The Order of the Poison Oak by Brent Hartinger Page A

I was controlling him with my mind, because this is just what I would have commanded him to do.
    As he stood up tall on that rock, I saw I had been right. They were skinny-dipping. Web was completely naked. And he was standing right in the moonlight, so I could see everything.
    I had seen Web naked before—that night in the shower house. But that had just been a quick look while his head was covered. This was different. Now I could stare. He didn’t know I was there. It was completely wrong of me, I knew that, and I knew I’d probably have to pay for it after I died, in purgatory or whatever (if such a place really exists).
    But I didn’t care. Because it was worth it. Standing there glistening in the light of the silver moon, Web was beautiful.
    My dad collects books of Peanuts comic strips—the ones with Charlie Brown and Lucy and Snoopy? And my watching Web like that reminded me of one series of those Peanuts strips. In the comic, Peppermint Patty, who is in love with Charlie Brown, sees the Little Red-Haired Girl, the girl Charlie Brown is in love with, for the very first time. Peppermint Patty wants to talk to her, but the only thing she can do is cry. She sees just how beautiful the Little Red-Haired Girl is, and why Charlie Brown is so in love with her. “She just sort of sparkles,” Peppermint Patty says. And Peppermint Patty realizes that she’ll never be that beautiful, and that no one will ever look at her the way Charlie Brown looks at the Little Red-Haired Girl.
    Standing on that rock, Web was sparkling too, and not just because of the water and the moonlight. His body was perfect, and I wanted to cry because I knew I would never look like that, and that no one could ever look at me the way I was looking at him.
    Only with me, it was more than that. I wanted to cry not just because Web was so beautiful. It was also because I now knew he was straight and he’d chosen Min for a girlfriend, and I would never know that beauty, and probably wouldn’t even be able to ever look at it again. (Who knows? Maybe Peppermint Patty was crying over the Little Red-Haired Girl for exactly the same reason. She always did strike me as a baby dyke.)
    And before I could stop myself, I really did choke up a bit. Because of the acoustics of the bay and the fact that the night was so still, my little cough echoed down into the cove.
    Web looked up toward the ledge. “Hello?” he said. “Is someone there?”
    I froze. It was one of those situations where I just could not be caught, because there was nothing short of the truth that could explain why I was where I was. And the truth was just so beyond embarrassing.
    “It’s nothing,” Min called. “Come on—jump!”
    He did. And with the splash of the water, I was able to creep from that ledge to the trail, where I could then carefully make my way back to my cabin.
    I can honestly say I felt horribly guilty about spying on them and violating their privacy like that. Unfortunately, if I’m going to be completely honest, I also have to admit that if I had that evening to live one more time, I would do the exact same thing all over again.
    * * * * *
    The next day, Saturday, the whole camp went on a field trip to a nearby logging camp. More specifically, an old logging camp that had since been turned into an open-air museum.
    If I were to describe the whole field trip, you’d be as bored as the kids (pretty darn bored). So I’ll try and stick to the non-boring parts, which, rest assured, have nothing whatsoever to do with logging.
    The first interesting thing happened on the bus on the way there. Em sat next to me, and at one point she leaned close to me and said, “I like him.”
    I sat back from her a little, mostly because I was worried about my breath. “What?” I said.
    “Your friend Gunnar. He’s cute.”
    I could only stare. “Are you kidding?”
    She laughed. “Why would I be kidding?”
    I glanced at the kids and counselors sitting around us. Gunnar was on