As the first day of drills wound down, Andrew decided that he was not quite having fun yet. The afternoon had been spent doing passes: chest passes, bounce passes, and passes off the dribble, both towards targets taped to the wall and to other campers. This was an area where Andrew was not significantly ahead of the other campers, but by the end, his plan to pretend sick and sleep away the rest of camp had morphed into a plan to actually injure himself badly enough to get sent home. He was just trying to figure out how he would contrive a situation where Dooby could injure him and make it look accidental when the passing drills blissfully came to an end.
“Tomorrow we’ll start the so-called ‘regular season’ of our camp tournament!” Brad announced into his megaphone. “Don’t worry about picking teams, though, it’s our job to assign you!” he continued, seeming to take satisfaction in dashing the hopes of a few naive kids who had already turned to their friends to arrange the teams.
“I feel bad for the dudes who get stuck on your team,” Dooby said as they walked back to their room to change out of their sweaty clothes. “They’re never gonna see the ball.”
Andrew shrugged. “They might see my balls if they look up while I’m dunking.”
“I bet you’d like that, fag,” Dooby ribbed. “Last year I averaged like fourteen points per game. They don’t keep stats or anything but I did it myself. I think I was putting up a double double but I was crashing the boards so hard I lost count.”
“Cool,” Andrew responded, privately certain that he would score every single one of his team’s points if he wanted to, and probably grab every rebound as well. “I’m gonna try to keep my scoring down just so I don’t get a bunch of tards wanting my autograph or something. Oh, and don’t look when I’m taking off my shirt, your boyfriend would get jealous.” He peeled off his damp Nike-logoed T-Shirt and replaced it with one which also featured the large, recognizable swoosh.
One of Dooby’s friends appeared in the open doorway of their room. “Yo Doobs, you and Wiggs wanna play some Halo? They got a bunch of XBoxes set up in the basement with big-ass TV’s.”
“Halo’s for retards,” Andrew said, even though he didn’t really think it.
“You kidding?” Dooby exclaimed. “If Halo’s for retards than I’m drooling and moaning with the best of them! Count me in, Big Stack.” ‘Big Stack’ was apparently the nickname of Dooby’s portly friend.
“I might as well come too. It’ll be cool to make fun of you when you get headshotted twenty times in a row,” Andrew said, secretly hoping that somebody would let him jump on a controller for a bit.
—
Andrew was just about to win his first game of team deathmatch when one of the counselors announced that they were only serving dinner for fifteen more minutes, and that curfew was in 45. “GAAAAY, ” Andrew yelled as the distraction caused him to screw up the aim on his rocket launcher, then get nailed by a grenade thrown by a player on the other team. Once the frustration wore off, he realized that he had eaten nothing since lunch. “I gotta get some food.”
“It’s spaghetti and meatballs,” advised a camper sitting nearby. “It kind of blows. Unless you like eating balls.”
“Screw that,” Andrew said, sitting back down. He had noticed that Dooby had been chowing down on nacho-cheese Doritos for the past three hours. His mom must have packed an entire backpack filled with nothing but. “Dooby, you sharing your chips or am I gonna have to fight you for them?”
“Oh, I’m so scared, what are you gonna do, slap me like a girl?” Dooby mocked, tossing Andrew a three-fourths-full bag of chips. “Go crazy. Pretend it’s a bag of dicks if you want.”
Forty minutes later, having ingested the entire bag of chips plus two large Gatorades, it was curfew, and the two of them returned to their room.
“I’m not even tired,” Andrew complained, sitting down at the chair which, along with its accompanying desk, comprised the only furniture in the room aside from the bunk bed. “Can we sneak out? I usually go to bed after midnight.” This was a lie; Andrew’s mother still enforced a strict 10:30 bedtime.
“I tried that my first time. Sneaking out. I made it about ten feet before one those gay counselors saw me. They take it easy on you the first time but then they kick you out if you do it again. Then everybody watches when your mommy comes to get you.”
“Gay. So what are we supposed to do, talk about our feelings?”
Dooby began to rummage around in his duffel bag. Finally, he brought out a ziplock bag containing a green, leafy substance and smirked at Andrew’s wide-eyed stare. “We could smoke some weed.”