You know what, Nuke?” Dweebs told me. “You’re going to fit right in here.”
Say what?
“Nuke?” I said.
Dweebs just kind of shrugged. “It’s short for New Kid. You’re the only one who wasn’t here last year.”
I guess everyone at Camp Wannamorra had a nickname. Or at least all the Muskrats did. Besides, I didn’t mind Nuke so much. It was better than some of the other possibilities. Like Booger Eater.
Meanwhile, all that moving in had worked up an appetite, I guess. By the time they rang the big dinner bell down at the main building, I was starving.
“Don’t get too excited,” Smurf told me. “Not unless you’re a big fan of mushy oatmeal.”
“Or mushy broccoli,” Cav said.
“Yeah,” Two Tunz said. “I lost ten pounds last summer. And that was after the pie-eating contest.”
I didn’t even care, though. At least I wouldn’t be eating alone. Camp had only started an hour ago, and I already had a cabin full of friends.
We all walked down to the Chow Pit together. Cav told me that was the name for the cafeteria. But when we got there, I didn’t see a cafeteria at all. Just a bunch of rickety picnic tables in a big circle on the grass, with a little hut off to the side.
“This is it?” I said. “There’s not even a roof. What if it gets hot out?”
“Then we sweat,” Bombardier told me.
“What if it rains?” I asked.
“Then the meat loaf isn’t so dry,” Two Tunz said with a laugh. He and Bombardier high-fived right over my head.
Every cabin had its own picnic table in the circle. We sat down at the Muskrat table while Rusty went with the other counselors to get the plates and silverware and stuff. That left about a hundred campers outside, all running around and laughing and talking at once.
At first, I didn’t really notice anything out of the ordinary. It was just a bunch of blah-blah-blah and buzz-buzz-buzz all around me.
But then… I started to hear stuff I didn’t like.
I was just starting to put two and two together, when I heard someone from a couple tables over who was louder than everyone else.
“What’s for dinner?” the voice asked.
“Dead meat!” someone else said.
“What’s for dinner?” the voice asked again.
This time, a bunch of guys answered and pounded on the table at the same time. “DEAD! MEAT!”
“Oh, man,” Smurf said. “Here we go.”
When I looked over, I saw the kid who was leading the whole thing, and I knew his type right away. Put it this way: If you took the words cocky and conceited and pain in the butt and then combined them all into one big word… and then looked that word up in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of this guy.
“Who’s that?” I said.
“Doolin,” Smurf told me. “He’s in the Bobcat cabin. Just ignore him.”
But I didn’t really see how. Every time Doolin said “What’s for dinner?” and every time the other Bobcats answered “Dead meat!” they were all looking right at us. We were the dead meat.
The other guys at my table were just shaking their heads or looking at the ground, except for Norman, who was reading, and Legend, who was… laughing? I had no idea what Legend’s deal was, but he obviously thought this was pretty funny.
I only wished I thought it was funny.
“What’s for dinner?” Doolin kept going, like a Britney Spears song that repeats over and over and over till you want to yank your ears right off your head.
“DEAD! MEAT!”
“What’s for—”
Then somebody else yelled out even louder. “Yo! Doolin!” I looked over, and Rusty was standing there. “Have a seat, dude.”
“What? I’m just playin’ around,” he said.
“I know, man. But have a seat anyway.”
“What-ev,” Doolin said, and high-fived the kid next to him before he took his time sitting down.
I was glad Rusty was back. But then again, this was only the first day. Something told me Rusty wasn’t always going to be there, and that Doolin and his wrecking crew weren’t done with us.
That wasn’t all either.
So far, I’d been feeling like I’d lucked out, getting into this crazy, cool cabin of guys. But now I was starting to think maybe all of us Muskrats had something in common with Booger Eater, and I hadn’t realized it. Maybe we were the biggest losers at Camp Wannamorra.
And maybe everyone already knew it.