Chapter 4. In Which I Discover Mosquitoes Aren’t the Only Omnipresent Life-draining Bloodsuckers Here
IN WHICH I DISCOVER MOSQUITOES AREN’T THE ONLY OMNIPRESENT LIFE-DRAINING BLOODSUCKERS HERE
I’m too struck to move. I can barely breathe.
My vision tunnels, and my new cabinmates become one massive, blurry blob.
Luca’s name echoes through my mind the way it has plenty of times before, haunting my spiraling bedtime thoughts and consequent dreams. Almost always, it’s announced alongside winner onstage, and I’m left to sit and watch in the audience alone, drowning in the defeat of knowing that I’ll need to tell Mom and Dad that I’ve lost to him again.
Luca is here?
The odds and the data don’t line up. When Luca snatched the JSHS National Competition win from me a mere twenty-four hours ago, he took Harvard’s high school program with him.
Why would he be at brAIN? Besides, this camp is for last names with notoriety.
I don’t know what Luca’s parents do, but he’s always struck me as a painfully normal—even a little simple—high schooler from Long Island.
The name Luca Melendez must be more common than I assumed. They can’t conceivably be discussing my Luca.
Well, not my Luca. Just Luca. The Luca.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a black fuzzy dot moving along the floorboards by my feet, barely pulling my attention. A spider the size of a bagel, which I did not know was possible.
I flinch and stumble back.
“Oh dear,” Felix says. He takes off his slipper, then bends down and slaps the spider. Dark indiscriminate gunk bullets across the room and splatters onto the wall.
I stare in utter silence.
“Wolf spiders.” Instead of grimacing or throwing up, Felix grins like he’s never been happier. “Comes with the Bachelor Island territory. Isn’t our camp authentic?”
“Oh,” I say. I think. I barely feel real.
“You okay?”
I point toward the door. “I’m just gonna step outside for a sec.”
“Okay. Sure.”
Leaving my luggage in the foyer, I escape onto the porch, which has holes in the wood steps for spiders to also hide in. And which I try not to think about.
I lean against the wall, forcefully stuffing my hands into my slacks pockets as if this will shove out my building horror.
Since yesterday’s loss, I’ve been trying not to process, to just get done what I’m supposed to and go-go-go.
But my lungs aren’t letting me anymore—they become hard to control, and suddenly, my breath feels snatched out of me.
Luca’s so-called charming grin pierces through my imagination. He laughs.
Laughs and laughs and laughs.
And The Plan goes on and on. Endless photo shoots and criticisms about my looks, my behavior.
I take a deep breath, then another, fighting to become one with the peaceful quietness of the woods. The bushes and oak trees, rustling in the cool breeze. The sweet smell of the pine needles. The crickets’ chirps.
Another body of water peeks through the horizon line. A real lake, unlike Lake River. A concrete promenade surrounds it. Beyond are trees carefully planted in single-file lines. A miniature orchard. Apples, maybe.
The eleven other cabins have their lights on. Chatter quietly bubbles out of each.
And the stars. I can make out each one. The Aquila constellation, which resembles a paper crane. Arcturus within the Herdsman constellation, the brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere.
Dad was right. The stars are easier to see here.
That was how Mom and Dad finally persuaded me to listen to their tutoring in elementary school. The stars.
At first, I struggled to even comprehend how one times zero could equal zero.
I wanted nothing to do with the new methodology Mom and Dad were concocting that eventually became Prince List’s standard: a mixture of high-impact tutoring and curriculum compacting, skipping the bulk of what most courses label as fundamentals.
But then Dad noticed how amazed I was by our trip to Montauk Point Park, seeing the stars so clearly.
He brought out a map of the Milky Way galaxy.
Instead of a bedtime story each night, he taught me a new star.
He explained that the only way to learn more about their inner workings was by learning the answer to one times zero.
So, I listened. The numbers began to make sense.
I understood them—the ways they clicked together.
I mastered calculus the week before I turned six.
Mom and Dad told my story everywhere they could.
My weekends were spent solving equations on ABC 7 and NBC 4 to prove my genius live, on-air. Prince List took off.
Soon, my lessons with Dad became less about the stars in the sky and more about life on Earth. How to be the face of a company at six years old. The distractions I needed to avoid so that image stayed gold.
And, of course, The Plan. Graduate from Stuy at the top of my class.
Be accepted into Harvard’s undergraduate physics program with a concentration in aerospace.
Allow Prince List customers to continue their belief in Mom and Dad’s methodology while I follow my childhood passion despite their disapproval.
Specifically, despite Mom’s assuredness that the Prince List role model’s career should align more closely with other stereotypically intellectual professions so that our customers could better relate to me, and Dad’s complicit silence.
Once The Plan is complete, I’ll escape Mom’s and Dad’s watchful eyes and the world’s.
I’ll wear browns and oranges and yellows, the colors that “don’t suit my features.
” I’ll stop forcing smiles at old-money investors who profit off my likeness.
I’ll stop acting as this carefully crafted, likable persona and remember how to be myself.
I’ve never wanted anything more.
A bush rustles nearby. Too loud to be the wind.
I turn, searching for the bunny or deer. Instead, I barely make out a person. The cabin lighting is dim, and the shadows of the woods obscure his details. He’s mostly indistinguishable except for his bulky leather jacket.
No, a letterman jacket.
My heartbeat spikes. The last time I saw a jacket like that was at the symposium. Watching a smoothie drip down the sleeves.
I peer harder as he walks into a small pocket of light from the cabin window. Is there a Long Beach High patch or anything identifying? No gold rings. Well, his hands are stuffed in his jacket pockets, so I can’t tell. His hair looks curly and dark, framing his shadowed face.
He walks away as quickly as he came, trudging toward a cabin marked with a Δ on the door. Cabin Delta.
Could be another camper on a walk. Or a mentor.
Or Luca.
I whip my phone out of my back pocket. One service bar. I pull up my search browser and type what I need to know.
How common is the first name Luca?
After thirty seconds of loading time, I’m informed that Luca made up only .05 percent of babies born in our birth year.
How common is the last name Melendez?
Even less—.018 percent.
I shove away my phone. Today brought so much whiplash that I’m hallucinating nightmarish visions of the guy I loathe most. That’s all.
If Luca is here for a thirty-seventh match, though, I won’t waste it.
I’ll do whatever it takes to beat him for the first time in my life.