Nerd Camp (14 page)

After filling up on green food and neutral drinks, the boys went with the rest of their division out to Shady Field, just like they would on school days. Only today, they weren't lining up by class and going into the classrooms; they were lining up by team and finding out which battle they would face first. A large scoreboard listed all the upcoming battles and how many points each was worth.

 

After a spontaneous chanting battle between the different teams, the older kids from each nation headed to the lake for
water sports, while Gabe and the other younger kids stayed on the field for field day.

Amanda snaked through the crowd until she found Gabe. She put her arm around his shoulders. “I bet you wish I was on Green with you,” she said. “But you're going down.”

“We're enemies,” Gabe said, realizing what was perhaps the best part of the next two days. “I can't talk to you.”

Green Nation had a strong showing for field day. A boy from Gabe's bunk blasted to victory in the fifty-yard dash, earning Green 30 points. Then Gabe and Wesley were the stars of the three-legged race: They blazed past a team of boys from Yellow at the very end to come in second place, just behind a pair of girls from Red, which gave them another 10. Then the counselors brought out large soil-sample bags from the Earth Science class to use for a potato-sack race. Wesley, who apparently had a hidden talent for jumping far and fast, came in first, bringing the team's total to 70.

The water-balloon toss seemed like another sure victory for Green. Nikhil handled everything with caution just to be safe, so he was a pro at throwing and catching breakable things. Paired with thoughtful Victor Kim, who cupped the water balloon with such tenderness, it could have been a
living creature, they were a water-balloon-toss dream team. After a few rounds of poor throws and clumsy catches, the competition was whittled down to two teams—Nikhil and Victor versus a couple of girls from Amanda's Blue bunk—and they were standing so far apart that you could fit a school bus between them.

“Throw!” said a counselor. One girl tossed the balloon up, and the other fumbled it. It fell, but it didn't break, causing the Blue team to clap and holler. At the same time, Nikhil lobbed the balloon up and across to Victor. It was too light a throw, and Victor had to run up a few feet, but he stretched out his arms and caught it, gently cradling it in his hands so it didn't break. The Green team erupted into cheers.

“They're unstoppable!” shouted Gabe, holding up his hands for a double high-five.

“Go, Nikhil!” Wesley shouted, slapping them. He had dropped their balloon before the game had even begun, but the sun was so hot that his shorts were already almost dry.

The counselors went around and made sure all the players took equal steps back. They were practically at opposite ends of the field. “Ready … throw!”

But before Nikhil could throw, a whizzing noise sounded
from near the classrooms. “Heads up!” someone yelled.

Something was falling from the sky, spinning out of control. Gabe covered his head and ran toward the perimeter of the field with the other screaming campers. The object landed with a
pop
—right on the trash bag of loaded water balloons for that afternoon.

The bag's contents shot into the air in a colorful geyser of water and latex. Some balloons shot up whole and then popped when they landed on the ground, splattering anyone in the vicinity. After the explosion, the crowd stood looking at one another, silent and soaking. Nikhil stared forlornly at the mess. He'd sacrificed his water balloon to save himself, and it was impossible to even identify it among the hundreds of casualties.

The counselors went to investigate the point of impact. Whatever had landed was trapped inside the trash bag, which lay shriveled on the ground with water leaking from all sides.

The Rocket Science instructor came running from the science building. She was wearing a lab coat and boxy goggles over her large glasses. “Sorry to bother you,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “But has anyone seen a rocket? I was testing rockets for class on Monday, and I seem to have added too
much calcium carbide.” Only then did she notice the group of counselors huddled around the soggy trash bag. “Ah! I think that's it!”

Everyone started laughing and talking. Nikhil apologized repeatedly to Victor, even though their Blue competitors had lost their balloon too. Gabe stared wide-eyed at the scene, shocked that something as regular as field day could be interrupted by something as smart as rocket science. So much for Color War filling the left side of his chart without qualifiers on the right. But then he saw something that made him forget about his logic proof altogether. It was Amanda, and she was waddling toward him with her T-shirt and shorts plastered to her skin. Her hair was hanging in long, wet pieces. A broken red water balloon sat atop her head, its tie poking straight up.

“What?” she said.

Wesley and Nikhil laughed so hard that they fell on top of each other. Gabe laughed so hard, he started to cry.

“Everyone's wet,” said Amanda. “It's not funny.”

“No, it's not funny,” he managed to say through heavy breaths. Amanda stood with her arms crossed, the water from her shorts dripping into a puddle underneath her. Gabe wheezed. “It's hilarious!”

Problem: Am I a nerd who only has nerdy adventures?

Hypothesis: No.

