Chapter Five: A Typical Day

David woke up the next morning to the sound of the first bell. Someone was already in the shower, and he could see that Sneakers and Racetrack were already up and dressed. He groaned and buried his head under his pillow, trying to block out the light.

Race stood and leant against the top bunk, then carefully picked up the pillow and regarded the dirty look David was giving him from underneath. "Rise and shine, Dave."

"If you tell me to give God my glory, I'll be forced to kill you." David's usual awkwardness disappeared in favor of his annoyance at being awake. Which actually wasn't all that surprising; his social awkwardness was usually competing with his inner sarcasm, and he was never more sure than anyone else which would win out. It kept his few friends at home on their toes.

Race grinned. "Not a morning person, I take it?"

"No," David replied emphatically. "Especially not when I didn't sleep." He glared around the cabin for a second; he'd been almost asleep repeatedly when someone else would be ushered in and wake him again. All in all, he hadn't gotten more than a few hours of shuteye.

"You'll wanna be up by second bell so you'll be on time," Race warned him, and dropped the pillow. David shut his eyes and tried to get comfortable, and very nearly managed to fall back asleep, so it seemed like only moments later when the second bell started ringing. This time, he actually managed to sit up, and noted that everyone else was already awake and dressed.

"'Morning," Sneakers greeted him cheerfully. David grumbled something incoherent in response and forced himself to climb out of his nice warm bed, though it was hard. It got harder when he hit the freezing cold floor. He mumbled something about needing a cup of coffee and dug out a clean set of clothes, and when he finished getting dressed, everyone tromped down to the dining hall as a group.

At least there was no singing. In fact, not only was there no singing while they waited, but Sneakers was kind enough to inform David that anyone caught singing before breakfast faced the risk of being, "murdered to death." David decided not to point out how ridiculous that sounded, and was glad that at least he wasn't the only one who wasn't a morning person.

He was even more gratified when he took his seat and discovered that Jack wasn't a morning person, either. At least not this morning. Jack clutched a cup of coffee and looked like he was going to pass out any second.

"Gee, Jack, up late last night?" Smurf giggled.

Jack started to answer with something wholly inappropriate, then remembered he was a counselor and not supposed to say words like that in the presence of campers. "It didn't take me long to catch you," he reminded her instead.

"Blink's fault," she answered immediately.

"Uh huh," Jack said, more concerned with his coffee than with the conversation.

"But you didn't get Race until dawn, or something, right?" she continued.

He glared at her.

"Four AM," David supplied, giving Jack as nasty a look as he could manage. Which was pretty nasty, due to the early hour and his basic feelings about being awake before noon during the summer. "He very kindly woke up all the rest of us."

Jack stirred his coffee instead of answering.

"Awww, poooooooor Jack," Smurf mocked. "Don't worry, next time we sneak out, it'll be when someone else has patrol."

"Next time you sneak out," Jack informed her, "you're done for the summer."

"Yeah, yeah," Ian scoffed from further down the table. "So they say every year."

"It's a stupid tradition, anyway," Jack answered.

"You liked it last year."

"I ain't a kid no more."

"Gee, do your old, aching bones need more rest?" Smurf mocked. "I guess we young wippersnappers had better–"

"Wippersnappers?" David interrupted, and laughed. She glared at him and he began to stare intently out a window, but Jack shot him a grateful look for taking the attention away from his exhaustion, and then breakfast arrived and no one said anything for awhile.

Breakfast turned out to be a fairly subdued meal, and vaguely better than dinner the night before. On the other hand, it was hard to mess up corn flakes straight from the box, though given the previous evening's meal, David decided that the cooking staff probably could do it if they tried. Jack took it on himself to tiredly explain to David what the day held in store for him; David was sick of being the only one who needed things explained, but smiled and nodded politely anyway.

Essentially, everything Jack said boiled down to him having a few days to figure out what activity he wanted to spend most of his time doing. He then tuned out Jack and the rest of the half-hearted chatter around him and began making a mental list of what to do and what to avoid.

