Praise for the works of James Newman

ODD MAN OUT

“There are many ways a novelist can write about the unraveling of civilized
impulses, but for sheer horror nothing rivals the Lord of the Flies-style
barbarism of the young and ‘innocent’, who we may naively imagine have
not yet attained their full capacity for sadism. Odd Man Out (is) a page-
turner . . . it’s not only engrossing, but deeply disturbing.”

-- Lucy Taylor, author of The Safety of Unknown Cities,

Fatal Journeys and A Respite for the Dead

“I've admired the writing of James Newman even before his debut novel,
Midnight Rain, was published. I've enjoyed it all, but Odd Man Out is far
and away the best thing he has published to date.”

– Mark Sieber, Horror Drive-In

ANIMOSITY
“This is how good fiction – horror, suspense, or otherwise – should be.
Mind-searing, gut-twisting, no brakes applied. Animosity leaves no doubt
that Newman is truly a literary force to be reckoned with!”

- Ronald Kelly, author of Fear and Hell Hollow

MIDNIGHT RAIN

“You might expect the work of a young Southern writer to show some roots,
and you'll see that clearly in James Newman’s writing. There’s a little bit of
Davis Grubb and Joe Lansdale twisting into that dark earth, and a strong
straight spike of Robert McCammon digging deep. But the story tree that
grows above ground belongs to a tale-spinner who can raise one mean hunk
of nightmare all on his own.”

—Norman Partridge, author of Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales

THE WICKED
"The Wicked is a good old-fashioned, unabashed Horror novel. James
Newman remembers when horror used to be fun, and he's recaptured it here
in all of its gory glory. A terrifying page-turner in the tradition of Graham
Masterton, J.N. Williamson, and Richard Laymon."

—Brian Keene, author of The Rising and The Complex

 Also by James Newman
Novels
Midnight Rain
The Wicked
Animosity
Ugly as Sin

Novellas
Holy Rollers
Love Bites (with Donn Gash)
Night of the Loving Dead (with James Futch)
Olden
Revenge Flick!
The Church of Dead Languages (with Jason Brannon)
The Forum

Collections
People are Strange
Death Songs from the Naked Man (with Donn Gash)

Non-fiction
666 Hair-Raising Horror Movie Trivia Questions

Screenplays
Still Waters
Copyright © 2016 by James Newman

Bloodshot Books Edition © 2016

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any

form or by any means without the author’s written consent, except for the
purposes of review

Cover Design © 2016 by Ben Baldwin - http://benbaldwin.co.uk/

ISBN-13: 978-0-9980679-1-9
ISBN-10: 0998067911

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.

READ UNTIL YOU BLEED!

 ODD MAN OUT
by James Newman

They say the human brain will often block out a traumatic experience, store
it someplace deep in the subconscious where it can’t do you any more harm.
Like a dangerous animal locked inside a cage.
I can think of no other reason why, until a few days ago, I hadn’t
thought about Wesley Westmore for the better part of thirty years.
Strangely enough, it was something that happened in church last
Sunday that made it all come back to me.
Now I can’t stop thinking about him.
I lie awake at night, wondering what I could have done differently.
Wondering if I deserve to be damned just like the others.

***
After his sermon was over and the Benediction was done, Pastor
McCormick asked for all members to stay behind for a brief business
meeting. He informed us of a “troubling issue” that we needed to discuss. A
decision had to be made and it could not afford to wait.
For the last few years, we had allowed a local chapter of the Boy
Scouts to use our Fellowship Building for their monthly meetings.
However, for the first time since its inception in 1910, the organization had
recently lifted its ban on granting membership to homosexual youth.
According to Pastor McCormick this created a “serious dilemma” for our
church. If we allowed the Scouts to continue using our facilities, it would
send the message that we support the “gay agenda” responsible for “ruining
this once-great nation”. He reminded us what the Bible says in Leviticus
20:13, concluded his rhetoric with a line about the Devil trying to destroy
the Lord’s house from within, before opening the floor to the rest of us.
One of the deacons — an older fellow to whom I am distantly related
by marriage — lumbered to the front of the church and took the microphone
from Pastor McCormick. After a screech of feedback that made his face
turn as red as his tie, he claimed to stand with our preacher on this matter
because we were “venturing into dangerous territory here.”
I couldn’t agree with him more.
I’m normally pretty shy, tend to rank public speaking somewhere
between flying and cigarette smoke on my list of least favorite things. But I
cleared my throat and said without benefit of the mic, “For the record, I
think this is wrong. Turning people away, telling them they’re not welcome
here? It’s not what Christ would have done.”
Murmurs throughout the congregation. Some were sounds of
concurrence, I wanted to believe, but more than a few of them bowed their
heads as if praying for my soul.
Pastor McCormick put it to a vote then.
I’m not sure what disturbed me more, when all was said and done: the
outcome (76 to 34 in favor of rescinding our invitation for those kids to use
our building) . . . or the fact that my wife and I did not vote the same way.
Patricia and I haven’t discussed it.
I’ve been too busy thinking about Wesley Westmore, and the seven
days I spent at the Black Mountain Camp for Boys when I was fifteen years
old.

***
Two nights ago I had a nightmare more vivid than any I can remember.
I awoke to an almost suffocating sadness unlike anything I had experienced
since my parents died in a car accident when I was in college. We had
argued the last time we spoke. That was twenty-three years ago. Now, just
several hours before Pastor McCormick planned to meet with the leaders of
Troop 441 to inform them of our church’s decision, the same profound
sense of regret descended upon me that I had felt the night after my parents’
funeral.
I dreamed of two boys sitting in a tree house. Boys with bloody
thumbs.
One of them was a chubby ten-year-old in a Star Wars shirt, with a
mouth full of braces. The other was a skinny kid with straw-colored hair
that he was constantly pushing out of his eyes.
“It’s official. We’re blood brothers. But don’t worry, D-man. It’ll be our
secret.”
This time, when he pushed aside his bangs, I saw a word on his
forehead. A vile word, scrawled in black Magic Marker on sunburned skin.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as we held our thumbs to an old beach towel to stop
the bleeding. “I never thought they would take it that far.”
He made a farting sound with his lips. “You had to fit in. You wouldn’t
want them to turn on you.”
On the floor between us now, instead of the bloody towel, lay a
hammer. Its handle had a green rubber grip with a square of sticky price-tag
residue at the bottom.
I remembered that hammer well. Remembered what we had done with
it.
Wesley picked it up, handed it to me. “You know what you have to do.”
I awoke with a gasp. For the briefest of moments, I smelled hot dogs
cooking on a grill, citronella candles burning on a warm summer evening. I
smelled the sweat of eight young men cooped up together in one small
room for too long. I smelled blood. Gasoline.
Then there was only the strawberry scent of my wife’s favorite
shampoo. She lay beside me, one hand on my chest, her long ginger curls
tickling my neck.
“I’m sorry . . .”
I flinched, realized I had said it aloud.
I listened to the rhythm of Patricia’s breathing for a few seconds to
make sure she was still asleep. Gently removed her hand from my chest,
rolled over to face the wall.
I thought about that hateful word written on my blood brother’s
forehead. An insult my friends and I used to hurl at one another several
times a day. We didn’t understand that words can be as dangerous as the
box-cutter Wesley and I had used to slice our thumbs. Words cut in a
different way. They leave scars all the same.
I wished I could cry. Wished I hadn’t been raised by a guy who instilled
in me from a very young age the conviction that real men don’t advertise
their emotions.
As I tried to drift off again, I knew it would be easier if I could cry
myself to sleep.
I remembered how Wesley had done that at least once during our stay
at the Black Mountain Camp for Boys.
I remembered sneaking my headphones out of the backpack beside my
bed, pushing PLAY on my Walkman to drown out the sound of his
suffering.

***
“Watch where you’re going, fag. You almost made me drop my
clipboard.”
From the moment I first met Nathan Ginyard, I knew he wouldn’t be
my favorite bunkmate that summer.
He was a month shy of turning seventeen, not quite two years older
than me, when all of this happened. A tall boy with hair so blond it was
almost white, he always wore gym shorts and basketball jerseys (his
favorite team: the Celtics). During those seven days I spent with him I
heard him brag more than once about how college recruiters had been
watching him play hoops since middle school, although another kid in our
group — a guy who attended the same school as him — claimed Nathan
rode the bench more than he touched the ball.
“What’s your name?” he asked me as I stepped off the bus. He stood by
the door with a clipboard, a pencil, and a bully’s smirk that I would soon
learn rarely left his face.
“It’s, um, Dennis. Dennis Mu --”
“Uhhh, guh, D-Dennis,” he mocked me. “Spit it out.”
“Dennis Munce. My name’s Dennis Munce.”
He checked my name off his sheet, took a moment to look me up and
down as if he had the power to send me back home if he didn’t approve of
what he saw. Which would have been fine with me.
 “Nathan Ginyard.” He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of one
hand, offered me the same hand. “I’m just yanking your chain. Everybody’s
meeting in the mess hall in ten.”
We shook. He pointed with his pencil to a row of nine log cabins about
a hundred yards away. They sat on a rise between thick woodland to my left
and a lake to my right that went on as far as I could see. Eight of the cabins
were identical except for a big green number painted on each door -- “1”
through “7” from left to right, with the last one labeled “SHOWERS” –
while the building in the middle was four times the size of the others. Its
windows reflected the morning sun, the rippling waters of the lake, and the
Blue Ridge Mountains beyond. A trio of boys my age talked excitedly as
they climbed the steps to the covered porch.
I hefted my duffel bag and walked on, gravel crunching beneath my
feet. The smell of diesel fuel made me sneeze, but the scent of fresh
mountain air took its place as I left the bus behind. From the edge of the
woods a squirrel watched me approach until I got too close. Two vehicles
were parked next to a picnic table between the mess hall and the lake: a
blood-red Firebird, and a late-model Jeep Cherokee, dark blue with faux
wood paneling. A kayak was strapped to the Cherokee’s roof. A large
tackle-box and several fishing poles lay on the ground behind the vehicles.
On the far side of the lake, a woodpecker’s frantic rhythm echoed
through the valley like someone firing off an automatic weapon every few
seconds.
Behind me, Nathan Ginyard said to the next boy who stepped off the
bus, “Look at this loser. What’s your name, loser?”
“Wesley Westmore,” replied a voice I recognized, though I did not
realize it at first because I hadn’t heard it in years.

***
I had begged my parents not to make me go. It wasn’t because I was an
introvert, as I made friends easily in those days. I loved my comic books
and Nintendo, but I enjoyed the great outdoors as well. Simply put, there
were a hundred other ways I would have preferred to spend my summer
vacation.
 It felt like I was being punished for something I didn’t do, I argued. I
was an unexceptional though far from terrible student. I had never been in
any sort of trouble. At that point in my life I had sipped a beer only once (I
didn’t like it). And I was technically still a virgin.
But my enrollment at the Black Mountain Camp for Boys had nothing
to do with my behavior.
Whether I liked it or not, I was part of a focus group.
This was to be the camp’s first season under new management. Since
my father worked for an insurance company that represented the owners —
and because Mom and Dad wished to fly to Europe that summer for a
second honeymoon — I was one of thirteen boys who were invited to the
camp for several weeks before it opened to the public. Our objective: to
report back what we did and didn’t like about the experience, and to offer
suggestions that would ensure a fair return-on-investment for parents who
would soon pay to send their sons away instead of spending time with them.
It was implied that we had won something special, though I suspected I
wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be there. On that first day we
grumbled as if we were back in school and our teacher had assigned
homework before a holiday, as the counselors passed out a two-page
questionnaire. We were expected to fill them out before boarding the bus to
return home three weeks later.
We never got around to pencil-whipping those forms.
The last time I saw one it was covered in blood and feces.
 DAY ONE

