Camp Life

  “I know. I went back to another Magic class session, after the one I went to with you. I was thinking about a lot of stuff.”

  He sat there silently.

  “What did you come up with?” she prodded.

  Instead of answering, Toby held up a finger. “Just a sec…I’ll be right back.” He jumped up off the swing, leaving Dara with her mouth open. When he reappeared, the swing was rocking slowly as Dara brushed her hair. The silvery blonde mass fell shining over her shoulders and down her back. Toby stopped running at the edge of the lawn, swallowed hard, and walked slowly to the swing, puffing a little.

  Dara glanced up and saw that he carried something in his hand. It looked like a stick. She didn’t say anything, waiting for him to speak.

  “I guess you know that I was kind of mad about that class,” he began and stopped, looking at her for confirmation.

  Dara nodded her head emphatically. “Yeah, I got that impression.”

  Toby pressed his lips together and took a big breath. “I mean, I really wanted to learn about real magic and…it wasn’t anything like that. I thought…well, this is going to sound really stupid, but I thought maybe it would teach stuff about real magic, like, um, making things move without touching them or even…even using a wand,” he finished, embarrassed. He waited for Dara to laugh at him, but she didn’t.

  Her eyes wide, she said “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could really do stuff like that? Make things fly? Fix things that get broken? Or, how about an invisibility cloak? I can think of lots of things I’d use that for!” she enthused.

  Toby stared at her. “I thought you’d think I was the biggest geek ever.” He shook his head. As if to prove to her how foolish he’d been, he waved his wand at her. “Look at this! I was trying to use it as a wand, and it’s a stupid old piece of wood off a pecan tree!”

  “Hmmm,” Dara considered the stick seriously, taking it from him and turning it over in her hands. “So, what’s inside it? Dragon heartstring? Unicorn hair?”

  Toby continued to stare at her, then burst out laughing. She joined in, and Toby found he felt very much better.

  The laughter tailed off, and Dara asked, “You wouldn’t show me what you ended up writing in that class. I know it wasn’t the kind of magic you wanted to hear about, but what did you do?”

  He was silent for a beat. “Like I said, at first I was mad, but something Caroline said clicked in my head. I thought I’d give it a try their way, you know, what Ron said. I had to go away and think about it, then go back to another session of that class before I could get it all straight in my mind. I finally did.”

  “I’m listening,” Dara said, as Toby sank down on to the swing.

  “Well, you know what I did my treasure map on? Going to Australia Zoo?”

  She nodded.

  “I thought the map was fun, but I didn’t really believe it. It was just…playing. Now, I’ve decided to put this kind of magic to the test.” He sat down next to Dara, his hands busy drawing the stick through his palm again and again.

  “I’ve decided I’m going to Australia next year! That’s what I want to happen. I’m going to talk to my parents about it. I’ll talk to other people, too, and try to figure out other stuff I can do. There’s got to be a way! I wrote up some ideas, and added stuff to my treasure map. I’m going to do everything I can think of, and then see if it works!”

  “Good for you!” a nearby voice said in accents that sounded like a little old lady from New York City. Toby and Dara both turned around, startled.

  Patrick stood there grinning at them. “Hey, more power to you, dude! I’d like to go to Australia myself, especially after hearing Jim talk about it.”

  “Who was that?” Toby asked.

  “Huh? Oh, you mean the voice?”

  Toby nodded.

  “From Big Fat Liar. Grandma? She thinks the guy in the dress is Amanda Bynes? I’m sorry, but that’s just not possible! I mean, Amanda Bynes!” Patrick sighed theatrically and patted his chest over his heart.

  Dara laughed.

  “Drew sent me to get you guys. Sean and I are giving lacrosse lessons to anybody who’s interested. Wanna come?”

  “Have you ever heard of this game?” Jake asked Jim as they approached the field. It wasn’t much of a field, just a large flat, grassy area that joined up with the baseball outfield.

  “Yeah, but I’ve never seen it played. Football, er, soccer is much more popular in Australia. Rugby, too,” Jim answered.

