Chapter Two: The Rest Of the Day, and Some Of the Night

"Awright, so that's Racetrack, Snitch, Mush and the one who looks like a pirate is Kid Blink," Sneakers said, pointing at the Italian kid, the one with the tennis ball and giant teeth, the curly haired boy with darker skin, and the blond with an eye patch in turn.

"Uh, right," David said, as Sneakers dropped his duffle bag at the foot of one of the four bunk beds, and pointed at the top bunk.

"You're up there," Sneakers said. "So once you're unpacked, you've gotta do a riding test and swim test. Do you ride?"

"Not really," David said, as he dragged his trunk over to the bed he'd been assigned.

"Scared of horses?" the tennis-playing kid asked.

"No. I just don't ride."

"He's scared," Blink murmured to Mush, who laughed.

"Be nice, Blink," Sneakers said. "So you're new, and I'm not gonna bother with this stuff for the rest of the guys, because they all know it. But curfew for seniors is ten, lights out is eleven. Wakeup call is seven Mondays through Saturdays, Sundays you can either get up for breakfast at nine or skip it and sleep until eleven, unless you want to go to Church."

"I'm Jewish," David said.

"Then no church, I take it. Oh, right—" he turned to Race. "I'm supposed to get you up Sundays, right?"

"Yeah," Race groaned.

"Okay. Anyone else?" There was a long silence. "That's what I figured."

"Oh, like you're going to be getting up on Sundays," Snitch accused.

Sneakers shrugged. "No activities until one on Sunday," he told David. "Otherwise, there's activities from nine-thirty until twelve, then lunch, then activities two until five, dinner at six, and evening sports or whatever until the little kids have curfew. Then you're free to do whatever you want—within reason—until curfew. Got all that?"

"Uh... I think so."

"Good. You'll figure it out really fast, don't worry. Oh, and there are three bells before meals; one a half-hour before, one fifteen minutes, and one when the dining hall opens for everyone."

"'Kay."

"Like I said, you'll catch on real fast. Hey, I gotta get back up to the check-in table, one of you guys want to take him to riding and the waterfront?"

There was a long silence.

"I can find—" David started.

"Race?" Sneakers interrupted. "You wanna make yourself useful?"

"Yeah, sure," Racetrack agreed. Sneakers thanked him, waved a little, and let himself back out of the cabin. "Let's go," Race said. "Riding first, so you can cool off an' get the scent of the horses off in the water. You'll wanna dig out your towel an' stuff, though."

David did as he suggested, and looked around him, vaguely paranoid. No one was talking, not to each other and not to him. He felt like an intruder; it was obvious that everyone already knew each other and they didn't especially want an interloper. "So, uh," he said finally, "who's bed is that?" He gestured at the middle bunk bed, the one where the kid with the tennis ball—Snitch, he recalled, and wondered how he got the nickname—was sitting.

"Skittery's. He's probably at riding," Snitch said, as David found his towel and swim trunks.

"Let's go," Race offered, standing finally. He and David walked out and headed out of the Senior Boys unit, then back uphill and around the cabins they'd just come out of. "Don't mind everyone, we just aren't used to new guys living in Pentland. You'll get to know everyone pretty fast."

"How'd you get your nickname?" David asked, slightly more comfortable talking to just one person than facing a whole new group.

"It's... 'cause I like racin' so much," Race said.

"Okay."

"Actually, it's from gambling, racing horses and all, but as far as my family knows it's because I like racing. Ya got that?"

"I guess." He shrugged a little, wondering why Race would be so emphatic about his family not knowing about the nickname, since it wasn't like anyone's parents would be wandering around camp. Well, parent's day, maybe, he figured.

They came up on the stables and riding area, crawling with kids and counselors. Race led him to one of the counselors, whose nametag identified him as Ratcatcher, though everyone was calling him by his real name, Morris. "What do you want?" he demanded of Race.

"Not me, him." Race gave David a little push forward. "He needs his riding test."

"New kid, huh?" Morris asked with a leer, then turned around to yell at one of the other campers.

Race leant over and mumbled in David's ear, "He's the head of the riding unit... Talks tough, so does his brother—" he pointed at one of the other counselors, who looked vaguely similar, "but they ain't really so bad. Once you get used to them."

"Uh, okay," he agreed, as Morris turned back to them.

