Work Text:
“Welcome—to Camp Athabasca!”
Shorts that go down to the knees, giving the impression of a nun trying to be modest in thirty-two degree weather. Sun screen slathering already-red cheeks in streaks of white. Pink sun visor and obnoxious STAFF tank plastered with the image of a sun grinning with one too many teeth.
That’s it: Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg has, somehow, become more obnoxious than the last time Noel Gruber saw her, circa one year ago.
I am getting paid to be here, he’s been repeating, like a mantra. I am getting paid to be here, I am getting paid to be here, I am getting paid to be here, and so I cannot legally throw myself in the lake.
“But by the end of this month”—Ocean peels her unnatural smile wider, displaying some gums—”you kids’ll be calling it Camp Atha-best-ca!”
Silence—apart from the shrieks of a hawk probably getting mauled by a pack of coyotes in the far distance.
“Kill me,” whispers Noel to whoever happens to be to the right.
He looks, and it turns out, it’s Penny Lamb. She’s always been cool, at least. “Lighten up, lover boy,” she says, jutting her chin across the cluster of counselors. His eyes flit to follow. “Eminem’s back this year.” She waggles her brows.
Oh, yes. So he is.
Mischa Bachinski is jabbing away at the keys on his Motorola RAZR, jaw effortlessly chiseled, forehead furrowed like he’s in the midst of a passionate argument with a stranger on the Internet. It’s the most beautiful thing on this godforsaken planet.
Noel clears something from his throat. “Why do you sound like that? Stop sounding like that,” he creaks. But he doesn’t look away.
“Like what? I’m not sounding like anything!” She whistles innocently, like a schmuck.
He gifts her a hearty nudge on the arm in return. She doesn’t even flinch.
It’s at this moment that Mischa glances up from his screen, catches his eye, smiles and waves, and Noel dies a little.
“Okay, fine,” he manages from the corner of his mouth, over sudden onset symptoms of arrhythmia, “but you’ve been ogling Captain Picard over there since, like, grade six. So-o-o…”
The hypocrite she is, she blushes, shamelessly, like a little schoolgirl, over one Ricky Potts. “And? Don’t even start with me, Gomez. You could cut the homoerotic tension between those two”—another jut, at Ocean as she talks and talks, and Constance, who watches and watches, like she hung the stars—”with a butter knife. Here’s a concept.”
Noel quirks a brow. “I’m listening.”
Penny leans in, conspiratorially. “I’ll bet you fifty dollars,” she hushes, “that all six of us are smooching by the end of the month. I can just feel it. My cards spoke to me.”
Noel snorts. “Your cards, huh?”
“My cards. What do you say?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m not going to say, is no to fifty dollars.” Hearing this, Penny sticks out an expectant hand. Noel takes it, nearly gets his own circulation cut off by a grip of iron, but shakes. “Let’s make this summer a little less shitty,” he says, meeting her eye.
She offers him a smile that’s nothing but genuine. He finds himself tossing her one back, too.
“You’ve got it,” says Penny.
The of the Throne-length Speech is drawing to a close. Soon, thirty-one glorious days of snotty, sweaty Hell will commence.
But Noel looks around, at the five others who’ll be walking through the fiery pits alongside him.
At least he won’t be snotty and sweaty alone.
Ocean thrusts a perfectly rehearsed hand in the air. “And remember, everybody, the most important rule of all: Have some fun in the sun!”
Halfhearted cheers ripple throughout a gaggle of campgoers.
This is going to be one long, long summer.
* * *
“Okay, everyone, it’s dinner time!”
With that, a throng of rabid dogs that hadn’t seen sustenance in days was set loose.
“Alright, okay, no shoving, honey— One scoop per plate, one scoop per plate— Oh, cool, great, let me get you a napkin for that— No, we do not throw dinner rolls at the heads of our enemies—”
Penny thunks down at the staff table, sufficiently stampeded. “Jesus,” she groans, massaging both temples in that way the Internet said to do before you get a cluster headache. “I’m starting to think these kids are mutants.”
