We’d only just begun partying and people were already going wild: dancing too erratically to the mellow musical stylings of Save the World With Song, flopping onto the ground and rolling around with each other, hooking up, of course. Rights had stripped off his shirt and was now swinging it over his head, to the questionable delight of a group of girls around him, like they were all playing out a scene from Magic Mike.
And I sat and watched them, wondering if Jimmy would wake up tomorrow to find that instead of calisthenics, everyone’s morning workout would consist of trying to get up off the ground.
I’d taken a few sips of beer, my first one ever. I did it partly to fit in and partly because this was another “first.” A first drink seemed appropriate right now. The beer tasted gross—it being room temperature probably didn’t help—but I could already feel it getting me buzzed. My brain was beginning to swim. I wasn’t yet sure if I liked the feeling, but I was leaning toward yes.
“Hey,” Poe said. “Wanna go somewhere?”
I stared blankly. “Okay.”
She presented her hand. Her small, lovely, soft-looking hand. I put mine in it. Definitely soft. She helped me up and then pulled me along.
* * *
We walked through the woods. I did not like walking through the woods at night, but apparently my superpower was gravitating toward girls who did.
“I just wanted to get away from all that noise,” she said.
“Uh-huh.” I almost tripped on an overgrown root but found my bearings again. Luckily, Poe hadn’t seen.
“That’s a lie. I really just wanted to get you alone.”
I swallowed. “Me?”
We stopped walking and she took a swig from her beer can. Her lips twisted in a smirk, that beauty mark on her lip practically twinkling. She looked at me quizzically, like if she studied me long enough she could read my mind. Maybe she already could.
“You and me, we have a lot in common,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Poe said. “We both think this camp is a joke. And we both really like me.”
“What?” I had to stop with the monosyllabic comments, but it was like my mind couldn’t form long words in her presence. Also, I was mostly confused whenever I was around her. Like now. Especially now.
“There’s this rumor going around that you like me.”
“Oh.” There I went again. “I couldn’t possibly like you,” I said. “I mean, even if I did like you, it wouldn’t matter because … you know …”
“I don’t,” she responded, walking closer to me. Her hair could’ve been a single piece of cut velvet. It was so uniform, not a strand out of place.
“It wouldn’t matter if I like you because you’re … you know.” If she wasn’t going to say she was gay, then I definitely couldn’t say she was gay. That’d be like outing her. Or something. Except she was walking even closer to me. So close that I could smell vanilla in her hair and beer on her breath. An intoxicating combination.
This was dangerous territory. I couldn’t look directly at her. If I looked directly at her I might do something stupid. I looked anywhere else. And then my eyes caught something on a tree. A circle of entwined twigs and leaves.
My crown of leaves. The one that Ashley had made me, the one I’d promptly taken off and hung on that tree like a welcome wreath.
I looked around and realized where we were. We were in the clearing. Our clearing—mine and Ashley’s. She’d wiped it clean, but she’d forgotten that wreath.
I took a step back from Poe. At the beginning of the summer I would’ve done anything to be in this very situation with her. Anything to be as close to her as I was now, anything to make her as interested in me as she seemed to be at this very moment. But now I realized I didn’t want any of that at all.
“I have to go,” I said.
I left Poe and the clearing.
I needed to take my mind off things. Which was the only way I could explain my attendance at Talent Night.
For our fourth competition to win The Prize, Jimmy explained that we could get up on stage and perform a talent. Something about how being a good activist meant being creative and how being creative meant having talent. I wasn’t too clear on the details, but I did know that Talent Night would now be connected to Color War. The counselors would award five points to every camper whose talent was—what they would liberally deem—remarkable. But for the first time, all points gained for this competition would also go toward rewarding the Color War teams. Also for the first time, this competition was optional. I decided to partake as an audience member only.
So I sat in the clubhouse, watching as Stop Fracking twirled her baton with gusto. She wasn’t as good as Trigger Warning had been before her, who had passionately sung a sad Adele song. Now Unity, dressed in a tux, was at the mic.
