The Alex Crow (14 page)

When I came back
to Jupiter from my private session with Mrs. Nussbaum the day after Cobie Petersen and Max talked me into smoking pot with them, Mrs. Nussbaum put my brother, and then Cobie, through pretty much the same routine of head-hole inspections, knee repair, and X-ray exams that I'd gone through.

I never asked Trent Mendibles or Robin Sexton what Mrs. Nussbaum did to them. As far as I could tell, Mrs. Nussbaum considered boys like Trent and Robin to be the normal ones—the boys she was depending on to steer the extinction of males (and if anyone could do it, the
normal
boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys would)—but she was highly suspicious of the other three boys of Jupiter.

So I told Max and Cobie the details of everything that had happened to me in Mrs. Nussbaum's examination room, even how I was scared that the ointment she put on my scraped knees might have contained some of Mrs. Nussbaum's
girl sperm
. They laughed at me. But every one of us was a little bit bothered by the colorful poster of the male reproductive system that hung on Mrs. Nussbaum's examination room wall.

How could you
not
look at something like that? It was like standing on the edge of an empty field and witnessing a bloody car crash on the road you're about to cross.

Then I told them about the questions she'd asked me—about what I meant when I wrote “inside a refrigerator” on my index card.

“Yeah,” Max said, “why
did
you write that?”

I shrugged. “It was the first place I could think of that was better than here.”

We were alone in Jupiter—well, except for Robin Sexton who just lay on his cot and stared up at the ceiling, pretending to be listening to music. Larry, as usual, was gone, and Trent Mendibles at that moment was probably sitting shirtless on the examination bed and having his hairy knees salved by Mrs. Nussbaum.

Max told us that Mrs. Nussbaum asked him a lot of questions after she read what he'd written on his index card. Unlike me, my brother kept adding to the card nearly every day, so Max had run out of room on one side and asked Mrs. Nussbaum if she would give him a new one.

Max said that she was thrilled he had kept writing on his card about where he'd rather be than at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, because it meant my brother was focused on better things and more positive experiences, and thinking like that motivates boys to take action. After seeing what Max had written on his card, I had to agree that Max was definitely motivated to take action on his positive experiences. He proudly showed Cobie Petersen and me what he'd been writing. And Max did not have the most legible penmanship, but these are some of the things I could decipher from Max's scrawl:

Where I would rather be than at Camp

Merrie-Seymour for Boys:

Agitating my youth group

Encountering heaven through dance

Whipping up some jelly

Icing the jewelry store

Painting some sea monsters

My brother was an artist with words.

Max said Mrs. Nussbaum spent several minutes staring at his card. Then she looked at him, looked at his card again, looked at Max. This went on for some time, according to Max.

Finally, she said, “Max, tell me, what does all this
mean
?”

Max told her they were titles of poems he was planning on writing, when he had bigger pieces of paper.

Max said she came right out and told him this: “These all sound like they might be references to masturbation. Are they? Have you been
masturbating
since you came to Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, Max?”

And Max said, “How could you even
think
that? What kind of sick kid would waste his time writing poetry about
masturbation
?”

He said Mrs. Nussbaum turned red (Max was awfully good at embarrassing her), gave him a new index card, and then sent him on his way, back to Jupiter.

Since we were in a sharing mood, after Mrs. Nussbaum was finished with his examination, Cobie Petersen also showed us his index card. Like me, Cobie never amended his choice since the first day. His card read:
Fishing or coon hunting up Dumpling Run with Ezra and nobody else
.

We already knew Ezra was Cobie Petersen's dog—the one who'd gotten pooed on by the Dumpling Man in Cobie's scary story.

“Well,” Cobie told Max, “I could change my card now to say I wouldn't mind if you and Ariel came along. I would kind of like that, I suppose.”

“Awww. I'm touched,” Max said.

“I'd go fishing or coon hunting with you, Cobie,” I said.

“
Coon hunting
sounds like slang for jerking off,” Max said.

“Everything sounds like slang for jerking off when you say it,” Cobie Petersen replied.

He was right.

He told us Mrs. Nussbaum asked about Cobie's real name, which was Colton Benjamin Petersen, and about Dumpling Run.

“It's a beautiful part of the state of West Virginia,” Mrs. Nussbaum had said.

