Chapter 3. In Which I Become an Omega
IN WHICH I BECOME AN OMEGA
If only Luca Melendez never existed, then I wouldn’t believe the universe is a playground for the stars to watch humans suffer on Earth.
I especially wouldn’t be enduring the rainy-Saturday-afternoon chaos of JFK International Airport to fly across the country to a middle-of-nowhere island while Luca gets to giddily enjoy Harvard’s program up until school starts again.
Yet here I am.
But there’s always a minimal chance. So, I’m in my nicest white dress shirt and checkered burgundy khakis—two of the six colors I’m allowed to wear according to Madeline Corrêa-Sparling, my stylist. She’s been Mom’s go-to since the day I summoned the courage to tell my parents that I was a boy after the NYC Elementary Physicists Competition, and Mom didn’t respond with a smile or hug but: We need to redo your wardrobe.
It was a Saturday night, yet Madeline still prepared a half-inch binder of mock-up outfits.
Mom stopped fixating on the wardrobe, though, once she realized she had bigger priorities, like finding me a therapist to approve the hormones and surgery I wanted—and, in her eyes, needed—to keep up my perfect appearance for Prince List. If I was a boy, then I still needed to be charming and attractive and picture-perfect in a way that suited the brand.
Mom and Dad never said that explicitly, but they told me in other ways.
We’ll stock up on photo shoots this month and wait until next year’s Q1 for when your testosterone gel should have kicked in enough.
If you get surgery within the next five months, then we can thankfully still move forward with next year’s summer calendar edition of you and Einstein at the beach.
Technically, I wanted these changes. I wanted to be thrilled that Mom and Dad approved of them. But for once, I had just hoped that a conversation between us wouldn’t focus more on Prince List than me.
To them, though, I don’t think there’s a difference. Which means as long as I’m in public, clocking out of Prince List duties isn’t an option.
And at the airport, it all goes over fine.
I’m a professional. The much harder part of the voyage is when I claim window seat 21A and the plane takes off, trapping me with my thoughts of what’s to come when I arrive in Washington.
I try to focus on my Michio Kaku book, only to read the same paragraph about string theory four times before realizing I haven’t digested a word.
All I can focus on is my upcoming academic war.
With the most niche yet well-connected last names in the country.
Nerves prickle in my chest, hot and tight.
I take a gulp of my herbal tea, hoping it will be enough to calm my nervous system. The plane hits turbulence and rattles, and my tea spills onto my dress shirt, seeping into the pure white fabric. All I can do is stare.
The jokes keep coming as a baby cries around the one-hour mark.
A tension headache creeps up my skull, and my emergency acetaminophen struggles to vanquish it.
I go through two more significantly more disgusting airline-provided teas, desperately wishing Mom and Dad allowed me to drink caffeinated coffee, before the plane starts its descent after six long hours.
By the time we pull up to the gate, the sky is a gradient of purples and oranges, and the bright lights of New York City are long gone.
I snag my luggage from the baggage claim, then grab a rideshare in a comically large Ford F-150 truck.
The highway quickly turns into a voyage through winding, tree-lined roads and finally a bridge stretching over a river called, unbelievably enough, Lake River.
I step onto the chunkiest gravel road I’ve ever encountered.
The singular streetlamp is the only reason why I don’t lose my balance with my luggage and eat dirt.
As I take off my identity-concealing sunglasses, I barely make out a gate and parking lot ahead in the dark.
A canvas sign running over the top reads BACHELOR’S RETREAT FOR ADVANCEMENT, INFLUENCE, AND NOTORIETY.
A breeze blows, rustling my dress shirt and carrying the earthy must and fresh blooms of the woods. It’s chilly enough to make me shiver, even in my knit cardigan.
Shivering. In July. The Pacific Ocean is already proving to beat New York City’s Atlantic side by twenty degrees.
My focus drifts beyond the gate, toward a bridge extended over a thin stream, leading into monochrome brick buildings.
The windows are punctuated by glass atriums, and the roofs are stylistically asymmetrical and faceted in steel.
They connect like the high-tech urban blocks in Silicon Valley, thirteen hours south of here.
The sidewalks, though, are abandoned. No other campers. No teachers.
“Howdy!”
I jump and spin around, my anxiety rushing back tenfold. A figure shrouded in a baggy jacket hood stands on the sidewalk now. Staring at me. In the dark.
All right. I’m getting mugged.
“Hello…,” I say, unsure what else to do in this situation.
