“Right. Well, see ya,” Leira said to Clay.
She tossed him his wallet—which she had evidently pickpocketed for a second time—and was gone before he could say good-bye.
“Does she always disappear like that?” Clay asked.
“You mean like somebody just yelled ‘fire’?” said Buzz. “Pretty much.”
“Well, it’s a good thing she found me when she did,” said Clay. “A good thing I found the llama, too.”
Now that he’d arrived safely at Earth Ranch, Clay was starting to feel angry about the way he was welcomed—or more accurately, not welcomed—on the island.
Buzz smiled. “Oh, you found that llama pretty quickly.…”
Clay looked at him askance. “How do you know? You’ve got drones out there, spying?”
“Something like that,” said Buzz.*
“Then I was right. The llama was a test.” Clay couldn’t decide if the idea that he was being watched made him more furious or less.
“Life is a test. The llama was there to help.”
“Sure,” said Clay, far from satisfied. How could a counselor be so relaxed about endangering the life of a camper? He kept thinking of the SOS on the beach: Was that a kid who never made it to camp? Or, worse, tried to escape from camp?
“Any more questions, Worm?”
Yes, Clay thought. How do I get home?
Clay was on the verge of asking if he could call his parents, but he decided to wait a day. He was tired and sunburned and more than a little afraid of whatever might be coming next, but he had to at least give Earth Ranch a try. As bad as camp might be, it couldn’t be as bad as repeating sixth grade.
“Good man,” said Buzz, slapping Clay on the shoulder. “C’mon, we’re late for Circle. But first you gotta clean up after your llama.” He pointed to Como, who had stood up from his dirt bath and was now dropping little brown pellets from his behind onto the ground.
“My llama?” echoed Clay.
“Yes, Worm, just like you’re his human. For as long as you’re here.” He handed Clay a large rake. “Can’t let that fantastic fertilizer go to waste.”
“You hear that, Como?” Clay sighed. “We’re stuck together. Nosotros somos…” He made the together sign with two fingers.
As Clay raked llama poop into a tidy heap, bees circled above like so many tiny sentinels in their black-and-yellow uniforms, and Clay wondered just what it was they were protecting, and from whom.
CHAPTER
TEN
CIRCLE
From the way Circle had been described, Clay expected his new cabinmates to be sitting on the floor with their legs crossed, talking about their feelings. Instead, they were lounging on their bunks with their feet up, talking about… well, Clay couldn’t tell, because they stopped talking as soon as he walked in. He suspected they’d been talking about him.
“Cabin, meet Clay,” said Buzz. “Clay, meet cabin.”
Clay’s first impression was that the three other boys in his cabin looked like a rock band—a young and clownish but also somewhat scary rock band. Between the three of them, they had a green Mohawk, a gold-tipped Afro, and one heavily gelled, slicked-back hairdo. Clay felt very dull in comparison—at least hair-wise.
“Well, isn’t anybody going to welcome the new Worm?” Buzz prompted.
The boy with the slicked-back hair jumped to his feet and shook Clay’s hand. He wore a pair of oversized eyeglasses that had no lenses and a T-shirt decorated with a picture of a necktie. Clay thought the outfit was supposed to be funny, but he wasn’t absolutely sure.
“Welcome to the Wormhole, New Worm,” said the boy with the glasses. “We are your Worm-mates. Punk Rock Worm over there is Pablo.”
The boy with the Mohawk raised a fist in greeting.
“Lil’ Superfly Worm here is Jonah.”
The boy with the Afro nodded his head.
“And that leaves yours truly,” said the boy with the glasses, pointing to himself. “I’m the Boss Worm, Kwan, which means ‘best-looking guy in the room’ in Korean, in case you were wondering.”
“And it means ‘biggest dork in the room’ in English,” said Jonah.
