The following story is fictional, any resemblance to events or persons is unintentional.
© 2001 by Rei McCall, All rights reserved.

 

One Summer in Heaven or Hell                     by: Rei McCall

 

PART TWO: YOUR FELLOW CONVICTS, ER… CAMPERS

My initial reaction was to lock both back doors and dive for the floor as my parents got out. Needless to say, they weren’t pleased that I disliked their chosen destination, and my father "encouraged" me out of the car… On a completely different note: When a man’s got eight inches and 150 pounds on you, it isn’t much of a fight, especially when he can unlock the car doors with the push of a button. Damn technology.

After my initial panic reaction, it quickly dawned on me that there was no use fighting it. I was miles from anywhere… or was I? I’d have to get a map soon and find out. Until then, I decided to be a dutiful teenager and followed my parents with a sullen look on my face.

The kids around me were all male, aside from a small handful of girls who looked like they were seeing off a brother rather than preparing to stay themselves. It looked like 14 or 15 was the average age, but there were guys who looked to be pre-pubescent still, and several who looked like they could drive me to the airport if I could phony up enough cash. A lot of them seemed to be wearing the same expression I was: Disappointed but resigned to their fate. Some looked angry (and possibly homicidal), but the rest, strangely enough, actually looked happy to be here. And I seemed to fall into the vast minority of teenagers here who wasn’t wearing on of those hideous camp T-shirts.

"What are we doing here?" I finally managed to squeeze out through my clenched teeth. "This place is a boot camp for underage criminals! They’ll kill me!" I winced as I looked back on all the roughing up I’d taken over the past few years, and that was only from standard, run-of-the-mill bullies and jerks. Some of these guys looked like they could clean and load a gun right in front of the convenience store clerk they were about to shoot with it.

"That’s the last thing that would happen," a jovial voice from behind me answered. I shrieked quietly and spun around, readying myself for the first blow to my stomach. When it didn’t come, I unclenched my eyes and looked up. A portly, balding man in a ‘Camp Augwai’ T-shirt was smiling at me. "Hi. I’m Mark," he took one of the clenched fists I was holding in front of my chest to try and soften some of the blows and shook it firmly. Finally realizing I wasn’t in for a beating, I relaxed a little; I needed to conserve my adrenaline for the real threats, after all.

"Mark Allen?" My father asked. Mark just nodded and he shook my father’s hand. "We spoke over the phone. I’m James McCreed, and this is my wife, June."

"Ah," he turned back to me and smiled through his scruffy, salt-and-pepper beard. "So, this must be Chris."

"Um…" God, I hated that name. "Yeah."

"Well, its nice to meet you. And regarding what you said, Augwai is anything but a juvenile hall with a lake-side view. We take boys who are in a bad family situation, or have problems with self-esteem or depression, or have a few behavioral problems and give them some positive male role-models and an outlet for whatever they’re feeling inside. We have a few offenders who are here for reform, but for the most part, we try to help young men before they turn to crime to lash out, or worse."

Translation: The wilderness version of a reform school. "Should I even ask why I’m here?" I asked my father sarcastically (defense mechanism again; I’ve got to learn to control that).

"Your doctor said that your problem was not being able to relate to other boys," my father began as I cringed a little. I knew where he was going with this. "So a summer in the woods, surrounded by positive role-models, doing male-bonding kinds of things should help you out with that."

Leave it to Dad to misinterpret the simplest of diagnoses. "Did you talk to Dr. Leander about this?"

"Yes." That man was a terrible liar. I must’ve gotten my skills from Mom’s side of the family.

"We’re doing this to try and help you," Mom added as she saw the growing look of annoyance on my face. "It’s only for two months, and it will really help you understand things. After all, you don’t want to be a you-know-what, do you?" She had refused to say the word "girl" in my presence ever since Dr. Leander passed along my test results… Besides, I don’t think she wanted Mark to know what my real problem was.

"C’mon, Chris," Mark leaned over. "Sure it sounds terrible now, but after a week here, you’ll be having too much fun to remember to sulk."

