Jacked Up Read online

My fellow passengers groaned and looked at me with pity. I was not the Chosen One.

  “Hee-haw … Hee-haw …” The tinny chant echoed through the walkie-talkie.

  Then the bus stopped.

  The driver cut the engine, the bus parked right in the middle of a dirt road. Dust billowed up from below the tires. Through the yellow hue, I saw only more yellow and brown. We were in a canyon, just as barren and lifeless as the land we’d driven through to get here.

  I was going to die with my fellow travelers, à la the Donner Party. Except, instead of freezing to death, we were going to bake. Which camper would I eat first?

  The door to the bus opened and Jason bounced up the steps. “T-G-I-J! Am I right?”

  Squeals and cheers from the other eight people on my bus. I was sure this was more convincing on a normal bus of thirty-five.

  “Coooooooop,” he growled. “Chris Cooper, my man! Praise Jesus!”

  Fist pumps from Chris. Glares from his sister. I could almost see the devil on her left shoulder shank the angel on her right.

  Jason looked at her, and he must have caught on to her disdain. “Jesus has a plan! Next year for you, Christina!”

  Christina? And Chris? Had their parents totally lacked creativity, or just thought that was a cute idea?

  I caught movement from outside my window.

  Four donkeys stood docilely next to the camp counselors holding their reins. The donkey-toting teens donned long white robes and sandals. Several other counselors stood next to wagons loaded with our luggage and yoked to pairs of Clydesdales.

  Chris Cooper retrieved his backpack, slipped it over a shoulder, and followed Jason off the bus.

  The rest of us grabbed our belongings and stepped off the bus. Well, the girl in the wheelchair didn’t step. We waited for her while she whirred slowly to the ground.

  It was when we finally walked (or rolled) around the bus that I understood what the Donkey Lottery was. The campers I could only assume were Genevieve, Nick Sampson, and Kaitlyn J., as well as our own Chris Cooper, each scrambled up onto the back of their own donkey.

  They were not in robes or sandals like the teenage counselors. They did not have a beard or halo like the real Jesus riding on an ass into Jerusalem. But that was definitely what was being simulated there.

  I stif led a laugh and looked around for someone with whom I could commiserate, but I saw only earnest and enraptured faces. Even the prettycute Bandana Girl appeared at peace with it all. There was nothing ironic going on here.

  And then we started down a dusty road into Eden Springs, in the blazing afternoon sun.

  The road went on forever. I was without water. I was without food. I was without the sunscreen that had been passed among my busmates.

  It didn’t take me long to consider prayer.

  I knew we’d arrived in Eden Springs when I spotted a long line of counselors, a tunnel of them, a gauntlet of them, all in robes and sandals. They each bent over and picked something up off the ground, and then they started waving the things. And I saw the whole donkey metaphor had not been played out.

  As the donkeys walked through the gauntlet, the robed counselors waved palm fronds. The rest of the campers followed those on donkeys through. Triumphant smiles abounded.

  Surely they knew the end of the story, the part where the notorious donkey-jockey got taunted, maimed with a cat-o’-nine-tails, mocked, and stabbed in the skull with thorns. And that was before he finally asphyxiated on the cross and was pierced in the side. You know, just to make sure he was not playing dead.

  I was hot and dehydrated. My skin was pink with a burn. I walked around the gauntlet in order not to endanger these well-intentioned Christians with my homicidal disposition.

  And then I was at camp. Which was, indeed, a paradise when compared to the walk.

  Green grass everywhere. Somehow a breeze. In the distance, a pool and waterslides. Perfectly leaved trees. Paved sidewalks. Freshly painted cabins with porch swings.

  Someone in a robe handed me a Dixie cup of water, and for a minute I didn’t care about his costume. I shot the water like I’d seen Jack do with cheap tequila.

  The same someone handed me another cupful, and another, all the while just smiling, glowing really, as he watched me drink and drink. And then he said something and pointed to a banquet table stocked with vegetables and sandwiches and more water.

  Another counselor, this one a girl with her long blond hair pulled back using twine, handed me a plate. I didn’t even have to dish up. She served me.

