Nerd Camp (5 page)

Gabe knew why it was called homesickness: He missed home so much that his stomach hurt. It wasn't that he didn't like camp; he did love it so far. He just wished he could teleport back to his own bed in his own room in his regular town for just a few minutes. He counted only eight times that he had spent nights away from his mom or dad, and all of those times were with his grandparents or with Eric, and his mom had been nearby.

His counselor said that the key to not feeling homesick was to not think about home. So Gabe sat up and looked through his backpack to make sure he had everything for his classes in the morning. He thought about how much fun the water-gun fight had been, and he mentally repeated Pi to the ninth digit in his head.

The counselor, David, shouted from his bed at the very front of the cabin: “Lights out in five minutes, guys.”

“Five minutes,” Gabe repeated.

“
T
-minus-five,” said Wesley in a robotic voice.

“Mmm,” muttered Nikhil nervously. “I still have five pages in this chapter. Good thing I put this over here”—he moved his flashlight from the floor to his bed—“just in case.”

Gabe noticed that Nikhil was at the very end of his book. “You should have finished that before you came,” he said, “so you didn't have to bring the book just to read the last chapter.”

Nikhil's eyes kept moving over the page while he replied. “No, I haven't read this book yet.” He turned the page and kept reading. “I like to read the last chapter first, just to make sure everything works out okay.”

Gabe considered this. He thought reading the last chapter first would ruin the ending, but he guessed that for Nikhil that was the point. It was pretty brave of Nikhil to come to sleepaway camp at all; even Gabe was a little nervous about how the summer would work out, and he
liked
surprises.

So far, it seemed like one of the best things about camp would be a surprise: Color War. A few kids in his cabin had older siblings who'd gone to Summer Center, and it was all they could talk about. Just like field day at school, Color War split the entire camp into teams, and they competed in all sorts of physical and mental challenges. But there was a
challenge even before Color War started: trying to figure out when Color War would break. It could happen at any moment and in any way. Last year, it even started the very first week of camp, and it had a circus theme, so it broke by the director of the camp riding in on an elephant!

“Hey, Nikhil,” said Gabe casually, “when do you think Color War will break?”

Nikhil put his book facedown on his chest. “I've been thinking about it,” he said. “And I think that if we compile a list of all the dates it's broken in the past, we can write a mathematical formula—you know, an algorithm—to figure out when it will break this year, within a few days, at least. I already recorded dates from the past three years. Victor is going to get me more from his older sister.”

“I bet you're right,” said Wesley. “I bet we can predict it.”

“Cool,” said Gabe. “Unless it breaks before we have time to get all the data. It could happen tonight!”

“That would be nuts,” said Wesley excitedly. “I can't wait for Color War. I didn't know if I wanted to come here, but so far it's pretty awesome. And tomorrow is school. I can't wait to go to sleep so it'll come faster.” He stared out the window by his bed, in the direction of the classrooms. “I really can't
wait,” he decided. “I'm going to go to sleep now.” He took off his glasses and placed them on his floating tennis-racket nightstand.

“Okay. Good night,” Gabe said, surprised. But then he was even more surprised when, as if a hypnotist had just snapped his fingers, Wesley was instantly out.

“Finished!” said Nikhil. He closed his book and placed it and the flashlight on the floor next to him.

“How was it?” asked Gabe.

“Really good. I'm definitely going to read it.”

“Nikhil …”

“Yeah?”

Gabe felt a pang of homesickness and wanted to ask if Nikhil was feeling the same way. But if Nikhil wouldn't even read a book without knowing the story would end okay—a story that was completely made up—then he must have confidence that being at camp would end up all right, or he wouldn't be there. “Never mind,” he said.

“Lights out in ten seconds!” their counselor shouted.

“You'd better get into bed,” said Nikhil.

“On my way.” Gabe jumped into bed and took off his glasses. The room dissolved into splotches of color. He turned
his head to the blob that he knew was Nikhil. “Good night, Nikhil,” he said.

“Good night, Gabe.”

The bunk went black and, as if someone clicked a switch in his back, Gabe's supersenses kicked in. His eyes were so bad that if he held his hand in front of his face without his glasses on, he could only sort of make out the shape of a fuzzy bunny rabbit, and that was probably only because his brain knew it was a hand. But Gabe had a theory: At night, when he closed his eyes, his body could take all the energy it normally had to apply toward seeing and apply it to other things, which made his other senses superhero-like.

How different the sounds and smells here at camp were from what they were at home in his own bed. At home he would hear the muffled tapping of keys as his mom answered her e-mail, or the soft din of the news on TV. He'd hear the foggy drip of the coffeemaker and smell the fresh coffee. His mom liked her coffee cold, so she brewed a cup at night and put it in the refrigerator for the morning. Most people said, “Wake up and smell the coffee,” but in his house the saying was “Go to sleep and smell the coffee.”
No
, Gabe reminded himself,
don't think about home.

He thought about the way Zack—who was going to be moving more than 2,000 miles at the end of the summer—just shrugged when he mentioned going to a new school and sleeping in a new, smaller room.

But thinking about Zack—and how different Gabe was from him—was no better than thinking about home right now. Gabe imagined an industrial digger scooping up his nervous thoughts like rubble and carrying them out of his brain. His mind cleared for rebuilding from scratch, he closed his eyes and let his body absorb the night.

