THE ORDER OF THE POISON OAK
by
Brent Hartinger
PUBLISHED BY:
Buddha Kitty, Inc. on Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Brent Hartinger
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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For Laura South-Oryshchyn,
A founding member of the Order of the Poison Oak
And for Michael Jensen,
to whom I grant a Lifetime Membership
Chapter One
I was surrounded by fires, angry blazes raging all around me. The flames hissed and crackled, their blistering heat searing my exposed skin. I desperately wanted to run, but there was no escape. I was trapped by the heat. Any step I might take, any direction I might turn, the flames would flare up and engulf me.
Then the school bell rang, and the students around me began bustling off to class.
I was standing in the hallway of Robert L. Goodkind High School in the moments before my first class. I was surrounded by flames, yeah, but not the kind you might think. No, the fires that threatened me were the flames of hatred and suspicion that flickered in the eyes of my classmates. Why did I feel like the hallway of my high school was some perilous corridor of fire, and like the looks in the eyes of the other students were the flames of that blazing inferno? There is a very short answer to that question: earlier in the year, some friends and I had started the Goodkind High Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance. And now the whole school knew I was gay.
Okay, so maybe I’m being melodramatic about the school being on fire. All I know is that ever since I’d come out, my high school had suddenly felt like a very dangerous place—and I had the defaced locker and anonymous E-mails to prove it.
“Move it, faggot,” Nate Klane mumbled as he ambled by me in the hallway.
See? This was exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. I’d put up with this kind of crap ever since we’d gone public with our Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance, and frankly I was getting pretty tired of it. Yeah, yeah, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. First of all, anyone who thinks that words can’t hurt you has obviously never taken sophomore P.E. And second, did it ever occur to whoever wrote that stupid adage that hurtful words might be a pretty good indication that sticks and stones are on the way? It’s not like it’s an either-or thing. Words and sticks and stones can go together, and often do. All I can say is that the writer of that adage sounds pretty damn blasé about getting his bones broken.
Let’s face it: being openly gay at age sixteen really, really sucks. (And if you’re saying, Well, then, why did you come out? it’s not like being gay and closeted at age sixteen is some carnival in the cafeteria.) But since this is the first chapter of this book, I can’t be all negative and overwrought or you won’t want to read any more (I’m not pointing fingers—I hate books like that too). So I’ll say the only positive thing I was thinking at the time.
Summer vacation was only four weeks away.
* * * * *
That morning, in a break between classes, I met my friend Gunnar by his locker. He was sniffing the air.
“Hey,” I said.
“Do you smell something?” he said.
I took a whiff. “Jerry Mason’s gym socks.”
“Not that.”
“What do you think you smell?” I asked him.
“Aspergillus flavus.”
I was afraid to ask what that was.
“It’s a toxic mold,” Gunnar said. “I think maybe our school has it.”
Let me cut to the chase: my friend Gunnar was, in a word, weird. The fact that he was a hypochondriac was the least of his quirks. But he was also smart and creative and just an all-around great guy. Example: he wasn’t gay, but he’d joined the Goodkind Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance out of loyalty to me.
“You ever hear of the curse of King Tut’s tomb?” Gunnar said, and I shook my head no. “Well, in the years after they opened that tomb, almost everyone on the expedition died. People said it was the Mummy’s curse. But now some people think that maybe the reason they died was because they were exposed to Aspergillus flavus when they opened the tomb.”
As much as I liked Gunnar, I wasn’t interested in toxic mold—even if the Egyptian mummy connection was kind of cool. So I decided to change the subject.
“Looking forward to summer?” I said.
“You know it,” Gunnar said. There was a weary rumble in his voice that surprised me, even though it shouldn’t have. Since Gunnar had joined the Goodkind Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance, he’d been on the receiving end of all the same crap as me. Only in his case, it was actually even worse. More than anything in the world, Gunnar wanted a girlfriend. He’d been trying to get one for years, but it had never worked out. (Being weird is not a plus when you’re looking for a girlfriend, and being smart and creative aren’t all that helpful either.) But now, thanks to the Goodkind Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance, everyone also thought he was gay. We’d tried to tell people that he wasn’t gay—”It’s a Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance, remember?”—but no one believed us. So now the one thing he most desperately wanted—a girlfriend—was the one thing he could never have. Not as long as he was a student at Goodkind High School, anyway.