Cobie Petersen said he liked to lay on the West Virginia–boy accent extra thick when he talked to Mrs. Nussbaum.

“'Deed it is,” Cobie told her.

“And interesting how many people up along the run are all named Peterson or Petersen,” she said.

“It ain't very interesting to me, ma'am,” Cobie said. “But I am wondering something.”

“Oh! You can feel free to ask me anything, Cobie!” Mrs. Nussbaum said.

“I'm wondering why you have that big poster of a penis on the wall of your examination room.”

“Oh! Ha-ha!” Mrs. Nussbaum said, “You know, boys around your age are always so curious about those parts of their bodies, Cobie!”

“Well, if we were
that
curious, I reckon we wouldn't have to look as far away as the wall of your examination room to find out pretty much everything we wanted to know,” Cobie Petersen pointed out.

Cobie told us this observation flustered her, too.

“Did she take all those X-ray pictures of everything in your body?” Max asked.

Cobie Petersen nodded.

I said, “I think she is suspicious of us because we're not like the other kids here—the
normal
kids at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. And she asked about our dad working at Alex Division.”

“She asked about my dad, too,” Cobie added.

“I bet she thinks we're biodrones or something, and that the other scientists at Alex Division are using us to keep an eye on her,” Max said. “None of those Alex Division guys trust each other.”

The thought of that terrified me. What if one of us actually
was
an Alex Division biodrone? How would any of us even know?

I looked at Max's face for a long time, trying to see if maybe there was something hidden behind his eyes. Then I did the same thing to Cobie Petersen.

“Dude,” Cobie said, “quit staring at me. It's freaking me out.”

Our little Jupiter cabin powwow fell silent. Trent Mendibles came back from his visit with Mrs. Nussbaum. Robin Sexton was lying on his back on his rumply cot, staring up at the black ceiling and rocking his head to nonexistent music.

“It's your turn,” Trent Mendibles said.

Robin Sexton didn't respond.

Cobie Petersen punched Robin Sexton's shoulder. “Hey. Fucker. It's your turn to see Mrs. Nussbaum.”

Robin Sexton got up, and as he headed toward the door, Cobie added, “And when she tells you to take off your shirt, you might as well just strip naked, 'cause she's going to want to have a look at everything you've got, and you're going to have to give a sperm sample, too.”

Robin looked horrified and sick.

When he left, Trent Mendibles said, “She didn't do that to me.”

“I know, hairy dude. I just wanted to fuck with the kid,” Cobie Petersen said. “He looks scared enough to piss himself right about now.”

Cobie and Max were sitting next to each other on Cobie Petersen's bed, directly across from me. I leaned toward them and whispered, “
Do you think they would actually do that to one of us?
”

“What? Strip us naked and ask for a sperm sample? Mrs. Nussbaum makes her own sperm. She doesn't want guy sperm,” Max said.

“No. I mean the biodrone thing. What if one of us . . .” I couldn't bring myself to say it.

“Nah,” Max said.

The way he said it made me feel better—like the thought of it was so completely ridiculous as far as my brother was concerned.

But I wondered how I was ever going to sleep peacefully again, now that Max had planted that little thought about one of us—maybe me—blowing up someday. My library of terrible stories was getting fuller and fuller.

And then Cobie Petersen asked, “Did she make you guys pee?”

“That's really disgusting,” Max said. “Why'd you pee for her?”

“No.” Cobie said, “It's not like I whipped it out and started peeing right in front of Mrs. Nussbaum. She gave me a plastic cup and told me to go in her bathroom and
urinate
in it, and then leave the cup of my
urine
sitting on the edge of the sink, so I wouldn't have to be embarrassed about handing over a plastic cup of my
urine
to her. And she told me not to put my fingers inside the cup because it would contaminate my
urine
, and I was, all, like,
why would I want to put my fingers in a cup of my own urine?
”

“Did you pee for her?” Max asked.

Cobie Petersen shook his head. “Dude, there was no way I was going to pee for her after smoking pot last night. But I did need to poo, so I went inside and shut the door. That bathroom was the nicest one I've been in in a couple weeks, and no one standing around watching me poo, too, so I took advantage of the luxury. Then I decided I better leave something else in her cup besides pee, and I came out, thanked her for letting me poo, and left.”

