Nerd Camp (3 page)

The subway pulled into the next station, and their parents stood up. Gabe's dad motioned with his head for Gabe and Zack to get off.

Zack patted Gabe on the shoulder. “I didn't really know if I wanted a stepbrother,” he said, “but you're pretty cool.”

Gabe tried to bite back the smile he felt breaking. He walked proudly through the station with his new family members. As they were climbing the stairs, he realized that the geeky logo on his duffel bag was facing out. He stopped, flipped the bag around, and then ran to catch up with Zack.

Gabe worked hard throughout the day to keep Zack liking him. He agreed heartily when Zack pronounced the chocolate cake awesome and the carrot cake gross, even though he actually thought the carrot cake was pretty good and not at all carroty. He kept quiet when the baker's assistant became confused about how to multiply the cost of the slices by the number of guests, even though he had already figured out the total cost in his head.

He did slip up a few times, though. At dinner, when he saw that the five main-course options came with six choices of side dishes, he said, “Let's figure out how many different
plates of food there could be! First we have to determine if it's a permutation or a combination.”

Zack looked at him as if he had begun speaking German.

“Kidding!” Gabe said.

“Are you trying to make me think I'm at school?” Zack asked. “That's mean.”

“Yep,” said Gabe, thankful for an explanation. “I'm going to test you on it later. So, I hope you have a number two pencil. Or two number ones! Get it?”

Zack rolled his eyes, and Gabe stopped laughing immediately and said he had to go to the bathroom.

After that, he tried to be extra careful. Even though he had brought two books—a copy of his current favorite to give to Zack and one to read himself—he didn't take them out or even mention reading again. He felt eternally lucky that he didn't keep anything incriminating at his dad's apartment, except for a spare pair of glasses in a bathroom drawer that Zack would have no reason to open.

There was only one twin bed in Gabe's room, and it was covered with Zack's stuff.
This is going to be Zack's room after the wedding
, Gabe realized for the first time. He didn't feel happy or sad about that, just surprised that he hadn't put it together before.

“I'm going to get an extra bed in here soon,” Gabe's dad explained, “so you'll both have a place to sleep when you visit, Gabe. But tonight one of you can sleep on the couch, or I've got sleeping bags if you'd prefer the floor.”

“Shot floor,” said Zack.

Glad he'd let Zack talk first—he might have said they'd flip for the bed, which apparently would have been the wrong answer—Gabe said, “I like the floor too.”

And so they rolled out two sleeping bags side by side in the small room, neither of them sleeping in what both could call his own bed.

Zack went into the bathroom and came out wearing a pair of baggy gray pajama pants and no shirt. “My room in LA is bigger than this,” he said as he slid into one of the sleeping bags. “Even my room at my dad's house is bigger, and that's smaller than my regular room. But I guess this place is okay.”

“It's smaller than my room at home too,” said Gabe. “Even though this building is twenty stories taller!”

Zack rolled his eyes, and Gabe rushed into the bathroom to avoid letting Zack see him turn red. Once there, he debated just wearing his T-shirt and underwear to sleep, but, pressing his luck, he reluctantly put on the pajamas he'd brought: a
pair of pants and a shirt that had the entire human skeleton on them. Zack raised his eyebrows but didn't comment, and Gabe's clavicles sunk. At least Zack didn't know that he had brought these pajamas on purpose and had planned on performing an original song and dance that named all the bones. He made sure to be in his sleeping bag before his dad turned the lights out, so that Zack wouldn't see that the bones glowed in the dark.

“Good night, Skeleton Man,” said Zack.

“Good night,” said Gabe. He rolled onto his side to take off his glasses and place them on the floor without Zack seeing his glow-in-the-dark tibia.
Tomorrow
, he thought,
I won't make any more mistakes.

“We're dressed like penguins,” said Gabe, looking at himself and Zack side by side in the tuxedo shop mirror. They were getting fitted for the tuxes they'd wear at the wedding at the end of the summer.

Zack started to waddle, but the man fitting his pant legs sighed loudly and gave him an exasperated look. “Sorry,” Zack said.