Fun… Yeah, right. I hated camping, and my parents knew it. Sure wilderness was wonderful, and I loved animals, but without certain amenities like pizza delivery, running water, and ready ambulance access, I tended to get cranky.

"I don’t get a choice in the matter, do I?" My father almost looked apologetic as he shook his head. I sighed. "Fine. What now?"

Mark clapped me on the shoulder. "Well, orientation starts in about forty-five minutes. Until then, there’s some snacks laid out in the Lodge." He waved towards a large building partially obscured behind the trees. "By the way, you’re counselor is going to be Angus," I snickered a little. "I’ll tell him to find you when I see him again. I’m sure you’ll like him." With that, he turned and began following someone else’s family.

The Lodge was fairly impressive, but only compared to the rest of the buildings. It looked like an enormous log cabin, built on a short cliff that overlooked the lake and even had a balcony in back supported above the water eight feet below. The view was breathtaking… too bad the rest of the Lodge wasn’t as nice. The foyer had nothing but a staircase leading to the second floor, which had been roped off, probably to keep potential criminals from whatever was kept up there. Beyond the entryway was a large common room that I surmised doubled as a cafeteria, since there was a short serving counter to one side and a swinging door that undoubtedly led to a kitchen. To the right was a wide doorway into a smaller room with a fireplace and a half-dozen beaten-up couches. The entire place was decorated in an American frontier/wilderness motif and even had (gag) a stuffed deer head mounted on the wall in the cafeteria.

As we walked in, a tall body parted the light crowd of milling parents and campers, headed straight for us. "Hi, you must be Chris."

I took a moment to actually focus on the person talking to me. Tall and thin, with a light build but nice muscular definition. Longish, almost shaggy dirty-blonde hair framed his oblong face and ended at his neatly trimmed goatee… And above those, a pair of green eyes that I knew I’d be seeing in my sleep tonight. He was gorgeous! I swear to God, I felt myself blush so hard that I knew it had burned itself in permanently.

I smiled shyly at him… God he was tall. Probably just a bit under my father’s 6’4". "I suppose I must be." SHIT! I was being coy! Dammit, I was flirting! With a guy who thought I was a guy! In front of my PARENTS! I snapped my neck sidewise and decided that the stonework along the bottom of the walls warranted further inspection. I blushed again, harder if that was possible.

He held out his hand, and I realized that it would be even more suspicious if I suddenly pretended he wasn’t there, so I shook it and made a point to stare at his chest rather than his face. Not difficult, since it was eye-level. "Name’s Angus," I had already figured that much out from his ‘Hi, my Name is Angus’ sticker. "You’re in bunk 4, the Black Bears. I’ll be your counselor for the summer."

I smiled a little inside. Maybe this summer wouldn’t be so bad after all.

"So, do actually speak?" He looked down at me with a mock-worry expression. I could feel my parent’s eyes boring into the back of my skull.

"Occasionally," I remarked before finally deciding it would be safer if I were nowhere near him or my parents. "Um, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to see the view." With that, I broke away from my parents and vanished into the relative crowd. One advantage of being only 5’7", it was easier to hide.

The front half of the "cafeteria" was several rows of chairs, all lined up to face a stage area in front. The rear of it had several tables set up, buffet-style, with various snack foods and cheap drinks. I poked around the setup a little: Vienna sausages, little dry-looking cornbread muffins, chips and dip, veggie trays, various incarnations of "coleslaw", and a few choice items I didn’t quite recognize off-hand. My stomach was still rather upset over the whole situation and made it quite clear that it wasn’t going to tolerate any crap at the moment. Finally, I grabbed some apple slices and a glass of water, muttering "Jeez, if this is the nice stuff they bring out for the parents, it doesn’t bode well for actual meals."

"You don’t know how right you are." I turned to the source of the voice: A young man, about my height, with light brown hair parted to one side and fairly nice glasses. His hair, expression, and the way he stood could’ve doubled for a billboard with ‘GEEK’ printed across it in four-foot letters. In other words: safe.

"I was here last summer," he smiled from behind his glasses. "Back then, I could use the tomato soup to strip the insulation off wires." I smiled back. It was nice actually being around a guy who couldn’t intimidate the hell out of me.