The interior of the mess hall was naturally lit thanks to an octagonal
skylight. Its hardwood floor had been polished to an almost mirror-like
shine. To my right was an office, to my left a utility closet and a large
corkboard with nothing tacked to it except a single flyer (“SUMMER
CAMP ROCKS . . . TELL YOUR FRIENDS!”). Directly ahead of me was
the kitchen. Through its serving window I saw a stainless steel sink and a
countertop cluttered with supplies: canned goods, shrink-wrapped cartons
of bottled water, and a watermelon that looked big enough to feed an army.
Twelve long white plastic tables were set up in the middle of the room,
three rows of four placed end-to-end. Alongside the tables sat about thirty
beige metal folding chairs, like the ones my favorite wrestlers were always
hitting each other over the head with on WCW Saturday Morning. I crossed
the room to find a seat. Didn’t have to look very hard. Although my fellow
campers were spread out between each row of tables, one would have
accommodated all of us with plenty of room to spare.
Near the kitchen doorway stood a college-aged guy named Todd. I
knew his name was Todd because he wore a tie-dyed T-shirt with the word
TODD airbrushed on the chest in big bold letters, and an arrow above those
letters pointed to his face. He had a ruddy complexion, long brown hair
pulled back in a ponytail. Grey jogging shorts, tube socks pulled up almost
to his knees. He chewed on a pencil as he studied some papers in his hand,
bobbing his head to a song only he could hear.
A few feet away from Todd stood an attractive couple in their late
twenties. They offered us friendly smiles as we filed in. They were obvious
fitness buffs, and wished to show off the fruits of their labor via tight tank-
tops and short shorts. He had a square jaw, perfect blond hair, and wore
yellow-tinted sunglasses. Her hair was curly, the color of new pennies. She
was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen outside of the
Playboys my cousin Carl kept stashed beneath his bed.
 I took a seat beside a lanky kid in a Widowmaker shirt and camouflage
shorts. He had a long, birdlike nose. Acne stippled his cheeks and forehead.
He sat hunched over, all of his attention on the yoyo that dangled from a
string around his middle finger.
“Hey, man,” I said. “You’re pretty good.”
“Thanks,” he said, without looking up from his toy.
Nathan Ginyard came in. He handed his clipboard to Todd before
sitting at the table closest to the attractive couple. He bumped fists with a
stocky guy in a sleeveless red shirt and black jogging shorts.
“Okay, ladies, listen up,” said Todd.
It took a few seconds, but eventually everyone grew quiet.
“The name’s Todd Patwin,” he said. “I don’t want you to think of me as
your ‘counselor.’ For the next three weeks I want you to think of me as your
friend.”
Groans from around the room.
“Yeah, yeah. Cheesy, right? And speaking of cheesy… newly
transplanted all the way from Green Bay, Wisconsin, I’d like to introduce
my associates, the Creasmans.”
The gorgeous young lady gave us an exaggerated wave.
“This is Josie,” said her husband.
“And he’s Chris.”
Someone let out a low whistle.
Chris wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist, kissed her cheek as if
to dissuade a roomful of horny teenagers from getting the wrong idea. But
he never lost his wide, white smile.
“So let’s get right to it.” Todd glanced down at his clipboard. “I
understand there were thirteen of you invited to participate in our little
focus group. Nine showed up. We can work with that. Thirteen’s an unlucky
number anyway, right?”
“Totally,” said Josie.
“Jo’s gonna hand out a questionnaire that we’ll talk about in a minute.
But first, we’re too spread-out. I need everybody sitting together at
Nathan’s table. Let’s get up close and personal, yeah? Get to know one
another a little better?”
“Gay,” said a boy sitting across from me.
If the counselors heard it they chose to let it go.
 We did as we were told, but not without grumbling about it: a chorus of
exaggerated sighs, chairs scraping against hardwood floor, and nylon bags
whispering on plastic tabletops.
“Perfect,” said Todd. “Now I wanna go around the table and get
everyone to introduce himself. We’ll start with my man Nathan.”
Nathan gave a cocky sniff, squared his shoulders as if the coach had
just asked him to execute the game-winning play. “Nathan Ginyard. You
losers met me outside already.”
“Shawn Treadway in da house!” The guy sitting beside Nathan had the
burly build of a football player. He was Caucasian, but with very sun-
browned skin and black hair shaved close to his skull. His bright blue eyes
contrasted with his dark complexion. He looked like a person who couldn’t
sit still without tremendous effort. There was also something about him that
looked mean, I remember thinking right away.
The next boy held up one hand in a rock n’ roll “devil horns” gesture,
introduced himself as Jason Groh. His dirty-blond hair fell to his shoulders
in the popular “rat-tail” mullet style that was popular back then. He had a
crooked nose that looked like it might have been broken at some point. He
wore cut-off jean shorts and a black tanktop. A pair of drumsticks lay atop
his gym bag on the table in front of him.
“David Kendall,” said a chunky kid with glasses. “How’s it going.” He
wore a baggy orange T-shirt, khaki shorts, and a bulky backpack that he had
yet to take off, as if he was afraid someone might run by and snatch it. I
never got to know much about David because of what happened a couple
days later.
Next up was Roger Wakowski, a pale redhead with more freckles than I
had ever seen on anyone. He wore a backwards baseball cap, a FUTURE
FARMERS OF AMERICA T-shirt, and loud yellow swimming trunks that
came down past his knees. He had wide shoulders and muscular arms -- the
antithesis of every pale redhead I had ever known. I don’t think I saw him
smile once during our time at Black Mountain, although I soon learned he
had a ribald sense of humor.
“C.J. Sellars,” said the only black guy in the room. “What’s up.” He
wore a dark polo shirt, grey shorts, and an expensive-looking watch on one
wrist. The start of a thin beard lined his jaw, which was more facial hair
than the rest of us combined. On the table in front of him sat a big plastic
McDonald’s cup and a well-read Bible. He took a sip from the cup, but
when the straw slurped loudly at nothing he quickly set it back down and
stared at his hands in his lap.
Sean Treadway let out a loud belch then. It was long, deep, composed
of three distinct parts like some crude gastric aria. The rest of us rewarded
him with raucous laughter. I suspect nothing has changed between then and
now – bodily noises never fail to amuse teenage boys.
After we had all settled down, the kid with the yoyo was next. He took
a few seconds to finish rewinding his toy, slid it into his pocket before
introducing himself as Jeremy Boone. He carried all of his stuff in a small,
mustard-colored suitcase.
“Yo, Jeremy,” said Todd. “I know a trick or two. Remind me later, I’ll
show you.”
One of Jeremy’s shoulders twitched in a disinterested half-shrug.
My turn. I cleared my throat. Told everyone my name. Instantly wished
my voice was deeper, stronger. And without that pesky stutter. It was minor,
but sometimes popped up when I got nervous.
From Nathan’s end of the table I heard a murmur of laughter. I felt my
cheeks go red.
“And last but not least?” said Chris.
“Wesley Westmore.” He wore his blond hair in what we used to call a
“skater” style; he was constantly tucking his bangs behind his ears with
long, thin fingers. A silver cross hung from a braided necklace around his
neck. He had on a Guns n’ Roses T-shirt, jeans with a hole in one knee, and
high-topped tennis shoes with bright green laces.
Josie finished handing out the questionnaires. I got a whiff of her
perfume when she laid mine on the table in front of me and it made me
lightheaded. She returned to her husband’s side while every one of us
admired her perfect butt.
Well, not every one of us.
I felt someone tapping my shoulder.
I turned to the kid with the dumb name and the even dumber haircut.
Gave him an annoyed look.
“You don’t remember me,” he whispered.
I shook my head. Returned my attention to Todd as he explained what
we were supposed to do with the form Josie had given us.
 But Wesley Westmore was whispering in my ear again.
“We used to be best friends before you moved away. Come on, D-man,
it hasn’t been that long ago. Blood brothers?”
And I remembered.

***
He was right. It hadn’t been that long ago. As it all came back to me
and I realized who I was talking to, I wouldn’t have been more surprised if
his teeth suddenly sharpened into fangs and he ran howling for the woods
on all fours.
When we are young a few years can feel like an eternity. Life is a series
of dimly lit paths upon which we occasionally bump into someone traveling
in the same direction. If we find we have common interests, we stop and
chat with that person for a while. Perhaps our new friend walks with us
until we arrive at the next fork in the road, at which point we might go our
separate ways.
Wesley Westmore and I had walked together for about nine months
when we were in the fifth grade. Several weeks into that school year his
family had moved from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to my hometown in the
western part of the state. I remember being furious on that first day we met,
when Mrs. McClure assigned the new kid a seat next to mine and tasked me
with making him feel welcome. After a week or so, however, Wesley and I
began to form a solid friendship based on our mutual love of comic books
and videogames.
I already had a circle of close friends back then, most of whom I had
known since kindergarten. We knew Wesley was not like us, even though
we couldn’t explain what that meant when we were nine or ten. He hated
sports, but I also preferred reading about the latest adventures of the Justice
League to watching my dad’s beloved Redskins on TV. He couldn’t care
less about girls, but I would be lying if I said I never used the word “gross”
to describe the opposite sex at that age. I remember snickering with our
fellow classmates at the way the new kid constantly pushed his bangs out of
his eyes with a flick of his wrist (I apologized once we became pals, but he
just laughed and claimed we were jealous because none of our parents
would allow us to grow our hair out long like his). Wesley was simply . . .
different. Perhaps I suspected on some subconscious level what that meant,
but I didn’t really know until our paths crossed again at the Black Mountain
Camp for Boys.
I couldn’t believe I had forgotten him. We had sliced open our thumbs,
mixed our blood, made an oath of lifelong loyalty. We had done it on a cool
spring night, the same night his parents split up. Earlier that evening I had
wrapped one arm around him, pretending not to hear his sniffling – because
boys don’t cry, and to break that cardinal rule in front of your friends is to
brand yourself as some kind of “pansy” -- while the taillights of his father’s
loaded-down station wagon receded in the twilight.
Two months later, my family moved away. It was my turn to be the
“new kid” somewhere else. By the end of that summer I lived less than
forty miles from him. But when we are children a drive from one county to
the next feels like a journey of a thousand years.
My blood ran through his veins and his through mine, but we quickly
drifted apart . . . and I didn’t see Wesley again until that day in the mess hall
when he wouldn’t stop tapping my shoulder.

***
They put us in Cabin #2, the second one from the left as you
approached the mess hall, among the group of four furthest from the lake.
Todd and the Creasmans took the ones on either side of us (“in case you
girls get spooked in the middle of the night,” said Todd, “we’ll be within
shouting distance”).
Each cabin accommodated ten campers. A pair of bunk beds sat to the
left of the door, another against each adjacent wall, and two more along the
back wall. Everything looked freshly painted; the walls were forest green,
the floor and ceiling a drab gray. Someone said it felt like boot camp,
stealing the words right out of my mouth.
We wasted no time choosing where we would sleep, on a first-
come/first-serve basis.
“Where do we go if we gotta take a dump?” asked Roger Wakowski.
He paced around the room, muscular arms out to his side, as if he might
find a secret door to the shitter if he looked hard enough.
“In your mama’s mouth,” said Sean Treadway.
 Roger showed Sean his middle finger.
“You guys are disgusting,” said C.J Sellars, the black kid with the
facial hair of a twenty-year-old. As he spoke he used his shirttail to spit-
shine the cover of his Bible, his skinny legs dangling from a top bunk he
had already claimed.
Without looking up from his yoyo, Jeremy Boone said, “There’s a
restroom in the mess hall but we’re supposed to use #8.”
“Might as well crap in the woods instead of walking all that way,” said
David Kendall. His shirt had ridden up to expose his pale belly as he
plopped down on the bed beneath C.J.’s.
“What are you complaining for, chubs?” asked Jason Groh, the guy
with the rat-tail mullet. “Wouldn’t hurt you to get some exercise.”
David blushed, pulled down his shirt. I felt a little sorry for him, as I
had been overweight until I entered middle school. Bullies love a few extra
pounds of baby fat like mosquitoes love blood.
“Might as well make this place feel like home,” said Sean. He removed
something from his duffel bag. A poster. He unrolled it, held it up for
everyone to see: Elle Macpherson in a bikini and a cowboy hat.
A few of us whistled.
“I catch any of you fags jacking off to her, though, I’ll kick your ass.”
I refrained from telling him that his insult made no sense (if we were
“fags” why would we be jacking off to Elle MacPherson?). Instead I just
shook my head as I tossed my duffel bag onto a bottom bunk on the
opposite side of the room from Nathan and Sean. Wesley took the one
above me without hesitation. He mumbled something about “just like old
times” as he climbed up there. I frowned. I was starting to worry that he
might expect us to be attached at the hip for the next three weeks. He was
mistaken. We used to be friends, but we were stupid kids back then.
I hoped he wouldn’t tell anyone about the blood brothers thing.

***
“Last one in likes to take it up the ass!” Nathan shouted. He had a
miniature basketball gripped in the palm of one hand as we all ran for the
lake like lemmings.
Beside me, Wesley said, “This Nathan guy, he’s kind of a jerk, huh?”
 “Ain’t no kinda to it,” I said.
He laughed. We pulled off our shirts, dropped them on the shore with
everyone else’s. He sprinted past me, his cross necklace bouncing against
his skinny chest.
We splashed into the lake. The sun was hot. The water was cold,
perfect. For the first time I thought I might enjoy it here. Maybe. I would
try to make the best of it.
Most of us headed for the slatted wooden raft in the middle of the lake.
Attached to one side was a basketball goal with an unpainted backboard and
a crooked rim about four feet above the water.
“Yo, Todd,” said Sean. He wore sunglasses as he swam, as if no one
had ever been so cool. “Your buddies too good to join us?”
I glanced toward shore, noticed that only the Firebird was parked by
the mess hall now. The Cherokee was gone.
“They had to drive back into town,” said Todd. “They forgot to get
hotdog buns.”
“Too bad. You know that girl looks fine in a bikini.”
“I’d like to put my hotdog between her buns!” said Roger.
The rest of us hooted in agreement.
“Careful, guys,” said Todd. “Chris probably wouldn’t appreciate you
talking about his wife like that.”
“Admit it, Todd,” said Sean. “You’d hit it.”
“How about we change the subject?”
“Ginyard for three!” Nathan yelled then, from over by the raft. He
aimed his ball for the goal, watched it arch through the air.
He missed by a mile. I was immensely pleased.
We spent the rest of the evening in the lake, stopping only to wolf
down a dinner of burgers and dogs, which our counselors cooked for us on
a grill behind the mess hall. We engaged in violent splashing wars . . .
performed painful belly-flops off the raft . . . and invented new games with
Nathan’s basketball, using missed shots to spell out words like BUTTHOLE
and BIGTITS instead of HORSE. Todd scolded us when things got too
rough, albeit halfheartedly. He said he’d rather not explain to his bosses
why he had to perform CPR on one of us the same day we stepped off the
bus (“bet this guy wouldn’t mind if you gave him mouth-to-mouth!” Sean
guffawed, and Jason told him to eat shit). At one point Wesley blasted me in
the neck with a mouthful of lake-water, trying to create some camaraderie
of our own. I ignored him. I dove deep, swam as far away from him as I
could before surfacing near the raft just as Nathan was climbing onto it.
“Yo, losers! Check this out!”
Those of us who looked Nathan’s way instantly wished we hadn’t.
He dropped his pants, mooned us.
For some reason I looked back at Wesley, just in time to see him
quickly avert his gaze from Nathan’s skinny white ass. He stared off toward
a blizzard of geese flying low over the horizon.
Nathan did a cannonball off the raft, nearly landing on top of me.
“Nah,” I said to myself, “there ain’t no kinda to it.”
 DAY TWO

Our first full day at camp was uneventful.

Todd and the Creasmans took us for a hike after breakfast. There was a trail
that began right outside the back door of the mess hall and led straight up
the mountain through the woods. A steep walk initially, it leveled out after a
hundred yards or so, and we never trekked far enough to lose sight of the
cabins or the lake. Once again I found myself having fun in spite of my
earlier misgivings.
During most of our hike we watched Josie Creasman. She wore tight
green jogging shorts and a T-shirt that read ASHEVILLE WALK FOR
MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY on the back. Todd kept telling us to step it up.
Every so often Chris jogged backwards, giving us his best drill sergeant
impersonation. If he knew we lagged behind just to keep his wife’s perfect,
valentine-shaped butt in our sights, he didn’t seem to care. I suppose he was
used to it.
“Man, she looks good enough to eat,” Nathan said, slapping me in the
chest with the back of one hand. “Tell me you wouldn’t like to get a piece
of that.”
“He wouldn’t know what to do with it if he got it,” said Jason.
“Ooh, burn.” David went up for a high five, but Jason looked through
him as if he wasn’t there.
We walked on for a few minutes, quiet except for our labored breaths
and the gentle chuffing of our sneakers on the trail.
When Josie stopped for a second to tie her hair back into a ponytail,
Roger said, “I’d like to get inside her crease, man.”
 “She’s something else,” Nathan said. He looked back at Wesley, who
was walking a few steps behind me. “What do you think, Westmore? Don’t
you think she’s something else?”
“She’s something else,” said Wesley. “For sure.”

