Nerd Camp (4 page)

Gabe took it. “Hey, Zack! What's up, man?”

Ashley sighed, and Eric rolled his eyes.

“You leave tomorrow, right?” said Zack.

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “I can't wait. I just finished packing.”

Eric tapped Gabe on the shoulder. “Did you already pack your Logical Reasoning book? I want to show it to Ashley.”

Gabe put his finger to his lips and covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Yeah, I packed it,” he said.

“What'd you pack?” said Zack.

“Nothing,” said Gabe. “Can I call you back later? Some of my friends are here.”

“Oh,” said Zack. “Don't worry about it, man. I just called to say good-bye. And remember, you have to write and tell me everything you do. Everything.”

“I promise,” said Gabe.

“Next year,” said Zack, “we'll go to sleepaway camp together.”

“Yeah! That'd be so cool.”

“Okay. Bye, Gabe.”

“Bye.”

Gabe clicked the phone off and put it on his desk. Ashley and Eric were looking at him. “That was my stepbrother,” he said.

“Duh,” said Ashley. “He's not even your stepbrother yet, but you still talk about him every five minutes.”

“And how cool he is,” added Eric.

“That's because he is cool,” said Gabe. “He's still so jealous
that I get to go to sleepaway camp. I have to write and tell him everything.”

“But he doesn't know that your camp is called the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment,” said Ashley.

“Well, no,” said Gabe.

“And he doesn't know that everyone who goes there is really smart and you had to take a test to get in.”

“No.”

“And he doesn't know that when you're there, you'll be in school almost all the time. And that you're really excited about it.”

Gabe sighed. “No, but come on. If he found out, he wouldn't like me.”

Eric looked at Gabe over his glasses. “But you're going to write and tell him everything.”

“It's camp,” said Gabe, tapping his nose. “I'll do it somehow.”

“Won't that be lying?” asked Ashley.

“No,” Eric granted, “it'll just be a challenge.”

“Yeah,” said Gabe. He liked challenges.

That night, after he said good night to his mom but before he shut off his reading light, Gabe found himself thinking about Ashley and Eric and Zack and himself and camp. He thought about Eric's little sister and how she idolized Eric and copied everything he did. As glad as he was to be finally getting a brother, it would have been so much easier to have a
baby
brother, one who grew up admiring him and never made him wonder if he was a nerd.

Zack likes me so far
, he reminded himself,
so I can't be a total geek, right? And I'm going to have tons of non-nerdy things to report from camp.
He wouldn't have to lie when
he wrote to Zack; he'd just have to be careful.
And logical
.

He got out of bed and unzipped his backpack, which was on the floor next to his suitcase. He slid out what was going to be his Logical Reasoning notebook and opened it to the very last page. Since he hadn't started the class yet, he wasn't totally sure of how to do a logic proof, so he just did his best.

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

Hypothesis: No.

To organize the proof, he made a chart and filled in the first row with evidence.

Proof:

That was a good, honest start. His summer was about to become one big logic problem. One awesome, fun, sleepaway, no-parents logic problem. He couldn't wait.

Dear Eric,

Greetings from camp! I have only been here .6 days, but so far I LOVE IT!! I am writing to you FIRST, before my mom even, but my mom is still here. I'm in the library! We have a library here!

Here's what we've done the first day so far: We parked the car, and then my mom and me went to the camp office to check in. Someone gave us a map of the campground and told us how to get to my bunk, which is 2B. We went to the bunk
and put down my suitcase and met my counselor. His name is David and he is in college. The bunk is a long rectangle, but it is divided up into small areas, kind of like rooms but without doors. There's just a space where a door would be. (See diagram A.) My bed is all the way in the last section, so it's kind of private. (See number 1 on diagram A.) It's not totally private because I share it with people named Wesley and Nikhil, but it's more private than the rest of the bunk because we only have three people instead of four. We came to check out the library. Now my mom has to go to a meeting for parents and I have to go to my bunk to unpack. Maybe I'll meet my bunkmates!

On one side of Gabe's suitcase was a duffel bag that could fit a person in it, and on the other side was a large trunk like a magician might have.
They belong to my bunkmates
, Gabe thought. He looked around. “Hello?” he said.

“Hello?” came a voice from the ceiling.

Gabe looked up. A thin boy with short black hair and black-rimmed glasses looked down from the top bunk bed he was sitting on. “I'm Wesley Fan,” he said. “Are you Gabriel or Nikhil?”

“I'm Gabriel,” said Gabe. “But call me Gabe.”

“I'm Wesley,” said Wesley.

“I know. You just said that.”

“I was telling
him
.” Wesley motioned with his head to the entryway, where there was a tall boy with dark hair that stuck straight up, making him look even taller. “Are you Nikhil?”

“Yes,” said the boy. “I'm Nikhil.”

“I'm Gabe,” said Gabe.

“I'm Wesley,” said Wesley.

The three of them looked at one another.

“Well, now we know one another's names,” said Gabe.

Wesley laughed. It was a quick, spirited laugh that came out the sides of his mouth and sounded like breath mixed
with spit. The noise made Gabe laugh, and then Nikhil joined in.

Instead of unpacking, which was what they were supposed to be doing, Gabe and Nikhil climbed up to the other top bunk, and the three of them started asking one another questions. Nikhil asked what classes they were taking, and they found out that they were in all different ones. Gabe asked their ages, and upon their discovering that they were all ten, he asked their birthdays.

