Chapter Text
Boys’ Cabin Three, Camp Arcadia, 11:37AM, Monday.
///
“...You sure that’s how it’s supposed to look?” Fillmore asked, a doubtful brow raised.
Chester and his accomplice, who lifted his red baseball cap to wipe the sweat beading his forehead, got up from the floor to look upon their work. “Like nothin’ happened,” Chester answered assuredly.
TJ tilted his head. “I dunno. It looks kinda… floppy, don’tcha think?”
The muddy green teepee bed, which originally stood on four wooden legs and reached almost to the same height of Chester’s bunk bed, now resembled something of a asymmetrical hut with a fuzzy carpet and a lot of excess fabric pooling on the ground.
“It’s compact now!” Chester argued. “I think Kiba’ll thank us for the improvements we made, honestly.”
Fillmore shook his head, turning back to head toward the lake. “Y’all might wanna start writing your wills before he gets back from his run,” he warned them with a smirk.
TJ groaned and palmed his face with both hands. “Whydid we think playing catch inside was a good idea?”
“Because you guys were too lazy to actually go outside. As a matter of fact, I remember Chester saying, and I quote, ‘Dude, just go long!’” Dib chuckled from his place on his bottom bunk, nose buried in a flashy magazine titled Paranormal Enquirer.
Chester frowned, turning toward the snarky genius. “Oh, look who’s talkin’, the walking tanning bed advertisement!”
Dib narrowed his eyes at the blond. “Hey!” he pointed a defiant finger at Chester, “I’m outside plenty, metalmouth! We just don’t get a lotta sun where I’m from, that’s all.”
“Y’know, wearing all black in the summertime really only makes the pastiness more obvious,” TJ snidely retorted, earning a snicker from Chester and a couple of the other boys who’d stayed behind in the cabin. Dib went a faint shade of red and he flicked a middle finger at the brown-haired boy, grumbling as he returned his attention back to his magazine.
There was a fluttering of wind and the sound of shoes hitting the wood porch outside the cabin door before it creaked open. “Hey, guys,” Tails greeted, taking off his goggles and strapping them behind his fuzzy ears. “What’s going o-” His gaze stopped on the deformed doggy bed and TJ and Chester’s guilty smiles.
The fox blinked and his blue eyes went wide. “Oh, man. Kiba’s gonna kill you guys.”
Chester and TJ both dropped their heads in defeat. “Augh, what’re we gonna do?!” TJ anguished. “We can’t put it back the way it was, the stick things that held it up are completely busted!”
Tails walked over to take a closer look at it. Poking his tongue out, the fox boy fished around his tool belt and pulled out a handful of rubber bands, deftly wrapping them around the snapped and frayed balsa wood sticks. Quicker than they could count, somehow the teepee was miraculously back to its normal shape, appearing almost none worse the wear.
Chester grinned brightly as TJ let out a grateful whoop. “Hell yeah! Dude, you’re a lifesaver!” the blond cheered, giving a high hi-five to Tails, who returned up high and down low it with a shy, pleased grin of his own.
As if it was right on cue, Kiba strolled in with Akamaru, both heaving and smudged in dirt from head to toe. “’Sup, fellas,” he acknowledged them, shaking out his spiky, dark brown hair as his humongous hound did the same, splattering the wood floors with outside debris. “Can we head out to the Mess Hall for lunch yet? Me ‘n Akamaru are starving!”
“Er, yeah, same here, l-let’s find and ask Mister Madrigal!” TJ suggested, subtly elbowing Chester in the ribs, who nodded rapidly with a big, nervous smile.
Kiba fixed the two with a suspicious expression. “...Alright, what’d you losers do?”
Chester’s eyes widened, waving his hands back and forth. “Wh-what’re you accusing us for?” he defended, “We didn’t do anything!”
Right then, one of the rubber bands that Tails had wrapped a little too tightly around the base of one of the snapped support sticks popped from the pressure, and sent the rest of them into a chain reaction of failure, flinging rubber all around the cabin until the doggy bed tipped over into a heap of fabric and tiny splinters, large rips and tears in the spots the sticks had managed to poke through in the actual tent part.
Kiba went between staring incredulously at Chester and TJ and the ruined teepee. Akamaru’s growls vibrated through the cabin and deep in his chest.
Chester’s face went deadpan and he turned his attention to his cohort. “The window or the door?”
TJ glanced back at him with a similar, accepting expression. “Window.”
Tails’ ears drooped as he sighed.
The next moment, Kiba and Akamaru burst through the front door, righteously furious and running down the stairs hot on TJ and Chester’s trail, who’d made a mad scramble through one of the windows on the left side and down the trail of cabins and were running like hell. “I’m gonna hang ya by your ankles from the ceiling, ya friggin’ headaches!” Kiba yelled angrily. “Get back here!”
Not a second later, Dib was out of the door along with the rest of the guys of Cabin Three who’d stayed behind, and was watching the shit hit the fan with a grin and a handheld video camera, zooming in on the action. “Oh, I’m totally documenting this,” he laughed vindictively.
“Coming through!” Chester yelled out, leaping over and dodging past some of the other guys that were walking on the trail. “Woah, ’scuse me! On your left!”
TJ kept looking back and ahead, hoping they’d make it to the counselors’ living quarters before either Kiba or his massive dog caught up to them. Every time he glanced back, though, they were both quite literally nipping at his heels.
“Shit, shit, shit!” TJ cursed, almost tripping over his own shoes trying to out-run the pissed off twosome. “Why are the cabins built so far apart? And how is he running so fast?!”
“Man, why’d you have to go and jump to catch the ball?!” Chester complained tiredly, arms and legs pumping at maximum effort. “All I said was ‘go long’, not make a freakin’ Hail Mary!”
TJ scowled at him, nimbly moving out of the way of a bigger dude with wild, long hair dressed in red, looking at Kiba in recognition and no small amount of confusion. “And whose bright idea was it to throw it right where Akamaru’s bed was?!”
“You shoulda watched where you were going, genius!”
“Aw, pot, meet kettle, cheese grater!”
Unfortunately for the two boys, they were so focused on arguing that they neglected to keep their eyes ahead on the trail they were being chased down. And doubly unfortunate, the one person who wouldn’t be aware of four figures barrelling down the same walkway he was currently crossing, indeed, happened to be walking past at that very moment.
Chester and TJ’s eyes went extra wide in sudden alarm. The other guys from Cabin Three – as well as a handful from the other cabins who’d stopped to watch the pandemonium play out – either hurried to avert their eyes or preemptively cringed from secondhand pain, but it was too late to stop their momentum without running into their cabinmate.
So they crashed right into him.
All three laid in a heap of scraped elbows and knees on the asphalt trail, moaning and groaning in pain. Chester cut his eyes at the boy they’d run into, immediately knowing who it was by the black zig-zag pattern on his bright yellow, collared shirt and the whispy tufts of pale blonde hair flowing from his exceptionally round head.
Chester laid his head on the pavement with a deep exhale. “Hey, Charlie Brown.”
“H-hello, Chester,” Charlie Brown replied, his kind voice painfully strained. “Nice to see you too, TJ.”
It was this scene that Kiba and Akamaru inevitably caught up to, pacing forward with an ominous grin that exposed his exceptionally sharp canines. “Thanks for the assist, bōruheddo,” he spared a glance toward Charlie Brown, grabbing TJ and Chester by the scruff of their shirts to yank them up. He smacked both upside the head with an audible thwack.
“The hell, dude?!” Chester cried out.
“Jeez!” TJ exclaimed painfully.
Kiba narrowed his eyes at the his fellow cabinmates and folded his arms. “That’s for wrecking Akamaru’s sleeping tent!” The white, fluffy dog ruffed in agreement, forcefully snorting through his nose.