He could smell the remnants of dinner and what might be the greasy start of tomorrow's breakfast. He could feel the moisture in the air that might bring rain. And he could hear the sounds of the entire campground and surrounding woods. At first all was quiet except for the low crackle of cicadas. But then from the open windows drifted chatter from outside, where the counselors were probably hanging out in a clearing. Some boys were whispering at the other end of the cabin, something about letting
x
represent the amount of candy they'd brought and
y
represent the number of days it had to last. In his corner of the cabin, both Wesley and Nikhil were breathing deeply and evenly. The bed creaked as Wesley rolled over to the wall.

“Mmm,” mumbled Wesley. “Scuba mask.”

Gabe put his hand over his mouth to keep from cracking up.
Scuba mask?
he thought.
What
was Wesley dreaming about?

Wesley flopped onto his back, making the bed shake. Gabe gripped the inside of his sleeping bag.

“Ha!” said Wesley. “Amoeba dance party!”

Gabe covered his face with his pillow to muffle his laughter. He didn't get to hear hysterical things like that at home!
What would an amoeba dance party look like?
he wondered.
They'd be really good at the limbo because they're so fluid!
Nikhil would probably be nervous about an amoeba dance party because if they danced too hard, some cytoplasm might spill and an amoeba could slip on it. He fell asleep imagining a line of protozoa shaking their single cells to the beat.

Dear Ashley,

It's 7:00 a.m., but I am awake already because I'm so excited about my first real day of Summer Center! Everyone will have to wake up soon, but I am writing to you before the alarm goes off. Then we'll go to breakfast. Actually, here's what I'll be doing every day, starting today.

Gabe tilled his breakfast with his spoon. The man who had handed him the bowl said it was oatmeal, but Gabe instantly thought of the word “gruel.” He could never really picture what gruel was when orphanages and step-parents served it in books, but examining the mound of murky brown goop on his tray, he felt a sudden empathy for orphans everywhere.

“Yesterday's food was so good,” he said. “What happened?”

“The parents left,” their counselor explained. “The food is only that good when parents are here.”

“What state is this stuff in?” said Wesley. “Solid, liquid, or gas?”

Gabe poked the gruel with the tip of his finger and then held it up to his nose. “A little of all three, I think. It's a state that hasn't been recognized by science yet.”

“What about plasma?” said Nikhil. “Plasma's kind of a fourth state.”

Wesley snorted. “Our oatmeal is made of plasma!”

“I'm going to get some orange juice,” said Nikhil. “I need something that's solid liquid.” He chuckled. “I mean something that's
only
liquid. Something can't be solid
and
liquid at the same time, except right at its freezing point.”

“Just don't get gas,” said Wesley. “We have to sleep in your room.”

Gabe cracked up, causing the scoop of oatmeal on his spoon to drop onto his tray. He picked it up with a napkin. When he saw how much it resembled something he could
have just blown into the napkin from his nose, he felt even less inclined to eat.

Nikhil returned with a glass of orange juice and a cup full of lemon wedges. “Here,” he said. “If you squeeze lemon juice on it, the acid in the juice will kill any bacteria.”

Gabe and Wesley looked at each other, impressed. Nikhil blushed and shrugged.

Gabe finished squeezing his lemon and took his first bite of breakfast. “Mmm,” he said. “Lemon-plasma oatmeal!” But it actually didn't taste half-bad, and Gabe was hungry. He began shoveling spoonfuls into his mouth.

It was only when he was walking into his Logical Reasoning classroom that he wondered if maybe he shouldn't have eaten so much. It was probably a combination of things that was making Gabe's stomach do somersaults: leftover homesickness, separation from his new and only friends at camp, first-day-of-school jitters … Add two bowlfuls of lemon-plasma oatmeal, and you had a recipe for queasiness.

“Are you going to puke?” asked a girl as they filed into the room.

Gabe shook his head. “I think I just ate a little too much oatmeal.”

“A girl in my bunk puked last night,” the girl bragged. “It was because she was feeling homesick. And did you hear that there was a boy who went home this morning? He cried until the counselors called his parents to pick him up.”

“I just ate too much oatmeal,” Gabe repeated. “I'm fine, though.”

The girl wasn't convinced. “You look weird.”

“You
are
weird,” Gabe snapped.

The girl crossed her arms. “I was only saying you look weird because you look kind of sick. I don't think you look
weird-
weird. I actually kind of liked you, until you said that.”

Big loss
, Gabe thought. It wasn't like he was hoping the two of them would become best friends.

“Take a seat, please!” said their teacher, Miss Carey. “We've got lots of fun logical thinking to do this morning.”

Gabe walked to the far end of the room before choosing a desk, hoping to sit as far from the annoying girl as possible. But she wandered along the U of seats as well and ended up right next to him. Gabe stared straight ahead, trying to ignore her presence.

She looked directly at him. “Fine,” she said. “Apology accepted.”

Gabe opened his mouth to say that he hadn't apologized, but he stopped himself. Miss Carey was in the front of the room. “Don't get too comfortable,” she said. “These aren't your real seats.”

Gabe smiled out of relief.

“In order to find your real seats,” continued Miss Carey, “and to introduce you to logic, I've got a logic problem for you. You only need a pencil.” She began passing out pieces of paper that had a list of clues on top. On the bottom was a chart that had each of the students' names running down the first column, and seat numbers, from the door to the windows, across the top. “Read the clues at the top and use the chart at the bottom to figure out who sits where. Then, when you think you know where your seat is, go sit in it. Then we'll see if you got it right.”

“Is this a test?” asked a boy on the other side of the room.

“No,” said Miss Carey, “it's not a test. It's just for fun.”

“What if we can't solve it?” asked someone else.

“Just do the best you can.”