When I came back to Jupiter from my private session with Mrs. Nussbaum the day after Cobie Petersen and Max talked me into smoking pot with them, Mrs. Nussbaum put my brother, and then Cobie, through pretty much the same routine of head-hole inspections, knee repair, and X-ray exams that I’d gone through.
I never asked Trent Mendibles or Robin Sexton what Mrs. Nussbaum did to them. As far as I could tell, Mrs. Nussbaum considered boys like Trent and Robin to be the normal ones—the boys she was depending on to steer the extinction of males (and if anyone could do it, the normal boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys would)—but she was highly suspicious of the other three boys of Jupiter.
So I told Max and Cobie the details of everything that had happened to me in Mrs. Nussbaum’s examination room, even how I was scared that the ointment she put on my scraped knees might have contained some of Mrs. Nussbaum’s girl sperm. They laughed at me. But every one of us was a little bit bothered by the colorful poster of the male reproductive system that hung on Mrs. Nussbaum’s examination room wall.
How could you not look at something like that? It was like standing on the edge of an empty field and witnessing a bloody car crash on the road you’re about to cross.
Then I told them about the questions she’d asked me—about what I meant when I wrote “inside a refrigerator” on my index card.
“Yeah,” Max said, “why did you write that?”
I shrugged. “It was the first place I could think of that was better than here.”
We were alone in Jupiter—well, except for Robin Sexton who just lay on his cot and stared up at the ceiling, pretending to be listening to music. Larry, as usual, was gone, and Trent Mendibles at that moment was probably sitting shirtless on the examination bed and having his hairy knees salved by Mrs. Nussbaum.
Max told us that Mrs. Nussbaum asked him a lot of questions after she read what he’d written on his index card. Unlike me, my brother kept adding to the card nearly every day, so Max had run out of room on one side and asked Mrs. Nussbaum if she would give him a new one.
Max said that she was thrilled he had kept writing on his card about where he’d rather be than at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, because it meant my brother was focused on better things and more positive experiences, and thinking like that motivates boys to take action. After seeing what Max had written on his card, I had to agree that Max was definitely motivated to take action on his positive experiences. He proudly showed Cobie Petersen and me what he’d been writing. And Max did not have the most legible penmanship, but these are some of the things I could decipher from Max’s scrawl:
Where I would rather be than at Camp
Merrie-Seymour for Boys:
Agitating my youth group
Encountering heaven through dance
Whipping up some jelly
Icing the jewelry store
Painting some sea monsters
My brother was an artist with words.
Max said Mrs. Nussbaum spent several minutes staring at his card. Then she looked at him, looked at his card again, looked at Max. This went on for some time, according to Max.
Finally, she said, “Max, tell me, what does all this mean?”
Max told her they were titles of poems he was planning on writing, when he had bigger pieces of paper.
Max said she came right out and told him this: “These all sound like they might be references to masturbation. Are they? Have you been masturbating since you came to Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, Max?”
And Max said, “How could you even think that? What kind of sick kid would waste his time writing poetry about masturbation?”
He said Mrs. Nussbaum turned red (Max was awfully good at embarrassing her), gave him a new index card, and then sent him on his way, back to Jupiter.
Since we were in a sharing mood, after Mrs. Nussbaum was finished with his examination, Cobie Petersen also showed us his index card. Like me, Cobie never amended his choice since the first day. His card read: Fishing or coon hunting up Dumpling Run with Ezra and nobody else.
We already knew Ezra was Cobie Petersen’s dog—the one who’d gotten pooed on by the Dumpling Man in Cobie’s scary story.
“Well,” Cobie told Max, “I could change my card now to say I wouldn’t mind if you and Ariel came along. I would kind of like that, I suppose.”
“Awww. I’m touched,” Max said.
“I’d go fishing or coon hunting with you, Cobie,” I said.
“Coon hunting sounds like slang for jerking off,” Max said.
“Everything sounds like slang for jerking off when you say it,” Cobie Petersen replied.
He was right.
He told us Mrs. Nussbaum asked about Cobie’s real name, which was Colton Benjamin Petersen, and about Dumpling Run.
“It’s a beautiful part of the state of West Virginia,” Mrs. Nussbaum had said.
Cobie Petersen said he liked to lay on the West Virginia–boy accent extra thick when he talked to Mrs. Nussbaum.
“’Deed it is,” Cobie told her.
“And interesting how many people up along the run are all named Peterson or Petersen,” she said.
“It ain’t very interesting to me, ma’am,” Cobie said. “But I am wondering something.”
