When everyone was seated in the cafeteria, the camp director stood on a chair and spoke into a megaphone. “Everyone! Attention please.”
“I think you’re right, Wesley,” whispered Nikhil. “She’s going to break Color War!”
“I thought it’s supposed to break with something crazy and fun,” said Gabe, disappointed. “I’ll be mad if it just starts with the director saying it at dinner.”
“Quiet, guys,” said their counselor.
“See?” whispered Nikhil. “You have to be quiet when Color War breaks.”
The director cleared her throat into the megaphone and waited until she had complete silence. “Thank you,” she said. “Unfortunately, we found a case of head lice here at Summer Center. We have treated the camper who had it, but I want all of you to be extra careful. Don’t share hairbrushes or hats, and don’t put your head on someone else’s pillow. Shampoo every day. If you feel itchy, please see the nurse. We don’t want the lice to spread. Those of you who did the hairstyles activity a few days ago should especially get checked. Any questions—” Hands shot up around the cafeteria before she could finish her sentence with “ask your counselors.”
The director paused, deciding whether or not to answer questions herself. Then she called on a boy whose hand was up and shaking with urgency.
“Who has it?” he asked.
“That’s not important,” the director said.
“But if we know who has it,” the boy explained, “we’ll know who to stay away from.”
The director said, “You don’t need to stay away from anyone, but the point is that you should be cautious in general, because it could spread to anyone.”
At Gabe’s table, Nikhil nodded nervously. Gabe noticed that he was leaning slightly away from Gabe, probably because his spiky do reminded Nikhil that he’d done the hair-styles activity.
The camp director pointed at a girl on the other side of the room. “Yes?”
“Lice are insects, right? What genus and species are they?”
The director’s expression was a cross between amusement and exasperation. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Thank you for your attention. If you have any other questions about how to prevent lice, please talk to your counselors or the nurse. If you have questions about lice as organisms, speak to a science teacher.”
A camper seated right near the director raised her hand intently. The director looked at it, contemplating. Finally she said, “Is this a question that you could ask someone later?” The girl shook her head, and the director said, “Okay, last question, then. Go ahead.”
“I don’t know the genus and species, but I do know the phylum and class,” the girl said. “Anthropoda Insecta.”
“Thank you,” said the director. “Let’s all be vigilant so the lice won’t be a problem. Have a great day.”
Gabe remembered how many girls had touched his head at the hairstyles activity. All of a sudden, his scalp felt itchy. He didn’t seem to be the only one.
“I think I’ve got it,” Nikhil said. He ran his hands through his tall yard of hair as though searching for something he’d buried there earlier. “I should probably go see the nurse.”
“Do lice fly?” Wesley wondered aloud.
“I don’t think so,” said Gabe, running his pointer fingers over his scalp. “I know they lay eggs, though.”
“But they’re insects,” said Wesley. He asked their counselor, “Do lice have wings?”
Gabe asked, “Is ‘lice’ the same singular and plural?”
Nikhil ran a fork through his hair and examined the prongs. “I should probably just shave my head,” he said. “Just to be safe.”
The nighttime activity choices changed every day, but they usually fell into standard categories: arts, crafts, sports, academic challenges. But every now and then there’d be a special activity, brought on by extraordinary circumstances and only available that one time. The night Gabe had tried different hairstyles, for instance, was particularly clear, so Nikhil had done stargazing. And the day a famous chef came to speak to the Food Science class, he stuck around for activities and taught campers how to make cinnamon rolls.
On the sign-up sheet the day after the director’s announcement, there was an ad for another special, one-time activity.
The counselors didn’t know how many people would sign up, but they reserved one of the larger science rooms so that they could fit up to thirty campers. Once the sign-up sheets were collected, they had to trade rooms with the theater group so they could hold Lice 101 in the amphitheater, the only space that could comfortably accommodate eighty- three people.
Gabe and Nikhil both went, even though the nurse had given them each a clean bill of health the night before (and that morning again for Nikhil; he’d gotten checked twice). Amanda came in with Jenny Chin, and they sat right in front of Gabe and Nikhil on the risers, so that Amanda’s long, puffy hair hung millimeters from Gabe’s shins.
