Camp Life

by Lucinda Maison

  Jim saw her and looking alarmed, called out “Oy! I wouldn’t do that if…”

  Corinne paid no attention and blasted the group of boys with a powerful jet of water.

  Jim shook his head fatalistically.

  The boys yelled and froze, searching for the source of the blasts.

  Corinne used that moment to start reloading, but before she finished, all six boys were heaving through the water towards her. She glanced up, saw a blur of six determined male faces, gulped, and tried to swing the cannon up to fend them off.

  Before she could blink, she felt the cannon being pulled from her hands and she was flying through the air. A spectacular fountain of water marked where she landed, and another wave soaked Dara and Caroline.

  Corinne surfaced to triumphant yells from the boys. A strong hand immediately clasped her upper arm and towed her to the side of the pool near Dara and Caroline.

  “You OK?’ Jim asked, letting go only after she was holding tightly to the edge. Corinne nodded breathlessly. “Slight strategic error,” she gasped.

  He laughed at that. “The perils of not having any brothers, I guess.”

  “What were you thinking?” Caroline demanded. “Don’t you know they’re always into overkill? You’re lucky they only threw you in the pool!”

  “Yeah, not one of my smarter moves,” she agreed, but then yelled at the boys. “Oh, sure, six against one! Aren’t you the brave ones!” She managed to look belligerent and bedraggled at the same time.

  “Good to see you haven’t lost your…what’s that word?...chutzpah, yeah, chutzpah, but some sense of self-preservation would be good, too.”

  “No kidding,” Caroline commented dryly.

  Jake, Jim, and Drew were the only ones left in the hot tub. The girls had gone off, dragging Toby with them, saying something about giving him a faux-hawk. Toby seemed willing to be their living doll; in fact, he looked quite pleased with himself as he strutted out the gate surrounded by three ladies.

  Patrick, Sean, and Dave left shortly after the girls. Drew heard Patrick humming something familiar as he passed by, then snorted as he dredged up a long ago memory from his days watching an old Sesame Street video. Patrick had been humming in Ernie’s voice, but the words came back to Drew’s mind; “Rubber Ducky, you’re the one. You make bath time lots of fun. Rubber Ducky I’m awfully fond of you…” At least it wasn’t Barney, he thought.

  Jake rested his head against the edge of the Jacuzzi, sighing as the hot water seeped into his bones. He stared up at the stars; there were so many more to see in the darkness away from city lights. It had been almost two weeks since he came to camp; in some ways, it seemed like two months, and then again, two days. He thought about his dad, about Ron, about his new friend, Jim, and he let the thoughts float away while he was cocooned in the warm water.

  “I think he’s dreaming.”

  “About what? Or who? How about that KiKi girl, the one from New York? I’ve seen him checking her out,” Drew said.

  “Could be,” Jim mused. “Or maybe it’s your sister. Can’t keep his eyes off her when we’re at the table.”

  “Just keep talking about me like I’m not here,” Jake broke in. ”And I watch Caroline eat because she eats more than me and she’s still a stick. How does she do that?”

  “Must be KiKi, then,” Drew stated, ignoring his question.

  Jake sat up. “It’s not KiKi, OK? Unlike some people, I can think about other things than girls,” he countered.

  Unrepentant, Drew and Jim grinned at each other. “And what would that be?” Jim enquired.

  Jake sank back down again, sighing. “Camp. How I didn’t expect to have any fun, and now I’m sorry it’s going to end soon.” He rolled his head to the side to look at the other two. “You may have noticed I wasn’t exactly thrilled when I first got here.”

  Drew rolled his eyes. “No, man, you had us fooled.” He grabbed a discarded noodle and lobbed it at Jake’s head. It bounced off and Jake grinned sheepishly.

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Sean told us what you said to him, and to Patrick and Toby, the day you got here...about not wanting to make friends.”

  ”Airy-fairy love your neighbor crap” was my favorite bit,” Jim commented appreciatively. “You had a way with words, when you spoke at all.”

  “I talk now…a lot more than I used to,” Jake defended himself.

  “We noticed that, too. And you’re not so…?”