"So how bad is this place?"

"Not the hellhole it seems… usually. Sometimes there’s some trouble from guys whose case-workers send them here, but after an ‘anger management’ session or two with the senior campers, they usually start acting more like chimps than gorillas."

"Very reassuring." Well, if I was going to be stuck here for two months, or at least until I could locate a map and make my way to a train station, then I might as well try and make some allies. "I’m Chris."

"Brian." We shook hands. After a few more warnings about the campers, and a few moments discussing the shortcomings of parents as a whole, we went our separate ways, and I headed for the balcony. The smell of testosterone in the room was starting to make my poor, abused (abusive?) stomach even more anti-social.

Unfortunately, I only made it far as the doorway before getting run over by a lanky body twice my size. I was knocked back against the doorjamb with an unceremonious "Watch it, shrimp," before finally sliding onto the floor. I looked back up and only saw the milling crowd inside; apparently, running over a young body didn’t slow whoever it was one bit. I just hoped he didn’t have a driver’s license.

"Hey, you okay?" I turned around towards the balcony and saw a girl about my age coming towards me wearing a concerned look. Her face looked fairly child-like, especially with the long, straight blonde hair that framed it, but it was quite obvious from *ahem* other areas that she’d already hit puberty, and hit it hard. "I’m so sorry. My brother is such an asshole sometimes. Are you alright?" She looked at me with genuine concern and offered her hand to help me up.

"Yeah, I guess." I took her offered hand and got to my feet, gently rubbing the small of my back where I’d actually hit the doorframe. "Don’t worry about it; Happens all the time."

"I’m really sorry. Guys can be such jerks."

"I know." I made a little mock-scowl and stuck my tongue out.

"So, how’d you end up here? Dropping your brother off?" We were out on the balcony by now, leaning on the railing and staring at the black, lapping waves below.

"Um, no. He’s back home." And then three seconds later, it clicked. Duh! She was trying to figure out why I was at the orientation for an all-boys camp, and apparently she didn’t realize I was a boy… physically at least. This was certainly an awkward position.

"Oh…" She gave me a sly, sultry look and smiled an evil, Cat-in-the-Hat/Grinch sort of smile. "Dropping your boyfriend off for a long, lonely summer."

"No!" I didn’t even bother trying to fight the blush that shot across my face. It was like the British army sweeping across Ethiopia; You wouldn’t stand a chance, so just surrender and hope for mercy.

"Hey Chris!" I heard a reasonably familiar voice call my name from inside. The two of us looked over our shoulders at Angus, who was smiling at me and trying to wave me inside. "C’mon, you should meet some of the guys!"

My face dropped from sunburn-red to terminally-ill-white in record time. The bastard had just called my name out for the world to hear, and now this girl who was being friendly because she thought I was a kindred soul was going to start treating me like a freak because I was a guy who looked like a girl. I groaned desperately and tried as subtly as possible to tell him to go away. Looking back, maybe it wasn’t really that subtle.

He finally got the message, shrugged, and vanished as quickly as he’d appeared.

"That him?" she asked slyly. "He’s cute!" My attention was diverted to her for a half-second before I wrenched myself away to study absolutely nothing that was floating in the water beneath us. "By the way, I’m Charlie. Nice to meet you." She smiled at me again.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah, it’s short for Charlene. My parents are exceedingly cruel people. Chris?"

"Oh, it’s short for Christa-" Eep! Don’t say it’s short for Christopher, you idiot! I had the sneaking suspicion that karma wouldn’t pull my ass out of the fire twice within forty-five seconds.

"Christa? That’s really pretty." She studied me for a moment and I started to feel my stomach try to leave without me. "It’s kind of exotic. It really suits you, with that round face and jet-black pixie cut. I wish I could look like that."

I stammered for a moment. Charlie wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, true, but she had a very sweet face and very nice proportions, and here she was saying she wanted to look like a guy?! "Huh? But, you already look good. Better than me at least."

