Camp Lore - 3. Chapter 3

I woke suddenly, possibly when the train hit an especially bad piece of track. I’d been dreaming that some giant goon was playing handball with my brain then realized it was only because my head was tapping against the window. My watch, once I focused on it, showed just past ten, and we were slowly moving through what looked like suburbs.

I reached for my glasses and discovered a guy sitting next to me, someone who hadn’t been there before. Around us, kids were singing, talking, and shouting in the aisles. The guy was doing a crossword puzzle from a Sunday Times I hadn’t seen. I glanced at the date and found it was for the next day.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

The guy looked at me as if first aware I was awake. He wore horn rim glasses the color of his black hair and had eyes so dark, I couldn’t see the pupils.

“How’d I get what?”

“The puzzle. It’s tomorrow’s.”

“Oh.” He smiled. “My mom works for the Times. We usually get the puzzle early.”

“What do you do on Sunday?”

I asked that partly because I was curious but as much to keep the conversation going.

The guy just looked at me.

“That’s when I do the puzzle,” I explained. “If my father or sister don’t grab it first.”

“You could make copies.”

“Sometimes, we do – if the first one who gets it remembers. Sometimes, it’s already started.”

“I almost always do it on Thursdays,” the guy said. “In classes. Sundays, I sleep late.”

He turned to the paper and finished a word he’d partly filled in.

“Before I forget.”

I nodded. The puzzle was two-thirds finished, and in ink. My family could only work in pencil. There was a chance he didn’t want to be interrupted and another he did.

“Did you miss it this Thursday?” I risked.

He shook his head. “I purposely skipped it. I knew I had this ride, and I really can’t read on trains. Sometimes, subways’re okay. Depends how crowded.”

I introduced myself. His name was Andy.

“Have you been here before?” I asked. “To camp?”

“To camp, yeah. But not here. When I was a kid, I went to cub scout camp – some place in Connecticut. My parents were splitting and needed somewhere to stash me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“About the divorce.”

He laughed. “It was years ago. They’ve both remarried – Dad several times. It seems his way of doing things.”

I was embarrassed, because he was telling me things I never would have asked. As I was considering that, he looked at me.

“You’ve never been here before.”

It was a statement, and I wondered how he knew.

“Is my shirt too shiny?” I joked. I sniffed my shoulder. “It’s a bit stinky now.”

He grinned. “It’s hot. There’s air conditioning, but not very much. And the kids keep opening the windows.”

I looked down the car. Some of the windows were open.

“And, nope,” he went on. It wasn’t your shirt. But you wouldn’t have asked if I’d been here. You’d know.”

“The camp isn’t that small. I thought it had a couple hundred boys.”

“But most of ‘em come back every summer – so you’d recognize people. Even if you didn’t really know them. And we’re the same age.”

I looked at him.

“Probably.”

Still, something bothered me.

“How do you know all that?” I asked. “If this is your first time.”

“I’ve been briefed.”

“Briefed?”

He nodded towards a guy standing in the aisle.

“His name’s Nate something. While you were sleeping, he spent five minutes hitting on me.”

I nodded, unsure what to say. This was news. Andy simply continued.

“He finally ran out of things and asked who you were. I guess he thought I knew. Since you were just sleeping there, I told him you were the guy I was sleeping with. He laughed, then moved on.”

I looked again at Andy, while he studied me. Then I looked at Nate something.

He seemed pretty much like any other guy there – a happy eighteen-year-old – if that was his age. And I wasn’t always the best judge of these things, but he looked pretty straight.

He was standing with a group of girls. Joking. Grinning. Chatting. And flirting – I could tell by his moves. And the laughs, and the reactions. And the girls didn’t seem unreceptive. He was definitely getting somewhere.

I turned back to Andy.

“That’s the other way I knew you hadn’t been here,” he went on. “He – Nate’s – been coming here since he was ten – I think that’s what he said. He seems to know everyone on the train but us.”

“I’ve been going to Vermont,” I explained, figuring my telling him a little about that balanced his parents’ divorce.

He accepted that and told me he was coming to Seneca as the tech counselor – for the girls’ camp. Actually, Seneca is two camps – a boys’ and a girls’. Though most of the time neither group gets to see the other.

“Nate tell you that, too?” I asked.

“No. The owner. What’s his name.”

“Linden – Bill Linden.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s an old friend of my father’s. That’s why I’m stuck here.”

“Stuck?”

“You don’t think this would be my choice. I wanted to work in the city.”

“And?”

“Got shot down.”

That seemed better than, “My parents said,’No.’”

“No offers?” he questioned.

“The perfect offer.” I hesitated, then surrendered the truth. “Overprotective parents.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, well...” I said.

“So you didn’t interview for this job?”

“No. I’m coming as a waiter. What’s there to ask?”

He admitted that.

“I must’ve done a good interview,” he admitted. “Linden told I was the best qualified person he’d ever seen. And he wondered why I’d bother.”

I wondered that, too, but figured – if I waited – he’d tell me.

“I wanted to get away,” he simply said.

“Makes sense.”

“We’ll see.”

And he smiled and went back to his puzzle.

“Why the girls’ camp?” I asked, after a moment. “I thought they were kept separate.”

“They are – mostly. He promised there was some overlap. And he already had someone for the boys’ camp – someone he’d been using for years. So he asked if I’d work with girls.”

“Easy decision.”

He smiled. “Yeah. I like women.”

It was an odd choice of words. But he just went back to his crossword.

I watch him for a moment, then felt I was spying so turned away. After another moment, I looked down the aisle, at Nate again. He was still flirting, and I couldn’t imagine him hitting on Andy. Talking, yeah – Nate seemed very friendly, and even as he was chatting with at least three girls, he was spinning around and talking with a half-dozen other people. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, or make any sense of it, but I’d bet he was always that loose and happy.

The other thing I couldn’t make sense of was Andy telling me Nate was gay. Unless that was Andy’s quiet way of both telling me something and hitting on me.

I leaned back in my seat and watched him again from an angle where I didn’t think he’d see. I wouldn’t be entirely against that.