Horses I've already avoided. Let's see. I want to be somewhere relatively bug free, where I won't get sunburned or injured. Also where I won't embarrass myself… Which he figured let out swimming and sailing (too much time outdoors), and archery as too likely to get hurt. He had a terrible mental image of stray arrows and delicate portions of his anatomy coming into close contact. Which left arts and crafts–and even he already had the sense that arts and crafts was probably considered lame for anyone over the age of twelve–theater, and tennis. Any of the three he could probably handle. Performing in public wasn't his strong point, but he didn't have stage fright the way a lot of people seemed to; he'd played tennis a handful of times, mostly in gym class, and was mediocre but not outright terrible at it; and while he had no artistic talent to speak of, he'd never heard of anyone being bad at arts and crafts.

As they were finishing breakfast, various counselors began to line up to for announcements. David listened with vague interest as he learned from Specs, apparently the head of the swimming unit, that the lesson groups and schedules had been posted, and then from Lark, who was clearly the head of the theater unit, that the first show of the summer would be some sort of retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, with auditions through the morning. She also announced that this year, the theater department would have a subdivision of dance and gymnastics, for the first time, and introduced the official Dance counselor, a dark haired guy named Bumlets. There was a half-hearted round of applause, and then the dishes were cleared and everyone was herded back to their cabins until activities began.

*

The sailing staff gathered on the boating beach around nine fifteen, waiting for the campers to begin to arrive. Dutchy made himself comfortable, sitting on one of the two-person sailboats, and nodded or waved to his co-counselors. He wasn't the sort who wasted words talking when a simple gesture would suffice, which meant he was far quieter than most of his peers, and certainly than the campers.

Irish sat down across from him. They were the two sailing counselors, who shared their beach with the canoe and crew folks; all of the boating staff was supervised by the same guy, a senior counselor who went by the name of Gunwale, but he pretty much let the sub-units direct themselves.

"So I figure, one of us is going to have to work with the little kids, and one of us has to supervise the more experienced ones," she said, knowing she probably wouldn't get more of a greeting than a smile.

"Yep." That was what he figured, too; it was his second year as a counselor–not in a row, he'd taken the last summer off of camp to work a regular summer job, which he'd ended up hating–and that was how it had always been done. "I got the kids," he added.

"No way," she answered. "I had the Feud last summer, I am not doing it again."

"I got rank."

"No you don't, you're not a senior counselor."

He paused. She had a point. "Rock paper scissors?" he suggested. She nodded, they counted in, and he lost with paper to her scissors. "Damn," he muttered and told their overbearing head counselor that he'd take the sailors with more experience.

There were a few more minutes of relative quiet, before the campers began to arrive. Dutchy sat back down on his boat, and kept himself amused by concentrating on the feeling of the damp sand under his bare feet, and the cool breeze through his hair and against his skin, as he'd left his Hawaiian print shirt unbuttoned. Simple things, but they felt nice.

His peace was shattered within minutes, though. He shut his eyes and pretended he didn't know what was coming.

"–couldn't even have given me one lousy hour alone on my beach, could you?"

"Your beach? I was here first!"

"Were not, I was so ahead of you on the trail."

"I was at camp for two years before you were. It is so my beach."

"Shut up and bite me."

"Who's being mature now, Smurf?"

He opened his eyes. They had passed from the path to the beach, now, and he waved Blink and Smurf over, figuring they'd be looking for him anyway. They were the two that returning sailing staff members referred to as the Feud; no one remembered quite how it started–Dutchy doubted that even they remembered–but several years ago a giant fight had erupted between them, and they'd never gotten over it. And since they both sailed all the time, they spent a lot of time together, and that just made things worse.

And if he hadn't known that they were actually doing it to annoy each other, he'd have really believed they did it to make the sailing staff crazy.

"Hey, Dutchy."

"'Morning, Dutchy."

He looked up at them, and nodded a little. "Hey. Sit down." He waited for them to make themselves comfortable in the sand, sitting as far from each other as they could and still be able to not at all accidentally throw sand at each other. "Look, you two. You pull the same stuff I've seen you try and do before, and I'll get you both banned from the boat beach. For the rest of the summer. Got it?"

The speech had probably worked better in his head than aloud, he reflected to himself as he watched their reactions. On the one hand, they were surprised he said anything at all, since he usually barely said more than four words at a time; on the other hand, it wasn't like it would do any good.

"We aren't trying to pull anything," Smurf objected.

"Uh huh." He raised an eyebrow. "Well, keep it in mind. Anyway, we're gonna wait and see if anyone else comes, then get you guys through the baby."

"We already know the baby stuff."