“Give us a break, man, we tried putting it back up,” Chester contended as TJ hefted up Charlie Brown, rubbing the side of his tender scalp. “Wasn’t like your mom made it or somethin’, right?”
“My sister knitted it for me, dumbass!” Kiba snapped, making TJ wince and Chester forcefully sigh, shutting his eyes. On a roll today, McBadbat. “You’re lucky I just got done runnin’. I almost don’t feel like tossing the two of ya into the lake.”
The reply, “I’d like to see you try it,” was mere millimetres away from leaving the tip of Chester’s tongue, but he mentally counted to ten and let it be where it was. He was starting to believe Kiba really might chuck him and TJ into the water if he made him mad enough.
“How about if we fix it for good?” TJ quickly interjected, seeing his cabinmate’s thunderous expression. “No harm, no foul if there’s a doggy tent at your bunk by the end of the week.”
Kiba mulled it over, visually weighing the pros and cons with his eyebrow movements. He looked down to the pony-sized canine that stood at his hip, seeming to mimic his owner's thinking pose. “Whaddya think, Akamaru? Give ‘em another chance to make you a new bed or show ‘em how we settle scores back in Konoha?”
Akamaru yipped, tail wagging happily.
“You’re in luck, losers,” the wild boy flashed another sharp grin. “Lookin’ forward to seeing what you two come up with by Friday.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Chester replied dismissively, brushing off the dirt from his flannel shirt. The boy and his dog, satisfied that their message had been received, walked past the pair, giving TJ’s shoulder a hard shove with his own.
Charlie Brown hung his head, kneading his thumb into his palm. “Sorry, you guys. I should’ve watched where I was going,” he apologized.
TJ shrugged, giving the round-headed boy an easygoing smile. “Ah, don’t sweat it, Charlie Brown. Coulda been worse,” he reasoned.
“Yeah, like how we’re gonna be dead in five days instead of getting it over with today,” Chester grumbled, kicking a stray pebble as the three walked. “How the heck’re we supposed to make an entire teepee for a dog that big from scratch? Last time I checked, I couldn’t knit.”
TJ’s grin curved downwards into a lopsided grimace, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Neither can I,” he admitted uncertainly. “Know anybody who might be able to help us out?”
Charlie Brown frowned in concentration, the wheels turning in his head. “My friend Linus might be able to, but I’ve only really ever seen him stitch up that old blanket of his,” he said, sighing sadly when no one else came to mind. “I wish I could help you guys out more.”
“Y-you need someone who’s good at knitting?”
Chester yelped. TJ let out a clipped scream, and Charlie Brown flinched hard in surprise. The three teenagers spun around behind them quickly, making the person who’d snuck up behind them and spoken so softly raise his voice in a shriek alongside them.
He stood somewhat stout, though some of that height could be made up if he hadn’t habitually slouched. A green poncho with geometric patterns dancing on its borders hung loosely around his skinny frame, faded and frayed at the ends from years of love. Springy salt-and-pepper curls draped to his shoulders, a sparse beard and mustache covering his cheeks alongside a bandage patched over his bulbous nose. And although the dark bags under his eyes belied a bone-deep weariness, his sage-shaded gaze was still bright and attentive.
“Ack! Sorry, sorry!” the man apologized quickly, hands up in a surrendering motion. “Bad habit, sorry.”
“C’mon, Mister Madrigal, you gotta stop sneakin’ up on us like that!” TJ complained, breathing heavily. “Gus already can’t walk in the cabin without keeping his back to the wall after yesterday!”
Their cabin counselor winced at the memory. Poor Gus was almost as jumpy as he tended to be, and almost two decades of well-practised light footfalls were hard to unlearn.
Bruno placed the bridge of his nose between his exasperated fingers. “Look, kid, I told ya, you can just call me Bruno,” he implored with a revulsed shiver. “Mister Madrigal makes me feel… er, about as old as I already feel, I guess.”
Chester waved his hands. “What were you saying earlier?”
Bruno blinked, then shook his head, as if clearing the cobwebs. “O-oh! Yeah, ah, if you guys are looking for someone who’s good at sewing, I know the perfect person.”
TJ and Chester both grinned in relief at their good fortune. Finally, some good luck! “Dude, seriously? Yes!” the blond teenager exclaimed with a fist pump.
A small, proud smile overtook the nervous man’s face, making him stand up a bit straighter. “Look around for a girl named Mirabel,” he explained. “She’s in Cabin Five over on the girls’ side. Her counselor’s the… uh, the scary one with the really red hair.”
Chester’s face dropped. He hesitated to even ask. “…Vicky?”
Bruno nodded. “Yeah, that’s her!” he replied in a light tone.
His head dropped down, hair curtaining the rest of his face as he groaned. Of course.
“Oh, that reminds me!” Bruno suddenly interjected, smoothing out his outfit. “I was on my way to tell the rest of you guys that lunch is ready. Sunny’s announcing the list for Saturday and today’s Cabin Activity.”
As Bruno walked past them and onwards toward Cabin Three, whistling a jaunty little earworm, the three boys shared a confused expression between each other.
///
“Gotta give them credit,” Trixie started, taking a sip of her pink lemonade. “The Mess Hall kinda looks a little cooler with the top dropped.”
Since Switch’s crash landing the day before, the cafeteria’s roof was still very much missing in action. The only things that remained of it was the criss-crossed metal railings that ran ceiling lights from atop. To be honest, most of Camp Arcadia’s population didn’t really mind it. The upside was that, since the weather was almost always beautiful, the warm winds allowed the scent of the lakewater and the pine trees to blow in from outside and fill in the empty space with a cozy, earthy aroma.
The downside, though…
“Yeah, if you’re used to, like, living in a sauna!” Veronica complained, fanning her flushed face with a delicate hand. The sun was indeed beaming down on the campers unrestricted, and the heat was thick enough to be toasted on top with a blowtorch and served as a fourth course. “Ugh, the sooner they can figure out how keep the AC inside, the better.”
“Aw, this ain’t so bad,” Wally shrugged, resting his elbows on the dining table. “You wanna feel some cruddy air conditioning, try hangin’ out with us in Hoagie’s garage back home.”
Said teenaged tinkerer abruptly paused mid-bite from his veggie burger and shot a glare at his Australian friend, hair damp beneath his hat. “Hey, my workshop is perfectly inhabitable!” Hoagie objected. “Doesn’t keep you freeloaders from coming over all the time and eating my snacks.”
“It’s not Abby’s fault you keep all her favorites in one place,” Abby commented with a cheeky giggle, deftly snatching one of Hoagie’s sweet potato fries off of his plate. Hoagie sputtered, then turned away, muttering under his breath as his cheeks went pink.
“Oi, last time I checked,” Wally stressed, pointing a thumb at his chest, “I got lifetime first dibs on all the snacks in the Gilligan household past four in the afternoon, anyways.” The blond ruffian grinned toothily. “Part o’ the official Best Friend Agreement ‘n whatnot, if I remember correctly?”
Hoagie let out a dramatic groan, tilting his head back into the sky. “Dude, we made that thing up in first grade!”
“But Best Friend Rules are forever!” Trixie gasped, wholly aghast at Hoagie’s protest. “You make a promise like that, you’d better keep it. Only thing worst than ignoring a B.F.R., is breaking a B.F.R.”
Veronica bumped the pretty girl’s fist with a concurring smirk. “Like, tell ‘em, Trix.”
Wally gestured to the two girls and folded his arms with victorious smirk. “Y’see? I rest my case,” he declared. “The workshop’s a sweat factory and your snacks’re still fair game.” He was met with his affirmation by a flung chunk of veggie patty at his nose. “Oi!”
Over by the other half of the lunch table, Chester’s dirty blond locks were sprawled all over the table. The teenager was currently thumping his forehead against the wood in a slow, steady rhythm, a hollow noiseechoing in the cacaphony of the other cabins’ chatter.
