Camp Rolling Hills

by Stacy Davidowitz

  “So . . . ?” Wiener said.

  Bobby was with him on this one. Since when was Ernest a funny name?

  “Anyway, he begged us to call him Ernie, so how could we not call him Bert?” said Steinberg.

  “But Bert was acting all grouchy, so we switched his name to Oscar,” Play Dough added, looking at Bobby to see if he was following. He was.

  “That made him Oscar Mayer,” Steinberg continued. “You know, the hot dog guy . . . ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s how I’m Wiener!”

  He seemed thrilled with a nickname that would make any other kid sink with humiliation. Maybe brainwashing is part of the cult, Bobby thought. He wanted no part of it.

  “All right, New Robert, what’s your middle name?” Play Dough asked, getting down to business.

  “Ernest.”

  “Ernest! No way!” Wiener raised his hand for a high five.

  Play Dough slapped Wiener’s hand down before Bobby could high-five him back.

  “OK, people”—Steinberg clapped—“we need some plan-B inspiration.”

  That was all he needed to say before the questions flooded in faster than Bobby could answer. Faster than he could think.

  “Do you have any mad skills?”

  “Quirky hobbies?”

  “Go-to movie quotes?”

  “Go-to normal quotes that, like, people say?”

  “What’s your favorite tool in the toolbox?”

  “Do you have a spirit animal?”

  “Where are you from?”

  Finally, a pause. Bobby didn’t know what “mad skills” meant, he didn’t have any quirky hobbies, and he couldn’t think of movie quotes on the spot or any quotes, for that matter. He guessed he liked hammers, but that was boring, and he had his cockapoo, Clark Kent, but Clark wasn’t a spirit animal—whatever that was—he was real, so Bobby wasn’t sure that counted.

  Then again, Bobby didn’t want to answer these questions, anyway. They were personal and no one’s business, and if he did say “hammer” or “cockapoo,” would his nickname be “Hammer” or “Cockapoo” all summer? Plus, he didn’t understand why he couldn’t claim any of the obvious nicknames for Robert. This all seemed like a lot of work for no reason.

  Eventually he settled on an answer. “Well . . . I’m from New Jersey.”

  “New Jersey? I’ve been there. It smells funny,” declared Dover, like he was the first person to notice.

  “Do you smell funny?” asked Play Dough, giving Bobby a sniff.

  Bobby held his breath, trying not to release any more stink. He’d already sweat (not peed) through his blue T-shirt. It was navy now.

  “Hey! That’s it! Smelly!” Steinberg yelped, without giving Play Dough a chance to confirm that Bobby didn’t smell, even though he probably did. They all did, it was really hot.

  “ ‘Smelly’?” Wiener mulled that over.

  Bobby thought about how, if he were Wiener, he’d be relieved the new kid was about to get stuck with a nickname that, by comparison, made his nickname the coolest name ever. But then again, Bobby wasn’t brainwashed. Everyone looked to Play Dough.

  “Smelly!” he pronounced.

  “Smelly!!!” the guys cheered.

  Bobby threw up a little in his mouth and forced it back down. He couldn’t believe he was really going to have to go by “Smelly” all summer at this stupid, weird camp with these stupid, weird people all because his mom’s stupid weirdness was pushing his dad away. He just wanted to be called Bobby by his real friends, Keith and Jake, who went by their real names, Keith and Jake, like normal people.

  Play Dough picked up a broom. “Kneel, Robert of Jersey . . .” He pushed Bobby down by his head. He tapped him on his right shoulder, then swept the broom over his head to the left one.

  Steinberg whispered, in gibberish, some sort of strange blessing. “Kvetch, tuches, goyish, oy vey, mazel tov!”

  Play Dough nodded to him and continued. “Arise, Sir Smelly!”

  “Guys, I really don’t—”

  “Smelly!!!” they cheered over him.

  “Does it have to be Smelly?” Bobby’s anxiety bubbled in his stomach, and his face burned. “Let’s talk about this. We can come up with something better, can’t we?” He hid his trembling hands. He could feel the onset of panic in his chest. “How about ‘Jersey’?”

  The guys marched around the cabin, climbing bunk-beds, jumping off bunk-beds, army-crawling on the floor, chanting wildly, “Sme-lly! Sme-lly! Sme-lly!”

