The Alex Crow (8 page)

The morning after our
scary stories, Mrs. Nussbaum woke up everyone in Jupiter. She pounded and pounded on the frame of our screen door.

It was five forty-five, nearly one hour
before
we officially were supposed to wake up to the tolling of the breakfast bell, which was a tin coffee can that hung from the eaves of the dining pavilion. Every morning, one of the counselors would beat it with a steel spoon.

“Good morning, boys!”

Nobody answered Mrs. Nussbaum, who knocked and knocked again. “Are you awake? Do you have clothes on? It's me, Mrs. Nussbaum! Can I come in? I have a surprise for you!”

That was an awful lot to process, considering we were all asleep, including Larry. And despite the predawn dimness, Mrs. Nussbaum could clearly see—as anyone standing outside Jupiter's walls of screen would—that not one of the boys of Jupiter was awake, and the only one with what might be considered
clothing
on was our pajama-wearing counselor, Larry, since the boot-camp boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys were treated like prison convicts and required to sleep in our underwear in order to conform to some mind-altering standard of tech-free brutality. Besides, there was no likelihood that we might mistake Mrs. Nussbaum for anyone other than Mrs. Nussbaum, since, as Cobie Petersen had so bluntly pointed out the day of our group therapy session, she was the camp's one and only female. On top of everything else, there was no possibility any of us could deny Mrs. Nussbaum's entry to Jupiter if that was what she wanted to do, because, with the exception of the counselors' exclusive, private, fully lighted shower and dressing room, there were no locks at all on any of the doors at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

So, amid the turbulence of wild crumpling atop our plastic-clad mattresses, while we stumbled around in the near dark and struggled to pull on our shorts and T-shirts, in barged Mrs. Nussbaum and her six-foot-tall, duffel bag–carrying
surprise
.

It almost felt as though we were in the military and subjected to a pop inspection, which we boys of Jupiter would certainly have failed. Cobie Petersen's T-shirt ended up inside out and backward, its tag sticking up like the tail of a frightened deer just below Cobie's chin; and Max, who could not find where his short pants ended up, stood there, wobbling, barefoot and yawning, still mostly asleep, in his underwear. Our sheets and pillows lay scattered all over the cabin's floor.

Larry was obviously perturbed by the early intrusion. He sat in his bed and glared at Mrs. Nussbaum.

“Good morning to my dear friends! How are you all feeling today—on your
second morning
at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys? I'm so proud of you all for how dedicated you are to breaking the chains of your technology addictions! Did you sleep well? I've brought a
new friend
for the boys of Jupiter!” Mrs. Nussbaum practically squealed with delight and swept her hand like a floor-show model to demonstrate the living thing that could not be missed by any of the blurry eyes of Jupiter.

“Boys,” she said, “this is Trent Mendibles, your newest bunk mate in Jupiter. He is fourteen years old, and comes to us all the way from Ohio! Would you like to say something, Trent?”

Trent Mendibles shook his head. “Um. Hello?”

Trent Mendibles looked like a malnourished Christmas tree that had been drained of all color. He stood there, rail thin in his baggy shorts and Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys log-fonted T-shirt, wearing the telltale name sticker that identified him as a new resident of our planet.

Cobie Petersen, our inside-out-shirt-wearing Teacher's Pet and unofficial general, leaned forward slightly and welcomed the new kid with an observation. “Jesus. You have the hairiest legs I've ever seen in my life.”

It was true.

And despite the fact that fourteen-year-old Trent Mendibles from Ohio was giraffe-sized compared to the rest of us, he looked scared to be standing at the epicenter of all Jupiter's attention, which made me feel kind of sorry for him. I think he had the same look on his face that I must have had the day I crawled out of my refrigerator: He was nervous and pale, and had dark circles around his glassy eyes. I imagined he'd probably been awake all night on the drive out here from Ohio, pleading with his parents to turn around and bring him home so he could log back on to the insomniac online gamers' community from which they had kidnapped him.

Mrs. Nussbaum continued, “And Trent, dear, this is Larry, your resident counselor. And these are your cabin mates: Here is Cobie—he's sixteen, from West Virginia—and our two fifteen-year-old brothers, also from West Virginia, Ariel and . . .
oh my!
 . . .
Uh . . . Max.”

