Boys Camp

by Kitson Jazynka

  The lake came into view, looking magical with a wide swath of moonlight gleaming on it. Zee called, “Hey, Carlos! Will you, Max, and Simon life guard us if we go for a moonlight swim?”

  “Okay,” said Carlos. “If you’ve taken your swim test, turn your pegs, get your buddy, and swim.”

  “Word of the day, Campers!” shouted Zee. “We’re moon-a-luna-dips. Get it?”

  Everyone groaned, and Jim said, “I still haven’t changed out of my swim trunks since this afternoon’s swim. And I still haven’t dried out. So I’m ready for a moon-a-luna-dip.”

  “That’s the beauty of living in your bathing suit,” said Nate. “You’re already ready to swim.”

  “I’m already ready, too,” said Yasu.

  “Already ready, three,” joked Vik.

  “Yeah,” said Tyler. “I’m already ready four for the swim. No need for sunscreen, either.”

  “That means it’s time for a plunge! Who’s in?” shouted Erik. The rest of the boys cheered and picked up the pace, zooming down the path to the lake. Zee and Will kept up with their friends, trying to blend in. Zee was glad they couldn’t hear his heart pounding.

  Yasu was first in the pack, as usual. At the dock, he came to a sudden stop. “Whoa,” he said quietly. He pointed to Carlos’s kayak. “What is that?”

  Zee and Will were delighted. With moonlight shining like a spotlight and bouncing off the water, the octopus in the kayak looked even weirder than they remembered.

  Now all the boys were talking at once. “Carlos, what’s in your …?”

  “What in the … ?”

  “Who?”

  Carlos walked slowly up to the kayak. He plucked the octopus out of his boat and spun around to face the boys. The tentacles spun, too.

  No one said a thing. Zee couldn’t tell if Carlos was mad or not. He sure hoped he wasn’t.

  Carlos lifted the octopus above his head and said, “Nailed.”

  Now all the boys exploded into cheers. Their noisy laughter shook the woods with more crazy cackles than a camp full of monkeys.

  “I just made up a song!” said Max. He sang to Carlos:

  When the moon hits your eye like a big Skeeter pie, you’ve been Oc-toed.

  “Hot potato!” shouted Carlos. He burst out laughing and threw the octopus to Yasu, who caught it and then tossed it in the air. The boys passed it around like it really was a hot potato that would burn their fingers if they touched it. Finally, Carlos snagged it and kept it.

  “Okay, all right,” he said cheerfully. “I might as well take my medicine and get it over with. Forget swimming. Somebody better run ahead and tell Skeeter to ring the cowbell so everybody’ll come to the dining hall. Looks like I’m having pie-in-the-face for a bedtime snack.” He shook his head. “I gotta hand it to whoever did this to me. Well done, octo-dumpster.”

  “You know what?” said Jim as they all headed up to the dining hall. “This looks like a Will-n-Zee to me.” He turned to the jokesters. “Did you two geniuses do this?”

  Will and Zee shrugged. “You’ll soon see,” said Zee. “The dumpster gets to throw the pie, right?”

  Just then, the camp cowbell jangled loud and clear. As the boys from the lake reached the picnic table outside the dining hall, other campers emerged out of the woods and their cabins, squinting, yawning, and trying to figure out what was going on. They knew the sound of the bell meant “Come now, or miss something good.”

  Skeeter scanned the crowd. “Carlos, my friend,” he said, “come take a seat.”

  “It’s my sincere pleasure,” said Carlos. He took off his guitar and carefully put it far away from the picnic table. Then he bowed to the campers, grinned, and sat down near Skeeter. A chocolate pie, covered with whipped cream and decorated with a single red cherry, sat on the table, illuminated by lantern light. “Pardon me, where’s my napkin?” asked Carlos.

  “Where’s your bib?” someone shouted.

  “Where’s the hose?” added someone else.

  “It is a time-honored tradition that the guy who plants the octopus gets to toss the pie at the one he plants it upon,” said Skeeter. “This time, the dumpsters were Camp Wolf Trail’s favorite wise guys, Will and Zee.” All the campers cheered as Skeeter ceremoniously handed the pie to Zee, saying, “Zee gets to do the honors because he’s the one who had the octopus last.”

  “On the count of three,” said Skeeter, speaking to Zee. “Then Octo-Pie!”