“I-” thump, “am so-” thud, "dead,” thunk.
Sitting next to and across from him, Timmy, AJ and Nigel shared a concerned look. “C’mon, Chester, it’s not the end of the world,” the pink-hatted teenager consoled him.
He snapped up from his bewailing, despair clear in his face. “What am I supposed to do? Just waltz my happy ass up to Vicky’s cabin and say, ‘Hey, V! Crazy story, I’m actually looking for someone my cabin counselor knows and apparently she’s one of yours! Why’s that? Oh, you know, just need her help fixing up this guy’s tent for his six-foot-tall dire wolf, and if I don’t have it by Friday, I’m gonna end up as his kibble instead’?!”
Timmy fought a grin. “Well… yeah, actually, that might do it.”
Chester exhaled deeply through his nose and smacked his head back on the table. “Ow.”
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Nigel shrugged, taking another bite from his burger. “It’s just asking her for a favor. You three have been friends with her sister for a long time, right? Surely she’s not that unreasonable.”
The deadpan stares from the Dimmsdale boys gave the bald Brit all the answer he needed. Nigel winced.
“Why’d you even make the deal with this Kiba guy to begin with?” AJ asked. “Sounds to me like you shoulda just taken the ‘get tossed into the lake’ option instead of dragging it out.”
“That was TJ’s fault!” Chester contested, sadly munching on a handful of fries. “Besides, what other choice do I have? Either I get Mr. Madrigal’s niece to make this doggy bed, or I’m toast. None of our friends know how to knit, and it’s not like I can just magically pop one outta thin air!”
Timmy involuntarily glanced down at his pink and green dog tags on his necklace and choked on a particularly long sip of lemon-lime soda.
From the leftmost side, the tall, hatted figure of Sunny Bridges strolled in through the entrance and stood in the middle of the Mess Hall, grabbing most everyone’s attention. He waited until the chatter had quieted down and gave the campers an easygoing grin.
“What’s happenin’, y’all?” he greeted them as he fanned his face with his ever-present hat. “The big cheese is still busy tryin’ to find a faster way to get down from his house without settin’ off another 3.0-scale earthquake, so he gave me the run down for Saturday and today’s Cabin-Buildin’ Activity to tell y’all about.”
Confused and intrigued murmurs bloomed at the tables, even among the the counselors. Chester frowned and glanced at his friends, who seemed to share the same thought. What the heck was going down on Saturday?
Sunny carried on, pulling out a plain sheet of paper with writing marked down from the top to the bottom and clearing his throat. “Hola, party people,” he began, making a couple people laugh at his terrible imitation of Switch’s deep voice, “This is the list for the first official Camp Arcadia Summer Jam Session! Here’s how it works. If your name’s called, your job is to find your paired partner and, sometime in the week, make your way to the Sound Exchange to grab a handful of records that get your ears twitching. After that, head to the Tape Factory to lay down a groove using those records! You’ll then perform that song alongside me – uh, the campmaster, that is – and the duo whose song I dig the most gets to pick the format for next Saturday. The format for this week: a 2B2B2B, or two-by-two, back-to-back mix. One twosome throws down, the next follows after them.
“Which leads me into today’s Cabin-Building Activity! I think everyone’s getting a little tired of calling their cabin, ‘Cabin Three’ or ‘Cabin Seven’, especially since we got two of each-”
“Astute observation, pal!” agreed the foxy – literally – counselor with the sunglasses from Cabin One. The shorter lady bunny beside him elbowed his ribs.
“-So today, each cabin is gonna pick one person to make a run to the Sound Exchange and pick out a brand-spanking-new official name for your Cabin based on a record that catches their eye. Be picky, cuz this is the name you’re all gonna be going by for the next three-and-a-half months. Everyone’s gonna meet back here at dinner and tell me what they’ve chosen, and then… well, you guys will just have to wait and see what happens after that. Good luck, and happy digging, campers!”
Amped-up conversation sparked from every corner of the room. Chester couldn’t deny that he was a little interested in doing what Switch was doing the first night they got here. In fact, the more the idea stewed around in his head – the flashing lights, being behind that desk with all that cool-looking music gear, making people dance and jump around to something he made – the more excited he got at the possibility of getting picked. Here’s hoping whoever I might get matched with isn’t a total weirdo.
“Ooo, who do you guys think’ll get called up first?” Veronica questioned, a curious wonder to her voice.
“Abby hopes it’s not her,” the raspy-voiced girl next to her shivered. “I get nervous enough talkin’ in front of class for presentations. Abby can’t play an instrument to save her life.”
“…So, is there a reason you talk in third person, or…?” Trixie puzzled, almost unsure if she wanted the answer.
Sunny lifted his hands high above his head and waved them in a downwards motion. “Aight, aight, y’all settle down. Now, here goes the partners for Saturday’s Jam Session. First spot, Manny Rivera and Jackie Lynn Thomas!”
A couple tables away from Chester and his friends, a Hispanic boy sitting next to a girl with electric blue hair gave her a bright, mischievous grin and a high-five. At the same table, another girl with very light, loosely curled hair – that had a striking stripe of mint green thrown in the mix – went wide-eyed as another Latino teenager talked excitedly with her and the fashion-averse blonde girl that helped save Switch the day before.
“Hey, I know that guy, he’s in my cabin!” Wally stage-whispered as he nudged Hoagie’s shoulder.
“Same here! Jackie Lynn’s in mine, she’s, like, hella nice,” Veronica mentioned pleasantly.
“Next up… well, how ‘bout that, my man Philly Phil and Jeffrey Anda, er, Andouille… Andonuts!” Sunny announced.
The tall bassist from Cabin Two let out an elated whoop, pumping his fists into the air. A freckled blond with the thick glasses from Jimmy and AJ’s cabin looked up in surprise.
“Dang, man, y’all got me going two-for-two on my kids,” Sunny chuckled underneath his breath. “Lil D, Annette Pearson, y’all got third!”
From somewhere in the Mess Hall, a girlish, strangled, terrified eep! rang out.
“After them, we got Huey Freeman and Neville Longbottom!”
Muted snickers and quiet giggles broke out among quite literally every single table. At the table with the lanky, ruddy-faced redhead and the bespectacled guy with messy black hair, Neville looked absolutely mortified. Whether that was from being chosen for the Jam Session or everyone’s reaction to his family’s name was anyone’s guess. Hoagie and Timmy both grimaced in sympathy.
“Aw, poor Neville,” Wanda sighed inside Timmy’s head. “He looks like he’s gonna pass out.”
“One heck of a last name,” Cosmo joked halfheartedly.
Sunny peered closer at the list, trailing down it with a finger. “Sixth spot goes to Kuki Sanban and Kori Anders!”
Nigel, Wally, Abby and Hoagie all looked at each other, wide-eyed and stunned. “Abby wasn’t expectin’ that,” the mellow girl succinctly murmured.
From across the way at the girls’ Cabin Seven, Kuki cheered happily, exchanging high-fives and excited whispers with another cute, fashionable Asian girl with high, dark blue ponytails and an athletic-looking girl with long, chocolate hair and a flowy pink skirt that showed off her strong legs.
“And roundin’ it off, Chester McBadbat and Norman Babcock!” Sunny finally finished, tucking the list back into his pocket.
Chester blinked. Then blinked again. I actually got picked?!
“Dude, they actually picked you!” AJ echoed his thoughts incredulously. Rounds of congratulations and eager speculations on what Saturday would look like lit up the table. Timmy spared him a genuine, if not shocked, smile and ruffled a light noogie into his hair, much to Chester’s annoyance.
“Guess we’ll be seeing you on stage, McBadbat,” Nigel remarked, a hidden grin beneath his cup.
The blond felt excited. But then, as it sunk in, his eyebrows furrowed. “Hold up… who the hell is-”
///
Norman Babcock was a weird dude.