Suddenly aware that Max was standing at the foot of his bed wearing nothing but briefs, Mrs. Nussbaum, who'd mispronounced my name again, reddened and turned away.

“And . . . um . . . Where is Robin this morning?” Mrs. Nussbaum looked around the messy cabin and then turned toward Larry, as though she may have been wondering if yet another boy from Jupiter had done something terrible to himself in order to get out of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

I didn't think Robin Sexton had the guts to do anything remotely comparable to Bucky Littlejohn's archery performance.

But, indeed, Robin Sexton's bed was empty, although everyone could see it had been slept in.

Max offered, “Maybe he had to go
throw out some photocopies
,” and then Max made the loose-fist sign language gesture that all boys understand, which he got away with because Mrs. Nussbaum, who was obviously trying to figure out why Jupiter cabin at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys would have a photocopier in the first place, was straining to keep her eyes away from my mostly naked fifteen-year-old brother.

I watched Trent Mendibles. He nodded knowingly.

And Max shook his head and said, “I don't know how the heck I'm ever going to make it through six weeks without a few sessions in the copy room myself.”

Then Cobie Petersen raised his hand and said, “Um. Mrs. Nussbaum? The kid—Robin—told us he sleepwalks. Also, the hairy giant new guy gets
that
bed.”

Cobie pointed at the bed on the end of the row—the one Bucky Littlejohn peed in on our first night.

Mrs. Nussbaum looked concerned and perplexed. “He
sleepwalks
?”

Cobie Petersen nodded. “That's what he said to us.”

Larry reached below his quiet, non-plastic bed and pulled up an alarm clock. “It's five forty-five. Really? We get a new camper at
five forty-five in the morning
?”

Mrs. Nussbaum accidentally glanced at Max again—I saw her—then she nervously looked away.

“I apologize, Larry, but he's just gotten here from Ohio!”

She made
Ohio
sound exotic and remote, as opposed to about four hundred miles away from Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, which is how far it was. The poor kid—Trent Mendibles—looked sad and unwanted, and he shifted nervously from foot to foot, still hefting his duffel bag.

Larry sighed. “Okay. Let the kids and me get dressed. The new guy—what's his name?—gets that bed on the end. We'll find that Robin dude before breakfast. I'm sure he's just in the showers or something.”

“Or maybe he's
working out with the swim team
,” Max offered.

Mrs. Nussbaum looked at Max, turned brilliant red, then fixed her eyes on Jupiter's screen door.

“We have a
swim team
?” she asked.

- - -

Despite the fact that it was relatively dark in the George Washington National Forest at six in the morning, it only took us about twenty minutes to find Robin Sexton. He was in the woods about thirty feet away from Jupiter, standing up while rocking side to side in a patch of ferns, completely asleep in his underwear.

Cobie Petersen nudged Robin's butt with the toe of his sneaker to try and get the kid to open his eyes. He was out cold.

“People always say you're not supposed to wake up sleepwalkers,” Max said.

“Why not?” Cobie asked.

The new guy—Trent Mendibles—had come with us on our hunt-for-the-weird-kid expedition. Larry left us on our own once again so he could take advantage of the counselors' luxurious facilities, or whatever else Larry liked to do away from the responsibilities of his actual job.

Max shrugged. “I don't know why. I just heard you're not supposed to do it. If waking him up accidentally kills him, Mrs. Nussbaum is going to get really mad at all of us, but mostly probably at Larry.”

“Eh. Whatever.”

Cobie kicked Robin Sexton's butt again. Harder.

“Hey, dork face.”

Robin grunted and slowly cracked his eyelids. He had a strangely horrified and drained expression on his face.

Then Cobie Petersen stepped around the ferns, positioned himself directly in front of Robin Sexton, and horned his pointed index fingers up from the top of his forehead.

He snarled, “Wake up, boy, I'm the Dumpling Man.”