There were four bunk beds, making eight beds total, but there was only one free bed because Buzz had an entire upper and lower bunk to himself, and the other unused beds were covered with a jumble of dirty laundry and muddy shoes. Clay’s bunk, to which he was directed right away, was the top bunk in the back left corner of the cabin. Since the other campers had chosen their bunks first, Clay figured his was the least desirable, though he wasn’t sure why until he sat on the mattress; the springs were popping out, and they jabbed him whenever he moved. The cabin was open-air style, with no glass or screens in the windows, and from Clay’s bunk he could peer down to the ground outside. It gave him a slight feeling of vertigo, which he did his best to ignore.
As it turned out, the box that Clay had delivered to camp was a care package for Jonah, who occupied the bunk below Clay. Everyone watched avidly as Jonah opened it. Here was something more interesting than a newcomer in their midst: food.
Jonah’s eyes lit up when he saw what was inside. “Can I keep it?” he asked Buzz. “Pretty please with, uh, red licorice on top.”
Grinning, he pulled out a plastic-wrapped package of skinny red rope familiar to most anyone who’s been to a movie theater.
“Go on, poison yourself,” said Buzz, who was peeling off his cowboy boots. “But don’t think I’ll be this lax if you get a cell phone in the mail.”
“Thanks, chief,” said Jonah, ripping open a package.
“You know what they say, it’s more fun to give than to receive,” said Kwan.
“Yeah, well, they lied, but have some anyway,” said Jonah, tossing licorice ropes around the room.*
As Pablo grabbed his licorice, Clay caught a glimpse of a dark bulky object peeking out from under his sleeping bag. Pablo quickly hid it—whatever it was—and gave Clay a look that plainly meant Clay was not to say anything. Clay looked away, alarmed to find himself keeping secrets so soon.
Jonah dangled another rope of licorice in the air. “For the new guy?”
“Sure, I mean, if there’s enough,” said Clay awkwardly.
“You kidding?” said Jonah, handing the licorice up to Clay. “There’s, like, ten more packages in the box. Plus, my moms’ll send more if I ask. They feel all guilty for sending me here.”
“So why did they, then?” Clay asked before he could stop himself. It was already clear he wasn’t supposed to be too nosy in this group.
“Oh, I got in a little trouble with the neighbors. They said they wouldn’t press charges if I came here.”
“Go on,” said Buzz. “Tell the whole story.”
“How can I? I don’t even remember it,” said Jonah.
“He’s a sleepwalker,” explained Kwan. He rolled his eyes back in his head and stuck out his hands zombie-style.
“More like a sleep-driver!” said Pablo. “He drove one of his moms’ cars straight into the neighbor’s garage.”
“Seriously? While you were sleeping?” Clay asked.
“Uh-huh,” said Jonah. “And I don’t even know how to drive!”
“The other day, he started walking into the lake in the middle of the night, still all snoring and everything,” said Pablo. “We just grabbed him and shook him until he woke up.”
Kwan nodded. “It’s no big deal after a while.”
Clay shook his head. “Wow, that’s… crazy.”
“What about you, Kwan?” said Buzz. “Can you tell Clay how you wound up here?”
“Sure, I’m not ashamed,” said Kwan. “All I did was provide a much-needed service for my peers.”
Jonah laughed. “Yeah, you took their money.”
“He ran a gambling den in his school bathroom,” said Pablo.
“I like to think of it as more of an underground casino in an educational spa,” Kwan sniffed.
“You mean like card games and
stuff?” Clay asked, looking at Kwan with renewed interest. He’d never met an underage underground gambler before.
Kwan grinned. “Cards for sure.” In a single deft motion, he pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket and started shuffling them like a pro. “But the real action was in the bookie operation.”
Clay was a little hazy about what precisely a bookie did, but he nodded as if he understood.*
“Tell him how you got caught,” said Jonah to Kwan.
“There was going to be this make-out party at this girl’s house, and I got everybody to bet on who would kiss who,” said Kwan, fanning the cards in his hand. “I had a full point spread, depending on how popular they were, how pretty, whatever.”
He walked over to Clay’s bunk and gestured for him to pick a card.
“So what happened?” asked Clay. He took a card, though as you know, he hadn’t been a big fan of card tricks since his brother disappeared.