"Nah. You’ve got this sort of exotic, mysterious look to you." If only she knew how exotic and mysterious. "And those eyes. Are those contacts? I’ve never met anyone with green-gold eyes before."

I’d always though my eyes were nice, so I had to smile just a little when somebody else agreed. "No, I guess it’s just a weird shade of hazel. My dad has hazel eyes and my mom’s are green, so I guess someone up there decided ‘Laws of genetics be damned!’ and gave me these."

"Well, you’re lucky. All I’ve got to work with is hair dye and the ol’ mancatchers." She hefted her breasts just a bit and grinned.

I snorted at that. "I just wish I could say that." I looked down at my completely flat shirt. After two months on birth control pills, they had started growing… in theory. Not that you could actually tell without a cell sample.

"Don’t worry so much. You’re what, thirteen, fourteen?" I nodded, a little embarrassed. "Well, my big sister was almost sixteen before she really started growing."

"Really?" Strange as it sounds, it actually did make me feel a little better, knowing that real girls got a late start sometimes, too.

"Yup," she nodded. "She was flatter than you when I started popping out. Drove her nuts."

When we finally stopped laughing, she wiped her eyes a little and finally asked, "So, what’re you doing all summer after you drop the hottie off?"

That little ball of panic had just decided to return to its summer home in my throat. "Um… I don’t know, really." It was sort of the truth. I’d never been trapped at a camp before, and I wasn’t really sure what they did all day. "Wh-what about you?"

She held her T-shit taunt in a theatrically proud gesture. It was like the shirts that most of the guys around were wearing, except it said ‘Camp Kawani’ rather than ‘Camp Augwai’. She must’ve noticed my confused expression. "It’s the girl’s camp, about five miles up the road. Same concept, but for the finer sex." She grinned, and so did I.

"Not that you’re a sexist pig or anything," I added.

She pretended to smack me. "Well, Kawani worked out so well for me that my parents didn’t mind when I asked if I could go back this summer, and they decided that Augwai might be able to straighten out ‘Daring’ over there." She motioned towards a tall, lean boy with ultra-short, dirty blonde hair and a nasty expression who was busy stuffing himself on the complimentary crap set out on the tables.

Charlie was so easy to talk to, it was amazing. Nothing like any of the girls from my junior high, who would’ve sooner kissed a teacher than strike up a conversation with me. I found out that she was fifteen and that her brother, ‘Daring’ Darren (as his associates back home called him) was fourteen, and that her sister, Teresa, was spending the summer getting ready to start college in the fall. I told her a little about my parents and my little brother, Marcus, but I decided that too much information could hurt me in the long run. Apparently, until last summer, Charlie had been "just the tiniest bit a slut," in her own words, so her parents sent her off to Kawani before she ended up pregnant. She said that it was really good for her, and that she learned to rely more on herself than others for her confidence and did a major 180. She almost made a summer sentenced to Augwai sound appealing, if it weren’t for the fact that it was an all-boys camp I was being forced into against my will in a pathetic attempt to ‘cure’ me.

Before I knew it, a bell started ringing indoors and the crowds began herding towards the chairs and seating themselves. I sighed a little louder than I meant to. "Damn." That bell almost sounded like a death march after a damn good last meal.

"It’s okay." She pulled a slip of paper out of her pocket and scribbled frantically on it before passing it along. "It’s my address and e-mail back home. Maybe we can get in touch after I get back."

"I’d really like that." I couldn’t help but smile. It felt nice to have someone to talk to for a change. Maybe the concept of friendship wasn’t as overrated as I had thought, if it was anything like this.

Then she did something I wasn’t expecting… She hugged me! After a moment to get over my initial shock, I hugged her back. It felt nice; warm and safe, but different than it did with my parents or family. "Too bad you’re not coming to camp. I think it’d be fun to spend the summer with you. You’re pretty cool." And then she darted off into the lodge to find her family.

She said I was cool. I began wandering back inside and half-heartedly looking for my parents. Nobody had ever told me I was cool before. Maybe she was joking. Then I looked at the scrap of paper in my hand; Charlie Jensen. And it looked like a real address, so she must’ve meant at least part of it…

"Huh?!" I did a double-take at the address. She only lived thirty miles away from me! Maybe I would have a friend after this summer. Weird concept.

