THE
OTHER
NORMALS
NED VIZZINI
Balzer + Bray
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Dedication
TO MY FATHER—
who taught me that an adventure story must always “deliver the goods.”
I love you.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
THE NORMAL WORLD
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
CAMP WASHISKA LAKE
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
THE WORLD OF THE OTHER NORMALS
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
SUBBENIA
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
CAMP WASHISKA LAKE
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
THE WORLD OF THE OTHER NORMALS
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
BENIA
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
WARBLEDASH RIVER
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
CAMP WASHISKA LAKE
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE
NORMAL
WORLD
1
THIS IS A STORY ABOUT BECOMING A MAN, so naturally it starts with me alone in a room playing with myself. Not that way—playing Creatures & Caverns, the popular role-playing game. Popular being a relative term. I guess if Creatures & Caverns were really popular, I would have other people to play with.
“Perry!” my brother, Jake, calls, knocking on the door. “Are you ready to go to your stupid store?”
“Hold on a second!” When my brother sees my gaming materials, his automatic response is to make fun of me, so I hide them in my backpack and put it on. My graph paper, manual, and mechanical pencils disappear quickly as he turns the knob and enters, smiling under his long hair, with his guitar slung over his shoulder.
“C’mon, I’m gonna be late for practice.”
We head down the hall. Jake walks like he’s carrying a tank in his pants and I try to imitate him, but my legs aren’t long enough. Mom is in the living room having a conversation with her boyfriend, Horace. You can tell she’s talking to Horace because her feet are up on the couch and she’s twirling her fingers in the air as if there were a phone cord when there isn’t. She’s in lazy Sunday-afternoon mode, like I was until a few minutes ago.
“Perry? Oh, Perry’s doing fine, you know. He’s a late bloomer.”
I squint at my mother. She doesn’t even notice me. I wonder how that bizarre notion could enter her head. Late bloomer? I’m an RPG enthusiast. I’m an intellectual.
“Hey! You coming?” Jake calls. He’s already at the front door. I follow him out—intentionally not saying “Bye, Mom!” because maybe that’s what late bloomers say.
Jake and I walk to the subway through New York streets piled high with recycling bags awaiting Monday-morning pickup. It’s a gorgeous spring day and the daffodils are out in small plots for trees, where dogs will be attracted to soil them. The late-ish bloomer-ish phrase bounces around in my head. As a fifteen-year-old you don’t want to be compared to a flower. By your mother. And then have the flower be faulty. The daffodils make it worse: they bloom on the same damn day every year.
2
MY BROTHER AND I SIT ON THE SUBWAY. Jake takes out a water bottle and sips it and turns his headphones so loud that I hear them next to me. I always hated people who did that, and now he does it—but I don’t hate him, I worry about his ears. He’s listening to his own band, The Just Because, which has a small reputation in New York for disrupting “battle of the bands” competitions but is otherwise rightfully unknown.
We are the stoners (aah-ah!)
We built America (aah-ah!)
We built America (ah-ahhh)
Yes we did
“That’s a stupid song,” I tell Jake, even though it’s catchy. I wrinkle my nose. Somebody on this train smells like booze. I check the car—there’s a homeless guy lounging in the corner in rumpled, stained clothes, taking up two seats.
“What?” My brother turns the music down.
“Nobody wants to hear songs about you smoking pot and building America.”
“I didn’t write it. The singer wrote it. I don’t smoke. Girls don’t like it.” He sips from his water bottle.
“Jake, what are you drinking?”
“Raspberry-infused vodka.”
“What the—?” I pull out my phone. “It’s twelve!”
“Exactly. Sunday-afternoon cocktail.”
“Give me that!” I grab for the bottle. Jake uses his long arms to keep it out of reach. He stuffs it back into his guitar bag. “You can’t start drinking in the middle of the day!”
He grabs my arm and squeezes, hard, like a mechanical claw. “Shut up, bro. Don’t embarrass me. There are girls on this train.”
