“Both of you,” I said.
“Well cut it out,” he said.
Before dinner when we got back the fat kid signed out one of the little sailboats and was just getting going when Chris waded out and tipped the boat over with him in it, and then waded back to shore.
“Cut it out,” the fat kid screamed once he surfaced. “You cut it out too,” he said when he saw me throwing more little rocks from the shore. They plunked in the water around him.
“Phone call,” some kid said to me when we were back in the tents. There was only one phone the campers could use, and it was in the Camp Director's office.
“What's that noise?” I asked my father after he said hello.
“That's your brother,” he said.
“What's wrong with him?” I asked.
“He wants to go see the Association in New Haven,” my father said.
“The band the Association? They're playing in New Haven?” I asked.
“What do you think: he wants to visit their house? Yes, they're playing in New Haven,” he said.
“How'd he find out about it?” I asked.
“How do I know?” my father said. “He listens to the radio.”
“I'm goin',” I heard my brother tell him. You re not goin, my father said back. My mother shouted in her two cents from wherever she was.
“Does he want you to go with him?” I said.
“He's nine years old. He's not going to a rock concert,” he told me.
My brother shouted something I couldn't make out. “Hey,” my father shouted back. “How'd you like to not leave your room for a few weeks?”
My brother said something else I couldn't hear.
“I told him he could play some of your records instead,” he said.
“You talking to me?” I asked him. “My records?”
“No, I'm talking to your mother,” he said. “He wants to play our Perry Como. That's why I called you.”
“I don't want him playing my records,” I said.
“Now don't you start too,” he said.
“I'm not starting anything,” I said.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said. “I'm gonna take all these fucking records and pitch them out the window.”
“Fine,” I said. “I don't care what he does. I hope he breaks them all.”
“I hope so too,” my father said.
“Lend me your flashlight,” Chris said to me when I was on my way back to my tent. He'd come from behind me.
“How will I get home?” I asked him.
“Lend me your flashlight,” he said. I handed it over and he veered into the woods and disappeared. I didn't even see it go on.
“Chris has my flashlight,” I told my tentmates when I got back. I said it like Godzilla was loose in the city.
It was my father's good one. When we'd been packing he'd been deciding between the crappy plastic one he let us play with and his. My brother had taken his once and had lost it. Even my mother had had to start looking for it. It had been this huge thing. I didn't care which one I had, but his had a better beam. I'd told him I wouldn't lose it and he'd said okay. And now Chris had it and when I tried to get it back he'd beat me to death with it.
As usual I couldn't sleep. I got up when it was still dark and signed up for the beach. I went by the counselors' lean-to but nobody was moving. A raccoon was rooting around in somebody's knapsack in the dirt.
Maybe it was good that I lost it, I thought on the way back to the tent. Maybe when they found out, my parents would be like, But he knew how much we wanted him to keep an eye on it.
But I also wanted to be the kid who stayed up when everybody else went under.
The fat kid showed up at the beach too. He said the Camp Director was trying to make it up to him about the Chris stuff.
I cut my hand on the sharp edge of a broken garbage can.
I was worried about the flashlight. The fat kid sat next to me. We were the only ones not in the water. It was so humid you couldn't tell we hadn't been in.
Some kids were having races from the steel dock to the pontoon raft. A few sailboats were crisscrossing, the occasional sail collapsing. One rowboat sat a ways out, trailing a Mile Swimmer. The water over the sand by the reeds where we were was the color of cream soda.
Kids were throwing other kids off the pontoon raft into the lake. There was a lot of shouting, and my hand was still bleeding. I was going to need a better Band-Aid.
“You think BJ stands for Blow Job?” the fat kid said.
I looked at him. I hadn't thought of that.
“Has he asked you yet?” he said.
“Asked me what?” I said.
“He asked me” he said. “I told him I would.” He looked at my face like he'd gotten the reaction he wanted.
“Why would you say that?” I said, though it was none of my business.
He shrugged, his shoulders up on both sides of his ears.
Someone whacked me on the head with a life preserver. “Camp Director wants you,” Chris said when I turned around.
“You finished with my flashlight?” I asked.
He looked at me, trying to figure out who I was. “I don't have your flashlight,” he said.
I closed my eyes and when I opened them he hadn't changed his expression. I told him I was the kid who lent him the flashlight.
“I got my own flashlight,” he said. “Why would I borrow yours?”
Last night, I told him. On the trail.
“Give him his flashlight,” the fat kid told him.
“What'd you say to me?” Chris asked.
Then he repeated that I had a call and gave my shoulder a shove while he was still looking at the fat kid. As in Get going.
When I looked back, he was standing there over him, the fat kid just looking out over the water like he was alone.
“Where the Christ are the records?” my father asked on the phone. When I told him he hung up.
When I got back the fat kid was standing in the water up to his waist, watching the kids on the pontoon raft, and Chris was gone. I got in as far as my knees and the air horn sounded for the end of sign-up events.
“You think BJ stands for Blow Job?” I asked Joyce at lunch.
“Duh,” he said. He had a quarter-sized strawberry on his forehead, like he'd been dragged facedown across a rug.
“So you think it does,” I said.
“It is all he ever talks about,” he said.
We had our trays and were looking for places to sit. “I haven't heard him say it once,” I said.
It turned out that Chris wasn't the only one who was beating on the fat kid. The fat kid's tentmates were too. The night before two of them held him down and one peed all over his face. And his bed. He told me at the Nature Center before dinner. The Nature Center was a two-room cabin that had a stuffed fox on a log and some turtle shells in a glass case. The best things in it were the spiders in the ceiling corners that weren't part of the exhibit. The fat kid said he didn't know where he'd go. He didn't want to sleep with those kids anymore. He didn't want to sleep anywhere anymore.
“I know that feeling,” I said. But he looked at me like I was just trying to cheer him up.
When I saw him later that night I thanked him for backing me up with Chris.
“You don't have your flashlight, do you?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“So what good did I do?” he said.
We were on our way back from the campfire. “Where're you two going?” BJ asked when he saw us walking together. But he sounded worried.