“We can’t say that,” says Ocean, halfheartedly, hair in knots and looking frazzled herself as she forks some green beans around her plate.
“I will say what I want,” sniffs Mischa, scarfing down meatloaf with one hand and typing with the other.
“One tried to stick his face in a bucket of fishing bait today,” concurs Constance.
“Maybe they have rabies,” supplies Noel.
Penny gives a roll of the eyes. “I wouldn’t put it past them,” she snorts, and sighs, heavy. “I cannot do mess hall for the whole month. I just can’t. It’s gonna kill me, mark my words.”
“I’ll do it.”
Everyone looks over.
Ricky is there. Right at his seat next to her, looking at her like a cat caught on camera, fingers poised over his AAC. “I’ll take mess hall, if you want.”
Penny blinks. “What? No,” she splutters, more than a little toasty in the face. “Oh, my God. I’m not gonna put you through that.”
He shrugs. “I can turn my volume up all the way. Like a big megaphone.”
“Dude, it, it’s okay.” God, she can’t even look at him now, pretends to actually be interested in her slop instead. “I was just being dramatic. Don’t worry about it. I’m cool.”
She can feel him stare at her for a second longer, with those big eyes, but then he turns back to his beans and his loaf. She almost sighs with relief.
Noel arches one of his stupid brows, from across the table. Penny cranks him a one-finger salute.
Then, the alarm on her phone blares.
Dessert.
Everyone tosses looks of varying degrees of sympathy. A consolation prize.
“I’ll be right back,” deadpans Penny, and trudges to the buffet.
It’s okay, for fifteen minutes. Doling out plates, rearranging line skippers, picking for anyone who’s holding up the line because they can’t decide between cookie or cake and sending them off on their merry way. It’s fine.
Until it’s not.
“Hey, hey, wait up, there.” She scutters to the front and kneels, to the height of a tween in a Jimmy Neutron graphic tee. “Can’t have both cookies and cake, kiddo.” Reaches one fateful hand out to whisk his plate away. “You gotta choose just—”
Then, loud enough to scatter the hawks in the trees; snap the serenity of Lake Athabasca in two clean pieces: “Ow, fuck!”
*
“So, he bit you.”
Penny groans. “Yes! Oh, my God, he bit me!”
In the medical tent, alone with Ricky Potts, that is the end of the low-down of the evening’s transpirings. Penny Lamb was bitten by a child.
Ricky winces in sympathy, as he Neosporins and Band-aids her victim of a finger. “Ouch.”
“Yeah,” she huffs. “Greedy little bastard! The hell are they putting in the water these days?”
“Chemical X.”
“Chemical X! So, the chaperones put a stamp in my ‘No-No Card’ and now I probably have rabies.”
“That sucks,” commiserates Ricky, a genuine sort of frown on his face. Oh. Well, she didn’t want to make him look like that.
“It’s fine,” she says, quick. “It’s the nature of the job. They’re not all bad, you know.”
He thinks this over for a second that feels like an eternity. “No, they’re not. But I’d be sad if you got rabies.”
Penny’s breath decides now it would like to lodge itself in her esophagus for the time being.
That might be the weirdest, nicest thing anyone’s ever said.
She swallows. “I’d be sad if you got rabies.”
Then, Ricky laughs.
Some other people might find it sad, or creepy when he does, because he makes this kind of, strange, wheezing, hollow sound. But they’d be wrong, because in fact, it’s the most gorgeous thing in the world. His shoulders shake, his lips curl and meet his eyes, little puffs of air escape through his nose, and for the first time tonight, Penny laughs, too.
It calms, after the perfect amount of time. “Okay,” Ricky declares. “You’re all patched up.”
Regrettably, he removes his hand from hers. She takes the chance to inspect his handiwork. He drew a cat wearing a space suit on the wrap.
Penny feels distinctly like she’d get bit by a child a thousand more times just to hear that laugh again.
“Thanks,” she says. Stalls, for a second. “For, all of it.”
Ricky looks at her with those big eyes, and unfortunately, she might not ever look anywhere else. “I hope you don’t get rabies.”