  No one else was there yet. They stopped on the edge of the field. Jake stared down at the grass for a minute, and glanced sideways at Jim. “So, what’s going on with you and that Corinne girl?” he asked offhandedly.

  “That Corinne girl?” Jim repeated flatly.

  “No offense, man. It just seems like…well, she talks so much and she’s…”

  Jim raised his eyebrows and Jake’s voice petered out. “You don’t know her, mate. She’s not what you think.” He snorted and shook his head. “She does a brilliant job of yabbering and being irritating, but if you can get her to drop the act, there’s an excellent person in there.” He smiled reminiscently. “I kissed her.”

  Jake’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. He started laughing and punched Jim in the arm. “Well?”

  “Can’t wait to do it again!” Jim responded earnestly.

  Jake laughed more, collapsing in the grass and knocking Jim down in the process. Jim shoved him back, but was laughing, too, when he heard a high voice calling for help. Looking quickly around, he spotted Teddy heading toward them, dragging something and dropping it, picking it up and dragging it some more, then dropping it again.

  Jim and Jake pushed themselves up off the grass and went to see what Teddy had.

  “Hi!” Teddy panted. “Drew wanted me to take some of these, but I think I got too many.”

  He had what looked like a pile of branches, but each had a little basket on one end. They were bulky and it was easy to see why Teddy had trouble carrying them.

  Jim reached down and picked up one of the sticks. “Are these for lacrosse? They look…” he searched for something tactful and came up with “primitive”.

  Teddy frowned in puzzlement.

  “Um, did you make these, Teddy?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. Drew and Patrick and Sean made them, but I helped. I got to take off the little branches, see?” He pointed at a spot where some twigs had evidently been stripped from the main branch.

  Jake picked up another of the sticks. It was a fairly straight branch, about 2 1/2 feet long tapering a “Y” at one end. Rawhide and cotton shoelaces had been woven through what looked like some basketball netting; the netting and laces were fixed between the two sides of the “Y” making a kind of shallow net pocket. The branch itself had been sanded smooth for most of its length, with the grip wrapped in duct tape.

  “Hey, Teddy!” another voice called. “Thanks for bringing those down.” Drew came up to them, a stick tucked under his arm. Sean was close behind him carrying another couple of sticks.

  Sean turned to Jim and Jake. “What do you think?” he asked proudly. They’re not titanium, but they turned out great, for what we had to work with.” He turned one of the sticks this way and that admiringly. “The heads were the hard part. I guess the Native Americans used to steam the end and bend it around into a kind of hoop, but Ron helped us cut branches that all had forks on one end. Took us awhile to get enough of them.”

  “What are you going to use for a ball?” Jake asked.

  Sean pulled a white, hard rubber ball out of one pocket and pointed at a can of tennis balls he’d dropped on the ground. “Ron had one lacrosse ball, and we found these in the game room. No deer hide balls.”

  “Deer hide balls?” Jake repeated.

  “It’s what Native Americans used. They invented lacrosse.”

  Oh. Why did they…?” he started to ask, but was interrupted by a shout from behind them.

  “Thre
e more to play!” Ron yelled, walking toward them with Patrick, Dara, and Toby. Ron was carrying a very different kind of stick. The shaft was silver and the head plastic, with bright orange laces woven through white strings.

  Patrick stared at it with envy. “Warrior Krypto Pro,” he breathed, “with a Blade Face-Off head.”

  “You’ll get your turn with it, Patrick,” Ron reassured him.

  “We’re not playing,” Toby ventured. “We just came to watch.”

  “Are you sure? We could use you both.”

  Toby looked to Dara for guidance, but she was looking at Drew with a goofy expression. He rolled his eyes. “I guess we’re playing,” he stated, a little more firmly than the situation called for.

  “Great!” Patrick exclaimed. He picked up one of the sticks and thrust it into Dara’s hands, bowing low and murmuring a few words in a strange language.

  Dara grabbed the stick by instinct, pulled her eyes away from Drew and looked curiously at Patrick. “What did you say? Was that elvish again?”

