Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital

“Morons,” Calvin said, and walked away. Jemma followed so close behind him she gave him two flats, which he did not comment on, but just kept walking with his heels outside his sneakers like they were sandals, and her head bumped repeatedly into his shoulder while she talked. “You saved Mr. Peepers’s life!” she said. “They were going to kill him, or kidnap him, or torture him, or eat him!”

“They were morons,” he said quietly, but he was trembling, and he made her swear by the red heart of Mr. Peepers not to tell their parents what had happened. Jemma swore, but she kept thinking about that gesture all day long. In the odd still moment it would come back to her, and she would make that circle herself, over and over until her brother saw it and made a shushing motion at her.

After they passed the clubhouse and the general store the golf course opened up on their left and the first through fourth tees, where they rolled all the way down to the river, were full of tents and people, and the parade was already well advanced along the road that wound down to the beach. Beneficent strangers pushed them forward when they stood at the back of the crowd lining the road, and they emerged among other children just as the first float was passing by, and the first portion of candy and fireworks went flying over their heads. Jemma leaped awkwardly, grabbing in the air with one hand and managed to nab a single bottle rocket. She cast it on the ground.

The floats passed: Betsy Ross working on the flag in the back of a festooned pickup truck; Ben Franklin flying a kite on a stiff wire with one hand and scattering roman candles with the other; a Liberty Bell made all of daisies and violets; the local Young Republicans beating on dead-donkey piñatas; delegations from each of the summer-camp classes, Nit through Gold Senior, riding high on the floats upon which they’d labored all through the summer, riding by in crepe-paper splendor, alternating Roman and Spartan, so insults were hurled from the stern of one float to the bow of the next, and candy flung hard enough to sting. Last of all came the Chairman and his Lady, both honorary but elected offices, whom Jemma had been awaiting with breathless anticipation. They rode on the finest float of all, constructed by labor contributed by every camp class: they sat on white thrones above a papier-mâché model of DC. Jemma longed to see them rise and stomp like monsters among the stiff paper capitol and monuments, but they only sat, their father in his blue waistcoat and red-white-and-blue pants; their mother in her green toga and spectacular tinfoil crown. Their bags contained the best candy, and the fanciest explosives, and both parents threw more than a fair share at Jemma and Calvin as soon as they saw them.

When their float stopped in front of the clubhouse they climbed up on the stage set up on the lawn and together rang the daisy and violet liberty bell with careful strikes pantomimed in time to a recording of the actual bell sounding. Then they set off a single rocket, an explosion lost in the glare of the sun, and declared the games open. These were the midsummer games, not to be confused by anyone with the end-of-summer annual Olympiad, but still quite important in the competition between the two summer-camp teams. Points could be gathered on this day such that the opposing team would never catch up, even if they won the decathlon or had both the boy and girl of the year chosen from within their ranks to receive the Field Medal. Every child, even Jemma understood the seriousness of the day and schooled their turtles accordingly.

The first game was not the turtle race — that was second — but the candy-grab, in which Roman and Spartan Nits and Novices raced in relay a hundred yards to hurl themselves at a ten-foot-high pile of sawdust full of secret candy, burrowing for thirty seconds, timed from the arrival of the first runner, and bringing back as much as they could grab to the team pile, which would be weighed and tested against the other team’s pile at the end of the race. The whole enterprise yielded few points to the winning team, but as the opening event it was enthusiastically attended and the spectators routinely screamed themselves hoarse.

Jemma started the relay, running against Tiffany Cropp, the youngest daughter of an intensely competitive Roman family whose sisters were famous for their beauty, speed in the water, and the violence with which they wielded their field-hockey sticks. Tiffany, at age seven, was fiercer even than her sisters, though still ugly, like they’d been when they were her age. She had been known to find girls she lost to in the Olympiad and beat them till they cried. This made Jemma nervous.

“I’m going to win,” she said, as they were waiting for the gun to sound. “I’ve got new shoes.” Jemma looked down at them, keds so white and spotless they almost hurt her eyes. Her own shoes, red-white-and-blue and dusted with stars, were holdovers bought special for the previous year, and though too big then, now they pinched.

“My mom has a big silver crown,” Jemma said, not comforted or inspired by the statement, but it was all she could think to say.

“Your mom is smelly,” Tiffany said quietly, crouching down and touching her fingers to the grass like a professional runner. “Ass-smelly,” she added. Then the gun sounded, and they were off, Jemma flying along on the encouraging screams of her brother and parents, which she thought she could make out quite distinctly among the larger encompassing screams of the crowd. She beat Tiffany to the pile; the counselor called the start of the thirty seconds as soon as her fingers touched it, and Jemma felt like she had been gathering candy forever when she heard Tiffany’s little body collide against the sawdust with a solid thud. The layers of dust had been sitting all night; they were warm on the surface but cool inside. Jemma very much enjoyed the feel of it against her hands, and the lovely clean smell, so much that she had to concentrate very hard to keep from being distracted from her task. This early in the race the candy was easy to find; she grabbed the hardly buried chocolate flags and lollipops and gumballs and sour bombs and piled them in her pockets and, when those were full, held out her shirt to make a basket. She should have known better than to look over at Tiffany, who was already shrieking in triumph, but she did. Her pockets were overflowing and she had a gigantic candy bosom, and even as Jemma watched she withdrew a foot-long tootsie roll from the sawdust, too long for her pocket or for her shirt. In less than five seconds she tied it in her hair. Then the bell sounded and she ran off, letting her hand push a little sawdust in the air as she turned away from the pile. It flew toward Jemma’s face but it missed her.

Jemma beat her back to the line of children waiting to run, and slapped Martin Marty’s hand two or three seconds before Tiffany reached her team mate, but Tiffany had gathered a whole four ounces more candy, the full weight of the tootsie pop that she shook dramatically from her head, the last thing to fall on her pile. “I told you,” she said to Jemma, without a hint of charity, and indeed the Spartans went on to win the candy grab. Jemma and her team mates watched bitterly as the candy was distributed among the victorious team, with not a single sour jelly for the losers, even from what they’d gathered themselves.

Jemma did better in the turtle race, thanks to Mr. Peepers, in whom her faith had not been misplaced. He’d even been hard to catch; that’s how she knew he would be a winner. In late June turtles started disappearing from the woods around the reservoir. Jemma had only started looking the previous week, and was lucky to find somebody so fine so late, when all that were left were the aged and crippled and the permanently numbered turtles of years past. Mr. Peepers won his heat and placed third in the whole competition, beating Tiffany’s turtle, #22, in the first race. Tiffany paced her turtle during his whole run, straddling his lane and shouting at him incessantly until he began to wander in circles, and then simply lay down and withdrew into his shell.