With the row of packed bags along the wall—Gabe’s suitcase between Wesley’s duffel and Nikhil’s trunk—Gabe felt like he’d stepped out of a time machine into the first day of camp. How strange to think that only six weeks ago, he had just arrived at Summer Center and didn’t know Wesley or Nikhil or Amanda or the postulates of logical reasoning or the difference between a couplet and a triolet.
The three of them were mostly done packing, but they’d decided to leave all their pictures and lists and graphs on the walls until after their parents came. Even Nikhil agreed that being able to hold on to the feeling that the bunk was still theirs outweighed the risk of not being 100 percent packed by the time the parents arrived. Stark white walls would have been too sad. And besides, they wanted to show off their Pi digits and Wesley’s sleeping-bag times and their celebrity photos and the funny things they all said. They’d spent the first hour of the allotted packing time reading their walls and reliving the memories. It was only when David knocked on their wall and said that families would begin arriving in an hour—and then they’d need to go get lunch before their class presentations at one o’clock—that they got to work.
Wesley found a lump of clothes wedged between his bed frame and the wall. “I didn’t realize I brought this shirt,” he said. He shrugged, blew a ball of dust off it, and stuffed it into his duffel bag.
“That bag is so big,” said Gabe, “you could put a body in there.”
“I do have a body in it,” said Wesley seriously. “A body of knowledge about geometry and Shakespeare!”
All three of them cracked up.
Nikhil sighed and sat down on his bare mattress. “I wish school was going to be like Summer Center.”
“I know!” said Gabe. “This is like school, but even more fun.”
“And the other kids don’t make fun of you,” said Wesley.
“And they don’t call you a nerd and teacher’s pet,” said Nikhil.
“Or say SCGE stands for Smart Camp for Geeks and Eggheads.”
“That’s what they called it at my school too!” said Nikhil.
“Who called it that?” Gabe asked.
“Everyone,” said Wesley. “My mom came into school and told my teacher that I was going here, and then my teacher announced it to the class.”
“My mom told Julia Renderson’s mom,” Nikhil said through gritted teeth, “and then Julia told everyone, and they started calling it that.”
“Smart Camp for Geeks and Eggheads … That’s pretty good for people who aren’t smart enough to come here,” Gabe said. “I bet my stepbrother would call it that too. But you know what? Even if we are nerds, we did a lot of really cool stuff.”
“Well, duh,” said Wesley. “That’s because this camp is awesome.”
“Yeah!” said Nikhil. “Even if it is Smart Camp for Geeks and Eggheads.”
“I get to be Geek!” called Wesley.
“No,” said Nikhil. “Gabe should be Geek because his name starts with G.”
“I’m Geek,” said Gabe proudly.
“Okay,” said Wesley. “Then I’m Smarty, and Nikhil’s Egghead.”
“I don’t want to be Egghead,” said Nikhil. “Besides, your head is kind of shaped like an egg. Gabe, don’t you think Wesley’s head is shaped like an egg?”
“Is it?” asked Wesley seriously.
Gabe cocked his head. “Kind of. If eggs had hair and wore glasses.”
“I can see eggs wearing glasses,” said Wesley, “but imagine if they had hair. Nasty.”
They all laughed. “That goes on the quote wall,” said Nikhil. He got up, took a pencil out of his pocket, and added it to the long list of funny things they’d said or heard during the past six weeks.
“Hey, can I use your pencil?” said Gabe. A proud Geek, he walked to the drawing of the three of them that they’d had made during the caricatures activity. He used the pencil to write in their names below their faces: SMARTY, GEEK, AND EGGHEAD. Then he added, THE WORLD’S COOLEST NERDS.
From the front of the cabin, David shouted, “It’s noon, guys! Families will begin arriving any minute now. Make sure you’re all packed!”
As sad as he was to leave Summer Center, the sound of the word “family” made Gabe think about how long it had been since he’d seen his mom. He hoped she’d be the first to arrive.
