Cool Campers (3 page)

“Hi,” BB finally said. He looked up at our enormous roommate and held up his hand. “My name's Andy, but you can call me BB.”

“Nice to meet you, BB. My name is Paul, but everyone just calls me Tiny.”

Tiny?
I thought. There was nothing tiny about him. Then I figured that must be why they called him Tiny. You know, like when a bald guy is nicknamed Curly.

“Hey, I'll bet I know why they call you Tiny,” I said, trying to be funny again.

“You do?” Tiny answered. He looked confused, like he wondered how I could possibly know. In fact, he looked so confused that I suddenly felt like maybe I shouldn't say what I was thinking.

“So why do you think they call me Tiny?” he asked. I couldn't say, “Because you're huge” if that really wasn't the reason. Maybe he didn't even know he was huge.

“Um . . . why don't you tell me why, and I'll tell you if I was right,” I said. His confused look turned to a friendly smile, and he happily told us his story.

“Well, when I was born, I came two months early and weighed about five pounds. I was so small I had to stay in the hospital for over three weeks. We have a picture of me, and I was just a little bigger than my dad's hands. The doctor said I was a miracle baby. Since then, my dad and everyone else have called me Tiny. So why did you think they called me Tiny?” The guys turned to me and waited for my answer.

I began to sweat. “That's exactly what I was thinking,” I said. “Only I was going to say that you weighed four pounds, not five.”

“Wow,” Tiny said. “You're good.”

IT WAS NOT
long before all of us felt like friends. We opened our backpacks and shared our candy with each other. Tiny had brought twice as much as the rest of us. BB had all kinds of gummy worms and other candy bugs. He told us more about all the bugs he'd collected, Tiny talked about how he liked to draw pictures, I gave a replay of the final inning of the championship baseball game we'd won a few weeks earlier, and Graham went on and on about Kelly and how beautiful she was.

“You like girls?” BB asked, scrunching up his nose. “All the girls at my school have germs.”

I looked at BB and thought about all the bugs he found and dug for in the dirt. I wouldn't think germs would bother a guy like him.

Graham put one hand on BB's shoulder. “Kelly's no ordinary girl. She's like . . . um . . . help me out, Raymond. Tell them how amazing Kelly is.” Our two new friends turned to me, awaiting my incredible description of Kelly. I didn't know what to say. She just seemed like any other girl to me. But I knew I had to help Graham.

“Let's see,” I started. I thought back to the Valentine's Day boxes we decorated in school last February. “To begin with, she can cut perfect hearts out of pink paper. And then there's how . . . um . . .” Graham stared at me with wide eyes as I tried to describe the girl he'd admired his entire life. “Well . . . there's . . . um . . . oh yeah, those great glasses she wears,” I continued. Graham smiled and nodded. I couldn't think of anything else. Somehow, even though I had known Kelly since the first grade, it all came down to cutting out paper hearts and wearing glasses.

They all stared, waiting for more. Unfortunately, that was it.

“That's about it,” I said.

“Yes, she's perfect.” Graham sighed. BB and Tiny looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Just then, we heard the gong ring.

“Let's go grab some lunch,” I said.

“Let me just clean my glasses first,” BB said. He sat on his bed and dug through his backpack until he found a small square cloth. BB had big blackframed glasses, and when he took them off his eyes looked small and squinty. As he cleaned his glasses, Tiny carefully moved over to the bugs in their jars.

“These bugs can't get out, can they?” he asked. He sounded nervous.

“Nope, they're safe in there,” BB answered, squinting at Tiny.

Tiny looked from one jar to the next. “What are you going to put in this empty one?” He unscrewed the lid of the empty jar and held it up. BB put his glasses back on.

“What empty one?” He looked up, gasped, then leaped from his bed and grabbed the jar out of Tiny's hand. “Where's Harry?” he screamed.

Tiny dropped the lid and shook his hands. “Who's Harry?”

“He was probably hiding on the lid!” BB shouted. He picked up the lid and examined it. “Oh no, he must have jumped off when you opened the jar.” The seriousness of BB's voice made us all scared.

“Who's Harry?” we all asked together.

“He's the big, hairy brown spider I found under the front steps of the cabin. I was still trying to figure out what kind of spider he was.”

Graham and I immediately jumped to Graham's top bunk.

Tiny had a look of terror on his face. “Aaaah, I hate spiders!” he screamed. It was a high-pitched scream that you wouldn't expect from a big guy like him. He was turning in circles and waving his hands in the air.

“Wait! Stop!” BB yelled. Tiny froze with his back toward us. BB crept slowly toward Tiny. “Don't move.”

“Why?” Tiny cried. Then Graham and I both realized what BB was doing. Graham pointed to Tiny's back.

“It's on your back! Harry's on your back!”

“What?” Tiny let out the most terrible, piercing shriek I'd ever heard. He started jumping around like a maniac, kicking his feet and swinging his arms in all directions. He looked like a crazed karate master. He ripped his shirt off and threw it on the floor. Then he leaped over to the corner of the room and stood there shaking.

BB bent down and carefully lifted the shirt. The spider was still there. Slowly, he moved the shirt to the opening of the jar. After a quick tap to the back of the shirt, Harry was back in his jar.

We all took a deep breath. I looked at Tiny and wondered how a big guy like him could jump around like that. BB handed him his shirt.