  Patrick smiled sheepishly and nodded. “I said “for my lady elf”, or close enough.” She grinned delightedly, dazzling Patrick and stopping Drew’s breath.

  “OK, we’ve got 8 sticks, not counting Ron’s truly excellent Warrior,” Sean said. “Everybody grab one and Patrick and I will go over the basics.”

  Since Sean and Patrick were the only kids who’d actually played lacrosse before, Ron had asked them to give a little lesson to the others. Ron himself had played lacrosse in college. Despite his country boy image, he’d gone to an east coast, ivy league school, and came out with a master’s degree in psychology and a fine appreciation of the sport of lacrosse. He was thrilled when he found out the twins had been playing club lacrosse in Utah. Baseball, football, soccer, they were all good, but in his mind, lacrosse was in a different league altogether, no pun intended.

  The sticks they’d made were barely functional, he thought, but they’d have fun with them anyway. He handed his own stick to Patrick, who received it reverently.

  “It’s so light!” He ran out onto the field and yelled for Sean to shoot him a ball.

  “One ball, then you have to get back here and help show these guys what to do!” Sean dropped the lacrosse ball into the basket of one of the wooden sticks and flicked it out to Patrick. At least, he meant to, but the ball dropped through the netting and onto the ground behind him.

  “Where’d it...?” He spun around looking for the ball. “Wait a sec!” he called out to Patrick. “I need to fix this.” He pulled out a couple of laces and re-threaded them through the netting, before picking up the ball again. This time, the ball sailed smoothly, but way left of Patrick.

  “Gonna take awhile to dial that in, huh?” Patrick commented, before running after it.

  “Might need some adjustments on the other sticks, too,” Sean yelled.

  Patrick started jogging back to the group, cradling the ball as Sean ran toward him. Just before Sean reached him, Patrick faked left, then ran around Sean to the right.

  “Oh, juked him!” he crowed.

  Sean turned and ran after him, catching up just as Patrick reached the others. He gave his brother a disgusted look before beginning to

  explain the object and rules of the game, and the modified version they’d be playing given the available equipment and the player’s universal lack of experience.

  Dara felt some relief upon hearing the word “noncontact”, though she didn’t understand what type of contact the game usually involved. Toby was happy to be involved, although somewhat apprehensive. He had spent as little time as possible playing team sports. Final Fantasy on his Xbox probably didn’t count, he thought.

  Jake and Jim were already tossing balls back and forth with some skill, while Drew ran toward the far end of the field to retrieve a ball Toby had lobbed with speed, but no accuracy.

  As he helped Teddy try to catch and shoot balls, Ron looked on as people chased wild throws, scrambled to catch balls that soared overhead, and accidently whacked each other with the unwieldy and unfamiliar sticks. Everyone seemed to be laughing and having fun just the same. Patrick and Sean ran around barking instructions to which no one paid any attention. Patrick stopped with his hands on his hips, staring at the chaos. “They are just a bunch of pansies!” he commented in an Indian accent. King Julian from Madagascar was one of his favorites.

  Ron smiled encouragingly at Teddy and motioned to him to toss the ball to Dara, standing about 10 feet in front of him. Patrick ambled over with a disgusted look on his face.

  He leaned on Ron’s stick, wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “Did you ever see such a mess?”

  “Many times,” smiled Ron, not acknowledging what Patrick had left unsaid. “I’ve had days on the field when it seemed absolutely nothing went right…dropped balls, missed catches, unbelievably bad shots, and everyone playing like they never heard of teamwork. Haven’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Patrick agreed. “I’ve been there.”

  “Then there are those other days, when it feels like you know where the ball is going to go even before it happens. You make impossible catches, the least experienced guy on the team scores an amazing goal, and everyone seems to be in the right spot at the right time. Those are golden moments,” he sighed.

  “So, how do you make that happen versus stuff like we’re looking at now?” Patrick gestured toward the people running all over the field.

