The Order of the Poison Oak

by Brent Hartinger

  “Great name,” I said.

  I wasn’t being sarcastic, but Otto just rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, just what I need, right?” He laughed, and I laughed too, even though it seemed like our laughter had something to do with his scar, and that made me uncomfortable.

  All around us, the various teams of counselors were introducing themselves to each other. I wondered what Min was saying to Web. Even more, I wondered what he was saying to her. I tried to listen.

  “So,” Otto said to me, “why’d you want to be a camp counselor?”

  “Huh?” I said. “I don’t know. Just wanted to get away, I guess.”

  “From what?”

  It wasn’t like I could tell him the truth. So I said, “Parents,” and he nodded knowingly. “You?”

  “I was a counselor last year.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Like it?”

  He shrugged. “I guess. I’ve been coming back for as long as I can remember. I used to go to camp here myself.”

  Talking to Otto, I found it impossible not to look at his scar. It was darker than the rest of his skin, with faint brown streaks. It was probably a skin graft, I decided—a patch job on some really serious burn. But from the look of things, it had happened a long time ago. The scar had sort of a swirl pattern to it, and it almost looked like his whole face was being sucked down a drain. And in the middle of all the scar tissue, where the drain would be, was his eye. It reminded me of the eye of a whale—obviously intelligent, yet peering out from behind something thick and rough and alien. (I immediately felt guilty for thinking this.)

  It was one thing to notice the scar on Otto’s face; it was another thing to let him know I was noticing. So I said, “You must know what Whittle is going to have us do this week, right?”

  He nodded. “Mostly just a lot of talk. You know—camp rules and regulations. And what to do if a kid gets a stomachache, stuff like that.”

  That didn’t sound like we counselors would be getting all that cozy, I thought. Maybe it didn’t matter that Web had ended up as Mm’s partner and not mine.

  “And sometime this week,” Otto went on, “we’ll probably have to learn first aid and lifesaving and mouth-to-mouth.”

  I hate you, Mm! I wanted to shout. Frowning, I glanced over at her, but she didn’t even notice. She was too busy talking to Web—intensely, I might add. She was the one who’d been encouraging me to notice hot guys. But now that I’d noticed one, she’d stepped right in and taken him from me. It was almost like she’d done it on purpose.

  A moment later, I realized that Otto was looking at me like he’d asked a question. I guess I’d been so busy scowling at Min that I hadn’t been listening.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said. He was looking at his feet. The hair on the top of his head was so thick that I couldn’t see the scalp, and I wondered if it was some kind of artificial weave. Maybe the burn he’d been in had taken off part of his hair too.

  “Sorry, that was rude,” I said. “What’d you ask?”

  Otto shrugged. “I just wanted to know if you ever went to summer camp.”

  “Day camp,” I said. “Does that count?”

  “Oh, it’s not the same thing at all.”

  “Yeah? Why not?”

  “Something about spending the night. Things happen.”

  “Like what?”

  “Ever hear of camp stew?” Otto asked.

  I shook my head no.

  “It’s when the cook takes all the leftovers from the previous week and mixes them together into one big mess. It’s absolutely disgusting. Last year, anyone who ate a whole portion got double dessert. Did they ever do that at day camp?”

  “Uh,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

  “And the pranks! You know, you don’t really know how to make a bed until you first learn the art of short-sheeting one!”

  I smiled while Otto went on talking. He was funny and interesting. He wasn’t Web, but maybe he was the next best thing.

  * * * * *

  Two days later, we’d learned CPR, first aid, lifesaving, and yes, mouth-to-mouth, not to mention about a thousand camp rules and regulations, none of which I will bore you with here. I’d also spoken a grand total of six sentences directly to Web Bastian. On the plus side, I’d only sounded like a blithering idiot twice.

  Wednesday night, just before lights-out, I was walking from the bathroom back to the cabin where all the guy counselors were sleeping when I heard a sneeze in the dark.