"So you're new. Bet you think you can ride like a pro, huh?"

"No," David said. Morris looked almost disappointed that he wouldn't get to disillusion David. "I actually don't ride."

"You planning to this summer?"

"I don't know yet."

"Well figure it out real fast, kid, so I can put you on the lesson schedule with the babies."

David almost winced at that. "I don't think so," he decided quickly. Better not to ride than to get put in a group with the babies... And besides, he didn't really like the way the riding counselors were yelling and figured avoiding them was safest.

And he didn't especially like horses.

"No point in testing you then, is there?" Morris snapped. "Get outta here, I got better things to do."

David was more than happy to do as asked. They only paused on the way out of the stables for long enough to meet his other bunkmate, Skittery. "You should reconsider riding," was his first comment. "I used to be real scared too—got my nickname 'cause I was more skittish than the horses—but they can't keep me out of the stables now." He grinned.

"I'm not scared of horses."

"Suuuure you're not," he said. "Nothing to be ashamed of, just because you're a teenager who's afraid of a harmless—"

"I am not afraid. I just... Don't like them. I had a bad experience once."

"Bit? Thrown? What?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Whatever, fraidycat. Hey Race, he got a nickname yet?"

"Nope."

"Can we call him Fraidycat?"

"I ain't gonna stop you. But you know you sound like a six year old, right?"

Skittery frowned. "Fine," he said. "But we'll think of a nickname for you, don't worry."

David was more worried that they would think of a nickname for him, but decided not o say so. He and Racetrack started back across the camp—it seemed to be all the way across—to get to the waterfront. They stopped in a shed off of the waterfront so David could change, though he didn't feel quite comfortable with it, as sunlight filtered inside through numerous gaps between the wall boards, and he heard distinctly female giggling coming from not far away.

The waterfront itself was set beneath a steep drop off on the hill; not quite a sheer cliff, but it felt like it to David as he half-hiked, half-slid down the winding path, nearly tripping several times over gnarled tree roots. This time, Race pointed him towards a much less hostile seeming counselor; a tall guy with curly hair and glasses, wearing swimming trunks with no shirt. His nametag had been attached to his shorts, but was now water-stained and unreadable, but he introduced himself as Specs.

"So the test is pretty easy," he said encouragingly. "You get in the water. And then swim a lap around there." He pointed to what had been designated the "deep end," which was really just an area out past the end of the dock, marked off with buoys and blue plastic rope. A floating dock bobbed at the far side, with another swimming counselor on it. She looked almost too young to be a counselor, definitely too short, with a pair of glasses, and a pair of oversized goggles pushed up onto her forehead, holding her short hair back out of her eyes.

"Uh," David asked. "Is that it?"

"Yeah."

"Um..."

"I said it was easy. If you drown, you fail and you have to stay off of the boats until you can pass. If you pass, I put you in a swimming group, unless you look like you can place out of it. Which most people your age can. Mostly it's just the little kids who take swim classes." He waved towards the counselor on the dock and she waved back, and Specs told David to go whenever he was ready.

"'Kay," David agreed, once again overcome by a fear of being put in a group with the little kids. Because what would really make my life easier this summer is to humiliate myself and have to swim classes with my little brother, he thought to himself. But unlike riding, he didn't have an easy out... But then again, also unlike riding, he didn't have an aversion to swimming and he finished the lap smoothly.

Race tossed him his towel, and Specs seemed satisfied. "I'll put you in the upper level group for now; you'll probably place out of it in a week or two. Sound good?"

"I, uh, guess."

"Cool. See you, then. Oh, Race, you wanna tell him about the tag system?"

Race agreed, and they walked off, stopping at a large board, covered with a grid of hooks, each hook holding up a metal tag. Race scanned the tags, then found one with David's name on it and handed it to him. One side was green, the other was white. "Green means your in the water, white means you ain't. There's one on the boating beach, too. Flip it when you go to the waterfront and back when you go back, so they know no one's drowned and been forgotten about."

"Okay," David said, and hung it back up, white side out. He finished drying off, threw his towel over his shoulder, and they began to scale the cliff back up to the main section of camp. "So what now?"

"Now we can kill time until dinner."

