Chapter 32 Camp Balls
Camp Balls
Summer Camp Madness
The kids sit in the rec room like perfect angels. Quiet. Straight-backed. Hands folded. A few smile politely. One is reading. Another is coloring within the lines. It feels safe. But little do the guys know it’s a false calm.
“See?” Riggs says, arms folded and looking very pleased with himself. “Told you. Piece of cake.”
West squints. “Why are they so quiet?”
Brandt leans toward Jax. “Is this a prank? Are they robots? Clones?”
“Don’t jinx it,” Jax hisses.
“They’re children,” Riggs replies. “You’re seasoned battle-hardened soldiers. As he exits the room, leaving them to their fates, West grabs his clipboard from his hands.
“I need this more than you do. Hand over the whistle, too.”
Riggs smirks. “You’ve got this.”
“I know I don’t,” Nash says flatly. He hasn’t sat down. He’s scanning the room like he expects one of the kids to jump up and start screaming tactical codes.
Mandy tugs at his sleeves, trying to pull them down over his scarred hands. He looks like he’s crawling inside himself, like a turtle.
McCormick claps his hands once. “Alright, campers. Welcome to the first day of Camp BALLS!”
All the guys pause.
“You’re really gonna say it like that?” West asks.
“It’s an acronym,” McCormick defends.
“Sure it is,” Brandt mutters.
Then, the silence turns to chaos.
It starts with a glue stick. Just one. Somehow airborne. Then a scream. No one's hurt—just screaming because it's satisfying. A small child bolts from the group like someone yelled "INCOMING" and starts scaling the bookshelf like a sugar-powered spider monkey.
West has a kid clinging to his leg like a koala. “Okay. Okay,” he concedes, looking to Brandt for help. “You live here now. That’s fine.”
Another kid pokes Mandy in the stomach and says, “Are you a zombie?”
Mandy freezes.
Brandt swoops in like a social worker with snacks. “He’s a superhero, dude. Those are burn scars. Like Deadpool, but hotter and less Canadian.”
The kid nods sagely and offers Mandy a half-melted Starburst. “Cool.”
Mandy blinks. “Cool?”
“Cool,” the kid repeats.
Mandy pockets the Starburst like it’s a medal of honor.
Nash meanwhile has backed into a corner and is being interrogated by two identical twins with matching shirts and zero mercy.
“Do you know how to kill someone with a pencil?”
“Have you ever seen a ghost?”
“Are you married to that man over there or are you just friends?”
Nash turns to Jax. “I’m gonna snap. I’m gonna snap in front of children. It’s gonna get ugly.”
Jax is too busy duct-taping pool noodles together for a “team-building exercise” that is rapidly becoming an improvised battering ram.
McCormick yells, “Smores in twenty! No fire until I say so!”
They seem to regroup after that, having a new mission to focus on. Brandt leads them outdoors where they gather in the shade of a giant maple. He delegates tasks like a born leader.
“You,” he points to a girl in pigtails. “Find a battle buddy and collect kindling for the fire.” He stares down a freckle-faced boy engrossed in a handheld gaming device.
“Put that down and go get a bucket of sand from the playground.” Next, he sets his sights on the twins.
“One of you get a bucket of water from the bathroom, and one of you find roasting sticks.”
He pauses when he hears a little girl shreik like she’s being kidnapped. Brandt glances over his shoulder to find a kid lighting a marshmallow on a stick using a suspiciously legal-looking lighter.
“WHO GAVE THE CHILD FIRE?” West bellows.
“Honestly? Respect,” Jax mutters.
“Gather around, kids,” McCormick yells. And like the Pied Piper, they follow him without question.
Possibly because he’s huge and towers over them, possibly because he’s brightly colored like a crayon, or possibly because he’s holding a package of hot dogs.
“Let me show you how to light your weenie on fire.”
West groans and rubs his face. He looks exhausted and they’ve only been at it for thirty minutes.
“Hey,” McCormick yells at a kid holding his dog between his legs and swinging it in circles. “Don’t play with your meat. You gotta handle it with care.”
Jax also groans. “Somebody’s parents are going to report us for indecency with a minor.”
Once the meat is cooked, the kids settle, mouths and hands full of hot dog buns and juice boxes. All is calm.
“This isn’t so hard,” McCormick decides. “We got this shit on lock.”
There’s one final moment of peace, and then—
BOOM.
A small explosion echoes from the campfire pit. Everyone freezes. A single flaming hotdog arcs through the air and lands with a wet splat on West’s clipboard.
He glares at the semi-circle of kids, then at the adults, a term he uses loosely. Then calmly, he says, “Brandt. Your children made a bomb.”
Brandt, sitting cross-legged and surrounded by a pack of nine year olds with mustard-smeared faces looks proud. “We call it the Weenie Blaster 9000.”