***
Next on the agenda was archery. Todd, Chris, and Josie warned certain
parties more than once that they should never point a nocked arrow at
another person. I picked up on how to shoot fairly quickly, to no one’s
greater surprise than my own. By the time we were ready to move on to our
next activity I was hitting close to the bulls-eye on each of the targets the
counselors had lined up behind the mess hall. During a rare moment when
he was concentrating on something other than his yoyo, Jeremy Boone
wandered over to me and said, “Check out Robin Hood! We oughta put an
apple on Nathan’s head, see if you can shoot it off.” I didn’t bother
mentioning that he was thinking of William Tell, because his idea sounded
fine to me.
On the lunch menu that day: fish. We caught it ourselves. Fishing had
always bored the hell out of me. But everyone had to participate unless we
wished to go hungry, Todd joked. I decided I could learn to like it about the
time I reeled in a bass that looked big enough to swallow my pet beagle
back home. Todd manned the grill. Chris cleaned what we caught. Josie
held her own with a pink reel and tackle kit. It didn’t even faze her each
time she impaled a bloody earthworm on a hook, which was more than I
could say for one or two of my fellow campers.
After our bellies were full we kicked around a soccer ball for a while. It
was okay until Sean threw the ball at my head as hard as he could. It gave
me a throbbing headache for the remainder of that afternoon. Turned out to
be worth it, though, when Josie brought me an aspirin, a glass of water, and
a generous view of her cleavage. The other guys stood gawking at us as
their ball rolled into the lake. I reveled in their envy, forgot all about my
headache.
We spent the last few hours of daylight in the lake. Well, most of us
did. C.J. sneaked off at some point to retrieve his Bible from our cabin. He
sat at a picnic table studying scripture while the rest of us called each other
names like “queer-bait” and “gay-wad” and bragged about all the pussy we
weren’t really getting back home.
As the sun began to dip behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, Chris built a
fire on the shore. Once its flames were strong and high they called for us to
come dry ourselves. Hair stiff, towels around our necks, we sat in a circle
and roasted marshmallows as we learned more about each of our fellow
campers.
Todd kicked things off with C.J.: “So what’s up with the Bible, my
friend? You seem really dedicated.”
C.J. blew the flame off a scorched marshmallow before he replied, “My
dad was a preacher. And his dad before him. I plan to follow in their
footsteps.”
“Do you have to go to school for that, C.J.?” asked Josie. She had
covered herself in a light jacket and sweatpants with UNIVERSITY OF
WISCONSIN down one leg.
“You can. You don’t have to. The only real qualification is a love for
the Lord.”
“Gotcha.”
Todd looked around the circle. Watched Jeremy do a “man on the
flying trapeze” trick with his yoyo.
“You’re pretty good with that thing,” he said. “How long have you
been working at it?”
Jeremy shrugged. “Couple years, I guess.”
Todd didn’t mention again what he’d said in the mess hall the day
before, about knowing some tricks of his own. I wondered if it had even
been true.
It continued like that for a while. Awkward conversation in fits and
starts while the flames crackled and popped between us. Todd did his best
to keep us engaged, going around the circle and inquiring about our
interests, our hobbies, our plans for the future. We learned that Nathan was
being recruited by some of the top schools in the nation thanks to his grade-
A basketball skills. He was currently trying to decide whether to commit to
Georgia Tech or Clemson. However, when Chris asked him to elaborate on
stuff like how many points he averaged per game he quickly changed the
subject, explaining how his buddy Sean was a “kick-ass” wrestler who had
just been offered a full ride to Davidson. Sean looked down his nose at the
rest of us, flexed his muscles, but offered nothing more. Jason wanted to
play drums for a living one day. He claimed to have taken lessons from a
dude who used to bang skins for the Marshall Tucker Band. None of us
knew who that was, but we agreed it was pretty cool. David was, in his own
words, “the biggest nerd you’ve ever seen.” He said his dream was to write
gaming campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons. Sean coughed “nerd!” into
his fist, but no one laughed because David had already admitted it himself.
Roger was a farmer’s son who got up every morning before dawn to feed
chickens, milk cows, and slop hogs. He loved it, said he looked forward to
taking over the family business one day. I shared with the group the fact
that I loved comic books and bad horror movies. Wesley said he was
obsessed with comic books too, especially the X-Men, but more than
anything he adored Guns n’ Roses. He couldn’t wait to see them in concert
next month. He had celebrated his sixteenth birthday a week before we
arrived at Black Mountain, and his parents had bought him front-row tickets
to see his favorite band.
Our counselors shared a bit about themselves as well. Todd said he
used to weigh nearly three hundred pounds before he discovered hiking and
biking. He confessed of a weird affection for folk music. Chris confessed of
a weird affection for Josie. Josie playfully elbowed her husband in the side,
said she loved playing tennis and watching movies that made her cry.
When the conversation lulled and he could tell we were getting restless,
Todd told us he’d be right back. He jogged into the mess hall, returned a
few minutes later with an acoustic guitar. He played it for us while fireflies
blinked outside our circle like a thousand lighters lifted heavenward. Most
of it was stuff we didn’t know. Sean called it “hippie shit.” Todd reminded
him that he had given us fair warning about his weird affection for folk
music. We asked him if he knew any rock n’ roll, which he didn’t. Wesley
asked – redundantly, I thought -- if he knew anything by Guns n’ Roses. He
didn’t.
My favorite part of the night came when Josie sang something called
“If You Could Read My Mind” while Todd accompanied her on his guitar.
We all sat mesmerized. Todd flubbed a few of the chord changes, but Josie
was perfect. For the first time we admired her for more than her amazing
body.
We were all so bummed when she went away.
Once the Creasmans left, it was the beginning of the end.
 DAY THREE

We were awakened around eight-thirty the next morning — about forty-five

minutes later than scheduled Rise and Shine — by Todd barging into our
cabin, breathing heavily. He was still wearing his pajama bottoms and an
old Nike T-shirt with a hole in one armpit. For once, his long hair hung
loose and messy, instead of pulled back in a tight ponytail.
“Got some bad news, guys,” he announced.
He paced back and forth from one side of the room to the other. He
smelled like calamine lotion.
What happened?” Nathan and Jason asked at the same time.
Nathan shot Jason a dirty look, as if he had stepped on his foot during a
pivotal moment in a big game.
“It’s David Kendall.”
We all stared at David’s bunk, noticing for the first time that it was
empty. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought at first that the kid had
died in his sleep or something.
“He went out behind your cabin last night to, uh . . . relieve himself.
Said his stomach was upset. He didn’t think he would make it to the
restrooms in #8. Apparently, while he was . . . doing his business . . . he got
into some poison ivy. It appears as if David had a pretty nasty allergic
reaction. Chris and Josie drove him to the E.R. about an hour ago.”
“Is he gonna be okay?” asked C.J., who occupied the bunk above
David’s.
“I think so. He should be fine once they get him on some medication.
Unfortunately, he won’t be joining us anymore. Chris and Josie will be back
this afternoon to give us a full update.” Todd sighed, ran one hand through
his hair, waved the other in the direction of the mess hall. “Meantime,
there’s milk and fresh-cut fruit in the fridge, Corn Flakes in the pantry.
Knock yourselves out. After breakfast, toss around a ball or something. I
need to make some phone calls. We’ll try to regroup around ten. Cool?”
“Do what you gotta do,” said Nathan. “I’ll keep these losers in line for
you.”
I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t the only one.

***
Although none of us can be absolved of blame for what happened, it
would be easy to say it all started with David Kendall. If not for David and
his diarrhea, eight teenage boys wouldn’t have been left without adequate
supervision. Things never would have gone as far as they did.
I can’t help comparing it to the what ifs that swarm through your mind
after you’re involved in a car accident: “What if I hadn’t been running late
for work? I wouldn’t have been right there at that exact moment when the
other driver drifted into my lane.” Such theories can be applied to the good
things that happen in life as well: If I hadn’t stepped in a gopher hole during
my senior year of college, fracturing my ankle, I never would have met the
nurse who ultimately became my wife.
What if the number of adults responsible for our well-being hadn’t been
abruptly cut by two-thirds less than seventy-two hours after we got off that
bus?
I suspect my story might have ended with nothing worse than a general
distaste for summer camp and a loathing for certain people I would never
see again.
The words “Black Mountain Camp for Boys” wouldn’t bring to mind
memories of pain and suffering. Tears and blood. Regret.

***
“Jeez,” said Todd. “Anybody know a good exorcist? Because it feels
like our group is cursed.”
We were gathered in the mess hall again. According to the clock on the
wall, it was a quarter past one in the afternoon.
For the first half of the day we had kept ourselves occupied without
getting into too much trouble. Roger hung out on the lakeshore with a rod
and reel. Nathan, Sean, and Jason threw a football back and forth, and for a
while C.J. set aside his Bible to join them. Jeremy sat on a picnic table,
trying to perfect his latest yoyo trick. Wesley stayed in the cabin, sprawled
out on his bunk, playing a handheld videogame. Meanwhile I cherished the
time alone. I climbed to the top of an enormous oak tree near the main road
and sat up there for hours, wishing I was ten again when adulthood seemed
a million light years away.
Not long before Todd stepped out on the front porch of the mess hall
and yelled for us to join him inside, I got a bird’s-eye view of Wesley
finally walking out of the cabin, shielding his eyes from the sun. He ambled
around for a while, and I suspected he was searching for me. I stayed up in
my tree, careful not to move or make a sound.
As we took our seats at one of the long plastic tables in the mess hall a
few minutes later, we knew something was wrong. Had David taken a turn
for the worse? Todd kept pacing back and forth, running one hand through
his hair.
“Man. Talk about a messed-up day.”
“What’s going on?” asked Nathan.
“First off, I’m glad to report that David is fine. I do have some bad
news about Chris and Josie. They’ve been in a pretty serious car accident.
They were T-boned by another car on their way back to camp.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “Are they okay?”
“I talked to Josie on the phone a few minutes ago. Chris broke his
collarbone, his left leg, and two of his ribs. Jo’s rattled, a few cuts and
bruises, but she’s okay.”
“So . . . what happens now?” asked C.J.
“It looks like you’re stuck with me,” said Todd.
I hung my head, felt a pang of unease in the pit of my stomach. For
some reason those seven words sounded ominous. I didn’t know yet know
how much of a slacker Todd was — I would learn soon enough —but I
knew I didn’t want to be there with no one around but him to keep guys like
Sean and Nathan under control. I had met boys like them before, boys who
only seemed happy when they were hurting someone else, and I made it a
habit to stay away from them. These two, though . . . I could tell there was
something about them that was more dangerous than spitballs, “KICK ME”
signs, and locker-room wedgies. An image of two deadly cobras came to
mind, with no protective glass between them and us like there had been
when Wesley and I took a field trip to the zoo with Mrs. McClure’s class a
lifetime ago.
More than ever, I did not want to be here.
“We’ll have to wait and see if the folks who sign my paycheck wanna
pull the plug on the focus group thing,” Todd continued. “I’ll know more in
the morning. It’s Sunday, so we can’t get a bus up here until tomorrow
anyway. Right now I’m hearing it’ll probably be up to your parents, as far
as whatever happens next.”
I knew what my own parents would say. Mom and Dad were boarding
a plane to Paris later that week. They wouldn’t want to ruin their plans.
“Yo, Todd,” said Sean.
“Yep?”
“Reckon Josie needs some company while Chris is down for the count?
‘Cause I’d be glad to fill that hole. If you get what I’m saying… ”
He punctuated his offer with a crude waggle of his tongue.
Todd stared at him. “Seriously, dude?”
“Huh?”
“Those are my friends. They could have been killed. I can’t believe
you’d say something like that.”
Sean stared down at his lap. “Damn. I’m just messing around.”
Todd’s shoulders slumped as if he had never been so tired. In a tone
that implied we were to blame for every terrible thing that had happened —
the Creasmans’ car accident, the poison ivy that sent a fellow camper to the
E.R., even David’s irritable bowels – he told us to hit the lake.
We ran from the mess hall, clamored down the steps like lunatics who
just realized the doors to the asylum had been left wide open.
“Fuck him, man,” I heard Sean say to Nathan as they shoved past me.
“I’ll kick Todd’s ass.”
Nathan slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry about it, bro. I thought
it was funny.”

***
Our activities for the rest of the day consisted of kayaking, soccer, and
a number of ridiculous “team-building” exercises. Throughout the latter
most of us kept rolling our eyes and insisting we had never been forced to
do anything so “gay.” For the first time, Todd seemed annoyed with us.
Recent developments had darkened his mood, I could tell. At one point he
threw up his hands, said, “You think this is gay? Well, maybe you get out of
it whatever you put in. Think about that, why don’tcha. Jeez . . . I’m doing
my best here, fellas.”
Later, as I lay in my bunk struggling to drift off to sleep, I realized for
the first time in my life how noisy the night can be. Crickets chirped outside
of our cabin like an army of alien invaders biding their time until our world
slumbered. Frogs croaked their nocturnal song like a choir with too many
members devoted to basso profondo. Inside the cabin, we added to the
ambience with noises of our own: a cough . . . a gurgling belly . . . balls
being scratched beneath boxers.
The cabin had no windows. Only the yellow circle of Jeremy’s glow-
in-the-dark yoyo penetrated the darkness. He had fallen asleep with the toy
still tied to his finger; it appeared to hover in mid-air beneath his bunk,
glaring at me like the geezers’s eye in that story “The Tell-Tale Heart”.
Just as my eyelids finally started to get heavy, I heard Nathan say from
across the room, “Yo, Wesley . . . Westmore, you awake?”
“I am now,” said Wesley.
“Got a question for you.”
“What.”
“If we’re in the woods and a copperhead bites one of us on the dick,
will you get down on your knees and suck out the venom?”
Everyone laughed. I felt guilty about it, but I joined in as well.
“Screw you, Ginyard,” Wesley replied.
“I’m serious, man. We need to know. Be honest. You’ll hold a cock in
your mouth ‘til the swelling goes down . . . won’tcha?”
“Screw you,” Wesley said again.
“You freakin’ wish.”
Jason spoke up then, from the closest bunk to my left: “Maybe he can
practice on his boyfriend over there.”
My breath caught in my throat and my heart started beating a little
faster. I didn’t know Jason’s comment was directed toward me, but there
was no one else he could have meant since Wesley and I shared a bunk. I
didn’t respond, hoping they would think I was asleep.
 Someone made obscene licking and slurping noises.
“As long as I don’t have to hear ‘em,” said Sean. “Faggots make me
sick.”
Murmurs of agreement throughout the room.
Someone farted then. It was a good one, loud and wet-sounding. A real
blue-ribbon winner.
“David?” said Jason. “Is that you?”
Everyone roared with laughter.
I laughed harder than anyone else. I laughed until my ribs ached and
tears rolled down my cheeks.
I felt like a man who has just been granted a stay of execution. When
you’re young there is no greater sense of relief than when the bullies’ sights
are no longer turned on you.
 DAY FOUR

When I was a kid, tattling only made matters worse. Standing up to a bully
in defense of a friend meant signing your own death warrant. But that
wasn’t the only reason I ignored it, once they started singling out Wesley. I
didn’t speak up because we had all gotten a taste of their meanness in one
way or another.
It was all in fun. Just words.
I kept telling myself that.
But meanness festers. Like malignant cells eating away at bone
marrow. And the more it consumes, the hungrier it gets.