“Hey,” I said, “there’s a stream cleanup the first weekend in June. You want to sign up?” The summer before, we’d volunteered for a stream cleanup and had met a couple of girls we’d talked to all afternoon. I’d had no interest in them, of course, and it hadn’t led anywhere, even for Gunnar. But there’d probably be new girls this year. I figured helping Gunnar find a girlfriend was the least I could do for him, given that he’d joined the Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance for me.
To my surprise, Gunnar shook his head and said, “Nah.”
He had obviously forgotten what had happened at the stream cleanup. “Remember last year?” I said. “We met those girls?”
He nodded. “I remember.”
“They didn’t go to our school. And there’ll probably be other girls who don’t go to our school.” In other words, they wouldn’t think Gunnar was gay.
“It’s not that,” he said. “I’m just not interested.”
“In stream cleanups?”
“In girls.”
This took a moment to compute. Gunnar not interested in girls? It made no sense. It was like talking about a diabetic honeybee.
“Gunnar,” I said. “What is it?”
He slumped back against his locker. “I’m tired of it, Russ.” My name is Russel Middlebrook, but Gunnar always calls me Russ. “Every time I get excited about some girl,” he went on, “I just end up saying or doing the wrong thing. I’m tired of embarrassing myself, and I’m tired of the rejection.”
I don’t mean to be mean, but Gunnar wasn’t exaggerating. Somehow he always did seem to end up embarrassing himself around girls. And that was even before the Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance.
“So what are you saying?” I asked.
“I’m saying I’m giving up girls,” he said.
I stared at him like he’d just said he was giving up pants. Or oxygen. (Have I made myself clear on the strangeness of the whole Gunnar-giving-up-girls thing?)
“It’s not forever,” he said. “I just decided that maybe I’m trying too hard. So I’m going to give it a rest.”
I nodded, trying to be supportive. In a way, it actually made sense. Then again, since when did people start doing the logical thing?
“Besides,” Gunnar said, “I think I got a summer job.”
“No kidding,” I said. “Where?”
“Camp Serenity. It’s this summer camp up in the mountains. I’m going to be a camp counselor.”
I glared at him. “And you were going to tell me this when, exactly?” We were best friends. It wasn’t like one of us to run off and leave the other alone all summer long.
“Give me a break,” Gunnar said. “I just found out about it last night. And I still have to apply, but the camp director is a friend of my dad’s. He says they’re desperate.”
As Gunnar was talking, I thought to myself, Up in the mountains? As in, away from everyone and anyone who knew I was gay?
“What about me?” I said. “You think they’d take me too?”
Gunnar grinned. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say!”
* * * * *
I was dying to tell my other best friend, Min, about our summer plans. She and Gunnar and I were all friends, and the only thing better than Gunnar and me going off to the mountains for the summer was the idea of Min coming with us. Min was a member of the Goodkind Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance too, only she had more of a reason to join than just loyalty to me. She was bi. She was also Chinese-American, which has nothing to do with anything, and which almost seems kind of racist to even bring up at this point. But her name sort of bears explanation.
I caught up with her in the hallway on the way to lunch. But before I could say a word, she nodded toward a guy in front of us and said, “Tim Noll is so hot! I love the way the hair on the back of his neck is so neatly trimmed.”
“Min!” I said. More than anything, I just wanted her to keep her voice down.
“Oh, come on,” Min said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed him.”
I hadn’t noticed him. Ever since I’d come out as gay, I’d made it a point not to notice guys at all. When the whole school knows you’re gay, the last thing you want is someone catching you looking at another guy. I couldn’t think of any better way to bring on the sticks and stones I mentioned earlier.
“Min,” I said, changing the subject, “Gunnar has this idea about what the three of us can do this summer.”
She ignored me. “Or Jason Gelrecht. You know he got his teeth laser-whitened? Not that I spend a lot of time looking at his teeth.” Ever since I’d come out as gay and Min had come out as bi, she seemed to like talking about hot guys with her gay best friend, especially when we were in public. But I don’t think it was because she really cared about hot guys. No, I think it was more so she could prove that she didn’t care what anyone thought of her. But it always made me uncomfortable, which I think was also partly the point. Min was one of my two best friends, but she could be kind of competitive. On some level, all her talk about hot guys was kind of a challenge to me: could I be as bold as her? (I know this makes her sound like a bit of a bitch. But she was always interesting to be around, and often pushed me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise do.)
