Camp Valor by Scott McEwen

Author:Scott McEwen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

PART THREE

CHAPTER 16

July 2017

Camp Valor

Ropes were tied to the corners of a big white sheet. The sheet hauled up, pulled tight. A fire was lit, the projector plugged in. Wet Hot American Summer, a classic summer camp comedy, glowed on cotton. Campers gorged themselves, talking longingly of home. Dolly set a schedule for guard duty: everyone would have an hour, but no one was really listening.

Ebbie devoured two entire pizzas on his own, Samy “cameled” two and a half. Sugar flowed into bloodstreams. Laughter rose. Taut, half-starved bodies became sated. Sunburnt and chapped faces softened. Minds unfocused. Bliss. Finally able to act their ages for a moment. To let loose and forget Valor.

Wyatt lay down on the grass under the giant glowing bedsheet, watching Paul Rudd as a camp counselor when Dolly flopped down next to him and gave him a quick glance and a smile. “Mind if I sit here?”

“Sure,” Wyatt said.

Dolly lay down beside him. Not so close that they were touching. But close enough that Wyatt felt his heart start to hammer in his chest. Had she asked him another question, he could not have answered. He couldn’t speak. The movie and the glowing bedsheet, the other campers, were suddenly a thousand miles away. Pinholes against a black sky.

Wyatt felt himself pulled to Dolly in a way that almost scared him. Her face shone in the light from the projector. It looked like porcelain, her lips red. She glanced back and his instinct was to look away, but he did not. He kept his gaze on her. And she did not flinch. She grinned and turned her eyes back to the screen. Wyatt lost track of time and proximity and was the happiest he’d been in recent memory.

“Dolly,” Hud’s voice called out from the other side of the fire, breaking Wyatt’s reverie. “Would you pass me a Coke?”

And everything shifted. The tilt of the planet that seemed to lean Wyatt into Dolly now tilted the other way.

Dolly’s smile turned into a scowl, something uncertain. “Yeah, sure.” Awkwardly she rose, walked to the cooler, fished out a can, and took it over to Hud.

She did not come back. She sat down beside Hud. Even closer than she had to Wyatt. Wyatt wanted to stick his hand in the fire. Maybe his head, too. He waited a few minutes, as the laughs rolled on, then he got up from the fire. He needed to put some distance between himself and Hud and Dolly.

“Where you goin’, son?” Samy asked, craning his neck back.

“Bed.” Wyatt retreated from the pool of light cast by the projector. “Wake me when it’s my turn to be on lookout.”

Wyatt pushed into the cabin. Empty. Dark. Musty. One look at his sleeping bag and bunk told him he wasn’t ready to sleep. Too much sugar. Too much frustration. And he smelled bad. Really bad.

Wyatt found a dirty bar of soap and a stiff towel and instead of hiking into the Caldera where there were showers, he headed down to the water.

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