***
Monday. Todd informed us over breakfast that our parents had been
contacted and everything was “copacetic.”
Our focus group would remain intact. We would spend the next three
weeks together as planned.
That put me in a wretched mood all day. Apparently some of the others
had hoped we’d get sent home too – by my estimation it was a fifty/fifty
mix of boys who didn’t want to be there versus those who were enjoying
themselves so far. Jeremy said he’d rather be at the Yoyo and Skill Toy
Convention coming up later that week at the Asheville Civic Center. Over
lunch I heard Roger ask Jason, “Dare me to write ‘EAT A DICK’ on every
line of their stupid questionnaire?” Jason double-dog-dared him, but said he
couldn’t stand his stepfather and if it meant not having to see that retard for
a while he’d do just about anything.
For a minute or two after Todd gave us the news, I considered
following David Kendall’s lead. Maybe I would head into the woods next,
squat down in a patch of poison ivy to do my business . . . but I nixed that
idea, because for some reason the plant has never affected me.
I was stuck here.

***
We were in the lake that afternoon, playing a rowdy game of hit-the-
guy-jumping-off-the-raft-with-Nathan’s-basketball. Speaking of Nathan, he
was nowhere in sight. Neither was Sean. I found this odd — and a tad
disconcerting — because hitting people seemed to be among their favorite
hobbies.
“I’ve got an idea,” said C.J., right before things got crazy.
“Let’s hear it,” Wesley said as he climbed onto the raft. It was his turn
to be the jumper.
“So it’s four points for a clean hit. How about a chance for conversion
points if your team rebounds the ball before it hits the water . . . one if you
hit the backboard, double-bonus if you sink a shot?”
“Works for me,” said Jeremy.
“Dope idea!” said Jason. “Slap me some skin, my brutha!”
If C.J. noticed Jason’s condescending attempt at sounding “black,” he
let it go. Their palms smacked wetly together.
“So what’s the score?” I asked.
“The Really Big Dicks 16, Pussy Destroyers 12,” said Roger.
“Let the record show that I don’t approve of those names,” said C.J.
“You mentioned it,” said Roger. “Nobody gives a shit.”
I laughed. I was starting to get into the game as well, had even begun
brainstorming on a name for our newfound sport (“bruise-ball” had a cool
ring to it) . . . when I glanced toward the cabins and saw Sean and Nathan
coming out of #2.
They quickly closed the distance between our cabin and the lake. There
was a purpose in their stride, like soldiers on a mission. Sean carried
something in one hand that looked like a magazine rolled into a colorful
tube.
A knot of dread tightened in my gut, an ominous feeling similar to how
folks out west must feel when they spot an enormous funnel cloud swirling
toward them on the horizon.
 “Listen up!”
“Yo! Everybody shut your hole a minute!”
We all grew quiet.
Sean and Nathan both wore flip-flops and swimming trunks, as if they
had planned to join us before something better came up. They stopped
where the water lapped against the shoreline. Sean slapped Nathan in the
chest with the rolled-up magazine, as if to say: What are you waiting for?
Tell ‘em. As Nathan explained what was going on, he looked like a guy
sharing details of some scientific discovery he had made just seconds ago, a
breakthrough that would benefit all mankind.
“Check it out! My cousin, he’s one of those skater geeks. He hangs out
a lot at a park near his school. Said there was this peter-eater who used to
come out there. He brought his boyfriend with him sometimes, and they
were always holding hands, rubbing that shit in everybody’s faces. One day
my cousin and his buddies ran those queers off, told ‘em they better not
come back!”
Nathan’s words echoed through the valley. Sean kept glancing toward
the mess hall, as if keeping an eye out for Todd.
“We played their school this year, stomped ‘em in the regional semi-
finals. I was talking to my cousin at halftime. He pointed them out to me,
up in the bleachers. Said those were the two fudge-packers from the park. I
saw him and his faggot boyfriend. I saw you.”
Nathan’s finger stabbed into the air in our direction. We followed an
invisible line from his fingertip… over the rippling waters of the lake...
through the open space between our teams... to the raft, where Wesley
stood, water dripping from his face and arms.
My childhood friend had gone deathly pale.
“I knew I recognized you as soon as you stepped off that bus.” Nathan
stepped forward, into ankle-deep water. “I just couldn’t figure out from
where.”
The rest of us looked back and forth between them.
Wesley stared down at his cross necklace, rolling it between his thumb
and forefinger as if praying for divine intervention. His bangs hung stiff and
wet to his chin, but for once he didn’t push them out of his eyes. As if they
hid him from the rest of the world if he could not see us.
“Look what we found in Westmore’s bag!”
 Sean unrolled the magazine then, held it up. The pages fluttered like
the wings of a bird trying to escape the grip of a sadistic child.
“What is it?” Roger asked, splashing toward shore.
“It’s a fag mag,” said Nathan.
Jason let out a high-pitched giggle, headed for dry land too. “No way!”
“It’s a bodybuilding book,” said Sean. “Pictures of muscle dudes all
oiled-up and sweaty. Does he look like a kid who pumps iron? Probably
weighs a buck-twenty soaking wet.”
“Are the pages stuck together?” asked Roger.
Someone made a gagging noise.
“Wait a minute,” said Jeremy. “Westmore’s a homo? He doesn’t look
like one. I mean, I’ve never known any homos…”
I realized he was talking to me. I dogpaddled away from him.
C.J. swam over to the raft. “They’re just messing with you, right?
You’re not really —”
“You assholes went through my stuff?” Wesley screamed across the
lake, fighting back tears. “You had no right to go through my stuff!”
I wondered what Todd was up to. I hadn’t seen him since shortly after
lunch, when he had cut up a watermelon the size of a small planet and we
devoured it in record time. He should be here. He should stop this. None of
this would be happening if he was out here doing his job.
I felt a sudden hot rush of anger. Not only at Todd, or the jerks
tormenting my childhood friend. For some reason, as he looked down at me
and our eyes briefly met, I was furious with Wesley too. I didn’t know
whether I was distressed over what I had just learned about him, or because
he had never trusted me enough to share his secret with me. Neither of us
had known what “gay” meant when we were mere fifth-graders obsessed
with Star Wars and monsters, but....
I was confused. Afraid. I hated them all. Including my blood brother.
Wesley pinched his nostrils shut and dove into the water.
I looked back toward shore, saw Sean passing around the magazine.
Every guy who touched it made a show of wiping his hands on his
swimming trunks afterward as if something slimy had crossed his palms.
They were already teasing each other about who wanted to sneak it away to
the showers for a “late-night swordfight” with “Wesley Wants-more-dick.”
 Several bubbles floated to the surface of the water where Wesley had
gone under. I wished he could stay down there forever. For his own good.
Finally, Todd came bouncing down the front steps of the mess hall. His
T-shirt read “I SUPPORT THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM: PARTY ALL
DAY AND PARTY ALL NIGHT!” He winced as the sunlight hit him,
quickly donned his sunglasses from atop his head like a guy who just awoke
from a deep sleep.
“Everything okay?” he asked, tying his hair back with a rubber band as
he approached the guys on shore. “What’s going on out here?”
“Nothing,” said Nathan.
Sean rolled up the magazine, stuck it in his back pocket.
“Cool,” said Todd. “Who’s up for a game of touch football? As long as
you ladies keep the ‘touch’ part to a minimum. I don’t swing that way.”

***
The rest of the day wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, considering
what they had found in Wesley’s bag. He got slammed to the ground more
times than I could count during Todd’s game of “touch” football, but
Wesley wasn’t the only one (halfway through the last game Sean sacked me
so hard I was convinced for about a minute that I was paralyzed from the
waist down). Todd ended our archery session early when Sean drew back
his bow and threatened to “sink an arrow into the fairy’s heart.” Nathan
slapped his handheld videogame out of his hands over dinner; for the rest of
the evening Wesley complained that the fire button wouldn’t work unless
you pushed down on it really hard.
“That’s what you homos like to do, isn’t it?” Jason said. “Push down on
it really hard?”
Of course, the fag jokes were in no short supply.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop thinking about my old friend’s secret. A
secret that was no longer a secret. My fifteen-year-old brain ached as if I
were back in Algebra class, puzzling over a pop quiz, as I pondered what
had made him turn out that way: Was it some kind of birth defect? Did he
wake up one day and just decide to be gay? Why would he do that, though?
I tried to comprehend why a guy my age would prefer muscle-bound
meatheads in a magazine called Flex to Shannon Tweed shower scenes on
late-night HBO. Did his parents know? If so, were they ashamed of him?
As a kid who had been raised in a Southern Baptist household, I
couldn’t help wondering what this meant for the fate of his soul: would
Wesley go to Hell when he died?
 DAY FIVE

The following morning I awoke on my side, facing the wall. For the first
time I noticed something carved into the wood there: the letters “KKK”,
beneath a backwards swastika. I briefly wondered about the kid who had
done it. Was he a harmless prankster? Or had teens as cruel as Sean and
Nathan slept here through the years? If this were one of the horror flicks I
loved so much back then, the Black Mountain Camp for Boys might have
sat atop some cursed Indian burial ground, a supernatural ley line feeding
off of negative energy, creating monsters out of misguided young men.
Silly. But that was the way my mind worked when I was fifteen. Before
I learned that real life is so much scarier than anything you’ll see in some
B-movie.
I lay there listening to the voices of my fellow campers for a minute
before rolling over. There were only two or three of them in the room with
me, I could tell; I heard muffled laughter on the other side of the wall in the
distance as the rest of the group started their day outside.
“That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, bro. He doesn’t have a clue!”
“Can’t believe I got away with it. I mean, how do you sleep through
that?”
“Probably dreaming about dicks and balls.”
The sound of back-slaps and high-fives.
I sat up in bed, rubbed crusty sleep from my eyes just in time to see
their shadows slipping through the doorway behind them as they left the
cabin.
I was alone with C.J. His legs dangled over his bunk as he finished his
morning devotional. He wore silver jogging shorts and a black T-shirt on
which bold white letters declared, “MY LIFEGUARD WALKS ON
WATER (Matthew 14:22-33).”
 He made a tsking sound with his tongue as he closed his Bible and
hopped down to follow the others out. “Those guys aren’t right. But I guess
he was sorta asking for it. ‘Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper,
but the one who renounces them finds mercy.’”
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“Todd’s making pancakes,” C.J. said, jogging out the door.
I quickly threw on a tank-top and a clean pair of shorts. Decided I
would shower after breakfast.
I wandered outside. It was going to be a gorgeous day. The sky was
bright blue, cloudless. Most of the other guys were hanging out by the lake,
skipping stones across its sun-dappled surface. Jeremy “walked the dog”
with his yoyo along the shoreline. Wesley sat at the picnic table by himself,
playing his videogame.
I noticed the others kept glancing back toward Wesley, their cruel
laughter echoing through the valley.
He pretended not to hear them. His lips moved in a soundless curse
every few seconds as he fought the damaged button on his game.
I walked toward him. Casually. Kicked a few rocks on the way. Trying
to make it look like I just happened to end up at the picnic table after
strolling around aimlessly, bored out of my skull. The air was thick, like
breathing cotton. Sweat had already started to drip from my forehead,
tickling my cheek.
A rumble of conversation from the others. Someone let out an
obnoxious guffaw that sounded like the bray of a dying donkey: “Baaa-
haaa-hawww!”
“Dude, that’s classic,” said Nathan. “Wish I’d thought of it first.”
Once I stood over Wesley, I saw what they found so hilarious.
He squinted up at me in the morning sunlight, his braided cross
necklace dangling in front of his skinny chest. “Hey, sleepyhead.”
I felt sick.
Someone had scrawled a word on his forehead in black Magic Marker.
It was framed perfectly by his long blond bangs. It was misspelled, but that
diluted none of its hateful power:
 “Take a picture, weirdo, it’ll last longer,” he said with a goofy grin.
“Wesley, um…”
“Why are you staring at me like that?” He returned his attention to his
game. “Careful, D-man. Those assholes might get the wrong idea.”
A cool breeze blew through the valley. The trees behind the cabins
whispered in reply, as if we were surrounded on all sides by snickering
conspirators. I looked back toward the group by the lake, watched Nathan
fling a rock as far as he could. Sean nudged him in the side with an elbow.
Nathan waited until his rock plunked into the water before facing us again
with a satisfied smirk.
“Wesley, you need to go look in a mirror,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Just . . . go look in a mirror.”
He stood. His game clattered onto the tabletop. “Dennis, what did they
do?”
I bit my lip, stared down at my feet. Rubbed at my own forehead with
the tips of two fingers.
Wesley ran for the mess hall as the others bellowed riotous laughter in
his wake.

***
The mess hall smelled like pancakes. My favorite. Under different
circumstances my mouth would have started watering right away. As I went
looking for Todd and Wesley, though, the aroma made my stomach churn.
Like a birthday filled with sunshine and birdsong ruined by news of a
tragedy.
I found them in the main office, next door to the kitchen. Wesley sat on
a stool beside a big metal desk. His teeth were bared, giving him an almost
feral look, as he rubbed at his forehead with a wet paper towel. Todd stood
over him with a bottle of alcohol and a new roll of towels. A trio of boys
with their arms around each another smiled down at them from a poster on
the wall (“AT THE BLACK MOUNTAIN CAMP FOR BOYS YOU’LL
MAKE MEMORIES THAT LAST A LIFETIME!”).
“Aww, man,” said Todd. “It’s not coming off easy. Looks like
permanent marker.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” said Wesley. The skin on his forehead was
an irritated sunburn-pink.
They saw me standing in the doorway.
“Oh,” said Todd. “Hey, Dennis.”
I didn’t return his greeting. I was too busy noticing the phone on the
desk behind him. I found myself staring at it like a drowning man regarding
a life-preserver that is just barely out of reach.
I snapped out of it when I heard Todd say, “It’s none of my business if
you are a homosexual. Not saying you are . . . I mean, it’s cool with me
either way. Live and let live, man, that’s always been my motto. Used to
room with this gay guy my first year at Western. You never would have
known he was ‘funny.’ Homeboy hung around some of the hottest chicks
I’ve ever seen!” He looked up toward the ceiling, and his expression was
that of a man reminiscing on the greatest times of his life.
“Are you gonna do something about this?” I asked him.
“What? Oh. You bet.” He ripped a new paper towel off the roll,
splashed some alcohol on it before handing it to Wesley.
“No.” Wesley stopped scrubbing at his forehead. “I don’t want you to
say anything.”
“What?” I said.
“Let it go.”
“Wesley, no. They can’t get away with —”
“Shut up, Dennis. This is my problem, not yours.” He looked back up
at Todd. His eyes grew wet as he pleaded, “I don’t want you to say anything
to them. Please. I think it’s better if we pretend this never happened.”
“Hey, dude, it’s your call.”
Todd gave Wesley a friendly pat on the shoulder before moving across
the room to peer out the bay window that overlooked the lake.
“Guess I’d better finish making breakfast before I have a mutiny on my
hands,” he said.
Outside, I could see Sean and the others taking turns hitting rocks over
the lake with a baseball bat. They were aiming for a flock of ducks preening
themselves on the swim raft.
“They’re just giving you a hard time,” said Todd. “Boys will be boys,
right?”
Wesley stared down at the soggy gray paper towel in his hand.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure that’s all it is.”