He’d talked to me about his talent. He said he didn’t have one but that it was okay because he’d gotten World Peace to help him out with that. He said she’d competed in tons of talent portions in plenty of pageants and that he had this in the bag. I looked at the program in my hands to see how long this was going to take.
Unity will be wearing his finest evening wear and answering the age-old question: “Why America really does need unity through multiculturalism.”
“I am American,” Unity said into the microphone. “And I personally believe that unity through multiculturalism is important and also the fabric of this nation. Because unity is part of the American Dream. But sometimes we have nightmares.” The spotlight on Unity must’ve been intense, because sweat was starting to sprout on his forehead and he was squinting. “And nightmares happen, such as thinking about clowns and others. It’s up to our leaders like the dreamers who dream to help educate our American students—especially the youngsters as such kindergartners and more littles—to never stop dreaming of unity in places like Texas and Alabama and New Hampshire as well as Old Hampshire. Not to mention my birth state of Illinois, where the pizza was invented. Because America.”
I had no idea what he was saying, and part of me wondered if World Peace had actually tried to help him or sabotage him. It really was a special talent to not be able to answer a question you asked yourself. I clapped, if only to aid Unity off the stage quicker.
I looked down at the program again. There was only one participant left.
Down With Styrofoam puts on a one-woman show of her original play, Death of a Styrofoam Salesman.
Time to go. No offense to Down With Styrofoam, but I was really not in the mood to sit through an entire play right now. Plus, her stance on Styrofoam was made even more unclear when the curtains went up and all of the scenery and props for her play were made entirely out of Styrofoam. Did “down” mean “with” or “against”? I got up and squeezed through the seated audience members to get to the aisle.
Down With Styrofoam took the stage. “Thank you all for joining me tonight in bringing the story of a doomed Styrofoam salesman to life. I wrote and directed this one-woman show, and I am happy to announce the return of Ashley Woodstone in all of the roles!”
I stopped in my tracks and turned. There she was. Ashley. Styrofoam salesman. I sat down at one of the empty seats in the back row.
The seven-minute play was an abomination, but Ashley was amazing. She acted the crap out of all six roles, playing a variety of people, from a little old man yelling at his cup to the title salesman, a fortysomething man in the midst of a debilitating depression. I sat on the edge of my seat for all of it, eyes wide, jaw unhinged. I couldn’t tell if we, the audience, were meant to root for the Styrofoam salesman or applaud his demise. And the death-by-elevator-shaft ending seemed entirely beside the point. But as soon as Ashley “fell” off the stage and the lights went down, I jumped out of my seat and clapped.
It was a standing ovation of one, and when the lights went back on, Ashley stood there onstage, her eyes locked on mine. I clapped, I cheered, I was the loudest person in the clubhouse. But she did not ret
urn my smile, or my excitement at seeing her. She broke our eye contact and walked off the stage.
I was seized with a sudden fear—that I’d really blown it, that she would leave camp again, that I would never get to properly apologize to her. I acted on instinct and ran down the aisle, throwing myself onto the stage just as Jimmy was walking to the center of it.
“Wait!” I said, standing up. “There’s one more act.”
Jimmy was confused but excited. “It looks like we have a last-minute entry. Children, the stage is yours.”
Jimmy left the stage, and a spotlight shone directly on my face. I had to shield my eyes for a moment until they adjusted to the light. I searched the room for Ashley. “My talent,” I said into the microphone that Jimmy handed me, “is being a terrible friend.”