Since he’d met the other guys of Cabin Three, Norman hadn’t said much of a word past his name and where he was from. His hair was dark, and it stuck straight up like a hair pick. He was dressed as casually as one could be; a red hoodie, half zipped-up to show a horror movie tee, a pair of worn jeans and some equally red sneakers to go along with the jacket. The constant, mellow unease he gave off reminded Chester a little of Charlie Brown, minus the almost palatable anxiety. Chester felt a little ashamed that he’d forgotten his name, but in his defense, Norman didn’t really seem the social type.
“Hey,” Chester began, sticking out an unsure hand, “You’re Norman, right?”
The other boy looked back at him, a curious sort of apprehension on his face. “Yeah. We, uh, we got put together for that Saturday thing, right?” Norman asked, shaking Chester’s hand back.
The bracefaced blond nodded, sitting back against his bunk’s tall leg. “Sure did,” he replied plainly. “I dunno what exactly we’re gonna be doing, but I’m kinda excited.”
Norman grew a small grin. “At least it’s starting to look less and less like we’re gonna get our brains replaced by alien parasites.”
Chester gave him an odd look, but chuckled despite himself. “If we’re lucky, this is all just a scheme to get us flung a little too close to a radioactive meteorite. Maybe we’ll get super powers!”
“Alright, guys, bring it in,” Bruno called out, stepping into the middle of the cabin. “C’mon, I gotta make sure everybody’s here before we get started!” The older man peeked down a sheet on a clipboard. “Okay, uh… Chester, Norman, I see you guys,” he pointed at them with a pencil without looking up. “Phineas, Rudy, you in here?”
A red-headed boy with a very angular head threw his legs over his spot from his top bunk above another boy with light brown hair and buck teeth, who had to shake himself out of a daydream. “Right here, Mister Madrigal!” Phineas answered.
“Yeah, I’m here!” Rudy Tabootie replied in kind.
“Gotcha,” Bruno acknowledged, trailing further down the paper. “TJ and Fillmore, you’re in here somewhere, right?”
“Over here, Mr. M,” came the cool voice of Cornelius Fillmore, sitting beside TJ on his floor bunk, flashing the man a subtle thumbs-up. He was more on the quiet side, but Chester found that Fillmore was just the type to play it cool and socialize when he felt like it.
From behind Bruno, Dib was snickering and showing Kiba the footage from earlier in the day that he’d captured, much to Kiba’s wonderment. “So, you just press a couple buttons on this thing and it keeps whatever you show it?” the wild boy asked, tilting his head as he turned it over and under.
“Yeah! And if you want, you can make copies of it and give it to other people,” Dib suggested with an evil grin. Chester’s eye twitched.
“Miles, where’s Danny?” Bruno queried.
The two-tailed fox in question sat cross-legged on his bed, turning his head and a fuzzy ear twitching upon hearing his name be called. Tails furrowed a brow. “I could’ve sworn he was in here somewhe-”
Below him, a black-haired teenager yelped and landed flat on the ground, seemingly propelled sideways from nothing that anyone else could see. He stared at the room and the room stared back, equal parts weirded out and suspicious. Danny Fenton let out a sheepish laugh and righted himself up. “Er, here, Mister Madrigal,” he answered, eyes darting from Bruno to the front wall’s windows back and forth.
Bruno’s face went impassive, sighing deeply. “…I’m not gonna ask,” he resignedly muttered. “Gus, you seen Charlie Brown around?”
Gus Griswold was one of TJ’s best friends and, in Chester’s opinion, a pretty cool little dude, if not a little twitchy. He simply shrugged. “Last I saw, he was at the Mess Hall with the rest of us,” Gus answered.
As if on cue, the door to Cabin Three opened. In stepped a small, white beagle – walking languidly on its back paws like legs, as if the sight wasn’t strange enough – with an even smaller yellow bird fluttering around it. The dog stopped to bow in front of Akamaru (who laid his head on the ground and back up again in response), resuming its casual walk until it stopped to lean coolly against the bedpost that Charlie Brown shared with Gus.
Charlie Brown came running in a moment after, grimacing in exasperation. “Snoopy, you know you and Woodstock have to wait up for me when we’re out on a walk!” The blond-haired boy sent a contrite look to Bruno. “Sorry I’m late, Mister Madrigal,” he apologized, sitting on the floor beside Chester and Snoopy, who sat on his haunches to let the small bird that accompanied him – Woodstock – rest between his paws.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Bruno assured him, sitting down in a wooden chair of his own. “Okay, so uh, first orders of business. Apparently, we got two of our very own representing us on Saturday, that’s pretty cool!”
“Yeah, congratulations, you guys,” Gus praised. “Got any idea for what you might wanna do?”
Chester made a wry face, lifting his shoulders non-committally. “We’re supposed to use stuff we find from the record shop up by the girls’ cabins. I guess whatever we end up getting is how the song’ll come out?”
“What does that even mean, though?” Kiba asked, face pinched in frustration. “Using records. How do ya make music out of a plastic disc thingy?”
Fillmore’s glasses shone in the incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling. “Maybe it’s not the actual physical record, just the music that’s on it,” the bald teenager suggested. “Like taking bits and pieces from other songs to make a new song?”
Bruno and the other boys ooohed, marvelling at the peculiar idea. Charlie Brown looked bewildered, turning his head to glance at Fillmore. “You can do that?” Beside him, Snoopy and Woodstock took on the same sort of exaggerated, mystified expressions.
“People scratch records all the time in the stuff I like to listen to,” Fillmore nodded, his hands behind his head as he reclined on his bunk.
Charlie Brown balked, an alarmed horror in his expression. “Why would you scratch a record on purpose?!” he exclaimed. “Won’t that ruin it?”
“Not really, not the way people’ve been doing it, from what I’ve heard,” Rudy replied. He tilted his head and gave a strange look to the round-headed teenager. “You’ve never listened to any hip-hop on the radio or anything?”
Charlie Brown shook his head. “I didn’t even know that was a genre of music,” he answered truthfully. “I mostly listen to jazz-” Snoopy and Woodstock mimed playing a saxophone, a pair of round sunglasses suddenly appearing on the dog’s face – “Sometimes classical music too, if I’m at Schroeder’s.” The beagle and bird changed to imitating someone hunched over a rather small piano, eyes closed in concentration over imaginary keys.
“Huh,” Rudy said, surprised.
Bruno chose then to interject, clearing his throat to catch their attention. “Well, since we’re already basically on the same topic,” he started, “Anybody feel up to volunteering to walk to the Sound Exchange so we can decide on a name for the Cabin?”
This time, the conversation dried up like a sour lemon. Some coughed awkwardly, others whistled, but all of them looked away from their cabin counselor, intentionally averting their eyes.
The older man rolled his eyes. “C’mon, guys, work with me here,” he whined, gesturing his arms outwards in a pleading manner.
“Give us a break, Mister Madrigal, you've seen the map,” Danny argued back. "Who wants to drag themselves all the way that far, just to have to walk right back? That walk’s gonna take forever!"
Norman shifted his sitting stance, bringing his knees up to rest his heels on the wooden lip of the bed. Chester noticed that for some reason, he kept discreetly alternating between looking at Danny and squeezing his eyes shut like he had a headache.
“What about us, Mr. M?” Chester suddenly proposed. “Me and Norman gotta make our way there anyways, why not kill a couple birds with one stone?”
Dib scoffed. “Yeah, right. Leave it up to you, we’ll get stuck with The Outhouse or something.”
Chester bristled, scowling at the sarcastic genius. “Better than Mom’s Basement,” he retorted, fists clenched.
Dib’s dark eyes narrowed dangerously. “You wanna run that one by me again, Train Tracks?”