After a few minutes, I managed to track down my parents. They had thoughtfully saved me a seat, which I was a little thankful for, since there were obviously not quite enough chairs for everybody.

People finally quieted down once they rang the bell again. Mark climbed up onto the raised stage area in front, looking rather pleased with himself from behind his scruffy beard, and approached the microphone.

"Welcome parents and campers." There was a polite round of applause. I contributed three claps, as I was feeling especially generous. "It’s wonderful to see so many new faces in front of me today, as well as those of you who’ve returned after a visit last year. For those of you who don’t know, I’m Mark Allen, the director of Camp Augwai…"

He continued on, and on, and on, making a "you’re going to love it" speech that sounded suspiciously familiar to the one my parents had delivered to me when they told me to start packing for my mystery trip. By the time he got around to introducing the instructors, senior counselors, and cabin counselors, I was desperately wishing I’d thought to bring my discman with me from the car. I managed to catch a few names… John Hastings, the arts instructor, Kelly Lu, the nurse (he and I would probably come to know one another way too well over the course of the summer, I thought), Leo Capri, the senior counselor handling basketball and hockey (lord knows why I caught that one), and Jordan Windfall, the wilderness guide. And of course there was Angus. Beyond that, they were just a jumble of different faces that I couldn’t really associate a syllable with, let alone a full name.

I did find it a bit odd that none of the cabin counselors looked like they were even out of high school yet. Probably had something to do with the whole ‘male-bonding’ theme of the camp; if you’re counselor was more like a big brother than a teacher (or a prison guard), then the typical guy would probably get along with him a little better.

Of course, I personally wasn’t fond of having a ‘big brother’ sleep in the same room as me.

I’m not sure when exactly it happened… probably while Mark was explaining the importance self esteem and personal image, but I drifted off to sleep, still sitting up.

"Chris?" My mother jostled me a little. I slowly came around, and immediately realized how much of a mistake it was to sleep while sitting. I carefully craned my neck back as far as I could and rubbed it with both hands. That was going to be sore for a little while. Mom was staring at me, looking a little disappointed, but she softened after a moment. I guess she realized I’d had a long day.

There was a little 8x11 notebook sitting on my lap, labeled ‘Augwai Camper’s Handbook’. I looked at Mom questioningly for a moment before she said, "He went through it earlier. If you’d stayed awake, you’d know that."

"Gee, thanks Mom."

We waited for most of the crowd to squeeze their sweaty bodies through the lodge’s front door before finally standing up and walking back towards the Saturn.

For a brief moment, I debated a second attempt at my ‘jump in and lock the doors’ plot from earlier, but realized that it would be just plain stupid without the keys. Besides, I had no idea how to drive a stick, even if I could hotwire it. My ‘wake up now and realize this is just a bad dream’ plot proved to be equally fruitless.

"Well, there you go." My father opened the trunk and removed my small suitcase. I took my black backpack and discman out of the back seat.

Mom hugged me and I began to worry that she might not let go… EVER. Sure, it would get me out of a summer at camp, but if she kept this up for another six months or so, sooner or later she was going to cramp what little style I had. "We love you, dear. You just enjoy yourself this summer, and get better."

I bit my tongue to keep from demanding "Get better what?"

Dad gave me a short hug, then added, "We know you’re not happy right now, but we just want what’s best for you." I had to bite my tongue again. The poor thing was going to be swollen by the time I found my cabin. "We’ll see you in a month for parents’ day."

After a few more "I love you"s and "be good"s, they finally pulled out of the make-shift mulch parking lot and onto the road. I waved weakly as the disappeared from sight. Sure, they were idiots, but they were protective idiots. I looked around slowly at the miles and miles of empty wilderness, and the dozens and dozens of socially maladjusted males. Never in my life had I felt this vulnerable.

I inhaled deeply, picked up my suitcase, and hope desperately that Cabin 4 had a lock on it.

 

 

© 2001
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