“My class was a bunch of chickens—that’s what happened! Nobody kissed anybody,” said Kwan, as if he were still offended by his peers’ timidity. “Three of clubs, right?”
“Uh-huh,” said Clay noncommittally. He knew Kwan had forced the card; his brother had shown him how to do that long ago.
“What? You can do better, New Worm?” Kwan flared.
“No,” said Clay, even though he could.
“I didn’t think so.” Smiling, Kwan took the card back. “Anyway, my position was, there were no winners; therefore the bank keeps the money.”
“So everyone got pissed at him and told their parents,” said Pablo.
“And now you’re here,” concluded Clay, relieved that the brief moment of tension had passed.
“And now I’m here,” agreed Kwan, throwing his cards to the floor. Kwan looked at Pablo. “Your turn, Pablito.”
“I’m an anarchist,” Pablo boasted. He pointed to the symbol on his T-shirt. The letter A inside a circle.
“It means he doesn’t believe in government and rules and stuff,” said Jonah.
“I know what it means,” said Clay, although this might not have been one hundred percent true.* He tried not to look at the mysterious lump in Pablo’s sleeping bag.
“Ask him how he got in trouble,” said Kwan.
“I didn’t get in trouble,” said Pablo. “It’s just that school is incompatible with my belief system.”
“You mean you ditched?” asked Clay.
“I don’t ditch,” Pablo sneered. “I go on strike. I protest school. I defy it.”
“Oh… cool,” said Clay, impressed but slightly confused.
“Do you know why school was invented?” Pablo demanded. “It was during the British Empire. To turn us all into little cogs in the same big machine.”
Kwan rolled his eyes. “No more history lessons, Pablo!” He looked over at Clay. “If you keep shaking your leg like that, nobody’s going to be able to sleep tonight.”
“Sorry,” Clay mumbled, embarrassed. “I do that sometimes.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Jonah. “Everybody here’s got his own freaky habits.”
There was silence for a moment. Clay figured it was his turn to talk. “So I guess I should tell you guys why I’m here, right?”
“Oh, don’t worry, we know—” said Kwan.
“Magic sucks!” they all quoted together.
They laughed as though this were an inside joke.
“Right.” Clay forced a smile. How did they know about that?
Buzz shot a warning look around the room. They quieted down immediately.
“Sorry about that,” he said to Clay. “Sometimes applications get leaked.”
“Dude, what was that all about, anyway?” asked Kwan. “Is Magic the name of a tagger you don’t like?”
“Yeah, or like a rival graffiti crew?” suggested Pablo. “Your crew having a war with them?”
“I don’t have a crew,” said Clay. “Actually, I’m not even a real graffiti artist.”
“You mean you’re not good?” said Jonah. “Don’t hate on yourself, man.”
“I mean I didn’t write on that wall,” said Clay. “I was framed. Somebody copied my journal while I was asleep.”
His protestation of innocence was met with laughter.
“So what you’re saying is, you’re a sleepwalker, too,” said Pablo. “You wrote all over your school wall, but you don’t remember a minute of it.”
“Yeah, that must be it,” said Clay sarcastically.
But when he thought about it, the sleepwalking idea gave him pause. It was the best explanation so far for what had happened.
As Circle wound down, Clay looked around at his colorful new cabinmates. They were a jocular bunch, no doubt, but there was a strong current of tension underneath. His instincts told him to be wary, and not just because of the mysterious contraband item under Pablo’s sleeping bag. The volcano wasn’t the only thing on the island with the potential to erupt.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
MAGIC ROCKS!
After Circle, Buzz went over the schedule for the summer session.
Although the other boys had already been at camp for a week, they all had questions—especially about the overnight backpacking trip to Mount Forge that they would be taking later in the summer. Apparently, Clay and his fellow Worms would be hiking through lava tubes (whatever they were), traversing live lava flows, and even ascending to the volcano’s crater. Clay’s arrival on the island sounded like a breeze in comparison.
Before they could go on the trip, they would each have to pass three tests: a swim test, a fire-starting test, and a lava safety test.
