14

It was Saturday morning, the first day of summer vacation. Max called to invite me over to his place to hang out before he left for camp. I was still mad at him, but I didn’t have anything else to do. It was better than doing nothing.

Max’s room is way bigger than mine. Maybe bigger than our entire living room, even. There’s a chess theme to his room. He has two big chess pieces carved out of wood: a king and a queen. They’re almost as tall as he is. He has a collection of chess sets. One has pieces that look like superheroes. Another has Alice in Wonderland characters. He has a poster of Garry Kasparov playing chess against Deep Blue. Kasparov was a world chess champion, and Deep Blue was the name of an IBM computer program that could play chess with humans. It was a new thing back then, and it was a huge deal when Deep Blue beat Kasparov. Max also has a poster of Magnus Carlsen. He’s Max’s favorite chess player of all time. He’s from Norway. He became a grand master when he was thirteen. Max told me it’s the highest title a chess player can earn, and once they earn it they can keep the title for life.

Camp Kanakwa is the name of the camp that Max goes to. Max says it’s his favorite place in the world. It’s on Lake Newago, about two hours away. Max has been going every summer since he was in second grade. It’s full of guys like him, guys who are obsessed with chess.

“Do you want me to get you a camp T-shirt?” he asked. I figured he was trying to be nice to make up for being such a jerk about my Chads.

“Why would I want a T-shirt from your camp?” I said, not trying to be nice. “I don’t go there. I’m never going to go there.”

“Fine.”

“Maybe one of your minions in the chess club would like one,” I answered. “Maybe you should get one for Gretchen Thorn. Just make sure it isn’t a fake T-shirt.”

“Why would I get a T-shirt for Gretchen Thorn?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “You’re always hanging out with her and Youssef and Jamal and the rest of your chess club chums.”

“Chums?” he said. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a word I learned from the Hardy Boys,” I said. “It means friends.”

“Oh,” said Max. “Because chum is also what you call chopped fish when you use it as bait. So I guess it’s a homophone.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “We’re not in school anymore.”

“Look,” Max said. “I feel bad about the whole thing with your Chads yesterday. I shouldn’t have made such a big deal about them. I was just trying to be funny.”

“You were a jerk,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Henry.”

“I hate it when you get everyone to laugh at me,” I said. “It sucks. And you know what else sucks?”

“What?”

“I’m probably not going to do anything this summer,” I said. “That sucks even more.”

“Get your parents to sign you up for something,” suggested Max. “Maybe it’s not too late. Jamal is going to a robot camp. It’s at the university. They get to make robots. Then, at the end, they have a Robot Olympics.”

“I’ve been trying to get my parents to sign me up for something for months,” I said. “If my dad can’t afford to get real Chad Bakers, then I doubt he can afford to sign me up for a real camp.”

“You’d like camp,” said Max.

“Yeah, well,” I said. And then I didn’t say anything else. We don’t usually run out of things to say, but this was different. It was a bit awkward.

“I better go,” I said. I had to get out of there. I knew I was going to miss Max, but I didn’t want to admit it. I was still mad, but even worse, I was starting to feel sad.

“Hold on, Henry,” said Max, looking through his desk drawer.

He wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to me.

“Here’s my email address at camp,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, stuffing the paper into my pocket. “I guess I’ll see ya.”

“See ya,” he said.

I left his house and climbed onto my bike. It’s actually Max’s old bike. He gave it to me last summer after he got a new one. Typical.

On my way home, I saw Gretchen Thorn. It was at the intersection near the park. I was waiting for the light to change. She was wearing a red baseball hat and a green baseball jersey. She was walking a dog. It looked like one of those wiener dogs. Its legs were so tiny that it had to run just to walk.

“One,” she said, smiling at me.

“What?” I said.

“This is the first time I’ve seen you this summer,” she said. “I’m keeping count.”

“Um, okay,” I said.

The light turned green. I quickly walked my bike across the street and then sped away. Gretchen had only ever talked to me when she was with Max and all the other chess club kids. I wasn’t going to wait around for her to call me a pawn or make some dumb joke about me being a poet. I had no idea why she wanted to keep count of the number of times she saw me. It all seemed kind of weird.

Back at home in my room, I took the piece of paper out of my pocket.

Maxwell_Julycamper@campkanakwa.com

WRITE ME!!

I crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.