“Min,” I said. “I’m serious. This friend of Gunnar’s dad runs this summer camp, and he—”
“Or Jarred Gasner,” Min said, “even though that’s kind of a cliché, him being Homecoming King and all. I bet you’ve seen him in the shower, haven’t you? What does he look like naked?”
Min and I may have been talking, but we definitely weren’t communicating. So it was time to fight fire with fire.
“You know who I think is hot?” I said.
“Who?” Min said. I’d gotten her attention at least.
“Jennifer Nance.” Min was bi, but she never talked about which girls she thought were hot, which I thought was very interesting.
Min laughed. “Oh, touché! I wondered when you’d get around to trying that.” One thing I appreciated about Min: she was smart—even smarter than Gunnar. She caught on to things fast, which always kept me on my toes. “Hey,” she said, “we can talk about hot girls if you want! I think Amy Mandrake has a great tush.”
Okay, I thought. Min had won another round, even if she had used an incredibly geeky word like “tush.” But she had an advantage. She was a girl, and girls didn’t have to worry nearly as much about sticks and stones and broken bones.
“Just listen to me a second,” I said. “Gunnar is going to apply to be a counselor at a summer camp, and he—”
“I’m in,” Min said.
“What?” I said.
“I want to go with you guys. I want to be a camp counselor too.”
I knew Min was quick, but I’d never known her to be this quick before!
Min saw the startled expression on my face and laughed again. “Sorry. Gunnar told me all about it during biology lab.”
In spite of her teasing me, I was pretty happy. I was going to be spending the summer in a place called Camp Serenity with my two best friends. I was certain it was going to be two months of the peaceful, completely non-gay R&R that I so desperately needed.
Looking back, I don’t think I’ve been so wrong about anything in my whole entire life.
Chapter Two
So the three of us got summer jobs as camp counselors. And four and a half weeks later, the Monday morning after school let out, we all climbed into Gunnar’s car and drove up into the mountains. Camp Serenity was located at the end of a dusty gravel road on the shore of a long, narrow body of water called—surprise!—Lake Serenity. The lake itself was not quite as pretty as a postcard, but it was much prettier than a snapshot. As for the camp, it consisted of a grassy marching field with a flagpole and a totem pole; a beach with a swimming area, huge fire pit, and dock; a lodge and cafeteria on the hill above the beach; and ten cabins scattered in the trees along the water.
The first camp session didn’t start until the following Sunday, but we counselors had had to come a week early so the camp director could tell us what our jobs were all about. Min, Gunnar, and I had been hired for five two-week sessions. In other words, Camp Serenity was going to be my home for almost the whole summer. But I didn’t mind. On the contrary, I was thrilled. I was with Min and Gunnar—the two people I cared more about than anyone in the world. And absolutely no one else within fifty miles knew I was gay. And they never would know, not if I could help it.
Gunnar parked the car in the gravel parking lot, and I suppose here is where I should tell more about how the camp looked, or how we went inside the lodge to talk to the camp director. Then again, that’s all pretty boring, so I figure I can skip all that and get right to the interesting part.
His name was Web Bastian, and he was much prettier than any postcard.
Web—short for Webster, I guess—was one of the ten counselors who had been hired by the camp director, a pasty-faced bald man named Mr. Whittle. I know I said before that ever since I’d come out, I didn’t notice hot guys, but (a) I meant at school, where everyone knew I was gay, and (b) that was a lie. When it came to Web, I could hardly keep my eyes off him.
“So!” Mr. Whittle said when we counselors had all gathered in a circle on the floor of the lodge’s big common room. “Why don’t we get started, okay? First, let me welcome you to Camp Serenity.”
Mr. Whittle went on to introduce the four other adults who helped run the camp, but I barely heard a word he was saying. I was looking at Web while trying to pretend I wasn’t looking (you know exactly what I mean). He was older than me—probably eighteen or nineteen—with dark hair and a face like the impossibly cute lead singer of some trendy-but-not-too-edgy garage band. And he had one of those lean, perfectly proportioned bodies where his clothes just sort of fell off him, like rain dripping from a weeping willow.
