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pictured Them, the five baboons, trapped inside that bunker after I’d locked Them in. Surely a humbling experience, especially after They’d found Themselves prey toevery flesh-biting species of vermin the Delaware Bay had to offer. I mean, the bunker stood out there unused year after year. Who knew what might be living in it? The insect possibilities were limitless.
    Now, how I would pull this off remained to be seen. I lay quietly on my bunk hoping for another idea to start breathing, and believe it or not, when I opened my eyes, I saw the hideous face of Jason Barton infecting my airspace.
    â€œGeorge, you okay?”
    I locked eyes with him and kept my gaze steady, but didn’t give him an answer.
    â€œSorry about last night. We don’t know who turned on the lights. We didn’t know what to do.”
    I continued staring at him. Then I decided to play along with his little charade. “What happened to the shaving cream?”
    â€œWe bagged that idea. We liked your idea better. Did Zimmerman say what he’s gonna do to you yet?”
    â€œNot quite yet.”
    â€œWell, hang in there, buddy. I mean, it’s not like he can really do anything to Mr. Clark’s son, right?” He gave me a nasty little wink before disappearing, and I thought over his parting words.
    Buddy
? Ha! I no longer liked the sound of that. What did he take me for anyway? Then I got another idea. I would play along with Them. I would pretend to believe Them and thereby draw
Them
into a false sense of security. It would make exacting my revenge a whole lot easier and a whole lot sweeter.
    Satisfied with myself, I turned on my side and jumped. The Music Man’s face, red with wrath and clashing morethan a little with his pink cashmere sweater, was hovering within inches of my own.
    â€œGet up and get dressed,” he snarled. “You’re in for a very long day.”
    I hopped out of bed to get dressed as quickly as I could, hoping that swift obedience might soften him up a little, but I was filled with a rock-hard sense of impending doom that made both the hopping and the hoping a little difficult. I noticed the occasional sympathetic glance shot my way by an apelike face, and each time forced myself to answer it with an equally pathetic look of my own rather than let loose the daggers that burned behind my eyes and give the show away. It all hinged on Mr. Zimmerman keeping me here at camp. Then They’d see George at his best. Or worst, depending on how you looked at it.
    The Music Man kept me by his side as the boys of Cabin F trooped to the mess hall for breakfast. He pushed me through the line pretty efficiently, and I noticed that our eating habits were not all that dissimilar. We both grabbed a wedge of the same variety of melon and reached for the same species of Frosted Pop-Tart, and we both avoided the more leathery, curdled, and congealed food groups. I found myself hoping that
that
was where our similarities would end. The table he chose was in a far corner of the room and therefore pretty isolated, and instead of sitting on the bench directly opposite me as anyone else would have, the big jerk dropped his tray right next to mine, and I had to slide over quickly before our hips touched. It was like having a conjoined twin. He explained himself by saying, matter-of-factly,“If I had to look at your face the whole time, I’d lose my appetite.”
    A little abrasive
, I thought, but I could see the justice of the remark. Having to look at his face would have put me off my feed indefinitely. But after a while I decided to risk it. I had to find out what I was in for before the suspense killed me. So I turned to look at him, and was just wondering how I might broach the subject, when I immediately became mesmerized by watching the man eat. He took the tiniest of bites and then chewed each one about fifty times, and with his skinny mustache twitching up and down as if battery