Nerd Camp (7 page)

But Amanda managed to turn that around too. She patted him on the shoulder. “I don't know what the choices will be tomorrow, but if it's meant to be, then we'll end up together.”

Jenny and Vidya finished their song, and they curtsied while everyone clapped.

“Do you want to sing?” the counselor asked Gabe.

He shrugged. He wanted to be playing kickball with Nikhil. Even the play would be more fun.

“There are a lot of good choices,” the counselor said. “I'll bring you the song list.”

Gabe shrugged again.

“Don't be embarrassed,” Amanda said knowingly. “It's okay if you're not that good.”

Before Gabe could respond, Amanda took to the stage for her solo.

Not that good
, Gabe thought. He took the list of songs from the counselor and began flipping through, determined to find a masterpiece with which he could wow the group.

The intro music for Amanda's song ended, and she began belting out the lyrics with gusto. “FIFty NIFty United States!” she sang.

Gabe looked up from the song list and wrinkled his forehead.
They have that song in here?
he thought.

“Alabama, Alaska …”

This was Amanda's big solo? Singing all the states in alphabetical order?

“Florida, Georgia,” Amanda fluttered in a squeaky soprano.

Gabe's expression changed into a wry smile. He looked back at the long song list, this time with purpose.
Yes
, he thought when he found the song he was looking for.
I can't believe they have it.
This would show her, and it would blow everyone away: double whammy.

He copied down the title on a piece of paper and handed it to the counselor. She took a look at it and nodded, visibly impressed. Then she put her finger to her lips and stuck Gabe's song on top of the pile instead of at the bottom. “You're up next,” she mouthed.

Gabe interlaced his fingers and pushed his hands away from him. He took a few deep breaths and jiggled his body, loosening up the way he would before a swim meet. He wished his bunkmates were there to watch this, and Eric and Ashley from home. The only person he was glad wasn't there was Zack—he had a feeling his song would ace Zack's nerd test. But he wasn't about to pass on an opportunity to one-up Amanda.

Amanda finished with one hand holding the microphone sideways by her mouth and the other hand up in the air, fingers wiggling. “Wyoooooming!”

Gabe thought there was no need for that extra-long “Wyoming,” but he applauded politely while the rest of
the audience whooped and cheered. Amanda bowed and remained on the stage, smiling proudly.

“Next up,” announced the counselor, “Gabe Phillips, singing ‘The Countries of the World.'”

Game time.

Gabe hopped up onto the stage and took the mic out of Amanda's hand. He didn't meet Amanda's judging eye; rather, he looked past her and tried his hardest to appear casual, as if he had just chosen a song at random and was only going to sing it in the shower.

“Testing,” he said into the mic. The counselor gave him a thumbs-up. Her eyes asked,
Are you ready?
He returned it.
Am I ever.

The music started up. The screen of the karaoke machine showed the name of the song in front of a map of the world. Then the map broke into a montage of images from around the world, and the first line of the song—the first five countries of the world, alphabetically—appeared on the bottom in white. The words began turning yellow, and Gabe sang out loudly and clearly: “Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria …”

The girls in the corner put down the song list and turned to the stage, curious. The counselor started clapping.
Amanda watched with her arms crossed and her eyes narrow.

“Does this name
every
country?” a girl asked.

“Yeah,” said another. “I've heard it before.”

“He knows them all?” the first girl asked.

Gabe began to dance around. He kicked and crossed his feet, and waved around the hand that wasn't holding the mic. “Chad, Chile, China …”

The girls began laughing and clapping. The counselor whistled. Gabe was getting into it.

“Wow,” said Jenny Chin to Amanda. “He's good. I can only name the countries of North America and Europe.”

“Yeah,” said Vidya. “Africa is hard.”

Amanda said loudly, “He probably doesn't know them all. He has the words right there.”

Gabe heard her during the musical interlude between Fiji and Finland.
I have the words right here?
he challenged Amanda silently. He looked straight at her. Then he turned around so he faced the wall. Just to ensure that she didn't think he could see a reflection of the screen somehow, he took off his glasses and held them above his head. “Germany, Ghana, Greece …,” he sang.

The group of girls in the corner jumped to their feet and shrieked their approval.

Gabe put his glasses back on and began doing jumping jacks like they were a dance. Since he was still facing the wall, he assumed the rise in applause was for his perfect pronunciation of Kyrgyzstan through Liechtenstein. He stopped singing when he heard another voice join his on Namibia.

He whirled around, almost tripping on the microphone cord.

“Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea!” sang Amanda.

Gabe's jaw dropped open. Who said he wanted to do a duet? He sang louder: “Paraguay, Peru, Philippiiiiiiines.”

Amanda matched his volume. “Poland, Portugal.”

Gabe covered his eyes with his arm. “Qatar, Romania.”

Amanda did the same. “Russia, Rwanda.”

The two of them went on like that, alternating every line, while the crowd roared. With each increase in volume the accuracy of the notes went down, but this was no longer about musical quality. It was a full-on alphabetical geography battle, and the audience was eating it up.

“United Kingdom,” shouted Gabe.

“United States,” answered Amanda.

“Uruguay!”

“Uzbekistan!”

“VANUATU!”

“VENEZUELA!”

They finished: “Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, ZIMBAAAAA-BWEEE!”

Everyone broke into wild applause.

“Take a bow!” the counselor called.

Gabe bowed deeply. His glasses slid down his sweaty nose, and he had to reach up and stop them from falling.

Amanda held up both her hands and waved to the crowd as though she were an Olympic figure skater who had just completed a perfect routine.