It was dumb, I know it was dumb, but I had no idea what else to say and I was desperate to say something—anything—that would get her to listen. I found Ashley in the crowd. She’d taken a seat all the way in the back. To me, she could’ve been the only person in the room. “It’s something I discovered about myself at this camp. I didn’t know if I’d make any friends this summer, but I did. And I didn’t realize that making friends means that sometimes you can hurt them almost as much as you care about them. I discovered at this camp just how painful missing someone can be. And that it can consume you. And that every little thing can remind you of them. Like a salamander in the woods. Or the smell of the earth after it rains. My talent is saying things I don’t mean and being an idiot and ruining a really good thing. The best thing.” I watched Ashley, trying in vain to read her unreadable expression. “I’m so sorry,” I told her. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But I hope you’ll at least consider it.”
I didn’t move. No one in the room seemed to. I just watched Ashley, waiting for her to give me a sign, waiting for that patented Ashley Woodstone smile. She stood up and walked out of the clubhouse.
A lone voice in the audience shouted, “YOUR TALENT SUCKS!”
* * *
I crashed through the double doors, into the night. I’d jumped off the stage and run down the aisle after her. She was heading in the direction of the woods. “Ashley, wait!”
Her back was turned to me, but I could see her sigh in the way her shoulders moved. “I’m not here for you,” she said. She turned to face me. “I didn’t come back for you, and I wasn’t at this camp for you. I know it may have seemed that way, but my time at this camp wasn’t just to be your sidekick or some girl you found really strange but drawn to for whatever reason. My camp experience wasn’t just to validate yours, Gregor. I was here to make friends. And I thought that was what I was doing with you. I guess I was wrong.”
Her voice got small at the end there, and it made my heart feel even smaller. Tiny enough to topple over and break.
“You might think that eating dirt is weird, but I don’t think that a sixteen-year-old boy who likes Superman is weird. Sorry if my so-called weirdness ruined your camp experience. But you kind of ruined mine.”
She walked off again, and I could do nothing to stop her.
“So she walks up to it, slowly. She doesn’t know what to do, she doesn’t know where to go. And then she opens the door and sees … that the pantry is full of grains and pasta and does not contain a single gluten-free option!”
This was Gluten Freedom’s idea of a scary story.
We were sitting around a small campfire, some other campers and I. It was Campout Night. Two days after Talent Night, two days after Ashley, in so many words, had told me she didn’t want to talk to me anymore.
Tonight, campers were spread out through the vast playing fields, some of them building tents, others learning the finer points of outdoor cookery. Tonight, we left the comforts of our cabins to sleep under the stars. A real camp experience.
Ashley and I had managed to stay away from each other these last couple of days. But now we sat at the same campfire, listening to the same ghost/gluten stories. Sitting across from each other and avoiding eye contact at all costs. Pika wasn’t anywhere in sight, though, so at least I didn’t have to worry about also avoiding his piercing gaze.
“Spooky!” Jimmy said. He was our group’s counselor for the night, heading up the ghost stories and sitting with us. “Let’s try talking about something else. It’s the last week of camp, and I want to get to know you kids better before it’s all over. I want to know the origin of your causes. Children, why don’t you start off by telling us why you want to feed the … children?”
I started, caught off guard. “Why I want to feed the children?” Ten pairs of eyes were trained on me, waiting for me to answer. “Well, I mean, I want to do good.”
Jimmy nodded thoughtfully. “But why that specifically?”
I picked a blade of grass from the ground, rubbing it between my fingers. “Well, a few years ago I actually met Robert Drill.” I guess I was expecting some gasps or awed looks on people’s faces or something, but then I remembered that everyone here had met Robert Drill when he’d come to camp for the press conference. “Anyway, he told me that I could feed the children of the world one day if I put my mind to it. So I decided to put my mind to it. I read up on children who are going hungry all over the world and decided that if I could do something about that, then my life would really be of some worth. That I wasn’t just taking up space.” It felt good, talking about this, about something real, something that mattered. But nobody seemed very impressed by anything I’d just said. Actually, I was pretty sure I caught Feminism rolling her eyes.
“That’s nice, Children,” Jimmy said. He scanned the rest of the campers until his eyes settled on Gluten Freedom. “Why don’t you go next,” he told her.