  “Rude?” Drew offered. “Cruel? Annoying? Snotty? Obnoxious?”

  “OK, OK!” Jake held up a hand. “Just because you two grew up with two parents who loved you and…”

  Drew and Jim let out loud groans that drowned out Jake’s words. Drew played an imaginary violin while Jim said “He asking for a dunking!”

  Jake had the grace to smile.

  “Seriously, what your dad did stinks,” Drew told him. “Personally, I’m glad you decided to quit acting like a shithead and making yourself miserable because of what he did. You’re much more fun this way.”

  “Thanks, I think,” Jake retorted, but warmed by what Drew said.

  “Anytime.” Drew glanced across at Jim. “So, did you like him better before he decided to start talking or after?”

  Jim looked as if he was giving the matter serious thought. “Still thinking,” he said, and dodged to the side as Jake launched himself across the tub. A minor water fight ensued, but they soon subsided, too tired and too content to continue.

  Chapter 21

  What’s Cookin’?

  Cal heard voices and looked up from troweling mortar off an adobe brick. Corinne and Dara were approaching, a third figure with a slight build sandwiched between them. Cal did a double-take, finally recognizing Toby. He was wearing shades clipped over his glasses, and his dark hair had been coaxed into a faux-hawk with orange-colored gel.

  Cal straightened, sticking the trowel upright in the bucket of mortar.

  “Dude,” he greeted Toby, then nodded at the girls.

  “’S’up?” Toby responded.

  Cal had a hard time controlling his smile, but he managed.

  “Nice ‘do.”

  “Thanks!” A boyish grin split Toby’s face, at odds with his previous cool dude stance.

  “Doesn’t he look great?” Corinne enthused. I wish I’d brought blue gel, it would have gone better with his eyes.”

  “No, I like the orange,” Cal said diplomatically. “Almost done here,” he added, pointing at the oven. The walls of mortared bricks rose up and canted inward to begin forming the roof. Most of the inside of the oven had been covered in a layer of mud mortar, as well.

  “Have to finish the roof, let it dry, then plaster the outside.”

  “There’s nothing for us to do here now. How about we go on that ride to the meadow?” Corinne asked Dara and Toby.

  “I’ve got to swim this morning. But I’ve been to the meadow already. I hiked there with Drew and Caroline. You’ll like it.”

  “I want to see the meadow, too,” Toby told Dara apologetically.

  “Don’t want to get your hair wet, huh?” she guessed.

  “Not yet,” he admitted. “We should ask Sean and Patrick, too. Let’s go find them.”

  Corinne looked less than thrilled with this agenda, but allowed herself to be towed away by Toby.

  “So when do we get to bake the bread?” Dara asked.

  “Probably by Tuesday.”

  She stared at the primitive-looking pile of dried mud. “Dara’s Rules: Don’t count on it,” she murmured.

  “What’s that?” Cal asked, puzzled.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, disconcerted. She usually didn’t say her Rules out loud. “I’m sorry, I have a hard time imagining this will work…as an oven, I mean.”

  “Oh, it’ll work,” he said confidently. “But I thought you said something about Dara’s Rules?”

  Embarrassed, Dara fiddled with the pockets of her shorts. “It’s just that I have t
hese rules I say to myself sometimes. It sort of helps me, um, well, it just helps me.” She felt awfully stupid and was afraid Cal would laugh.

  She glanced up and saw him watching her with a curious expression. “Give me an example,” he said. “Like, what was the one you said just now?”

  “That one was “Don’t count on it”. Actually, it’s “Don’t count on it, whatever it is.”

  Cal nodded, wincing inwardly. Ouch, he thought. “When you think about “Don’t count on it, whatever it is”, does it remind you of anything?”

  Rocky trotted over to Dara and put his paws on her knees. She squatted down and scratched under his chin, and he promptly dropped and rolled in an unmistakable plea for a belly rub. She smiled and obliged, thinking about Cal’s question.