I think Cobie Petersen most likely picked the wrong thing to say to awaken our ninety-four-pound sleepwalker, Robin Sexton. Maybe Robin Sexton had been having a nightmare about the Dumpling Man, or maybe it was just that Cobie Petersen's story the night before had made some kind of impression that permeated the toilet paper barriers that were still wedged inside the kid's ears. Whatever it was, when Robin Sexton's eyes came into focus, the kid shrieked like a madman and launched himself out of the bushes, swinging and flailing a barrage of fists, and pale, bony knees and elbows at Cobie Petersen.

And Max, my brother, took a step back and said, “This is probably why you don't wake up sleepwalkers.”

I glanced at Trent Mendibles, just to see how the new kid was enjoying his first few minutes in Jupiter, and he said to me, “What the fuck is this place? A home for insane kids?”

I really wanted to answer him, but I didn't.

What I wanted to tell him was this:
I've been wondering the same thing for the past two days
.

And we had a full six weeks to go.

Even though he obviously possessed wolverine-like qualities, Robin Sexton was no match for a raccoon-hunting mountain boy like Cobie Petersen. Robin did manage to clip a good punch into Cobie's nose, but in less than three seconds, Cobie Petersen had the smaller boy pinned to his back in the dirt while Cobie leaned over him, clenching Robin's bony wrists, and trying to get the kid to wake up and calm down.

I was surprised at how gentle Cobie Petersen could be with Robin, because after the punch he'd landed, most boys I'd met since coming to America would have beaten the life out of the kid.

“Calm down, kid,” Cobie soothed.

It was probably hard for Robin Sexton to calm down, though, because Cobie Petersen's nose gushed blood all over the scrawny boy's face and chest. It looked like some kind of horror movie, there was so much blood on the boys.

“Dude. Come on. Relax. You were sleepwalking,” Cobie said, as he dripped and dripped and dripped a steady stream of blood all over the skinny thirteen-year-old twitching kid from Pennsylvania.

And Robin Sexton gurgled and spit.

“Gah! Get off me, you son of a bitch!”

And as soon as Cobie Petersen loosened up on Robin, the kid began swinging punches and spitting all over again.

It was a gory mess.

Trent Mendibles shook his head. “I really wish I could upload this shit on video. I'd get a million hits. This is just like level four in
Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners
, except for the little dude in his underwear, and being in the woods instead of in Stalingrad during World War Five in 2311, and shit.”

- - -

Larry was very mad at us when he came back to Jupiter and saw what Cobie Petersen and Robin Sexton looked like, which was murder victims or something. I couldn't blame him. We were attempting to make our beds, trying to clean up, but couldn't manage to finish before Larry walked in on us.

Robin Sexton, who looked especially scrawny because he was still in just his underwear, was covered in blood. So was Cobie Petersen, but he never really looked very scrawny at all.

“What did I tell you?” Larry shouted, “What did I fucking tell you fuckheads yesterday? Am I going to have to follow all five of you around twenty-four hours a day so you don't fucking kill yourselves? I am NOT going to do that.”

Cobie Petersen raised his hand. “Um. Larry? It's all okay. It was just an accident. The kid got scared when I woke him up, is all. We didn't even fight or nothing. Trust me. He'd actually be dead right now if I hit him.”

“That's it.” Larry said, “All five of you. I want you out of here and in the showers right now before the rest of the cabins wake up and someone sees you like this. I've fucking had it with this shit. You're straightening your shit up or I'm going to start kicking your asses. Boot camp begins today for you pieces of shit.”

Cobie raised his hand again. “Larry? Big Chief? I'm really sorry. Do you want a hug or something? Would you like me to read you a story?”

It was remarkable to me that Larry didn't completely snap at that exact moment.

But that was that. Larry, gritting his teeth, marched us in a line, like a leg-ironed chain gang carrying toothbrushes, towels, and clean changes of our name-labeled clothes, out to the communal, spider-infested inmate showers just before the sun cracked the top of the trees in the east.

Nobody wanted to get into those showers, but nobody wanted to fight with Larry, either. He was clearly at his breaking point.

Living with the Burgesses, I had seen a lot of very strange things. None of them particularly frightened me, but I have always been acutely afraid of spiders. When the counselors walked us all through the shower room during our orientation two days before, I couldn't help but notice the massive webs up in the black tar-paper corners of the unlit ceiling, and the hanging white tufts of egg masses that looked as big as tennis balls.