* * *
It started with the Buddy System.
There she was; a small girl, in stature and in air. Soft, round, with big squarish frames and rosy cheeks.
“Alright, everyone! Now, introduce yourself to your Buddy with your name, grade, and why you’re here at Camp!”
Ocean stepped up first. “Hi,” she said, with a big voice and a big smile. “My name is Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg. I’m in grade two. I’m at Camp because I’m supposed to ‘connect with Mother Nature.’”
The girl froze for a second, like she needed that long to process a flurry of information. When she’d unfrozen: “My name is, um, is Constance. I think,” said Constance, probably. “I’m also in grade two. I’m at Camp because my mama and papa met here.” She didn’t speak, for another second. “You’re…loud,” Constance observed.
That was something people said a lot. Ocean had the feeling it wasn’t always so great. “Is that bad?” she asked, and wished she didn’t sound so small when she did, wished she wasn’t holding her breath for the answer.
But Constance thought this over. Then, shook her head. “No,” she told her. “I think it’s cool.”
A little something bubbled up inside her. Ocean stopped holding her breath, for what felt like the first time ever.
“Okay, everybuddy!” said a tall lady in a sunny yellow shirt. “Don’t forget to hold hands!”
Constance reached out a soft, shy one. She smiled, and it felt so warm. Ocean always felt so cold, until now.
She took her five fingers and laced them together, and it was like a puzzle piece had snicked into place.
“Let’s get moving, Buddies!”
And really, looking back, it was just supposed to be while they were walking; so nobody wandered off, or got lost, Ocean’s quite sure.
But she can’t remember ever letting go of her since.
*
“I don’t want to go home.”
In grade four, it was the first time she ever really told anyone that.
Everyone else was out swimming. Ocean couldn’t do it. Mom and Dad said it was a sin to the Earth to corrupt its waters for the purposes of human recreation, so she never learned; she knew better than that, now, of course. Still, she didn’t go.
It was one of Connie’s favorite things, she knew. But she never had to ask her to stay back with her. She always just did.
Connie threaded another bead onto the makings of a bracelet. Then, her head traveled up. “You don’t?” She frowned, always so soft. “Why not?”
Ocean picked at a nail until it bled. “It smells bad,” she mumbled, smeared the red away on her knee so it wouldn’t get all over her own letters and stars. “And, and it’s loud. Sometimes.”
The frown stayed on, her brow was still knitted, but hesitantly, Constance coaxed another bead through the string. “Well, loud can be good,” she tried, slowly.
“No.” Connie stopped her threading, looked up again. Ocean stabbed string through a heart. “Not this kind,” she told her, quiet.
Constance was silent for a while. Then: “We could take you home.”
Ocean looked up from the bracelet and the gash in her nail. “Huh?”
“Prince Albert’s on the way to Uranium,” blurted Connie. “You could come in the car with us. Like a road trip.”
It was not, in fact, on the way to Uranium. In fact, from Lake Athabasca, it was a twenty-seven hour detour, Ocean knew.
“We’d still have to take you home. Eventually.” Constance’s voice grew low, gentle. “But you’d stay with us. Wouldn’t have to go—just, for a little while longer.”
Ocean cried, that evening. But Connie hugged her, in those big, soft arms of hers, and Ocean hugged her back, and every year after that, for just two days more, she pretends that the Blackwoods’ car and twenty-seven hour detours and the friendship bracelets they traded that night were her year-round reality.
She still never takes that BFF off her wrist.
*
In grade eleven, long a counselor and not a camper, Ocean dangled her feet in the water alongside her best friend and wondered for just how much longer she could.
She’d been tiptoeing and tap-dancing around it since the concept had presented itself to her at the end of last summer, and for the past nine months, her brain had been exploding.
Ocean had been seeing Constance during the year, on surprise trips to her own spelling bees and talent shows and Connie’s and the Blackwoods’ Thanksgiving dinners and holiday celebrations, but Camp was the only consistency. What would happen, after this? Connie was bound for great things—culinary school, she said. Where would she be, then?