  “Gesundheit!” I said, even though I had no idea who I was saying it to. Who knows? I thought. Maybe it’s Web.

  “Thanks,” said a voice. It wasn’t Web. It was a girl.

  I pointed the beam of my flashlight toward the sound and accidentally flashed it right in the face of one of the other counselors. Her name was Em. She had a flashlight too and must have been walking to or from the bathroom herself.

  “Oh!” I said, quickly lowering the flashlight. “Sorry.”

  “‘Sokay,” she said, blowing her nose in a Kleenex. “Hay fever. Real smart idea to sign up as a camp counselor, huh?”

  I smiled. Em had straight brown hair and round tortoiseshell glasses, like some kind of female Harry Potter. I’d spent the last two days sitting near her, but we hadn’t talked about anything except camp stuff. She was sort of gawky, but I liked what I’d seen of her. She was the type of person who played Dungeons & Dragons, and who wouldn’t be caught dead in a tanning booth.

  “You know what’s making you sneeze?” I asked. All I smelled was pine trees and dirt.

  “Thuja plicata,” Em said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what I’m allergic to. Also known as western red cedar. It’s the tree pollen.”

  “You know the scientific name of red cedar?” What was it with people suddenly knowing the scientific names of things? Was I not paying attention in biology, or what?

  Em blew her nose again. “No. Actually, I just made that up.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I was lying before. That really is its scientific name.”

  By now, I was thoroughly confused. But I have to admit I was also entertained. I chuckled.

  “So I’m Em,” she said. “But you know that already, don’t you? Just like I know that you’re Russel. Or is it Russ?”

  “Most people call me Russel. Does anyone call you Emily?”

  “Actually, Em is short for Emeraldine.”

  “Really?”

  “No, I’m lying again.”

  This time, I laughed out loud.

  “So what do you think so far?” Em asked.

  “Of camp? Oh, it’s great. I really needed to get away.”

  “Yeah? From what?”

  I decided then and there that I needed to stop telling people this.

  “Parents,” I said. “Why’d you come?”

  “My sister’s getting married in August. And she was hard enough to take before she started obsessing about the difference between almonds and pecans in her groom’s cake.”

  I liked this girl’s attitude. Which meant I also liked her.

  Suddenly, someone coughed. It sounded like it was coming from the guy counselors’ cabin. It sounded like Web.

  “Well,” I said. “I should probably get back. Nice to ‘meet’ you.”

  “Likewise,” Em said. “Oh, and Russel?”

  I glanced back at her—only to see her shine the beam of her flashlight right into my eyes.

  * * * * *

  The next morning—Thursday—the camp director gathered us in the lodge’s common room like always (and, like always, Web looked Teen People cute!). But this time, Mr. Whittle had two new adults with him—a man and a woman—and they both had big burn scars on their faces, like Otto. (Incidentally, one other counselor, a girl named Janelle, had facial scars too, but they weren’t as bad as Otto’s.)

  “Every June, Camp Serenity becomes a very special place,” Mr. Whittle said in this hushed, somber tone
that annoyed me somehow. “That’s because we reserve our first two-week session for a particular group of kids. These are kids who might not feel comfortable at our other sessions or at other summer camps, okay? Most are burn survivors with scars or kids who have other facial injuries.” I remembered, now, that Mr. Whittle had explained all this during my job interview, but I’d mostly pushed it out of my mind. Of course, this explained the scars on Otto’s and Janelle’s faces. Otto must have started coming to Camp Serenity as a burn survivor and stayed on as a counselor. But I didn’t see how any of this made much of a difference to anything, which is why I’m only getting around to mentioning it now.

  “Anyway,” Mr. Whittle went on, “Ryan and Jean here are burn survivors themselves, and they’re also going to be our guests for the first two weeks of camp. And for the next two days, they’re going to help us prepare for the arrival of our first session of kids, okay?”

  So we were going to get burn survivor sensitivity training, I thought to myself. I guess that made sense. Except for Otto, I didn’t have any experience with people who’d been burned. I sure as hell didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing.