“Now,” Mr. Whittle was saying, “I see a couple of familiar faces from years past, which I guess means we’re doing something right, huh? Why don’t we go around in a circle and everyone can introduce themselves, okay?”
Web was the seventh person to introduce himself, and that’s when I heard his voice for the first time. “I’m Web Bastion,” he said, and his voice was deep like an ocean, but gentle like a lake. And speaking of lakes and oceans, I didn’t mention Web’s eyes, which were bluer than a tropical lagoon.
I was still thinking about Web when I heard Mr. Whittle say, “Now, I need everyone to divide up into pairs. And let’s all pair up with someone we don’t know, okay?”
Needless to say, I was determined to be Web’s partner—especially since I was pretty sure we’d end up learning mouth-to-mouth at some point during the week. But he was sitting three spots away from me, which made my teaming up with him easier said than done.
I stared over at him, but he was still looking up at Mr. Whittle. Around me, I saw other counselors turning Web’s way, so I knew I’d have to act fast.
I turned my whole body toward Web, being careful to avoid eye contact with anyone who wasn’t him. He was sure to look my way eventually, but by then it might be too late. All around me, the other counselors were already talking and pairing up.
Casually, I stood up, still keeping my eyes locked only on him. If nothing else, my standing might draw his attention.
Sure enough, I saw his head turn, and our eyes met at last. He smiled.
And then Min stepped right in front of me, blocking Web completely, like the moon blotting out the sun. She’d stood up too. Min and I looked at each other, and for a second I thought she was going to ask me to be her partner, despite the fact that Mr. Whittle had said we weren’t supposed to pair up with people we knew.
But then, without a word, Min turned toward Web. Even though she was facing away from me, I heard her say to him, clear as a bell, “Hey, you got a partner?”
“No,” he said, his voice still all milk and honey. “Let’s do it.”
In other words, Min ended up as Web’s partner, not me. And I wanted to wring her damn neck.
* * * * *
I still needed a partner, but now I didn’t care who it turned out to be.
A voice next to me said, “You paired up yet?”
I looked. It was this kid with a big scar that covered the left half of his face, which I’m reluctant to mention because it makes it sound like this was his defining characteristic when it shouldn’t be (sort of like Min being Chinese-American). Then again, that scar was this kid’s defining characteristic, at least looks-wise. Somehow it makes me seem like less of a jerk if I also say he had brown hair.
“No,” I said, meaning I wasn’t paired up yet. I made a point of smiling at him. “But I guess I got a partner now, huh? Russel Middlebrook.”
“Otto Digmore,” he said. He didn’t hold out his hand for a handshake or anything geeky like that.
“Great name,” I said.
I wasn’t being sarcastic, but Otto just rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, just what I need, right?” He laughed, and I laughed too, even though it seemed like our laughter had something to do with his scar, and that made me uncomfortable.
All around us, the various teams of counselors were introducing themselves to each other. I wondered what Min was saying to Web. Even more, I wondered what he was saying to her. I tried to listen.
“So,” Otto said to me, “why’d you want to be a camp counselor?”
“Huh?” I said. “I don’t know. Just wanted to get away, I guess.”
“From what?”
It wasn’t like I could tell him the truth. So I said, “Parents,” and he nodded knowingly. “You?”
“I was a counselor last year.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Like it?”
He shrugged. “I guess. I’ve been coming back for as long as I can remember. I used to go to camp here myself.”
Talking to Otto, I found it impossible not to look at his scar. It was darker than the rest of his skin, with faint brown streaks. It was probably a skin graft, I decided—a patch job on some really serious burn. But from the look of things, it had happened a long time ago. The scar had sort of a swirl pattern to it, and it almost looked like his whole face was being sucked down a drain. And in the middle of all the scar tissue, where the drain would be, was his eye. It reminded me of the eye of a whale—obviously intelligent, yet peering out from behind something thick and rough and alien. (I immediately felt guilty for thinking this.)
It was one thing to notice the scar on Otto’s face; it was another thing to let him know I was noticing. So I said, “You must know what Whittle is going to have us do this week, right?”
He nodded. “Mostly just a lot of talk. You know—camp rules and regulations. And what to do if a kid gets a stomachache, stuff like that.”