  Music shouted through loudspeakers. Modern music. Finally, something normal. I sat down in the grass and ate my sandwich. The bread f laked like it was fresh from a bakery. The vegetables must’ve been plucked from a vine moments ago, so juicy and perfect.

  Everyone else was milling about the grounds, newly energized, hopeful. We had water. We had food. We would not have to resort to cannibalism.

  I was thrilled and relieved and … Yes, happy!

  Happiness did happen here! At least for the near-death desperate.

  I lay back in the grass, the cold smooth green grass, and looked at the big blue sky.

  When I looked around the camp again, people had their cell phones out and were taking selfies.

  Chris was taking a selfie with his donkey and disciple.

  Another camper leaned in with a bunch of palm-toting counselors.

  I took another bite of my sandwich.

  A camper stood next to a woman—another one of the counselors? She definitely didn’t seem like one, the way she was dressed. Or not dressed. Black lace and red silk. Her dark hair wrapped up with perfect ringlets hanging down over her shoulders and those breasts. I stared at those breasts. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything like them. Were we at church camp or the Playboy Mansion? The camper took a selfie with her.

  I finished my sandwich as the boy moved away and another boy moved in for the next selfie.

  Then, as my blood sugar normalized, my senses returned.

  I saw everything.

  Oh, dear gawd.

  Next to the breasty woman lay a man on a mat. Dirty and haggard, he didn’t get up. The campers took selfies by lying on the ground with him.

  This could not seriously be what I thought it was. Perhaps it was only my post-traumatic stress from being forced into Bible skits by Charlotte’s youth group.

  Another man, with a cane, wandered around the camp with his eyes closed, bumping into campers. They didn’t mind. They took selfies with him and the “blind” man smiled for the camera.

  Oh, it was indeed what I thought. This was not PTSD.

  Another woman, face horror-stricken, was only wrapped in a sheet, a Jewish rabbi nearby glaring at her, a pile of stones by his feet. They paused to take selfies with the just-arrived campers. Sometimes the characters posed together, sometimes apart.

  I spotted a disciple with a coin purse and a noose dangling from his neck. Judas.

  There was a man robed in purple, velvet finery. He stood by a sign that read, PICTURES WITH PONTIUS! Wow, the camp even repped the Romans.

  Next to him, a character from The Walking Dead. Huh?

  And then I saw Jesus.

  I knew it was Him because He was surrounded by the masses. The Harry Styles of this band of religious figures. Like, hair and everything. But Jesus’s hair was f lattened by a crown of thorns. And, oh yeah, there was a tree-sized wooden cross behind him, stuck in the ground. He wore only a loincloth. I worried about the security of his junk.

  When I was eleven, my parents took me to Disneyland. Before going on the rides, which is all I’d cared about, we’d walked through the village with all the shops. And there had been characters everywhere. Alice in Wonderland and Mickey Mouse and the Beast and Cinderella.

  That was what I was seeing now. Bible Disneyland, every character alive and greeting the campers. But this was more Rob Zombie than Disney.

  Suddenly, I was certain I was hallucinating. My Dixie cup must have been l
aced with shrooms. Perhaps this was some neo-Jonestown-cult-mass-homicide plot wherein hundreds or thousands of kids perished in the name of Jesus camp. Did cyanide make you hallucinate? Did I drink anything at the church before we left?

  But no. Those were real donkeys. Real palm fronds. Real breasts on the fake prostitute.

  A robed and sandaled counselor stood over me. “Somethin’ for the PC Box, my man?” He held out a box, padlocked shut, with a slit on top.

  “Uh …” Tithing? We had already overpaid to be here. But whatever. The disciple-counselor looked homeless, so I’d just tell myself he was buying himself some whiskey to keep the DTs away. I stood up, reached into my pocket for a dollar, and slipped it into the box.

  The counselor squinted at me, but then shook his head and walked on. I heard someone laugh behind me and turned.

  Bandana Girl. Her book still in hand.

