“Yeah,” I said. “That was Dr. Alistair. We aren’t supposed to get personal calls, except on Sunday afternoons. Then it’s okay.”
“So he explained to me.” Douglas didn’t sound in the least bit ruffled by his conversation with Dr. Alistair, world-famous orchestra conductor. “And you prefer working for him over Dad? At least Dad would let you get phone calls at work.”
“Yeah, but Dad would withhold my pay for the time I spent on the phone.”
Douglas laughed. It was good to hear him laugh. He doesn’t do it very often anymore.
“He would, too,” he said. “It’s good to hear your voice, Jess.”
“I’ve only been gone a week,” I reminded him.
“Well, a week’s a long time. It’s seven days. Which is one hundred and sixty-eight hours. Which is ten thousand, eighty minutes. Which is six hundred thousand, four hundred seconds.”
It wasn’t the medication that was making Douglas talk like this. It wasn’t even his illness. Douglas has always gone around saying stuff like this. That’s why, in school, he’d been known as The Spaz, and Dorkus, and other, even worse names. If I’d asked him to, Douglas could tell me exactly how many seconds it would be before I got back home. He could do it without even thinking about it.
But go to college? Drive a car? Talk to a girl to whom he wasn’t related? No way. Not Douglas.
“Is that why you called me, Doug?” I asked. “To tell me how long I’ve been gone?”
“No.” Douglas sounded offended. Weird as he is, he doesn’t think he’s the least unusual. Seriously. To Douglas, he’s just, you know, average.
Yeah. Like your average twenty-year-old guy just sits around in his bedroom reading comic books all day long. Sure.
And my parents let him! Well, my mom, anyway. My dad’s all for making Doug work the steam table in my absence, but Mom keeps going, “But Joe, he’s still
recovering
… .”
“I called,” Douglas said, “to tell you it’s gone.”
I blinked. “What’s gone, Douglas?”
“You know,” he said. “That van. The white one. That’s been parked in front of the house. It’s gone.”
“Oh,” I said, blinking some more. “
Oh
.”
“Yeah,” Douglas said. “It left the day after you did. And you know what that means.”
“I do?”
“Yeah.” And then, I guess because it was clear to him that I wasn’t getting it, he elaborated. “It proves that you weren’t being paranoid. They really
are
still spying on you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Douglas said. “And that’s not all. Remember how you told me to let you know if anyone we didn’t know came around, asking about you?”
I perked up. I was sitting at the receptionist’s desk in the camp’s administrative offices. The receptionist had gone home for the day, but she’d left behind all her family photos, which were pinned up all around her little cubicle. She must have really liked NASCAR racing, because there were a lot of photos of guys in these junky-looking race cars.
“Yeah? Who was it?”
“I don’t know. He just called.”
Now I really perked up. Rob. It had to have been Rob. My family didn’t know about him, on account of how I never really told them we were going out. Because we aren’t, technically. Going out. For the reasons I already told you. So what’s to tell?
Plus my mom would so kill me if she knew I was seeing a guy who wasn’t, you know, college-bound. And had a police record.
“Yeah?” I said eagerly. “Did he leave a message?”
“Naw. Just asked if you were home, is all.”
“Oh.” Now that I thought about it, it probably hadn’t been Rob at all. I mean, I’d made this total effort to let Rob know I was leaving for the rest of the summer. I had even gone to his uncle’s garage, you know, where Rob works, and had this long conversation with his feet while he’d been underneath a Volvo station wagon, about how I was going away for seven weeks and this was his last chance to say good-bye to me, et cetera.
But had he looked the least bit choked up? Had he begged me not to go? Had he given me his class ring or an ID bracelet or something to remember him by? Not. So not. He’d come out from under that Volvo and said, “Oh, yeah? Well, that’ll be good for you, to get away for a while. Hand me that wrench right there, will you?”
I tell you, romance is dead.
“Was it a Fed?” I asked Douglas.
Douglas went, “I don’t know, Jess. How am I supposed to know that? He sounded like a guy. You know. Just a guy.”
I grunted. That’s the thing about Feds, see. They can sound just like normal people. When they aren’t wearing their trench coats and earpieces, they look just like anybody else. They’re not like the Feds on TV—you know, like Mulder and Scully, or whatever. Like, they aren’t really handsome, or pretty, or anything. They just look … average. Like the kind of people you wouldn’t actually notice, if they were following you—or even if they were standing right next to you.