“What did you put in the cup?” Max asked.

Cobie Petersen grinned and shrugged.

And Max said, “Wait. Are you saying you actually
released your combat troops
in Mrs. Nussbaum's cup?”

Cobie nodded. “She's just going to figure I'm a dumb hick from Dumpling Run who doesn't know what
urine
means.”

Max fell back on the bed, covered his face with his hands, and said, “I am going to die!”

“You guys smoked pot. I fucking hate you,” Trent Mendibles said. “You ever go online, I'll shred all your asses at BQTNP.”

Cobie Petersen answered the kid with a pair of stiffened middle fingers.

On Monday of week
four, we were more than halfway to our freedom.

And on that Monday of week four, Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys was struck by a torrential thunderstorm that started just before lunch.

The competition that afternoon was supposed to send us down to the waters of the cold, deep, and green canoe lake for interplanetary swim relays from the muddy shores of the rec field to the floating wooden dock that was anchored in the center of the lake. The counselors decided to cancel the contest on account of the incessant lightning strikes.

Most people don't want to watch teenage campers getting electrocuted.

More than half the boys at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys couldn't swim anyway, but that was to be expected. There was no way to avoid participating in the relays, though; non-swimming swimmers were forced to wear bulky life vests. Even the most determined Bucky Littlejohns among us was not going to be able to drown himself.

We had practiced swimming every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday during our internment at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Cobie Petersen was a powerful swimmer, and Max and I were reasonably good; so even with the floundering Robin Sexton and unmotivated Trent Mendibles, who complained that there was no water level in
Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners
(so how could he be expected to swim?), Jupiter would have most certainly beaten all the other planets.

With just under three weeks to go at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, Jupiter was well in the lead of the camp competition, even with our terrible showing at tug-of-war. Despite all our differences, the boys of the six planets were unified in feeling like prison inmates who were notching off the days remaining until our collective parole.

It was a miserable day.

And we learned something new about the hairy kid from Ohio: Trent Mendibles was morbidly terrified of thunder. In defense of Trent Mendibles, the spring and summertime thunder in the mountains of the George Washington National Forest sounded like bomb blasts—so frighteningly loud that I was certain there must be trees snapping like matchsticks beneath the concussion of the booms. When the first thunderclaps exploded, Trent Mendibles blanched pale—well, paler than his usual never-go-outside Ohio complexion—and then whimpered and squeezed himself into the dark space beneath his bed.

Larry tried to get him to come out when the lunch bell rang, but the kid refused to budge.

And Larry said, “Hey. Furball. Don't make me drag you out by your ankles.”

Cobie Petersen shook his head. “So. Hairy.”

From under the bed came the quavering voice of Trent Mendibles.

“I'll smear my own shit on your hands if any of you fuckers touch me.”

It was surprising how easily Larry gave up trying to coax Trent Mendibles out from under the bed. Nobody else in Jupiter cared whether or not the kid with the hairiest legs any of us had ever seen joined us for lunch, anyway.

Max tapped the oblivious Robin Sexton on the shoulder and said, “Hey. Kid. Why don't you squeeze under there and keep your bro company?”

And the thunder boomed and boomed all around Jupiter. With each explosion, Trent Mendibles would chirp like a little bird or say “Fuck!”

Beneath his plastic cot, the kid shook from fear so hard we could actually see the bed vibrate, which naturally caused Max to speculate that perhaps Trent Mendibles was
seeing off some of his departed loved ones
.

Just walking to and from lunch was like jumping in the lake fully clothed. So it was no surprise to us that Larry stayed behind and waited in Jupiter, claiming that someone sensible had to keep an eye on the kid hiding under the bed. And when we got back to Jupiter, the rain had been coming down so hard that with the wind pushing it through the screen walls, all of our beds were soaked. Well, all of them were soaked except for Larry's. Larry was experienced with the shortcomings of the cabin design at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, so he had rotated his bed sideways and slid it into the center of the floor, which was a narrow band of dry planks floating in the ocean of Jupiter.

“This fucking sucks,” Cobie Petersen observed.

Larry sat, smug and smirking at us from his dry and warm, non-plastic bed.

