and dread at Captain Hansen’s cautious decision to forego any attempt at landing until daylight tomorrow.
“Who knows where we will be at daylight tomorrow?” Murdoch wondered.
MARSHMALLOW JEFF AND THE BOYS FROM EARTH
“I’m going to tell you guys something, but you are not allowed to ever repeat it to anyone else as long as you live.” Larry pointed his index finger like a spear to emphasize the words anyone else.
“That sounds perfectly reasonable, Larry,” Cobie Petersen said.
I wondered about Cobie Petersen. Like Max and me, Cobie Petersen just didn’t belong here; he didn’t fit in with the other kids at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. At that moment, after his smart-ass comment went unnoticed by Larry, I almost wanted to talk to him, to ask him why his parents sent him here, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Robin Sexton, on the other hand, was a different story. Of the four boys of Jupiter, he was clearly in the right place.
I watched Robin Sexton. His face was blank, and he stared into the fire with frozen eyes. His thumbs and fingers wriggled over an invisible controller. I was pretty sure he was hallucinating clearing a difficult level in some violent video game.
“I’m going to tell you what happened to Earth,” Larry said.
“Before or after the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs?” Cobie asked.
Robin Sexton rocked back and forth.
“No,” Larry said. “I’m going to tell you about the Earth cabin, and why we don’t use it anymore at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. And you fuckheads can’t say anything to anyone, because this is a true story. But you have to tell a scary story, too. It’s what normal kids do at camp, at night.”
Max and Cobie looked warily at Robin Sexton. Then they both promised they would tell a story.
Larry said, “What about you, Marcel Marceau? You in for telling us a story?”
I shook my head.
“You could just act it out,” Larry said.
I was acting it out. I shook my head again.
“Whatever,” Larry said. “Well, two of you is better than none. We already know Earbud’s scary story, about the time he got caught jerking off at camp. So here goes: I started working here as a counselor when I was seventeen—just out of high school. My dad wanted to make me join the army, or he said he was going to throw me out of the house when I turned eighteen, which was going to be in a month and a half, so I headed east and ended up answering an ad for a live-in counselor. In those days, there were three alternating programs here: a camp for fat kids; this one you guys are in—the camp for fuckheads like you who don’t have any real-life friends; and a camp for kids with psychological disorders, you know—neurotics, compulsive liars, narcissists, kleptomaniacs, sadists, and arsonists.”
It sounded like the future of America to me.
“Lucky thing I missed out on the Camp Merrie-Seymour for Psychopathic Boys cycle that summer,” Max said.
“Every day, you’d wake up and it was like Custer’s Last Stand,” Larry said.
“That’s slang for jerking off,” Max pointed out.
“It is?” Larry said,
Max nodded his assurance.
Larry went on, “The Earth cabin’s counselor was a guy named Marshmallow Jeff. The kids called him that because he was really, really white, and he’d use marshmallows as bribes to get the crazies to behave themselves. And he was super creepy, too. He kept marshmallows in his pockets for the kids, and tucked inside the tops of his socks, too. Nobody liked him, and he never talked to anyone.”
For some reason, this last statement caused Max and Cobie to turn and stare at me.
Then Larry said, “But the kids of Earth were like zombies under Marshmallow Jeff ’s control, on account of all the marshmallows he’d give them. The Earth cabin’s still here, too. It’s on the other side of the creek from the mess hall, in the woods. After the incident that happened there that summer, they stopped keeping the vines knocked back around Earth, so unless you know it’s there, you don’t even notice it.”
“So, what happened at the Earth cabin?” Max asked.
“I’m telling you, kid. Be patient.” Larry moistened his lips and burped a silent blast of vodka gas. “Pretty much as soon as the camp term started that summer, Marshmallow Jeff complained to Mrs Nussbaum that one of the other planets was playing tricks on the Earth boys—trying to scare them. He said that his kids kept seeing two red eyes in the woods at night, like they were staring in at them through the screen on the cabin. Nobody likes to get stared at by red eyes at night, right? Anyway, it kept happening, night after night, and the eyes kept getting closer and closer and closer to the Earth cabin.”
Larry lowered his voice and got a crazy look in his eyes when he said the part about the eyes getting closer. And I’ll be honest—I’d never heard stories like this before, so it was making me more than a little scared.
Then something happened that made us all jump.
We heard the fluttering buzz of a vibrating cell phone. Larry jerked his hand down to smother the spot in his cargo shorts where he’d hidden his phone, but it was too late. The thing may just as well have been an air-raid siren as far as the boys of Jupiter were concerned.
“Uh,” Larry said.
Robin Sexton’s eyes flashed flames.
“You have a phone!” Robin said.
“No—I—uh—”
In other circumstances, with other planets, I could easily imagine a bloody scene ending in Larry’s gruesome dismemberment. But clearly, Max, Cobie, and I didn’t care about Larry’s cell phone. Robin Sexton, on the other hand, began salivating and attempted to get to his feet.
But Larry held out a warning hand and said, “Don’t even think about it, kid.”
Robin chewed on his lower lip and sat back in the dirt.
It was reasonable that counselors would be permitted to have such luxuries as cell phones and electricity and so on. I could only assume that most of them were more adept than Larry at keeping their secrets concealed.
“Am I going to finish telling this story, or what?”
“If we had our phones, you could group text us,” Cobie Petersen offered.
Larry sighed, and put his hands on his knees like he was going to get up and go to bed.
“No. I was just kidding, Larry,” Cobie apologized. “Please finish the story.”
Larry pointed his spear-finger at Cobie. “You’re telling one, too.”
“I