  Zee and Will gave each other a smile in cahoots. The crowd of campers gathered around, laughing and cheering and hollering. Zee could have sworn he even heard someone yodeling.

  “One.”

  “Two.”

  “Three!”

  Zee lifted the pie as if to throw it and then …

  He put it down. He placed it on the table carefully and stepped away from it.

  “Hey!” hollered the campers. “What’re you doing? What’s the deal?”

  Zee held up his hands for quiet. “Will and I want to change the Hot Potato Octopus tradition,” said Zee, “and Skeeter agreed to help us. So, instead of Carlos getting a pie in the face, Skeeter made PIE FOR EVERYBODY!”

  The boys cheered louder than ever. Skeeter flung open the door to the dining hall and the wild pie eaters thundered in. The long tables were dotted with pies of all sorts. “Grab a fork and dive in!” said Skeeter. And nobody waited to be told twice.

  Carlos thumped Will and Zee on the back. “I owe you one, guys.”

  “That’s what we were hoping you’d say,” said Zee. “We have a favor to ask you. How about telling us how to find Hidden Falls?”

  “Sorry,” said Carlos. “That I cannot do.”

  “We thought you might say that, too,” said Will. “So we have a backup favor. How about teaching us how to do Dead Man’s Dive off Big Boulder into O’Mannitt’s Cove?”

  “You’re on,” said Carlos. “It’s a deal.”

  “Thanks!” said Will and Zee together.

  Then they got to work sharing one of Skeeter’s pies—apple with raisins in it—and eating it quickly.

  “Look at you two,” said Tyler. “Camp Wolf Trail’s funnymen are giving new meaning to the phrase wolf it down. What’s your hurry?”

  “Let’s just say the night’s not over yet,” said Will mischievously, “and neither are the surprises.”

  Tyler smacked his forehead, shaking his head in pretend despair. “I can’t take any more,” he said. “You guys are wearing us out with all this fun—and it’s just our first day.”

  Will and Zee practically wore themselves out laughing as they stood outside and heard the Pawpaw Cabin campers’ howls of delight and surprise upon discovering that the inside of their cabin was festooned with toilet paper. Swoops and loops of paper hung from the beams, wound up the bunk posts, and mummified the boys’ trunks. A dense spider’s web of white filled the interior of the cabin so that the boys had to bat their way through to their beds.

  “Yeah, it’s funny,” said Simon, the Pawpaw counselor. “But guess what, folks? You’ve gotta re-roll all that toilet paper. That’s our allotment for the summer. You don’t want to waste it.”

  “Aw, man!” the boys groaned.

  Zee chuckled. “Word of the day, Pawpaw Cabiners: Roller-rama-drama!” Zee turned to Will and said, “This is when I leave for Birch. You better help your buddies.”

  “Okay,” said Will. “Roller-rama-drama, man.”

  “Listen, thanks, Will,” said Zee. “I gotta say, this has to have been the greatest first night of Camp Wolf Trail ever. All our plans were good, and everything went perfectly. We didn’t find out how to get to Hidden Falls, but we’re going to do Dead Man’s Dive.”

  “Yeah,” said Will. “And we’ll find the Falls. No question.” He turned to go inside Pawpaw, and then in an unusually serious tone he said, “One thing, though. Don’t forget what I said before. No bringing anybody else in on our plans, especially without asking me. Finding the Falls, whatever we do. It’s you and me,
Will-n-Zee, right?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure, you and me,” said Zee, a little taken aback. “Right.”

  “Okay then,” said Will. “See you tomorrow.”

  Will loped up the steps to Pawpaw with the long-legged strides his new height gave him. Zee watched him go, feeling puzzled and just a bit like he’d been scolded. He shook it off. Will was right, of course. Will-n-Zee needed nobody else. As Will would say, no question.

  Chapter Four

  Carlos was true to his word. The very next afternoon, he began instructing Zee and Will to prepare for their climb and dive. Carlos led Zee and Will to Big Boulder at O’Mannitt’s Cove and painstakingly taught them how to scale the giant rock face. Then they watched as he dove off Big Boulder into the water. Carlos insisted that Zee and Will needed a couple days of instruction so that they’d be really ready to climb and dive safely. They squeezed the lessons in just after Arts and Crafts while the rest of Birch was at Archery. Zee was a little sorry to miss Archery with the rest of the Birch Cabin guys; they were having a really funny mock Robin Hood Archery Contest, and the prize was going to be a sack of chocolate gold coins. But hey! He’d wanted to do Dead Man’s Dive for three years, so he was psyched to have his chance at last.

