “Nah. He bought all this land and made me promise to visit when I retired a couple years back. Finally, I did. He was fit to burst, so excited to show me around. First, all that fancy schmancy eMagine place.” The way he said it, I knew the word “eMagine” tasted sour in his mouth. “Then he says, ‘Look here at all this wooded area. Not sure what I’m going to do with it.’
“I says to him, ‘Why not make an actual, real camp here? A fire-building, fossil-finding, honest-to-goodness camp for real kids?’” That chuckle sounded again. “Wasn’t ’til later I realized he’d baited me, plain and simple. And like a fool minnow, I bit.
“‘That’s just what I’d hoped you’d say,’ he had said. And he took me back here, to this caboose, told me I was director of Camp Paleo.” Mr. Bosserman stood and gathered up the bottles of sauce and dressing, and this time I didn’t say anything to stop him. “I’m the caretaker of the campgrounds in the winter, spring, and fall, director of Camp Paleo in the summer. Something to do.” He shuffled back into the caboose. I could see when he opened the curved door that it had a little kitchen inside. I peeked into one of the round windows and saw a bed and a TV, too. The walls were lined with bookshelves, filled to overflowing.
“Do you live here year-round?” I asked when he returned, flashlight in hand.
“Yup. Fool-headed kid bought this caboose from the rail yard next town over. Trains stopped using cabooses in the 1980s. All these were rusting away. Just like Alan to find a new use for it. Spent more than this land’s worth on cranes loading it up and gettin’ it here. Then filling it with a kitchen and walls, outfittin’ it with a bed. I daren’t imagine how much that cost.”
“He must really love you.” My feet dragged as I followed him down the deck stairs. I closed my eyes, picturing my dad and our walks. How sad he would be when I was too old for them.
“Nah,” Mr. Bosserman grumped. “Everything about me annoys him. Way I talk. Way I live. Just wants to keep me busy and outta the way.”
“Seems like a lot of work to keep you out of the way. Wouldn’t it be easier to put you in one of those old folks’ homes?”
“I ain’t that old!”
I shrugged, even though I bet it was too dark for him to see. “He must’ve liked trains a little to get a caboose.”
“Fool-headed boy,” Mr. Bosserman said again, but softer this time.
I followed just behind his steady steps, watching the flashlight’s beam bounce along the pathway, my stomach full and happy, and my heart sad and homesick all at once.
Mr. Bosserman waited, keeping the flashlight steady into the A-frame, until I crawled under my covers. I glanced around. No one—not even my pack—had noticed I had snuck out.
I slept in later than everyone else, only waking when a T-shirt was tossed into my face. I sat up and saw clothes everywhere, with more flying through the air. I rubbed my eyes. A sock smacked my cheek.
“I’m sure we’ll find it,” April was saying to Kira. “I mean, it couldn’t have just walked off.”
“Maybe you left it in the bathroom?” Megan suggested.
“What’s going on?” I yawned.
“Ugh!” Kira threw a sweatshirt from the top bunk onto the floor with a soft thud. She was so mad that I could see little bits of spit fly from her mouth as she talked. “I remember putting my makeup bag right here in my duffel before we went on the hike yesterday. Right here!”
I climbed out of my bunk, tossing the T-shirt back on Kira’s bed.
“You!” Kira yelled, pointing at me. “You took it, didn’t you?”
“Now, now,” Jessica said in her chipper way. “Let’s not go blaming our friends!”
“We’re not friends,” Kira and I said in unison.
“I didn’t take your stupid makeup bag.” I stepped over a sweatshirt and got my own bathroom bag out of my suitcase. “Do I look like I wear makeup?”
I mean, seriously, I hadn’t brushed my hair since we got to camp.
“It’s a designer bag,” Kira snapped. “Everyone would want it.”
“Not me,” Amanda said. I could almost mouth along when she added, “Designer labels make me angry.”
“Besides,” I said, “you were with me the whole day. When would I have snagged it? Face it. You just lost it.”
“How do we know you didn’t snag it when the rest of us were sleeping?” Kira yelled.
Megan sucked in her breath and stared hard at me. Guess maybe she might have noticed I had sneaked out last night. I turned away from her and back to Kira.
“I told you! I didn’t take your stuff.”
April zipped up her sleeping bag. “I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually, Kira. You can go for the natural look until it does.”
I rolled my eyes. The old April wouldn’t have sounded so much like a magazine advice columnist.
“Where are you going?” Kira snapped as I threw back my sleeping bag cover and jumped to my feet.
“The bathroom!” I yelled back. “If it’s okay with you, your highness!”
“Yeah, right,” Kira muttered. “You’re probably going to hide the evidence.”