  “Yes, it makes me think about my mom and dad. I mean, I know they love me, but I can’t count on my mom to stand up for me. She doesn’t stand up to my dad about anything. And I can’t count on my dad except for whatever he thinks will get me to the Olympics. It’s like…he makes sure I get to practice, he found me a great coach, stuff like that, but…it seems like that’s all he cares about. He was supposed to come see my play – I was one of the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz – but he got busy and didn’t come. I got an award for English Composition and there was an award ceremony in the gym one night; he missed that, too. If I want to go to the movies with friends or have a sleepover at someone else’s house, I can’t ever count on him to let me. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t, and I can’t figure out the reasons either way.” She gave a humorless laugh.

  “Uh huh. So, what do you think about all that? I mean, when you think “Don’t count on it”, what do you feel, what do you think?”

  She frowned. “I think it saves me from being disappointed. It hurts when he doesn’t seem to care about anything but swimming. If I don’t expect anything from him, then I can’t be disappointed…except I am anyway.”

  “You’re saying the Rule doesn’t work. It doesn’t work to keep you from being disappointed,” he clarified.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “I wonder if your other Rules work.”

  She looked up quickly, then down again. “I’d have to think about them all.” Rocky placed a sturdy paw on her hand, urging her to resume scratching.

  “I’ve had rules or beliefs that worked and others that didn’t, too. There was one that got me in a world of trouble,” he reminisced. “It was “I’m smarter than my dad.” When I was in high school, I used to sneak out of the house at night to hang out with my friends. I’d wait until my parents went to bed, stuff pillows under my covers, and pop the screen off my window or tiptoe out the front door. We’d meet in the park, maybe do some drinking, maybe egg cars or toilet paper houses.”

  Dara looked at him disapprovingly.

  Cal nodded. “I know. Bad ideas. Anyway, I thought I was so smart and my dad was so clueless he’d never find out. One time when I snuck back in the house through the front door, I heard my dad get up and start down the hall toward the kitchen. I hid behind a chair, snuck around him, and made it back to my bedroom. I was full of myself for days after that.” He sighed. “And then the cops caught us one night. We were breaking curfew and we had a bottle of tequila. They brought me home at 3 in the morning and pounded on my parent's door.”

  Dara blanched. “My dad would have killed me!”

  “Part of me thought that and the other part was trying to bluff my way through, acting all cocky. After the cops left, my mom said she couldn’t deal with me right then and she went back to bed. She was crying. After she’d gone, I bragged to my dad that I’d snuck out a bunch of times and he never knew it.”

  She gasped, and he continued. “I’m sure he must have felt like grabbing me by the throat at the time, but he didn’t. He didn’t yell at me. Instead, he told me quietly that there is no honor and no skill involved in tricking those who trust us, so my bragging rights weren’t worth squat. He had a bit more to say, and I did get punished, but what he said about trust was what stuck with me. I felt like such a slimeball. My relationship with him didn’t change overnight, but that’s the night it started. That’s the night I began to grow up.”

  He smiled at Dara and scratched Rocky’s neck. “My belief was that I was smarter, and it turned out that smart had nothing to do with it. These Rules of yours…you might want to give them some more thought. Figure out which ones are worth keeping and which ones are better off chucked out the window.”

  “We’re hungry!” Jake declared, coming into the kitchen with Jim.

  Shelley pulled her head out of the refrigerator, clutching a head of lettuce in one hand and a block of cheese in the other.

  “Forage all you like, you won’t get served in here.”

  Jim already knew the drill and was making a beeline for the pantry in back. Jake looked like he didn’t know where to start, then quickly followed Jim.

  Shelley smiled as they emerged from the pantry a few minutes later, laden with bread, tomato, avocado, onion, a jar of pepperoncini, two bags of chips, and a bag of Oreos. Jim set his load down on the prep table and moved to the fridge, adding mayo, mustard, and a pack of honey roasted turkey breast to the pile.

  “Can we have some of that cheese?” Jake asked Shelley. “And some lettuce?”

  She handed it over. “Just a light snack before dinner?”

  “Lunch was hours ago! And I didn’t get seconds because Caroline got to it first,” Jake responded in a voice of ill-usage.

  They made thick sandwiches, grabbed the chips and Oreos and headed for the door with a brief thanks to Shelley.