Proof:

Dear Mom,

This is just a very short letter, because we're in the middle of Color War and it is so so so so SO much fun!! We are going to plan for the scavenger hunt now. Zack said you have a surprise for me when you come pick me up. What is it?

After a lunch of salad and pasta with green pesto, everyone had an hour of free time. But no one was going to use that time as free. The counselors weren't allowed to run Color
War stuff with their teams during free time, but C
²
was a part of Green Nation, and he called a meeting to plan their strategy for the scavenger hunt. The counselors handed out lists for the scavenger hunt at the end of lunch, but teams had until Sunday morning, the final day of Color War, to complete it.

“We'll get two hours on Sunday to do it,” C
²
explained, “but if we wait until then, we don't stand a chance. If we want to win, we've got to start now.”

Green wasn't the only team that was forging a scavenger hunt plan now. The Red team was huddled in the woods. Yellow was clumped on the pavement in front of the Humanities building. Blue was underneath the big tree on the edge of Shady Field. But having C
²
on their team meant Green had the best spot: the playground. C
²
himself was standing at the top of the slide, and everyone else was on the jungle gym. Gabe and Wesley had prime spots on top of the monkey bars. Nikhil, who preferred a seat he couldn't accidentally slip through, was sitting on the wood right by Gabe's dangling feet.

“I've looked through the list,” C
²
continued. “It's a lot of stuff, but nothing impossible. Well …” He looked up at the sky, contemplating something. Deciding against whatever it was he was considering, he said, “Yeah, nothing impossible. So, here's the
plan. I'm going to give each bunk a bunch of items from the list. You can find those items all together or you can split them up further. I don't care. But start working right away, okay? I'm going to come around to your bunks before lights out. If there's anything in your list you think you can't get, tell me by lights out
tonight
. Got it? Then bring everything you have so far to me by
tomorrow
night before lights out. That way, Sunday morning we can figure out as a whole team who can get the stuff that's missing, or how to be creative and make stuff that we can't get.”

The boys from Gabe's bunk gathered underneath the monkey bars to look at the section of the list C
²
had assigned them. After some arguing about the most efficient way to tackle it, and then about how arguing was inefficient, they decided to split the list into smaller lists by number and then let sections of the bunk choose their list based on what they knew they could get.

Since Gabe knew about similes and metaphors from his Poetry Writing class, he claimed the first seven items for himself and Wesley and Nikhil.

1. A simile

2. A metaphor

3. A cup of red sand

4. Seaweed

5. The tenth word in the second column on page 237 of the
Concise Oxford English Dictionary

6. A dime from 1996

7. A picture of someone on your team with a celebrity

The first two just required a bit of thought. The dime shouldn't be too hard; between them and everyone in their bunk, there was bound to be one from 1996. The sand and the seaweed they would probably get by the lake, which they'd be going to right after free time. Number five just involved going to the library and looking it up. They had fifteen minutes before they had to change for swimming, so they decided to walk over to the library now.

“I bet we could finish our whole part of the list by today,” said Wesley.

“What about the picture of someone with a celebrity?” said Gabe. “Have you guys ever met a celebrity?”

“An author came to my school once,” said Nikhil, “but I didn't get a picture with her.”

“I went to SeaWorld and petted Shamu,” said Wesley proudly. When he saw that his bunkmates weren't impressed, he added, “Shamu's a famous whale.”

Gabe laughed. “Did you get a picture?”

“Yeah,” said Wesley, “but I don't have it here. I
knew
I should have brought it.”

“I don't know if that would work, anyway,” said Nikhil as the boys entered the library. “The judges might not know it's Shamu.”

“Yeah,” said Gabe, “they might think we gave them a picture of you petting a not-famous whale.”

They all laughed but then covered their mouths when the librarian signaled for them to be quiet. The three of them walked up to her desk.

Nikhil asked, “Where can we find the
Concise Oxford English Dictionary
?”

Wesley asked, “Where would I find a book about Shamu?”

Gabe and Nikhil followed the librarian's pointed finger to the window ledge, where a large, thick book lay open. Gabe needed to use both his hands to flip it closed. “
Concise Oxford English Dictionary
,” he read. “What page?”

The dictionary was so big that the tenth word in the
second column of page 237 was only
CENTURY.
They were hefting the book into the copy machine—Nikhil had suggested they make a copy of the page for proof, just to be safe—when Wesley showed up with a book about whales. He had the book open to a big picture, spread over two pages, of a black-and-white killer whale. The caption had a paragraph that said something about Shamu and SeaWorld.

“Looks like the original Shamu died in 1971,” said Wesley with a sad sigh. “So, the Shamu I petted wasn't the really famous one.”

“It's still pretty famous, though,” said Gabe. “We could take a picture of you and this picture. Then we'd have a picture of you and a celebrity!”