  When Carlos thought Will and Zee were ready, he finally gave them permission to do their climb and dive. It felt great—that moment of triumph in front of the Birch and Pawpaw guys. After they both dove, all the guys walked back to the beach and dock where they usually swam. They had to step aside to let a small pickup truck come through. Attached to the truck like a rattling caboose was a trailer carrying a dozen colorful kayaks.

  “Aw, Carlos, you shouldn’t have,” joked Will. “Kayaks as gifts for us all? That was really nice of you.”

  Carlos laughed. “I wish I could have bought kayaks for you all,” he said. “But these are just on loan. Birch Cabin’s going on a kayak trip to camp out on Spikey Island for a night.”

  “Just Birch?” asked Will. “Not Pawpaw? Not the Isabels?”

  “Birch first,” said Carlos, “but your turn will come, Will, don’t worry.”

  Zee could see that Will was disappointed, so he decided to distract him by pulling some stunts to make him laugh. “Hey, guys,” Zee said to the boys. “You know what we need to refresh ourselves after our swim in O’Mannitt’s Cove? A swim.”

  “You got it,” said the boys. They headed for the pegboard, jostling for a turn to flip their tags from green to red. Then they ran to the end of the dock and waited next to their swim buddies, their toes wrapped around the long edge of the wooden platform. After the last of the boys had flipped his peg, Carlos grabbed the foam rescue tube, then walked out to the edge of the water and blew his whistle, the boys’ signal that it was okay to jump in.

  “Word of the day, guys,” said Zee. “Plungiferous!”

  With Tarzan whoops, piercing shrieks of joy, wolf howls, and shouts of Plungiferous! the boys threw themselves into the water. Zee hung back on the dock, waiting for his friends to come back up to surface.

  “It’s your lucky day, Campers,” he said. “I’m going to show you the perfect dive. Perfect! You want to see what years of swim team and diving lessons gets you? Watch this!” Zee bent his knees with exaggerated precision, made a perfect arrow with his hands above his head, and pushed off with the dock in slow motion, arcing in a smooth dive. Then, midway into the water, he flapped his arms and kicked wildly, clownishly contorting himself. “Whoa-oh! Whoa! Aaaaaack!” Zee hit the surface with an enormous smack, sending water splashing everywhere.

  “Nice job, Zee!” The boys laughed and shouted and splashed water at Zee when his head came back up above the water.

  “Good thing you didn’t goof around like that when you jumped off Big Boulder,” said Jim. “We’d have called it Dud Man’s Dive.”

  “No, really?” asked Zee, pretending incomprehension. “That wasn’t good? Okay. Let me try again. Watch this.”

  “Atta way, buddy,” Will cheered encouragingly. “Dive worse, why don’t you? You’re looking positively plungiferous.”

  ***

  After lunch, on their way to basketball, Zee and Will ambled along under the shady oak trees that lined the path. Zee looked up. The dark green undersides of the leaves only let through a few glimpses of powder-blue sky.

  “Now that the octopus is done, and Dead Man’s Dive is over, what are we going to do next?” asked Will. “We don’t want to have peaked and just fade into boringness.”

  “Do you mean what pranks can we pull?” grinned Zee. “Well, I’m carving a block with a wolf paw print on it in Arts and Crafts. I figure we can use it to make paw prints in the mud on the lakeshore and lure the guys into following the prints. Then we can have a prize or surprise at the end. No wolf, but maybe a rope swing or something.”

  “Excellent,” said Will. “It’ll be a Wolf, Wolf hike. Sort of like a Wolf, Wolf story, only with a happier ending.”

  “Yeah, good one!” laughed Zee.

  “I like your idea,” said Will, “but how about a new quest? I really want to find Hidden Falls!”

  “Me, too,” said Zee.

  The boys had heard counselors and old campers talk about the magical hidden spot, but they’d had no luck getting anyone to tell them where it actually was. The tradition required campers to find the place on their own and then never divulge its whereabouts to any other camper.

