Nerd Camp (9 page)

Get this: Last night, Wesley solved his homework problems IN HIS SLEEP! I was up, and I heard it and wrote down the answers. Maybe tonight he'll say when Color War will break!!

Did I tell you about the brain busters? Every Monday, my counselor, David, gives us a brain buster and we have until Friday to solve it. You are only supposed to get one guess, but we figured out that you can usually get another guess if you bribe David with a Kit Kat. He really likes Kit Kats. This week's brain buster is SO SO SO hard. No one can solve it!! If you get this before Friday and you can solve it, you should call the camp and leave a message for me with the answer. Okay I'll put a copy of it here. Get ready for your brain to bust ha ha! Here it is:

You are being held prisoner in a castle. The king says he'll give you a 50-50 chance to live or die. He takes you onto a field that is covered with black and white pebbles. He says, “I am going to pick up two pebbles. In one hand I'll have a black pebble, and in one hand I'll have a white pebble. You get to pick a hand. If you choose
the hand with the white pebble, you get to go free. But if you choose the hand with the black pebble, you die.” You agree to the rules. He reaches down and picks up a pebble in each hand. But you see that he secretly picked up two black pebbles! You know that if you accuse him of cheating, he will kill you instantly. What do you do?

Wesley didn't solve the mystery of life in his sleep that night, but he did say something that helped solve the weekly brain buster.

“Okay,” said Wesley during lunch. “What did I say again?”

“First you said, ‘Oh, duh,'” said Nikhil, who had heard Wesley talk when he'd woken up to go to the bathroom. “Then you said, ‘Use the pebbles on the ground.' And then, when I came back from the bathroom, you said, ‘Opposites.'”

“It has to relate to the brain buster,” said Gabe as he chewed on a grilled cheese sandwich. “Why else would you be talking about pebbles?”

“Unless in your dream you were in Pebbleland,” joked Nikhil.

Wesley lowered his forehead onto his tray and moaned,
“I don't remember. I could have been dreaming about Pebbleland. Once I dreamed that I was in Candyland. I was eating a really big marshmallow, and when I woke up, my pillow was gone.”

Gabe and Nikhil burst out laughing. “Well,” said Gabe, pushing aside his grilled cheese and the possibility of Wesley eating a pillow in his sleep, “last night you said, ‘Use the pebbles on the ground,' and now we can use that to solve the weekly brain buster.” He took out the copy of the brain buster that he'd been carrying in his pocket all week and put it on the table, above their trays.

“Use the pebbles on the ground …,” Wesley said. “How can you use the pebbles on the ground? …”

“What about ‘opposites'?” said Gabe. “You also said ‘opposites.'”

“That was after I went to the bathroom,” Nikhil reminded him. “Wesley could have been in a totally different dream by then. Who knows?”

“You can't accuse him of cheating,” Wesley read again.

“You could ask to see the two pebbles before you start. Just to be safe,” said Nikhil. “That's what I'd do.” He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed it slowly and carefully.

“You could say you get to pick the two pebbles you use,” tried Gabe.

“But he already picked them.” Wesley pointed to that sentence with his knife. “Now you just have to pick a hand.”

Nikhil put his finger up while he chewed. He never spoke with food in his mouth, to avoid choking. “You could pick the left hand,” he said after he swallowed. “And then, when it's black …” He trailed off.

“But that's not using the pebbles on the ground,” said Gabe, picking up his cookie. “We have to try to use the pebbles on the ground, like Wesley said.”

Nikhil opened his mouth to say something, but then he looked at Wesley and changed his mind.

“The ground is covered in black and white pebbles,” said Wesley, onto something. “You could pick up your own white pebble … and then ask him to shake hands before you start?”

The counselors called for them to start cleaning up. Absorbed in thought, the boys finished their last bites and walked one behind the other to throw out their trash and deposit their trays.

“Use the pebbles on the ground,” Gabe muttered. He
stopped for a second to think, and—
bonk
—Nikhil came crashing into him from behind. Gabe's grilled cheese crusts and watery ice flew into Wesley's back. Plates and cups and utensils clattered to the floor. There were a few seconds of silence as everyone in the cafeteria stopped and looked at them. But then, seeing nothing more exciting than a minor traffic accident, the noise returned.

“Sorry,” said Nikhil. He rushed to the floor to start picking everything up. “I should have kept a safer following distance.”

“It was my fault,” said Gabe. “I stopped to think. Sorry, Wesley.” He got down on his knees and began picking up utensils and used napkins.

“Is this your fork?” asked Nikhil.

“No, I already have a fork,” said Gabe. “I'm missing a spoon. But we need to pick up everything anyway, so it doesn't really matter whose—”

He froze.
Use the pebbles on the ground. Opposites.
“I've got it!” Gabe shouted. “You
are
a genius, Wesley! And you're a genius, too, Nikhil, for bumping into me!”

Nikhil didn't seem pleased with his credited role in the solution. Wesley looked at Gabe with a wrinkled nose, raised
eyebrows, and arched shoulders to avoid contact with his wet T-shirt.

“He picked up two black pebbles,” Gabe explained. “So you pick a hand and hit it really hard to make the pebble fall out. Then you say, ‘Well, we can't tell what color it was because it's
on the ground
with all of these black and white pebbles. So open your other hand, and whichever color it's
not
is what I picked!'”

Wesley nodded slowly, his face lighting up. “It'll be black still in his hand, so he'll have to admit to cheating or say you picked white.”

Nikhil dropped everything from his hands onto his tray and stood up. “That's good,” he said, admiring the solution, if not his present situation. “But let's talk about this when we're not in a place that could trip people.”