  “Hang on…not the entire bag of Oreos, OK?”

  Jake grinned, stuffed a few in his pocket, offered another handful to Jim, and held the bag out to Shelley.

  “Goes back in the pantry…and your knives go in the sink…in the pot with the soapy water.”

  Jake stopped himself from rolling his eyes. He trotted back to the pantry, returned the Oreos to the shelf, grabbed the two knives and dumped them in the pot, and caught up with Jim as he backed his way out the swinging door.

  They walked outside, rapidly chewing and swallowing large bites of sandwich. Sarah strolled by them on her way into the lodge; she gave Jake a big smile, and he nodded back, murmuring a low greeting. She kept going, and Jake turned around to look. When he turned back Jim was grinning at him. “Nice smile. Young, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t tell by looks. She’s my age…just short.”

  “Fancy her?”

  Jake turned a little pink. “No, are you kidding? I mean, she’s nice, but I’m not…I don’t…”

  Jim nudged him with his shoulder. “Someone else? Caroline, maybe?”

  Jake sighed. “Why are you busting me? I like Caroline, too, even if I do have to fight her for food, but I’m not looking for a girlfriend right now. Just because you and Corinne are tight doesn’t mean the whole world has to pair up.”

  Jim laughed. “True. No worries, I was just wondering.”

  They continued munching and walking, no particular destination in mind, until Jake stopped suddenly.

  “Do you hear that?”

  Jim stopped, too, staring at the ground as he listened. “Yeah. What is that? It sounds like…I don’t know, but it’s familiar.”

  Jake nodded. “It sounds like someone singing the Oompa Loompa song,” he said, disbelieving. “I bet it’s Patrick.”

  “Oompa Loompa…? Oh, Willy Wonka…the old one!”

  They changed direction, heading toward the sound. Rounding the corner of the lodge, they spotted several groups of kids scattered around the patio.

  “You will live in happiness, too,” sang a boy Jake didn’t recognize, then the kids all around him joined in on the final line “Like the Oompa Loompa doompadeedo!” They laughed as they finished singing, with backslapping and friendly shoving.

  “One more time?” asked the boy.

  Jim saw Noreen on the fa
r side of the patio and started toward her to get an explanation.

  “Hi, guys!” she greeted them.

  “What’s this about?” Jim asked.

  “It’s kids who went to the Get Real classes. We’re getting ready for the show, for parent’s night.”

  “Can we do it, too?” Jim asked, horrifying Jake. Jake shook his head vigorously, signaling to Jim that he would rather spend an entire afternoon watching chick flicks with a group of chattering girls than to help put on a show.

  Noreen looked measuringly at Jake. “Have you been to a Get Real class, Jake?”

  “No. I went to the other two, but not that one.” He glanced at Jim, then back at Noreen. “I’m not exactly the acting type.”

  Noreen and Jim both broke into smiles. “You’ve done some excellent acting since I’ve met you. Truly wonderful!” Noreen commented admiringly.

  “First class, mate!” Jim added.

  Jake blushed for the second time that day, but couldn’t keep the smile from his own face. He held up a hand in acknowledgment. “OK, but I still don’t like the idea of acting in front of parents and everybody.”

  “Actually, this particular part is only supposed to be the kids who’ve gone to the class.”

  Jake breathed a sigh of relief, but then Jim piped up. “I could do some of the exercises with him, if that would work,” he offered. “I’ve done it plenty of times with mum and other people.”

  Jake glared at him murderously, with no visible effect on Jim, who continued to look at Noreen.

  “Great idea! Jake, you can pick the skit or skits you want to be in, and if you decide after all that you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. How’s that?” Noreen waited expectantly.

  Jake had had so many new experiences since he came to camp, he felt like a different person. He thought about what Jim and Noreen suggested and he knew his old self would have run away and never looked back. Somehow, he found himself agreeing to do some of the Get Real stuff with Jim, but he made no promises about being in a skit.

  “Hey, Jake! Jim!” Patrick yelled, waving them over. He, Sean, and Caroline were standing together by the big pine tree.