  “Thanks, Al,” Jean said to Mr. Whittle. She stood up and looked around at us all. She didn’t say anything, just smiled. Now, there are smiles, and there are smiles. Her whole face lit up. Jean’s grin wasn’t just disarming; it was a goddamn political statement. It was like two guys walking down the street holding hands—you’re going to notice whether you like it or not. I’m beautiful and I’m happy, Jean told us with that smile. And the amazing thing was, you totally believed her.

  Finally, Jean said, “How many of you here went to summer camp?”

  Eight out of the ten counselors raised their hands—including me (unlike Otto, I figured day camp did count).

  “And what was it you liked best?” Jean asked.

  “The canoes,” Min said.

  “Roasting marshmallows around the campfire,” a counselor named Lorna said.

  “Archery,” Web said.

  “The chocolate chip pancakes,” Em said, and everyone laughed.

  I tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t remember anything in particular. (All right, I thought, so maybe day camp didn’t count.)

  As each of us spoke up, Jean kept grinning like a Cheshire cat. Finally, she said, “Fantastic! Well, you know what? Those are all the things we want our kids to remember about camp too!” She thought for a second, then winked at Em. “I’ll see what we can do about the chocolate chip pancakes.” We all laughed again. Then Jean got serious. “But sometimes something as simple as a couple of weeks at summer camp can be a horrible experience for a burn survivor. That’s because kids with scars on their faces are sometimes made to feel like they don’t fit in with kids who don’t have scars.”

  And so began two days of burn survivor sensitivity training. It was pretty basic stuff. For example, Ryan said, “We’re burn ‘survivors,’ not burn ‘victims.’ No one wants to be known as a ‘victim’ their whole life, right?”

  But the biggest lesson, one we heard again and again, was that burn survivors wanted people to see beyond their scars. They didn’t want to be defined by their injuries. They wanted to be seen as individuals, just like anyone else.

  “Burn survivors are used to being treated like freaks and monsters,” Jean told us. “But we’re not monsters. And over the course of the next two weeks, it’s your job and mine to make sure that none of these kids feel like monsters either. For them, this is a chance to have two weeks where they can completely forget about what they look like on the outside.”

  I listened attentively to all this, and I contributed during the group discussions. But the truth was, I didn’t think any of it applied to me. After all, I was gay. I knew all about what it was like to be stereotyped—to have people assume lots of negative things about me, and to make all these snap judgments. I sure wasn’t about to do stuff like that to anyone else. I’d treated Otto like an individual, hadn’t I? (Even if his eye had reminded me of a whale’s.)

  Saturday was our day off then Sunday came. Counselor orientation was over, and the burn survivors finally arrived. Unfortunately, it took me less than an hour to learn that Jean and Ryan were absolutely wrong: these burn survivor kids were monsters. Only it had nothing whatsoever to do with the way they looked.

  Chapter Three

  I was standing in the middle of a raging hurricane. The fury of the storm battered and bewildered me.

  Okay, so it wasn’t a real hurricane. I’m doing that thing I did when I said the school hallway was on fire, when I tried to fool you into thinking one thing, only to spring on you that I meant something else entirely. In this case, I’m talking about my campers, who I now realize I also just compared to monsters. I am aware this is bringing me dangerously close to metaphor overload, so let’s just get to the point, shall we?

  My campers were out of control. Each of us counselors had been assigned a cabin of eight kids. They’d been grouped by age and gender, and I had eight ten-year-old boys. By the time we got to our cabin, they were reminding me of Helen Keller in that play The Miracle Worker, but before Anne Sullivan turns the wild, shrieking Helen into a halfway-normal human being. I’m exaggerating, but only a little.

  Mr. Whittle had divided up the kids out on the marching field, separating them into their various cabin groups. That part went okay, I guess because the kids were all still kind of stunned to realize they’d really be away from home for the next two weeks and because Mr. Whittle and Jean and Ryan were standing right there.

  Out on that marching field, I’d introduced myself to my campers as their counselor and asked them their names.