*

David's head hurt, and if people didn't stop singing he was, in fact, going to strangle each and every one of them. It wasn't even the constant singing around him that was annoying, it was what they were singing. Camp songs. He clenched a fist and tried to ignore the girl screaming "Rise and shine and give god your glory glory!" in his ear.

It wasn't easy, though. She was shrill.

"Hey, Dave, you ain't singing," the camper next to him half-yelled in his ear, as there was no other way to be heard over the din of every camper in the place screaming something insipid about Noah's Ark. He glanced over; it was Mush, one few people he'd met who hadn't made him feel like a total outsider.

"Don't know the words," he half-yelled back.

"What are you, stupid?" asked one of his other bunkmates, crowded in next to him, close enough to smell his sweat. That was the blond one with the eye patch, who slept in the bed over Mush's. "It ain't like they're hard to learn!"

David decided not to reply, and wondered how stupid camp traditions like this one got started. The whole camp was crowded around in front of the dining hall, packed tight together, singing like there was no tomorrow. Sneakers had warned David about it on the way to the dining hall and promised that anyone they caught not singing was singled out for humiliation. "Better than it used to be," he'd assured David cheerfully. "Used to be anyone who they caught not singing didn't get to eat."

The eye patch kid—Blink, that was his name—had a point, though. The words were repetitive enough that anyone should be able to learn them in about two minutes flat. He half-heartedly began to mouth along with the chorus. Mush jostled his shoulder, probably an attempt at a reassuring gesture, and mouthed something that looked like "Atta boy!" but could have been anything. David gave him a fake smile and went back to pretending none of it was happening.

The door to the dining hall creaked open and one of the counselors stepped out, a long computer printout clutched in hand. She climbed on top of a chair and yelled in a drill sergeant like voice, loud enough to cut through the din of a hundred screaming campers, "OKAY, LISTEN UP!"

And remarkably, everyone fell silent. That was screaming power.

"I'm sorry we're late, but with the rush of getting everyone moved in, it took longer than we thought to work out the seating assignments. So I'll read them off and if I catch one person talking while I'm reading, you're in a lot of trouble! The rest of the summer we'll have these posted before breakfast on Monday mornings, got that? Okay!"

She began to read off names and tables, and Mush leaned over to hiss in David's ear, "That's Lark. Medda, actually, but her camp name is Lark, right? She's in charge of the theater. Really good at—"

"MISTER MEYERS, what did I say about talking while I'm talking?"

He had the good grace to feign embarrassment. "Sorry, Medda," he apologized quickly, and as soon as she went back to reading continued, "—at getting people's attention. Knows me real well by this point, I spend way too much time in the theater." He laughed at himself a little and continued, "I'm probably the only straight male Broadway geek you'll ever meet."

"—are at table six, and MISTER MEYERS if I catch you talking one more time I will lose my patience with you, and at table seven we have..."

David listened for his name, but didn't hear it. Which meant that either he'd been forgotten, or she'd called it out while he was listening to Mush, and as he'd heard Sarah and Les's names, probably he'd just missed it. She finished reading and tacked the printout to a bulletin board on the wall of the dining house. The crowd surged forward, apparently now allowed entrance to the dining hall. David did his best to maneuver himself to the side, so he could check the list, but it was like fighting the tide and the rush of bodies pulled him in.

Now stuck inside the dining hall, he looked around nervously. The only faces he recognized were family—though obviously he wasn't going to ask them for help—and his bunkmates, all of whom had already found their seats and were talking with their friends. He stared around, hoping to figure out where to sit by finding a free seat, but there were too many unclaimed chairs for that to work. He glanced back at the door and wondered if anyone would notice if he ducked back outside to check the list.

Probably. But he didn't have much of a choice. He started to edge backwards, but the door slammed shut and a hand grabbed his shoulder. It was the red-haired counselor Mush had dubbed Lark—Medda?—and she smiled cheerfully. "Shouldn't have been talking while I was, dear."

"Uh..." he managed, wanting to point out he'd been talked to though he hadn't said a word, but it seemed futile, because she slipped back into drill sergeant voice and called out, "We seem to have a lost camper here!"

David wanted to sink into the floor as every pair of eyes in the place turned to stare at him. He could feel his face turning red. Someone shouted a catcall at him and he really, really wished the floor would open up and swallow him. "Now, now, none of that!" Medda said, cutting off whoever had been yelling. "What's your name, hon?"

