Jimmy appeared behind the podium and greeted the members of the press. I guess it was time to start.
“First of all, I just want to say, the rumors about this camp have been greatly exaggerated,” he began. “You’ve probably heard that there has been one hospitalization at this camp and two fatalities. Well, those figures are simply flat-out wrong. There was only one fatality, and we gave the goldfish a beautiful burial. And I can confirm that the camel that was injured a few days ago did not in fact break its back. It was only dehydrated and needed to rest. Who knew camels could get dehydrated, amiright?” Jimmy’s uncanny skill for trying to make an audience laugh and failing was as strong as ever. In a low and rushed voice he concluded, “Camper Michael Kremsler, however, was in fact taken to the hospital for diabetic ketoacidosis. The point is … Robert Drill is here, everyone!”
I almost couldn’t see him for the sudden standing ovation, but there he was, pulling back the curtain and walking to the podium. His movements were not translucent or robotic. He was the real Robert Drill. My one-time hero.
“Hello, campers and press. I just want to say right off the bat how happy I am to be here at Camp Save the World, the most normal camp in America!”
A media person’s hand shot up. He didn’t wait to be called on before he started talking. “Is it true that conditions in the mess hall have gotten so bad that star camper Ashley Woodstone has been reduced to eating dirt?”
Drill laughed. “Ashley Woodstone does not eat dirt.”
Jimmy stepped forward and whispered something quickly into Drill’s ear that wiped the smile off his face. Drill took to the microphone again and quickly said, “I have no comment on Ms. Woodstone’s eating habits.”
Another member of the press raised her hand and asked a question. “Mr. Drill, can you address the issue of the international kidnapping that occurred at this camp? Is it true that the camper in question, who did not speak English, tried to draw his way to freedom, effectively painting a map showing where he was from and where he was supposed to be heading this summer—a camp in California—but was largely ignored by campers and staffers alike?”
“What happened to that camper was a simple mistake with his travel itinerary,” Drill said. “The good news is that he was sent to his art camp in Palm Springs as soon we were alerted to the incident. We hear that I Like Paint is very happy there.” Robert Drill’s eyebrows crinkled as he read over his paper, and then he turned to Jimmy once again before returning to the audience. “Excuse me, the camper’s actual name is Alec Pent.”
I couldn’t believe it; I Like Paint had been telling us his name the whole time. We were all just too stupid to hear it.
Another press person raised his hand, but Drill stopped him before he could go on. “Okay, I know you all have a lot of questions, but I feel I need to make clear that this is still a normal camp. Camp Save the World has an emphasis on civic duty and leadership. All of our campers are accomplished activists with their own personal campaigns, trying to make the world a better place. The camp has provided them with opportunities they wouldn’t have had anywhere else, with counselors who are activists themselves that have taught them what it means to be out in the field. With activities that are uniquely focused on activism.”
Lies. Lies. Lies.
“Aside from this wonderful camp experience, one lucky camper will have the opportunity to work with the Robert Drill Foundation in Florida for an internship opportunity unlike any other.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I found myself walking, my feet moving of their own accord, down the aisle, right through the center of it, ignoring all the looks I was getting. I caught a glimpse of Poe, staring right at me, and although she wasn’t saying anything, I found courage in the way she watched me. By the time I got to the podium it was too late for anyone to stop me.
“ROBERT DRILL IS A LIAR!”
I had definitely shouted that too loud, but I had to take advantage of the shocked silence around me. “The internship is a lie! Tell everyone, Mr. Drill! I heard you tell our head counselor that there was no unpaid internship! It was all a lie, wasn’t it? And for what? To make everyone at this camp turn against each other?”
Mr. Drill smiled, but it was an uneasy smile, like he was just plastering it on for the cameras. “Son, I think you’re mistaken.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I met you when I was thirteen years old. And you told me I could feed the children of the world someday. But that was a lie too, wasn’t it, Mr. Drill?” I walked to the microphone, which made Mr. Drill take a step back. “It’s time you tell us the truth,” I said. “We deserve that, at least.” With the microphone in front of me and everybody’s undivided attention, I decided to throw in one last thing before I let Robert Drill have the stage back. “Also, I just want to state for the record that I am not a bigot.”
I stepped away, and Mr. Drill took my place behind the podium. “Okay. I’m not sure how you heard that conversation between Jimmy and I, but you’re right. I did tell him that there was no unpaid internship.”
Gasps everywhere and murmurs from the press. It was the chorus of my validation.
“But,” Mr. Drill continued, “it was only because The Prize is actually a paid internship. In the amount of a full four-year college tuition.”
Well, shit.
“You ever going to get out of bed?”
No. The answer to that question, for now and always, was no.
Win pulled back my sheet anyway, exposing my head to the harsh light of nothing. “You missed calisthenics.”
Didn’t care. “Are people talking about me?”
“Nobody is talking about you.”
“Are you kidding? The whole camp is talking about you!” Rights said. Activities had already started, so I didn’t know why he was even here. Probably wanted to gloat. Probably wanted to see what humiliation looked like in low-quality human form.