“I can’t wait to see my family,” said Nikhil. “Even my sister.”
“My stepbrother told me my mom is bringing me a surprise,” said Gabe. “But I have no idea what it is.”
“My grandparents are coming,” said Wesley. “And my mom and dad and brother and sister. And my aunt and uncle who are visiting from China.” He scratched his egg-shaped head. “I hope there’s room for me in the car.”
“And for your body of knowledge,” said Nikhil. “Why are so many people coming to pick you up?” Gabe asked.
Wesley grinned. “They’re my Fans. Get it? Because my last name is Fan.”
As if on cue, the first family through the cabin door was the Fans, and there were a lot of them. “Dad!” shouted Wesley. He flew off his top bunk into the arms of a man who looked just like he did, only taller and with graying hair. Then Wesley was swallowed up by hugs and kisses and a flurry of conversation in Chinese. Wesley’s brother and sister began squeezing between and climbing over their relatives to walk around and look at the walls. There was hardly any room to fit them all, and Gabe could see that Nikhil was probably thinking about fire hazards, so he suggested he and Nikhil go wait for their families outside.
The campground was swarming with people, and more and more were parading over the hill to the bunk area in large clumps led by counselors and staff.
“There’s my mom!” shouted Nikhil. He sprinted toward an oncoming group of families and was greeted by a tall, thin Indian couple. Gabe watched as a small girl with long pigtails jumped out from between Nikhil’s parents and tackled Nikhil to the ground. They rolled down the hill in a tangle of arms and legs. Nikhil jumped to his feet and brushed himself off, but the girl kept rolling—making other families jump over her or step out of her way—until she landed close to Gabe. She stood up and showed off a smile that was missing so many teeth, it looked like a chess-board. Gabe wondered how many she’d lost naturally and how many she’d lost doing things like tackling Nikhil and rolling down hills.
When Nikhil and his parents reached the cabin, Nikhil said, “This is one of my bunkmates, Gabe. And this is my mom and my dad and my sister, Mo. She’s the crazy person who could have gotten hurt rolling down the hill.”
“I love danger,” said Mo, smiling devilishly.
Gabe laughed. He couldn’t imagine how one family could have two children who were such opposites.
Nikhil’s family went into the cabin, and Wesley’s came out shortly after. Gabe tried to be patient, but he was disappointed every time someone rounded the hill who wasn’t his mom. Wesley’s family came back out of the cabin and began talking to him. Talking to them all made Gabe wish he had more people coming to get him. Maybe not as many as Wesley had, but just a little more than his mom. He felt a familiar pang of yearning for a sibling. I will have a sibling in a few weeks, he reminded himself. Once I go back home.
Someone tapped Gabe on the shoulder. He whirled around. “Mom!”
“Gabe, honey!” She wrapped him in her arms. “I missed you!” she said, squeezing a bit tighter on the word missed.
“Me too. But I have so much to show you and—” Gabe broke away from his mother’s hug and saw his surprise.
“Hey, man!” said Zack.
Gabe blinked a few times behind his glasses. “Whoa,” he said.
“Are you surprised?” his mom asked.
“Yeah,” Gabe said honestly. He was also nervous and confused and angry. He was going to stop pretending around Zack from now on—he was sure about that—but he wasn’t sure he was ready for Zack to see his camp for what it really was. He worked hard all summer to keep Zack from finding out the truth about Summer Center. Now that Zack was here—here at camp—he didn’t know what would happen.
“It seems like you had the most awesome summer ever,” Zack said. “Now that I live in New York, I had to come see where it all went down.”
Maybe he won’t figure it out, Gabe thought desperately. “Yeah, cool. Hey, Zack!”
“Is this your bunk, honey?” asked Gabe’s mom. “Can we go inside and see?”
“Um, sure.” Gabe led them into the cabin and down the length of it. They squeezed past other kids and their parents, including Nikhil’s family. Gabe would have introduced them, but Nikhil’s sister was leaping from one top bunk to another, and Nikhil was focused on telling her to come down, so Gabe decided to do it later. “This is my section,” he said when they reached it. “I shared it with Wesley and Nikhil.”