Nash, who’s got his shirt pulled up over his head, says, “Swimming’s out!” His voice sounds muffled beneath the cotton tee.
Mandy looks haunted with his thousand-yard stare, like he’s just returned from a year-long deployment. “You good, Mandy?” West calls.
“Why won’t they stop asking why? It’s their favorite word!”
West chuckles. “He’s good.”
By the time sunset hits, Mandy is sticky with what might be jelly or blood, Brandt has adopted three kids who keep calling him “Daddy Thunderpants,” Brandt is shockingly good at face-painting and has a line around the picnic table, and Nash is sitting by the lake muttering about frogs being government spies while a kid braids dandelions into his hair.
McCormick claps his hands. “Okay. You know what? Today was a win.”
Jax hands him a wet wipe. “A messy, smoky, deeply concerning win. But yeah. A win.”
Mandy sits down beside them, quietly munching his Starburst. “One kid asked me if I was Wolverine. I didn’t correct him.”
“Hell yeah,” West says. “Next year, we’re making MREs and field kits.”
And from the smoky distance, a child yells, “CAMP BAAALLLLLLLS!” before cannonballing into the lake fully clothed.
No one even reacts. They just watch the ripples in silence.
West smacks Jax on the back. “He needs a swim buddy. You’re up.”
“I’ll grab him a dry shirt from the giftshop,” McCormick volunteers.
Everyone nods and watches him walk off, but Mandy yells, “Not the one that says My Daddy Loves BALLS!”
“Or the one that says A Summer With BALLS changed my life,” West calls.
The guys sit scattered around a long cafeteria table, all in varying states of physical and emotional disrepair.
West’s shirt is smeared with something orange—possibly ketchup, possibly blood, possibly the crushed remains of a Cheeto-based uprising. His clipboard is singed. He doesn’t look angry. He looks… tired in his soul.
Jax has removed his shoes and is holding one upside down. A small handful of marshmallows fall out.
“Not even surprised,” he mutters.
Brandt is humming quietly while three kids braid yarn into his arm hair. One of them hands him a drawing labeled To Daddy Thunderpants. He accepts it like it’s the Purple Heart.
Mandy is nursing a Capri Sun looking shell-shocked. His Camp Balls shirt is crusted with something sticky and pink.
McCormick bursts through the swinging doors carrying an industrial-size tray of mac and cheese like he’s delivering treasure to royalty. “Let the healing begin,” he says proudly, slapping it down in the middle of the table.
“Does this have hot dogs in it?” Nash asks suspiciously, still picking leaves out of his hair.
“Just love and cheese,” McCormick says.
“Same thing,” Mandy mutters.
They all descend on the tray like wolves in slow motion. After a few blissful, cheese-filled bites, silence falls. Until Jax breaks it.
“I can’t stop hearing that one kid’s voice,” he says, wide-eyed. “‘Do raccoons have nipples?’ Like, why? Why was that the hill he chose to die on?”
“Because,” West sighs, “kids are chaos with legs.”
“Pure entropy,” Nash agrees, stabbing his mac and cheese with what may or may not be a s’mores stick he repurposed as a fork.
“One asked me if I was legally allowed to buy glitter,” Mandy says quietly. “What does that mean?”
Jax laughs. Probably something their parents told them in order to avoid having to buy it.”
“They asked me how many people I’ve shot,” Nash mutters. “Before we even introduced ourselves.”
“They asked me how babies were made,” Brandt adds.
Jax nods solemnly. “Same kid asked me that. Then asked if I could make one with West.”
West pauses mid-bite. “Okay what. That’s worse than the kid who asked me to explain what the dicks were on Riggs’s clipboard.”
“I didn’t even say no,” Jax mumbles. “I panicked and said we’d talk about it after lunch.”
McCormick is unbothered, sipping from his juice box like he’s thriving. “These kids are gonna remember us forever,” he says wistfully.
“They’re gonna need therapy forever,” West corrects.
“Same thing,” Jax deadpans.
Outside the cafeteria, a loud blast echoes before a thump and wet splatter against the window.
Mandy doesn’t even look up. “That better not be another weenie bomb.”
“I think it was one of the Thunderpants Triplets,” Brandt says proudly. “They’ve organized. There’s a ranking system now. They’re building a fort.”
“I saw them sharpening popsicle sticks with a rock, like shivs.” Nash says.
“I saw them make a zipline out of pool noodles and fishing wire,” West adds grimly. “I didn’t stop them.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Jax says. “They made you their war chief.”
West shrugs. “They respect hierarchy. These kids are more capable than the recruits at my training camp!”
Another beat of silence. This one almost peaceful.
Then a tiny, sticky face appears at the window. “Mr. Daddy Thunderpants? We need more tape. And also a helmet.”
Brandt doesn't move. “Tell them to use the hotdog buns.”
The kid nods solemnly and vanishes.