Well, here it was: lying in bed with a sheet over its head, stewing in its own self-loathing.
“Pathetic,” Rights said.
“Don’t listen to him,” Win said. “It doesn’t matter if some people are still talking about you. Just remember—”
I pulled my sheet back over my head again and shut myself off from the world.
* * *
I didn’t know how much time had passed before I heard a knock on the door. I ignored it, but the knocking was persistent. I rolled over onto my stomach and reached for the window curtain next to the bed, pushing it aside to see who was out there. Pika stood outside the window, staring straight at me. I almost fell off the bunk bed when I saw him. If he was at the window, that meant that the person at the door had to be …
“Ashley,” I said. Pika was making his way up the steps behind her, but I closed the door on him before he could make it in.
“Gregor Maravilla!” Ashley said. “I heard.”
She was dressed in a ballerina-type skirt that was too long to be a tutu but strawberry-ice-cream-colored enough to remind me of the ballet anyway. Her hair was tied in a messy knot at the top of her head. She wore a chunky sweater even though it was a hot day. “What did you hear?”
“I heard you stood up to Robert Drill. I’m so proud of you.”
“What?”
“I didn’t go to the press conference because, well, I hate those things. I go to enough of them for work. Had I shown up they would’ve made it all about me, and it wasn’t about me. It was about you and Robert Drill and your big moment. Pika was there, though. He told me all about it. He said you went up to the podium and really told Drill off.”
Pika. That bastard.
“You didn’t come to the clearing, or dinner, and today you missed calisthenics, so I came to see you. Tell me everything!”
“What your bodyguard didn’t tell you is that I’m the idiot who accused Robert Drill of making false promises, but it turns out it was an even better promise, and now I have no chance of getting that paid internship—of my dreams, I might add—whi
ch would’ve not only fulfilled me on a deeply personal level but would also have, as it turns out, paid for my entire college education.”
Ashley’s ever-present smile dimmed. “What?”
“‘Be the hero,’ you said. But you know what, Ashley? I’m never going to save the day. I’m never going to feed the children, because heroes aren’t real. Superman isn’t real. Superman never had to live in the real world. Superman never had to go to this camp!”
I only realized I was out of breath when I found myself trying to catch it. I had come to this camp with a mission to do good. I thought I could change the world. I thought I would find my pathetic origin story. But this camp changed all that. It broke me. I was done being an idealist. Living with my head in the clouds never got me anywhere. In fact, it had made everything worse.
“What are you talking about?”
“I humiliated myself!” I said. “Not only in front of the man I idolize, but in front of the press. Do you know what my brother sent me today?” I went to my bunk bed and dug under my pillow for the fax that Anton had sent first thing in the morning. “The five most embarrassing moments from the Robert Drill press conference at Camp Save the World,” I read. “Let me just skip to number one: A camper totally lost his shit and stormed the podium, accusing Robert Drill of ‘injustices’ that all turned out to be completely made up. It’ll probably be a while before that kid ever lives that tantrum down.”
I crumpled up the paper and threw it on the floor. “And it’s all your fault.”
Ashley took a step, her face a picture of confusion. “Do you really think that, Gregor?”
“You know what? Yeah, I do.” I was getting even angrier, the last four weeks of this clusterfuck of a summer finally coming to punch me in the gut, making me vomit up all the vitriol that had been cooped up. “I actually came to this camp with a good cause. Not like Save the World With Song or Zombie Attack or that girl who wants S.P.E.W.—which I still don’t understand, by the way. And I certainly have a better cause than you. All you do is eat dirt, Ashley. I mean, what the fuck even is that? Nobody is going to start eating dirt just because a Manic Pixie Dream Celebrity going through a fad diet is telling them to. And I’m sorry to break it to you, but I’m not altogether sure that your eating dirt isn’t just a case of undiagnosed pica or at the very least a serious eating disorder. Either way, you obviously have an iron deficiency and you need to get that checked out.”
Ashley didn’t say anything. She just looked upset, and that, weirdly, made me even angrier. “Everything about this camp is so screwed up that you’re probably going to be the one to win the internship. And you don’t even need it! You said yourself you’re only at this camp to make friends. But guess what—you can’t make friends if you don’t open up about yourself. You might be famous, but I don’t know anything about you. Or your family. Or your ‘bad news’ exes. You just shut me down anytime I ask you about them. And you can’t make friends when you’ve got a bodyguard following you everywhere you go. You asked me if I thought you were weird, and you know what? Yeah. I do. You’re freaking weird, Ashley.”
I breathed. It only took a second—just that one breath—but in that moment I found out that hating yourself could happen instantly. I hated myself with a force so strong that it knocked me back a step. I was winded with how big of a jerk I was.
I wanted to eat my words, find them all, gather them up and swallow, pretend they hadn’t ever been out in the world.
But they had.
I could see it on Ashley’s face. No smile, not even the hint of one.
“Sorry you were humiliated, Gregor.”
“Ashley …”
“I brought you this.” She held up a bag I hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding the whole time. “Which was … stupid of me. But here it is.” She set it on the floor.
