Somewhere around the boring part where the guy named Rolf and the oldest daughter are singing You are sixteen, going on seventeen, Jack nudged me.
“Dude, I’ve got to pee,” he said.
We both got up and kind of hopscotched over the kids who were sitting or lying down on the sleeping bags. Summer waved as we passed and I waved back.
There were lots of kids from the other schools walking around by the food trucks, playing the carnival games, or just hanging out.
Of course, there was a huge line for the toilets. “Forget this, I’ll just find a tree,” said Jack. “That’s gross, Jack. Let’s just wait,” I answered.
But he headed off to the row of trees at the edge of the field, which was past the orange cones that we were specifically told not to go past. And of course I followed him. And of course we didn’t have our flashlights because we forgot to bring them. It was so dark now we literally couldn’t see ten steps ahead of us as we walked toward the woods. Luckily, the movie gave off some light, so when we saw a flashlight coming toward us out of the woods, we knew immediately that it was Henry, Miles, and Amos. I guess they hadn’t wanted to wait on line to use the toilets, either.
Miles and Henry were still not talking to Jack, but Amos had let go of the war a while ago. And he nodded hello to us as they passed by.
“Be careful of the bears!” shouted Henry, and he and Miles laughed as they walked away.
Amos shook his head at us like, Don’t pay attention to them.
Jack and I walked a little farther until we were just inside the woods. Then Jack hunted around for the perfect tree and finally did his business, though it felt like he was taking forever.
The woods were loud with strange sounds and chirps and croaks, like a wall of noise coming out of the trees. Then we started hearing loud snaps not far from us, almost like cap gun pops, that definitely
weren’t insect noises. And far away, like in another world, we could hear Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
“Ah, that’s much better,” said Jack, zipping up.
“Now I have to pee,” I said, which I did on the nearest tree. No way I was going farther in like Jack did.
“Do you smell that? Like firecrackers,” he said, coming over to me. “Oh yeah, that’s what that is,” I answered, zipping up. “Weird.” “Let’s go.”