That didn’t sound like we counselors would be getting all that cozy, I thought to myself. Maybe it didn’t matter that Web had ended up as Min’s partner and not mine.
“And sometime this week, we’ll probably have to learn first aid and lifesaving and mouth-to-mouth,” Otto said.
I hate you, Min! I wanted to shout. Frowning, I glanced over at her, but she didn’t even notice. She was too busy talking to Web—intensely, I might add. She was the one who’d been encouraging me to notice hot guys. But now that I’d noticed one, she’d stepped right in and taken him from me. It was almost like she’d done it on purpose.
A moment later, I realized that Otto was looking at me like he’d asked a question. I guess I’d been so busy scowling at Min that I hadn’t been listening.
“Huh?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said. He was looking at his feet. The hair on the top of his head was so thick that I couldn’t see the scalp, and I wondered if it was some kind of artificial weave. Maybe the burn he’d been in had taken off part of his hair too.
“Sorry, that was rude,” I said. “What’d you ask?”
Otto shrugged. “I just wanted to know if you ever went to summer camp.”
“Day camp,” I said. “Does that count?”
“Oh, it’s not the same thing at all.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“Something about spending the night. Things happen.”
“Like what?”
“Ever hear of camp stew?” Otto asked.
I shook my head no.
“It’s when the cook takes all the leftovers from the previous week and mixes them together into one big mess. It’s absolutely disgusting. Last year, anyone who ate a whole portion got double dessert. Did they ever do that at day camp?”
“Uh,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
“And the pranks! You know, you don’t really know how to make a bed until you first learn the art of short-sheeting one!”
I smiled while Otto went on talking. He was funny and interesting. He wasn’t Web, but maybe he was the next best thing.
* * * * *
Two days later, we’d learned CPR, first aid, lifesaving, and yes, mouth-to-mouth, not to mention about a thousand camp rules and regulations, none of which I will bore you with here. I’d also spoken a grand total of six sentences directly to Web Bastian. On the plus side, I’d sounded like a blithering idiot only twice.
Wednesday night, just before lights-out, I was walking from the bathroom back to the cabin where all the guy counselors were sleeping when I heard a sneeze in the dark.
“Gesundheit!” I said, even though I had no idea who I was saying it to. Who knows? I thought. Maybe it’s Web.
“Thanks,” said a voice. It wasn’t Web. It was a girl.
I pointed the beam of my flashlight toward the sound and accidentally flashed it right in the face of one of the other counselors. Her name was Em. She had a flashlight too and must have been walking to or from the bathroom herself.
“Oh!” I said, quickly lowering the flashlight. “Sorry.”
“’S okay,” she said, blowing her nose in a Kleenex. “Hay fever. Real smart idea to sign up as a camp counselor, huh?”
I smiled. Em had straight brown hair and round tortoiseshell glasses, like some kind of female Harry Potter. I’d spent the last two days sitting near her, but we hadn’t talked about anything except camp stuff. She was sort of gawky, but I liked what I’d seen of her. She was the type of person who played Dungeons & Dragons, and who wouldn’t be caught dead in a tanning booth.
“You know what’s making you sneeze?” I asked. All I smelled was pine trees and dirt.
“Ambrosia artemisiifolia,” Em said.
“Huh?”
“That’s what’s I’m allergic to. Also known as ragweed.”
“You know the scientific name of ragweed?” What was it with people suddenly knowing the scientific names of things? Was I not paying attention in biology, or what?
Em blew her nose again. “No. Actually, I just made that up.”
“Really?”
“No. I was lying before. That really is its scientific name.”
By now, I was thoroughly confused. But I have to admit I was also entertained. I chuckled.
“So I’m Em,” she said. “But you know that already, don’t you? Just like I know that you’re Russel. Or is it Russ?”
“Most people call me Russel. Does anyone call you Emily?”
“Actually, Em is short for Emeraldine.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m lying again.”
This time, I laughed out loud.
“So what do you think so far?” Em asked.
“Of camp? Oh, it’s great. I really needed to get away.”
“Yeah? From what?”
I decided then and there that I needed to stop telling people this.
“Parents,” I said. “Why’d you come?”
“My sister’s getting married in August. And she was hard enough to take before she started obsessing about the difference between almonds and pecans in her groom’s cake.”