They’re tricky that way.
“That was it?” I noticed that there was this one guy who kept reappearing in the photographs on the secretary’s bulletin board. He was probably her boyfriend or something. A NASCAR-driver boyfriend. I felt jealous of the secretary. The guy she liked liked her back. You could tell by the way he smiled into the camera. I wondered what it would be like to have the boy you like like you back. Probably pretty good.
“Well, not really,” Douglas said. He said it in this way that—well, I could just tell I wasn’t going to like the rest of this story.
“What,” I said flatly.
“Look,” Douglas said. “He sounded … well, he seemed to really want to talk to you. He said it was really important. He kept asking when you’d be back.”
“You didn’t,” I said, just as flatly.
“He kept asking and asking,” Douglas said. “Finally I had to say you wouldn’t be back for six weeks, on account of you were up at Lake Wawasee. Look, Jess, I know I screwed up. Don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad.”
I wasn’t mad. How could I be mad? I mean, it was Douglas. It would be like being mad at the wind. The wind can’t help blowing. Douglas can’t help being a complete and utter moron sometimes.
Well, not just Douglas, either. A lot of boys can’t, I’ve noticed.
“Great,” I said with a sigh.
“I’m really sorry, Jess,” Douglas said.
He really sounded it, too.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m not so sure I’m cut out for this camp counselor stuff anyway.”
Now sounding surprised, Douglas said, “Jess, I can’t think of a job more perfect for you.”
I was shocked to hear this. “Really?”
“Really. I mean, you don’t—what’s the word?—condescend to kids like a lot of people do. You treat them like you treat everybody else. You know. Shitty.”
“Gee,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Douglas said. “Oh, and Dad says anytime you want to quit and come on back home, the steam table’s waiting for you.”
“Ha-ha,” I said. “How’s Mikey?”
“Mike? He’s trying to get as many glimpses of Claire Lippman in her underwear as he can before he leaves for Harvard at the end of August.”
“It’s good to have a hobby,” I said.
“And Mom’s making you a dress.” You could tell Douglas was totally enjoying himself, now that he’d gotten over giving me the bad news. “She’s got this idea that you’re going to be nominated for homecoming queen this year, so you’d better have a dress for the occasion.”
Of course. Because thirty years ago, my mom had been nominated homecoming queen of the very same high school I was currently going to. Why shouldn’t I follow in her footsteps?
Um, how about because I am a mutated freak? But my mom stubbornly refuses to believe this. We mostly just let her live in her fantasy world, since it’s easier than trying to drag her into the real one.
“And that’s about it,” Douglas said. “Got any messages for anybody? Want me to tell Rosemary anything?”
”
Douglas
,” I hissed in a warning tone.
“Oops,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I better go,” I said. I could hear someone coming down the hall. “Thanks for the heads up and all. I guess.”
“Well,” Douglas said. “I just thought you should know. About the guy, I mean. In case he shows up, or whatever.”
Great. Just what I needed. Some reporter showing up at Lake Wawasee to interview Lightning Girl. Pamela wouldn’t freak too much about that.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, bye, Catbreath.” I used my pet name for Douglas from when we were small.
He returned the favor. “See ya, Buttface.”
I hung up. Down the hall, I heard keys rattle. Pamela was just locking up her office. She came out into the main reception area.
“Everything all right at home?” she asked me, sounding as if she actually cared.
I thought about the question.
Was
everything all right at home? Had everything
ever
been all right at home? No. Of course not.
And I didn’t think it’d be too much of a stretch to say that everything would never be all right at home.
But that’s not what I told Pamela.
“Sure,” I said, hugging the padded envelope to my chest. “Everything’s great.”
C H A P T E R
4
I
was forced to eat those words a second later, however, when I stepped outside the camp’s administrative offices, into the sticky twilight, and heard it.
Someone screaming. Someone screaming my name.
Pamela heard it, too. She looked at me curiously. I didn’t have time for questions, though. I took off running in the direction the screams were coming from. Pamela followed me. I could hear her office keys and loose change jangling in the pockets of her khaki shorts.
