by Emma Lord
Mickey’s the first one to spot me when I get off the bus—or at least I think she is, until Rufus barrels his way through the campers with his tongue lapping out of his mouth. He jumps up on me with so much unabashed puppy love that between the force of him and the weight of my backpack on my shoulders, I immediately start to tip over.
Someone deftly grabs my elbow right before I end up introducing my butt to the mud.
“Rufus, manners?” says a voice I don’t know.
I turn around and could almost blow a kiss at the sky with gratitude—a camper who actually seems to be my age, with messy curls and a smirk that he aims at me without an ounce of self-consciousness. He must be a veteran of Camp Whatever It’s Actually Called, too.
Not just a veteran, but the other boy in Leo’s picture.
“Thanks,” I say. “Uh…?”
Instead of giving me his name, he salutes me, leans down to pet Rufus, and then disappears into the throng. By the time I look up to find Mickey, Leo’s beaten me to her.
“Your hair!” she exclaims, reaching up to mess with it.
“Your sleeve,” he says, grabbing her other arm by the wrist and examining it. “I thought you decided you were a Hufflepuff.”
“Yeah, but a Gryffindor rising,” says Mickey, justifying the latest iteration of her temporary tattoo sleeve. “Anyway, my mom made too many of them and let me snag a few before I left for camp, so—Abby! Hey! You should meet Leo.”
Leo turns to me, his eyes bright with mischief. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he says, offering his hand.
I take it, squeezing it hard. “Likewise—Liam, was it?”
“Leo,” says Mickey helpfully.
“Oh, Leon,” I correct myself, without breaking eye contact with Leo. He’s trying to play along, but laughter is starting to creep into his smile.
“Actually, my legal full name is Keep This Up And You Won’t Get A Single Lasagna Ball Out Of Me This Entire Summer—”
“You guys know each other?” Mickey cuts in, delighted.
“Yeah. Leo’s been talking up this camp for years,” I say, turning to her with meaningful eye contact. Well, eye contact I hope is meaningful enough to say, Please for the love of God give Savvy the heads-up about this before she shows up.
Leo wraps an arm around my shoulders and squeezes, displaying me like a kid sister. “Must have said something right, if it finally got her to come.”
Mickey’s eyes widen for a split second, enough for me to know she got the message to not blow my cover loud and clear. “Well—wow—that’s great!” she says. “Well—Leo, you should probably go check in.”
“On it,” he says, saluting us both as he goes and tossing me a wink, one that Mickey definitely doesn’t miss.
She raises her eyebrows at me, looking gleeful. “Okay, I have zero time to yell about how much I ship this, because apparently the whole camp computer system crashed and it’s all hands on deck.”
I dismiss the comment, waffling between her and Leo, feeling like it’s the first day of kindergarten all over again and I’m about to lose both my chaperones. “Should I just … go to orientation then?”
“Yeah,” says Mickey, pointing in the general direction of where the other campers are moving. “Savvy’s down in the pit running the show while we try to un-fuck-up all the class rosters. Never a dull moment!”
I hesitate, looking at the curved, elevated rows of benches around the pit full of unfamiliar faces. Even the boy from before seems to have disappeared into the ether, but thankfully a blond girl in neon colorblock leggings beckons me over to sit with her and a few others on the left side.
“Psst—hey! We’ve got a spare seat!”
The girls on either side of her scoot to make room for me, nodding to acknowledge me as one of them moans, “I can’t believe my parents signed me up for the SAT prep portion. I’m not even going to college. I already have a whole plan!”
“Ugh, same. I have a 1560 and they still enrolled me in those stupid sessions. Like, I’m already set on premed, haven’t I already filled the quota for parental bragging rights?” the other girl groans. “They’re lucky I’m too lazy to incite any kind of legit teenage rebellion, or they’d be screwed.”
They pause, giving me space to do the sociable thing like agree with them or at the very least introduce myself, but I’m struck by sudden and decidedly unwelcome panic at the words “whole plan” and “already set on.” It’s not like senior year is a surprise or anything. I guess it’s just a surprise that I still don’t have any kind of scope for what comes after it.