“But don’t think of them as tests; think of them as rites of passage,” said Buzz. “The volcano overnight will be the culmination of the journey that you are taking at Earth Ranch. You will have to trust in your fellow campers. You will have to navigate the hazards of the lava landscape. And because you will be packing no meals, you will have to forage for food, identifying which plants are edible and which are poisonous.”
“Oh, man, no more licorice!” Kwan complained.
“Can we hunt?” asked Pablo. He glanced outside the cabin, as if there might be game hiding in the bushes.
“We’re here to be at one with nature, not to attack it,” said Buzz. “The last thing we need is one of you Worms running around with a spear in his hand.”
“Okay, master, sir, we’ll all be good boys.”
“Pablo…”
“Right,” said Pablo, retreating into his bunk. “Got it. No hunting.”
“What about that gray bush with purple berries?” Clay asked. “You know, that one that’s on the trail on the way here? Is it poisonous?”
Buzz laughed. “Not unless you’re allergic to blueberries. Too bad there aren’t any growing on top of Mount Forge.”
Well, that’s one theory out the window, thought Clay. He was pretty sure that Beware—the—you—bury did not mean Beware the blueberry.
“Don’t be fooled by Buzz’s Zen beekeeper act,” said Jonah as Clay followed him into the shack-like bathroom that night. “He’s a total drill sergeant underneath.”
“Yeah?”
Jonah nodded vehemently. “He’s already bawled out Kwan a couple times, and after Pablo tried to cross the Wall of Trust—I don’t know what Buzz said, but Pablo’s been wicked scared of him ever since. I think the only reason he hasn’t chewed me out yet is that he’s afraid of what I’ll do to him in my sleep.”
“Really?”
“No. I just know how to keep my head down, I guess.”
The bathroom lights briefly flickered out, leaving them in darkness. Clay tried not to get nervous.
“It’s the generators here,” said Jonah when the lights went back on. “They’re kinda unreliable.… Just be glad you weren’t using the self-composting toilet.”
“The what?”
“You’ll see.”
As far as Clay was concerned, the self-composting toilet was just a
hole in the ground with a fancy name, and he wasn’t going to squat over it until he absolutely had to. At least it didn’t smell. Which was more than he could say for the tap water. He spit it out and put more toothpaste on his toothbrush.
“Ugh—it tastes like rotten eggs,” Clay said to Jonah. “Or sulfur, I guess.”
“It’s from the volcano,” said Jonah, his mouth full of toothpaste. “You get used to it.”
“I guess there’s a lot to get used to around here.”
Jonah shrugged. “I don’t know, seems like they never really let you get too used to anything at Earth Ranch.”
Before Clay could ask Jonah what he meant, an older boy walked into the bathroom.
“That’s Flint,” Jonah whispered. “He’s a junior counselor. From Fire Truck. Ignore him.”
Too late.
Flint stepped behind Clay and stared at him in the mirror so that Clay had no choice but to stare back. Flint had black hair, blue eyes, and the muscles of somebody who had started lifting weights at an early age. He looked like Superman’s mean-spirited younger brother. Clay disliked him on sight.
“Hey, it’s the new kid—welcome to Earth Ranch,” said Flint, in the least welcoming voice Clay had ever heard.
“Hi,” Clay said curtly. “I’m Clay.”
“I know—you’re the graffiti artist.”
He knows about that, too! Clay thought. Does the whole camp know why I’m here?
“For the record, I didn’t do that—” said Clay, turning to face Flint.
“Don’t lie,” said Flint menacingly. He stepped forward, forcing Clay to back into the sink. “I don’t like liars.”
“I’m not lying—”
Flint cut him off. “Oh yeah? And I bet you didn’t write that, either—”
As Flint spoke, the bathroom lights flickered off and on again. Clay turned back toward the mirror—and froze in disbelief.
MAGIC ROCKS!
As before, the message was written in Clay’s bubble letters—only enlarged many times over. But this time the sentiment was reversed. MAGIC ROCKS! rather than MAGIC SUCKS!