Gabe pointed at Zack as though scolding him and tried not to laugh. He was getting fitted for a cummerbund, and if he laughed, he'd get a similar noise and look from the person measuring his waist.

“Penguins can fly, right?” said Zack.

Gabe didn't answer, even though he had done a whole unit on penguins in Wings. He thought he heard something. He closed his eyes. “Someone's cell phone is ringing,” he said.

“I don't hear anything,” said Zack.

“I have bat ears,” Gabe said. “It's coming from your jacket, Dad.”

“Go see who it is,” his dad said from behind a dressing room curtain.

The measurer removed his hands from Gabe's waist, and Gabe ran to get the phone out of his dad's jacket pocket. “It's Mom,” he said. “Can I answer it?”

“Sure.”

“Hi, Mom!”

“Gabe, hi! Just the person I was calling to talk to. How's your weekend so far?”

“It's good. Dad and Zack and I are in the tuxedo shop, and I'm getting fitted for a cummerbund.”

“All right,” his mom said. “I'm sorry to bother you, honey, but you got some mail that I thought you'd want to hear about.”

Gabe's eyes opened wide. “I did?”

“Yes.”

His mom paused for suspense, and Gabe glanced at Zack. “Go ahead,” he said.

“You got into the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment!”

“I did?” Gabe repeated, his mouth spreading into a grin. “Yes!”

“Congratulations!” his mom said. “I saw a big envelope from Summer Center in the mailbox and opened it right away.”

“So, I can really go?”

“Go where?” asked Zack.

“Of course,” said Gabe's mom. “I'm looking through this, and it looks like you're going to have so much fun. I just don't know how you're going to pick which classes to take. They have everything. Poetry Writing, Chemistry, Rocket Science, Cryptology, Statistics, Geography, Shakespeare …”

“Go where?” Zack repeated.

“Sleepaway camp,” Gabe said to Zack.

“You're really going to sleepaway camp!” Zack said. “That is awesome!”

“Not just any sleepaway camp,” his mom said on the
phone. “Only the brightest of the brightest get to go. I'm very proud of you, Gabe.”

Gabe blushed and prayed Zack couldn't hear her.

“I've always wanted to go to sleepaway camp,” Zack said, clearly envious.

“So, what do you think you want to take?” his mom asked. “We should mail this back ASAP so you get your first choice. You have to take one math or science course and one humanities course.”

“It'll be so hard to pick …,” Gabe said.
Only math
or
science?
he thought.
That's so unfair
.

“I'm going to text my mom,” Zack said, taking out his cell phone. “Everyone gets to go to sleepaway camp but me. It's so unfair.”

“Want me to read you all the options?” Gabe's mom asked. “Maybe Zack can help you decide.”

Gabe looked over at Zack, who was typing on his phone so rapidly, it looked like he was playing himself in a heated round of thumb war. “I'll just look tomorrow,” he said. “Bring the list so I can read it on the train.”

“You got it,” his mom replied. “Have fun at the engagement dinner, honey. I miss you.”

“Miss you too, Mom. Bye.” Gabe closed the phone and clicked the heels of his patent leather tuxedo shoes together. “I'm going to camp!”

Zack closed his phone. “You are the luckiest person in the world. You have to tell me everything about it, okay? We'll e-mail each other, or, if it's really, like, in the woods, then we can write actual letters.”

Gabe was so happy, he worried he might pop the buttons on his sample tuxedo shirt. Not only did Zack think he was cool for going to camp, but he also wanted to keep in touch with him all summer, like they were real brothers.

“Is it a special swimming camp or something?”

“No,” Gabe said.
It's nerd camp
, he thought.
Just like the one the kid you don't like is going to.

“Just regular, then? That's cool.”

The tuxedo attendant appeared from the back of the shop holding a cummerbund in each hand. “Back to the fitting area, please, boys.”

As the attendant wrapped the black fabric around him, Gabe could see Zack looking at him in the mirror with unshakable respect and admiration, as if he had just single-handedly mapped the human genome—or had to take a
leave of absence from school to become a professional ice cream taster. He was set.