“Seriously,” says the girl who beckoned me over, “parents are so competitive now, all the school districts here have gotten out of control.”
I’m about to nod in agreement when we all cringe at the crackle and whine of a cheap microphone coming to life.
“Hey, Camp Ev—Reynolds!”
It’s Savvy, standing on the little elevated stage just beyond the middle of the pit. Despite the perpetually damp air, her hair and makeup are as immaculate as ever, but now she’s wearing a tank top with the camp’s name on it tucked into a pair of high-waisted khaki shorts and rocking sleek black sneakers. A hush falls over the campers, save for the group of girls next to me, who all start whispering at once.
“Oh my god, that’s her.”
“Those shorts are so cute.”
“She’s shorter than I expected!”
“But so much prettier in real—”
“Shh,” one of the other junior counselors hushes them as the gears start clicking together in my brain and I realize that I accidentally planted myself next to an entire Savannah Tully fan club. I peer at them out of the corner of my eye and see three high ponytails and three pairs of identical black sneakers and immediately pull out another piece of gum to stress chew.
“As you know, we had a bit of a revamp this year,” says Savvy. “Some of the pieces are still moving, so we appreciate you bearing with us. But we’re proud to announce the first official camp session of Camp Reynolds and thrilled to have you here.”
I’m expecting the unrepentantly half-hearted cheers I’m used to hearing at school, but the volume ramps up all at once—kids whistling and whooping and clapping their hands. When it doesn’t die down, I realize it isn’t only Savvy hype. A lot of the kids have been here before. I’m the unenthused outsider.
I try to make eye contact with Savvy, but she looks away quickly when our eyes meet. Mine dart away too slow, and I feel like a total loser in the aftermath.
“If we could, uh, start with everyone grouping themselves together based on the camp track you’re on?” says Savvy to the group, seeming to go out of her way to point her face in any direction other than mine. “SAT prep here in the middle, AP prep to my left, and general campers on my right.”
The girls start to get up with reluctant sighs, but I grab the elbow of 1560, and the other two pause.
“Hold on,” I whisper. “I heard they messed up the rosters. Maybe if we don’t move they won’t know we were enrolled in the SAT thing.”
“I Already Have a Whole Plan” narrows her eyes. “Wait, seriously?”
“Just—sit tight for a second,” I say. “If we get busted we can pretend we got confused.”
We go silent, letting the crowd of general campers swallow us up until we’re standing in the middle of the pack. I’m so sure we’re going to get caught that I start chewing my gum with violence.
“Oh,” says the girl who beckoned me over in the first place. “We’re really not supposed to—”
The same junior counselor from before shushes us, and we all clap our mouths shut and face front, jumpy that we’re about to get caught playing SAT prep hooky.
“As for what to expect … I really appreciate you reading up on the new rules in advance, and pre-appreciate you respecting them during your session here. It might have seemed like a lot, but it’s all pretty simple really—”
I pop a bubble, and Savvy stops dead at the sound, final
ly turning to look at me. I’m so stunned that it takes me a second to realize the entire pit of campers has turned, too. I lick the deflated bubble goo off my lips and stare back, wondering if there’s some kind of stray insect climbing up my face and nobody wants to tell me.
“Uh.” It’s Savvy, talking to me. Talking to me. I take a step back, wondering if she’s lost her goddamn mind when she adds, “Sorry, but … I’m going to have to give you a demerit.”
I blink at her, and everyone seems to lean in like they’re passing a fender bender on the road and want to get a better view. “Wait. What?”
The girl next to me brushes my elbow, her voice small and tentative. “Um, the camp banned gum?” she says. To her credit, she sounds every bit as miserable giving the news as I am to receive it.
This has got to be a prank, but when I look around, not a single camper looks fazed. Before whatever part of my brain is responsible for common sense kicks in, I blurt out, “Are you shitting me?”
