Wandering a bit, I stray from the path and leave the group behind. I have a decent armload of branches of various sizes, and decide for fun to try balancing them on my head. They slide off and tumble down my back. One snags my shirt. But I’m nothing if not persistent. I try again. And again.
I can only balance one or two sticks on my head at a time, but I feel proud that I can navigate the hike while mastering this old-fashioned art. It would be nice to have some twine. That Tez sure knows a lot about rope.
For a while, I just walk, confident I can find my way back. I’ve always been good at finding my way home. With the branches in my arms—and a few on my head—I feel like I will definitely contribute to the fire. I’m about to turn around when I hear the blub of something splashing in the lake.
I walk closer to the water’s edge. It’s a duck—no, two ducks. Splashing happily. Hello, duckies. Then a stick near the water’s edge catches my eye. It’s darker than the rest of the wood I’ve seen, and gnarled like a knot.
Carefully balancing the sticks on my head, I bend down, keeping my back straight, just dipping from the knees. I pick up the black stick and run my thumb over its cold surface. Its chill seems to seep into my fingers, weird and unsettling. I don’t like the way it feels; it almost gives off a hum. Low. Threatening.
Just as I start to throw it back, Scary Mary barks right in my ear. “We’re not playing fetch, You!”
Shuddering, I shove it in the middle of my stack and trudge on.
Tez
With the sun going down, and most of the other kids already back at their cabins, the Great Hall looms in long shadows.
Sunset streams through the giant windows as we collect our sack dinners. (Real food service is supposed to start tomorrow. Tonight, it’s PB&J, a cup of applesauce, a bag of questionable carrot sticks, a warm pudding cup, and a carton of chocolate milk.)
The sunset’s blazing oranges and reds reflect off the shiny wooden floor and make the stone walls at either end seem to glow. In the middle of each is a blackened fireplace, at least as tall as a first grader. A first grader tall, and probably five first graders wide. The first grader isn’t an internationally approved unit of measurement, but that’s what I imagine when I see the empty, sooty maws.
Squared wooden arches hold up the ceiling; somebody has splashed a brand-new coat of red paint over both. That same red is all over camp. The showers are painted red, the signs at each camp—red. Even the boathouses at the edge of the lake. It’s just a little bit creepy. There must have been a sale on the shade, but somebody should have thought this through.
When the sun dips, the rows of empty tables run with bloody light. Great for the appetite, you know? Sliding onto the bench next to Corryn, I joke, “Who decorated this place? Michael Myers?”
Bowl Cut drops his bag and sits across from us. “Are you guys talking about Halloween? Did your parents let you see it?”
“No,” I admit, deflated. Horror movies aren’t educational, according to my parents. Also, I like to fall asleep without worrying about guys with hockey masks in my closet.
“Who’s talking about Halloween?” Knees asks, sliding in next to Bowl Cut. “Man, that was righteous. I saw it at the drive-in, double feature with Friday the 13th. There were girls screaming everywhere.”
Corryn unwraps the waxed paper on her sandwich. “I bet it wasn’t just the girls.”
“Just the girls what?” Ew asks, standing with her bag until Hairspray and Braids decide where to sit. They give me identical stink faces, then finally crowd in next to Nostrils. I guess I messed up boys’ side–girls’ side, but oh well.
“Horror movies,” Knees says, taking a huge bite of his sandwich. Then he keeps talking, his voice muffled by Jif and grape jelly. “My moms lets me see all of them. We have cable, so . . .”
We all murmur in admiration. I think Knees is the only person I know who has cable. Trading a look with Corryn, I can tell even she’s impressed. We haven’t gotten it yet. It’s really expensive and our library has VHS tapes and a VCR we can borrow for free.
“Yeah, like, I’ve seen Slumber Party Massacre, The Howling, Poltergeist, The Omen, all the Jason movies, all the Halloweens . . .”
Nostrils snorts. “That’s not even real, man.”
“No doy, genius.” Knees looks at the rest of us like, Can you guys believe this dork? Subtly, I shake my head with everybody else. “They’re movies!”
Grabbing the bottom of his bag, Nostrils dumps his whole dinner onto the table. His applesauce rolls toward Braids. She pushes it back with one finger, like it might be nuclear waste or something. Nostrils doesn’t even notice; he’s shaking his head right back at us. “Yeah, well, some real stuff—some real scary stuff—went down right here.”
“Where?” Ew asks.
“Here,” Nostrils says, then points at the floor. “Camp Sweetwater.” He looks dumbfounded, his gaze moving from face to face. “You mean you guys don’t know?”
The Great Hall smells like the cabins, old and woody, but there’s something sour and wet underneath it. The whole building creaks, and the unlit wagon-wheel chandeliers sway just enough to throw strange shadows in every direction.
“Let me guess,” Corryn says. She waves a carrot stick casually. “Blah blah bandit with a golden arm, somebody stole it, blah blah—” She whips a hand out and grabs my shoulder. “I WANT MY GOLDEN ARM BACK!”
Startled, I jerk and my heart jumps. With seven pairs of eyes trained on me, I do my best to look collected. I’m cool. I wasn’t scared. I shove potato chips in my mouth, because I’m afraid if I say anything, my voice might warble.
Nostrils scoffs. “That’s more made-up stuff. Listen. I’m gonna tell you the real dirt on this place. Don’t say I never did anything for you, all right?” He dips his head and lowers his voice to a murmur. Looking at each of us, he says, “Like, two hundred years ago or something, Indians lived around here, right?”
“The Miami peoples,” I supply. “They spoke an Algonquian language; they’re related to the Lenape and Shawnee.”
Knees presses an elbow into my ribs. “Shut up, Chickenlips. Let the man talk.”
With that, Hairspray, Braids, and Ew do a wave of rolled eyes at me. Curling my arms around my dinner, I lean into the circle—fully up with the shut.
“Right, so the Miami peoples,” Nostrils says, picking up where he left off, “lived here and were chill and everything, okay? Then these French dudes showed up. They ran away from Paris because all those fools up in there were cutting off heads and making a mess—”
“That’s one way to describe the guillotine,” I whisper to Corryn. She smirks and bumps her shoulder against me. Hey, I made her laugh. Ish!
“But the dudes that showed up here were bad news. I’m talking like, robbing and murdering and stealing and . . . yeah, they were like, we don’t care if people are already here, this is our lake now.
“The Indians saw them dumping coffins in the lake, like big ones. Metal ones, you know? And they sank to the bottom. And after that, they wouldn’t come back—the Miami, I mean. They wouldn’t come back; they said the lake was tainted.