The rest of the weekend with Zack went as well as Gabe had been imagining. The two of them got along as though they'd been friends their whole lives.
I'm not just a nerd
, Gabe told himself.
Zack wouldn't be friends with me if I was nothing but a nerd.

With the badge of camp honor, Gabe no longer had to make sure everything he said or did would convince Zack that he was cool.

He just had to make sure Zack didn't find out the truth about Summer Center.

Gabe's clothes and camp supplies were laid out across his bed, grouped into categories and stacked in piles. It was a clothing city with T-shirt towers, notebook parks, and a sweat-pants river running through the center. Gabe rolled a piece of paper and held it to his mouth like a megaphone. “Attention, residents of Clothes-for-Camp City. This is your mayor speaking. Prepare to be moved into a suitcase and taken to camp. I repeat, prepare to be moved into a suitcase. You will be transported to camp first thing in the morning.”

“You ready?” his mom asked.

“Let's go,” Gabe said.

She picked up the “Things to Take to Summer Center” list from Gabe's desk and began reading. “Ten T-shirts.”

“Check.” Gabe made his arm into a wrecking ball and rammed it through the T-shirt stack. He simulated the collapse noise. “Poooochchchch!”

His mom was not amused.

“What?” Gabe said as he gathered the T-shirts into a ball and dropped them into his suitcase. “The city has to come down to be transported. I warned the residents. They evacuated.”

“I don't care about the residents. I care about the time I took folding all your clothes. How about you move everything neatly, not in a pile of rubble?”

Gabe sighed. “Okay.”

“Okay. Six pairs of shorts.”

Gabe slid one hand under the pile of shorts and another on top. He made a
beep-beep-beep
noise as he backed up the stack and lowered it into the suitcase. Then he came up and grinned. “Check.”

His mom chuckled and rolled her eyes. “I'm going to miss you this summer,” she said, “even if you are very silly.”

“I'm going to miss you,” Gabe said, “and Eric and Ashley and Zack.”

“Well, let's get you all packed so you'll be done by the time Eric and Ashley get here.” She glanced at the digital clock on Gabe's nightstand. It was right next to his pillow, but Gabe still needed to put on his glasses in bed to be able to read it. “If we go really quickly, you can even call Zack before they arrive.”

They went back to the list. With each item and noise, the suitcase became fuller and fuller, until it was stuffed to the brim, clothes on the bottom and school supplies on top. It was so full that Gabe had to sit on it while his mom zipped it shut. “You can't open this until you get there,” she said, “or we'll never get it closed again.”

Into his backpack Gabe put his keep-in-touch kit, which included a folder full of
FROM THE BUNK OF GABE PHILLIPS
stationery that he'd printed, his address book, extra pencils, and two sheets of stamps. He added his spare pair of glasses and his goggles, which were also prescription (without them he could easily swim into the wall of the pool). Tomorrow morning he'd fill it up with the book from his nightstand and all of his bathroom stuff. He felt like he had packed up his whole life, and it was weird to think that when he unpacked all of it, it'd be to use it somewhere other than this room.

* * *

“Look at your suitcase,” said Ashley when she and Eric arrived to have dessert and say good-bye. “It's bigger than Eric.”

“Hey!” said Eric. He went and stood next to it. “I'm taller.”

“Not by much,” said Gabe.

“Just wait,” said Eric. “I might grow so much while you guys are at camp that by the end of the summer, I'll be taller than both of you combined.”

“Combined?” said Gabe. “You'd be a giant!”

Eric nodded. “That'll show you guys.”

Ashley sat down on Gabe's suitcase. “So, Gabe is going to spend the summer doing math and writing poetry, I am going to day camp, and you are going to grow?”

“Grow a lot,” said Eric. “Every time I write you, Gabe, I'll tell you how many inches I grew.”

“I can't say for sure yet,” said Gabe, “because I don't start my Logical Reasoning class till Monday, but I think that doubling your height in six weeks is not logical.”

The phone rang, and Gabe's mom picked it up. She brought the phone to the door of Gabe's room. “Zack,” she said.