“Excuse me.”
The voice behind me is way too old to be a junior counselor, or even a head one. It has an authority to it that makes me extremely certain I’m done for before I even turn around.
Sure enough, it’s a woman with a clipboard and a name tag that reads VICTORIA REYNOLDS. She has steely gray hair and matching steely eyes, which are focused on me in a way that makes me want to stare down at myself and make sure I haven’t burst into flames.
“Sorry for the interruption,” she says to the others. And to me: “Young lady, you can follow me.”
I open my mouth to protest, but one subtle, single shake of her head is all I need to think better of it. Instead I turn to Savvy, hoping I might catch some twinge of remorse, some hint of apology on her face, but she won’t even look at me. It’s like I am nobody to her. Like I don’t even exist.
So I turn and leave the firepit, my head held high and my mouth chewing the offending gum hard enough to snap my jaw, and don’t look back.
seven
“Who taught you how to wash dishes, the Hulk?”
I pause in the admittedly hostile washing of the plate in my hand and turn my head one begrudging fraction of an inch. It’s the boy from this afternoon, the exact same smirk on his face, as if it’s been there this whole time.
“Well,” he says when I don’t answer, “if the whole dish-washing thing doesn’t work out, at least you’ll have a solid career replacing the kid mascot for Dubble Bubble.”
So he’s a chatty type. Too bad. Whatever curiosity I had for him before is every bit as shoved down the drain as the leftover chili I’ve been washing off these mucked-up plates.
He leans against the sink, watching me in my vigorous routine of wash, dry, stack. “I’m Finn, by the way.”
I offer him a tight smile. He takes it in and lets out an exaggerated sigh.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll help you. But only because you look kind of pathetic.” A pause. “And also cuz I got assigned kitchen duty, too.”
“What did you do?”
He waves me off. “What didn’t I do? Can’t get away with anything under the new regime,” he says. “It’s like they’ve all gotta be shitting me, if you know what I mean.”
I pause, the sink still running piping hot water into the soapy basin. “I didn’t see you at the pit,” I accuse.
“Ah, so you were looking for me?”
Ordinarily I’d be embarrassed, but I don’t care what this Finn guy thinks of me. I’m too angry to care what anyone thinks, really. A week of after-dinner kitchen duty assigned by a sixty-year-old woman with a whistle hanging around her neck will do that to you.
“I was there. Preoccupied, maybe, by the ‘Camp Reynolds’ sign I was defacing, but definitely there.”
I sigh, handing him the scalding-hot wet dish in my hands. He takes it so cheerfully that I can only guess he was hoping to get saddled with kitchen duty.
“You planning on telling me your name, or should I just give you one?”
I ignore him, handing over another dish. The thing is, Savvy’s been avoiding me. After Victoria assigned me kitchen duty and gave me a stern talking-to about “language” and a printout of the foot-long list of rules she didn’t care that I didn’t know about, she was nowhere in sight. And when I finally cornered her outside the cabins hours later, she had the nerve to think I was coming to apologize to her.
“What was I supposed to do?” she hissed under her breath. “It’s my first day as a junior counselor. The youngest one we’ve ever had, by the way, because Victoria trusts me. And then you come blazing in and deliberately test my authority in front of everyone—”
“I’m sorry, since when is what I put in my mouth part of your authority?”
“Did you not even bother to read the rules?” Before I could answer, she let out a huff and stepped back from me in faint disgust. “Of course you didn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She took a breath and glanced around the edge of the building—making sure nobody saw her with her delinquent blood match, I could only guess—and said, “Listen, let’s forget about this. We’ve got bigger things to worry about. Come to the rec room during the free hour before curfew.”
“I can’t,” I told her. “Thanks to you, I have kitchen duty after dinner for a week.”
It was almost worth the punishment to get to drop that little bomb on her and watch her mouth form an inadvertent “oh” of surprise. Savvy, I’d already learned, was not a person who adjusted well to people messing with her master plans.