  Bobby had doubted they could get any more enthusiastic than when they’d sung their welcome song, but that was just the warm-up. His head felt cloudy and dizzy, and he was losing himself to Bizarro Bobby by the second.

  “Sme-lly! Sme-lly! Sme-lly!”

  Bobby didn’t care how much they loved nicknames in their freaky cult, he just wished they’d leave him out of it. Or at least not parade around the room like psychos, mocking him, singling him out, and stripping him of what little dignity he had left. “I’m totally cool with the limitations of Robert!” he yelled out in one last attempt.

  It didn’t stop. Bizarro reveled in his vicious attack as the boys cheered louder and louder.

  There was no janitor’s closet in sight, like at school, and Bobby needed to be alone. Away from the taunting “Sme-lly!” chant, away from these weirdos, away from all of it. I need to escape, to hide, to be anywhere but here. Just away. Far, far away, he repeated in his head. Bobby found himself dumping everything from his oversize duffel onto the floor, laying the bag out on a bottom bunk, climbing inside, and zipping himself in as best he could.

  He closed his eyes, trying to think about good stuff, like Keith and Jake and his other friends who called him Bobby, and Clark Kent’s bark, which scared the squirrels, and Keith’s Purim carnival, where he’d won Goldie the Goldfish, and the game he’d played with All-Star Louis Fenderson at baseball camp. Bobby wished he could go back in time to when his dad had changed his life by introducing him to the Beatles on his iPod. It all seemed so far away.

  Suddenly, the sound of unzippering broke through his swirling thoughts.

  “Hey, buddy, you got yourself stuck in there?”

  Bobby opened his eyes, and there stood Rick, his shaggy hair falling to the sides of his face. Bobby had no idea how long he’d been daydreaming. Thirty seconds? Ten minutes? He was so humiliated, he could die.

  “Nah, just chilling,” Bobby said casually, as if it were totally normal for him to be stuffed inside a duffel bag at his own doing.

  “All right. Well, I’m gonna get started refolding your clothes. Wanna give me a hand?”

  Bobby nodded, and as Rick pulled him out of the duffel, he tried to prepare himself for the judge-y stares and the You have a nice nap in your suitcase? jokes the guys were surely cracking.

  But to his surprise, they didn’t even seem to notice. Totle was busy tossing his clothes into his cubby like it was a basketball hoop, Steinberg cleaned his lab goggles with toilet paper, Dover draped a Boy Scout sash filled with merit badges over the foot of his top bunk, Wiener color-coordinated his clothes, and Play Dough ate a Slim Jim from a stash hidden in his sock. No more chanting. No more singing. No more unwanted attention.

  In fact, no one seemed fazed by Bobby’s freak-out at all. He couldn’t tell if he was more relieved or weirded out.

  “You want these T-shirts here?” Rick asked, pointing to an empty cubby against the wall.

  Since he couldn’t go home and he couldn’t hide, he might as well unpack. “Yeah,” he said. Bobby was sure the worst summer of his life had officially begun.

  “Would you like some sugar in your tea?” Melman asked Slimey in her supposedly British accent.

  Slimey fell into a giggling fit atop Harold Hill, tugging at the grass to steady herself. Melman had been speaking in that accent since the glorious reunion of the “fraternal twins” two hours ago, but she came off sounding more like a sophisticated pirate.

  Slimey took a de
ep breath and watched the sun turn the sky a cotton-candy pink. It was so good to be back, waiting for their first Evening Activity. “Hate to break it to you, but that is so not how British people talk. Haven’t you seen Harry Potter?”

  “Harry Potter isn’t real life. I’m real life!!!” Melman shouted in her “British” accent again, this time sounding like a drowning wizard with two broken hearing aids. Her hands flailed in the golden sky as she danced circles around Slimey, the two of them drawing What the what? glances from their cabinmates scattered around the hill. Melman was being her normal, insane self.

  “I’ve missed your weirdness!”

  “You should have visited me after school,” she joked, plopping down on the grass beside Slimey. “London’s, like, only five minutes from Teaneck, New Jersey.”

  Slimey wished that were true. She wished Melman’s dad hadn’t gotten transferred overseas in September, taking her best friend in the whole world with him. “Nah, Skyping was way more fun.”

