Disruption (3 page)

Chapter 5

I slipped into an empty seat toward the middle of the bus. There were about a dozen kids already on board. Some looked like they might be a year or two older than me, and others looked like they might be as young as ten. The first thing I noticed, though, was that they weren’t smiling the way they had been outside. Some scowled, while others wore expressions like blocks of concrete. Even the kids who looked a couple years younger than me looked like they weren’t to be messed with. I wondered if Dad had inadvertently snuck me into a camp for rich kids with bipolar disorder. I’d heard people like that can have unexpectedly drastic mood changes.

I lowered my head and pretended not to notice.

I hadn’t been sitting more than a minute when a kid my age, maybe a year older, marched from somewhere in the back of the bus and stopped in the aisle beside me.

“You’re in my seat, fish.” He was bigger than me, but not by much. His blond hair was cropped short, and he had dark eyes. Brown probably, but they looked almost black.

I’d seen enough prison movies to know that “fish” was something you called the new guy, but I’d never heard another kid use it. I decided to ignore him.

“Hey.” He poked me in the arm. “I’m talking to you, newbie.”

I sighed and stood up. “Your seat?”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Fine.” I grabbed my bag and heaved it across the aisle.

“That’s my seat too,” he said.

“C’mon, Chase,” a thin but tough-looking boy said from a few seats back. “Leave the new kid alone. We haven’t even gotten to camp yet.”

“Best behavior until we’re on the bus,” Chase said. He spoke like he was reciting a rule. He waved his hand around like a magician who’d just conjured his surroundings. “We’re on the bus now, wouldn’t you say?”

I was getting tired of this kid. I pointed behind him. “What about that seat? Is it yours too?”

He stared at me and nodded with an evil smirk that, combined with his overly dark eyes, made him look like one of those demon-human hybrids you see on late-night TV. I took a slow breath and could feel the collective gaze of everyone on the bus. I wasn’t interested in fighting this kid. He looked tougher than me. But I knew bullies. In elementary school there had been one in my class, Benjamin Bertem. He used to pick on a bunch of us until one day when we waited for him after school and beat him up, five against one. Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t a fair fight. We were all hauled down to the principal’s office and had to write letters of apology to Ben. But after that, he never bothered us again.

Bullies are like hyenas. They pick out the weak one in the group and attack. If you make it known you’re not going to put up with it, they move on.

I rolled my shoulder and thought,
Sorry, Dad
, then turned and glared at Chase.

“Well if that’s your seat,” I shifted my weight from my heels to the balls of my feet, “maybe you should have a seat.” I lunged at him full force, arms stretched out. I figured I’d probably get a bit of a beating, so I wanted this hit to count.

I’m not entirely sure what happened. He moved, or maybe I slipped, but one second I was rushing into him, and the next I was upside down, my face pressed against the floor between two seats across the aisle. Chase gripped one of my legs, holding it up so I couldn’t right myself, and with his free hand, he pounded me in the ribs over and over. His fist felt like it had been dipped in cement. I yelped and squirmed, thrashing around like a hooked fish.

“C’mon, Chase,” I heard someone say. “Let ’im go.”

Chase laughed and shouted something I couldn’t make out, but as he did, he stopped hitting me long enough for me to twist my hips and place my hands on the floor beside my face. I drew the knee of my free leg up to my chest and lunged back as hard as I could. I hit him, he dropped my leg, and I landed on the floor of the bus. I pulled myself to my feet, spun around, and swung my fist where I imagined Chase’s face would be.

My fist slammed into the palm of a very large hand owned by a guy wearing a safari vest. My mouth and eyes widened in the same instant.

“What are you two doing?” Mr. Smith snapped. He stood between me and Chase, one hand clenched around my fist and the other hand on Chase’s chest, holding him back. Blood trailed from Chase’s nose. “That woman from the accreditation association hasn’t been gone five minutes.” His voice was as rough as sandpaper, and his grip tightened with each syllable. “What if she’d come back? What if she’d seen you two?” He glared murderously at Chase, then me. “You know what’s at stake. This is your future we’re building, and I have no patience for little brats who want to sabotage this organization. Understood?”