Dinner was over. The kids were streaming out of the dining hall and heading over toward the Pit for their first campfire. I saw kids of all sizes and colors, but the two to whom my gaze was instantly drawn were, of course, Shane and Lionel. This time, Shane had Lionel in a headlock. He wasn’t choking him, or anything. He just wouldn’t let go.
“It’s okay, Lionel,” Shane was saying. He pronounced it the American way, LIE-oh-nell. “They’re just dogs. They’re not going to hurt you.”
The camp dogs, barking and wagging their tails delightedly, were leaping around, trying to lick Lionel and just about any other kid they could catch. Lionel, being so short, was getting most of these licks in the face.
“See, I know in Gonorrhea, you eat dogs,” Shane was saying, “but here in America, see, we keep dogs as pets… .”
“Jess!” Lionel screamed. His thin voice broke with a sob. “Jess!”
There was a group of kids gathered around, watching Shane torture the smaller boy. Have you ever noticed how this always happens? I have. I mean, I know whenever I take a swing at somebody, people immediately come flocking to the area, eager to watch the fight. No one ever tries to break it up. No one ever goes, “Hey, Jess, why don’t you just let the guy go?” No way. It’s like why people go to car races: They want to see someone crash.
I waded through the kids and dogs until I reached Shane. I couldn’t do what I wanted to, since I knew Pamela was right behind me. Instead, I said, “Shane, let him go.”
Shane looked up at me, his eyes—which were already small—going even smaller.
“Whadduya mean?” he demanded. “I’m just showing him how the dogs aren’t gonna hurt him. See, he’s afraid of them. I’m doing him a favor. I’m trying to help him overcome his phobia—”
Lionel, by this time, was openly sobbing. The dogs licked away his tears before they had a chance to trickle down his face very far.
I could hear Pamela’s keys still jangling behind me. She wasn’t, I realized, on the scene quite yet. Clutching my envelope in one hand, I reached out with the other and, placing my thumb and middle finger just above Shane’s elbow, squeezed as hard as I could.
Shane let out a shriek and let go of Lionel just as Pamela broke through the crowd that had gathered around us.
“What—” she demanded, bewilderedly, “is going on here?”
Lionel, free at last, hurled himself at me, flinging his arms around my waist and burying his face in my stomach so the dogs couldn’t get at his tears.
“They try to kill me!” he was screaming. “Jess, Jess, those dogs are try to kill me.”
Shane, meanwhile, was massaging his funny bone. “Whaddidja have to go and do that for?” he demanded. “You know, if it turns out I can’t play anymore on account of you, my dad’s going to sue you—”
“Shane.” I put one hand on Lionel’s shaking shoulders and, with the envelope, pointed toward the Pit. “You’ve got one strike. Now go.”
“A strike?” Shane looked up at me incredulously. “A
strike
? What’s a
strike
? What’d I get a
strike
for?”
“You know what you got it for,” I said, answering his last question first. The truth was, I hadn’t figured out the answer to his first question. But one thing I did know: “Two more, and you’re out, buddy. Now go sit with the others at the campfire and keep your hands to yourself.”
Shane stamped a sneakered foot. “Out? You can’t do that. You can’t throw me out.”
“Watch me.”
Shane turned his accusing stare toward Pamela. Unlike when he was looking at me, he actually had to tilt his chin a little to see her eyes.
“Can she do that?” he demanded.
Pamela, to my relief, said, “Of course she can. Now all of you, go to the Pit.”
Nobody moved. Pamela said, “I said,
go
.”
Something in her voice made them do what she said. Now
that’s
an ability I wouldn’t mind having: making people do what I told them, without having to resort to doing them bodily harm.
Lionel continued to cling to me, still sobbing. The dogs had not gone away. In the usual manner of animals, they had realized that Lionel wanted nothing to do with them, and so they remained stubbornly at his side, looking at him with great interest, their tongues ready and waiting for him to turn around so they could continue lapping up his tears.
“Lionel,” I said, giving the little boy’s shoulder a shake. “The dogs really won’t hurt you. They’re good dogs. I mean, if any of them had ever hurt anyone, do you think they would be allowed to stay? No way. It would open the camp up to all sorts of lawsuits. You know how litigious the parents of gifted children can be.” Shane being example numero uno.