“What happened here this evening is not a joke,” he began, which seemed too on the nose, considering all of the sniffling and wheezing. “I understand that you all have had an exciting first week of camp. The events of the counselors’ endowment may be fun and games, but this is not.”
So he did know about the Cheeseman trials, even if he didn’t know that they were his namesake. It did shatter some of the illusion, knowing that the games were authorized by the governing authorities. They had probably even had to clear their events with the college before putting us through them.
“This evening, a person—or persons—broke into multiple dormitories and removed the study materials found there. At present count, thirty-two binders are missing.” Cheeseman paused, letting this sink in. With Avital gone, there were forty-seven of us left at Onward. So, fifteen people—myself and Brandon included—had binders left. I wondered how many had also taken their binders to dinner. It wasn’t uncommon to see people reading and eating in the dining hall.
“At this time,” Cheeseman continued, still rooted to the carpet, “it is unclear if anything else was taken. Later, you will be excused to make an itemized list of anything else missing from your room.”
I closed my eyes, momentarily inventorying my room. My laptop and cell phone were on my bed. There was cash in the front pocket of my backpack. My train ticket for my journey home was tucked into one of the N. K. Jemisin books on my desk. My debit card, with my real name embossed on it, was hidden in a pair of socks in my suitcase, in case of emergency. If any of it was missing, I would be completely helpless.
It was getting hard to breathe.
“Do you think my typewriter is okay?” Brandon whispered in my ear.
I swallowed thickly and saw his wobbly smile. It was strange to have someone consistently noticing when I started to get under water. It was the kind of surprise sweetness you could get used to if you weren’t careful.
I wrapped one of his shoelaces around my finger, the same way he did when he was thinking. It was comfortable closeness, but not Lumberjack Beard–Perfect Nerd Girl loud about it. His pinky brushed mine in a way that made me think maybe he didn’t mind the quiet route.
“At this point, there are two courses of action we could take,” Cheeseman said, drawing my attention regretfully back up front. “The first and the easiest is that the person or persons responsible for this come forward. The binders will be redistributed and we will continue with the camp as it has been run for the last twenty years.
“The second option is that the camp goes into lockdown. Instead of the collegiate-level freedoms you have been given in the last week, you will answer solely to your counselors, who, in turn”—he glared at the line of standing college kids—“will answer to me. Study materials will be shared, one binder per team, so that everyone will be equally disadvantaged by this heinous and invasive act. You will not go to the bathroom without permission and a written pass. Use of the campus facilities outside of the dining hall will be prohibited. Lights-out will be pushed up to nine p.m.” He shook out his wrist and theatrically held it in front of his face. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever been part of Eugene’s community theater scene. He would have made an excellent Dr. Chasuble in Earnest. “Which would start in seven minutes.”
Heads turned, everyone searching the lobby for the one person who would stand up and put a stop to this. I saw Isaiah mean-mugging near the back of the room. Leigh was ripping at her fingernails with her teeth. Onobanjo, the possibly-Nigerian Rubik’s Cube whiz, was whipping his head frantically, conducting a seated one-man investigation of the room. Next to the girl with the petal-pink hijab, Perla had started to cry again, her shark eyes getting puffier.
But no one spoke.
Wendell Cheeseman’s head lowered an inch, just enough to close the lid on the conversation.
“Counselors,” he said, disappointment making his voice rumble. “Please collect your teams and escort them to their rooms. Lights out in three minutes.”
“Oh God,” Perla sobbed unabashedly. “I hate this place.”
As we filed toward the counselors, to be sorted by floor, I caught Brandon’s elbow. “What were you saying about being able to get us off campus?”
“Give me two days,” he whispered back. “It just got a little more difficult.”
25
“Socks, check,” Leigh murmured to herself as she sifted through the pile she’d amassed on her bed. “Face wash, check. Beanie, check…” She gasped. “The burglar stole like four of my fancy tampons!”
“That was me,” I said, flipping through the pages of N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms until my train ticket came into view. Safe and sound. Thank God.
“Oh, that’s fine, then. Only top quality for my bestie. No cheapo cardboard,” Leigh said, raining feminine hygiene products back into her battered blue backpack.
“Aww,” I said, setting the book back on my desk and smiling over my shoulder at her. “That’s true friendship.”
It felt nice to smile. The atmosphere at camp had completely curdled from the second we’d been left to our new lights-out the night before.
Breakfast had been about as cheerful as the buffet line at a wake. Each table in the dining hall now had a piece of paper taped to either end, with a team number on it. Hari had forcibly removed Perla from Team Three, sitting her down between himself and Meg at our new spot near the beverages.
Perla’s sullen demeanor paled in comparison to the counselors’. It hadn’t escaped anyone’s notice that they were also being punished. Their table in front of the picture window had been abandoned. There were no Starbucks cups in hand. Meg was makeupless and unsmiling in wrinkled UCLA sweatpants. After we’d bused our table, they’d marched us back to the residence hall and given us fifteen minutes to inventory our rooms for stolen property. Meg hadn’t even flourished the blank paper when she’d handed them out. It was unnerving.
Leigh sloughed the rest of the pile into her backpack. The springs whined as she bounced down onto her mattress. “Anything missing on your side of the room?”
“A bottle of hand sanitizer and a bag of trail mix. Both from my backpack.” Strangely, both had been in the same pocket as my money, but all of that remained. And I’d checked my debit card’s hiding place after Leigh had gone to sleep the night before. I wasn’t sure if our burglar had been extremely inept or simply snackish and germaphobic.
“They got my binder, my notebook, and,” her lip curled in disgust, “all of my pens. Who steals a woman’s pens? I ask you. They weren’t even good quality.”
I sat down on my bed, kicking closed my suitcase. It was comically large, sitting across from Leigh’s single bag. “It has to be someone trying to wipe out the competition. Why else would they take all of the binders? I don’t think the counselors did it. Their misery feels too real and it wasn’t on the Cheeseman list.”