“Oh! You can feel free to ask me anything, Cobie!” Mrs. Nussbaum said.
“I’m wondering why you have that big poster of a penis on the wall of your examination room.”
“Oh! Ha-ha!” Mrs. Nussbaum said, “You know, boys around your age are always so curious about those parts of their bodies, Cobie!”
“Well, if we were that curious, I reckon we wouldn’t have to look as far away as the wall of your examination room to find out pretty much everything we wanted to know,” Cobie Petersen pointed out.
Cobie told us this observation flustered her, too.
“Did she take all those X-ray pictures of everything in your body?” Max asked.
Cobie Petersen nodded.
I said, “I think she is suspicious of us because we’re not like the other kids here—the normal kids at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. And she asked about our dad working at Alex Division.”
“She asked about my dad, too,” Cobie added.
“I bet she thinks we’re biodrones or something, and that the other scientists at Alex Division are using us to keep an eye on her,” Max said. “None of those Alex Division guys trust each other.”
The thought of that terrified me. What if one of us actually was an Alex Division biodrone? How would any of us even know?
I looked at Max’s face for a long time, trying to see if maybe there was something hidden behind his eyes. Then I did the same thing to Cobie Petersen.
“Dude,” Cobie said, “quit staring at me. It’s freaking me out.”
Our little Jupiter cabin powwow fell silent. Trent Mendibles came back from his visit with Mrs. Nussbaum. Robin Sexton was lying on his back on his rumply cot, staring up at the black ceiling and rocking his head to nonexistent music.
“It’s your turn,” Trent Mendibles said.
Robin Sexton didn’t respond.
Cobie Petersen punched Robin Sexton’s shoulder. “Hey. Fucker. It’s your turn to see Mrs. Nussbaum.”
Robin Sexton got up, and as he headed toward the door, Cobie added, “And when she tells you to take off your shirt, you might as well just strip naked, ’cause she’s going to want to have a look at everything you’ve got, and you’re going to have to give a sperm sample, too.”
Robin looked horrified and sick.
When he left, Trent Mendibles said, “She didn’t do that to me.”
“I know, hairy dude. I just wanted to fuck with the kid,” Cobie Petersen said. “He looks scared enough to piss himself right about now.”
Cobie and Max were sitting next to each other on Cobie Petersen’s bed, directly across from me. I leaned toward them and whispered, “Do you think they would actually do that to one of us?”
“What? Strip us naked and ask for a sperm sample? Mrs. Nussbaum makes her own sperm. She doesn’t want guy sperm,” Max said.
“No. I mean the biodrone thing. What if one of us . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Nah,” Max said.
The way he said it made me feel better—like the thought of it was so completely ridiculous as far as my brother was concerned.
But I wondered how I was ever going to sleep peacefully again, now that Max had planted that little thought about one of us—maybe me—blowing up someday. My library of terrible stories was getting fuller and fuller.
And then Cobie Petersen asked, “Did she make you guys pee?”
“That’s really disgusting,” Max said. “Why’d you pee for her?”
“No.” Cobie said, “It’s not like I whipped it out and started peeing right in front of Mrs. Nussbaum. She gave me a plastic cup and told me to go in her bathroom and urinate in it, and then leave the cup of my urine sitting on the edge of the sink, so I wouldn’t have to be embarrassed about handing over a plastic cup of my urine to her. And she told me not to put my fingers inside the cup because it would contaminate my urine, and I was, all, like, why would I want to put my fingers in a cup of my own urine?”
“Did you pee for her?” Max asked.
Cobie Petersen shook his head. “Dude, there was no way I was going to pee for her after smoking pot last night. But I did need to poo, so I went inside and shut the door. That bathroom was the nicest one I’ve been in in a couple weeks, and no one standing around watching me poo, too, so I took advantage of the luxury. Then I decided I better leave something else in her cup besides pee, and I came out, thanked her for letting me poo, and left.”
“What did you put in the cup?” Max asked.
Cobie Petersen grinned and shrugged.
And Max said, “Wait. Are you saying you actually released your combat troops in Mrs. Nussbaum’s cup?”
Cobie nodded. “She’s just going to figure I’m a dumb hick from Dumpling Run who doesn’t know what urine means.”
Max fell back on the bed, covered his face with his hands, and said, “I am going to die!”
“You guys smoked pot. I fucking hate you,” Trent Mendibles said. “You ever go online, I’ll shred all your asses at BQTNP.”
Cobie Petersen answered the kid with a pair of stiffened middle fingers.