“I was going to sing that next,” Amanda said to Gabe as the two of them stepped off the stage. “But don't worry. I forgive you for stealing it.”

Back in the bunk, Gabe told Wesley and Nikhil the story of how Amanda barged in on his countries song but he took her down in battle. They thought the story was so good that they made him repeat it for some other boys, and then
some more. By the ten-minutes-to-lights-out warning, all the boys, plus their counselor and the counselor from the next bunk over, were crowded into Gabe's section. They sat on the beds, sprawled across the floor, and hung from the bedposts in order to watch Gabe reenact the battle, complete with the entire countries song, dance moves, a pencil-case microphone, and a falsetto Amanda voice.

It was a story that would go down in camp history. But when Gabe settled into his bed and took out his notepad before lights out, he realized that, once again, it wasn't one that he could tell to Zack. Despite all the cool stuff that was filling up the first column, there were just as many condemning things filling up the second.

Just imagine if Zack—Zack, who took guitar lessons and had his own surfboard—had seen the karaoke contest. Gabe could picture his look of pure embarrassment—no, utter
repulsion
at this geeky freak who was going to become his stepbrother.

He took off his glasses, and the real world dissolved into fuzz. But an image of his world as Zack must see it came in crystal clear, and it was humiliating.
I'm surrounded by nerds
, Gabe thought.

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

Hypothesis: No.

Proof:

Gabe,

Here is a letter from ME (Eric) AND ME (Ashley)! We are alternating sentences.
We are at Eric's house and we had breakfast for dinner.
My sister says hi and I can't believe I had to waste my sentence on that.

We went to the first summer reading party tonight at the library.
It was fun and we
missed you and the librarian said we could take a summer reading poster for you because she's sure you've read three books already so we will mail it with this letter and also did Color War break yet?

Now Eric is just trying to write longer sentences than me and that is not fair or grammatical so I am going to write a really long run-on sentence even if it doesn't say anything so blah blah blah bl
Ashley stop it, sorry Gabe, before this gets out of control I will tell you that I grew half an inch!
He looks the same to me!!

Okay, I am going to just write you my own letter so bye (for now), Gabe.

Folded up, the summer reading poster didn't look like much, but once Gabe started unfolding it, it got bigger and bigger until it was almost as wide as his bed. The library theme this summer must have been music, because the poster said reading rocks and had a picture of books in the shape of a guitar.

“Whoa,” said Nikhil, looking at the poster, which now covered Gabe's sleeping bag. “Cool!”

“That's so cool,” said Wesley. “We have to put it up on the wall.”

The Gabe part of Gabe wanted to agree, but ever since the night of his karaoke routine, he was starting to look at things the way Zack might look at them. And reading was definitely not cool. Reading, in fact, was the very first strike Zack had discovered against him. Gabe didn't think he needed to stop reading—he would never do that—but he didn't think he needed to advertise his love of it, either.

“Yeah!” said Nikhil. “We should put it up next to the reading chart. It'll probably fit, but I'll measure. Just to be safe.”

The reading chart was where the three of them recorded which books they'd read, with columns for title, author, who read it, score out of ten, short summary, and favorite quotes.
Nerdy
, Gabe thought. Above the reading chart, on a long scroll, stretched Pi to the twentieth digit.
Double nerdy
, Gabe thought. Wesley had 3-D geometric shapes hanging like mobiles by his bed, Nikhil had a large periodic table along the length of his, and Gabe's bedposts were covered
with photocopies of his favorite poems.
Nerd-a-palooza
, Gabe thought; he could just hear Zack's voice.

“I don't know if we should hang that up,” Gabe said, his head tilted and his nose scrunched.

“It'll fit,” said Nikhil. He was still holding his ruler.

“Okay,” Gabe said, trying to be casual. “But do you ever wonder if maybe—I don't know—we could put different stuff on our walls?”

“You mean like Fun-Tak instead of tape?” said Wesley.

“No, like different kinds of posters that don't have to do with school or learning. Things that
normal
people would find cool, so our bunk isn't so geeky all the time.” Gabe regretted the words the moment he finished saying them. The silence that followed made him wish words, like water, could evaporate and disappear.

David poked his head in from the doorway. “Lights out in ten, guys. Hurry up and hit the bathrooms before it's too late.”

Gabe grabbed his toothbrush and rushed to the bathroom, leaving his words behind to hang in the air. He brushed his teeth inside one of the toilet stalls, and he didn't come out until he was sure the bathroom was empty. By the time he got back to the bunk, the lights were out, and he slid
quietly into his sleeping bag, praying his bunkmates were still silent because they were asleep.

Gabe woke up prepared to say he wanted to hang the
READING ROCKS
poster after all, but there was no one to say it to. Nikhil's bed was made up neatly, and Wesley's sleeping bag was in a heap on his mattress. He got ready and walked to breakfast alone, hanging behind the rest of the kids in his cabin. He had a stomachache, but it wasn't from homesickness or eating too much oatmeal. He was pushing some scrambled eggs around with his fork when Wesley and Nikhil came rushing to sit on either side of him. They were out of breath, and Nikhil was holding a stack of papers.

“Gabe, just wait'll you see what we got!” said Wesley.

“David said we could go to the computer lab before breakfast,” Nikhil explained. “So we brainstormed what would be cool to put up, like you said.”

Wesley made a noise like a clap of thunder and moved his hands like a bolt of lightning was hitting his brain. “We decided on music and sports,” he said.

Gabe felt his mouth spreading into a grin. The guilty feeling was replaced by a warm, tingly one, a genuine love of his
bunkmates. This was going to be a step in the right direction, he just knew it. “Let's see!”