He shrugged. "Camp policy, you gotta do it every year."

"Aw, man." Blink groaned and kicked a pile of sand, which landed on Smurf, who responded by kicking him.

Dutchy shut his eyes again. It was going to be a long morning.

*

"Come on. Audition. It'll be fun," Mush encouraged, grabbing David's arm and dragging him towards the theater.

"I was actually thinking arts and crafts–"

"Lame. Come on." He shoved David in the theater door. "Hey, Lark! Ya miss me all year?"

Medda was waiting for them on one of the wooden benches that lined the inside of the theater, or at least, she'd been waiting for Mush. She walked over to them and pinched his cheek. "You know I did, darling," she answered, and David wondered for a fleeting second if she was actually flirting with a camper less than half her age–and what kind of counselor flirted with campers at all. He decided to keep that train of thought to himself, though, as he remembered what had happened at dinner the night before and didn't want to see what Medda was like when she was actually angry.

She turned to David. "Well, if it isn't my dear lost camper. How was your night, kid? Exciting, I trust?"

"Uh…"

"Actually, Dave got busted real early. First thing. Didn't get the fun of running around with the rest of us. So what's the week's show, Lark?"

She handed him a cheap paper packet, clearly a copy of the real script. "Oh, just something for the kids–Red Versus The Wolf, nothing challenging. But it's a fun little show."

"Hmm." He began to read through the first page and nodded to himself a little. "Looks fun. Hey, Dave wants to audition but he's too scared."

"I am not. I mean, uh, I do not."

Medda considered him. "Well, it's too late, you're already here." She presented him with his own photocopied version of the script and pointed towards the stage. "Why don't you boys take a minute to read through it? I wonder where the girls are…"

"Far, far away, I hope," Mush muttered under his breath.

"What was that, Mister Meyers?" Medda demanded.

"Uh, nothing, Lark." Mush ushered David back towards the stage and perched on the edge, then began to read through the script. "You'll like theater here, the staff's real nice. The shows ain't great, but not too bad for a summer camp, ya know? Hope you don't mind me volunteering you, you just looked like you didn't know where to go or anything. And I figured, who doesn't love the stage?"

"Lots of people."

"Aw, come on. You telling me that you don't like being the center of attention?" He paused, then added in a hushed voice, "And you get lots of girls this way."

David managed to smile at that and glanced down at the script. He'd been considering the theater anyway, and Mush seemed pretty nice. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

"Oh Muuuuuuuuuuushy!"

"Mush!"

Two very over-enthusiastic girls appeared at the doorway, waving. Medda intercepted them, but they only talked to her for a second, accepted copies of the script, and dashed up to the stage. "Hi, Mush!"

"G'morning, Mush!"

"Oh. Hi." He sighed. "Uh, Dave, this is Smartass–Smartie when there's kids around," he clarified, gesturing to the broad shouldered girl with lighter brown hair. "And that's Trixie." He nodded to the other girl, with dyed burgundy hair, wearing a sparkly black T-shirt with the Rocky Horror logo on it. "More theater people. Smartass, Trixie, this is Dave. He's real shy, be nice."

"Hi, Dave."

"Hey. So Mush, how was your morning? What are you doing this evening?"

"Do you know what part you want yet? Have you read the script?"

"How was your year? You're gonna be a junior, right? Hey, did you get my letter?"

David decided that instead of figuring out who was who and which questions were asked by which girl–he really had no idea, and he doubted Mush was paying enough attention to know, either–he'd tune them out and read the script. The fact that Mush's answers to their questions were, at best, half-hearted, didn't seem to bother or discourage them.

A few younger kids came in, escorted by the counselor Dave had heard someone refer to as Pie Eater. Yet another strange name, and he was once again glad that people seemed content to call him Dave. He was about to go back to the script, when someone else bounded out on to the stage, from behind the curtain this time.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he declared. Clearly, this was another counselor; tall with spiked brown hair. "I'd like to welcome you all to the Camp Yafeh Summer Theater program! Now, let's all gather and get to know each other–we theater people get very close by the end of a production. Don't we, Lark?"

Medda made her way up to the stage, and Mush and the girls scattered off to the side. David followed, already feeling like he was part of a staged production. It probably had to do with the booming stage voice the second counselor was using. "We most certainly do, Maverick."