  “That’s not a tithing box. That’s the PC Box,” she said.

  “Politically correct?”

  “Prayers and Confessions.” Bandana Girl grinned. “The paper you got when you got on the bus. I told you, you have to confess. You have to write down a prayer or confession and then put it in the box.”

  “What happened to the good old days of talking to a priest?” I asked.

  “You’re Catholic?”

  “Ha. No. I’m not into confessing anything.” I looked around for Jack Kerouac, hoping he’d heard me. Actually, I was hoping he wasn’t at camp at all, but that was likely too much to hope for. I didn’t want Jack interrupting while I talked to this prettycute girl. “I’m just saying, at least with a priest, it’s only you and some guy who’s so old he won’t remember anything you say anyway.”

  “So you’re worried about it being written down?”

  “I’m not worried about anything. I just don’t want to do it.” The pitchiness of my voice gave me away.

  She laughed. “You look petrified.”

  “Well, did you see the zombie back over there?”

  “That was a leper. Maybe you do need some help in the politically correct department.”

  “I’ll write that down as my confession.”

  “That’s cheating. You’ve already confessed it to me. Anyway, you’ll get used to camp. It’s actually fun.” She smiled. I eyed the book in her hand.

  “What’re you reading?”

  “I’m not.” She opened the book and (gasp!) there was writing all over it.

  “You broke the cardinal rule DON’T WRITE IN BOOKS.” Dear gawd, she probably ran with scissors.

  “I was marginalizing it,” she explained.

  “Literature is not to be marginalized.” I glared. “Unlike zombies. They need to be put in their place pre-apocalypse.”

  She laughed. “I’m just writing in the margins.”

  “That’s called annotation.”

  “If you’re a nerd.” She raised her eyebrows and nodded toward me. “But, then, nerds would wear grammar T-shirts.”

  I shrugged. “Or read a book on the way to summer camp.”

  “You cannot deny your attire. I have already denied reading. I was marginalizing.” She opened her book to a random page and pointed to some scribbling. “It’s a play on words. The fact that I am writing in the margins—and more so, what I am writing—marginalizes the text.” She f lipped the book closed. “Thus, marginalizing.”

  “And that’s not nerdy at all.” I smiled; she smiled back. Then we both watched the prostitute walk by, followed by a girl wearing a bikini of leaves. It was hard to tell Eve from a tree-hugging working girl. “So, what book was that?” I continued.

  “I’m working on Steinbeck right now.” She showed me the cover—The Grapes of Wrath. “I already did Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony, but this takes way longer. And needs way more.”

  “But you’re not reading them?”

  “I’ve already read them. But I go back through and write in the margins. Like, things to think about and questions and aha! moments. That way, the next poor soul to suffer through torture-by-classics may find some reprieve in the snarky or insightful remarks of a classics-survivor.” She laughed. “I mean, have you read the turtle chapter?”

  “It’s symbolic.”

  She snorted. “And boring. I made up a bunch of Why’d the turtle cross the road? jokes.”

  “That’s literary blasphemy.”

  “Yes, I’ll be going to hell. Me and everyone on Wattpad.”

  “What do you do with the books after you’ve defiled them?”

  “Pay the fine to the school for destruction of property and sneak the book back into the pile for next year.”

  “Poor kids never get to read the untainted story,” I joked.

  “What? No way. I feel bad for the twenty-five kids who don’t get the marginalized copy. I think I’m going to publish a line of them, like those books For Dummies. Except it’ll be called something like Classics for Bored Kids.”

  “I guess it’s a step up from SparkNotes.”

  “It’s a stepladder up.” She laughed. “I’m Natalie, by the way.”

  “I’m Nick.”

  It got quiet between us. Clearly, we had met our quota of clever for the day.

  Then Natalie held up her paper between her finger and thumb. “Okay, well, I’m going to walk over there now. You know, drop this in the box. Because that’s what we do here at camp.” She sauntered away, smiling back at me. “Do it, Nick … You have to do it …”

  I pulled my own paper from my pocket and waved it at her like I might actually do something with it. I wished I’d had something else interesting to say to keep her around. I wished I’d asked for a copy of The Bored Kids Guide to The Red Pony, or something.

