The Other Normals (14 page)

“Ah … excuse me?”

She whirls around, flinging her cigarette down and crushing it in one guilty motion.

“Holy—what happened to you? You were just here!”

“Ah … I started wandering in the woods and I got a little confused and I seem to have lost my clothes and I also found these clothes and I have some injuries I can’t explain.” I try to sound calm. “Do you have clothes from the Lost and Found to fit me?”

“Get inside! Jesus! Let me see your head!”

She holds open the door for me. I’ve figured out how to jut my hands into my pockets and press them against my hips to hold up Mortin’s pants, so I hope I look natural, but I don’t think I quite pull it off.

“Thanks for your help. And hey, I didn’t get a black eye, huh? That ice pack must have worked.”

“Excuse me?”

“Remember? When I was here? You gave me an ice pack?”

“You didn’t need any ice pack. You were fine when you came in. I don’t know what happened to you
since,
but—”

“If I was fine, what was I here for?”

“You were here to talk with Dale Blaswell after you knocked out poor Eric Chin! You don’t remember?”

THE NURSE GIVES ME KHAKI PANTS AND a bright pink T-shirt from the Lost and Found. I don’t think the clothes are “lost”—I think they were wisely jettisoned by previous campers. I change in the bathroom where I climbed through the window after Mortin Enaw. I put Mortin’s clothes in a shopping bag; I figure he might want them later. I picture him coming through to Camp Washiska Lake and not finding them and being very mad at me. At least I left his lighter.

I check myself in the bathroom mirror—my hair is ridiculous and asymmetrical, but isn’t asymmetrical hair popular these days? This is the face I have to work with. Everybody gets one face, and there’s no point hating it. I used to think mine looked doughy and needy, but now I’m just glad it’s
attached to my body.

When I go back to the nurse, she’s on the phone at her desk in the examination room.

“Yeah, he just wandered out of the woods. He seems con—”

I press the button on the phone cradle.

“What—”

What would Ada do? She’d be smart, like when she told the
guard she needed a doctor. She’d find leverage.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be smoking cigarettes in front of campers, do you agree?”

“Excuse me? I was on the phone!”

“I know, but I’m saying, maybe it’s best that you not tell anybody about me coming out of the woods.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“Perry—” I start, but then I decide to try something different. “
Peregrine.
Peregrine Eckert, of New York. And I’m not trying to be unreasonable. Smoking isn’t permitted at Camp Washiska Lake; I read that in the brochure. So let’s just hide our secrets together and both be cool. Cool?”

She puts the phone in its cradle and nods.

“I think I’m ready to join the other campers now.”

“Head down the road to the right. Follow the signs for Hideaway Village. They should be getting ready for dinner. The square dance is after. And whatever happened to you”—she leans forward—“if you need to talk, I’m here. I’m a licensed behavioral therapist.”

I WALK ALONE DOWN THE BADLY PAVED road that bisects the boys’ side of Camp Washiska Lake. The shoes I found in the Lost and Found are flip-flops that cut into the skin between my big and second toes, so I take them off and find myself more comfortable barefoot, World of the Other Normals–style. The asphalt is warm and cracked. The streaming light around me feels safe. I never realized before: it’s a
luxury
to be safe, to walk around without fear of serious imminent bodily harm. It’s rare, and it’s recent.

It’s also boring. The adrenaline is gone. Time goes at its normal pace, and all the old thoughts come back:
I’m not big enough I’m not good enough I’ll never make it it’s too late I’m disappointing someone somewhere right now people hate me I deserve to be hated palsy fever acne blister bone drench fluid burst
.... I wonder how my brain can be such a clear and beautiful machine in mortal danger and such a tedious drag when I’m safe.

I come to a bend in the road and see a sign tacked to a tree:
HIDEAWAY VILLAGE
. I proceed up a wide, well-worn path and bump into a burly male adult of the hip-hop persuasion coming the other way.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” He wears a tight stretch top like people who go to the gym. He has a big neck and short blond hair. It seems the only other white people at this camp are adults. “Are you Perry Eckert?”

