Charlie Joe Jacksons Guide to Summer Vacation

by Tommy Greenwald

  Different as in, it had never happened before in our entire lives.

  The match went back and forth. Katie and Cathy were both pretty decent, for a couple of bookworms. I tried not to care, but it was a close match, and I ended up paying close attention. Finally, Katie won. The crowd whooped and cheered as the two girls hugged, then came off the court.

  When they saw George and Nareem, they came running over. All four of them said “Hi!” to each other at the exact same time.

  “What are you guys doing here?” asked Katie.

  “Yeah, don’t you have basketball?” added Cathy.

  “Dwayne let us come watch,” said George. “You guys are really good, by the way.”

  “Really good,” agreed Nareem.

  “Not really,” said Cathy, “but thanks.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” said Katie.

  “No problem,” said George.

  Then they all just started smiling at each other.

  “I hate to break up this incredibly fascinating conversation,” I said, “but we should go.”

  Katie looked at me. “Charlie Joe, what is WITH you?”

  I shrugged. “What?”

  Her eyes flashed with anger. “You can do the most interesting things—like your article yesterday, which was actually pretty brave—and yet you’re capable of being the biggest jerk!”

  “How am I being a jerk?”

  Katie looked shocked at the dumbness of my question. “Well, for one thing, the whole camp came and cheered for you at the basketball game against Camp Jockstrap, but when we’re playing in the tennis tournament finals, you act like you’d rather be anywhere else.”

  “That’s so not true,” I said, even though it was.

  Katie shook her head sadly. “You’re being mean to me for absolutely no good reason.”

  “You were mean to me first.”

  “No I wasn’t.”

  Nareem threw up his hands. “Would you two stop this nonsense right now!” he demanded. Katie and I stopped the nonsense, right then.

  Nareem looked at us. “You two have been best friends your whole lives,” he said. “And now you’re acting like kindergarteners, for the silliest reason in the world.”

  “Being called a nerd is not silly,” I insisted. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “I never said you were a nerd!” Katie yelled. “I said you were a smart person who wanted to learn! How is that so horrible?”

  I thought for a second. “Because you’re calling me a phony.”

  Katie’s face changed, as if she’d been slapped.

  “I would never call you a phony,” she said finally.

  Nareem stepped in again. “Think about it, Charlie Joe. Katie is your biggest fan. She thinks you’re hilarious and smart and you’re basically her best friend. How could she possibly think you’re a phony?”

  I had no answer to that one.

  George tried next. “I think what Katie’s really saying, Charlie Joe, is that maybe you’re realizing there’s more to life than trying to avoid reading books. There are a lot of interesting things and people in the world that are worth learning about, and reading about. Is that possible?”

  I thought about that for a second.

  “Not really,” I said.

  Katie sighed. “You’re unbelievable. Are you ever going to grow up?”

  I smiled. “Hopefully not. Listen, I hate to ruin the fun, but we need to get back, or Dwayne is going to make us dribble around the whole rest of the camp backwards.”

  “That would not go well,” Jack said.

  We all headed off except for George and Nareem, who lingered behind. George hugged Cathy, and Nareem hugged Katie. Then they kept hugging.

  “Let’s go, you guys,” I called to them. “Seriously.”

  As George and Nareem finally tore themselves away, Katie stared at me with her hands on her hips.

  “What?” I said. “You guys could hug until Christmas, for all I care. It’s Dwayne who’d be mad, not me.”

  Katie rolled her eyes, just like the way she did when we were six years old and I’d told her that books could kill you. That eye-roll always made me laugh. I looked at her, and for a split second I wanted to tell her that I thought she was the funniest, coolest person in the world.

  Instead, I just said, “Congratulations on your victory,” and walked away.

  28

  That night, after lights out, I wasn’t tired, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Katie calling me mean.

  So I borrowed Sam’s flashlight and read some more of the Lech Walesa biography.