  No one said anything. At this point, they actually seemed kind of shy. This was probably the first time many of them had ever been away from their parents for more than a day or so.

  “You,” I said, pointing to the closest kid. “What’s your name?”

  I’d happened to pick the one kid who didn’t seem shy at all. In fact, as I looked at him, he glared back at me the way a lion looks at a gazelle—like he hated me in some primal, instinctive way. He obviously resented being here and was now determined to take it out on me. But finally, through gritted teeth, he spoke his name: “Ian”

  Now that I was looking right at him, I saw that I’d also picked the kid with the least obvious facial scars. Up close, you could see that his skin almost looked like it had melted a little, but from farther back, he just looked slightly out of focus. Anyway, I couldn’t help but wonder if the other kids had noticed that I’d called on Ian first—that maybe I thought he was special because he didn’t look so bad.

  “All right,” I said. I quickly pointed to another random kid. “You?”

  “Zach,” the other kid said. And that’s when I realized that I’d gone from the kid with the least obvious injuries to the one with the most obvious ones. A lot of Zach’s body was covered with this white, gauzelike clothing. A few days earlier, I’d learned that this was something called a pressure garment and that it helped with the healing. Zach also had this white plastic mask over his face, which was kind of disturbing, with his eyes peering out and everything. It made him look a little like the Phantom of the Opera (I was sure he was very sick of hearing that!).

  “Okay,” I said, picking out another kid. “You?”

  “Trevor,” said a kid with a facial scar that reminded me a little of a seahorse.

  And so we went on down the line—to Willy, Noah, Kwame, Julian, and Blake—and I decided that burn survivors are like snowflakes: no two are exactly alike. They had big scars, little scars, dark scars, light scars, pressure garments or bandages, and no pressure garments or bandages. (There were also kids in wheelchairs and on crutches, but I didn’t have any of those. They were staying in the main lodge with Jean and Ryan as their counselors.) One of my kids—Julian— wasn’t even a burn survivor. He just had the worst case of zits I’d ever seen. (I later learned this was something called early-
onset acne conglobata.)

  In short, we weren’t exactly the Brady Bunch. But I’d had my two days of burn survivor training, right? Plus I was gay and oh-so-sensitive.

  With the introductions over, I led my kids to our cabin so they could unpack. And this was where things started to go seriously wrong. In the mere two hundred yards between the marching field and our cabin, something had happened to my kids. It had to do with the fact that they were all burn survivors. Around other kids like themselves, it suddenly didn’t matter what any of them looked like on the outside, just like Jean had said. So now, in a way, they weren’t burn survivors. Now they were just ten-year-old boys.

  Hyperactive ten-year-old boys.

  Hyperactive ten-year-old boys who were suddenly fast friends.

  Or maybe “friends” is the wrong word. Maybe they’d just become united in their opposition to me— who, incidentally, was not a burn survivor, and so was suddenly the odd guy out.

  Anyway, by the time we reached the cabin, they were running all over the place, laughing and playing.

  “All right!” I said. “Settle down, okay?” My whole life, I’d been hearing teachers say this to kids. It felt bizarre for me to be the one saying it now.

  I got the same reaction that most of my teachers got. No one paid any attention.

  Okay, so maybe their running around and playing wasn’t the worst thing in the world. (How often did these kids get a chance to play like that, anyway?) But then the kid with the out-of-focus face started climbing to the top of one of the bunks. Once at the top, he turned around like he was going to jump down onto one of the single beds below.

  “Hey!” I said. “You there, don’t do that!” By this point, I had already forgotten all their names.

  Of course, the kid jumped anyway, landing with a big squeak.

  Three kids immediately veered for the bunk bed and started climbing.

  “Stop!” I said. “Everyone just stop right now!”

  Still everyone ignored me. The three kids kept climbing up the bunk, and one of the other kids pulled a squirt gun out of his bag, pointed it at me, and fired. He’d actually come to camp with the damn thing already filled with water.