***
We kicked off the day’s activities with a game of softball. Wesley
surprised us all by showing considerable talent at the pitcher’s mound. He
actually struck Nathan out at one point. I wondered if he would pay for it
later.
When that was done, Todd set up a volleyball net on the shore. Sean
insisted it was “a game for girls”. I thought it was a lot of fun, but I tried not
to show it.
Next up was a round of Capture the Flag (“a game for five-year-olds,”
according to Sean).
After lunch we took a long hike. As we headed back down the
mountain, I tripped over a root. Someone grabbed my arm just in time to
keep me on my feet.
I composed myself, turned to thank the person who had saved me from
eating the forest floor.
Wesley told me that’s what friends are for.
Then he leaned in close while we walked, started whispering to me in a
slightly confrontational tone. As if he had been dwelling on this all day and
could no longer keep it to himself…
“You know, nobody would’ve had a problem with it, if it was one of
the magazines you guys like to look at. Big fake plastic tits and airbrushed
vaginas. You’d all pass it around, drool over Miss July, and talk about how
you’d give it to her good. Tell me I’m wrong, D-man. You know I’m right.”
His forehead was still very red, I noticed.
Until he spoke up on the other side of me, I didn’t realize that Jeremy
was keeping pace with us.
He said, “But looking at chicks, that’s normal.”
“I don’t remember inviting you into this conversation,” said Wesley.
 Jeremy shocked me then by showing a side of himself I hadn’t seen
before: “You might wanna watch your mouth, peter-puffer. Before
somebody knocks your teeth out.”
At that moment I realized the true nature of hatred. It is contagious.
And even those among us who had previously remained quiet, their
attention focused on objects as innocuous as yoyos or holy books, could be
infected by the meanness around them.
No one was immune.

***
That night I was awakened by a soft whimpering noise. At first I
thought there was a rat in our cabin.
I lay there staring into the darkness, wondering if I had dreamed it.
From across the room, the blinking orange butt of a single firefly spoke to
me in Morse code. The insect had gotten trapped inside our cabin at some
point; now it bounced around, trying to find its way out. At first glance it
looked like one of my fellow campers sneaking puffs on a cigarette.
The haunting cry of a loon echoed across the lake.
I held my breath, listened for that whimpering noise to come again. I
couldn’t be sure what I had heard beneath Roger’s grating snore.
Then I realized it came from directly above me.
It was Wesley, softly sobbing in his sleep.
I sat up on one elbow.
The room smelled faintly of urine. Someone had pissed on Wesley’s
magazine earlier. He had found the soggy evidence waiting for him on his
pillow just before Lights Out.
The bed-frame rocked gently as he tossed and turned up there.
A sniffle.
“Wanna go home,” he moaned. His voice was muffled, as if his face
was buried in his pillow.
I had never heard a more pitiful sound.
I thought about the friendship we had shared years ago. We had made a
pact. Blood brothers. I wondered if I should wake him, say something in an
effort to console him.
 But then I thought about what might happen if the others caught us
whispering in the dark.
I reached beneath my bunk, removed my Walkman from my gym bag,
and slipped the headphones over my ears.
I hesitated, but only for a heartbeat or two . . . before I pushed PLAY,
and slowly cranked up the Beastie Boys until I could no longer hear
Wesley’s weeping.
 DAY SIX

When we first arrived, our counselors had shared with us the complete
agenda for our stay via a clipboard hanging from a hook on the back of our
cabin door. On the clipboard were twenty sheets of paper, and printed in dot
matrix on each sheet was a daily list of everything they had planned for us
from Rise-and-Shine to Lights Out.
By the fourth or fifth day the pages had started curling up from the
humidity, and our schedule of activities had become a communal sketchpad
for drawings of exaggerated genitalia. I wondered if the black Magic
Marker responsible for the graffiti was the same one that had written that
word on Wesley’s forehead.
According to the clipboard, this was what we were supposed to do on
Day 6:

8:00 - BREAKFAST
8:30 - LANGUAGE BARRIER - (team building exercise)
9:30 - ULTIMATE FRISBEE
10:15 - KAYAKING
12:00 - LUNCH
12:45 - HIKE + INTRO. TO SURVIVAL SKILLS, Part I
3:30 - VOLLEYBALL
4:15 - ODD MAN OUT’ - (team building exercise)
5:30 - DINNER
6:15 - SWIMMING
 7:30 - FIRESIDE CHAT
9:00 - LIGHTS OUT

Other than the volleyball (which I enjoyed, thanks to my team winning

two out of three games) and the Frisbee (which I didn’t, since the plastic
disc proved nearly as dangerous as a saw blade in the hands of certain
parties), we ignored the schedule once again and spent another day
splashing in the lake. We swam until our muscles were sore and our
fingertips resembled those of our grandparents, all ghost-white and
wrinkled. Todd came out of the mess hall once an hour or so, just long
enough to ask what we were up to, as if that qualified as doing his job
(“bangin’ your mom, what’s it look like,” Roger replied under his breath
early on, and it soon became a running joke with everyone except Wesley
and me taking a turn each time he asked).
I did my best to avoid the others. I explored beneath the swim raft,
running my hands over the slimy moss that covered the thick posts
anchoring the raft to the lake floor. Its strange, alien texture felt as if I were
touching something that had never been touched by another human. I dove
deep, and the sounds of my fellow campers’ horseplay grew muffled and
distant. Their skinny white legs thrashed above me as if they were being
sucked into space by invaders from another world. I liked that thought just
fine.
After dinner we were lounging around by the lake, our bellies full and
aching from a feast of Sloppy Joes. I sat at the picnic table, listening to my
Walkman for a while before its batteries finally went dead. I left my
headphones on even after it went silent, to discourage anyone from talking
to me. C.J. sat on the other side of the table with his nose stuck in his Bible;
occasionally he took a bite from his unfinished plate without looking up
from his studies. Wesley paced around in my peripheral vision, his fingers
mashing hard at his videogame.
I watched a plane leave its long white contrail across the sky like some
celestial graffiti artist. A cool summer breeze wafted through the camp,
carrying with it the slightly fishy but not unpleasant smell of the lake and
the things that lived within it. A cicada sang its surreal song from the tall
trees behind our cabin.
 I should have known the serenity wouldn’t last forever.
Eventually, Sean came out from behind the mess hall and started
challenging us to wrestle him. He wore black track shorts and an F.B.I.
(“FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR”) half-shirt that showed off his tan belly.
He snuck up behind C.J., got him in a chokehold. C.J. flailed about,
knocked his dinner plate off the table, splashing baked beans all over his
legs. When Sean was done with him, C.J. held a hand to his throat and
coughed, “You got too much rage in you, man. I’m gonna pray for you.”
Sean laughed in his face. Jason danced around, taunting Sean as if they
were on WCW Power Hour, then laughed like he’d never had so much fun
when Sean put him in a figure-four leg-lock. I noticed Jason walked with a
slight limp for the rest of the day. Roger was the only one who gave him
any real competition, but Sean eventually pinned him too. He strutted
around like a bantam rooster afterward, flexing his muscles as if there were
dozens of cameras aimed at him, while Nathan played ring announcer.
When Sean got on top of the picnic table and started singing “We Are
the Champions,” I sneaked away, covering my mouth to stifle a laugh that
would surely get my ass kicked. The irony was too much to bear.
For the next few minutes I made myself scarce. I headed toward our
cabin to stow away my Walkman, took my time cleaning up around my
bunk a little. I zipped up my duffel bag and slid it against the wall. Kicked
some stray granola bar wrappers under the bed. Halfway made my bed and
fluffed up my pillow. Outside, the sounds of a new wrestling match echoed
through the valley: labored grunts, an occasional hoarse curse, and the
slapping of skin on skin.
When that was done I walked down to #8 to “drain the main vein” (as
we used to say when we were kids).
I exited the bathroom to the sound of violent shouting down by the
lake. It instantly reminded me of the commotion you would hear in the
hallway any time a fight broke out at school, before cheers of bloodlust
turned to disappointed boos when a teacher broke it up too soon.
I had learned there was rarely anyone around to break it up at Black
Mountain. Bad things had a way of playing out to their ugly conclusion
here, like a script written long before we arrived.
I stood there for several seconds, using one hand to shield my eyes
from the bright sunlight. I could see everyone clustered together down by
the mess hall.
I ran to join them, to find out what was going on.
Wesley lay on the ground. Sean stood over him, his hands balled into
fists. Blood trickled from Wesley’s left nostril. There was dirt in his hair,
and more of it smudged across the front of his Captain America T-shirt. His
chest heaved up and down. His face burned bright red as if he had been
standing too close to a raging fire.
“Fucking faggot,” Sean said. “You ever touch me again, I’ll cut it off!”
Wesley trembled beneath him. “I didn’t do anything. I d-didn’t mean
to…”
As he said it, we all saw him push down on his crotch with one hand. He
winced as if it caused him great pain.
“I ain’t no homo.” Sean looked around the circle as if trying to
convince the rest of us. “I pinned him, and he popped a boner! I ain’t like
you, pole-smoker. Swear to God, I’ll cut your fucking cock off, you try to
touch me like that. You hear me, sick fuck?”
Sean paced back and forth. For the next minute or so his furious
breathing seemed to drown out every other sound in the universe.
Wesley wiped at his nose with the back of one hand, smearing blood
across his dirty cheek. He tried to sit up, but fell back to the ground. Tears
glistened in his eyes.
I noticed there was something in Sean’s eyes too. He hid it well, but it
was there. All of the color had drained from his face. His alpha-male
machismo had been replaced by… an unfamiliar loss of control. A
homophobe’s irrational fear of being penetrated by another man. I didn’t get
it then, at the age of fifteen. I do now.
It obviously scared the hell out of a guy like Sean. Now he had
something to prove.
He took a step toward Wesley, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. I
heard it rip. His right hand balled into a massive fist.
I ran to find Todd.

***
Fortunately, I found him in the first place I looked. And at last I
discovered at least two reasons why he was never around…
 I heard him talking on the phone in the office as soon as I stepped into
the mess hall.
“I know you care about him. But how much longer do I have to wait?”
I crossed the dining area, approached the office with light footsteps.
“I just want to be with you, baby. You don’t know how scared I was,
when I found out you were hurt.”
A pause. The snick! of a lighter.
“Heartless? I don’t care. You should do it now. He’s a good-looking
guy — once he’s back on his feet he’ll find someone else! I just want you
here. With me.”
My cheeks grew hot. I knew I was hearing something I wasn’t
supposed to hear.
I peeked through the doorway. His back was turned to me as he gazed
out the window overlooking the lake. A wisp of smoke hovered above his
head. I wondered if he cared at all that we were nowhere in sight. How
quickly would he have moved if he saw our bodies come floating to the
surface of the lake – facedown, grey and bloated? What if, the next time he
bothered to leave the office, he discovered that we had been eaten by bears,
and there was nothing left of his young wards but a few blood-soaked socks
and shoes?
“You do what you have to do,” he said into the phone, “and I’ll be here
waiting. But I’m not happy about it. You’re my girl.”
He swiveled around in his chair. I saw a stubby joint pinched between
the thumb and forefinger of his free hand. He brought it to his lips, took a
drag.
I moved out of sight.
A cough. His chair squeaked. “Is someone there?”
I stepped forward again.
“Baby, I gotta go.” He hung up the phone.
I didn’t say anything, just stood there awkwardly.
Todd stubbed out the joint in the ashtray, waved his hand in front of his
face to clear the smoke.
“Dennis. Hey. Something I can do you for, my man?”
“You’re needed outside,” I said. “Now.”
 ***
We were gathered in the mess hall again. Todd kept shaking his head as
if he had never met a bigger gang of screw-ups than the eight sitting in front
of him.
“Here’s the thing. I trust you to act like mature young men. It’s why
I’m not always standing over you, holding your hand.”
We were all silent. Sean sat stiffly, staring off toward the kitchen.
Wesley glared at Sean as he held a tissue to his nose. He had an ugly
crescent-shaped bruise under his left eye.
“Is that what you want? Somebody to babysit you? Because that’s not
in my job description, fellas.” Todd looked back and forth between Sean
and Wesley. “I’m disappointed, that’s all I’m saying. We’re supposed to be
in this together. That’s what Black Mountain’s all about.”
Sean pointed at Wesley. “He started it. I was just showing them some
of my moves. This pervert tried to —”
“That’s B.S. and you know it,” Wesley spat. “I told you I didn’t want to
wrestle. I wasn’t bothering anybody!”
Wesley looked around at the rest of us, waiting for someone to back up
his story. No one did.
Todd sighed. “Look… if you can’t get along, just stay away from each
other, okay? It’s not that hard. There’s a hundred-and-twenty-three acres of
camp out there. Plenty of room to do what you wanna do and still keep your
distance from some guy you got a problem with for whatever reason. Think
you can you do that for me?”
“My pleasure,” said Wesley. “Just tell him to keep his gorilla hands off
me.”
“I’m not the one that got a hard-on from touching another dude,” said
Sean. “He tries something like that again, I’ll break his damn face.”
“Whatever,” Wesley mumbled. “You probably liked it.”
Sean jumped up. His chair crashed to the floor. “What the hell did you
just say?”
“You couldn’t wait to crawl on top of me. But I’m the fag.”
“Ohhhhh!” the others shouted in unison.
Sean’s nostrils flared as everyone laughed at him.
Nathan said, “Did he really just say that?”
 “He did,” said Jeremy, without looking up from his yoyo. “I heard
him.”
“I wouldn’t wanna be you, man,” C.J. said to Wesley.
“That’s enough!” Todd rubbed at his temples as if we had given him a
terrible headache. “I don’t have time for this. Wesley, you come with me
and help me start the fire. It’ll be dark soon.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” said Wesley.
He shot one last nervous glance toward Sean before following Todd out
the door. As he passed my table, he made eye contact with me as well. I
looked away.
“You’re gonna pay for that, faggot,” Sean whispered.
Through an open window I could see one of those old-fashioned Coca-
Cola thermometers hanging on the front porch. The temperature was 69
degrees in the shade, yet I felt a chill from head to toe.
 DAY SEVEN