  “Oh, now is just inexperience…made more challenging because we don’t have, um, forgiving sticks to work with.” He chuckled. “As for the other way, I’m still working on that myself. But I’ve found that, in addition to a whole lot of practice, the more I pay attention and notice the truth about whatever’s going on with me, the more those moments happen.

  “Teddy…” he heard Sean say in mildly exasperated tones, “if you flick it when the stick is still behind your head, the ball’s just going to go straight up in the air.”

  “You said to flick it, so I flicked it!” Teddy retorted.

  Ron and Patrick both smiled.

  “For me, it has a lot to do with what’s happening off the field,” Ron explained. “Here’s an example. There was this guy on one of my lacrosse teams, a good player, better than good, actually, but personally, a first class jerk. During games, he’d hog the ball instead of passing, showboat after he scored, talk a lot of trash to the other team, and wasn’t much better to his own teammates.”

  “Oh, I’ve met that guy before,” Patrick grinned.

  “Yeah, there are a few of them out there. Anyway, there was a girl we both liked. One night, the whole team went out for pizza after a game, and she showed up at the same restaurant. This guy, his name was Richard…seriously!” Ron interjected when Patrick snorted. “Well, he chose that night to come down hard on Josh, our goalie. In the last quarter, Josh let in 7 goals before coach pulled him, and we lost by 12 points. I saw Richard harassing Josh, and then I noticed the girl walking toward us. I got up and grabbed Rich by the front of his shirt, dragged him out of his seat, and shook him a little. I thought he’d throw a punch, but instead he sank at the knees and begged me to let him go. We were right in front of the girl when this happened; she looked at us both like we were cockroaches and turned around and walked away. Josh pulled on my arm, and I realized I was still holding Rich. I let him go, and he ran off.”

  Ron watched the balls flying back and forth, before resuming his story. “I told myself I did what I did to protect Josh, but every time I thought of what happened I got that “ick” feeling. You know what I mean?”

  Patrick nodded.

  “Rich stayed away from practice and we didn’t know if he had quit the team, or what. I told myself it was better that he didn’t come back, but it still kept bothering me. My mind kept replaying that night, and I stunk at practices. I had no energy and I kept missing shots, when I could get myself downfield to take them at all. One day after another lousy practice, I admitted to myself
that I didn’t rough up Rich for Josh, I did it to impress that girl.

  “What did you do?”

  “After I finally stopped lying to myself about what happened, I went to Rich’s dorm and apologized for roughing him up, told him I’d never touch him again, and asked him to come back and play. He did come back, eventually. It was pretty awkward, at first, but then he seemed to pick up where he left off. He was never quite as cocky and irritating as he had been, but close. Me, I felt this weird sense of calm and the ick feeling was gone. I found I had more energy and my game came back. I think when we don’t tell the truth, especially to ourselves, it saps our energy and attention. Being really honest and working to make things right…that gives energy. I don’t know if that makes any more sense to you…”

  “Yeah,” Patrick interrupted. “It does.” His mind went back to one of his own “ick” moments, one that still made his stomach lurch whenever he remembered it.

  “What about you?”

  “Oh…I…well, I did something really bad to Sean once. I still feel “icky” about it,” he said, trying to joke.

  Ron didn’t smile, just raised his eyebrows and looked inquiringly at Patrick.

  “It’s just…I booby-trapped a toilet at school and it sort of backfired. I only meant for people to get wet, but…but, one of the teachers went to investigate the screams and she sort of slipped and broke her ankle. Someone thought they saw Sean leaving the bathroom right before it happened, so he got nailed for it. He figured I had done it, but when he asked me, I lied and he believed me.” Patrick paused, embarrassed. “He still doesn’t know.”

  “What would happen if you told Sean?”j

  Patrick looked fearful. “He’d hate me! I not only let him take the blame, I lied to him…my twin!”

  “What happens if you don’t tell him?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, maybe…” He sighed, dropping his chin onto his chest. “Crap.”

  Patrick drew in a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked away, heading toward Sean. Ron watched, saw Patrick talking, and Sean’s face change gradually from puzzlement to wrath.

  “Idiot!” yelled Sean. He beaned Patrick with the head of his stick.