"Uh, David. Jacobs."

"I see, now, did anyone hear David Jacobs' name on the list? I'm sure those of you who really pay attention must have."

Someone across the room waved. "You're over here, Dave!" The voice was familiar, but David had met too many new people in the past few hours for that to be any help. Medda gave him a gentle push towards the right table and disappeared to her own. Hesitantly, he walked towards the voice, wishing he could see clearly past the other tables.

It wasn't until he was about to sit down that he recognized the fake cowboy from New York, grinning. He'd pulled his slightly too long hair out of his eyes and held it back with a red bandanna, and still had the nametag labeling him Cowboy. "So you new or what, Dave?" he asked, somehow managing to put about six extra vowels in the name Dave without making the world an extra syllable long. It was actually fairly impressive.

"Uh, yeah."

Cowboy offered him a hand to shake, which he did hesitantly. "Jack Kelly when I ain't at camp. You got a nickname yet?"

"Nope."

"That's a shame. I'm sure you'll have one soon, though, knowing the guys you're living with. You're the one in Pentland, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"You gonna keep starting all your sentences with 'uh'?"

David didn't have an answer for that, but could tell the blush hadn't left his face yet.

"So we getting dinner or what, Cowboy?" demanded one of the other campers at the table.

"Yeah, yeah. Soon's Ally gets out here with it..." Cowboy turned around and glanced over his shoulder. David followed his gaze and could see a handful of campers wandering out from another doorway—presumably the kitchen—carrying dishes. One of them, a girl who looked too small to be balancing that many dishes and who had pigtails that seemed too long for her body, stopped at their table and unloaded them, then clamored into the last open space.

Each table held eight or ten campers, depending on how crowded they were, with a counselor at the table's head. David was sitting on Cowboy's left; the girl who'd brought their food out—Ally, he assumed—was across from him.

"Hey, kids—" Cowboy said, reaching for what looked like the main course, some sort of meat though it was hard to tell what kind, "why don't you introduce yourselves to the new guy, huh?"

"Please tell me I'm not the only new person at the camp," David muttered, mostly to himself.

"Nope, just the only one in Senior Boys," Cowboy answered, passing the first plate of stuff down. "Ian, you start."

The first boy was Ian, who was in his third year, from Miami and he looked it, with tanned skin and spiked blond hair. "They tried to give me a nickname," he said, warily eyeing the food he was passing down to the other end of the table. "Nothing stuck, so—Ian."

David hoped he'd be so lucky, but didn't say so aloud. Nicknames weren't really his thing.

There were two girls sitting at the table, who could only be described as "tiny." The first was Alister, who'd gotten their food—she was their "hopper," David was informed—and she also managed to avoid having a real nickname. Ally was the closest she got. The second was one of her bunkmates and also tiny, though she looked a bit older; she introduced herself as Curly. One of the other boys had red curls and introduced himself as Snipeshooter; he was probably a few years older than Les. The only other person who jumped out at him was a girl who was around his age, with two blue streaks dyed into her hair and wire-rimmed glasses. "Smurf," she offered. "And no, it's not because of the hair."

"I wasn't going to ask," David answered, which was true. He honestly hadn't cared that much.

Cowboy finished serving their meals and attention was called back to the front of the room, though this time, it wasn't Medda. An older woman with black hair, going grey now, clearly, rang a small bell and called for grace. David glanced at her, then scanned the room for one of his bunkmates—the Italian kid everyone had called Racetrack. Surprising similarities.

The woman identified herself as Maria Higgins, one of the camp's owners, and that confirmed it; Racetrack's last name was Higgins too. No wonder he was so paranoid about his family finding out about his nickname, David realized, as Mrs. Higgins said a quick grace. The campers began to eat, though the food was fairly iffy.

Most of the meal was uneventful, until they were just finishing up. Blink was sitting at a nearby table and he stood for a minute, apparently walking over to ask a friend a question, taking his glass with him and... David wasn't quite sure how, but the knock-off non-name brand kool-aide somehow ended up all over Smurf. And judging by the look on Blink's face, it wasn't an accident.

Smurf tensed and froze as the liquid splashed over her, looking like nothing so much as the victim of a sliming on You Can't Do That On Television. She shut her eyes and wiped the juice off of her face.