I liked this girl’s attitude. Which I guess means I liked her.
Suddenly, someone coughed. It sounded like it was coming from the guy counselors’ cabin. It sounded like Web.
“Well,” I said. “I should probably get back. Nice to ‘meet’ you.”
“Likewise,” Em said. “Oh, and Russel?”
I glanced back at her—only to see her shine the beam of her flashlight right into my eyes.
* * * * *
The next morning—Thursday—the camp director gathered us in the lodge’s common room like always (and, like always, Web looked Teen People cute!). But this time, Mr. Whittle had two new adults with him—a man and a woman—and they both had big burn scars on their faces, like Otto. (Incidentally, one other counselor, a girl named Janelle, had facial scars too, but they weren’t as bad as Otto’s.)
“Every June, Camp Serenity becomes a very special place,” Mr. Whittle said in this hushed, somber tone that annoyed me somehow. “That’s because we reserve our first two-week session for a particular group of kids. These are kids who might not feel comfortable at our other sessions or at other summer camps, okay? Most are burn survivors with scars or kids who have other facial injuries.” I remembered, now, that Mr. Whittle had explained all this during my job interview, but I’d mostly pushed it out of my mind. Of course, this explained the scars on Otto’s and Janelle’s faces. Otto must have started coming to Camp Serenity as a burn survivor and stayed on as a counselor. But I didn’t see how any of this made much of a difference to anything, which is why I’m only getting around to mentioning it now.
“Anyway,” Mr. Whittle went on, “Ryan and Jean here are burn survivors themselves, and they’re also going to be our guests for the first two weeks of camp. And for the next two days, they’re going to help us prepare for the arrival of our first session of kids, okay?”
So we were going to get burn survivor sensitivity training, I thought to myself. I guess that made sense. Except for Otto, I didn’t have any experience with people who’d been burned. I sure as hell didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing.
“Thanks, Al,” Jean said to Mr. Whittle. She stood up and looked around at us all. She didn’t say anything, just smiled. Now, there are smiles, and there are smiles. Her whole face lit up. Jean’s grin wasn’t just disarming; it was a goddamn political statement. It was like two guys walking down the street holding hands—you’re going to notice whether you like it or not. I’m beautiful and I’m happy, Jean told us with that smile. And the amazing thing was, you totally believed her.
Finally, Jean said, “How many of you here went to summer camp?”
Eight out of the ten counselors raised their hands—including me (unlike Otto, I figured day camp did count).
“And what was it you liked best?” Jean asked.
“The canoes,” Min said.
“Roasting marshmallows around the campfire,” a counselor named Lorna said.
“Archery,” Web said.
“The chocolate chip pancakes,” Em said, and everyone laughed.
I tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t remember anything in particular. (All right, I thought, so maybe day camp didn’t count.)
As each of us all spoke up, Jean kept grinning like a bobcat. Finally, she said, “Fantastic! Well, you know what? Those are all the things we want our kids to remember about camp too!” She thought for a second, then winked at Em. “I’ll see what we can do about the chocolate chip pancakes.” We all laughed again. Then Jean got serious. “But sometimes something as simple as a couple of weeks at summer camp can be a horrible experience for a burn survivor. That’s because kids with scars on their faces are sometimes made to feel like they don’t fit in with kids who don’t have scars.”
And so began two days of burn survivor sensitivity training. It was pretty basic stuff. For example, Ryan said, “We’re burn ‘survivors,’ not burn ‘victims.’ No one wants to be known as a ‘victim’ their whole life, right?”
But the biggest lesson, one we heard again and again, was that burn survivors wanted people to see beyond their scars. They didn’t want to be defined by their injuries. They wanted to be seen as individuals, just like anyone else.
“Burn survivors are used to being treated like freaks and monsters,” Jean told us. “But we’re not monsters. And over the course of the next two weeks, it’s your job and mine to make sure that none of these kids feel like monsters either. For them, this is a chance to have two weeks where they can completely forget about what they look like on the outside.”
I listened attentively to all this, and I contributed during the group discussions. But the truth was, I didn’t think any of it applied to me. After all, I was gay. I knew all about what it was like to be stereotyped—to have people assume lots of negative things about me, and to make all these snap judgments. I sure wasn’t about to do stuff like that to anyone else. I’d treated Otto like an individual, hadn’t I? (Even if his eye had reminded me of a whale’s . . .)
