Nerd Camp (18 page)

He took off with long, powerful strokes. He paddled out past the floating rope that marked the official kayaking zone, then aimed the kayak to the right. As he rounded the bend, his mind shifted to thoughts of going home. First he thought,
Nothing nerdy had better happen to cancel out this adventure
. But then, as the water became rougher and his
strokes became stronger, he thought,
Why do I keep thinking so much about Zack?
He reached a part where he had to paddle through some trees, and he thought,
C
²
would think this is cool even if something geeky
—

There was a rustling in the leaves. Gabe pushed forward with his paddle to slow the kayak and stop in place. He shut off his flashlight and listened. The rustling noise came again.
It's probably just the wind
, Gabe thought. But he dipped his finger in the water and held it up. The air was completely still.

Swwwwwooooooshshsh.
The leaves rustled again, followed by a faint whimper. Gabe's whole body turned to ice. He felt his arm hairs stand at attention. There was something there.
It's the ghost
, he thought. He kept his eyes wide open behind his glasses, too afraid of heightening his other senses to even blink.

The rustling became louder, and the whimper turned into words. “Go away,” the ghost moaned.

It doesn't want me to pass
, Gabe thought. That was enough of a reason for him to turn back. He wanted to turn back. If only his brain would send the message to the motor axons to make the muscles in his arms put the paddle in the water and
turn around. The breakdown in neural communication left him frozen and floating in place.

The leaves were moving now. They cut back and forth through the water with force. A sudden burst of light flashed from behind the leaves. Gabe choked on his scream, but the ghost's pierced the night. There was a high-pitched shriek, and then a cry of anguish: “NO!”

Gabe's respiratory system kicked in, and he started breathing again. That scream, that voice—it couldn't be from a ghost. It was too present and human and … familiar. Then his circulatory system kicked in, and he flicked on his flashlight.

The trees became silent and still. Now the ghost was afraid of
him
.

“Hello?” Gabe said.

There was no answer for a second. Then the voice came again: “Gabe?”

Gabe nearly fell out of his kayak.
“Amanda?”
he said.

“Gabe!” cried Amanda. “Thank God you followed me! My kayak is stuck in the branches, and my flashlight fell into the water.”

Gabe let out a loud sigh. Never in his life did he think he'd be so happy to see Amanda Wisznewski. He paddled into the
inlet until the nose of his kayak bumped the back of hers. “What are you doing here?” he asked as he moved his head around to scan the light over the water and find the branches that had caught her.

“Going to Dead Man's Island to get a cup of red sand. What are
you
doing here?”

Gabe laughed. “Going to Dead Man's Island to get a cup of red sand,” he admitted. He might as well say it before she did. “Copying you.”

Their relief made them laugh harder than the joke warranted.

Gabe pulled up through the dense leaves so that he was alongside Amanda. Then he pushed off her kayak and shined his hat beneath it. She had paddled into a tangle of branches, and they came to a thick knot right at the pointy part of the bottom of her boat. “You aren't afraid of the ghosts?” he asked.

“I was when you put on your flashlight!” she said. “
Man
, that was scary. I thought you were the ghost of the dead explorer.”

“I wasn't as scary as
you
! The leaves were moving, and you were making noise. Why did you say ‘go away'?”

“I was talking to the branches. They were everywhere!”

Gabe used the edge of his paddle to push the knot of branches down. “Try to go forward,” he said.

Amanda pushed off Gabe's kayak and propelled herself forward. “Yes!” she said.

“Uh-oh,” said Gabe. When Amanda had moved out of the trap, he had drifted in. Now his kayak was stuck.

Amanda turned to the side. “Here,” she said. “Give me your paddle and I'll pull you.”

Gabe stuck his paddle out to her and gripped the end. She reached the other end and pulled with all her might. At first it seemed like she was only going to pull herself back into the trees, but then she grabbed onto a branch with her other hand to hold her boat in place. With a jerk, Gabe's kayak became dislodged, and he drifted forward to meet her.

Once they were both through, Gabe moved his head in sweeping strokes to illuminate the area. “Wow,” he whispered. It was Lily Pad Lagoon, and it was unbelievable. The water was low and perfectly calm. Large, flat lily pads dotted the surface, creating a floating, abstract checkerboard. Above them, sweeping tree branches arched around
the perimeter in a dramatic canopy. Where the branches stopped, stars filled their place—hundreds of them, glowing like Christmas lights in the late summer sky. Gabe closed his eyes and listened. The lagoon was quiet, sleeping. There was nothing but the low buzz of cicadas and the occasional croak of a snoring frog.

The two kayakers paddled in silence, respecting the peace of the lagoon. After a crossing through another thin passageway, the lake opened up again, and Gabe spotted a small, round mound in the distance. “There it is,” he said. “Dead Man's Island.”