“Did you know,” said Nikhil, “you only need twenty-three people in a room to have a greater than fifty percent chance of finding two people with the same birthday?”

“No way,” said Gabe.

“Yeah!” said Wesley. “We proved that in my math club. I can show you how.”

“We're only three people,” said Nikhil, “so the odds are a lot lower. But mine's January fifth.”

“One-five?” Gabe said. “Mine's five-one! May first.”

“All right!” said Nikhil. “We're inverse birthday buddies.” They high-fived.

“My birthday's on Pi day,” said Wesley.

Gabe gasped. “I love Pi day.”

“What's Pi day?” asked Nikhil.

Gabe and Wesley gaped at each other through their glasses. “You've never heard of Pi day?” Gabe asked. “It's March fourteenth, so three-fourteen, like three point one-four, which is Pi. On my math team we celebrate it every year.”

“We celebrate it in school,” said Wesley. “We sit around in a circle and eat pies. Mmm.”

Nikhil's jaw dropped in jealousy. He decided to tell his teachers about it next year, and he climbed down and wrote it in his notebook. “I don't
think
I'll forget,” he explained, closing up the notebook, “but you know. Just to be safe.”

“I love pie,” said Wesley dreamily.

“Yeah, Pi is really useful in math,” said Nikhil. “How many digits can you name after three point one-four?”

“I know ten,” said Wesley.

Gabe's shoulders sunk. “I only know eight.”

Nikhil stood up tall. “I know fourteen,” he said proudly.

“Fourteen!” said Wesley.

“Since we taught you about Pi day,” Gabe said, “can you teach us up to fourteen digits?”

“All right,” said Nikhil. “I want to learn more anyway. I'll teach you guys to fourteen, and then we'll all learn more.”

“Goal: We all know twenty digits of Pi by the end of camp,” said Wesley.

Nikhil wrote goals on the top of a piece of looseleaf paper and the goal on the first line. Then he took out a roll of tape from the front pocket of his backpack and taped the paper to the wall.

Gabe felt his body tingle with what he realized was no longer nerves but excitement. He could totally spend six weeks with these two, no problem. They were having the sort of first meeting that he'd hoped to have with his stepbrother. Did that mean Zack would think they were nerds? Would he be able to write to him about Wesley and Nikhil at all?

“I took one of the top bunks,” said Wesley. “Is that okay?”

Nikhil nodded enthusiastically. “I prefer the bottom. I know I probably wouldn't roll off—incidences of people rolling out of bed are actually quite low—but I prefer the bottom anyway. Just to be safe.”

“I might roll off,” Wesley said with a shrug. “I roll around a lot when I sleep.”

Nikhil looked apprehensive, but he didn't say anything.

“Then I can pick top or bottom,” said Gabe. “Where should I go?” he wondered aloud, tapping his nose.

“Well,” said Nikhil, “if you don't really care either way, I'd prefer it if you slept on the bottom, below Wesley. I don't
think
my bed would collapse with someone sleeping on top of me—I'm sure they build these things using good materials and sound engineering—but you know. Just in case.” He looked at Gabe with an expression that was trying very hard to be casual, but Gabe could see that he was really very concerned.

Gabe shrugged and jumped off the top of what was now Nikhil's bunk. “Okay,” he said. “I'll take the other bottom.”

“That means you don't have to solve this challenge,” said Wesley from his perch atop Gabe's new bed. “Where am I going to put my book and my glasses and my tissues when I sleep?”

“On those posts?” Gabe suggested. He pointed to one of the wooden posts on a corner of the bed.

“I thought of that,” said Wesley. “But I roll around, so it won't work. Look.” He balanced a book on the post, then tapped underneath it with his hand. The book wobbled and fell down.

Nikhil shook his head nervously. “Yeah, don't put stuff there.”

“You could hang a net from the ceiling,” suggested Gabe. “And put stuff in there. That'd be cool.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Wesley thoughtfully. “But I don't have a net.”

“And it could fall on you,” said Nikhil.

“Wait!” said Wesley. “I got it.” He shinnied down from the bed and began rummaging through the big duffel bag. He grinned and held up a tennis racket. He stood on the edge of Gabe's bed and wedged the handle of the racket underneath his mattress. Then he climbed back up and placed a book on the face of the racket. He moved his hands away slowly. “Ta da!” he said.

“Good thinking,” said Gabe.

“Yeah, that's genius,” said Nikhil.

Wesley held out his arms. “Thank you, thank you,” he said. “I got into Smart Camp for a reason.” He bowed deeply, then came up and hit his head on the ceiling.

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

Hypothesis: No.

Proof:

Dear Zack,

It is only the first night, but so far camp is awesome!!! You would love it!! I have bunkmates named Wesley and Nikhil, and we all get along great. Here's what we did today after the parents left. We had pizza for dinner, which was so good. And then we played some games to get to know our bunkmates. Then we toasted marshmallows! And then we had a HUGE WATER-GUN FIGHT! It was extra fun because it was already kind of dark out, so you could sneak up on
people. I got really soaked. Now I am back in my bunk. I have to go because it's almost lights out. You were right, camp is the best, and I am not feeling sad or missing home at all.