That was the other thing: Despite it being summertime in the George Washington National Forest, what with being soaked to the skin and inside a windy and wet cabin, the four non-hiding boys of Jupiter were shivering with the cold.

Trent Mendibles was shivering with something else.

Max sloshed down onto the foot of his bed. He said, “I fucking hate this place.”

Larry just grinned, enjoying the opportunity to have nature get back at us for all the grief we'd given him through our first twenty-four days at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

“Yeah. Live it up, Larry,” Max said. “You're going to be extinct before we are, anyway.”

Then Max slid his duffel bag out from beneath his bed and dug through it, looking for dry clothes.

“Dude. Don't change into your dry stuff. It would be stupid.” Cobie Petersen told him, “You'll only end up getting everything you own soaked. And where would that leave you?”

Another explosion of thunder, another startled squeak from beneath Trent Mendibles's bed, a gust of wind, and more rain coming sideways through the screen wall above our pillows.

It went without saying that Cobie Petersen—Larry's Teacher's Pet—was our commanding general of Jupiter. Without him, we other boys would be constantly going in different directions, and wet, too. Colton Benjamin Petersen made sense, and was easy to follow, even if he sometimes suggested doing stupid things like smoking pot with him in the middle of the night.

Cobie Petersen had a rain plan.

Dripping wet, freezing, Max, Cobie, and I removed all the wet sheets and pillows from our cots and then upended the crumpling plastic mattresses to block the back window screen where the rain was coming into Jupiter heaviest and getting onto our stuff. It was the one and only day when I had any kind of appreciation for the fluid-resistant beds we slept on.

We moved all our duffel bags into the dry swath beside Larry's cot in the center of Jupiter. Larry sat cross-legged on his non-rained-on sheets, while Robin Sexton just stood by the door, dripping and watching us work.

Max glared at the kid from Pennsylvania with the toilet-paper-and-kite-string earplugs. He said, “One of these days, before we get out of here, I'm going to kick you in the balls for all the shit we have to put up with from you.”

This also made me realize that tonight was my night to be on sleepwalk duty, which caused me to want to kick Robin Sexton in the balls, too.

The last mattress to go up came from Trent Mendibles's bed.

He whimpered, “Put it back, fuckers. Leave me alone.”

Trent Mendibles, who was dry in comparison to the other boys of Jupiter, had been curled up on his side on the damp floor with his hands covering his ears and his forearms hiding his eyes.

Cobie Petersen told him flatly, “No. You're taking one for the team.”

Trent Mendibles was so scared he was crying. I felt sorry for him, but only a little, because I knew what it was like to be that scared. But thunder was just thunder. The kid had no grasp on reality.

Maybe they didn't have bad weather in
Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners
.

Max sat on the edge of his wooden cot frame and slipped off his sneakers and socks, which splatted onto the cold floor like slabs of raw liver. “Can I get dressed now?”

“No,” Cobie said, “we still have some things to do. But it probably is better if we ditch our shoes and socks.”

Barefoot, Max and I slogged through the mud of the deserted grounds of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, following Cobie Petersen out to the dining pavilion. We splattered our way into the kitchen and stole a big carton of plastic garbage bags, a pair of kitchen shears, and two rolls of duct tape.

It was brilliant.

Back inside the reasonably drier Jupiter, we changed into our unemployed swim trunks, and then stuffed all our wet bedding and clothes inside garbage bags. Robin Sexton just watched us, sitting on the foot of his cot frame.

Cobie Petersen glared at the kid as he slipped on his trunks. “Dude. You're a creep. Stop looking at me.”

Robin Sexton just stared and stared. Trent Mendibles whimpered in the corner. Larry snored, napping on his dry cot in the middle of Jupiter.

We cut holes in three of the garbage bags so we could make rain ponchos with them. The duct tape made them heavier and secure around our necks and wrists so they wouldn't leak so much.

Then Cobie Petersen tapped Robin Sexton on the forehead.

“Kid. Take that shit out of your ears.”

Robin Sexton complied.

“You've got only one chance if you want your shit put in the dryer. Bag up your clothes and sheets right now or we'll leave you here to freeze to death. I don't really care either way.”

Robin Sexton said, “I fucking hate you.”

Larry snored.

But Robin reinserted his earbuds, quickly stripped and changed into his swim trunks, wadded up his wet laundry, and stuffed it into a plastic bag. I picked up Trent Mendibles's sheets.