Then her brows furrowed, and she pointed at me. Pointed at me. Like we were in an after-school special, and she was the Extra-Disappointed Teacher. “You’ve got nobody to thank for that but yourself.”
I thought that was going to be it, because she whipped around to head back to the camp. But I let out a laugh that was more of a scoff, this ugly noise I’d never heard myself make before. I was almost proud of myself—hidden talent unlocked—until it prompted Savvy to turn back and say, “If you’re just going to make a bunch of trouble, why’d you bother to come at all?”
She said it fast, without even looking at me, but it still landed hard enough to sting. And just like that, all the anger I was trying to work up was knocked right out of me, and I was more puddle than person. I’d been someone’s little sister for less than a week, and I already screwed the whole thing up.
“Dubble Bubble girl it is,” says Finn, shaking me out of my thoughts and back to the plates I’d been mauling with the sponge. “Unless your parents gave you a better one.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “I’m out of here tomorrow.”
“Uh, come again?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Huh,” says Finn, propping himself up on the counter and taking his sweet time with the whole dish-drying thing. “So what’s the plan, then? Hike up the two-mile-long hill to the main road and stick your thumb out until a local takes pity on you? Or swim back to the mainland and hitch a ride on a fish?”
I only tell him because I’m still working up the nerve to go through with it. Saying it out loud makes it less terrifying. “I’m calling my parents.”
“Yowza. That bad?” he asks. “Listen, Savvy’s all bark and no bite, so if that’s what’s got your Camp Reynolds hoodie in a twist—”
“I didn’t even want to be here in the first place.”
Only now that I’ve said it do I realize how true it is. Even before I accidentally blew up my own spot and earned myself top billing on Savvy’s shit list, I haven’t been able to squash my uneasiness—the sense that so many things I thought I knew are falling apart, and I’m not even there to watch them crash. My parents have been lying to me about Savvy. Connie might have lied to me about Leo. And the distance between me and them only seems to magnify the weirdness of it ten times more than if I were home.
It would be easier to leave. To pretend the last twenty-four hours never happened. Nobody would have to get angry, nobody
would get hurt.
“What brought you here, then?” Finn asks. “Are you one of those SAT score chasers, the Stanford-or-bust type?”
“Exact opposite.”
“So you’re a Savvy stan?”
I wrinkle my nose. “She wishes.”
Finn manages to finish drying exactly one dish. I go ahead and hold my applause. “Gotta say, I’m impressed—usually it takes a lot longer than three seconds to get under Savvy’s skin.”
“Guess I’m an overachiever after all.”
“You know, it’d be a shame if you left now.”
I’m supposed to ask him why, but I really, really don’t care what he has to say. The only thing I care about is doing these dishes, finding Leo to explain this whole mess, and doing whatever I can to get the first ferry off this island in the morning.
“It’s just that, without Wi-Fi decent enough to stream more than twenty seconds of Netflix, your little spat is the closest thing to binge-worthy entertainment we’ve got.”
I roll my eyes.
“What makes it funnier is you guys weirdly look alike. More than any of her Savanatics.” Finn pauses, somehow making even less progress drying his second plate. At this rate we’ll be here all night. “I mean, it’s uncanny. Even that ‘shut up, Finn, you’re driving me nuts’ face you’re making right now is spot-on Sav—”
“Of course it is,” I blurt. “She’s my stupid sister.”
I maybe had half a chance of playing that off as a bad joke if I hadn’t punctuated it by accidentally dropping the plate in my hands, freezing as it bounces off the rubber part of the kitchen floor and cracks on the tiles under the sink. I lean down to pick it up, and when I rise, Finn is staring at me with his mouth wide open.
“Holy shit.”
I turn away from him to put the broken plate pieces in the trash. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like Savvy and I pinky-swore or made some kind of blood oath that we wouldn’t tell anyone.
“Okay, okay, back up, Bubbles. Savvy’s adopted.”
Ignore him. Ignore him and he’ll go away.
“So you’re, what? Her half sister?”
