Like You'd Understand, Anyway

The counselors came back. They shoved each other around and got each other in headlocks. Campers were dismissed by troops, Beaver first. One kid tripped when we got up to leave and burned his hand. On the way back to the tents everybody had sword fights with the flashlight beams until the counselors told us to cut it out.

Nobody said anything in the tent. I climbed under the covers, already too hot. Mosquitoes buzzed in one ear and then went over to the other one.

They called lights out. We switched off our flashlights. “So, do you beat off?” BJ asked, as soon as they went out.

For some reason I got all teary and rolled my face into the pillow. It already smelled like the bottom of a laundry bag.

“How old are you?” he asked. A light went by outside and I could see his silhouette.

“Who you talkin' to?” Joyce finally asked back.

“You,” BJ said. “Anyone.”

“I'm eleven,” Joyce said.

“Yeah, well I'm twelve,” BJ said.

“Huh,” Joyce said. In the dark, one of them rolled over and then kicked hard at his sheets.

“What about you?” BJ asked.

“I'm twelve too,” I said.

“You are not,” BJ scoffed.

“I don't have time for this,” I said.

“He is not,” he said to Joyce.

“He says he is,” Joyce said back.

“Fuckin' liar,” BJ said, and rattled something in a box. I could hear him eating.

I was crying, which was the very last thing I wanted to be doing, and trying not to make any noise at all. I was pushing on my eyeballs with my fingertips and I was worried I was going to drive them through my skull. They hurt enough that I stopped. My father had said, “You don't want to go to camp? You don't want to do any thing. Times're tough all over. Go up there and force yourself to have a good time. We'll stay down here and deal with your brother.” When I tried to bring it up again later on, he told me, “Believe me, you got the better deal.”

“I got a boner like an iron bar,” BJ said. He made a noise on his bed like he was hauling it around.

This is only the first night, I kept thinking. And that only made me cry harder, until I stopped.

“What was that?” Joyce asked, and he and BJ stopped moving to listen. But then there was nothing else to hear.

At breakfast everybody seemed to know everybody but me. “I got you,” BJ called to a kid at another table. “I got you later on. You're mine.”

“You know him from back home?” I asked.

“I met him when you did,” BJ said. He sawed his fork into some waffles.

I looked at the kid. “When did I meet him?” I asked. Nobody answered.

The fat kid and I collided on the way out of the dining hall. He spilled something but I didn't see what. BJ high-fived me on the way down the front steps.

“It's not a crime to help somebody,” my mother told me once. She was talking about my little brother.

My little brother was going crazy. That was the big worry. I was wound pretty tight and had some issues, which was how my father put it, but my little brother worried everybody. I couldn't tell who was more scared about it, my mother or father. They started going over it one night after school got out for the summer, when they thought we were asleep, and after I listened for a while I sat up in bed and realized he was standing there in the hall in the dark.

“C'mon in here,” I told him. He came in and sat on the covers. He was only nine and it felt like he'd been crying since Easter. He had bed head and thick hair and it stuck up like a wing. Even in the dark he seemed sad.

“Waynik, Keough, what's his name, they're all the same,” my father said. He was rinsing something at the sink.

“They're trying everything they can think of,” my mother told him. “Waynik says to give it some time.”

“Waynik sees him one hour a week,” my father told her. “Friday afternoon to boot. He's got his clubs by the door. He's ready to hit the first tee.”

“You wanna try someone else, we'll try someone else,” my mother said.

“We tried someone else,” he said. “That's how we got here.”

My brother had been going along okay until he hit fourth grade. Then it was like everything was fine until it was too hard for him. He'd be shooting baskets and miss three in a row and just go off, tearing down branches and throwing the ball as hard as he could into the street. He broke a new tree my dad planted in half. He pulled his jaw down so hard with his hand he had to go to the emergency room. I caught him hitting himself one night because I heard the wet sound of the blood from his mouth. We were supposed to do our homework at the same time, and I'd hear him stop halfway through and tear it up and then move his arms so spastically that he'd knock over whatever else was on his desk.

That night after they went over things my mother and father were quiet, down in the kitchen. It was pretty bad to think about them down there just looking at each other.

“They think I'm mental,” my brother finally said.

“They're worried about you,” I told him.

“You think I'm mental?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“So why do I do mental things?” he wanted to know.

“I do mental things,” I reminded him.