“Aargh!” I growled. I glared at April, waiting for her to tear into Kira on my behalf. But my so-called friend suddenly didn’t seem to have anything to say.
I stomped out of the A-frame. When I got to the bathroom, I slammed the door as hard as I could, even though the A-frame was probably too far away to hear the forceful smack of wood against wood. The fat toad who lived in the bathroom seemed startled, though.
Chapter Seven
This sneaking away thing is addictive.
As we entered eMagine’s computer lab, I heard Grandma’s voice drifting out of the open cafeteria windows next door. “One serving of tater tots! One!” she yelled. “This isn’t an endless buffet! Get your tots and move on.”
As the rest of the Paleo campers walked into the lab, I crouched down and backed away.
“Where are you going?” Megan hissed.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”<
br />
“You better! You’re going to get in trouble.” She grabbed my wrist.
I shrugged her off and ducked out of the doors while perky Jessica pointed out empty lab seats. “I’ll be right back!” I scanned the line, trying to make sure April, Amanda, and Sheldon wouldn’t give me away. But April took a seat between Kira and Ash at the long table. And when Sheldon and Amanda passed me, they were already absorbed in which geology website to visit for tips on where to find the next fossil. They didn’t even notice me.
I skidded into the cafeteria and almost blew my cover by standing there, mouth hanging open and staring at all the awesomeness. These campers were the exact opposite of cavemen in their gleaming cafeteria filled with screens, screens, and more screens. Television shows—oh, how I’ve missed you!—poured from monitors in each corner of the room. The brightly colored benches and tables held additional screens and even more were in the hands of the campers themselves. The kids buzzed to each other between bites of food, saying noncaveman-y things such as, “You’re such a jimmy!” and “Stop rubber ducking and let’s just do this!” One boy sitting alone just kept repeating, “Backdoor, backdoor.”
“A jimmy?” I muttered.
“Someone who doesn’t know what he or she is doing,” a boy behind me said. He rolled his eyes but kept them on the tablet he held, not looking up at me at all. “It’s what you call a person who doesn’t know anything about programming.”
“What’s with the kid needing a backdoor?” I asked, thinking maybe he was another Camp Paleo stowaway.
The boy rubbed at his temples like I was such a jimmy. “It’s something you put in so you can get to your program quickly for debugging.”
“Debugging?”
The boy slowly backed away without answering.
In front of me, three girls sat with their knees on the cafeteria bench, elbows and foreheads touching, making the beads in their braided hair click as they crowded around an iPad. “Let’s make the maze part harder. Maybe add a booster or something there,” one said, making the girl next to her bounce a little.
“Yeah! Let’s do this!” Tap, tap, tap on the screen.
“No! We should add a swerve here!” the third squealed.
I leaned over them, trying to see what they were doing. Seriously? They were creating an app. Not playing an app. Making one.
“Wow,” I gasped. One of the three glanced up at me and widened her eyes.
The girl covered the laptop the way Sheldon covers the answers of his math quizzes so Tom can’t copy him. “Let’s add some refuctoring, pronto,” she whispered. All three of them darted quick glances around the room, and then went back to programming.
The top half of the walls in the cafeteria were mirrored, making it look even more massive. And, unfortunately, forcing me to see myself.
I’ll paint a little picture for you. Let’s just say the only shower you’ve taken for the past few days has been standing under a trickle of cold water in a dark shower stall that had centipedes on the ceiling and baby toads by your feet. Maybe you forgot to bring in shampoo and so you just sort of scrubbed at your hair with soapy fingers. Let’s say you couldn’t bend over without your backside touching a slime wall so you hoped the suds would take care of the dirt coating your knees and your ankles. Then let’s say that as soon as you left the shower stall, you immediately coated yourself in bug spray and sunscreen, which you’ve generously reapplied sixteen times since.
You might have forgotten to pack a hairbrush, so for the past three days, you’ve just shoved your hair into a ponytail and tried not to think about why your bangs weren’t hanging across your forehead anymore. Turns out, that’s because they stick straight out from your head in a stiff line. And let’s say you forgot to change into your pajamas the night before and, since you were already dressed when you awoke, you just went with it.
Yup. I was looking pretty good …
I also was hungry, so I grabbed a tray and joined the lunch line. Judging from how the clean and sparkly eMagine campers in line scooted ahead, I’m guessing I smelled as fresh as I looked.
“Come on, come on, mealtime is almost over,” Grandma muttered behind a tray full of fruit. She didn’t look up.
I snickered. At least someone looked worse than I did. Grandma’s frizzy hair was tucked into a bright yellow hair net, her hands covered in plastic gloves, and her face was cherry red and lined where sweat trickled down her cheeks.
