“Have a good time at camp, son,” Dad said.
“Try and stay away from the canoes,” Mom said.
“Get me Ashley Woodstone’s autograph,” Katrina said.
“Remember: Resist the urge to be weird,” Anton said.
Darcy smiled, but really she was just opening her mouth to pull out the pencil she was chewing on.
I went to Grandpa to say my final goodbyes. “I’m gonna make you proud, Grandpa Maravilla. I’m going to save the world.”
“¿Qué?”
I smiled and gave him a hug. Then I turned to face the camp again. And I didn’t look back.
I did actually have to look back one last time. One of the rules at Camp Save the World was that campers were not allowed to have any electronic devices. “We don’t have that many rules at this camp,” said a man whose name tag read JIMMY! HEAD COUNSELOR! “Rule number one is to save the world. Rule number two is to have fun. And rule number three is no cell phones allowed.” He then handed me a piece of paper with rules four through twenty-three and sent me chasing after my parents to leave my cell phone with them.
But after that, I was on my way to my new home for the next five weeks: Cabin 8.
Cabin 8 looked mostly like the summer camp cabins I’d seen in movies and TV: bare wood walls, some dressers, and a pair of bunk beds. And sitting on one of the top bunks was a guy stuffing paintbrushes into a satchel.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Gregor.”
The guy—shaggy, shoulder-length blond hair pulled back beneath a red bandana—looked down at me, a crease between his eyebrows.
I tried again. “What’s up?”
He continued to stare. I attempted to dispel the awkwardness by chuckling, but to my surprise, forced laughter in a quiet cabin with a confused person watching was in fact the textbook definition of awkward. I hauled my stuff toward the bottom bunk but stopped when I noticed a photograph taped to the wall right next to it. In it, a perfect-looking African American guy was standing with his golden retriever on what looked to be the top of a mountain.
“I’m guessing this isn’t you,” I said. Almost as soon as I said it I wanted to kick myself. Was that supposed to be a joke? I wasn’t even sure, and by the looks of it, Paintbrush Dude wasn’t sure either. I swallowed and scratched an imaginary itch on my forehead. “Sorry, did I say something, or … ?”
“He doesn’t speak English.”
I spun around at the sound of the voice. The perfect-looking guy from the photograph was standing in the doorway, looking even more perfect in person. I was tall, but he was taller and much less gawky. His face was all strong angles and confidence. He walked over to shake my hand. “I’m Win Cassidy.”
“Great name,” I said. “I mean, I’m Gregor Maravilla.”
We both turned back to Paintbrush Dude, who was still watching us, a dubious expression on his face.
“I think he’s from Italy or Albania or Croatia or something,” Win said. “All he knows how to say is ‘I like paint.’”
That couldn’t be right. “What’s your name?” I asked him.
In a heavy, indiscriminate accent, Paintbrush Dude cleared his throat and very deliberately answered, “I like. Paint.”
“I’m calling him I Like Paint,” Win said. “ILP for short.”
An immigrant kid who didn’t speak English being called I Like Paint? This was not okay on so many levels. I felt disgusted and outraged on his behalf. And although this unnamed kid looked kind of angry at me for some reason, I wasn’t about to let this go unaddressed. “Isn’t that kind of problematic?”
“Oh, definitely,” Win said. I was surprised he agreed with me. He stood with his legs akimbo and folded his arms over his chest, regarding our bunkmate seriously. “But he’s really not giving us much to work with. Plus, I think it could be potentially more damaging if we gave him a totally new ‘Americanized’ name, like Brian or Todd, you know? But don’t worry, it’s absolutely a priority of mine to find out ILP’s real name as soon as possible and set things straight.”
ILP—he was already ILP in my mind, despite how wrong I felt about calling him that—didn’t seem to care. He gathered up his paintbrushes and hopped off the top bunk, shooting us one last confused look before he left.