“What are you doing?” Cobie Petersen—our general—asked.

“Helping Trent. I feel sorry for him.”

Cobie gave me a disappointed look and shrugged
whatever
.

Then Robin Sexton pulled out another garbage sack and started to measure it for a rain poncho. Cobie Petersen snatched the bag from the twitching kid's hands.

“No. You are
not
coming with us. We'll be back when we're done.”

We did not go directly to the laundry room. Cobie Petersen had other plans.

Carrying our laundry sacks like muddy, barefoot thieves, the three of us padded out into the woods to find the spot where we'd hidden the things we stole from the counselors. Wrapped in our duct tape and garbage-bag rain suits, we must have looked like alien spacemen, if anyone possibly had been looking at us.

The trees in the forest stopped most of the rain, but it was so loud hitting the leaves, it sounded like we were walking inside a popcorn cooker. And the thunder boomed and rattled above the treetops.

“What are you thinking?” Max said when we got far enough into the cover of woods that nobody could possibly know we were there.

“No one's coming outside in this rain,” Cobie Petersen said. “We might as well have a little fun.”

“We can't smoke pot in the middle of the day,” I argued. “People will know. We'll act too stupid.”

“Don't be dumb,” Cobie Petersen said. “We can't smoke pot because the joint is going to be too fucking wet.”

“Yeah, Ariel,” Max added, “don't be dumb.”

It didn't matter that they were joking. I was still scared that Cobie Petersen was going to lead us into trouble.

We spent a good ten minutes trying to find the hiding spot. Things change after ten days in a forest. And as Cobie Petersen predicted, our stash was fairly well soaked. I felt bad for Mrs. Nussbaum's book,
Male Extinction: The Case for an Exclusively Female Species
. I didn't like seeing books damaged. I'd seen enough burned-out schoolhouses and libraries in my first life.

Cobie Petersen dropped his laundry sack onto the leafy ground, reached inside the mossy hole and lifted up a can of beer, which he handed to my brother Max.

“What if they make us go swimming or something?” I protested, “You'll drown.”

I sat on one of the small mossy boulders that hid our contraband.

Cobie Petersen shook his head. “You worry too much.”

“Yeah, you
do
worry too much. Lighten up, Ariel,” Max said, and he popped open the can of beer.

Cobie picked up the two remaining cans of beer and passed one to me.

“Nobody will ever know,” he promised.

So we drank warm beer in the rain, dressed in swim trunks and garbage bags.

I couldn't tell, exactly, if one can of beer had any effect on me. My knees felt rubbery and disconnected from my body, though, and I fell down twice on the way back to the camp, so, probably. Max and Cobie laughed at me. Even with our makeshift rain gear, we were wet and muddy up to our thighs. And we all had to stop and pee in the woods before we came out into the clearing of the campgrounds.

I noticed I didn't feel cold anymore. I also didn't care about the spiders in the disgusting shower room, or that it was disgusting at all. The three of us rinsed the mud and leaves off our skin after we loaded all our wet things into the dryers.

I'd hidden Mrs. Nussbaum's book inside my sack of laundry. I figured it would give me something to do while we waited for our stuff to dry. Cobie Petersen and Max occupied themselves by talking too loud and laughing about things I tried not to pay attention to.

Max told Cobie Petersen that the beer he drank made him feel like sneaking away to somewhere private so he could
deport some troublesome settlers
.

Cobie laughed and called Max a pervert, which he was.

In the last section of Mrs. Nussbaum's book, she explained about the difficulties scientists at Merrie-Seymour Research Group had encountered when attempting the de-extinction of species from which there were only male genetic samples. This furthered her argument for the uselessness of males in general. Among these species were an invertebrate worm with legs, a rat, and one experiment in which both males and females were created from a species of extinct Polynesian crow—this was our pet, Alex. She also wrote about one of the first trials of hominid de-extinction in a chapter called “The Strange Case of Dr. Alexander Merrie's Siberian Ice Man.”

I was sitting on the dryer, reading, while our clothes tumbled around below me. It was a warm place to sit. The dryer stopped. A buzzer rang.

Cobie Petersen slapped my knee and said, “How's the
girl sperm
book ending up?”