"Oops," Blink said innocently.

She stood up and turned around to face him. "Oh, that's alright, Kid," she said in a voice that was far too calm to be, well, calm. "I know it's 'cause you know I'm gonna kick your butt at every single race this year."

He narrowed his eye. "We'll see about that," he snapped.

She grinned and David noticed her fingers working their way across what remained on her plate, and saw her scoop up some of what was probably supposed to be mashed potatoes. This time, he saw what was coming, and started to warn Blink, but it was too late.

Smurf moved quickly, flinging the potatoes and catching the blind side of Blink's face. She giggled.

"Oh, that's it—" he snapped, despite having started it.

"Hey!"

Jack was standing now and in a second's time, managed to get himself between the two. Another counselor—David recognized him as Specs from the waterfront—had also jumped to his feet and put a not-at-all subtle hand on Blink's shoulder.

"Sit down, both of you," Specs demanded

"But my hair—"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Blink, go siddown," he said. "Smurf, go change and get back here fast. Okay?"

She nodded and pulled her drippy hair from her eyes, and walked out of the dining hall, "accidentally" shouldering Blink out of her way as she did so. Jack sat back down, and Specs stood over Blink until he took his seat as well, then sat.

David could have sworn he heard Jack mumble something along the lines of, "I need a cigarette," but maybe he was hearing things.

"Gonna be a long summer, man," Ian noted.

"No kiddin'. Awright kids—"

"Since when do you call us kids, Jack?" Snipeshooter laughed.

"Since I'm a counselor an' you ain't," he answered.

"Oh, whatever. You ain't a real counselor, you're... Jack," Snipeshooter answer.

Jack froze for a second, not sure how to react to that, then decided to ignore it and continued, "So, kids, let's get our dishes taken care of so we can get desert while there's some left."

"Desert?" David asked.

Ian shrugged. "It's usually not worth it. Unless you really, really like badly cooked lemon bars."

*

David stared up at the ceiling. He couldn't sleep. It wasn't that there was anything in particular on his mind, other than a realization that, if anything, at camp he fit in less than at school. He'd expect that, though. Mostly he couldn't sleep because his bed just wasn't very comfortable, and he was used to the sounds of suburbia at night, not chirping insects and wind and trees. He frowned. Did trees make noise? Well, probably the wind through the trees, then.

A different sound broke him out of his half-coherent thoughts: a creaking hinge, followed immediately by someone hissing "Shhhh!"

He rolled over to face the offending door, and saw someone crouched outside. No, several someones. "It's time," the closest someone murmured, barely audible.

Mush and Blink's bunk was closest to the door; Mush sat up and woke Blink, and by the time Blink was up, Snitch and Skittery were awake as well. Racetrack sat up on the bunk underneath David, then stood. "You comin', Dave?" he asked quietly, shooting apprehensive looks at their slumbering counselor.

"Coming where?"

"It's tradition." Race grinned. "We're gonna go meet the girls somewhere."

"Uh." David glanced around nervously. On the one hand, this was probably extremely stupid; on the other hand, he was already out of place, and couldn't imagine how much worse it would be if he didn't go. He nodded a little and let himself down the ladder, while everyone else quietly scurried out.

He paused to dig around in his luggage for a moment, trying to be silent but needing a flashlight, and as he grasped it glanced over at Sneakers' bunk. Sneakers was lying on his side now, and the light from outside caught his eyes. He was awake, and staring at David, who's features contorted into a look of horror. He opened his mouth to try and come up with a lame excuse, but Sneakers shook his head a little and raised a finger to his lips, the international sign for "keep your damn mouth shut."

He stood there for another second, frozen, waiting for Sneakers to react. Finally, Sneakers rolled his eyes and made a shooing motion, as though hurrying David out the door. David hesitated, and Sneakers made a big point of shutting his eyes and rolling over, facing away from the door.

Well, I can take a hint, I guess... David thought, vaguely confused. But he let himself out of the cabin and clicked on the flashlight, then hurried to catch up with the quickly disappearing group of boys, wondering what had just happened. Sneakers used to be a camper here... I guess he understand there traditions... Nice of him to let me go, I guess.

But he couldn't entirely shake off the feeling that this tradition was a really, really stupid idea.

[End Chapter Two]
Chapter Three: Revenge Is Sweet
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