His face looked different. It wasn’t just that his glasses were clean. He seemed hassled and worn out. Despite the air-conditioning, beads of sweat had collected on his forehead.
I told him I was writing a survival guide for Camp Green Lake and then asked him how he managed to get the new CD for the B-Tent Boys.
He smiled, and for a second he looked like his old self again. “I went to Pendanski,” he said. “Asked him what kind of music he liked.”
“The Backstreet Boys?” I asked.
X-Ray laughed. “Nah, he’d never heard of them. It was someone ancient and boring. The Rolling Rocks, I think. But I told him they were my favorite group, too. He started naming songs I’d never heard of, and I’d say stuff like ‘Rock on’ and ‘Awesome licks.’ Made him feel like he was the coolest cat in the state of Texas.”
I could imagine.
X-Ray’s mother shouted to him from another room. “Rex, you still haven’t taken out the garbage!”
“I got a friend here!” X-Ray shouted back, then continued his story. “So anyway, I told Pendanski, for the sake of camp morale, we should get some new music for the Wreck Room. Except I made him feel like it was his idea.”
X-Ray’s mother opened the door. She was skinny and wore glasses, too. “I’m not going to tell you again,” she said. “And you know the rules about having friends over on a school night.”
“He?
??s writing a book about Camp Green Lake,” said X-Ray. “I’m going to be in it.”
His mother scowled at me. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t want Rex associating with …” She paused, unsure of how to put it, but I got the idea.
She turned to X-Ray. “Have you finished your homework?”
“I’ll do it!”
“Don’t snap at me,” his mother warned, then walked out.
He quickly finished his story. Mr. Pendanski was good at computers, so they had no trouble downloading the music off the Internet and burning it on a CD. X-Ray convinced him that the other guys wouldn’t appreciate the Rolling Rocks, so they chose the Backstreet Boys instead.
X-Ray looked back down at his homework. “Man, who cares what angles are congruent?”
I shrugged.
“We were supposed to get orange juice for a week,” I said. “How come you let them off the hook after just three days?”
“They woulda quit paying anyway,” X-Ray said. “This way they thought I was doing them a favor.” He laughed. “They owed me.”
It was good to see his cool, confident smile again.
“Man, those were the good old days,” he said. Then he shook his head and sighed. “Sorry, you got to go. Homework.”
On my way outside, I took out the garbage for him.
Final Survival Test
What is your name?
A: Barf Bag
B: Snotface
C: Thworm
D: David Divad
E: Hannah