  I watched her drop her paper into the PC Box. And I wondered what sort of prayer or confession a girl like her would write.

  No one can blame me for checking the mattress for hay when we got to our cabins. Jesus was born in a manger, and I thought there’d be something of that experience in our sleeping quarters. Straw, the donkeys, three creepy old men gifting herbs, Mary’s placenta.

  I peeled back my sheets, checked the bathroom, looked under the bed. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I didn’t want any surprises. Visits from Jack Kerouac were unpredictable enough; I didn’t need unexpected Bible metaphors.

  Finding nothing unusual, I sat on my bed and rested my head in my palms and wracked my brain for Bible stories. What skits had my sister forced on me as a child? Would an ill man be dropped from the ceiling? The pig with the demons in it, did it go into a house before it ran into the lake to drown? I had to know what was going to happen, what could happen.

  My cabinmates rolled their suitcases in, took out Twizzler packages and cans of Monster, and shelved everything in cubbies next to their beds.

  A short, skinny kid unpacked kale chips and Vitaminwater. He gave me a critical once-over. “Are you homesick?”

  “No,” I said. “Just a headache.”

  “Sometimes I get homesick, but then I just take a rest and do some problems in my math book to calm my nerves.”

  “That’s messed up, Charles,” a boy said as he walked out of the bathroom in swim trunks. Then he looked at me. “Are you the kid from Mountain View?”

  I nodded. “Are you all from Valley Christian?”

  “I’m not,” Charles said. “I’m homeschooled.”

  “Thus the math book to find your Zen,” I said.

  Nobody laughed.

  “I’m Matthew,” the kid from the bathroom announced. “You want to go down to the waterslides?”

  “Is that what we’re supposed to do?”

  “Did you already drop a prayer or confession? Then it’s free time,” he said. “God gave us free will, and we get free time to practice it.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was saying all that in earnest or not, but I was certainly ready for the pool after the near-death experience of walking to camp.

  “Free time isn’t until after the Silent Three,�
� Charles corrected.

  “Yes, Charles, yes. But, let’s get our stuff on so we’re ready.”

  “The Silent Three?” I asked as I unzipped my suitcase and dug around for my swim shorts.

  My cabinmates answered:

  “It’s hell.”

  “Hell comes before Eden in this case.”

  “Three silent hours of hell.”

  They still hadn’t answered my question.

  I pulled my beach towel out from under my clothes. Someone gasped. All moaning and groaning stopped.

  Charles stood at my bed, mouth agape, Matthew at his shoulder, face grave. The other boys slowly moved into a semicircle around my bunk.

  “Harry Potter …” Charles whispered.

  You could barely see Hogwarts on the towel anymore, it was so faded. “Yeah, it’s kinda old—” I started.

  “And Satanic,” Charles said.

  I laughed. Nobody laughed with me.

  “It’s a book,” I said.

  “About magic,” Charles insisted.

  I assessed the other six boys, all of whom stared at my towel dubiously.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” Matthew said. “The rules don’t actually say you can’t bring magic paraphernalia to camp.”

  “Did you bring a voodoo doll?” Charles asked me.

  “Why would I bring a voodoo doll?”

  “Why would you bring a Harry Potter towel?”

  “Because it’s a hundred years old, so my mom won’t kill me if I leave it here accidentally.”

  “But you’ve read the books?”

  “Yeah, when I was, like, ten.”

  Charles pursed his lips. “This is bad. This is a bad sign.”

  A couple of the other boys went back to their bunks, apparently not too concerned.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” Matthew said again. “It’s just a book to you, right?”

  “Technically, it’s just a freakin’ towel to me.”

  “The language,” Charles groaned. “I might need to call my mom. I might need a cabin change.”

  “Shut up, Charles,” one of the boys said from behind his closet door.

  Just then, Jason popped his head into the cabin. “Gentlemen! It’s gonna be ACES today, praise God. The sky shines blue, the slides await!”