“Okay,” she said. “I started getting sick a lot a couple of years ago. I never felt good. Ever. It wasn’t just stomachaches, it was all-consuming. I would miss school a lot because of how sick I was. And the worst thing was, I had no idea what was wrong with me. No one did. Some doctors even told me it was all just in my head, like I was actually trying to make myself sick on purpose. Before I got diagnosed with celiac disease I thought I was dying; that’s how bad I felt. People think going gluten-free is a stupid fad diet or a joke, but it isn’t a joke to me. I can’t eat the same things as everybody else. I have to be extra careful anytime I go out that there isn’t any cross-contamination in my food. And if I get just one person to be a little bit more sensitive to the needs of others, then I’ll feel like everything I’m putting into this cause will be worth it.”
The sounds of the other campers at the other activities still filled the fields, but it was quiet enough here, with us, that the crackling of the flames drowned them out. We all stayed listening even though Gluten Freedom was done talking.
Jimmy nodded and smiled. “Win, tell us about your campaign.”
Win cleared his throat, his eyes locked on the fire. “It’s just me and my mom in California. She has a job now and everything is good, but for a while there, when I was in first grade or so, she was unemployed. I was hungry a lot. That’s the most prevalent memory I have from that time in my life. Other kids were learning how to ride bikes or how to read or whatever, but all I remember is being so hungry. What that felt like. I’m grateful that my school had a free breakfast and lunch program. My mom would drop me off extra early so that I could eat before school. It made a big difference.”
He rubbed the pad of his thumb over his bottom lip, and I caught a glimpse of his fingernail, chewed almost to the stub.
“Ending hunger is the most important thing in the world to me because I know what it’s like to be hungry,” Win went on. “And nobody should ever have to feel that way.”
Jimmy nodded. “Thank you for sharing that with us, Win. Unity, why don’t you go next?”
Unity’s big eyes shifted, looking around at all of us but not settling on anyone for too long. “I’m originally from Chicago, but my dad moved us to Missouri three years ago for his job. In Chicago we had fa
mily and friends and a community of people. In Missouri, though … I’m the only brown kid at my school. It’s a small private school, and me and my sister are the only Indian kids in the whole place.
“I know there’s not going to be a big, diversified population everywhere I go—that’s not realistic in some places—I’ve accepted that, but it’s important that people like me—people with different customs or from a different culture than you’re used to—it’s important that we’re visible and that we’re included in the conversation. I know it probably sounds cheesy but I really believe that if we can all unite and accept each other we’ll be stronger together. Because sometimes I feel so apart from the people around me, you know? And I just don’t want to feel like an alien in my own town anymore.” Unity picked at the edges of his cast, where it was fraying close to his thumb. “It’s lonely being the only one.”
World Peace, who was sitting next to him, placed her hand on top of his cast. She linked her fingers with his.
There were plenty of times this summer that I thought I had a pretty noble campaign, that what I was fighting for was more important than what a lot of other people here were fighting for. But looking around the campfire, I was starting to realize just how wrong I was. I’d been a snob about this. Maybe my campaign was not the most important one here. And the campaigns that I thought were just jokes could actually be meaningful to a lot of people.
I needed to put things in perspective. Because no matter what I was going through, there were bigger problems out there in the world. I found Ashley staring back at me. I wondered if she was thinking about perspective too.
Things were different after that campfire. No more wallowing in bed, no more being sad about the state of my life and Ashley. I was going to do something.
My bunkmates were happy to see this new initiative.
“Glad to see you’re finally taking Color War seriously, Superman,” Men’s Rights said as he put down his barbells. “I wouldn’t normally count on you, but we’re going to need as much manpower as we can get if we want to win Capture the Flag. Who am I kidding? We’re going to need very little manpower, because we are playing against girls. Amiright?” He raised his hand in a high five toward Win, but Win let him keep his hand in the air.
No Good Deed Page 19