Win rummaged through the top drawer of one of the dressers. He had the air of someone who’d been at this camp forever and already had a set routine and knew where everything was and had to rush off to meet his already large group of friends. “I gotta go, but I’ll catch you at orientation?”
“Sure!” I said.
It was already starting to feel like this camp was a new beginning for me. Like my life was finally about to start. And like Anton was wrong about everything.
I went over to the other bunk bed and dumped my things over the bottom bunk. I took out my Superman poster. Everybody else in the world was obsessed with the latest Superman movie, which had just come out two months ago. I was not. And in my own small protest against the shitshow that was that movie, my poster represented Superman from the comics. I pinned it on the wall, just over my pillow.
This was going to be a good summer. I could feel it.
* * *
When I was thirteen years old I stood in line for an hour to get Robert Drill’s autograph. He was signing copies of his autobiography at one of the big bookstores in Manhattan. It was a Sunday and it was the first time I’d ever taken the subway by myself.
Robert Drill was barely forty then, and he’d already done so much with his life. He’d started in game programming as a wunderkind at fifteen, and then he’d moved on from gaming to coding to create one of the biggest social media applications in the world. And then he’d started DrillTech, the foremost corporation in the advancement of modern technology. But instead of just sitting on all his billions, Drill had started the Robert Drill Foundation, donating the majority of his money to worthy causes all over the world. More than the tech stuff or the billionaire status, that’s what he was known for. Helping people. To me, he was a real-life hero. He may not have had the super strength or special gadgets or spandex suit or whatever, but he was still a hero: blessed with power and using it for good. Obviously, I wanted to be just like him.
I told him so when I gave him my book to sign that day in the bookstore. And I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said: “You have the potential for greatness. You could feed the children of the world one day.”
I never forgot those words. They shaped my Feed the Children campaign. They shaped my entire life.
Orientation didn’t start for another hour, so I had time to take a tour of the camp grounds. Even though I hadn’t left New York, this part of it—the country—felt totally different. It even smelled different, like earth and rain and sunlight weren’t just things that I could see and feel but things I could breathe in with every deep inhale. Coming from Brooklyn, I wasn’t used to seeing this much green all around me, or this much sky.
The camp was flanked by a lake and the woods. The girls’ cabins were spread out along the water, while a row of boys’ cabins was on the other side, next to the playing fields. Between the two sections of cabins was the Counselors’ House, a place big enough to have a wraparound porch. The office was on the first floor, while the sleeping quarters were on the second and third floors. I thought maybe the Counselors’ House was set up between the boys’ and girls’ cabins as a sort of buffer to make sure girls and boys did not intermingle late-night (rule number seven: no after-hours fraternization between campers). If that was the case, the layout was archaically heteronormative.
The clubhouse and the mess hall were both on the west side of the camp, and tucked away in the east was the recreational room. A brief stop inside showed me that there was a large flat-screen TV hooked up to a DVD player hanging on a wall and a couple of couches and beanbags facing it. At the other side of the room was a Ping-Pong table, and along the other walls were shelves, sparsely filled with books. I picked up a few to get a taste for the selec
tion. The Hunger Games and Robert Drill’s autobiography.
Outside the rec room, there was a group of campers I hadn’t noticed before, painting the back wall. It looked like they were painting a mural. ILP was among them, the only one on a stepladder. He was drawing a picture of the earth and other kids were already filling in some of the countries, each painting in a different color.
It was heartening to see campers working together and supporting each other with their causes—and camp hadn’t even officially started yet. This was exactly the sort of thing I’d never see at school. Kids helping each other out. I hadn’t even met most of these people, but I already respected my fellow campers.
The great thing about this camp was that everyone here was passionate about something. It was easy to be cynical about stuff. Most everyone I knew was cynical about something. Like my family, for example. They were all cynical about what this camp—or I—could accomplish. It was hard being an idealist in that kind of environment. But here, everyone was an idealist. To get into Camp Save the World you couldn’t just have a general desire to do good; you had to have a documented record of all the good you’d been doing thus far, with a focus on a specific cause that was close to your heart.