  “Got any idea how to find it?” asked Will. “Last year we looked everywhere. All winter we searched Google Earth. Nothing!”

  “Maybe we should just start over,” said Zee. “Forget everything we tried and come up with something else. Like, you know, that new guy Kareem? Turns out his brother and even his dad were campers here. Let’s go ask Kareem if they told him anything about Hidden Falls.”

  “No way, man,” said Will. “Bad idea. What if Kareem wants to come with us? Hidden Falls is ours.”

  Once again Zee felt scolded, as he had when Will got mad at him for including Skeeter in the pie plan. He shook it off and said, “We’ll just ask him for information,” he said. “He might be able to help. C’mon. Let’s go.”

  Will sighed, but grudgingly followed Zee to Birch Cabin. They found Kareem there, playing cards with Jim.

  “Hey guys,” said Jim. “We’re just dealing a new game of Crazy Eights. You want in?”

  “Maybe another time,” said Zee. “We—”

  But Will interrupted. “Kareem,” he said. “Did your dad or your brother give you the scoop on Hidden Falls?”

  “Ha!” said Jim. “Don’t be fooled, Kareem. Everybody knows that Will-n-Zee found Hidden Falls last summer, but they don’t want us to know that they found it, so they’re pretending that they didn’t.”

  “Huh?” asked Kareem.

  “Really, Jim, we have no clue where Hidden Falls is,” said Zee. “Honest.”

  “Whaddya say, Kareem?” prompted Will impatiently.

  “My brother told me about the tradition of keeping the Falls a secret,” said Kareem. “That got me curious, so I bugged my dad about it. All I could get out of him was something about a spring.”

  “Like a freshwater spring?” Zee asked.

  “Yeah,” said Kareem. “I figure it feeds into the lake somewhere.” He tossed his cards on the bed, saying eagerly, “Let’s go look. We could be scientific about it and search every inch of the lakeshore.”

  “Thanks, Kareem,” said Zee. “We—”

  But Will socked him in the arm and interrupted him again. “We’re going to head out by ourselves,” he said firmly. “Just us. But thanks.”

  “We’d find it in no time with all of us looking,” said Kareem. “It’ll be awesome!”

  The door slammed. Zee and Will were outside before Kareem even finished speaking.

  Zee felt like he’d been rude. “Kareem’s right, you know,” he said to Will. “We’d find it faster with more guys looking.”

  “This is supposed to be just our thing,” said Will. “It’ll be
our Greatest Triumph Ever. It’ll ruin the whole adventure if other people come. No question.”

  “Okay,” Zee shrugged.

  “Meanwhile,” said Will, “tonight we put teabags in the shower heads. I can’t wait for the next person to take a shower—in tea!”

  Chapter Five

  But Will and Zee couldn’t begin their search for the Falls right away because the next morning, Carlos crowbarred the Birch Cabiners away from the breakfast tables and herded them out of the dining hall and down to the lake. An overcast sky made the water look pearly black as a warm breeze rippled its surface. The boys gathered at the dock in front of the trailer-load of kayaks that had been delivered the day before.

  Carlos introduced the boys to their kayaking instructor. “This is Jamie,” he said. “She knows everything there is to know about kayaking.”

  “Morning, campers!” said Jamie. With two hands, Jamie lifted a kayak over her head, then turned and placed it on the boat ramp.

  “Morning,” answered the boys, some of them speaking around doughnuts in their mouths.

  “So,” said Jamie. She grinned up at them while she tinkered with the kayak, checking the seat, closing the waterproof hatch, and making sure the yellow paddles had been put together correctly. “Are you ready to become paddlers?”

  “You bet! Me first!” said Yasu. “I call the green kayak.”

  “Dibs on red,” said Kareem.

  “Whoa,” laughed Jamie. “We’ll go out paddling for half an hour or so, but before that we have to cover some basics. First of all, everybody grab a life vest.”

  Zee felt sure he wouldn’t need the vest. He could swim. But he got a vest from the rack anyway, because he knew it was a camp rule that you had to wear a life vest anytime you were in a boat. Jamie learned all the boys’ names as she fitted each one with a life vest that zipped up to his chin in the front and snapped shut with black plastic clasps. She tugged the side straps to make the vest fit snugly so that it couldn’t slip off.