“Ashley, wait.”
She left, despite my stilted moves to try to reach out, explain, take it back.
I felt like running headfirst into the wall. Instead, I pulled my shirt over my face, plopped down onto the floor, and breathed hard to try to dissipate my new anger. This time it was all directed at myself. I wasn’t even thinking about Drill anymore.
I pulled my shirt down. There was the bag she’d left. Inside was red fabric. I stretched it out, trying to make out what it was. The letter G was sewn onto the top center of it. And then it hit me. A cape.
There was a note too.
For Gregor. Now that you’re a real hero you’ll need this.
I sat in Nurse Patrosian’s office. Just like the first time I’d been there, I had to wait to be seen. The kid before me had taken up a lot of the camp nurse’s time with a bleeding thumb. It didn’t look that bad when he walked out with his hand bandaged up, but Nurse Patrosian’s white uniform was splattered all over with blood.
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked her. “Are you going to be okay?”
“No,” Nurse Patrosian said. “Now, how can I help you?”
I sat up and combed the hair falling over my forehead off to the side. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“I see,” she said, sighing. “Why do you say that?”
I felt for the space in my chest where my heart was. “It feels like an elephant is sitting on me. I can’t breathe right.” I took a deep breath to show her just how hard it was for me to take a deep breath. It came out all shaky. “Just … My chest hurts. Can you help?”
Nurse Patrosian sent me on my way with a lollipop, a bottle of Tums, and instructions never to bother her with a nonsense illness again.
I had felt awful since the moment I woke up, the memories of the day before smashing into me the second I hit consciousness. There was the piercing, twisting agony of the things I’d said to Ashley in the cabin. I pressed my fingertips into the center of my chest and rubbed.
I was a colossal idiot. The certainty of that fact heavy like a weight, pinning me to my bed. But I knew I had to get up. If there was any hope for me to make things right with Ashley, I’d have to find her and do my best to apologize.
* * *
My first stop was the mess hall. It always seemed that anytime I sat down to eat, Ashley would appear and come straight for me. Before, in the first days of camp when I’d been stupidly predisposed not to like her, it felt like a nuisance. Now I’d give anything to see her make a beeline for my table. She wasn’t anywhere, though.
I took my tray, ready to make my way through the crowds, when the whispering all around me reminded me of the press conference. I was so deep in thought about Ashley that I’d almost forgotten I’d made an ass of myself in front of everyone. I tried not to listen to the whispering going on behind my back, but I couldn’t help but pick up on a few things, and everything I could make out had one common denominator.
Ashley.
After a moment I realized no one was talking about me. The buzzing all around me mirrored the thoughts in my brain exactly. All anybody was interested in was her.
I took my regular seat, grateful that Unity was already there so I could ask him. “What’s everyone talking about?”
“You haven’t heard?” he said. “Ashley Woodstone left camp.”
“What?” He was wrong. She wouldn’t just leave. Not without saying goodbye. But worse, I thought: Not because of what I said to her.
“Rumor has it she went to see her boyfriend in jail,” Unity said. “Upstate New York: nothin’ but jails and summer camps, man.”
Her boyfriend in jail? The rumors I’d forgotten from the start of camp came crashing back to me. A cluster of three girls walked by my table and I stood abruptly, blocking their way. “Is it true that Ashley went to see her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—in prison?” I didn’t know why I thought they’d know better than anyone else, but I needed to hear from other people. I needed confirmation and second opinions before I put any stock in this.
“Oh yeah, she def went to see Rupert L.,” Clean Air said.
“I think it’s so sweet that
she wants to get back with him after everything,” Censorship said.
“If my boyfriend was as ripped as Rupert L., I wouldn’t care if he was in jail for murder,” Fracking said.
Clean Air slapped Fracking’s elbow. “He’s not in jail for murder,” she said. “Only an accessory to it. Or something.”
The girls walked on and I took my seat again, feeling dazed, my knees weirdly weak.
“I heard she went up there to marry that Rupert dude,” Unity said. He was stuffing his mouth with a breakfast burrito, so I couldn’t understand him too well, but having gotten the gist of it, I didn’t want him to repeat himself.
“She can’t—she can’t get married. She isn’t even old enough,” I said. “Right?”
“She can do whatever she wants. She’s an adult.”
“She’s seventeen,” I corrected.
“Emancipated minor,” Unity said. “Once she marries him they can have conjugal visits.”
“Conjugal visits?”
“Yeah, they let you have sex—”
“I know what it means.”
“They do it in like a trailer or something, for privacy. That Rupert dude is getting so lucky right now.”
I pushed away from the table, letting my untouched bowl of cereal go soggy. “I gotta go.”
* * *
I almost didn’t recognize our clearing anymore. The blankets and pillows were gone, no ice bucket or snack chests. The branches looked naked without their string lights.
Pika stepped out from behind a tree.
“Pika!” His name was a gasp when I said it. I was relieved to see him. If he was here, then Ashley couldn’t be too far. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
No Good Deed Page 17