“O-kay, tranquilo, you two,” Bruno said, anxious but stern. “We’re all on the same team here.” He turned his full attention to where Chester and Norman sat and gave them a small smile. “Guess we’re leaving it up to you guys, then. Make sure you get back here before dinner so we have something to give the Campmaster, alright?”
Chester and Norman looked at each other, then back at Bruno, and nodded firmly.
///
Chester walked quietly beside his fellow cabinmate, as the two of them made the long walk to the upper east part of Hanging Gardens Isle. It was still early in the afternoon, but thankfully the sun wasn’t directly overhead to make the journey unbearable with heat. Birds flapped around high into the sky, and the soft grass gave way to a loamy soil on the forest’s floor. Norman, as it turned out, wasn’t much for conversation. He seemed lost in thought, looking all around them as they split the scopse of trees that acted as the diving line between the girls cabins and the boys cabins.
“First time at summer camp?” Chester questioned, hopping over some loose rocks.
That seemed to shake the spiky-haired teen out of his head. “Huh? Oh, yeah,” Norman replied, his voice faraway. “I’m just… I’m not used to all this quiet. It’s pretty noisy where I’m from. All the time.”
“Dimmsdale’s kinda like that too,” Chester responded in kind. “The trailer park gets really busy on the weekends, people throwing parties and stuff.” He smiled at the memories of homemade fireworks and countless outdoor barbecues he’d been to since he and his dad moved to Happy Trails.
Norman, on the other hand, looked about ready to swallow his own tongue. “Oh.”
Chester took notice of Norman’s new brand of quiet-tinged-with-uncomfortability and decided to spare him an olive branch. “Don’t sweat it, by the way,” he reassured him. “I know it’s weird to hear that I live in a trailer park, but I’m not ashamed of it or nothin’.”
The shorter boy turned up an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah,” stated Chester with a sardonic grin. “I just get mad when people feel like they can look down on me ‘cuz of it.”
After seeing how he reacted to Dib’s tame ribbing, Norman believed him. “I get it. Your neighborhood’s still your home, even if it’s not the most flashy place in the world.”
“Exactly!” Chester lit up.
Norman felt a bitter smile grow in the corners of his mouth. That was a mindstate he admired – something he wished he had more of. A lot of the time, it seemed like there was only so much space in Blithe Hollow for him, and even that amount had run its course a long time ago. He didn’t know how much having Chester’s staunch enthusiasm regarding his gift would help him, but he figured it’d at least make him feel better when the bullying and the cold looks inevitably came his way.
Speaking of spaces, the two had been roaming for the past couple of minutes, and had indeed crossed past the treeline and into the girls’ side, but they weren’t making their way up where the Sound Exchange lied. “Hey, uh, Chester? The Sound Exchange is supposed to be up,” Norman puzzled. “Why’re we walking down the girls’ trail?”
“Remember how I said we were gonna kill a couple birds?” Chester hinted, walking a ways and looking over the cabin doors until he stopped in front of one that read ‘Cabin Five’. He and Norman walked up the stairway, pausing as he brought his knuckles close to the entrance. The bracefaced blond gulped nervously. “You don’t get scared easy, do you?”
Norman grinned at the plethora of ironic jokes he came up with on the spot at the question. Honestly, he was sort of proud at how quick he’d thought of some of them. “Not really, no,” he answered instead, shaking his head.
Chester blew out a shaky breath.“Good. Don’t look her in the eye and you should be alright.”
Norman blinked and looked at Chester, suddenly concerned. “Wait, what d’you me-?”
Chester rapped his knuckles at the door in the old Shave and a Haircut rhythm, and the noisy chatting inside died down. He could hear shoe steps approaching the entrance, and the boys braced themselves for the storm that awaited.
The door opened and Chester felt the air leave his lungs involuntarily.
She had soft, wavy, bright ginger hair that fell well below her green-sweater-covered shoulders, covering one of her spruce brown eyes. A smattering of freckles peppered across her cheeks and the bridge of her cute, small nose. Pink, glossy lips were turned downwards in a confused frown, leaning against the door frame and crossing one of her bare legs, covered by a tartan red skirt and brown boots that had obviously seen much love across the years.
“Well? Who’re you lot, then?” she questioned gruffly, a heavy Scottish dialect coloring her girlish voice.
It took a feat of willpower to make himself remember why exactly he came here. An elbow from Norman might’ve helped the jumpstart.
“Er, uhm,” Chester stammered, red-faced and running a hand through his hair, “I-I’m lookin’ for a girl named Mirabel. She’s here in Cabin Five, right?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed, but she turned away from the two and hollered,”Oi, Mirabel! Ye’ve got a boy out here askin’ aboutcha!”
The way that she said the word ‘boy’ didn’t exactly give Norman the idea that she’d hold them in any sort of high regard.
She turned back to them and curled a wrist on her hips, appraising Chester with a curious, critical eye. “Ye look familiar,” she eventually said. “You’re one of the ones that’s been sittin’ with Nigel and the others at supper, aren’tcha?”
Chester snapped his fingers and flashed her a gleaming, metallic smile. “You’re Rachel’s friend! She talks about you all the time. I-I’m Chester. Er, McBadbat.” He shot out a nervous open hand at the girl, hoping that he wasn’t sweating as badly as he thought he was.
The girl gave him an odd look. “What kind of a last name is that?”
“One that we probably earned,” The blond boy mumbled self-deprecatingly.
She smirked. “Fanny Fulbright,” she introduced herself.
Suddenly the door was yanked open wider to reveal a shorter, rather pretty mocha-skinned girl in a flowing, colorful dress and pink, fabricwork sandals. Her curly hair bounced and weaved, kissing her shoulders with every movement, and her brown eyes sparkled with intrigue behind her overlarge, neon green glasses drooping from her round nose. “Somebody’s looking for me?” she asked, looking between the two boys.
Chester’s eyes went wide. “Mirabel, right?”
The girl’s brows furrowed in suspicion. “Yeah, who are you?”
The blond ran another hand through his hair, giving an impressed whistle. “Jeez, you guys got some strong genes,” he muttered to himself. “I’m Chester, this is Norman,” he answered, pointing toward Norman, who gave both girls a shy wave. “Mister Madrigal told me to look for you if I needed some help knitting something?”
Instantly, Mirabel’s countenance brightened, a dazzlingly pretty smile growing over her face. “Oh,Tio Bruno sent you! Sure, yeah, what’s up?”
Relief couldn’t have washed over Chester’s face quicker. “Thank you God,” he heaved. “I got ‘til Friday to fix up a dog’s teepee bed, and if I don’t have it, I’m dead meat.”
Mirabel giggled and cracked her fingers with a long arm stretch. “Not a problem,” she assured him, pulling out a notebook seemingly from out of nowhere, tying her hair back into a poofy ponytail. “How big is the ol’ pupperino?”
“Almost as tall as you.”
Her note taking screeched to a halt, etching a jagged scratch across the paper.
Mirabel blinked. “¿Perdona?”
Chester would’ve thought her dumbfounded expression was hilarious if his physical health didn’t rest on the impossibility of the request. He just groaned and hung his head. “He’s almost your height sitting down,” he repeated lamely.
Fanny and Mirabel shared a look, and the ginger girl barked in laughter as she walked in the other direction. “Ha! Good luck, blondie,” she bid the three of them adieu. “You three have fun not getting him killed.”
The curly-haired girl rolled her eyes and turned to face Chester, who’d stretched his neck past Mirabel, staring after Fanny as she walked. An amused ahem brought the blond back down to Earth.
“Huh, what’s up?” Chester sputtered. Norman held back a quiet snicker at his cabinmate’s wonderstruck expression.
“How about we do it like this – you come back tomorrow after breakfast,” Mirabel instructed, writing out something detailed on her notepad. “Bring whatever’s left of the tent with you so I can see what I’m working with? If this dog really is as big as you’re saying it is, we’re gonna need all the time we can get.”