“Rory, right?” the figure asks.
A knowledgeable mugger. Most people don’t know my real first name, even if they’ve seen my posters a hundred times. “Yes?”
The figure pulls something out of his pocket and inspects it. A gold compass on a long chain, or a pocket watch? I can’t tell in the dark. Maybe I don’t want to know.
“I’m Felix,” the figure says. “Your camp mentor. The main office told me you’d be arriving late tonight.” He steps closer and extends his other hand for a shake but trips over his Doc Martens shoelaces.
I hold out my hands to shield myself, only to end up catching him.
“Oops,” Felix says, straightening himself and putting away the round gold contraption.
He must be a university student if he’s my mentor.
He’s only a bit taller than me. Even though his oversized plaid flannel attempts to conceal his narrow form, his skinny jeans reveal the truth.
His straight soft black hair is pulled loosely and messily into a low ponytail, hiding most of his face. “Hopefully your trip was uneventful?”
I laugh lightly—not my real laugh, but the gentle and melodic one I’ve been instructed to use in public. “Thankfully. Traveling as the Prince Kid can be a pain, but everyone left me alone mostly.”
“You’re a prince?”
“Sorry?”
“The office didn’t let me know. We actually have another royal in our cohort. What country did your parents originally come from?”
“Um, no,” I say slowly, only to realize the error I’m making in real time.
I’d assumed Felix knew who I was. I almost explain but then stop myself.
Maybe it’s better this way. If he doesn’t know I’m the Prince Kid, then he also doesn’t know that I threw a smoothie at Luca. “That’s just my last name. Prince.”
Felix considers the name for a moment. “Right on.”
No knowledge detected.
Dad claimed the brAIN admissions team likely hadn’t seen my viral video because of this island’s isolation, but who knows if that extends to the mentors?
From what I read online while waiting to board my flight, Bachelor Island was renamed by three self-absorbed bachelors who moved there in 1850 and is now mostly the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.
Besides the renowned professors who take sabbaticals here year-round and teach campers, there are no permanent residents.
Felix beckons me to walk alongside him, so I follow him deeper into the deserted miniature metropolis.
We walk over a second bridge to cross a thin stream, then pass a building that, according to the lit sign above the double doors, is the Hybrid Nanomaterials Laboratory.
Then an indoor recreational center for people who waste their time with sports, which regrettably reminds me of Luca.
An itch on my hand distracts me—a mosquito. I irritably slap it with my other hand. “Where is everybody?”
“Quiet hours start at nine,” Felix says, waving his hand haphazardly to ward off a cloud of gnats. “Which is important around these parts. Otherwise, the Bachelor Island Ghost will get ya! Everyone else has already arrived.”
I should probably ask about that Bachelor Island Ghost thing, but I’m too busy spiraling over being late for the first time in my life. Mom and Dad didn’t mention I would be tardy. The other campers might have gotten a head start on their work.
“I see,” I say, the fear of failure already hanging over me mere seconds into being at camp.
“Don’t worry. You haven’t missed much. Today focused on bonding and touring the campus with your cabin and whatnot.”
I stop in my tracks. “Cabin?”
“Yeppo.”
“We stay in cabins?” Another itch on my hand. Another slap. “As in log?”
“With your three cabinmates, correct.” Felix leads me off the concrete path and onto a dirt one, barely lit by electric lanterns. “Who you’ll be competing with each week.”
Mom and Dad didn’t mention this, either.
I pick my pace back up. “We compete as teams? Not as individuals?”
“For the weekly group tests. It’s a round-robin style bracket. That’s how we decide who competes for the Medal of Victory at the end.”
Group tests.
The words reach inside me and twist my guts with a mighty fist. That means I can’t just rely on myself to reach the Medal of Victory. I’ll have to rely on other cabinmates. Strangers.
Who I’ll meet any moment.
The bigleaf maple and fir trees around us thicken as we approach the first cabin. The exterior is indeed made of log. The only decor are the dogwood shrubs trailing the sides and a front-door placard marked with a Δ symbol.
“That’s Cabin Delta,” Felix says. He points to the next cabin marked with a Β. “And Beta.”
“Rough.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s important to brAIN to continue our tradition of a camp mentality,” Felix says.
“But don’t worry. You’ll still sleep in a bunk bed with sheets that have thread counts in the thousands.
Laundry is taken by our staff every day at seven o’clock.
And the curtains are made of the finest mulberry silk.
Trust me, I was a camper myself back in the day. ”