Saturday was our day off; then Sunday came. Counselor orientation was over, and the burn survivors finally arrived. Unfortunately, it took me less than an hour to learn that Jean and Ryan were absolutely wrong: these burn survivor kids were monsters. Only it had nothing whatsoever to do with the way they looked.
Chapter Three
I was standing in the middle of a raging hurricane. The fury of the storm battered and bewildered me.
Okay, so it wasn’t a real hurricane. I’m doing that thing I did when I said the school hallway was on fire, when I tried to fool you into thinking one thing, only to spring on you that I meant something else entirely. In this case, I’m talking about my campers, who I now realize I also just compared to monsters. I am aware this is bringing me dangerously close to metaphor overload, so let’s just get to the point, shall we?
They were out of control. Each of us counselors had been assigned a cabin of eight kids. They’d been grouped by age and gender, and I had eight ten year-old boys. By the time we got to our cabin, they were reminding me of Helen Keller in that play The Miracle Worker, but before Anne Sullivan turns the wild, shrieking Helen into a halfway-normal human being. I’m exaggerating, but only a little.
Mr. Whittle had divided up the kids out on the marching field, separating them into their various cabin groups. That part went okay, I guess because the kids were all still kind of stunned to realize they’d really be away from home for the next two weeks and because Mr. Whittle and Jean and Ryan were standing right there.
Out on that marching field, I’d introduced myself to my campers as their counselor and asked them their names.
No one said anything. At this point, they actually seemed kind of shy. This was probably the first time many of them had ever been away from their parents for more than a day or so.
“You,” I said, pointing to the closest kid. “What’s your name?”
I’d happened to pick the one kid who didn’t seem shy at all. In fact, as I looked at him, he glared back at me like a lion looks at a gazelle—like he hated me in some primal, instinctive way. He obviously resented being here and was now determined to take it out on me. But finally, through gritted teeth, he spoke his name: “Ian.”
Now that I was looking right at him, I saw that I’d also picked the kid with the least obvious facial scars. Up close, you could see that his skin almost looked like it had melted a little, but from farther back, he just looked slightly out of focus. Anyway, I couldn’t help but wonder if the other kids had noticed that I’d called on Ian first—that maybe I thought he was special because he didn’t look so bad.
“All right,” I said. I pointed to another random kid. “You?”
“Zach,” the other kid said. And that’s when I realized that I’d gone from the kid with the least obvious injuries to the one with the most obvious ones. (Had I subconsciously done that to try to prove that I wasn’t prejudiced? I don’t know, but it made me uneasy.) A lot of Zach’s body was covered with this white, gauzelike clothing (a few days earlier, I’d learned that this was something called a pressure garment and that it helped with the healing). Zach also had this white plastic mask over his face, which was kind of disturbing, with his eyes peering out and everything. It made him look a little like the Phantom of the Opera (even though I was sure he was very sick of hearing that!).
“Okay,” I said, picking out another kid. “You?”
“Trevor,” said a kid with a facial scar that reminded me a little of a daisy.
And so we went on down the line—to Willy, Noah, Kwame, Julian, and Blake—and I decided that burn survivors are like snowflakes: no two are exactly alike. They had big scars, little scars, dark scars, light scars, pressure garments or bandages, and no pressure garments or bandages. (There were also kids in wheelchairs and on crutches, but I didn’t have any of those. They were staying in the main lodge with Jean and Ryan as their counselors.) One of my kids—Julian—wasn’t even a burn survivor. He just had the worst case of zits I’d ever seen. (I later learned this was something called early-onset acne conglobata.)
In short, we weren’t exactly the Brady Bunch. But I’d had my two days of burn survivor training, right? Plus I was gay and oh-so-sensitive.
With the introductions over, I led my kids to our cabin, so they could unpack. And this was where things started to go seriously wrong. In the mere two hundred yards between the marching field and our cabin something had happened to my kids. It had to do with the fact that they were all burn survivors. Around other kids like themselves, it suddenly didn’t matter what any of them looked like on the outside, just like Jean had said. So now, in a way, they weren’t burn survivors. Now they were just ten-year-old boys.