Chester could’ve cried. “Dude, how can I pay you back? I’ll do anything you want, just say the word.”
Mirabel paused and tapped a finger to her round cheek. “Hmm,” she intoned, pretending to think hard. “Can we be friends?”
The blond teenager rolled his eyes goodnaturedly. “Kinda goes without saying. C’mon, anything you want, for real!”
She actually put her mind to it the second time around. After a moment, Mirabel decided, “Gimme all your desserts from the cafeteria for the rest of the week, and I’ll call us even.”
Chester gave her a megawatt smile and an outstretched hand. “I’ll catch ya at the lunch table.”
The brightly-dressed girl smiled back at him and eagerly shook it back with both hands, bouncing excitedly on her toes. “Okay, cool, cool!” she squealed.
Her gaze turned to Norman, who’d been content to silently watch the funny scene play out and felt awkward when the attention landed back on him. “What about you, Norman? I know you don’t really have any life-endagering knitting missions right now-” that got a laugh from the other boy, “-but I could always use another friend.”
Norman felt the bottom of his metaphorical feet come from under him. No one’d ever actually asked him to be friends back home. Definitely not after Aggie’s anniversary, he thought acridly. Although he was as unsure and uncomfortable as he could feel, and even though he felt like she’d come to regret it, the spiky-haired boy couldn’t turn the sweet girl down. “Um, yeah. I mean, sure, we can be friends,” he answered her, voice smaller than usual. “I don’t mind.”
Mirabel gave him a soft, small smile in return. Something in it felt understanding, bittersweet in a way. “Okay.”
“C’mon, Norm, we oughta make it up to the record shop before it gets too late,” Chester prompted. “I’ll be sure to bring the tent by tomorrow!” he asserted to Mirabel, the two boys hurrying down the stairs.
She happily waved after the pair. “See you tomorrow, Chester! Catch you later too, Norman!”
Once they’d left and Mirabel closed the cabin’s door, Vicky stepped from out of her spot in the wall between the door and the open window with a satisfied smirk. “Good to know the twerp just wants to learn how to sow,” she purred, words falling like silk.
Mirabel just shook her head. “Senorita Valentine, why didn’t you want Chester to see you?”
“’Cuz part of being a big sister means you’re everyone’s big sister, especially your baby sister’s friends,” she replied plainly. Then, with an evil smirk, “And every good big sister needs blackmail.”
///
It wasn’t a stretch to imagine that the camp didn’t really have much left to shock Chester or Norman with. After all, space travel, campers with super powers and a beautiful, picturesque island is sort of hard to beat.
When Norman had heard that the campmaster had a record shop on the island, he hadn’t had a clear mental image of it; he’d never even been inside of one before. But he hadn’t imagined that it would look anything like this.
The outside was an unassuming rectangle – short in front, long on the sides, with a tropical feel to the lightly-shaded wood and ash red, arched tile that made up the roof. The building had an asphalt trail leading up to it, same as the other buildings on the island, and it was surrounded by taller trees that made it feel almost foreboding. Not even a four minute walk away was the other, more asymmetrical building that the two boys guessed was the Tape Factory. The one they’d gone into had a plain, rounded sign with the words, The Sound Exchange, illuminated on top in a funky, dynamic font, built from neon lights that flickered between every letter so often. Inside, though, was where the real show was.
Rows upon rows upon shelves upon shelves of upright vinyl records were packed to bursting all the way down to the end of the shop, where a singular cashier’s desk sat. Where the shelves on the walls seemed to be broken up by tiny, handwritten markers in each cubicle, the open rows in the middle of the floor had big banners above indicating the genres. Private Press Jazz-Funk. Progressive Rock. 80s New Wave. Northern Soul. Mid 90s Independent Hip-Hop. Detroit Techno. The categories were so numerous, and it seemed to go on and on forever. Listening stations were positioned dead center of the shop’s walls. Each record was immaculately kept, plastic coverings keeping them protected from dust and dirt. The smell that wafted throughout the shop was unfamiliar, but made an instant impression on their noses; it was reminiscent of a grandfather’s house, swirling with the promise of unearthed history and the mildew of an old bookstore. Norman loved it immediately.
“Woah,” Chester mumbled.
“Yeah,” Norman concurred.
Chester glanced around and saw a handful of people already sifting through the stacks. “Wanna split up the work?” he purported. “I can pick out the record for our cabin, you handle the records we’ll use for our song.”
“You sure?” Norman worried. “What if I accidentally get something that sucks?”
Chester shrugged. “How’ll we know if it sucks or not? Not like we know what we’re doing, anyways,” he laughed, walking off toward the hip-hop section.
The melancholy boy figured he couldn’t argue with that.
He walked over by the subtly-categorized square record shelves, running his fingers down the spines of the vinyl and enjoying the satisfying fluttering sound they made. His mind drifted to Switch’s performance on the first night they got to the island; how energetic and lively the music was, and the way the entire crowd seemed to move as one. Not even simply bouncing to the rhythm of the beat, but fully jumping, not caring if someone’s knee ended up in someone else’s upper spine.
I dunno if I wanna make something that’s that hyped-up, Norman thought as he idly shuffled through record covers in the jazz fusion section. But it’d be cool to have everyone dancing along to it. Maybe something with a cool bass line or somethi-
His inner monologue was interrupted when he bumped into someone in the same row as him, sending some of her records tumbling to the ground. The spiky-haired boy cringed, kneeling down to pick up what he’d made her drop. “Sorry, I shoulda watched where I was going,” he apologized quickly.
“Don’t worry about it, I wasn’t really paying attention either,” she replied, voice equally as soft as his. Norman glanced up at her and was greeted with an unexpectedly gorgeous sight. The first thing he noticed was her eyes; big, big, expressive pools of inky black, made only more alluring by the vivid pink and shadowy purple eye makeup surrounding them. She seemed to actually radiate a halo of light around her lissome form – odd, considering there weren’t hardly any windows in the shop for light to reflect into. Her hair, just as shiny and black as her eyes, feathered out into bangs and neck-length hair tucked behind her sizeable ears. The corners of her small, pouty lips were tweaked into a wry grin, and he’d realized that he hadn’t actually said a word for a solid twelve-ish seconds. Long enough to completely mortify him.
The beautiful girl gasped quietly, and Norman eventually discerned that she was staring at his shirt. “ I love Night of the Living Dead,” she gushed shyly.
“M-me too,” Norman blurted. He fought the incredible urge to facepalm. She probably put that together already, Babcock. “Didn’t think anybody else here liked Romero.”
“You kidding? Horror's are all I watch some days,” Mystery Girl admitted, looking down at her polished black flats. “Poltergeist, The Shining, Blacula-”
Norman’s mouth went agape. “I’ve never met anyone who even knows that movie exists,” he said, disbelievingly. “Where did you-”
“Best friend’s got a taste for the scary stuff. The cheesy stuff too, now that I think about it,” she answered with a hidden giggle. “I’m Lydia.”
“N-Norman,” he eventually returned.
Lydia’s closed-mouth smile got wider, and he decided to look anywhere else but her pretty face. She gestured to the door with a dainty thumb. “I was headed back to my cabin since I just picked out our nickname-record-thing, but maybe I’ll see you later? At dinner?”
The poor boy could only nod mutely.
Lydia clasped her records behind her back and smiled at him once more before turning on her heel, the motion flaring out her black skirt slightly, and heading out the door, the chime of a bell ringing out as she exited.
Right then, Norman felt a strange tugging in his chest from the rows of records behind him. He glanced up at the banner hanging above him – Boogie Funk & Post-Disco. One hell of a section to end up in. Almost like an unseen hand was guiding him, he flipped through records, stopping on a few but never truly landing on whatever it was he felt he was looking for. He’d gone straight through to the middle of the row and was rounding on the end of it, when suddenly. There it was.
