Read Online This Is Only a Test by B.J. Hollars - Free Book Online Page B

ailment to the boy in the bunk who never has.
    The nurse keeps an endless supply of calamine lotion, Gold Bond, and Popsicles, and somehow these are the only cures those boys ever seem to require.
    Freshly healed (and with purple Popsicles dangling from their lips) the campers begin their long walks back to their cabins.
    Out your room’s window, you and the boy can just make out their small shadows pushing against the dark. Eventually, you hear what appears to be dillydallying (“Dude! Check out this bug!”), so you shout for the boys to double-time it back to their bunks.
    â€œI’ll time you,” you call out the window. “1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . .”
    The fuse is lit, the campers run, their tennis shoes skimming the earth.
    You turn from the window to watch the boy staring hard at the wooden bunk above him, his twig legs crisscrossed at the ankles.
    â€œHey, want me to close this?” you ask, nodding to the window.
    His face is immutable: dark eyes, aquiline nose, slightly sunken cheeks.
    â€œMaybe we’ll close it this time,” you say, and when you see no reaction—not even the flittering of eyes—you reach your hands toward the pane and press down.
    The following day—your last day together—proves to be a scorcher. It’s so hot, in fact, that not even all the shade from all the oak trees in the grove can adequately protect you. Water is the only relief the camp has to offer, and so all activities are cancelled. All campers are to report directly to the lake with their sunscreen.
    All the campers but one.
    From your place inside the Med Shed, you and the boy hear a bleating “Marco!” followed by “Polo!” You and the boy hear the aftermath of the cannonballs as those campers fold their knees to their chests.
    You offer an apologetic smile, as if to say,
Hey, I get it. I’m an empathetic guy
.
    But you both know you don’t get it.
    Don’t get what it’s like to be held captive by your body, to be forced to hold a pose indefinitely.
    During rest hour—when the rest of the campers return to their sweltering cabins to write letters home (“The food is great! The lake is great! We love it!”)—you and the boy decide to go for a dip.
    It’s just a lake
, you think,
what could possibly go wrong?
    You follow one step behind as the boy hums his power chair down the path that leads to the water. He stops his chair just short of the sand, which is when you enter the scene.
    You lift his small frame from his chair and carry him toward the water, cupping one hand beneath his knobby knees and the other beneath his back. Each bead of sweat clings to him, obscuring his face and collecting in his cheeks.
    In that moment, all you want in the world is to give that boy what he wants. Somebody has told you he likes the water, and since you are in a position to give him that, you do.
    From his place at the shaded picnic table, the lifeguard spots you headed his way.
    He asks if he can help and you say sure, then you split the boy’s weight between you.
    As the three of you enter the lake, you convince yourself that a boy like him must like buoyancy. That a boy in his condition must like the way the water turns everything weightless. Removes friction, eases grating, allows a body to rock in the waves.
    Years later, you will all but forget those waves, that water, the whir of the air conditioner in the Med Shed. What you will remember most is the changing. How you struggled to work the angles as you pulled that diaper down. How his knees had proven too sharp, and how each time you spread his legs they snapped back like a bear trap newly sprung.
    Back in those days, you were just some boy and he was just some boy, but when you finally do grow up and have a son yourself, every diaper change will seem easy in comparison.
    At last you learn the protocol—not from any counselor’s manual, or any