A high-pitched beeping noise. At first, I thought it was a part of my

nightmare. I dreamed I was playing a videogame. Somehow I knew I was
playing for my life. Sweat poured down my face as I worked the joystick in
my hand. Onscreen, my character jumped from rooftop to rooftop across a
row of moonlit cabins while a mob of cackling delinquents followed close
behind. The villains carried baseball bats dripping with eight-bit blood.
Once I was fully awake I realized the beeping was the alarm on
someone’s wristwatch.
It stopped. Everything was silent for the next minute or so, save for the
loud chirping of crickets outside our cabin.
Whispers then, in the darkness . . .
“We still gonna do this?”
“Damn straight. Unless you pussies have changed your mind.”
“Screw that, bro. I’ve been looking forward to this. Couldn’t even
sleep!”
“Should somebody check on Todd, make sure he’s out?”
“We’ll be okay, long as we keep it down.”
My mind raced, wondering what they were up to.
The sound of multiple feet hitting the floor, as my fellow campers
jumped out of bed. Sounded like some of them already had their shoes on.
“What if sissy-boy makes a racket?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m telling you, Todd ain’t
gonna hear shit from #7.”
“Yeah, but sound carries out here.”
“Quit being such a girl. He makes too much noise; we’ll shove
something in his mouth. Faggot oughta like that.”
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw figures approaching my
side of the room from all directions.
I gasped, sat up. But they weren’t coming for me.
 The bottom halves of their bodies filled my vision. Suddenly my bunk
rocked from side to side as they grabbed Wesley up top.
“What the hell?” he shouted.
“Wake up, ass bandit,” said Sean. “We’re going for a walk.”
“Hey… stop… get your hands off of me!”
“Careful,” said Jason. “He might get wood again. You know he likes
you!”
“Don’t make me tell you again,” Sean growled. “Motherfucker, I said,
get up!”
They rolled him out of bed then, quickly stepped back, and he fell to
the floor from five feet up. He landed on his side with a horrible thud. I felt
the whole cabin shake.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Wesley cried.
I watched, feeling helpless, as he curled into a fetal position at their
feet.
Across the room, C.J.’s watch glowed green as he sat up and checked
the time. “Seriously, guys? It’s two’ clock in the morning!”
“That’s fag-bashing time where I come from,” said Sean.
“It’s always fag-bashing time where I come from,” said Roger.
“I heard that,” said Jason.
Someone flicked on the light.
Everyone except C.J. and me were already dressed, if only in their T-
shirts and pajama bottoms. Sean wore a muscle shirt with the words OWEN
WARHORSE WRESTLING on it, black sweatpants, and flip-flops. Jason
stood over by the light switch, sliding his bare feet into an old pair of tennis
shoes. “GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE” read
the slogan on his shirt. Somehow I knew he had thrown it on just for this
occasion.
“Glad everyone’s awake,” Nathan announced. “There’s a party starting
soon in #7. You’re all invited. Attendance is mandatory, in fact.”
“You’re looking at the guest of honor,” Sean said, cracking his
knuckles as he stared down at Wesley.
“Why don’t you leave him alone?” I said, against my better judgment. I
swung both legs over the side of my bed. “You h-heard what Todd said –”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Jeremy. “You can shut your hole.”
 He reached over and pinched me on the neck. Hard. A childish gesture,
more fitting for a first-grader than a fifteen-year-old, but that didn’t make it
any less painful. The next day I would discover his assault had left an ugly
purple bruise. I glared up at him as I held one hand to my neck, clenched
my teeth so tightly I heard them squeak within my skull. Jeremy crossed his
skinny arms in front of his chest, daring me to retaliate. His eyes were a
creepy dull gray, as if some sadistic creature had slipped inside his skin
while we slept, transforming a pimple-faced yoyo geek into one of our
oppressors.
I wished I could wrap one of his yoyos around his pencil neck.
Sean and Roger grabbed Wesley beneath his arms then, and jerked him
off the floor. The sound he made reminded me of a puppy kicked in the side
by an abusive master. They shoved him toward the door.
“Move,” said Roger.
Someone bumped my shoulder hard, and I lost my staring contest with
Jeremy.
“Everyone to #7,” said Nathan. He jogged across the room to his bunk,
where a flashlight lay atop the mattress. “You too, Munce. C.J., let’s go.
You don’t want to miss this, brutha.”
He tossed the flashlight to Jason. Jason immediately turned it on and
shined the light in my face.
When I regained my sight, I fell into step behind C.J. and we followed
the others outside.

***
Crickets chirped around us. An owl hooted in the nearby forest. Our
footsteps sounded like someone crunching on a midnight snack as we
walked along the gravel path that ran parallel to the cabins. Jason’s
flashlight lit the way. At the foot of the hill, the lake resembled a bottomless
abyss, pitch-black and hopeless. Not even the moon was reflected on its
surface. In fact, I did not see the moon at all, as if tonight it hid its face in
shame along with every star in the galaxy.
Sean gripped the back of Wesley’s neck while Roger held him by one
arm, like guards escorting a prisoner to the electric chair. When we reached
our destination at the far end of camp, they shoved him through the
doorway, then everyone else filed inside without having to be told to do so.
#7 had the musty smell of a building that has been empty for a while, but
underneath there was a hint of a locker room odor: sunscreen, sweaty socks,
and deodorant. Jason’s flashlight illuminated a galaxy of dust motes, five
pairs of bunk beds and — in the center of the room — a single wooden
chair.
“Close the door,” said Sean. “Keep the light off.”
Nathan moved to the far side of the room while Jason aimed the
flashlight at his feet. I got the impression they had rehearsed this in
advance, blocking it out like some perverse play. Nathan bent to pick
something up in the corner: a small Coleman lantern and three rolls of silver
duct tape. He tossed the rolls to Roger one by one. He pulled a book of
matches from his back pocket, and lit the lantern. Jason flicked off his
flashlight.
Shadows danced across our faces in the flickering glow of the lantern.
Nathan set the lantern on the floor in the middle of the room, a few feet in
front of the chair. The chair was old. Black blotches of mildew stained its
thin blue cushion, and one leg was gouged and splintered as if rats had
chewed on it through the years. Sean pushed down on Wesley’s shoulders,
forcing him to sit.
“What are you going to do?” asked Wesley.
Sean didn’t reply. He just stood there staring at Wesley for a long
moment, as if trying to decide exactly what he wanted to do with him. He
sniffed, scratched his balls through his sweatpants.
Wesley fidgeted in the chair. Pushed his bangs out of his eyes. “What
do you want? You want me to say I’m sorry? I will. I’ll say I’m sorry.
Okay? Sean, I’ll say I’m sorry . . . . ”
Sean looked toward Roger and gave him a nod.
Roger started wrapping the duct tape around the chair, binding Wesley
to it by his torso and shins. For the next two or three minutes the only sound
in the cabin was the loud, sticky ripping sound of the tape coming off each
roll. When Roger was done he stepped back to admire his work.
“Like a big ole’ homo mummy!” he laughed.
Wesley’s lower lip quivered. His eyes pleaded with me to stop
whatever was about to happen.
 Outside, the chirping of the crickets was louder than ever. Like a
bloodthirsty crowd cheering in anticipation. Down by the lake, the bullfrogs
joined in too, but their deep, authoritative voices sounded like a warning:
Don’t do this, boys, don’t do this . . . don’t do this, boys, don’t do this . . .
don’t do this, boys, don’t do this . . .
No one moved. All eyes were on Sean as we waited to see what came
next.
He reached between his sweatpants and the small of his back.
He pulled out a hammer. It had a green rubber grip on the handle.
“Now, about last night . . .”
Sean leaned down in front of Wesley, held the business end of the
hammer up to his face, an inch or so from his nose.
“Tell me again how I wanted it. Say it again, what you said in front of
Todd. About how I must have liked it.”
A single tear leaked from Wesley’s right eye, trickled down his cheek.
“I d-didn’t . . . please —”
“I wanna hear you say it, faggot. Now’s your chance to say it to my
face.”
“I just wanna go home,” Wesley sobbed.
“He wants his Mommy!” Jason giggled.
Sean used the claw end of the hammer to brush Wesley’s bangs out of
his eyes. Wesley flinched, recoiling as far as his bonds would allow.
“Not so big and brave now? Decided you don’t wanna run that faggot
mouth after all?”
“I never did anything to you,” said Wesley. “I just w-want to go home.
I didn’t even want to come here . . . ”
“Well, you’re here now,” said Sean, “and I’m gonna teach you a lesson
you won’t ever forget. You’re gonna see what happens when some
Tinkerbell tries to get fresh with Sean Treadway.”
He stepped back, held out his free hand in Nathan’s direction without
turning around.
“Gimme the hooch, ‘cause I need a drink.”
Nathan pulled out a small pewter hip flask hidden beneath a nearby
mattress. He slapped it into his friend’s palm.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Sean took a long pull from the mouth
of the flask.
 “Hell yeah,” said Jason. “Don’t hog it all, dude. Pass that shit over
here!”
Roger gave Jason a light shove, took the flask from Sean and tipped it
back.
“I’ll take some too,” said Jeremy.
I suspected most of them drank not for liquid courage, but to prove
how “cool” they were. They were acting like this was one big, twisted
party. As if it was their duty to show the gay kid the error of his ways, and
they couldn’t wait to get started. Even C.J. helped himself to a sip, after
hesitating for only a second or two when the flask was passed his way.
Sean stepped forward again to stand over Wesley, blocking him from
my sight. He looked down. I could tell his hands were moving in front of
his body at waist-level, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. Looked like
he was messing around with the drawstring of his sweatpants.
My stomach lurched when I figured it out.
“Kiss it,” he said. “That’s what you’ve wanted all along, right? To put
your mouth on me? Kiss it, faggot.”
Jason giggled.
“Man, that’s just wrong,” said C.J.
“Here it is, bitch,” said Sean, moving closer until his crotch was right
in front of Wesley’s mouth. “Kiss the fucker. I know you want to.”
Nathan chuckled, but there was something about it that sounded forced.
As if his friend had crossed a line now that was too far even for him.
Wesley’s head shook from side to side. “N-no . . . stop . . . ”
Sean laid the flat end of the hammer against the side of Wesley’s skull
as if preparing to drive a nail. “Do what I tell you, or by God you’ll regret
it.”
Wesley closed his eyes. New tears rolled down his cheeks. He tilted his
head forward.
I heard a soft smack, like two children innocently touching lips.
Nathan said, “Gross!”
Jeremy turned away, covered his mouth and stomach as if he had just
witnessed something that might make him lose his dinner.
I hung my head.
Sean kept his crotch in front Wesley’s face, twisted his head back to
look at the rest of us. “You guys watching this? Bet he ain’t never seen one
this big!”
“Love at first sight,” said Roger.
Sean moved so fast then, none of us saw it coming.
“Fuckin’ faggot better never touch me again!” he bellowed, as he
swung the hammer at Wesley’s face.
I heard something crack. The chair tilted over, and Wesley crashed to
the floor with it.
Nobody moved.
“That’s what you get,” said Sean, breathing heavily. “That’s what you
get.”
“Oh, G-God,” Wesley cried, shivering within his silver cocoon. His
hands opened and closed uselessly at his sides. A string of bloody spittle
dripped from his bottom lip onto the floor. “Please make them stop. Why
are they doing this?”
His voice didn’t sound right, as if he spoke through a mouthful of soup.
I feared that Sean’s assault had broken his jaw, maybe knocked out some of
his teeth.
He made a low moaning noise as Jason and Roger set his chair upright
again. He coughed, spat more bloody saliva into his lap.
Sean tucked himself back into his pants then, before turning to face us.
“Somebody take off his shorts. Get his junk out.”
No one moved.
“Who’s got the stuff?” Sean looked around, saw that Jeremy was
holding the flask. He snatched it out of his hands. “Lucky winner. You, pull
down his shorts.”
“I’m not touching that queer!” said Jeremy.
“I’m not asking you to suck his dick. Just get it out. Not gonna tell you
again.”
Sean guzzled from the flask, never taking his eyes off of Jeremy.
“This is bullshit.” Jeremy knelt down on one knee. He made a big show
of looking away and grimacing while he hooked his fingers into the
waistband of Wesley’s shorts. Just so no one got the crazy idea that he was
trying to sneak a peek at what dangled between the homo’s legs.
He paused then, looked back at us. At me.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Sean.
“Dennis should do it. They’re blood brothers, you know.”
 My heart skipped a beat.
“What are you talking about?” said Sean.
“They used to be real good buddies. Blood brothers. I heard the fag
talking about it in the mess hall when we first got here.”
Jeremy let go of Wesley’s shorts and slowly rose to his feet. He looked
at me and one corner of his mouth turned up in a hint of an evil grin, as if
he had just defeated me in some long, drawn-out battle.
“Dennis should do it. That’s what I think. He’s probably got AIDS
already and he don’t even know it.”
“Please,” Wesley cried. “P-Please. Whatever you’re about to do . . . I’m
sorry . . . Sean, I’m sorry, I d-didn’t mean anything by I—”
Sean wiped liquor from his chin. His bright blue eyes were already
starting to glaze over, and I noticed his speech was slurred when he said to
me, “You, then. And stuff something in his goddamn mouth. He’s giving
me a headache.”
I gave each of them a murderous look before I stomped forward to
stand over Wesley. I stooped, jerked down his shorts to just above his duct-
taped shins. I tore off his socks, wadded them into a tight ball and shoved
them into his mouth. Again, his eyes pleaded with me to stop this. I wished
he knew how badly I wanted to. But I couldn’t.
“Good,” said Sean. “That’s good.” Another swig. “Here.”
Nathan took the flask from him.
“Sean, what are you gonna do?” asked C.J.
“First things first,” said Sean, “you’re gonna tell us what your Good
Book says about homos.”
“Me? What?”
“Always got your nose stuck in that Bible. I want you to tell us what it
says about queers. It says some stuff, and I know it’s against it.”
“Listen up, losers!” said Nathan. He held the flask heavenward.
“Straight from the man upstairs!” I noticed his words were starting to sound
a little slurred as well.
C.J. reached into a deep pocket of his track pants, pulled out a smaller
Bible than the one he normally carried. He flipped through it with a shaky
hand.
“There are, um, a number of verses that theologians believe refer to
homosexuality, but they’re all open to interpretation. The, uh, most popular
would be —”
Sean snapped his fingers several times fast. Looked like it took some
effort. “Save the sermon for church. Just tell us what it says.”
“Right.” C.J. cleared his throat. “Well, um, in Hebrews 13:14 we’re
told that the Lord will judge the sexually immoral.” He flipped through the
Bible some more. I noticed as he went on his voice grew more confident.
“In Romans 1:26-27, ‘Men abandoned natural relations with women and
were inflamed with lust for one another. They committed shameful acts with
other men and received due penalty for their error.’” He closed the Bible,
slipped it back into his pocket as if he knew the rest by heart. “Leviticus
18:22 calls the lifestyle ‘an abomination’ — detestable, in some
translations. But the one that makes it crystal clear where the Lord stands
on this issue is Leviticus 20:13, in which we are told those who engage in
such behavior ‘shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon
them.’”
“There you go,” said Sean. “You’re a . . . anna bomination.” He pointed
the hammer at Wesley, swayed on his feet. “Jesus said that.”
C.J. said, “Actually, Christ himself never mentioned homo-sexuality.
His one commandment was that we should love our —”
“I’ve heard enough.” Sean held up a hand to shush C.J. “Right there in
black and white, preacher-man.”
Roger abruptly stepped forward, closed a big freckled fist around
Wesley’s cross necklace. “Speaking of, you ain’t got no right to be wearing
that. It’s fuckin’ sacrilegious.”
He ripped it off, threw it across the room.
“This is wrong,” I said.
“What’s that, Dennis?” said Nathan. “You got something to add?”
“I said, this is wrong. Don’t you think he’s had enough?”
“Oh, we’re just getting started,” said Sean.
Jason took a swig from the flask. “Maybe you wanna sit on his lap, talk
about the first thing that pops up.”
“Yeah, I bet you’d like that,” Jeremy said.
“Is that what you want?” said Nathan. “Wanna sit on your boyfriend’s
lap?”
“No,” I said. “That’s not what I want.”
 “Then shut the fuck up,” said Sean. “Everybody’s gonna get a turn. As
a matter of fact . . . I’m thinking you should go first. Won’t matter if you get
any on you.”
Goosebumps broke out all over my arms, like a bad rash.
“What?”
“You heard the man,” said Nathan, pushing me forward with a fist
between my shoulder blades. “Batter up.”
Sean held the hammer toward me, handle-first.
“No way,” I said, shaking my head furiously. “I won’t —”
“You’ll do it, or you’re going in that fucking chair next.”
Sean stood so close to me our noses were nearly touching. His bright
blue eyes burned into mine. He smelled like liquor and unwashed armpits.
I stood there for a moment, trying to stare him down. I knew I looked
ridiculous. He was a seasoned jock with at least thirty pounds on me. I
wondered what would happen if I took the hammer from him, then hit him
with it as hard as I could. The element of surprise would certainly be in my
favor. But it was only in the movies that a guy like me got to be the hero,
besting the bully and walking away unscathed. Sean would undoubtedly
take me to the ground and snap my neck before I could even blink. What if
I broke for the door and ran away? Maybe I could save Wesley, if I
screamed loud enough to wake Todd before they caught up with me. I was
outnumbered six to one, though. If I betrayed the others I feared I would
end up in worse shape than my old friend.
“What’s it gonna be, loser?” Nathan asked me.
“If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” Roger said, as if he had read
my mind.
“Look at it this way,” said Jason. “He’ll think twice the next time he
gets excited looking at another dude. He might even thank us years down
the road.”
I felt my hand close around the hammer’s rubber grip like something
with a mind of its own. It was sticky; there was a square of price-tag residue
at the bottom as if the tool had been purchased only yesterday.
Sean grinned, slapped me on the side of the arm as if we were old
buddies.
“Do it! Do it! Do it!” everyone started chanting in unison.
“What is it I’m supposed to do, exactly?”
 Sean slammed his right fist into the open palm of his left hand. The
resulting smack! was as loud as a small-caliber gunshot.
“I think you know,” he said.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. Guilt consumed me like a burning
fever as I took a step toward Wesley.
My old friend stared up at me, his eyes wide with terror. His genitals
looked as small as a toddler’s, as if they were trying to crawl back up inside
of his body.
“Give me the booze,” I said, to no one in particular.
I held out my free hand. Someone slapped the flask into my palm.
I took a sip, winced while the others made woofing noises.
“We’ll make a man outta you yet!” said Nathan.
Whiskey dripped down my chin. I wiped it away with the back of one
hand, took another sip. Flames seared my esophagus. Unlike the others, I
drank not to show off. I didn’t want their approval. I did it to get through
this.
I handed the flask back to Nathan.
“I’m sorry,” I said to my old friend.
I put no momentum behind it. I just allowed the hammer to drop out of
my hand, onto Wesley’s scrotum.
He screamed through his gag. A squirt of piss shot out of him, just
barely missing my leg.
“Happy now, you assholes?” I stepped back, threw up my hands. “I’m
done.”
“Weak,” said Roger, even though he wasn’t the only one holding a
hand to his crotch.
“Gimme,” Jason said. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it like I mean it, too. Get outta
my way, pussy.”
He shoved me aside. I stumbled back.
I turned away, just as Jason slammed the hammer down:
THWACK!
Everyone shouted, as if feeling Wesley’s pain.
My legs turned to liquid. I leaned against one of the bunks, buried my
face in its bare mattress. It stank of dust and years of boy-farts trapped
inside its fibers.
 As I covered my ears to block out Wesley’s muffled screams, I recalled
the friendship we had shared once upon a time. The memories had always
been there, in the back of my mind, but as I grew older they had faded into
vague recollections I might have heard about from someone else. Now I
remembered everything, so vividly, like watching a movie on the backs of
my eyelids: riding our bikes through my neighborhood after school . . . the
prize-winning two-headed freak costume we made for the Halloween
festival . . . building snow forts that winter, pretending we were Luke
Skywalker and Han Solo exploring the white plains of Hoth. I remembered
how devastated we had been when my family moved away a few months
later and we were forced to say goodbye. I remembered our pact, made with
an old box-cutter borrowed from his father’s toolbox. I wondered if some of
the blood leaking out of him now had once flowed through my veins.
Another terrible THWACK! Another shriek from behind his gag.
A furious buzzing filled my ears. I felt lightheaded. Though I was
pretty sure I barely drank more than an ounce, the alcohol sat heavy on my
stomach. The world shifted. The room began to spin in crazy circles.
I lasted another minute, maybe. But when I raised my head to glance
over at Wesley and saw his eyes roll back in his head, I followed my old
friend into unconsciousness.
“When he wakes up we oughta ask him if he knows any dykes,” I
heard Roger say, seconds before the floor came up to meet my face. “I don’t
mind dykes. I can watch lesbians lick muff all night long . . . . ”
“Check it out,” said Nathan. “Munce couldn’t handle his liquor!”
Someone belched.
Everything went black.