He gently, but quickly, lifted the vinyl record out of its place buried deep in the corner of the rack. Three Black men, garbed in Roman armor, were posing victoriously on a long, winding road made from the black-and-white keys of a piano. Above them read the title, Imagination – In the Heat of the Night.
Weird cover, Norman decided, But maybe it’s got something cool on it. Whatever “cool “even sounds like.
The spiky-haired boy took it over to the listening station and placed the record on the turntable, overwhelmed at the complicated-looking contraption. Thankfully, someone seemed to have read his mind and left instructions on the wall in front of it. Okay, so I just put it where the hold pokes through, he thought, careful to only touch the record by the edges. Then press the square button on the edge and be really gentle when I put down the needle. For as delicate as it all was, there was a tactile satisfaction that Norman felt from turning all the switches and faders and hearing the soft, dusty feedback in his headphones from the cartridge brushing the outside groove of the record.
(Music: Track 08: Music & Lights)
A syncopated, squelching bassline ramped upwards and came right back, hopping along the shuffling, steady pace of the drums. The kick drum and layered claps and snare were soft, and yet still managed to come through the mix alongside the double-time of the hi-hats and tambourines. It sounded like futuristic disco, alright – maybe that’s what the post in post-disco means, Norman wondered.
It was deceptively simple. The men’s vocals were front and center like an instrument themselves. Keyboards glided along, chiming softly with the undeniable groove of the bassline. Here and there, a flourish of a second synth filled in the empty space with a twiddle, but other than that the strength of the song came from how… bouncy it felt, for lack of a better word. Norman realized that this, this was what he wanted people to dance along to when he was on that stage. As his feet tapped along to the dreamy, groovy music, he figured this would make for a pretty good starting point for whatever song he and Chester could come up with. He swiftly replaced the arm of the turntable back to its resting place and slid the record into its jacket, eager to make his way back over to his cabinmate.
Chester, meanwhile, had chosen a record and was keeping it close to his chest, giddily hiding it from Norman’s view. “Hey, man,” he greeted the spiky-haired teenager. “Got something good?”
“I think so,” he replied with a shrug. “I felt this weird pull when I found it, like it wanted me to dig it out. It sounds good and everything, but I feel… I dunno, I just like it.” He then caught that Chester was deliberately not showing off the record he held close and felt himself smirk. “Any reason I can’t see whatcha got?”
“Nah, man, it’s a secret,” Chester explained with a satisfied, devious grin. “Wait’ll I run it by Mr. M, you’ll see what I came up with.”
Norman just let it be, choosing to approach the counter with their music in hand. A bored-looking young woman with long brown hair, dressed in an all-black, skin tight outfit, sat with her legs crossed and her face in her manicured hands, perking up a little when she caught wind of the two boys coming up to the counter. “Hey,” she greeted them casually. “Checking these out?”
“Uh huh, just these,” Chester responded, cheeks going pink. The record shop worker’s outfit left just enough curves to the imagination, but only just. The golden badge on her collared leather longsleeve read Vanessa D. in black lettering.
She handed both of them what looked like a bookmark with a punctured hole near the top and a tote bag with the Camp Arcadia logo on the side, records tucked inside neatly. “Bring them back when you get done listening to ‘em and make sure you take care of them,” she instructed, sitting back down to inspect her nails. “Other than that, go wild, boys.”
“Appreciate it, er, Vanessa,” Chester thanked her bashfully, both teenagers committing to the Herculean task of keeping their eyes on hers and not dropping them back down to her well-developed chest.
The older girl’s mouth turned a smidge upwards. “No prob, blondie. See you guys whenever.”
“Y’know, you’d think people would get more creative with my nicknames,” Chester bemoaned as they walked out of the door of the Sound Exchange. “It’s always ‘Blondie’, or ‘Chompers’, never anything cool!”
“It’s kinda hard to shorten Chester without it sounding weird,” Norman pointed out, toes still tapping out the song’s rhythm as they walked over to the last part of their afternoon journey. “If it makes you feel better, you’re the first person to give me a nickname. No one’s ever called me ‘Norm’ before.” He made a face. “And now that I’m saying it out loud, I dunno if I like it.” Chester burst out in a guffaw at his honesty, and soon enough Norman started laughing alongside him. He really hadn’t meant to be so blunt.
By the time they reached the singular, surprisingly heavy door of the Tape Factory, a handful of phrases and licks from Music and Lights kept repeating in Norman’s head. He found himself humming the chorus, particularly the part about dancing with pretty girls on the dance floor. He pictured himself dancing with a certain pretty girl he’d met not too long ago, smiling involuntarily.
The inside of the Tape Factory was, in so many words, compact but cool as fuck.
It had a homey feel, with posters of musicians strewn all over the strong white concrete walls, alongside ridged foam blocks in the corners of the octagonal walls. Everything was set up in the middle of the room, plenty of space away from every wall. The main desk held up the two boxes with the pads and dials they’d seen Switch play on, and the boys walked up close to get a better look. The big one, the one with the blue screen and the sixteen white rubber pads, had dents and scratches on the steel body, evidence of a lifetime of use long before they’d gotten there. The other one was more of a rectangle and a gunmetal silver, with four colorful knobs and a big dome flashing numbers in red, morphing colors around the display. It only had twelve, numbered pads, and was noticeably more button-like than the squishy drum pads of its big brother.
A pair of turntables, with a box of switches and faders in between them, rested on an unassuming desk on the left, and on the right was a small piano with plenty of knobs and a funky green color scheme. In front of all of this was a drum set, a couple of freestanding microphones, and in the corner, a massive, complicated-looking machine with two identical reels on either side, blinking and flashing lights.. There were only two stools to use as chairs, but that suited Chester and Norman just fine.
“So what now?” the blond-haired boy wondered, aimlessly turning a knob here and there. Norman noticed a tiny sticky note next to the boxy machines like the one at the listening station in the record shop, same handwriting and all. Put the needle on the record, turn the machines on, press a couple buttons and let your imagination do the rest, it read.
“See if you can find the ‘on’ switch for these things,” Norman directed Chester, fishing the Imagination record out of his new tote. “I guess I’ll put the music on and hope something happens.”
Eventually Chester fumbled around and turned on the miniature keyboard and the boxy machine, the bright blue of its digital display beaming proudly. When Norman lowered turntable’s stylus onto the outside groove, Music and Lights’ intro filled the air and played in the boys’ ears in full stereo, not a speaker or a studio monitor in sight. Chester’s face screwed up like he smelled something terrible, but he was nodding his head as though he really dug what he was hearing.
“Holy shit, this is nice,” Chester complimented with a joyous grin, dancing and jumping around the room without a care.
Norman felt a bit of earned pride at Chester’s words. He accidentally leaned a bony elbow on one of the white pads of the boxy machine and in an instant, the song stopped playing through the way he remembered it went. A minuscule, barely-a-second’s worth of the intro repeated over and over again, looping back in on itself perfectly, truncating the previously intricate bassline down into two strong notes. The light keyboards now played out of place, but not unpleasantly so.
Chester gawked at Norman incredulously. “How’d you do that?!” came the blond’s inevitable question.
“I dunno,” Norman lamely replied, staring at the mysterious music box apprehensively. “That’s… this is what I kept hearing in my head. After I listened to it the first time at the Exchange.”
Chester walked up to the drum machine and experimentally tapped another pad in time with the loop and it shifted forward, now playing a beep! at the same time as the snare-clap and taking out the first bass note. He jumped back like a kid getting burned by an oven’s flame, and the room seemed to thrum with unseen energy, expanding and contracting the walls like a rubber balloon. “Trippy,” Chester breathed.
Press buttons and let my imagination run free, huh? Norman took a deep breath and, with a shaky hand, pressed another pad.