Chase sighed. “Yes, sir.”

I blinked. I guessed there was only so much bloodshed allowed before accreditation was rejected. That, or Smith was really worried about lawsuits. It’s a camp for rich punks, I remembered; they’d probably sue for too much pulp in their orange juice.

Smith glared at me, and his grip coiled tighter over my fist. “Well?”

I winced. “Y—yes, sir.”

He gave us both a shove and said, “Sit down and shut up. Unauthorized violence is not permitted. Not here. Not at camp.” He glared at us again, and when he spoke next, it was through clenched teeth. “Break that rule and I’ll see to it you’re both kicked out of the program.
Capisce?
”

Chase paled, then nodded and sulked back to his seat. Smith turned to me, and I quickly grabbed my bag and slipped back into my original seat. I’d only been part of this camp for ten minutes, and already I had half a dozen questions rattling around my skull. None of them made much sense.
No unauthorized violence?
Did that mean there would be
authorized
violence at the camp? I wasn’t looking forward to that. I was never any good at wrestling or boxing. Why had Smith and Dalson seemed so pleased with my sarcastic comments to the lady in the parking lot? Was this some kind of comedy camp? If so, I’d be golden. And what was the deal with these campers? One minute they were practically skipping around the buses holding hands and braiding each other’s hair, and the next they looked like a group therapy session for kids with anger management issues. Probably not a comedy camp, then.

“That was a lucky kick.” The voice came from over my shoulder, and I turned to see a girl staring back at me. She had light blue eyes and dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her skin was the color of toffee. “Still,” she added with a grin, “it was nice to see Chase take a shoe to the side of the head.”

I shrugged. “Thanks. I guess.”

“I’m Rylee.” She reached over the seat and held her hand out. “I kind of pride myself on knowing who’s who, and I don’t think we’ve met.”

“I’m Matt,” I said shaking her hand. “And no, we haven’t met. This is my first time.”

She nodded. “That explains it.”

“What?”

“Why you tried to fight Chase.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You didn’t know better.”

I felt my brow furrow.

“He’s a Delta. He’s not going to make things very comfortable for you. My advice?” She leaned closer to my seat. “Either hope another Delta picks you, or make yourself scarce for the next three weeks and hope Chase forgets your name.” She made a face at me. “But if I’m being honest, I think you might be in real trouble.” She smiled again. “Don’t sweat it. Maybe another Delta will pick you.”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” I said. I glanced over Rylee’s shoulder. Chase was eyeing me the way a Rottweiler would eye a squirrel. “What’s his problem, anyway?”

“The last three camps, he’s come in second in team challenges.” Her eyes shifted back and forth. “Second. Three times in a row. So he takes that anger out on others. Especially new kids. Plus, he’s a sociopath.” If she was joking, she needed to do some work on her delivery. The way she said it made me think not only that she was serious, but that being a sociopath was entirely normal. “It’s good to have at least one sociopath on each team. You never know when a team challenge might require you to do something someone with a conscience might have a problem with.”

“Yeah,” I said, “sure. Makes total sense.” She was messing with me. Cute
and
sarcastic. I was liking this girl more and more by the second.

“But since he’s the Delta, it means he has the power to be dangerous rather than just annoyingly unpredictable.”

I shook my head. “I’ve dealt with his kind before,” I said. “He’ll get over it.”

She laughed and then stopped abruptly. “Oh, you were being serious.” She bit her lip. “I know him. Or, at least, I’ve seen him pick on people before. Trust me; your best bet is to get picked by a different Delta. It’s a long shot, but . . .”

Okay, now she seemed really sincere, and that just made me nervous. But I remembered that Dalson guy saying something about how I was going to be a Delta. I almost mentioned it to Rylee, but stopped myself. I wasn’t sure what it was to be a Delta, and clearly I was supposed to know.

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you a Delta too?”

A boy from across the aisle looked up from his laptop and laughed. “Her? A Delta?” He laughed again. “Not likely.” He had a tangle of orange hair and pasty skin that looked almost translucent. If he hadn’t been on the bus, I’d have thought his skin had never seen sunlight.