  “You’re right. We should just Skype at camp—walk around with laptops. We’d never have to real-life see each other again!” Melman scooted closer and threw her arms around Slimey’s neck. “Oh, Slimes, I’m really glad you came back. I don’t think I could handle the J-squad without you.”

  Slimey looked over her shoulder at Jenny braiding Jamie’s hair on the other side of the hill. Missi was there, too, and Slimey watched her creep her fingers through Jenny’s hair, only to be shot down by the J-squad’s unified stare-glare. Sophie was in the middle of the hill, throwing grass at the sky and whispering in Latin or Chinese or something. Sara hadn’t let her bring a book along, even though she could’ve read a whole chapter at this point—the boys were super-late.

  “Earth to Slimey,” Melman said.

  Slimey turned back to face her. “Of course I came back to camp. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know. Bad memories?”

  A lump formed in Slimey’s throat. She reached around her neck for her silver locket, really needing to open and close it at this very moment, but it wasn’t there. She knew no one was allowed to wear jewelry during Activity Periods, but taking it off for the first time in ten months was like separating from Teddy the teddy bear when she was two, except much worse. She hoped it was safe where she’d left it—on the underside of Melman’s top bunk, dangling above her Mooshi pillow. She felt naked without it on and didn’t know what to do with her hands. She dug her fingernails into her stomach.

  “The bad memories are at home, too.”

  “I know, but, like, you found out right in the—”

  “I know where I found out, Melman,” Slimey cut in. “Being at home is worse. There’re pictures of him, and all his clothes are still in the closet, and my mom, you know, is . . .” Her voice cracked, and she couldn’t say another word without tearing up, and she didn’t want to tear up, not now, so she stopped.

  “Yeah,” Melman whispered gently, taking Slimey’s hand from her stomach and giving it a tight squeeze.

  “Here, at least, I have the locket he gave me, and I have you. I’ll be fine,” Slimey assured her, squeezing her hand back. The lump in her throat was still there, but it wasn’t choking her anymore. It was just a little stuck.

  “Together we’ll make it the best summer ever—you’ll see,” Melman said, bringing back the British accent, pulling Slimey up and twirling her around.

  Slimey let Melman twirl her over and over again. It made her laugh, which freed up the lump, even if it didn’t come close to filling the hole in her heart.

  Slimey was dizzy in a good way when she heard Sara unenthusiastically delivering instructions. “Line up, ladies, all in one place.” Melman and Slimey wobbled over to where Sara and Sophie were waiting. “The San Juan boys have finally decided to grace us with their presence, and we might as well look ready,” she droned.

  “Why?” asked Jamie, shuffling her feet lazily.

  “To make them feel bad for being late.”

  “Missi, come stand between us,” Jenny purred sweetly, even though it was obvious she was manipulating the order (and Missi’s feelings) so that if they counted off every other girl to make teams, she and Jamie would be together.

  The boys charged up Harold Hill like a mischievous troop of monkeys: jumping, pushing one another, and laughing. Slimey was pretty sure Play Dough was eating a banana. But . . . now that he was getting closer, she could see it was a slice of lemon cake. Steinberg sprinted past him but didn’t get too far before he had to stop and puff his inhaler. Totle reached the girls first, pulling his T-shirt over his head and hopping from foot to foot, his signature victory dance. Dover arrived next and jogged straight past their line, his palm up for high fives. The girls all gave him one, except for Jamie and Jenny, who just looked at him skeptically, and Sophie, who stabbed her pointer finger into his hand instead. Somehow, Wiener had snuck in front of Melman and Slimey. He performed a set of push-ups, starting his count at one hundred and only making it to a hundred and three before he collapsed onto the grass.

  Rick, pulling up the rear, greeted the two cabin groups with his typical intense enthusiasm. “All right, Anita Hill ladies and San Juan gents, find yourselves a partner of the opposite sex!”

  No one moved. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to be paired up, but what Rick didn’t understand was that they weren’t ten anymore. Whoever you chose meant A LOT at this age. If a girl approached a guy to be her partner, she might as well be asking him to the Midsummer Dance.

  “Come on, guys . . . ,” Rick said, his pressing stare hopping from camper to camper.

