The Alex Crow. Andrew Smith

in a sort of rustic hewn-log font on the crossbar over the entry gate. It said this:

       Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys

       Where Boys Rediscover The Fun of Boyhood!

      It almost made me nauseous—not just the word rediscover, which is a ridiculous word—all the boy, boy, boy on that sign. You could practically smell balls just by reading it. To be honest, the camp always did smell like balls, anyway.

      Someone—no doubt a Merrie-Seymour success story who’d endured the camp before Max and I arrived—had taken the time to vandalize the crossbar by etching in two additional words: OR DIE.

      Apparently, the internees at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys had been encouraged to carve. This was something that we’d never be allowed to do. After Bucky Littlejohn’s archery performance, the counselors removed everything sharp from Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

      There were all sorts of things carved into the walls around our cots. Two pieces in particular fascinated me. First, there was a kind of religious depiction of an Xbox controller that was nailed to a cross floating in the clouds, while tangles of skeleton-thin boys looked up at it from the apparent hell of Jupiter cabin. The second thing I admired was a short inscription—a mathematical equation for our cabin—that said LARRY = SATAN.

      And there were plenty of names, too, and dates. The name nearest my pillow said ELI 1994. Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys had been there for decades.

      It was almost like sleeping in a graveyard.

      So as I lay there that first night, trapped between the twitching kid with toilet-paper earplugs from Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Cobie Petersen—and while I listened to Bucky Littlejohn’s pathetic sobbing—I imagined what 1994 Eli was doing right at that moment.

      Probably Facebooking, I thought.

      Larry extinguished the lantern. There was no electricity in the cabins, naturally.

      Our audience disbanded and journeyed back to their respective planets.

      The mattresses on our cots were covered with thick plastic. It made sense, I suppose, but whenever any of the boys moved or shifted, our beds made sounds like someone was crumpling a soda can. After about five minutes, Cobie Petersen said to no one in particular, “I can’t take this shit.”

      Larry said, “Shut up and go to sleep.”

      Larry had a non-plastic mattress. Apparently, Larry could be counted on to not pee his bed, or do the other things some of the campers at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys inevitably did.

      Max rolled onto his side—crumple crumple!—and put his pillow over his head.

      Then Cobie shot up in bed and yelled, “What the fuck! The crying kid’s pissing!”

      And we all heard the dribble of Bucky Littlejohn’s urine as it trickled down between the cots and puddled on the floor below us.

      Larry said, “Jesus Christ!”

      The lantern came back on.

      And Larry ordered Bucky Littlejohn, who was steaming and stained in his drooping, piss-soaked underwear, and the rest of us, the four insomniacs with dry underwear, to go to the lavatory—a dark and scary combination toilet, insect sanctuary, and shower facility for the campers—and fetch a mop and pail.

      On the way there, Cobie said, “If you weren’t covered in piss, kid, I’d kick the shit out of you.”

      I wondered if Cobie Petersen really meant that, because if he actually did kick the shit out of Bucky Littlejohn, it would really be a mess we’d have to clean up.

      It was a very long night.

THE GREAT WELCOMING MANNEQUIN

      It was hot and stuffy inside the walk-in refrigerator where I hid the day of the slaughter at the schoolhouse.

      It may be difficult for you to believe, Max, but electricity only came to the village once or twice per week, so the refrigerator had never performed its duties as far as I could recall. Maybe it did function as something other than a clown’s hideout at some point in time. Maybe there were legends passed down from the elders of the village about an era when the refrigerator was cold, and also contained food.

      Despite the fact that there was nothing edible inside the refrigerator, I could not bring myself to pee there when I needed to.

      Nobody pees inside refrigerators, even ones with no food in them. I would be in trouble if anyone ever found out I’d peed inside our school’s refrigerator.

      But, as desperate as my urge to pee was, I was too afraid to go outside.

      I thought about things. I wondered who was safe in the village, and if my cousins, my uncle, and aunt had been looking for me—or if they assumed I’d gone off with the other boys to become a rebel with the FDJA.

      So I tried to devise a mathematical formula based on the concept of predicting when, exactly, the need to pee would surpass my fear of being shot while dressed in a clown suit. As I thought about this, I curled up on my side and fell asleep on the floor.

      It is possible that I was inside the refrigerator for days. Who could ever know? Refrigeration—even when the refrigerator in question does not produce coldness—has a way of slowing down time. But I do know this: The mathematical breaking point at which I overcame my fear of going outside occurred sometime before I opened my eyes.

      I needed to go.

      So picture this, it is a disturbing image: a fourteen-year-old boy wearing a white clown suit, peeing into the gutter along a street in a village where none of the residents is alive.

      Everyone had disappeared or lay dead. Their bodies were scattered randomly as though they simply had the life force sucked away from them while they went about their daily drudgeries.

      It was poison gas. We were familiar with such things. It had happened before and certainly would happen again.

      A useless refrigerator saved my life.

      A second miracle, or possibly just another accident. Who can say about things like this?

      It was afternoon—but what day I could not tell—when I came out of the refrigerator to pee among the dead in the street in front of my old school. I say old because it certainly was not going to be a school after this. There was nobody left to learn anything.

      “Hey there. Where did you come from?”

      I spun around to see who’d asked the question. I hadn’t finished, so I found myself peeing in the direction of a pair of uniformed Republican Army soldiers carrying rifles. They’d been walking, searching house to house along the street toward the school. The men wore gas masks over their faces, so I could not tell which of them had called to me.

      “I came from a refrigerator,” I said.

      “How long have you been outside here?”

      “Not even long enough to pee.”

      They stood there, watching me as I buttoned up the front of my clown pants.

      The soldier on the right turned to his partner and said, “It’s a miracle this little boy survived.”

      “I thought so, too,” I said, choosing not to argue about such things as accidents and divinity.

      “Why are you dressed like that?”

      “We were having a play.” I nodded at the school. “In there. Someone stole my clothes and I had to stay like this. And why are you dressed like that ?”

      I pointed up and down, at the men’s uniforms.

      “You’re a funny clown.”

      I