At this camp, you weren’t what you’d always been. You weren’t the guy in the band, or the kid with the deadbeat dad, the pastor’s daughter, the dweeb who sits in the corner. Here, you were—to put it mildly—the champion of the most worthy cause, the foremost expert in your field. Here, you were amazing. I was surrounded by campers who were bound to become interesting people at college parties.
I knew that together we could make a difference. And for once I didn’t feel like a total nerd for having such a corny, optimistic point of view.
A girl with short hair and bangs that fell above her eyebrows half skipped, half jogged toward me with a pink bakery box in her hands. “Have a cupcake,” she said, out of breath but exuberant. “It’s vegan. My campaign is Go Vegan.”
I bit into my surprisingly delicious vegan cupcake as she took off. I loved it here already.
* * *
The playing fields were the last part of the camp grounds I had yet to explore. It was called the playing fields, but it was really just one vast blanket of grass, flanked by the woods, a basketball court, and a rink. Knowing nothing about sports, I had no idea if the field was ideal for baseball or football, but for the first time in my life I was excited to try out either of those games. That was another part about camp that I was happy about. There was an innocence to it. Playing ball and running barefoot through the grass, and girls wearing awesomely small breathable fabrics and … people getting it on in public?
The couple I spotted caught me off guard. I’d nearly stumbled over them on my way to the rink. A guy and a girl, on the ground, wedged up against the waist-high rink wall, fervently making out.
They hadn’t seen me yet, so I ducked into the rink before they could. The camp was basically made up of uneven terrain—dirt, gravel, hills, roots, stumps. But the rink was smooth concrete, so of course that was where I tripped. At least there was no one to see me land on my shoulder.
Then I heard the unmistakable scraping sounds of skateboard wheels, thunderous as they barreled toward me. I was face-to-face with the board, sure it was about to crash into me, when it stopped abruptly, a hunter-green Toms shoe stepping off it.
The shoe belonged to a foot, which itself belonged to an ankle. I followed it up to a pair of drawstring pants, cinched at the cuffs. I followed the pants up till they came to rest lazily on slender hips, exposing a sliver of skin. White tee. And then there was her face.
Rosy. Glowing. Apple-cheeked. She was East Asian with long black hair split down the middle. It was probably time to stop staring, to break up this unbearable awkwardness with a few words. Any combination would do, but I could not let go of that face yet. She had a beauty mark on her mouth, right where top lip met skin. There was another speck on the top of her cheek, like it’d fallen there, delicate as a tiny snowflake. Like she’d been sprinkled with the stuff and tried to shake it off. Two beautiful specks, turned dark by the sun.
“You okay?”
I blinked, reconfigured myself. “Walking is … harder than it looks.”
She smirked around a piece of gum in her mouth. As she chewed I had weird thoughts that involved me wanting very badly to be gum.
“I didn’t think anyone was here.”
“I was sitting against the wall,” she said. “This is the only good place to skate around here. And smoke.”
Now that she mentioned it I could detect the remnants of cigarette smoke on her. Before this moment smoking was never something that I wanted to do, but now all I wanted was to sit against the rink wall and share a cigarette with her. I could imagine passing it back and forth between our fingers, talking about the meaning of life and falling in love or whatever.
“What’s your name?”
“Gregor Maravilla.”
“I’m Poe.”
“Like Edgar Allan?”
“Like Nicolas Cage’s character in Con Air: Cameron Poe. My parents were huge fans.”
“Oh! Did you know Tim Burton wanted Nic Cage to play Superman in a movie? It didn’t work out but there are pictures of him in the costume and—”
“It’s after Edgar Allan.”