  It was only because everyone else was asleep and I had absolutely nothing else to do.

  I swear.

  29

  Friday morning, when people walked into breakfast, they saw copies of the Bugle on each plate, which was normal.

  They also saw a note on top of each copy, which was not at all normal.

  From the Staff of the Bukkee Bugle:

  We’re sorry to announce that this will be the last edition of the Bugle for this summer. Both of next week’s issues, including Friday’s special Overnight Adventure Preview, have been canceled.

  We cannot stand by after our staff supervisor, Ms. Domerca, was taken off the newspaper for defending the right of one of our reporters, Charlie Joe Jackson, to express his opinion.

  Therefore, we are all resigning our positions at the paper, effective immediately.

  We hope you enjoy this last issue, which includes the long-awaited analysis of camper eating habits as they affect academic productivity—written by Jared Bumpers and Lauren Rubin—as well as an article about kids and stress, by Jack Strong.

  Sincerely,

  The Staff of the Bukkee Bugle

  30

  We’d come up with the idea for the staff note Thursday afternoon, while Dr. Singer was snoring away on the couch. Lauren wrote most of it. Jared made us put in the phrase long-awaited. It was a small price to pay for a unanimous vote.

  When Dr. Singer woke up, we showed him the final issue—without our secret addition, of course—while a girl named Becky Esposito quietly printed out copies of the note in the back room. Dr. Singer had no idea what we were up to, poor guy.

  Then, just before breakfast, Jack and I put the papers and the notes on each plate. Dr. Mal didn’t realize what we’d done until he sat down at his own table, thirty seconds before the campers walked in.

  By then, it was too late.

  I watched him as he read the note. The top of his bald head turned red, and he snapped his neck around—looking for me, probably. He didn’t find me, but he did find Dr. Singer, who was reading the note at his own table. The two of them looked at each other and hurried out of the dining hall, probably to decide what to do.

  That’s when I made my move.

  I went to the front of the dining hall and grabbed the microphone. I was as nervous as I’ve ever been in my life. But then I thought of Ms. Domerca, and how unfairly she’d been treated. I took a deep breath and started talking.

  “Announcements, please! Announcements!”

  The room fell completely silent.

  “Okay, I know I’m not Dr. Mal,” I continued. “And I know it’s the beginning of the meal, not the end. But I have an important announcement.”

  I saw Dr. Mal and Dr. Singer heading back into the dining hall. I figured I had about fourteen seconds.

  “Today is supposed to be the first day of Extra Workshop, but I say it doesn’t have to be. For anyone who wants to skip it and go for a swim instead, please head down to the lake right after breakfast.”

  The two doctors were about six seconds away. I raised my fist. “As Lech Walesa once said, ‘Our firm conviction is that ours is a just cause. We hold our heads high, despite the price we will pay.’”

  Dr. Singer grabbed the microphone out of my hand. Dr. Mal took my arm and steered me out of the room.

  “Freedom is priceless!” I shouted back toward the campers.

 
; I heard the applause begin as the door shut behind me.

  I think Lech would have been proud.

  31

  On our way to his office, Dr. Mal told me he was calling my parents.

  “I should warn you, this may well result in us sending you home,” he said.

  A sudden image of the beach flashed through my head. Unfortunately, it was immediately followed by an image of me grounded for the rest of the summer.

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Dr. Mal dialed my home phone number and waited, while I prayed that my mom answered and not my dad. It was a weekday morning, so my odds were good, even though Dad took some Fridays off in the summer.

  After a few rings, someone picked up. “Mrs. Jackson?” asked Dr. Mal.

  Prayers answered.

  “I’m very sorry to call you like this, but we have a bit of a problem,” Dr. Mal told her. “Charlie Joe has insisted on breaking a few rules here at camp in our first few weeks. Last week he ordered pizza in the middle of a basketball game, and now he’s asking children to skip one of our workshops and go swimming.” He paused for a minute, no doubt listening to my mother tell him how deeply embarrassed she was. “Well, no, I’m not sure yet, but I think it’s best if the two of you talk about it first, for a brief minute.”