***
For a while I dreamed it was me in that chair.
But in my dream, Wesley refused to participate. He pushed his bangs
out of his eyes, told Sean he could stick that hammer up his poop chute or
maybe Nathan could do it for him. While they stood there in shock with
their mouths hanging open, he ran to get help, and eventually the night lit
up with swirling red and blue lights. Good prevailed. Evil was taken away
in handcuffs. And everyone lived happily ever after, I guess. In my dream.
 ***
I awoke around five a.m. Apparently someone had been kind enough to
carry me back to #2 and tuck me into bed, once they decided they’d had
enough fun for the night.
Everyone was snoring. Someone’s nostril whistled. I suppose torture
takes a lot out of a person.
I slid out of bed as quietly as possible. I wasn’t surprised to find
Wesley’s bunk empty. Although I didn’t know how far they would go, I
think I had known all along that he wouldn’t be back. I reached beneath my
bed, grabbed a bottle of water I had opened at some point but never
finished. Maybe Wesley would need it.
I tiptoed across the room. My heart slammed in my chest so violently I
was sure it would wake the others. As I passed Jeremy’s bunk I could hear
him grinding his teeth. Sean rolled over, mumbled something in his sleep
that sounded like “know better next time.”
I held my breath as I eased the door open.
The sky was still dark, but a hazy purple-pink lapped like flames at the
edge of the horizon. Heat lightning flickered beyond the mountains. It
reminded me of the pulsing glow I always saw in the doorway of my
grandfather’s machine shop when he was busy welding. I missed him. I
wondered what he would have said about the things we had done here
tonight. He had been a grumpy sort, intolerant of anyone whose lifestyle
conflicted with his old-fashioned morals, but when it came to helping those
less fortunate he could be one of the most compassionate people I had ever
known.
On my way back to #7 something splashed out on the lake. A fish or a
turtle, swallowing up some creature smaller than itself. I saw only ripples.
I felt like I was being watched, judged by Mother Nature herself. I
picked up my pace.
When I got to the cabin, I hesitated before entering. I didn’t know what
I expected to find on the other side of that door.
I whispered his name as I stepped inside.
I smelled blood. And human waste.
I flicked on the overhead light.
 “Oh, God,” I said when I saw him sitting there. “Oh, God . . . Wesley . .
.”
I dropped the bottle of water. Its lid popped off when it hit the floor and
the water gurgled out like something alive but slowly dying.
I wondered if they had planned to return later, to beat on him some
more before breakfast. Or maybe they were finished, but had left him here
— still taped to the chair — because they didn’t care about being caught. I
could easily imagine Sean threatening to take on the world if Wesley was
found and someone suggested that he should pay for what he had done.
Sean Treadway had become something more than human in my mind, an
unstoppable force of evil that could do whatever his black heart desired
without fear of repercussions. I had suffered my fair share of bullies,
especially in middle school, but I had never met anyone as cruel as him. He
was their god.
The hammer lay at Wesley’s feet in a puddle of blood. Wesley’s head
hung down, his chin touching his chest. His socks were still jammed into
his mouth. A wrinkled piece of paper taped to his stomach hid his ruined
genitals. It fluttered in an early-morning breeze that wafted through the
open doorway behind me. As I looked closer, I saw it was a copy of the
questionnaire Josie had given us the first day we arrived. It was smeared
with Wesley’s bodily fluids. Across the top of the page someone had
scribbled in black Magic Marker:

I whispered his name again. He didn’t respond. I removed his gag with
trembling hands and his bloody socks rolled into his lap. I gently tipped his
head back. It rolled back on his shoulders, and now he looked like he was
staring up at the ceiling in prayer.
One of his eyes was swollen shut. Dried blood crusted his chin like a
crimson goatee. His nose was broken, and twin rivers of blood had leaked
down on each side of his mouth. His entire left cheek was one huge purple
bruise. As always, his hair hung in his battered face, but now his bangs
were stiff, matted with more blood.
A fat greenbottle fly landed on his forehead, twitched its way across his
brow. Tears filled my eyes as I waved at the air in front of his face, shooing
it away.
“Wesley, wake up. It’s D-Man. We’re gonna get you out of here, buddy.
You wanna go home?”
Fear squeezed my heart like an ice-cold hand when I realized he wasn’t
breathing.
“Wesley, wake up!”
I fell to my knees in front of him, grabbed him by the thighs and shook
him.
“Wake up, dammit! Wesley, please wake up!”
His head fell forward, so his chin touched his chest again.
I wished he would spit at me, curse me, call me names. If only he
would wake up.
“No,” I cried. “You can’t be dead. You can’t be.”
For once, I didn’t worry about what any of them might think if they
walked in and saw us like this. I lay my head on his bare knee and wept for
my old friend.
“This isn’t happening.” My body hitched with sobs. “Wesley . . . I’m so
sorry . . .”
Down by the lake, the frogs were chanting again. It sounded like they
were saying: You let them do this . . . you let them do this . . . you let them
do this . . .
And they were right.

***
Later.
They attempted to burn the evidence. They built a pyre on the
lakeshore, laid Wesley’s body out on some eighty-pound sacks of concrete
they found stacked behind the mess hall. The old chair came apart when
they removed him from it. They piled the pieces on his chest along with the
shreds of duct tape, like a giant silver bow on top of a gruesome gift.
Todd was there too.
 It had been his idea, in fact.
He had walked out of his cabin just before dawn to find us standing
around the picnic table. He asked what was wrong (“Why the long faces,
girls? You look like somebody died!”). I only hesitated for a second before
telling him everything. I no longer cared what the others might do to me.
But no one denied what I said. The others filled in the blanks, then we took
Todd to #7 to show him what we had done.
“Jesus Christ,” he kept saying, over and over. “Jesus Christ, you guys .
. .”
“I know, man, I know.” Nathan patted him on the shoulder as we
walked back down the gravel path. His tone suggested that Todd had
stumbled upon some minor inconvenience — a flat tire, or a parking ticket
left under a windshield wiper.
“Jesus, Jesus Christ . . .”
Sean handed Todd the whiskey flask. “This might help.”
Todd blinked. Stared down at it for a minute or more. As if he didn’t
know what he was looking at. Finally, he tipped it back and finished off
what was left inside.
He quickly came up with a plan then. He said it was the only way.
He threw the hammer into the lake as far as he could throw it. Once
that was taken care of, he went searching for some gasoline. Nathan and
Jason siphoned some out of a generator behind the mess hall, while our
counselor stood by and supervised. Next he told them to go find a hatchet.
And some chains. Said there might be some old weights buried in the back
of the utility closet; they should dig those out if they could find them. Right
up until the end, I could tell Sean didn’t like being bossed around.
While they were busy I sneaked off toward the mess hall. I breathed a
sigh of relief when I found the office unlocked.
I kept an eye on the others through the window as I dialed 911.
The horizon turned from pink . . . to orange . . . to blue. The sun peeked
over mountains like a witness to our crimes. A new day would be here
soon.
Now, as we stood there watching the flames from about thirty feet
away, the smell of burning meat filled the air.
Todd’s face was ghost-white and shiny with sweat. His eyes were
glassy, bloodshot. I hated him almost as much as I hated the bullies who
had brought this upon us. But at the same time I felt strangely sorry for him.
He resembled a little boy, lost and afraid. Although what he was attempting
to do here was evil, I didn’t believe that Todd himself was evil. He was
stupid. Stoned, probably. Desperate. This had happened on his watch, and
he knew his life would never be the same.
Numbly, I stared at his shirt. It depicted two stick figures standing over
a campfire, scratching their heads. CAMPING . . . IT’S ALL FUN N’
GAMES UNTIL SOMEONE LOSES THEIR WEINER, read the caption
beneath them. Todd glanced over at me, followed my eyes down to his shirt.
He must have seen a spot of blood or something on his chest, because he
twitched as if a mild electric shock had just shot through his body. He
ripped off his shirt and threw it into the fire.
C.J. sat on the ground next to Todd, rocking back and forth, his lips
moving soundlessly. The pyre’s orange glow was reflected on the surface of
the water behind him, as if his Lord had already cast him into the lake of
fire forewarned in the Book of Revelations.
The others stood further away, over by the picnic table closer to the
mess hall. Through the clouds of thick black smoke that billowed up from
Wesley’s body, I saw that their faces were grim. Their party mood was
gone.
I watched Roger pick at a scab on his arm as if he had never been so
bored.
Suddenly, Jason broke from the group and ran for the lake. He splashed
into the water, fell to his hands and knees, and vomited up his dinner from
the night before.
“We did this,” he cried. “We killed him. We’re gonna go to prison!”
“It’s worse than that,” said C.J. “You don’t do something like this
without facing judgment for it in the next life.”
Something popped in the fire. We all flinched. Even Sean.
No one said anything for what felt like an eternity. No one moved. The
sun rose over the mountains. But it could not push away the darkness that
threatened to smother my soul.
I heard sirens in the distance.
“Dude,” someone said from behind me.
I turned, saw Jeremy standing there. He wore an old Army jacket over
his pajamas. The string from one of his yoyos dangled from his breast
pocket like a white flag of surrender raised by a troop in a trench. His hands
were clasped behind his back almost reverently.
“You know what this reminds me of?” he said.
I didn’t reply. But he told me anyway.
“Return of the Jedi. When they burned Vader’s body at the end?”
Now it was my turn to vomit.
First things first, though . . . I reared back and slugged Jeremy as hard
as I could in the mouth.
I hit him so hard I learned later that I had fractured two of my knuckles.
 EPILOGUE

“THOSE WHO DO NOT

REMEMBER THE PAST
ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT.”

