From the way Circle had been described, Clay expected his new cabinmates to be sitting on the floor with their legs crossed, talking about their feelings. Instead, they were lounging on their bunks with their feet up, talking about… well, Clay couldn’t tell, because they stopped talking as soon as he walked in. He suspected they’d been talking about him.
“Cabin, meet Clay,” said Buzz. “Clay, meet cabin.”
Clay’s first impression was that the three other boys in his cabin looked like a rock band—a young and clownish but also somewhat scary rock band. Between the three of them, they had a green Mohawk, a gold-tipped Afro, and one heavily gelled, slicked-back hairdo. Clay felt very dull in comparison—at least hair-wise.
“Well, isn’t anybody going to welcome the new Worm?” Buzz prompted.
The boy with the slicked-back hair jumped to his feet and shook Clay’s hand. He wore a pair of oversized eyeglasses that had no lenses and a T-shirt decorated with a picture of a necktie. Clay thought the outfit was supposed to be funny, but he wasn’t absolutely sure.
“Welcome to the Wormhole, New Worm,” said the boy with the glasses. “We are your Worm-mates. Punk Rock Worm over there is Pablo.”
The boy with the Mohawk raised a fist in greeting.
“Lil’ Superfly Worm here is Jonah.”
The boy with the Afro nodded his head.
“And that leaves yours truly,” said the boy with the glasses, pointing to himself. “I’m the Boss Worm, Kwan, which means ‘best-looking guy in the room’ in Korean, in case you were wondering.”
“And it means ‘biggest dork in the room’ in English,” said Jonah.
There were four bunk beds, making eight beds total, but there was only one free bed because Buzz had an entire upper and lower bunk to himself, and the other unused beds were covered with a jumble of dirty laundry and muddy shoes. Clay’s bunk, to which he was directed right away, was the top bunk in the back left corner of the cabin. Since the other campers had chosen their bunks first, Clay figured his was the least desirable, though he wasn’t sure why until he sat on the mattress; the springs were popping out, and they jabbed him whenever he moved. The cabin was open-air style, with no glass or screens in the windows, and from Clay’s bunk he could peer down to the ground outside. It gave him a slight feeling of vertigo, which he did his best to ignore.