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bottom of Johnno’s nose to the top of his lip was always red and flaking off. He also had dandruff, so when he moved, it was like he was snowing.
    May spoke first. “Moron, we don’t want you in our cabin. You have to move. We took a vote and everybody voted to have you out.”
    “Where am I supposed to go?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe you should go find a big tree and sleep under it. I don’t care. You just can’t sleep here.”
    “Did you fill up my sleeping bag with leaves?”
    “No. I didn’t do that. I just organized the vote to have you kicked out of the cabin. I wouldn’t do something like that.”
    I tried to think of the worst thing I could say. I knew that May wasn’t responsible for the bag, but she was a dick all the same. I searched my pre-teen mind for possibilities. “Go climb a rock!” No, too Yosemite . “Sit on it.” No, too Happy Days . Um, um. Ah yes! I have it.
    “YOUR MOTHER!!!!!”
    “My what?”
    “YOUR MOTHER!!!!”
    Johnno, who had been silent until then, exploded.
    “Take that back, you bitch. What about my mother?!”
    In my distress, I had forgotten that they were brother and sister, and in saying something about her mother, I was implicating him as well.
    The force of his rage was truly terrifying. He got all flaky on me. It was like an avalanche. His thick glasses steamed up so fast I was sure he couldn’t see me at all. It seemed somebody had said “Your mother” to him before, and he just wasn’t going to take it anymore.
    Johnno lunged at me and grabbed my forearms. I grabbed his in return, and we pushed each other from one side of the cabin to the other. He wasn’t very strong, but he was plugged into the same kind of adrenaline that mothers use to lift cars when their children are in peril. I was so surprised that I was fighting a boy that I had trouble getting my footing. He pushed me backward into my still crunchy, cracklin’-leaves sleeping bag, and I dug my nails into his arms and pushed him up against the log wall. It must have looked like we were dancing.
    Johnno’s nose was running and he was crying hot, angry tears out the sides of his thick glasses. It moistened all the white patches on his upper lip so it looked like he was melting. We were getting tired of pushing each other back and forth.
    He let go of my arms, and I let go of his.
    “Just get out of here, MORON!”
    “Yeah, get out! Get out, MORON!”
    “You MORON!!! We don’t want you here infecting our cabin. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!!!!!”
    Then, inexplicably, they both left.
    I took my sleeping bag to the back of the cabin and shook it out again. Leaves and twigs and dry dog turds and acorns still stuck to the flannel inside and had to be picked out by hand. I would be finding burrs embedded in my skin for days.
    As I emptied the bag, I could hear the sounds of summer off in the distance. That Chicago song again, girls screaming, water splashing, intermittent outbursts of the 2-4-6-8 variety—all of it for me was the music of exclusion, the sorry soundtrack of the outcast, reminding me of all the things I was not doing, was not allowed to do, would never be a part of.
    The next few days were relatively uneventful. It seems likely a talk was given, the counselors or ministers devising some intervention on my behalf. The name-calling and the shouting and the flying pine cones ceased. All that remained was a sort of silence, a wide berth. Everywhere I went for the next three days, a great deal of space was made around me. It was as if I had an infectious disease. No one would share a table or a bench with me. Not at mealtimes, not at campfires, not at the talent show that I was not allowed to participate in. In the crowded lodge, with kids crammed into every nook and cranny all over the floor, practically hanging from the rafters, I sat with an entire bench to myself. I stayed in the girl’s cabin, but all the campers around me had moved their things and were sleeping on exercise mats