They started giving Wesley problems to solve every night while he slept. They tried math problems and historical trivia and, of course, they asked him when Color War would break. If Gabe was sure both his bunkmates were asleep, he sometimes whispered personal questions, like “What can I do to make sure Zack likes me?” and “Even though I'm getting Zack, will I
ever get a baby brother or sister, one who's more like me?”

But Nikhil and Gabe had a hard time staying awake to listen for the answers. He could say them at any time—midnight, 4:00 a.m., 6:15, or not at all—and he never remembered having said anything when he woke up. Sometimes he talked in Chinese, which was worse than not talking at all, since they couldn't understand him. One night, Gabe stayed up reading under the covers with his flashlight until 1:00 a.m., but Wesley didn't make a single sound. The next night, Wesley conducted an entire conversation with the air, but Gabe was so tired from having stayed up till one o'clock the night before that when he awoke to Wesley's voice, he just rolled over and fell back asleep.

“We need a voice recorder,” said Gabe.

“But then we'd have to listen to the whole night of silence just to see if he says one thing,” Nikhil pointed out. “I know. We need a sound-activated recording device. It would only kick in when there's noise.”

“That would work,” said Gabe. “But where do we get one of those?”

“I don't know.” He brightened. “Maybe Wesley will know in his sleep!”

They presented him with the problem, but even though they ate double helpings of ice cream for extra sugar, neither Gabe nor Nikhil managed to stay awake to hear the answer.

“Anything?” Wesley asked in the morning, once he'd gotten out of his sleeping bag in 9.8 seconds.

His bunkmates shook their heads, ashamed.

Wesley's shoulders sank. “I could be curing cancer.”

“Or translating the works of Shakespeare into Chinese,” added Nikhil.

“Or predicting when Color War will break,” reminded Gabe.

Wesley sighed. “And the world will never know.”

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

Hypothesis: No.

Proof:

Zack—

My dad said in his letter that you sent me a really cool postcard from Disneyland. I didn't get it yet, but when I do, I'm going to put it up on the wall of my bunk. Wesley put up a postcard from his cousin in China, and my friend Ashley sent me one from Boston (she went there with her family) and I put it up. Soon we'll have a whole wall of postcards!

* * *

Gabe stood with the pencil in his hand, staring at the activity list.
Just sign up for it
, he coaxed himself. He peered down the cabin to the far back wall, where the reading rocks poster was hanging.
This is just what you need.

Wesley was still doing the play, and Nikhil—he moved his finger to Nikhil's name and followed the code for the activity number he'd selected—was registered for stargazing. None of the other options were calling to him, and there was no way Amanda would guess that he'd pick this one.

Wesley poked his head in the door of the cabin. “Hurry up and pick your activity, Gabe! David's going to show us how to throw a Frisbee overhand!”

Wesley disappeared as quickly as he'd come, and Gabe was left alone with his thoughts and the list. He pictured Zack's spiky, gelled hair and how cool it looked.
I can't change everything nerdy about this place, but I can change myself. I just have to do it
, he thought.

With a deep breath and a burst of confidence, he signed up for activity choice four: “Try new hairstyles.”

Once he'd signed up, he didn't back down. Not when David pulled him aside at dinner and asked him to confirm his
choice on the sign-up sheet, and not when he was the only boy in the “Try new hairstyles” room.

A line of mirrors hung along one wall, and a cluster of desks in the center of the room were covered in hair products and accessories. There were brushes, combs, head-bands, and barrettes, plus bottles of mousse, canisters of spray, and tubs of gel. The girls talked excitedly and pointed to various items on the desks. They didn't even seem to notice Gabe, who was standing in the back, awkwardly fiddling with strings from the hood of his sweatshirt.

“Okay, listen up, please,” said one of the counselors—both female—in charge. “All of these brushes and combs are new. If you use one, put your name on the handle with one of these Sharpies. No sharing brushes allowed. Also, Colleen is going to demonstrate how to use the straight irons and the curling iron. You can only use one of those after you watch the demonstration, because they get really hot and you could get burned if you don't know what you're doing. Otherwise, you're welcome to use any of the products here.” She waved her arm over the array on the desks. “And we can help you French braid and reverse French braid, if you'd like.”

The girls began to whisper and squeal and plan. Gabe began to wonder if he'd made a big mistake.

“Have fun!” said the counselor.

The girls swarmed the products like happy ants at a picnic, and within a few seconds most of the choices were gone. Once they'd dispersed into groups, Gabe walked up to the desks and looked over what remained. Pomade, Frizz Away, Super Ultra Hold, Max Volume—what did any of this stuff even mean? He was reading the back of a bottle of “smoothing creme” when the counselor who'd done the introduction came over and sat on the edge of the desk.

“I don't think that's your best choice,” she said. “Your hair's not really long enough to need smoothing creme.”

Gabe put the bottle down and stared, overwhelmed and disappointed, at the floor.

The counselor held out her hand. “I'm Francesca,” she said.

“Gabe.”

“Nice to meet you, Gabe. What are you looking to do here?”

Gabe gulped, his stomach flipping with worry. He knew this was a bold activity choice, but was she going to kick him out? “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, what do you want your hair to look like? Do you want it bigger, parted, spiky, slicked back? If you tell me what you're looking to do, I can help you find the right product. Consider me your personal style consultant.”

Relieved, Gabe looked up at Francesca for the first time and smiled. A personal style consultant—that was exactly what he needed if he wanted to look less nerdy. “My step-brother wears his kind of spiky and messy,” he said, “but on purpose.”