“Peregrine.”

“Who gives a shit? Where you been?”

“I was going to Hideaway Village.”

“I’m your counselor. Ken. You were supposed to be here an hour ago. What happened?”

“I was in a fight and I got injured. See?” I show him my head.

“Fight? You look like you got a drive-by haircut. I know about the fight. You’ll be happy to know the kid you beat up is in the same yurt as you. Right now we’re doing a cookout, and nobody from my yurt can eat until my campers are accounted for, so come on.”

I don’t ask what a yurt is. I know from the brochure. I’m not eager to see one in person.

PICTURE A SMALL CIRCULAR CABIN WHERE you sleep on the floor. That’s a yurt. Nomads in Tibet live in them. For some reason Hideaway Village campers do too. When Ken and I reach ours, though, I’m comforted: it looks like Gamary’s thakerak chamber. It’s round and compact with wooden walls, a flimsy screen door, and no windows. In front of it is a campfire pit. Around it, sitting on logs, are five angry campers.

“Can we eat now?” one asks. He’s the darker of the two guys who were playing basketball in the parking lot before. Next to him is the guy he was playing with.

“Everyone,” Ken says, in an adult-summarizing-things tone, “this is Perry, the seventh member of Hideaway Village yurt four. Please welcome him. You can start cooking your hot dogs now.”

“Peregrine,” I correct. No one welcomes me. Ken lights the fire. I think of Ada. What’s she doing now? Is she rescuing Mortin with Gamary? Is Mortin
alive
? It feels wrong not to know … and for what? So I can rot with these fellow humans? The basketball duo snap open a cooler and hand hot dogs to everybody.

“Eckert,” Ken says, “meet Kolby and Jaxson.” He nods at the pair. They ignore me. Next to them sits a small guy with a pushed-in nose and angry, beady eyes. He was hanging out with Sam in the parking lot too. He sneers as he puts his hot dog on a stick.

“You get in a fight and keep us all from eating, what’s wrong with you, bitch?”

“This is BJ. BJ, please be respectful.”

“JB
, son,
JB
,” he says. “If you mess it up again, I’m’a punch you.”

Ken tightens his fists and flexes his chest at JB; JB backs off. Ken gestures to the next guy, a portly Hispanic kid. “George.”

George ignores me. He’s totally focused on his hot dog, as if by looking at it he could make it cook faster.

“And you know Ryu.”

There he is: the original Earth Ryu. He has to correspond to the one I hit with Ada’s notebook. Not just because of the name. He looks different now, far removed from the confident, predatory character I encountered at the start of camp. He has a bruise under his lip and a cut on his temple. I guess because I defeated the other Ryu, I did a reverse-history thing and beat up this one as well. He looks like he has vengeance on his mind.

“Hey, ah, it’s okay.” I sit next to him. “Whatever we were fighting about, I’m sure I’m cool with it now.”

“I don’t care if you’re ‘cool’ with it, I’m not ‘cool’ with it.”

“Hey!” Ken says. “You two: one wrong move, and neither of you gets your hot dog.”

Ryu mouths,
I’m going to kill you.
I slide away from him.

“Ken, you said there were seven people in our yurt? Who’s the last one?”

Ken nods behind him. Coming toward us, pushing his glasses up his nose, is a person I was worried I’d never see again. “Damn, this place has some off-brand bathrooms. What’s up with you putting the bathrooms ten minutes from where we gotta sleep?”

“Sam!”

SAM IGNORES ME, WALKS TO THE COOLER, and gets a hot dog.

“Sam? We’re friends, right?” I hope I haven’t effected some kind of correspondence change where Sam and I no longer know each other. I can’t survive the next eight weeks without Sam.

