After he threatens us a couple more times, he tells us to pick up our gear. We’re hiking to Cabin Group A, and we’d better stick to the path or get eaten by wolves. Gavin seems really dedicated to the idea of wolves so I’m going to let that one go.
Hefting my bag, I take one last look at Corryn. She crosses her eyes at me, so I pretend to stick a finger up my nose. We both smile at the same time.
I mouth to her, “Group A?”
Her smile fades, and she mouths back, “Group C. Sorry.”
So much for a first friend on the first day.
2
Is That a Bug?
Corryn
Group C; that seems like a good omen. C is for Corryn! C is for yes, if you speak Spanish. C is for cookie; I heckin’ love cookies.
What I don’t heckin’ love is that it takes fifteen buggy, muggy minutes just to get to Oak Camp Group C. We walk past another perfectly good camp to get there. With each step, the trees get thicker, and we get farther and farther away from everything.
Like, hello; by the time we get to the Great Hall for lunch, will there even be any food left? I’m extremely concerned about that situation. I like food. I like it a lot.
C is also for concerning—the last open shower-slash-latrine was five minutes ago. The one closest to our cabin group is boarded up. Literally—boards are nailed over the doors and windows. I knew they were pulling this camp out of mothballs, but come on, people! It figures that Mom and Dad would throw me into the first lousy place they found, just to get rid of me.
Dust puffs up on the dirt-and-gravel path as we walk, a whole cloud of it. The air is a haze of gnats so thick I’m picking them from my teeth. We’re going to be filthy by the time we walk back from our showers. Not that I care about being dirty. I’m just saying, it makes no sense.
We finally arrive at Group C and I’m ready for a C-esta. The other campers in Oak probably are too. We watch A and B march on up the main trail, even deeper into the woods than we are. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I swear I can hear that kid Tez talking about some kind of tick bite that makes you allergic to meat.
Mega weird! I hope I get the chance to ask him about it later.
I drop my bag in the dirt outside our cabin, right next to my new roommates’ stuff. Already, they chat like friends. They wave their arms, laughing at jokes they didn’t share with me. I can’t help but feel like an intruder, like I’m sneaking around someplace I don’t belong. I try to shake it off and join the fun.
“I’m Corryn!” I announce to them.
At first, they don’t respond. Then one of the girls laughs.
“We know,” she says. “Your panties told us.”
“Ew, panties,” says the blonde with the shag haircut.
My face burns like I already have a summer’s worth of sun. This is stupid. “Ew” girl’s face is stupid. This cabin is stupid.
I don’t want to be here! Dad said it would be fun; Mom said I needed to spend more time with people instead of bikes. And yet, I know it’s because they want me away while they do their dirty work. It’s their Summer of Separation. Do they really think I don’t know?
I think they don’t, but they might have suspected. They gave me hush money. A bribe. Five bucks a week for the camp canteen, the same as my allowance. It’s like a bonus: no washing dishes, but still the bucks roll in.
If I save up all summer, I’ll have forty-five bucks. Forty-five dollars will put new mag wheels on Elliot. That’s all I have to look forward to; that’s why I finally agreed. But when I imagined camp, I left out the part where I would be marooned in another state without my dad, who makes camping awesome.
My cabinmates shuffle aimlessly. It’s not obvious if we’re supposed to go in, or wait, or what. In fact, except for walking up the path to the cabin, we had zero information whatsoever. The short girl tries to peer into one of the windows, but they’re still a good foot above her head. Sneak-out-proof. Clever.
Finally, Mary comes up the trail behind us, already yelling.
“What’s this, some kind of hen party?” she demands. “Waiting for your butler? Well, there ISN’T one!”
“We were waiting for you,” says the girl with intricately braided hair.
“What for? I’m not your mummy, Braids,” says Mary, shooting daggers with her eyes. Quickly, her gaze cuts across us. She points to the smallest girl and says, “You’re Ew.” Then she turns to the one with the sky-high bangs and perfect feathers. “Hello, Hairspray.”
Mary sure loves the nicknames. I wonder if she knows that she has one. ’Allo, Scary Mary, emphasis on the Scary, pip pip, Bob’s your uncle, here’s the loo! Probably not, since I’ve only called her that in my head. Definitely not saying it out loud. I can’t be the only one thinking it, though.
I brace for my nickname, but Mary looks right through me. I don’t want her making fun of me, I really don’t. But not getting a nickname is somehow more insulting.
“Get a move on!” Scary Mary yells.
O-kay, then! Pulling open the cabin’s rickety door, I survey the place I’m going to be living in for the next nine weeks. Dang. Nine weeks. I try to reframe it in my mind. I’m living here for forty-five buckeroonies. This is time served in my sweet, sweet Elliot’s best interest. Don’t think about anything else. Just mag wheels. Mag wheels. Yes. Okay. I can definitely do this.
Door, open.
And here’s what the place looks like: two bunk beds, one on either side, decked with bare plastic mattresses waiting for our bedding. Cubbies fill the space between the beds, next to built-in desks. A lone little air freshener dangles from the ceiling. Winter Forest isn’t doing much to chase away the smell of used cabin, to be honest.
The walls have been scrubbed clean, old wood pretending to be new. The back wall is super shadowy—and right in the middle, it’s almost black. The shadow suddenly shifts on the wall and the hair on my arms stands up.
What’s happening here?
Dark spirals spin from the shadow, a pulsing bull’s-eye that grows and churns. It spreads to cover the back wall in ever-thickening lines of black. For a minute, it looks like an invisible, deranged child is scribbling with a handful of crayons.
Gulp.
Looks like C is also for creepy.
And crawly.
And cockroaches.
And centipedes. The wall isn’t black—it’s alive!
Every bug I’ve ever seen—earwigs and beetles and spiders and ticks. They’re humming and crawling and buzzing and surging.
I’m not afraid of bugs. I’ll squish a millipede with the heel of my bare foot on the bathroom floor without blinking. But this isn’t a bug. It’s not even ten.
It’s thousands.
Teeming over the windows, they blot out the sunlight. As the cabin darkens, the bugs course up the ceiling. Like a black mold, they spread. When they reach the bare light fixture, they fall. It’s a storm of insects, raining onto the floor as more emerge from dark corners.
I shouldn’t be able to hear them, but I swear I can. Millions of tiny feet, tiny pincers, tiny claws, click-click-click, all over everything. My stomach threatens to hurl at the sound of them, hundreds of thousands, ticking across the cabin.