Had I just gone into the Nic Cage Superman story again? I was never dumber than when talking to a hot girl. My mouth’s first response to beauty was always word vomit. A long moment stretched between us, and in its awkward silence, so much was confirmed. Mostly, that Poe was obviously the smarter and more sophisticated of the two of us. And I was a childish idiot who believed everything he heard and couldn’t go five minutes without talking about Superman. I had to save this moment before it killed me.
“There are people about to have sex right outside the rink.”
I was so useless. Poe’s eyes went wide, and she skated to the wall, not stopping until she was leaning over the side. I caught up to her and pointed the pair out. They hadn’t graduated to anything more than sloppy kissing yet. Except for face licking. There was aggressive face licking now. Poe watched them with bare curiosity. I tried not to watch Poe with bare curiosity myself.
“Wow,” she said. “They’re really going at it.”
“They obviously don’t know about rule number seven.”
“You a stickler for rules?”
“No,” I said too quickly. “I hate rules.” Stop talking.
“Nothing like watching two people going at it to put you in the mood …”
I loved this camp. I loved it so much.
“… or totally turn you off,” Poe continued. She pushed off the wall and was now rolling away. “Nice meeting you, Gregor.”
And I was left to watch her go, wondering what flavor her gum was with only the lingering fantasy of my lips on hers.
Orientation was at the clubhouse. Rows of folding chairs had been set to face a small stage just a foot above the floor at the head of the room. The stage setting was complete with a red theater curtain covering the wall. By the time I got there, most of the seats were already filled with campers. The requisite panic of choosing the right seat—the same one that I’d always felt at the start of every new class on the first day of every new school year—set in, but then I spotted my bunkmate Win. He was waving me over and patting the empty seat next to him.
The room buzzed with excited chatter. People were whispering, animated, huddled together and trading stories. I was sure everyone was talking about their campaigns and the things they’d done to merit a spot at this camp, but as I made my way to Win I realized that they weren’t talking about that at all. In fact, they were talking about one specific thing.
“Is anyone here her bunkmate?” one girl said. “That would be so cool.”
“I hear her cause has roots in feminism.”
“There’s no way she’s here with a feminism campaign, ’cause that’s what I’m here for.”
The myth of Ashley Woodstone had followed me from my family’s car into the camp and she hadn’t even made an appearance yet. Awesome.
“She’s probably just looking for some good PR now that the world knows her boyfriend was a psychopath.”
This made me stop for a moment. I had to admit, I was curious despite myself. But the word “psychopath” got thrown around all the time (which was really insensitive to people with mental health issues), so I didn’t think much of it. Everyone here may have been obsessed with Ashley Woodstone, but nobody seemed to be asking the question that I thought was most pertinent: Why the hell was a movie star even at this camp?
I got to Win. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”
“No problem. I know how stressful it can be finding a suitable seat partner.”
Somehow I doubted that about him. “Yeah, especially when all anyone wants to talk about is Ashley Woodstone.”
Win nodded. “I know, right? People are all antsy, waiting for her to show up. But I get it, she’s famous.” He was playing aloof, but I caught him discreetly surveying the crowd, probably checking to see if Ashley had shown up yet.
I didn’t want to talk about Ashley. But. “I heard somebody say something about her having an … unstable boyfriend.”
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head.
Win stared at me, eyebrows raised. “You been livin’ under a rock, buddy? He’s one of The Ruperts.” Win was about to say more when our head counselor stepped onto the stage.
“Hello there, everyone!” Jimmy said, taking a deep breath and smiling wide at the crowd. He was the same guy who’d given me the list of rules earlier. Jimmy looked to be in his late twenties, over six feet tall and broad-shouldered, with dirty-blond hair that fell around his ears in overgrown curls. He had the physique of a jock but the geeky nervous excitement that I recognized in myself. I could see it in the smile on his face. I could even see it in the way he clutched the clipboard in his hands. “I’m Jimmy, your head counselor, and I want to personally welcome you to Camp Save the World!”
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