“Is this them?” Zack asked. He walked right up to the caricature that now said, in Gabe’s handwriting, SMARTY, GEEK, AND EGGHEAD: THE WORLD’S COOLEST NERDS.
Gabe had to remind himself to breathe. “Yeah, that’s the three of us,” he said as nonchalantly as possible. He took off his glasses and began rubbing out an imaginary smudge with his shirt. He had to prepare himself to see Zack’s reaction as he took in the rest of the room. He put his glasses back on as his mom was commenting on the READING ROCKS poster and Zack was examining the funny quote board, which also contained flashes of genius they didn’t want to forget, like “Good idea for a comic book about two gangs: Similes vs. Metaphors” and “Good invention: Windshield wipers for glasses.”
“What’s a sim-mile?” asked Zack.
Gabe looked where he was pointing. “Oh, a simile?” he said. “That’s a comparison that uses the word ‘like’ or ‘as.’ I learned about them in my Poetry Writing class.”
Wesley ran back into the room to grab a hat. “And in Color War,” he said. “We needed a simile for the scavenger hunt, and we used ‘The lake was as cold as an ice age.’”
“Oh,” said Zack, his forehead wrinkled beneath his spiky black hair. “And who’s that?” He pointed to a printout on the wall near the ceiling.
Wesley stopped, his mouth in a circle. “That’s Beethoven! You don’t know Beethoven?”
“Oh,” said Zack. “He was a president, right?”
Wesley’s jaw dropped even lower.
“Of course he knows Beethoven,” said Gabe quickly. “The composer. He’s just kidding around.”
“Yeah,” said Zack, looking at Gabe with a combination of gratitude and befuddlement.
Gabe’s mom smiled and pulled Gabe toward her to kiss the top of his head.
Wesley started laughing. “You really had me!” he said to Zack. “Beethoven a president! He wasn’t even American! But he does kind of look like Andrew Jackson. I always thought that.”
Gabe tapped his nose. “Just the hair,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” said Zack sarcastically. “They could be hair twins.”
Wesley cracked up. “You’re funny,” he said, “like Gabe! And your hair is kind of like the kind of hair he had for a while.”
Gabe’s mom looked at Gabe with her eyebrows raised, but her eyes were smiling.
“Let’s go to lunch,” Wesley said, leading the way out of the bunk. “I hope it’s not lemon-plasma oatmeal again! Remember that?”
Gabe laughed. They had first had lemon-plasma oatmeal on the very first morning of camp. That felt like ages ago. His mom walked ahead, listening to Wesley tell her about how Nikhil taught them to put lemon juice on their food to kill bacteria.
“Lemon-plasma oatmeal?” said Zack, staying back. He looked up at the banner with Pi to the twentieth digit. “What kind of camp is this?” he asked.
Gabe looked at himself and Zack, nerd and non. He’d known this moment was bound to happen, only he’d imagined it happening when he was back home and had had more time to prepare. But in a way, hadn’t he had this whole summer to prepare?
He thought about Amanda, who he even sort of liked, despite her being so annoying and getting everything backward. And he thought about Nikhil and his sister, who were complete opposites but clearly loved each other anyway.
He took a deep breath. “SCGE stands for Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment,” he said. “It’s a camp for nerds.”
Zack’s shoulders drew up, and he cocked his head, taking this in. “But all the stuff you wrote about. Like kayaking to Dead Man’s Island—”
“I kind of can’t believe I did that,” said Gabe.
“And the lice—”
Gabe shuddered, remembering.
“And Color War. All that happened here, at”—he looked at the drawing of SMARTY, GEEK, AND EGGHEAD—“at this camp?”
Gabe nodded proudly. “And I didn’t even write to you about some of the best parts. Come on, I’ll tell you at lunch.”