*

Dutchy sat down on the dock next to Specs, not minding when Specs said hello without looking up. He was busy being a lifeguard, after all, and Dutchy didn't want to distract him.

The evening was a lot less hot than the day had been, which was nice; by noon, everyone in the camp had been drenched in sweat, even the people doing indoors activities. It wasn't like the rickety old camp buildings had air conditioning… Which was why the swim staff had arranged an evening free swim.

"How was your day?" Specs asked, again not looking up.

"I've had better."

"Problems on the boat beach?"

"The Feud. Gonna have to kill Blink and Smurf."

"I can see why." Specs sought out the two in question, and as close as he could tell, Smurf was about thirty seconds away from drowning Blink. That could just have been because of her grip around his neck, and the shade of blue he was turning, and the proximity of his face to the water. "Damn it," he added, and blew his whistle. "You two knock that off!"

Blink sucked in a deep breath and Smurf swam off to sulk somewhere else, probably. He didn't really care. "Yeah, you're going to have to kill them," Specs agreed. "But otherwise?"

"Pretty good day. How was yours?"

"Pretty much the same."

And then they went back to watching the swimmers in silence, enjoying being with each other without saying anything.

*

By the time nine at night rolled around, David was more than ready to fall into bed and crash for the next ten hours, but once again, in an attempt to not be his usual, antisocial self, he found himself tagging along after his bunkmates. Mom would be proud, he reflected to himself, glad that this time they weren't sneaking out. Senior curfew was ten o'clock, so they had a full hour, and the Juniors had just had their curfew, so now they had the whole of camp to themselves.

Apparently, what that meant was a nightly gathering at the dining hall, complete with coffee or tea and a snack, usually whatever was leftover from that night's dessert. It wasn't actually as exciting as Race and the others made it out to be, but David figured at least it wouldn't take as much energy as the day's activities had.

After his audition–which had been declared "Simply stunning!" by Lark, though him figured she said that to everyone as he heard it at least three other times that morning, he'd been pulled over to tennis. The afternoon had been his first swimming group–nothing terribly challenging–more theater (to his surprise, he'd been cast with a mid-sized role and they were holding a first read through) and after some fast talking, he'd let himself be dragged to archery.

He figured it wouldn't be so bad. Sneakers was the head of the archery unit, after all, and Sneakers seemed pretty relaxed. Or so he'd thought, until he'd spent an hour being drilled by some scary female counselor while Sneakers occasionally walked by and made snide comments, which seemed to be his hobby. David had paid attention and learned the rules–memorized them, in fact, because he was truly scared of what counselor Chauncey might do to him if he didn't.

It had been traumatic, to say the least.

Dinner was accompanied by more exuberant singing, and that was followed by an hour of free swim. Which was a nice way to relax, except that everyone had to have a partner and he didn't know anyone, and ended up with some ten year old kid. He also saw Les for the first time, and discovered his younger brother had already made friends and fit in perfectly.

Sarah had decided not to swim, though. He didn't miss seeing her very much.

And now, finally, the day was winding down. It hadn't been a bad day, just the first one on this schedule, and he was tired.

He wasn't the only one. Jack was already sitting in the dining hall when the boys of Pentland, followed a minute later by the Ferguson boys, arrived. He had a cup of coffee clenched in one had as he had in the morning, and was staring down at a novel, though he didn't seem to be reading it so much as staring blankly at the page.

"Hey, Cowboy, I didn't know you could read," Race commented as he sat down. David took the seat across from him.

"Shut up."

"Someone's cranky," Race answered cheerfully. David wondered how it was possible for one person to actually have that much energy at any given point; sure, he'd only know Racetrack for less than forty-eight hours, but Race, while not hyper the way other people were, was certainly energetic, and had been all day. "Miss your nap this evening?"

"Shut up," Jack said again, and took a gulp of coffee.

"Aw, leave him alone, Race," Mush put in. "If all he can manage to say is shut up, he must be real tired."

"You shut up too, or I'll sick Trixie on you. Don't think I won't."

David gave him an amused look; he'd learned during the two hours he'd spent in the theater that Mush didn't just have a choice of girls, Mush had stalkers. And while he seemed to consider them nice enough people, he also seemed terrified of them.

"What're you reading?" he finally asked Jack.