He nods across from us at a beautiful woman with short blond hair and earbuds. I don’t know how I missed her. I’m supposed to have laser focus for people like this. Maybe if I were blooming properly I would. She looks
up from the book she’s reading. Jane Eyre.
“Don’t look at her,” my brother tells me.
“I’m not.”
“Then why are you looking at her?”
I look down.
“I’m a musician,” he whispers. Vodka and raspberries hit my face. “It’s my right and duty to stay buzzed whenever I can.”
“No it’s not. You’re going to get in serious—”
“You have bigger things to worry about anyway: I heard you’re going to summer camp.”
“What?”
“Heard Horace tell Kimberley.”
“No! Why?” So far, in life, I’ve managed to avoid summer camp by excelling at math enough to qualify for a program called Summer Scholars in the city.
“Dad wanted to send you to math camp, but Mom’s making you go to real camp with public-school kids.”
“I am a public-school kid!”
“You’re a specialized-school kid.”
“Why now? I’m too old to go to camp. Wouldn’t I be a counselor?”
“Inflation. Horace told Kimberley that Mom can’t afford to have you home all summer. You consume hundreds of dollars a week in food, although I don’t know where you put it. With camp, for a few grand she doesn’t have to feed you or do your laundry or anything. Maybe she’ll send you for three or four weeks, but if she really wants to save cash, she’ll send you for eight. She already gave you that bowl haircut; that’ll last until September.”
I touch my hair. Our parents, after entering their divorce proceedings eight years ago, each began dating their divorce lawyers. Dad’s is named Kimberley; Mom dated a number of different lawyers until she found Horace. Due to their special relationships with my parents, Kimberley and Horace handle their cases pro bono.
“Kimberley says that Mom read an article about how boys who go to summer camp become more ‘emotionally mature’ men.”
I stay quiet.
“And you’re already having issues in that department if you’re riding with me to buy Creatures and Caverns books.”
“Like you’re going anywhere important.”
“Legendary Just Because band practices are important. And I don’t understand why every time I give you a chance to go to one, you just want to play by yourself in your room. I don’t make up the rules, Perry. Creatures and Caverns is a waste of time! There are certain things that are so uncool they’re cool, but role-playing games isn’t one of them.”
The train screeches to a halt. Jake drinks more vodka. The Jane Eyre girl gets out.
“What’s the name of the camp?”
“Some normal name. It’s very traditional, I think, with canoeing and log splitting and bears and counselors who molest children. In New Jersey. It’ll be good for you! What else you gonna do? You didn’t make Summer Scholars this year, right, because you’re a bitch?”
I ignore him, but it’s true. It’s a permanent blot on my math career. A month ago, on a qualifying exam, I did what I call a mutant paradigm shift: I filled in the answer for problem 15 in the bubble for problem 14 and then shifted every subsequent answer up by one question. Even though it was possible to see that I completely understood the questions, my score had to be counted with the incorrect answers. Mr. Getter, the Summer Scholars coach, told me he couldn’t have such a sloppy performer on his squad. I tried to explain the situation to Mom and Dad directly and through their lawyers, but they wouldn’t hear it. I was about to try and get into college, they said, and hadn’t they told me that no matter how divorced they were, I had to get into a good college? Mistakes of inattention—human fallibility—were no longer to be coddled or explained away; that period of my life was over. I got the feeling that my parents wanted me to get a job this summer, but I didn’t know where—a bookstore? The zoo?
“What were you going to do all summer? Play Creatures and Caverns by yourself?”
I don’t say anything.
“Jeez, Perry.”
“I like looking at the books! Is that so bad? It’s perfectly normal to enjoy reading role-playing-game manuals and making up characters by yourself.”
“It’s normal for some people, not for normal people.”