  Slimey looked at the boys spread around the hill, heads down and kicking dirt—all the hyperness knocked right out of them. She thought about walking over to Dover, since he was passionate about random activities and only three paces away, but since she didn’t want to make any misleading statements the first night of camp, she took Melman’s hand instead.

  “Really? OK, then, I guess Sara and I will match you up ourselves.” Rick looked to his co-counselor for support. “Sara?”

  “Rick?” she shot back icily, making no move to help.

  Slimey didn’t know why Sara was acting so cold. As far as she knew, nothing had happened in the last half a day to make Sara upset. Plus, Rick was Sara’s boyfriend’s best friend, and they had all grown up together at camp.

  “All right, then, here we go.” Rick rubbed his hands together as the campers stood frozen with anticipation.

  Slimey was still standing beside Melman, and if she couldn’t be paired off with her, then she guessed any boy would be fine. She knew Melman didn’t care who she was with, either, as long as it wasn’t Wiener.

  “Wiener with Melman,” Rick announced.

  “Score!” shouted Wiener, throwing a celebratory fist into the air. Melman shook her head at him. Undiscouraged, he yawned and stretched his arm so that it hovered above her shoulders. Dumbest. Move. Ever. Luckily, Melman was a pro and smoothly ducked out of the way before any physical contact could be made.

  “Play Dough and Jamie,” Rick announced, looking at Jenny.

  “I’m Jenny. She’s Jamie.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What? Yes! I’m Jenny—”

  “She’s Jenny,” Rick confirmed, looking at Jamie.

  “No!” Jenny cried out.

  Of course Rick knows who we are, Slimey thought with a smile. Rick had known them all since they were One Tree Hillers and he was a Counselor-in-Training. He used to let them take turns riding on his shoulders while he ran as fast as he could.

  “They’re basically the same person,” Sophie explained, not picking up on the fact that Rick was kidding, “except Jenny tells Jamie what to do, and she does it, and Jamie asks Jenny what to do, and she tells her.”

  “It was a joke, Sophie! We three may be besties, but that doesn’t mean he can’t tell us apart,” Missi chimed in, throwing her wiry arms over the J-squad’s shoulders. It was painful to watch her relentless third-wheeling.
>
  Rick rattled off the rest of the pairs. “Totle and Jenny, Steinberg and Sophie, Dover and Missi, Smelly and Slimey.”

  Smelly? Slimey wondered. Who’s Rick calling Smelly? And why am I—

  That’s when she saw him, stepping out from behind Play Dough. In a blue T-shirt, red shorts, and a gray hoodie—same outfit from the bus. He was shorter than she thought he’d be but just as cute, with tousled brown hair and those same warm brown eyes. He looked up, and Slimey waved. Don’t talk too much, Slimey, she reminded herself. Just act normal. She knew she should just act like he was Play Dough or Steinberg or Dover, even. Guys she’d only seen as friends. She didn’t want to ruin it the way she’d ruined her chances at school with Peter by talking too much about Ron Weasley.

  He half smiled as they walked toward each other. “So you’re . . . ?”

  “Slimey, yeah.”

  “Cool. Nice to—”

  “You’re from New Jersey!” she exclaimed. Take it down a notch, Slimey.

  “Oh. Yeah . . .”

  “I recognize you from the Paramus bus.”

  “Oh!” he said, relieved. “Right! I picked up your—”

  “I didn’t stalk you or anything.”

  “No, I didn’t think that.”

  “OK, good.”

  “We’re both from New Jersey—cool. Where, um . . . where in—”

  “OK, San Juan-itas,” Rick interrupted, “time for the first game of the night. Before we get started, I want you to turn to your partner and tell each other one random thing about yourself. On your mark, get set—”

  “Do I have to stay with Totle?” Jenny whined.

  “Yes,” Sara answered.

  “No,” Rick overlapped.

  The counselors exchanged a look. Slimey kind of agreed with Sara. If she were Totle, she wouldn’t want to be rejected, even if it meant getting a nicer partner. Jenny and Jamie switched guys anyway, and since Totle didn’t seem to care, and Play Dough seemed happier paired with Jenny, Slimey turned back to Boy from the Bus. She wished she’d spent the last minute thinking about what to say instead of worrying about the boys. Now she was bound to go off on a nervous tangent. “So, random fact. Do you wanna go first?”