I looked over at Norman, but he didn’t say anything at all. He just started taking down all the tape and signs and throwing them away. I figured the least I could do was help him clean up. Technically, it was my bunk too. Not to mention, this was at least partly my fault.
Still, once I started touching his sleeping bag and stuff, I couldn’t help but think about that stupid name, Booger Eater, and what it might really mean.
It must have shown too, because Norman took one look at me and said, “You don’t have to worry, Rafe. I stopped eating my boogers when I was six.”
“Oh,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking about that…. I mean, I wasn’t—”
“Yeah, you were,” he said. “It’s okay.”
I just kept wiping up shaving cream with my towel, but I still wondered what he was thinking. After another minute, I said, “So then… why do you let people call you that?”
“Let them?” he said. “It’s not exactly my choice. I got caught doing it once, six years ago, and it just kind of stuck.”
“Like a booger,” I said. That actually got a smile out of him. “But doesn’t it bother you?”
Norman shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t even care that much.”
This kid was a terrible liar. I could see right through him. He was acting like he didn’t care because he didn’t think he could do anything about it. But I would have bet anything that he cared a whole lot—on the inside.
Been there. Done that.
“What if I came up with a different nickname?” I said. “I could call you Boo, for short. You know, instead of Booger—”
“I got it,” he said. “And no thanks.”
“What about Norm?”
“My name’s Norman, Rafe,” he said. He crumpled up the last of those stupid signs and tossed them in the wastebasket. “It’s not that complicated.”
I tried to look him in the eye. “That’s the same thing you said about the math,” I told him.
But I guess he was done talking. He just climbed onto his bunk and picked up another book. This one was called The Lord of the Rings by some guy named J. R. R. Tolkien. I think the R. R. stood for “Reading and Reading” because this book looked about ten thousand pages long. I couldn’t finish that book in my lifetime, but Norman would probably be done by breakfast. It was crazy.
Almost as crazy as he was. I seriously didn’t get him, but I did feel bad for him. And let’s face it, if he hadn’t been at Camp Wannamorra, it would have been me down there at the bottom of the heap. Usually, that’s what the new kid is for.
Maybe I should have just minded my own business. Maybe it would have been better for everyone if I’d left it alone. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how Norman was going to be stuck with that nickname for the rest of his life if someone didn’t do something about it.
Someone like… oh, I don’t know. Me, maybe.