3
WE GET OFF AT EIGHTY-SIXTH STREET in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Jake heads to band practice while I go to Phantom Galaxy Comics, which is like a three-story nerd mother ship. The first floor has comics thumbtacked to the walls and ceiling in polystyrene bags; the third floor has Pokémon cards; the second floor is home base for me—warm, brown, and quiet like an English den. The role-playing-game floor.
Alone, allowing the door to close behind me with the bing-bong of the electronic bell, I climb the steps. I always close my eyes and picture the RPG floor before I reach it. It has walls plastered with huge rich posters of fantasy creatures and landscapes: a beautiful woman with a dragon on a leash, an elf looking into a reflecting pool and seeing a human reflection, the album Led Zeppelin IV. It smells woodsy and solid, not glossy and cheap like the comics downstairs. As I reach it, though, I stop. I have the feeling I’m being watched.
I’ve heard this feeling expressed before in movie scores through the use of rising violin noise. I’ve never experienced it, though. I’m stunned at how clear it feels. As if something hot is sitting on my neck.
I whirl around. Nothing. Then a skritch, like a pencil taking down a note … but in front of me is just a smiling gnome on a poster and a security camera.
4
AT THE CASH REGISTER, A MAN SITS behind a glass case. Below him are cabinets full of pewter miniatures—small metal figures like toy soldiers. When you get really into Creatures & Caverns, you can buy them and paint them to be like your characters.
“Interested in something?” the man asks. I’ve never seen him here before. He occupies his chair in the rough shape of a pyramid with a sweatshirt.
“A new Creatures and Caverns expansion.”
“Looks like you have some minis you’re interested in too. Want to see any?”
I scan them. The small silver figures look ready to do battle for the fate of the world: knights, dwarfs, skeletons, pikemen, horsemen, wizards, and dragons pitched forward wielding swords, axes, spears, halberds, war hammers, staffs, and poisonous breath. An archer draws back a flaming arrow with a thin ribbon of metal curling up for the smoke.
“Are you playing a campaign right now?” the guy asks.
“No, I just make up characters by myself. I don’t have anybody to play with.”
“Who’s your main character?”
“I don’t have a main one.”
“You don’t? Here’s mine.”
He pulls one of the minis out of the glass case. The glass squeaks as he closes it. The figure is a tall, thin wizard with a staff, who looks like Gandalf … but to a degree, all wizards look like Gandalf. This one is younger, with a goatee.
“That’s Roland of Cornwall. Twelfth-level illusionist in the Pax Pastorum expansion. Here’s his sheet.”
He slips me a laminated sheet of paper. It has a colored-pencil drawing of “Roland of Cornwall” with his game stats: Strength 42, Speed 37, Health 38, Intelligence 99, Wisdom 99, Personality 99, Honor 2.
“In the new edition of the game, they give you an Honor stat. Characters with low Honor are more inclined to steal things and lie and cheat. Characters with high Honor are more inclined to get killed.”
“I know about the Honor stat. Why is your character named Roland of Cornwall?”
“After me. I’m Roland.”
“Are you … from England? Cornwall is in England.”
“Of course. I’m into England.”
“But you’re not from England.”
“I’m into it. It’s an interest of mine.”
I stifle a laugh.
“What d’ya think is funny?” Roland snatches Roland of Cornwall away. “If you’re gonna laugh at me, you can get outta here. Go laugh with your friends. First you’ll have to find some.”
“I’m sorry.”
> “What do you name your characters, if you’re so smart?”
“I’m never good with the names.” Names are a certain place my head doesn’t go. “I get stuck trying to think up different ones. Usually I just forget it and move on to create another character.”
“That’s because a name has to mean something. What’s your name?”
“Perry Eckert.”
“What do people call you?”
What a strange question, I think, considering that people do call me something different; am I the sort of person who everyone knows has a nickname? That only works for people in sports, or superheroes … I realize an Indian raga is playing through the sound system in the store, drifting around me and Roland like a waterfall.