Tiny examined it thoroughly and pulled it over his head. Then he gave one last big shiver. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. “I'm okay,” he said. “Sorry, I don't really like spiders.”

“Really?” Graham said. “We couldn't tell.” Then we all started laughing. BB put the jar back on the table, and we walked down to the mess hall.

The room was filled with long tables. At one end, there was a huge fireplace that I could probably stand up in, and at the other end were two long serving tables. Four staff members were serving the food. A few kids were already sitting down and eating, but no one was in line, so we walked right up.

The choices were hot dogs or hamburgers. There were also chips, bananas, cookies, and cartons of milk. I chose a hot dog, Graham and BB both picked burgers, and Tiny took one of each.

“Where should we sit?” Graham asked, scanning all of the empty tables. I set my tray down on the table right in front of us.

Graham placed his tray next to mine, and Tiny and BB sat across the table from us. Tiny picked up his hot dog with one hand and his hamburger with the other. Then he went back and forth taking a bite out of each one.

“Wow, that's a lot of food,” Graham said. “Why didn't you get a banana?”

Tiny put the hamburger down, rubbed his stomach, and made a face like he was sick. “Bananas give me gas,” he said.

“Oooh,” we all replied in unison. I didn't know about the rest of the guys, but I was really glad he didn't get a banana. I'm not sure why, but it seemed like gas from a huge kid like Tiny would be a lot worse than gas from a puny kid.

We sat there quietly enjoying our food until Graham broke the silence. “You know, I always wanted a nickname. You two are so lucky.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Nicknames are so cool. My sister always calls me Dork. But I don't really count that as a nickname.”

“Yeah, but she thinks everyone is a dork, so it doesn't really matter.” I turned back to BB and Tiny. “Does anyone even call you by your real names anymore?”

BB thought for a moment. “You know, I can't remember the last time anyone called me by my real name.”

“Me neither,” Tiny said. “Even my grandmother calls me Tiny.”

Then it hit me. “Graham, let's get nicknames for camp.”

“Yeah!” He looked at BB and Tiny. “You two can give us our nicknames.”

“Why us?” BB asked. He looked a little nervous about being in charge of something so important.

“Well, we can't give ourselves nicknames,” Graham said. “They have to come from someone else. Take Tiny, for example. He didn't get born one day, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Wow, I am so small. I think I'll just call myself Tiny.' Someone else had to do it.” I nodded in agreement.

BB and Tiny looked at each other. “Well, I guess so,” Tiny said. “But I've never given anyone a nickname before. I might not be good at it.”

“All right,” BB said. “Let's see. It should probably be based on something you like or how you look or maybe part of your real name.”

“Hmm . . .” Tiny scratched his head and looked deep into my eyes. “Tell me, Raymond, what do you really like?” At that moment I couldn't think of anything.

“I, uh, like . . . hmm, what do I like?” I looked around the room for some ideas. Then I glanced down at my tray. “Well, I like hot dogs.”

“Hot dogs, huh,” BB said. “How about just calling you Hot Dog?”

“Nah.” I shook my head.

“How about Weenie?” Tiny said in his happy voice. “It's just another word for hot dog. You know, like—”

“No way!” I interrupted. “No one wants to be called Weenie!”

“I guess you're right,” Tiny said. Graham was trying to hold back his laughter.

“Why don't you start with Graham instead?” I suggested.

Tiny turned to Graham. “Let's see. How about Red?”

“Why Red?” Graham asked.

“Because your hair is red.” Tiny pointed to Graham's messy mop of curly red hair.

“Oh, yeah. Well, I don't want to be called Red. Try another.”

“How about Freckles?” BB said.

“Nope. Don't like that either.”

BB and Tiny both let out a heavy sigh at the same time.

“I know,” BB said, sounding a little impatient. “How about ‘Graham'?”

“Graham . . . hmm. I like it,” Graham answered, laughing. “Let's go with that.”

“And just call me Raymond,” I joined in. In the end I figured being called Raymond and Graham was a lot better than being called Weenie and Freckles.

IT WAS TWO
o'clock when we finished lunch. The gong sounded again, so we all walked to the lodge together. The place was packed, and it was loud in there. Everyone was talking at the same time. I looked around for people from our school. The only ones I saw were Zach and David. They were standing next to each other across the room. I figured they must be in the same cabin. I recognized a few other kids from last year, but couldn't remember most of their names. It didn't look like Matt was there.

“Hey, isn't Matt coming?” I asked Graham.

He looked around the room. “I guess not. This will be great. One less guy trying to be popular.”

The noise seemed to get louder and louder. Then, out of nowhere, the growl of a grizzly bear blared over the loudspeaker. It silenced the entire room. As we looked around, searching for the bear, the doors swung open and in ran all of the camp staff. They were cheering and clapping and jumping around like crazy.

“Let me hear you growl, Grizzlies!” one of them yelled. We all growled as loud as we could. They ran up and down the room and made their way to the big fireplace in the front of the room.

“Hello, Grizzlies!” they all called out together.

“Hello!” we all answered.

“Is that the best you've got?” one of them yelled back.

“Hello!” we screamed at the top of our lungs.

I loved this part of camp. Somehow all of the energy from the staff made me even more excited to be there. I looked over at Graham. He was jumping around and cheering. I could tell he loved this part too.

A tall guy with short hair that stuck straight up stepped forward. “Is everyone ready for some Grizzly Fun?”