One of the science teachers stood in the center of the stage and expressed her excitement at having so many people interested in head lice. She began with some facts: “Pediculus humanus capitis, commonly referred to as head lice, are wingless insects that feed on human blood. They are about the size of sesame seeds. They have six legs that have claws that grip human hair.”
Gabe looked at the back of Amanda’s head. It was a thick, frizzy blob, a Pediculus humanus capitis amusement park.
The science teacher began writing and drawing on a rolling whiteboard that had been brought in for the occasion. She said, “The eggs that lice lay are called nits. Nits are oval in shape, and they’re sort of yellowish white. When a female louse—‘louse’ is the singular for ‘lice’—lays her eggs, the eggs glue themselves to the hair shaft.”
Gabe pulled his legs up onto the seat, away from Amanda’s hair.
The teacher wrote THE LIFE CYCLE OF LICE on the board and began drawing a diagram. A few campers started to take notes. Gabe watched with interest, being careful to keep his toes away from Amanda’s hair. He’d always lined up for the yearly lice check at school, and the one or two times someone in his class had it, he’d stuffed the note about it in his take-home folder with all the other handouts for his mom. He’d never really thought about lice as living organisms until today.
As he listened to the science teacher answer questions from around the room, he felt a tingly feeling come over him that he could only attribute to a love of Summer Center and everything they did there. For the sake of his logic proof, he knew he should bury that feeling and cover it up tightly.
Gabe ran his hands over the stiff peaks he’d spent ten minutes forming on his head. Is it really fair that I have to stop liking Summer Center to please someone who thinks “picture” is spelled “picktur”?
“No,” said the teacher, “lice can’t survive more than twenty-four hours without a human host. They need human blood to live.”
“That’s gross but also cool,” Nikhil whispered to Gabe. “They’re like little vampires. Not that vampires are real.”
Gabe put his fingers on his top lip to make fangs, and Nikhil covered his head with his arms. A printout with a blown-up picture of a real louse reached Amanda in front of them, and Gabe and Nikhil looked between the girls’ shoulders to get a peek. “Look at its claws,” said Gabe.
Amanda spun around and smiled. “I know you like doing things with me, but you should wait for your turn.”
Gabe bared his teeth and made his thumb and pointer finger into lice pinchers. Amanda stuck out her tongue and turned back around.
Now the nurse took the stage to begin talking about preventing the spread of lice. “Girls with long hair should be especially careful. It’s probably a good idea to wear your hair in braids and wear a hat or a bandanna over it.”
Gabe sat back and thought about how he could turn the lice problem into an epic poem. He could make it a whole story about killer lice vampires that are sucking the blood of unknown victims at camp. It would be really exciting, with plot twists and fight scenes and a team of bandanna-clad combs that blast the nits into oblivion. What rhymes with lice? he thought. Mice, rice, nice, suffice. … He kind of hoped that the lice stuck around camp a little longer. Imagine a whole lice epidemic! That’d even be something he could write to Zack about—it was like something straight out of the Grossology book—as long as he didn’t catch it himself. Fighting to obliterate lice was cool. Catching lice was not.
“Thanks for coming to Lice 101!” said the nurse. “You are all smart kids. If you’re smart about preventing lice, this camp will be a lice-free zone the rest of the summer. You can head back to your bunks—ha-ha!”
Problem: Am I a nerd who only has nerdy adventures?
Hypothesis: No.
Proof:
THINGS I CAN |
THINGS I CAN’T |
1. I’m going to sleepaway camp for six weeks! |
1. It is the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment. |
2. My bunkmates are really cool, and we became friends right away! |
2. They like learning digits of π. |
3. The food is bad, just like at camps in books and movies! |
3. We fixed it with lemon juice to kill the bacteria. |
4. She is in my Logical Reasoning and Poetry Writing classes. |
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5. I creamed Amanda in a sing-off! |
5. We sang all the countries of the world. |
6. We put music and sports pictures on our walls. |
6. They are of Beethoven and the rules of badminton. |
7. Wesley says amazing things in his sleep! |
7. He solves math problems. 7a. and brainteasers. |
8. I tried some cool hairstyles that lots of girls said looked cute. |
8. One is named for Julius Caesar. |
9. Vampire lice are sucking the blood out of people’s heads! |
9. We learned all about the Pediculus humanus capitis and their life cycle. |