“-Girls, you got – pretty girls, you got – pretty girls, you got – pretty girls, you got-” the vocal sample from the chorus repeated endlessly, chopped up at just the right point and playing in time as the intro’s sparse bass line, but mixed in with the open drums and sparkling, rhythmical percussion from another part of the song Norman had forgot he’d liked.
“Dude! Dude!” Chester gurgled excitedly, jumping around the project studio on the balls of his feet. “This sounds amazing! What the hell made you loop it up like that?!”
Norman didn’t have an answer – he wasn’t too sure himself. “It got stuck in my head and I wanted to see what it would sound like, so I just… thought it and I made it.”
“Maybe that’s how it works,” Chester reasoned, hitting the stop button on the turntable. “Whatever you hear on here-” he pointed at the turntable, “-you put it all together on these things,” he indicated at the drum machines and the lone synthesizer. “After that, we perform it in front of everyone at that Jam Session thingy!”
This was insane. All he’d done was move around parts of the song and it sounded like something completely new, something that was closer to how he’d heard it. Not physically, with his ears and his brain, but it was like-
What my ears wanted to hear, Norman concluded, sparing an astonished glance to Chester. He’d already read his mind. The blond hopped onto one of the stools and spun around, grinning conspiratorially at his cabinmate.
“Let’s see what else we can do!”
As they worked and played into the night, neither noticed the big machine’s wheels in the back, lighting up and slowly turning, spooling a wide, flat material between them.
///
They wouldn’t end up leaving the Tape Factory until well after dinner had started.
In fact, if Chester hadn’t checked his watch sometime around eight-forty, chances were that they’d have missed dinner altogether and stayed there until neither one could stay awake. Messing around for hours, coming up with new loops and ideas from Music & Lights had been the type of fun Norman only dreamed of having back home. Now, though, they had to hurry before dinner was over so their cabin could complete the Cabin-Building Activity for the day and get themselves an official nickname.
They rounded the corner quickly, passing by the girls’ Cabin Eight and running down the trail that led to the Mess Hall. The oil lamps that lined the trail illuminated the surroundings with soft, orange candlelight. “I hope you picked out a good one,” Norman huffed, pushing up his hoodie’s sleeves as he moved his feet. “The guys’re gonna be pissed if we don’t come through!”
“Don’t wig out man, I told you, I got it!” Chester reassured him, stepping wide over a stray log. “I just hope we’re not too late to get somethin’ to eat!”
The mismatched pair made haste as quick as they could; officially, dinner was over at nine, but they held out hope that the Campmaster kept it open to announce everyone’s new name. The long walk became rather short when one ran as fast as they could. Chester checked his watch – 8:55PM. Five minutes left!
They finally came up to Cabin One and hit the curve that led straight through the girls’ double doors. Without hesitation (or provocation, for that matter), Chester leapt and dramatically kicked the doors in with a loud bang!, striking a heroically dorky pose.
Before either could actually think about how they’d entered, the eyes of a hundred and eighty-five campers, sixteen camp counselors, three kitchen chefs, and a dozen-and-a-half camp staff – including a startled Switch – snapped directly onto them.
Norman suddenly felt very small.
Chester laughed nervously. “Uh… sorry we’re late?”
Bruno pinched the bridge of his nose with a longsuffering sigh. Over at Cabin Three’s table, TJ and Charlie Brown held up square signs that read ‘9.3’ and ‘8.1’, grinning widely.
“Oh, sweet, we were waiting to see what Cabin Three came up with!” Switch said, completely ignoring the awkward atmosphere. “Mr. Madrigal, if ya don’t mind?”
Chester and Norman made their way to their table, passing by the silent peculiar looks and stifled laughs from every table – Norman spotted Lydia at Cabin Two’s table and flipped his hood up, pushing Chester along to hurry past her and her snickering cabinmates, blushing to the roots of his spiky hair – and Chester finally fished out the record he’d grabbed and handed it to Mister Madrigal.
The cover depicted a pair of guys walking in the street of a neighborhood sparsely littered with palm trees. Both were looking at the invisible eye of the camera, one slimmer with a pair of jeans and a khaki button-up short sleeve, the other more on the husky side with a big grey hoodie and a boombox resting on his shoulder. In an cokebottle green box in the top left was the duo’s name, People Under the Stairs , and to the right in the same color but standing on its own was the album’s title, O.S.T.
“I saw the cover and I just liked the way it looked,” Chester answered the unsaid question, gesturing with his hands excitedly. “All I needed to hear was the first song and it came to me – call the cabin The Staircase, and we can all be-”
“The People Under the Stairs,” Bruno finished, shaking his head as a grin slowly grew over his bearded face. “Not bad, kid. Anybody opposed to that?”
Norman himself thought it was pretty perfect – not the least because it was also the name of one of his favorite movies, but that was another story. The other guys seemed happy with it, even a begrudging Dib.
“Alright, cool, that settles it!” Switch declared, lifting an authoritative finger high in the air. “Cabin Three on the boys’ side will now forever be known as… The Staircase!”
The earth beneath everyone’s feet began to shake and quiver, more powerfully than it had ever before. A blinding flash of blue burst through the air of the Mess Hall’s still-uncovered ceiling, and as soon as it started it cut out abruptly like nothing had happened.
The Campmaster grew a sneaky grin as he faced the congregation of campers and counselors. “Good teamwork and creativity, y’all,” he praised them with a giddy smile. “Every cabin came up with something, I think, matches your collective personalities to the tee. I hope the new digs are to you guys’s liking.” And with that, Switch whistled and casually stepped out of the boys’ side of the cafeteria.
As people followed him out, Chester could hear gasps and elated chattering from the girls and guys alike. He and the guys of The Staircase hurried out of the door and couldn’t believe the sight that laid before their eyes.
Each and every cabin had been changed into something incredible. Cabin Eight, the closest to the lake and the Mess Hall, was transformed into a 1960s space age mish-mash of sleek steel and neon stripes wrapping around the edges of the oblong-shaped building. In radiant, multicolored bubbles around each individual letter was the name, The Astro Lounge, shining from a pole stuck in the ground right next to the cabin. A group of guys, Chester assumed were from Cabin Eight, were loudly whooping and cheering, freaking out as they quickly ran up the stairs to get reacquainted with their lodgings.
Chester, Norman and the rest of his gang rushed down the illuminated trail, eager to see what their decision had turned their old cabin into; and it certainly didn’t disappoint.
The previously regular-looking wooden cabin was replaced with a tall, wide, dark green building modelled after a simple flight of steps, climbing all the way up to a high fourth step. Big, circular windows were plastered in the middle of each “step”, with the bottom entrance door a homey peach color with a viewfinder and a doggy door. In graffiti bubble letters that seemed to leap off of the surface, an oak-colored wooden sign was planted into the ground beside the small stairs that led into the cabin, reading out, The Staircase.
Somehow, Switch had made the inside much bigger than the outside. The wide first floor held the same small kitchen as before, but it was now joined by a living room area with a humble little television against the wall. There were stairs that led up three stories with a room on each side, making up six rooms for the twelve boys of Cabin Three.
“Holy shit!” TJ cursed excitedly. The other guys scrambled about, hopping on the comfy blue couch and turning on the TV or messing around with whatever they could get their hands on.
Chester held out the side of his fist to Norman, a proud smirk set on his mouth. “Appreciate ya for coming with, Norm.”
Norman bumped it back, and in the back of his mind he imagined that this is what the beginnings of a friendship looked like. He decided it didn’t feel too bad at all. He gave a wry grin back to him. “All in a day’s work, McBadbat.”
Snoopy passed by with Woodstock on his shoulder and stopped in front of the two. The beagle lifted his cool-guy sunglasses and waggled his eyebrows, before lowering them back down and going on his merry way.
“Charlie Brown’s got a weird dog,” Norman decided. Chester agreed.