A girl two spots ahead of me was stalling, staring at the different choices. I’ve got to admit, it was a bounty. There were fresh strawberries, sliced peaches, blueberries, and even some blackberries from which to choose. Grandma’s ladle swayed over the options, following the girl’s eyes as she scanned the fruit. Grandma still hadn’t noticed me.
“Kid,” asked Grandma, her voice hardening, “what’s your favorite berry?”
“Barry?” the girl replied, eyes widening. “Um. Manilow, I guess.”
“Manilow? That’s way old school,” the girl behind her scoffed.
“What can I say?” the first girl replied. “My folks are hipsters. And big Fanilows.”
“Berry!” Grandma snapped. “Berry! As in straw or blue! Are you even children?” She whipped the ladle back and forth, making both girls back up. They shakily pointed to the peaches.
The girls scooted down the line to the more emotionally stable lunch ladies. “I’ll take ’em all,” I said to Grandma. “All the berries.”
“’Bout time someone knows her mind,” Grandma muttered and scooped fruit onto my tray without looking up. “Genius kids making me lose my mind …”
I coughed.
“Lucy!” she gasped, her eyes widening as she stared me in the face. “What are you doing here?”
“Good to see you, too, Grandma.”
She ushered me behind the register to the big stainless steel kitchen, getting another lunch lady to take over the ladle for her. I held firm to my tray, snagging a ham sandwich on the way.
“What’s up, Luc?” Grandma sat down on the steps outside the kitchen with a thump and dragged off her soggy hair net. Her hair puffed up like a mushroom.
I nibbled on the fruit and shrugged. “Just wondering how you are.”
Grandma narrowed her eyes at me until I sighed.
“And maybe wondering some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” Grandma slipped off her latex gloves and bunched them up into a ball. She tossed them toward a trashcan and fist pumped when they landed inside. “Sweet!”
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“What?” she snapped. “I’ve been picking up the lingo.”
“Don’t.”
Grandma laughed. “All right. Spill. What stuff have you been wondering about?”
I pushed my now-empty tray off my knees and onto the step below us. “Love stuff.”
“Dear Lord. Couldn’t it wait until you got home?”
“No.” I crossed my arms. “How do you make people fall in love?”
“You don’t.”
“That’s it? I’m serious, Grandma,” I said. “I know these two people. And they’d be great together. Really would solve a lot of problems if they just realized it, you know? So how do I make them realize it?”
Grandma stared at me a long time. She touched my bangs with a surprisingly gentle touch, stopped, and rubbed her fingers together. She patted my head instead. “Is this about me and Mr. Bosserman?”
“No!” I blurted. “Ew.”
Grandma glared at me. “What do you mean ‘ew’? I can’t have romantic feelings?”
“Grandma!”
“Lucy!”
We stared at each other, both of our mouths opening and closing while we figured out what to say next. Pretty quickly I realized that going to my always-alone grandma for relationship advice might’ve been a poor choice. But her reaction did trigger a whole new set of questions.
“Where is Grandpa?”
“What?” This time, when Grandma shot to her feet,
I couldn’t tug her back down. She stared at me.
“I mean,” I started, “I know how things work. If I’ve got a grandma, I’ve got to have a grandpa out there. Where is he?”
“Your mom never talked to you about this?”
I shrugged. I had asked Mom once where her dad lived. All she said is that she’d never met him. That he left Grandma before Mom had been born.
Grandma sighed. “Sometimes people think they’re in love when they’re not. Maybe what they really want is to not be alone anymore. Your so-called grandpa? He realized before I did that what we had wasn’t love. He bailed out ’bout the same time I knew your mom was on the way.”
“Well, he’s a jerkface then.” I crossed my arms. “You’re lucky he left.”
Grandma nodded, but didn’t say anything for a moment. “Still would’ve been nice, you know. Not to be alone.”
Suddenly my plot for April and Sheldon took a backseat. Was my Grandma sad? “Do you still want that?” I asked quietly.
“Want what?”
“To not be alone anymore?”
“Nobody wants to be alone. Not really,” she answered. Grandma put out her hand and I grasped it, letting her pull me up next to her. She kissed the top of my head, which was a pretty brave thing to do considering the state of my hair. “I wouldn’t say I’m lonely. Not with you and your sister around.”
“But Molly’s in day care and I’m getting older …” I suddenly thought about Mr. Bosserman standing alone on his deck, saying his son was just trying to get him out of the way.
“Man, kid. Did you just come here to depress me?”
I pushed myself against Grandma’s side. “No. I just … I think you should really give Mr. Bosserman a chance to share his chow chow.”
Grandma laughed. “All right. I’ll give him a chance.”
“So, you really don’t have any advice for me?” I pushed. “About getting two people to notice each other? Maybe even start to like each other?”