  Dr. Mal held out the phone. I looked at it like it was a piece of celery, but eventually I took it.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She started right in. “Seriously, Charlie Joe? You can’t make it through three weeks at summer camp without getting into major trouble?”

  She was angry, frustrated, and yelling. But here’s the weird thing: I was still happy to hear her voice.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t do anything that bad. Last week we actually beat Teddy Spivero’s camp in basketball, and this week I was just expressing my freedom of speech.”

  My mom paused in shock. “Freedom of speech? What do you know about freedom of speech?”

  “Lech Walesa, this Polish guy in this book, is all about freedom of speech. And Ms. Domerca, the teacher, she got taken off the camp newspaper because she stood up for me.”

  She sighed. “Put Dr. Malstrom back on the phone.”

  I handed the phone back to Dr. Mal. “She wants to talk to you.”

  He took the phone and listened. After a second he said, “No, he doesn’t seem to want to leave.” Another pause. “I know. I’m surprised, too.” And another pause (Mom certainly had a lot to say). “I can’t say that I have,” said Dr. Mal, answering some question that was probably along the lines of, have you ever had a kid who was such a nightmare in the entire history of your camp?

  “The board will meet this afternoon and make a final decision,” Dr. Mal told my mom. “I can tell you, though, we don’t have a lot of wiggle room with this kind of behavior.”

  He looked at me like he couldn’t wait to get rid of me, and I started thinking about what I would do for the rest of the summer if I were locked in my room.

  There was a knock on the door. Dr. Mal held his hand over the phone. “Who is it?”

  “Marge.” Marge Shockey was the director of water sports. She was tall and freckled, and her skin always had that wrinkly, prune-ish look of someone who’s been in a bath for seven hours.

  “What is it, Marge?” Dr. Mal called.

  Mrs. Shockey came in, looking a little nervous. I don’t think she’d spent a lot of time in Dr. Mal’s office. In fact, I’d probably been there more than she had, by that point.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you should know that something’s happening down at the lake.”

  “Damn it,” Dr. Mal said, breaking his own very strict no-swearing rule. He returned to the phone. “Mrs. Jackson, we’re going to have to call you back in a bit.” He turned to Mrs. Shockey. “What are you saying?”

  “Kids are starting to show up asking to take a swim.”

  The top of Dr. Mal’s bald head turned redder than a tomato. “Exactly which kids?”

  Mrs. Shockey swallowed deeply before she managed to croak it out.

  “Well,” she said, “pretty much the whole camp.”

  32

  Dr. Mal, Mrs. Shockey, and I ran down to the waterfront, and sure enough, kids were hanging around the dock in bathing suits, laughing and fooling around and definitely not on their way to Extra Workshop. (Ms. Domerca was there, too, talking to the kids from the Bugle. She was wearing a purple, pink, and orange bathing suit that had peace signs and flowers all over it, which turned out to be a perfect look for her.)

  I couldn’t believe everyone had actually shown up. It was just like Lech Walesa said. We have the right to decide our own affairs and mold our own future … and he who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.

  Dwayne came up to Dr. Mal. “I couldn’t stop them, Boss. At first a few kids started coming down, and I made them turn around. But then they all started coming, and there wasn’t anything I could do.”

  “Thank you, Dwayne,” said Dr. Mal. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Dr. Mal put his hands up, and everyone fell silent. Campers were revolutionaries only up to a point, I guess.

  “Can I ask why everyone is down here at the lake,” Dr. Mal asked, “instead of at the first session of Extra Workshop?”

  No one moved. A few people looked at me, waiting for me to say something, but I’d just been in Dr. Mal’s office talking to my angry mother, and I wasn’t in the mood to be all that talkative right then.