Rylee frowned. “Shut it, wire-head.” She looked back at me. “He’s a techie. He knows very little about anything outside of computers.” He shook his head and turned back to his computer, and Rylee straightened. “Chase has been a Delta for at least six camps now, so he’s going to be named a Delta. I could probably guess who the others will be, but no one
really
knows until they’re called.”

The kid hunched over his keyboard snickered.

“It could happen,” she whispered. Then she looked back at me. “I haven’t been one yet. But if I were picked, I’d be brilliant.” She leaned forward. “I have my team all picked out.”

The frizzy-haired kid sighed.

Rylee glared. “Keep it up and I’ll take you off my list.”

“All right,” I said under my breath, “there are teams, and the Deltas are like the captains? What sport are we playing?”

“Wow, you
are
new,” Rylee said. “Which is really weird since you’re so old.”

“Old?”

“You know what I mean.”

I didn’t have a clue what she meant, but for the hundredth time that morning, I had a feeling I should. “What kind of competition is it?” I asked. “How do the teams compete?”

Rylee fished an iPod from her pocket and put one of the earbuds in her ear. “You’re asking the wrong questions, Matt.” She nodded toward the back of the bus. “You should be working out a plan to avoid Chase.” She slipped the other earbud in place and leaned forward. “And that’s not something I’m interested in getting involved in.” She pressed a button on her iPod and closed her eyes.

I turned back around in my seat and stared straight ahead. I wasn’t actually worried about Chase. He was a bully, and I’d deal with him if I had to. I was more worried about the fact that my dad had asked me to blend in, and instead of doing that, I’d somehow landed a spot as a Delta—a team captain. Maybe I could still fake it if I knew what sport we’d be playing or what was expected of me as a team captain, but I didn’t have a clue, and I had a feeling I was going to have a very hard time when we got to camp.

Alaska wasn’t always cold, was it? I wasn’t really a fan of the cold.

I rubbed the side of my chest where Chase had pounded me and turned my attention to the road.

Dad, what have you gotten me into?

Chapter 6

At the beginning of eighth grade, my science class had taken a field trip, and in two hours on the bus, three fights had broken out, one boy had been taped to the emergency exit, and another had been stuffed under a seat. The trip to the camp was more like an hour and a half, but in that time, no one did anything that could’ve been seen as
bad
. And it wasn’t that they were good either. In fact, with a few exceptions, everyone on the bus had these icy expressions. Mess with any one of them, and I was reasonably certain you’d end up with a sharpened toothbrush in your spleen.

Maybe this camp was for criminally insane youth, and my dad had sent me here because he saw these campers as my peers. One little prank goes wrong, and everyone thinks you’re a dangerous criminal. Give me a break! I shook my head. No, he’d said it was for rich kids. Not that rich kids couldn’t be dangerous criminals, yet somehow I doubted there’d be a camp for that sort of thing.

“Five minutes,” the driver yelled. I jumped because until that moment he hadn’t uttered a single word, and hearing an adult’s voice caught me by surprise. “You’re to head directly to the soccer field. Deltas will be named, and selections will commence immediately.”

Everyone straightened in their seats and clutched their backpacks against their chests. Rylee wasn’t kidding about Delta being a big deal. The more I watched, the more I realized these kids weren’t like other kids, at least no kids I knew. They were disciplined, but not in the cadet-at-military-camp way. I had friends who were in Junior ROTC, and they said bus trips were as wild as ever. Plus, the only supervision on the bus was the driver, and yet, with the single exception of what had happened before we left, no one had gotten out of hand.

I craned my head over the back of the seat to ask Rylee if there was anything else I needed to know before we got off the bus, but she shook her head before I could speak. She pressed her finger to her lips and whispered, “Just follow me when we get off the bus. And for Pete’s sake, stay away from Chase.”

The bus turned off the highway and followed a narrow road for a few minutes, then turned again, this time onto an even narrower dirt road. The branches clawed at the windows of the bus until they thinned and finally fell back. Before long the trees disappeared behind rolling hills that stretched out around us. A moment later we passed through a wooden gate with a large crossbeam high overhead that said CAMP FRIENDSHIP.