Jack looked up. "That's the first time you've sounded interested in anything so far at camp, Dave. Congrats." He put a napkin between pages and shut the book, then passed it to David. "And you didn't even say 'um.'"

David felt himself blushing a little as he looked at the book. It was old copy of Frank Herbert's Dune, and Jack didn't seem to be too far through it. David passed it back; he'd read it the year before. "You didn't strike me as the science fiction type."

"I don't exactly walk around wearing Spock ears or nothing," Jack answered defensively.

"You can like scifi without being a scary Trekkie," David replied.

"Yeah? Name three people who do."

"Uh." David hesitated. "Well, I do."

"That's one."

"You do."

"Two."

"Uh." He paused.

"See? That's my point." Jack paused. "Hey, is Sarah Jacobs your sister?"

"Sort of." David shrugged.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well…" He trailed off. "She is, we just don't have anything in common. At all."

"Yeah, she seems a little more… Assertive… than you do."

David nodded. He'd heard that before, approximately seven thousand times, from his parents. At least Jack didn't follow it by suggesting he should try to be more like her.

The girls began to file in, Mush decided he wanted to get to bed early, grabbed one of the cookies that had been set out, and disappeared. He was a little late, as Trixie and Smartass appeared in the doorway and followed him.

Blink sat down where he'd been. "Man, that kid is such a closet case," he commented.

"Ya think so?" Race asked. Jack rolled his eyes and opened his book again, though he was paying more attention to the conversation than to his reading. David listened as well, not having much to offer.

"You know any other boys that obsessed with Broadway?"

"That's just a stereotype."

Blink shrugged. "Okay, but seriously–the guy is terrified of girls. I mean, he's got them chasing him all the time, and he runs away. That ain't normal."

"You ever talked to those girls?" Race shot back. "You'd run away, too."

"Nah." Blink grinned. "'Cause, see, I like girls."

"Really?" Race asked innocently. "What about that one?" He pointed to table with the coffee set up, where Smurf was pouring herself a cup, talking to Swinger. Or at least attempting to; so far, no one had really managed to have a coherent conversation with Swinger.

"Well, not her."

"Uh huh." Race shrugged.

"Gotta wonder, though… I mean, what would it be like to, ya know, be in the closet? I mean, that would suck, right?"

"Gee, Blink, that was almost profound," Race commented.

"Bite me," Blink answered.

David was also fairly surprised to hear Blink saying something that seemed to be his own version of an intelligent observation. Yeah, gotta wonder, David thought to himself, glad that whatever social problems he had, that wasn't one he was worried about.

He glanced over at Jack, who was now concentrating very hard on his book.

"So what's it matter, anyway?" Race asked. "What if he was gay?"

"It don't matter, just… You know, he oughtta tell people. If he even knows."

That also struck David as a surprisingly intelligent comment, coming from Blink… True, he hadn't known Blink for more than two days, but Blink had definitely not struck him as the intelligent sort. Maybe I'm being too cynical again, like Mom and Dad keep telling me, he mused to himself. Or maybe Blink's just having a good night, or something. Weird, though, I wonder what that would be like to be gay and not even realize it. I don't know how people can deny something like that…

"You really think he's gay?" Race asked, continuing the conversation, jerking David out of his thoughts.

"You really think he's straight?" Blink shot back.

"Good point." Race grinned, and began to pick at a cookie. Blink got up and wandered off to go talk to Snitch and Skittery at one of the other tables, and Jack looked up from his book again.

"You ever heard Blink talk like that before?" he asked.

"Kinda; we talked a few months ago and he said one of his good friends at home came out. Freaked him out, but I guess he got over it."

David continued to be silent, but glanced over at where Blink was laughing with the other guys. So maybe he's not exactly smart, but he must be a pretty decent guy, he decided.

There was a lull in the conversation, and David began to wish he'd brought a book himself. He yawned and rested his head in his arms, leaning on the table, and drifted off… It was a sudden change in the atmosphere of the chat around him that woke him up. He looked around to see what was going on.

The room had fallen silent, or at least, close to it. Striding purposefully from the door over to the table where he was sitting were the two counselors David had seen at the stables the day before; he didn't remember their names, just that no one had seemed to like them. Race tapped Jack's shoulder and nodded in their direction. "Great," Jack muttered. "I did not need the Delancey brothers on top of a long day."

[End Chapter Five]
Chapter Six: Scuffle
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