  “If no one has anything to say,” Dr. Mal went on, “I’d like everyone to return to their cabins, please get changed and report for workshop. That’s enough of this nonsense. We’re already twenty minutes behind schedule.”

  People started shuffling around, not sure what to do next, then started slowly heading away from the water. I looked around, wondering if this was the end of the line. The shortest revolution on record. Ten minutes.

  I wanted to shout, “Stop! Swim! Don’t listen to him!”—which would have been kind of an awesome rhyming cheer, now that I think about it—but I just couldn’t. I wasn’t quite as brave as Lech Walesa, it turned out. Probably because I didn’t have the mustache.

  Then someone said, “I’d like to say something.”

  It was Katie.

  Everyone stopped as she stepped up to the front of the dock. She wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, by the way. Just regular shorts and a tank top. Katie was never big on swimming.

  “Dr. Mal,” she began, “I think this camp is amazing and that you’re a fantastic camp director. I love it here, and I can’t wait to come back next year, and maybe even eventually become a counselor.”

  He looked down at her, smiling just a bit. “Thank you, Katie.”

  “But,” she added, “I don’t think that in this instance you’re being fair.”

  Dr. Mal stopped smiling.

  “In his completely inappropriate way, Charlie Joe is making a pretty good point,” Katie went on. “We all work really hard here. But this camp isn’t all about work. It’s about play, too. I think what makes it so great is that it has just the right balance of work and fun.”

  “She’s right,” Jack agreed, nervously staring at the sand. “We kind of like it the way it is. You can only work so much.”

  I couldn’t believe it. The most dedicated kid at camp, stepping up! I hoped his dad would never find out about what he’d just said.

  Other kids murmured their agreement. Maybe the revolution wasn’t over after all.

  “But Dr. Mal has a point, too,” Katie added, looking at me. “We’re here to learn, because we love to learn. And we should take every advantage of the opportunity, since we’re only here for three weeks.”

  “That’s true, too,” said someone else. Soon everyone was chattering away about the ups and downs of Extra Workshop.

  Dr. Mal wasn’t sure what to do. He was used to being a dictator. But there was no way he could argue with Katie,
whom everybody respected, and who had just told him how great the camp was. Finally, he said, “So, Katie. What do you suggest?”

  “Well,” she said, “it just so happens that a bunch of us have been thinking about it, and we have an idea.” She nodded at Nareem, who cleared his throat.

  “What if we have Free Swim today?” he suggested. “Then next week, we have Extra Workshop Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Free Swim Tuesday and Thursday?”

  Dr. Mal hesitated and looked around, as if searching for advice that never came. “I’ll need to discuss it with the board.”

  George stepped up, looking scared but determined. “With all due respect, sir, we don’t want to wait for the board’s decision. We, the campers, think this is a fair compromise. We would like to be treated with respect, and have you honor our suggestion.”

  He looked at Cathy for support. She nodded. “Otherwise,” he went on, “we will not report to Extra Workshop at all.”

  George stepped back, and everyone clapped him on the back. I couldn’t believe it. My fellow campers—the kids I thought were hopeless, comically challenged dorks just two weeks ago—were totally stepping up.

  I was proud to call them my friends.

  Dr. Mal took out his cell phone and made a phone call that lasted approximately thirteen seconds. He put his phone away, looked up at the sky, then back down at Katie.

  “Deal,” he said.

  Everyone burst into cheers so loud the ducks flew from the lake.

  But if Dr. Mal thought that he was done making deals, he was wrong. Lauren was the next to walk up to the camp director. “Dr. Mal,” she said, “we would also like to have Ms. Domerca back as our staff supervisor at the Bukkee Bugle.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up,” Dr. Mal told Lauren. Then he walked up to Ms. Domerca. “I’m sure we will be able to work something out. I regret that whole incident. You should always be free to express your opinion here, without fear of reprisal.”