“That is so fucked up,” the other kid said, like he'd just come downstairs on Christmas morning.
“So what is your name?” Joyce asked once we were back from dinner. Dinner had sucked. A little piece of metal or something had been in my Salisbury steak, and a kid in line behind me when we were bussing our trays had made fun of my shorts.
“BJ,” the other kid said. Now we had more time to piss away before the big Opening Night Campfire.
“What's that short for?” Joyce asked.
“BJ,” BJ said.
All through the first part of the campfire my gum was still bleeding from the thing in my food. I could taste it. I kept doing this thing with my face to make it feel better. “What're you, retarded?” BJ asked. I guessed he could see it even though it was getting pretty dark.
I was pressing my hands together really hard. I couldn't keep my feet still. It was interesting, though: being here wasn't any worse than being home, or being anywhere.
There was a big pyramid of wood in front of us. It was like six feet tall. A wire ran from the middle of it to a stepladder set up behind us. Every kid sitting on the grass was thinking bonfire and hoping it would maybe get out of control and the state would burn down.
We all had our flashlights with us for the trip back to the tents, though at this point they were supposed to be turned off. Chris pulled three kids from the audience and sat them in front and told them to turn their flashlights on him when he got up onstage. The stage was a plywood sheet on four metal milk crates. One of the kids was still shaking when Chris climbed up there. You could see the light beam jittering. He'd probably been thinking they were going to start things off by kicking three kids in the face.
Instead Chris said hi to us all and then said “I can't hear you” four times at what we said back. Finally even I screamed hi. He introduced the Camp Director, who had a beer in his hand. The Camp Director handed him the beer when he climbed up onto the stage. The plywood almost tipped and the Camp Director held his hands out on both sides of him and said, “Whoa, Old Paint.” He seemed to think that that should get a laugh.
He told us that Pautapaug was an old Nipmuc Indian name that meant “swampy land.” He told us that the camp got started by the Bridgeport Rotary Club in 1919. He said that we were 175 acres from the nearest town. He gave us the schedule: Reveille; Bunk Attack, for kids who slept through Reveille; the Call for Waiters; Breakfast; Sign-Up Events; the Call for Waiters; Lunch; Siesta; Sign-Up Events; Call for Waiters; Dinner; Water Polo or Capture the Flag; Campfire and Taps. He gave it to us again. Then he taught us the camp song.
“Pautapaug, carefree land, Pautapaug, helping hand,” the kid next to me sang.
The Camp Director got down and Chris got back up there. The Camp Director took his beer back. The other counselors were all doing something behind us.
“Fire god of Pautapaug, send down your fire!” Chris screamed.
A coffee can filled with some kind of fire slid down the wire to the pyramid. It bounced when it hit the wood and then sat against it for a minute before the whole thing went up. It must have been totally soaked with gas or something. That was a big hit with the campers.
The kids in the front row had to move back. The toe of one kid's sneaker started to melt.
There was more singing. Then the counselors all went somewhere. We sat there in the dark, looking at the fire.
Was I really going to make it to eighth grade? Did I even want to make it to eighth grade? Nothing about the year coming up seemed like anything I wanted to go through.
“So is that it?” BJ said, before the fire was even out.
The counselors came back. They shoved each other around and got each other in headlocks. Campers were dismissed by troops, Beaver first. One kid tripped when we got up to leave and burned his hand. On the way back to the tents everybody had sword fights with the flashlight beams until the counselors told us to cut it out.
Nobody said anything in the tent. I climbed under the covers, already too hot. Mosquitoes buzzed in one ear and then went over to the other one.
They called lights out. We switched off our flashlights. “So, do you beat off?” BJ asked, as soon as they went out.
For some reason I got all teary and rolled my face into the pillow. It already smelled like the bottom of a laundry bag.
“How old are you?” he asked. A light went by outside and I could see his silhouette.
“Who you talkin' to?” Joyce finally asked back.
“You,” BJ said. “Anyone.”
“I'm eleven,” Joyce said.
“Yeah, well I'm twelve,” BJ said.
“Huh,” Joyce said. In the dark, one of them rolled over and then kicked hard at his sheets.
“What about you?” BJ asked.
“I'm twelve too,” I said.
“You are not,” BJ scoffed.
“I don't have time for this,” I said.
“He is not,” he said to Joyce.
“He says he is,” Joyce said back.
“Fuckin' liar,” BJ said, and rattled something in a box. I could hear him eating.
I was crying, which was the very last thing I wanted to be doing, and trying not to make any noise at all. I was pushing on my eyeballs with my fingertips and I was worried I was going to drive them through my skull. They hurt enough that I stopped. My father had said, “You don't want to go to camp? You don't want to do any thing. Times're tough all over. Go up there and force yourself to have a good time. We'll stay down here and deal with your brother.” When I tried to bring it up again later on, he told me, “Believe me, you got the better deal.”
“I got a boner like an iron bar,” BJ said. He made a noise on his bed like he was hauling it around.
This is only the first night, I kept thinking. And that only made me cry harder, until I stopped.
“What was that?” Joyce asked, and he and BJ stopped moving to listen. But then there was nothing else to hear.
At breakfast everybody seemed to know everybody but me. “I got you,” BJ called to a kid at another table. “I got you later on. You're mine.”
“You know him from back home?” I asked.
“I met him when you did,” BJ said. He sawed his fork into some waffles.
I looked at the kid. “When did I meet him?” I asked. Nobody answered.
The fat kid and I collided on the way out of the dining hall. He spilled something but I didn't see what. BJ high-fived me on the way down the front steps.
“It's not a crime to help somebody,” my mother told me once. She was talking about my little brother.
My little brother was going crazy. That was the big worry. I was wound pretty tight and had some issues, which was how my father put it, but my little brother worried everybody. I couldn't tell who was more scared about it, my mother or father. They started going over it one night after school got out for the summer, when they thought we were asleep, and after I listened for a while I sat up in bed and realized he was standing there in the hall in the dark.
“C'mon in here,” I told him. He came in and sat on the covers. He was only nine and it felt like he'd been crying since Easter. He had bed head and thick hair and it stuck up like a wing. Even in the dark he seemed sad.
“Waynik, Keough, what's his name, they're all the same,” my father said. He was rinsing something at the sink.
“They're trying everything they can think of,” my mother told him. “Waynik says to give it some time.”
“Waynik sees him one hour a week,” my father told her. “Friday afternoon to boot. He's got his clubs by the door. He's ready to hit the first tee.”