“Yeah, we’re friends,” he says, sticking his hot dog over the fire. That’s it. He clams up. I get a hot dog. I sit next to Sam and cook it. At least he doesn’t move away. After many uncomfortable moments, I build up the courage to speak in the quietest voice I can.

“What’s wrong?”

“Why are you
here
?”

“Why didn’t you tell me
you’d
be here?”

“Not your business. I don’t need people knowing what a ghetto camp I go to.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Tell me that in a week. There was a nerdy white kid here last year, couldn’t make it to Visiting Day. Ran away.”

“My parents thought it would be good for me.”

“Real people, huh? They want you to be with real people instead of geniuses.”

“I’m not a genius.”

“I
know that, Perry.”

“Call me Peregrine.”

“Peregrine?”

“Yeah.”

“Who do you think you are, an MC? I’m not gonna start calling you some stupid-ass name.”

“Sam … I’m different. Some weird things happened to me.”

“What?”

“I thought you might be able to tell me. I came in today and … I got in a fight, right?”

“What, do you have amnesia?”

“Just tell me what you remember.”

“You came in like it was prison, where you’re supposed to fight the first person you see. You picked on Ryu. I don’t know why you did it. I just sat back and watched you deck him. I couldn’t believe it. Counselors broke it up. You went to the nurse’s office. Now you’re here.”

“Who started the fight? I did?”

“Didn’t see.”

“Was he trying to take my miniature? I got this amazing new miniature for Pekker Cland, and—”

“What you two faggots talking about?” JB asks.

I start to answer, but Sam expertly pokes me in the thigh with the end of his hot-dog stick.

“Nothing.”

He slides down the log and leaves me alone, watching the skin of my hot dog turn black and puff out into nasty wide blisters.

FOLLOWING OUR COOKOUT, THE REST of which I spend sitting by myself trying to simultaneously ignore people and overhear their conversations, we have a “Hideaway Village powwow” chaired by camp director Dale Blaswell. All forty Hideaway Villagers gather at a set of picnic benches in a clearing central to the yurts. Behind us are the bathroom and showers, housed in a building that looks like a zoo shed meant to hold electrical equipment. Dale is all smiles, but something underneath looks reptilian and untrustworthy.

“Welcome, everyone, to Camp Washiska Lake!”

My fellow campers
mmm
dismissively.

“Let’s try that again. Welcome to Camp Washiska
Lake
!”

We cheer, obeying the rule of repeated crowd exhortation by adults.

“That’s better. That’s the kind of enthusiasm this place deserves.” Dale smooths out his mustache in two strokes like a villain in a western. “Camp Washiska Lake is one of the world’s special places. You may not realize it, but you are all about to embark on a journey that will introduce you to special places”—yes, he says
special places
twice—“and special people. I’m lucky; I get to be here every year. But unless you end up working here,
you have a limited time to experience all that we have to offer. Now, rule number one at our camp is
respect
....”

I’m already gone. I can’t take seriously anyone’s offer to show me a
special place
now that I’ve really been to one. I’m probably ruined for life with special places. What if, when I get home, I win a trip to Ibiza? I won’t even care. And Ibiza is the resort destination where people go to have dance-floor sex with European girls. I read about it on the internet. It really is special for Earth.

I look at my fellow campers, trying to figure out how to survive the next eight weeks. There have to be vulnerabilities; there have to be friends. Ada wouldn’t want me to just be a loser until August. All I see, though, are kids bubbling in their own groups, snickering (at me?), whispering (about me?), and smiling (at my expense?).

Three of them are Ryu and his henchmen, the big Asian guy and the medium-sized one. They sit at the end of a picnic bench and eye me with death stares. It annoys me that my actions in the World of the Other Normals have earned me an enemy instead of a friend.

“Do they always give this talk?” I ask George, the big Hispanic kid in my yurt, as Dale drones on.

“Every year the same, yeah: respect, no drugs, no candy.”