After the cozy tranquility of Lily Pad Lagoon, the vast open water felt cold and unstable. Haunted, even. They paddled quickly and kept their conversation going.

“My stepbrother is going to think this is the coolest adventure. As long as nothing nerdy happens to cancel it out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've got a logic proof,” Gabe said. “I am trying to prove that I am not just a nerd who does only nerdy things. But so far I don't know if I can prove it. I've got a chart, and for every good adventure there is a geeky part.”

“Like what?”

“Okay. Like our karaoke thing. That was pretty awesome, right? But we were singing all the countries of the world. That's nerdy, so it negates my hypothesis.”

The bow of Gabe's kayak slid stiffly onto the sand of Dead Man's Island. Amanda's came ashore right next to his.

“You always look at things backward,” she said.

Here we go again
, Gabe thought.
Just like she always says it's
me
who's stalking her when it's really
her
stalking me. How is she going to turn
this
around?

“We sang the countries of the world,” Amanda said, “but we had a really crazy sing-off. So for every geeky thing, there's a really cool adventure.”

Gabe turned to face her. He thought about the time his math team friends slept over his house and how they all looked a little different in the morning. Not just because they were wearing pajamas and orthodontic headgear, but because he had spent a whole night with them and felt like he knew them better than he did before. As the light from Gabe's hat shined into Amanda's face, he had the same thought about her. She was wearing a sweatshirt like any other and her hair was still long and thick and kind of wild in the light, but somehow she looked just a little bit different.

Amanda covered her face with her hands. “Are you trying to blind me?” she said.

Gabe moved his head back to face the island. “Do you really think someone died here?”

“I don't know.”

Gabe unhooked his peanut butter jar from the bungee cords at the front of his boat and unscrewed the lid. It would have been easy to jump onto the island to scoop up the sand, but, thinking like Nikhil, he decided to scoop from within his kayak. Just to be safe. He turned the boat sideways, reached over the side, and scooped a big jarful of red sand.

“Oh, no!” Amanda cried.

“What?” Gabe pictured ghosts and dead bodies and long trails of blood.

“My cup is missing. I must have lost it when I lost my flashlight.”

“Oh, come on,” Gabe said.

“I'm serious. Good thing you brought a jar big enough for both of us.”

Typical
, Gabe thought as he screwed the cap on the heavy jar of red sand—
his
red sand that
he
had gotten by sneaking out and
not
getting caught in branches and
not
dropping
his flashlight and jar into the water. Amanda was on the Blue team, and this was Color
War
, not Color Sharing. He'd already helped her enough that night. She'd still be stuck in the thicket and the dark if it weren't for him. Now she expected him to share his sand, too?

But there was something about the darkness and the hour and the talk they'd just had and the journey they'd just gone on—there was something that told him they were in this together.

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Good thing.”

After paddling back and pulling the kayaks onto shore and sprinting across the field, and nudging Nikhil to tell him he was back, Gabe lay in his bed with his eyes closed and the sounds of camp wrapped around him. He'd made it.

Maybe Dead Man's Island
was
haunted. It had to be an otherworldly spirit that made him think Amanda looked different in that light and made him promise to share half his sand with her. She was on the Blue team, and she was annoying and crazy and always looking at things backward.

But maybe she was right about one thing. Even if he was a nerd, he had just had one awesome adventure.

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

Hypothesis: No.

Proof:

The next morning's breakfast was the last color-coded meal, and it sparked a realization of all the last things coming up. This was the last morning of Color War. After that would be the last few days of classes. Tonight, he and his bunkmates would learn their last digit of Pi. And Saturday was the last day of Summer Center. Six weeks of camp, over in a blink.

Gabe got a round of applause when he presented the red sand to C
²
during the designated scavenger hunt time. Maybe it was because he didn't want his teammates to know that he'd helped a Blue team member, or maybe it was because he was taking a cue from C
²
, who accepted the cup of sand
without asking any questions, but Gabe decided to keep most of the details about his journey private. Nikhil thought it safer if he didn't know the specifics of how his bunkmate broke the rules, and Wesley was impressed just knowing that it happened at all, so it wasn't too hard. Gabe had a flash of nervousness when he passed Amanda on the field, but all she did was shout, “Blue is the best!” When Jenny stuck her tongue out at him, he knew that Amanda hadn't told anyone about last night either.

The Color War battles ended with the scavenger hunt in the morning, but the official closing ceremony wasn't until after dinner. The administration spent the day tallying the scavenger hunt scores and divvying up points for sportsman-ship and team spirit, and the campers had shortened sessions of each of their classes. They were only going to have two more days of school after this, and both Miss Carey and Mr. Justice said that those two days would be spent working on a final project to present to their families when they came to pick them up.