The Alex Crow. Andrew Smith

So perhaps I had a polluted perspective on the whole notion of winning—of beating your rivals—and what that meant in the overall scheme of things.

      But this is what we do at camp; winners make losers, and losers make winners.

      Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys’ mess hall wasn’t much of a hall. It was a massive structure that some people might describe as a pavilion, a minimalist construction of more than a dozen or so log stilts that supported a peaked and shingled roof with lots of picnic tables beneath it. And all the tables were notched and carved, too. It seemed that the most popular word in camp-carving language was fuck, but I didn’t look at every single tabletop, so I can only estimate.

      A few weeks after I came to America, I thought it would be nice if I could invent a new language. I didn’t tell anyone about it, because the first thing people say to you when you tell them you are making up a new language is this: “Say something in it.”

      I wasn’t ready to start saying things yet.

      I was certain about this: In the best new language, there would be no words for me or you. Those words have caused all the trouble started by the old languages. In any new language, there should only be we.

      We do everything, and everything we do, we do to us.

      That would have to be the first rule.

      At dinner we sat beneath the pavilion roof and ate hamburgers and mashed potatoes with gravy. There was red Jell-O, too. I’m not sure what flavor the red Jell-O was supposed to be. It was sweet and rubbery. And red. Robin Sexton spooned some of his red Jell-O into the diamond-shaped opening on the paper carton of low-fat milk that came with every camper’s meal. Then he closed it and shook it up. Robin Sexton drank it. What dribbled from the corners of his mouth looked like salmon-colored vomit. He also put his mashed potatoes and gravy inside his hamburger.

      Max just stared at the kid. Max didn’t eat much.

      It was a very strange meal. The planets segregated themselves as planets will do, locked in isolated orbits at separate tables. So as much as we probably did not like each other, the four boys of Jupiter sat alone near the outer edge of the pavilion.

      Although other counselors sat among their wards, Larry chose not to eat with us.

      Some of the counselors brought acoustic guitars to the pavilion. At the end of dinner they were going to sing to us and teach us camp songs, because this was all part of rediscovering the fun of being boys.

      “If anyone attacks, we should all run that way,” Max said. He pointed to an opening at the edge of the yard that led into the trees of the surrounding black woods. We had walked the trail with Larry that morning before the archery disaster. About a half mile down the path was a spring that filled a cinder-block well house with icy water.

      “Are you always thinking about escape routes?” Cobie Petersen asked.

      Max nodded. “It’s what I do.”

      Cobie said, “Who would attack, anyway?”

      “Some of those fuckers from Mars look like psychopaths.”

      Max had a point.

      “Hey. Kid. Kid.”

      Cobie made an attempt at getting Robin Sexton’s attention. He waved his palm in front of the kid, but Robin had his face down over his Styrofoam plate so that his nose was just an inch above what remained of his hamburger bun.

      Cobie Petersen tapped Robin Sexton’s head and pointed at his ears.

      “Huh?”

      “Take that shit out of your ears.”

      Robin tweezered his fingers into his ears and popped out the two compacted beads of toilet paper. They were impressively large. Also, one of them had a smear of pumpkin-colored earwax on it.

      “What?” Robin said.

      Cobie Petersen asked him this: “Were you really jerking off in bed last night?”

      All the eyes of Jupiter were riveted on Robin Sexton, who, despite the dimness of evening, turned visibly red and bit his lip. This concerned me. I slept about sixteen inches away from Robin Sexton, and so did Max.

      “No,” Robin said. But if the boys of Jupiter could act as a fair jury, Robin Sexton would have been convicted on the spot.

      Robin added, “I. Uh. I sleepwalk. I had to make myself stay awake.”

      Cobie Petersen shook his head. “Jerking off is not a good way to keep yourself awake, kid. It just makes you tired.”

      Max nodded. “Punching the clown puts me to sleep, too, but I would never do it in Jupiter, with all you other dudes around. Gross.”

      I was horrified. This was not the first time since coming to America I had to sit through a conversation about jerking off. Max even talked about jerking off in front of our parents! They never knew what he meant, though, because he’d make up his own words for it, like punching the clown. Sometimes he’d talk about helping his best friend get an oil change, or going out for a shake with my best friend. But one night, he explained it to me in excruciatingly clinical detail. Max told me that all “normal” American boys constantly cooked soup, and that I’d have to stop acting like such an uptight immigrant kid and loosen up. And a number of the boys in my classes at William E. Shuck High School talked about jerking off as casually as you’d talk about going to the movies, or what you ate for lunch.

      Robin Sexton swallowed hard and then only stared—at Cobie, then Max, then me.

      Then he replaced his toilet paper earplugs and put his face back down in his food.

      Dinner ended with the agonizing song-singing that was a scheduled nightly event at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Larry came back from wherever he’d been hiding, and the six counselors, with two guitars, a tambourine, autoharp, and a cowbell, commanded all the planets to join in singing three songs I had never heard before. The first two songs were called “Kum Ba Yah” and “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”

      And I was not the only boy unfamiliar with these songs, since they played no part whatsoever in the culture of video gaming and social networking. So the counselors passed out photocopied lyrics sheets and made us sing, sing, sing, until we got the songs stuck in our heads for good.

      Also, the counselors encouraged us all to sing the word balls instead of ears during our multitudinous renditions of “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” Everyone thought this was very daring and funny. I thought it was as demented as having a conversation about punching the clown over dinner.

      But the worst thing was the third song. Nobody except the counselors and Max knew the third song, because it did not exist anywhere outside the solar system of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Max knew it because he’d been required to sing this same song during his summer at fat camp. The song was called “Boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour,” and it went like this:

       Merrie-Seymour Boys!

       We’re Merrie-Seymour Boys!

       We’re learning healthy habits,

       Smart as foxes, quick as rabbits!

       When people see us they turn and stare,

       Merrie-Seymour Boys are everywhere!

       We’re fit and strong, as hard as granite,

       We come from every single planet!

       So cheer and make a happy noise—

       For US, the Merrie-Seymour Boys!

       For US, the Merrie-Seymour Boys!

      When we shouted “US” in the last lines, we were supposed to clap. We looked like thirty-two (now that Bucky Littlejohn