- sign found in Jonestown, Guyana,

site of the Peoples Temple tragedy
(Nov. 18, 1978)

In another time, in another place, it could have been any one of us. We all
had traits that might have made us victims of harassment, under different
circumstances: my stutter when I got nervous . . . Jason’s ridiculous rat-tail
haircut . . . Roger’s red hair and freckles . . . C.J.’s devotion to Bible verses
instead of dirty jokes . . . Jeremy’s obsession with yoyos, not to mention his
acne-stippled cheeks and forehead . . . even Nathan, with his boasts of
basketball talent and nothing but bricks and air-balls to back it up.
Wesley’s sexual orientation trumped everything else.
 Back then, to a group of teenage boys, Wesley’s secret was worse than
anything we could imagine. We thought there was something wrong with
him. We couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be that way, as if it
were something he chose. We didn’t understand that it was part of his
biological makeup. Expecting him to change it would have been like asking
Roger to erase his freckles, or demanding C.J. scrub off his black skin with
a bar of soap and a scouring pad.
At first I assumed they had beaten him to death. I found out later that
the official cause of death was asphyxiation.
They had left him there, in the dark, to slowly drown in his own blood.

***
Despite all the evidence against them, Sean Treadway and Nathan
Ginyard both denied having any part in Wesley’s murder. Throughout their
joint trial they insisted they were innocent. The jury did not believe them.
They were convicted of second-degree murder, conspiracy kidnapping, and
desecration of human remains. They were subsequently sentenced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole.
Sean’s mother and stepfather appeared on the news one night, during a
time when you couldn’t turn on the local channel without hearing the name
Wesley Westmore. They must have agreed to a lengthy interview in hopes
of soliciting public sympathy for their son. According to his mother, Sean
had been molested by a family friend when he was younger. I remembered
what C.J. said that day by the lake when Sean nearly choked him out, about
how Sean had so much rage in him. He was right. I suppose the abuse Sean
had suffered as a child did contribute to his behavior. It could never justify
what he had done to Wesley, however.
Jason Groh and Roger Wakowski accepted plea bargains offered to
them by the District Attorney. In return for their testimony against the true
“ringleaders,” they were sentenced to thirty years with the possibility of
parole pending good behavior. I assume they have been released by now.
Perhaps they’ve even become productive members of society. I do not
know for sure because I haven’t looked them up.
Jeremy Boone was found guilty of one count of aggravated assault.
Because he had no prior record, he was sentenced to three years’ probation.
Toward the end of our sophomore year, Jeremy transferred to my school. I
barely recognized him. He sported a full beard and long, greasy hair
halfway down his back. Apparently, he had traded his yoyo infatuation for
an addiction to crystal meth. He was arrested on drug charges nearly one
year to the day after we stepped off the bus at Black Mountain. I never saw
him again.
C.J. Sellars was tried but found not guilty of aggravated assault. The
jury agreed with his attorney’s defense that he had participated under
duress. Just this morning I Googled C.J.’s name. After weeding through
dozens of results to find the right person, I learned that he had achieved his
dream. He lives in Marietta, Georgia, where he is a minister in the United
Church of Christ. He is active in a number of social justice groups,
primarily advocating for LGBT equality. C.J. looks older than his years, but
happy, like he is doing what he was born to do.
For my testimony against the others, I was absolved of any
wrongdoing. The D.A. believed me when I said I had feared for my own
safety that night in Cabin #7. Still, I did not go unpunished. Until I left for
college, I was trapped in my own kind of prison. After everything that
happened, my parents no longer looked at me the same way. Our
conversations were awkward, terse. As if I was a stranger living in their
home, someone who could not be fully trusted. My father once asked me,
after a few too many beers, if I had known that Wesley was a fag when we
were kids. He wanted to know if he had ever “tried anything” with me, out
there in my old tree house. I got the feeling Dad never stopped searching for
ways to help him understand how his son had been involved in something
so heinous.
Todd Patwin never made it to trial. Shortly after he was released on bail
— less than forty-eight hours after the police arrived to find us standing
around a very different sort of campfire — he hung himself in his
apartment. He didn’t leave a suicide note. On a nightstand a few feet from
his body lay a copy of the Asheville Citizen-Times. On the front page was a
photo of a young man who had been murdered under his custody. Todd
didn’t need to leave a note, because that smiling photo of Wesley Westmore
said everything.
 ***
The Black Mountain Camp for Boys was shut down for good that
summer. I might have heard something about its new owners being sued
into bankruptcy.
I’m thinking about driving up there sometime, just to see if they
bulldozed the place to the ground.

***
I remember wondering, not long after I found out Wesley was gay,
what his parents thought about it. If they hoped it was just some phase their
son was going through. I wondered if Wesley Westmore, Sr. blamed himself
because his boy couldn’t care less about football and hunting and all the
things that defined masculinity, according to society.
But nothing could be further from the truth, judging from what I
learned about his father in the days leading up to the indictments.
“We loved our son unconditionally,” he told a reporter on the steps of
the courthouse one morning, before he broke down sobbing and could not
continue. “He never came out to us, but we knew. We supported him one
hundred percent. We just wanted our son to be happy.”
I saw in his father’s features what Wesley would have looked like if he
had lived to reach middle age.
Mr. Westmore was a good man. I wondered if I could ever be that kind
of person.

***
Since last Sunday, when my church’s congregation voted 76-34 in
favor of rescinding our invitation for the Boy Scouts to use our fellowship
hall, I’ve thought a lot about Wesley Westmore.
But I’ve thought even more about hate.
A long time ago, a wise man said, “Never open the door to lesser evil,
for other and greater (evils) invariably slink in after it.” Hate doesn’t always
start out as hate. It is often born of ignorance. We discriminate against those
who are different from us, under the guise of upholding tradition or
protecting one group while denying rights to others. We build walls to keep
us separate, and when those walls eventually crumble and fall we blame the
other for chipping away at the foundations. We point fingers right up until
the moment we are crushed beneath the weight of our own intolerance.
Everyone loses. In the end we all bleed red.
We fear what we do not understand. Fear is in great abundance these
days.
I think about the decision that was made by the members of my church.
I think about the message we are sending to a new generation.
My wife and I have some things we need to discuss.
 AFTERWORD
by Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss
A church vote on hosting the Boy Scouts. Diverging opinions between
spouses. Blood brothers distanced by the geography of difference. These
things are as American as apple pie and summer camp. And yet just below
the surface roils the shame that hushes the truth, making quick distance
between the generations and locking away trauma.
Even as our nation has, at a rapid clip, made historic gains in legal
rights for those who identify as LGBTQ+, these gains have revealed a deep
and toxic homophobia emanating, in part, from misogyny. As evangelicals
hijacked the language of “family values,” suggesting there is only one
moral way to be a family, hardened gender roles (alleged to be biblical)
suggest there are more innate differences between the sexes than within
them. The simple act of gay folks showing up as their full selves to every
aspect of their lives—work and home, school and church, in spaces both
public and private—challenges the rigid gender binary that undergirds
fundamentalism. That implicit challenge, and its rapid rise to public
acceptance, has met in some pockets of the country the dangerous equations
of heterosexuality with righteousness and homosexuality with evil.
Swift progress has not arrived on our doorsteps through the mere
passage of time. It has traversed every corner of America by way of a path
hardened by violence, fresh with tears and blood. From Harvey Milk’s
tragic murder to Matthew Shepherd’s brutalized body and the plague of
violence against black trans folks today, the way has been littered with
courageous steps forward in the face of disfiguring hatred. Because that’s
what hatred does—it distorts the one who possesses it until they lash out to
maim others.
James Newman’s Odd Man Out speaks to the most slippery, insidious
manifestations of hatred—how it can take hold of even those who long to
resist it. In this simple, short story about a teenage boy at camp, we traverse
with him beyond the point of no return. It begins, we are reminded, with
quieting the inner conscious when it urges us to speak up. It demands
complicity, and most of us have obliged at one point or another. This story,
then, shines a warning light on the choppy seas of silence, shame, and
complicity. It reminds us they lead to ruin.
Odd Man Out disturbs and provokes. It reminds us of the rampant
sexism and homophobia that characterizes coming of age in a “boys will be
boys” culture. And when it hurtles around the curve toward its exacting,
horrific end, we can trace hatred back to those moments of silent assent in
the name of safety and self-preservation. This story does not go easy on the
conscience. And yet it is precisely because its outcome is so horrific that
this story must be for everyone. It pulls back the veil to reveal hatred and
violence for what it truly is—far too common and simple.
In the beginning and end of this story, then, lies our hope. A simple
vote in an ordinary church. And yet in this act lies an opportunity for
change—for truth to speak louder than shame, for the conscience to unlock
and awaken. One can only pray that in such moments unfolding in
sanctuaries across the nation, the church is pulled back from the dangerous
ledge of fundamentalism and placed on the pathway to justice. For God has
told you, O mortal, what is good and what is required of you: to do justice;
to love kindness; and to walk humbly with your God. So said the prophet
Micah centuries ago. The chilling violence of Odd Man Out reminds us that
we can live justly the honest way—in small, everyday acts that resist
hatred’s distorting power. Let us be resisters together, then, as we build a
new world that calls forth the fullness of every person. Let us see how the
world lurches and quakes with the justice that is already washing its way
across our land.

— Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss

Canton, NC
October 27, 2016
 Born and raised in Detroit, the Reverend Amanda Hendler-Voss
graduated from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University with
certificates in Black Church Studies and Church and Community programs.
As a member of Women’s Action for New Directions, she has worked to
engage voices of faith in shifting national priorities away from militarism
toward peace. Her ministry includes a particular focus on dismantling
racism. She currently serves as co-pastor of Land of the Sky United Church
of Christ in Asheville, NC.

The United Church of Christ was founded in 1957. Known as a “church

of firsts” due to its open and affirming welcome to all persons, the UCC
was the first historically white denomination to ordain an African-
American, the first to ordain a woman, the first to ordain an openly gay
man, and the first Christian church to acknowledge the right of same-sex
couples to marry. The UCC was also at the forefront of the Civil Rights
movement.
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Newman lives in North Carolina with his wife and their two sons.
His published work includes the novels MIDNIGHT RAIN, THE
WICKED, ANIMOSITY, and UGLY AS SIN, and the collection PEOPLE
ARE STRANGE. STILL WATERS, a short Christian-themed horror film
based on his original screenplay, is now available for purchase at
www.tackytiefilms.com.

Up next are the novels DOG DAYS O' SUMMER and SCAPEGOAT
(co-written w/Mark Allan Gunnells and Adam Howe, respectively).
 ALSO FROM
BLOODSHOT BOOKS
From a crater lake on an island off the coast of Bronze Age
Estonia... To a crippled Viking warrior's conquest of England ... To
the bloody temple of an Aztec god of death and resurrection...

Their presence has shaped our world. They are the Riders.

One month ago, an urban explorer was drawn to an abandoned

asylum in the mountains of northern Massachusetts. There he
discovered a large specimen jar, containing something organic,
unnatural and possibly alive.

Now, he and a group of unsuspecting individuals have discovered one of history's most horrific
secrets. Whether they want to or not, they are caught in the middle of a millennia-old war and the
latest battle is about to begin.

Available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com

ISBN-13: 978-1495230004
 NO VAMPIRES.
NO WEREWOLVES.
NO ZOMBIES

BEEN THERE. DONE THAT.

You’ve heard their stories before and you’re

screaming for a different breed of horror.
Say “Hello” to the ones that are still hidden
by the shadows. The ones that peer from
behind the gravestones with multi-faceted
eyes and crawl from the sewers on slime-
covered tentacles. The ones that stain the
pages within this tome with the blood of
their victims . . .

NOT YOUR AVERAGE MONSTER: A BESTIARY OF HORRORS

THIS AIN’T YOUR DADDY’S NIGHTMARE!

Available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com

ISBN-13: 978-0692567937
 JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD VENTURE
OUT OF YOUR HIDING PLACES, HERE COMES
ANOTHER HORDE OF HORRORS

Slithering, wriggling, lurking, and creeping.

Leaving slick trails of pustulent slime behind
them. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill
monsters populating the pages of this tome.
No, these critters feed on the fear that bubbles
up inside you when all appears lost and the
scent of blood is on the wind. Now is the time
to face these demons and read on . . .

NOT YOUR AVERAGE MONSTER, VOL. 2:

A MENAGERIE OF VILE BEASTS

THIS NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN!

Available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com
ISBN-13: 978-0692644737
 Welcome to the small Midwestern town of Belford, Ohio.

It’s summer vacation and fourteen-year-old Toby Fairchild is

looking forward to spending a lazy, carefree summer playing
basketball, staying up late watching monster movies, and
camping out in his backyard with his best friend, Frankie.
But then tragedy strikes. And out of this tragedy an
unlikely friendship develops between Toby and the local
bogeyman, a strange old man across the street named Mr.
Joseph. Over the course of a tumultuous summer, Toby will
be faced with pain and death, the excitement of his first love,
and the underlying racism of the townsfolk, all while learning
about the value of freedom at the hands of a kind but cursed
old man.

Every town has a dark side. And in Belford, the local

bogeyman has a story to tell.
Available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com
ISBN-13: 978-0692730980
The Vyrmin Will Rise…
Hidden among us are the wicked. Their vile deeds have been
retold from generation to generation down through the ages.
They are hidden among us—evil men and women, always
dangerous, always Wild.
They are hidden among us—and they become beasts…
during the Dark Times.

The Blood Prince Awakens…

One man is the key. He will renew the Hunt. But who is the
Blood Prince? What horrific things happen when he enters
the woods? Can anyone stop him? Will anyone even try?

The Dark Times are Nigh…

When the beasts that are men return to the Wild. When the
beasts that are men return to the Hunt. When the Blood
Prince takes the hand of his demon lover in the sky. When
the screaming starts under the cold silver gaze of a pitiless,
hungry moon.

The Vyrmin Will Feed!

Available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com

ISBN-13: 978-0998067902
ON THE HORIZON FROM
BLOODSHOT BOOKS
2016
The Frighteners – Stephen Laws
Tunnelvision – R. Patrick Gates

2017*
Eternal Darkness – Tom Deady
Shadow Child – Joseph A. Citro
The Boulevard Monster – Jeremy Hepler
Abode – Morgan Sylvia
The Breeze Horror – Candace Caponegro
The Raggedy Man – Christopher Collins
Those Who Follow – Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason
Sinkhole – Ken Goldman
Dust to Dust – M.C. Norris
White Death – Christine Morgan
Red Diamond – Michales Joy
Blood Mother: A Novel of Terror – Pete Kahle
The Abomination (The Riders Saga #2) – Pete Kahle

2018*
The Horsemen (The Riders Saga #3) – Pete Kahle
Not Your Average Monster, Volume 3

* other titles to be added when confirmed

READ UNTIL YOU BLEED