Was it normal to wonder, Ocean thought? About best friends—at least, as much as she had been.
That was another thing she was choosing to do the tango around.
“I’m applying to USask.”
Ocean snapped up. “You,” she spluttered, “huh— sorry?”
“I’m applying to USask,” Constance said again, slower this time, intentional, “and I was wondering if, um, if you were gonna, too.”
Ocean croaked, but nothing came out.
Connie started fumbling with her thumbs, fast. “I, I mean,” she went on, tripping over herself a little, “you’re, like, super smart, Ocean. You shouldn’t, limit yourself. Not—not to say that USask isn’t great, but you could go anywhere, I really think you could. But, you know, if that anywhere was Saskatoon for you, and, and my anywhere also happened to be Saskatoon, then, I think, that I”—she gulped—”I don’t want to lose—”
“I’ll do it.”
Connie’s mouth popped shut.
Ocean grabbed for her hand. Constance clocked what she was doing before she fully did it, met her halfway, and both of the beads around their wrists clinked and clacked in harmony. “Let’s go to USask,” said Ocean, without having to think an awful lot about it.
Connie’s face split into one of those huge, soft, warm grins.
After this summer, they’re both moving in the fall.
* * *
Campfire Time is, generally, awful.
The songs range from nursery-rhyme-Mother-Goose-hellfire to CKIS-FM-Katy-Perry-racket-fest. Nobody knows how to sing—not even the chaperones—all of the little devil children are off-pitch, Ocean is trying and failing to find the soprano line, and Noel is now victim of a raging migraine. In sum: awful.
“Gee, whiz,” Noel says as his conglomeration of campers and counselors todders for the miniature bonfire on the beach, “boy, how I just can’t wait to be serenaded to sleep by a gaggle of middle schoolers.”
Constance represses a snort. “Maybe they’ll spring for something other than ‘Firework’ this year.”
“Do you think they’ll finally take my Bowie suggestion?” wonders Ricky aloud.
“Rickster, I hate to break it to you, these kids don’t know what a Bowie is. I think that’s a bit of a pipe dream.”
He deflates.
“Hey! I like ‘Firework’,” chips in Ocean, unhelpfully. “How about ‘Teenage Dream’?”
Noel entrenches his face in his hands. “Enough with the Katy Perry, Jesus. You were the inspiration for the chorus of ‘Small Talk.’”
“I hear you, bud,” consoles Penny, before Ocean can screech something in retaliation with her indignant open mouth. “Look. At least Mischa’s gonna be—” She looks around, at the gaggle, then furrows her brow. “Hey. Where’s Mischa?”
“Great.” Noel tries not to sound genuinely upset about it, because that’s so damn lame, but God. “The only thing that was going to save this shitstorm of an evening.”
Mischa showed up here last year, and he’s made everything more bearable since. Apparently, he just came from Ukraine; after getting to know him better, his adoptive parents sent him here, to “assimilate into Canadian culture,” but really, Noel knows it’s to have him out of the house for a month a year. Bastards, he’d like to tell them, to their face.
But maybe, the whole thing was some shitty blessing in disguise, because he just kind of, gets it. He’s a little coarse on the outside, but he just, loves. Strongly, and unabashedly. Like, his music, and his home, and his friends. He always has such feeling embedded within him, that’ll surprise you with its depth and thought once you take the time to unearth it through some late-night conversations and meals at the mess hall.
Mischa’s like no one else. And unfortunately, Noel has fallen, hard.
Not just because he wants to fall, like he once did, just for the hell of it, the thrill of it. No, because there’s something about him.
Which, it turns out, is worse.
All four of them give looks of sympathy—like they know. Noel wants to die an inch more.
The bonfire’s reached, and of course, sand’s already in his shoes. Everyone takes seats on logs that are far too small for the allotted amount of children, and so Noel is left with half of his ass hanging off the side of one, which, also great. Wonderful. Perfect evening.
Naturally, one of the chaperones fires up the “Firework” CD on the dinky old stereo from too long ago that crackles so loud Katy would be jealous. Ocean claps with sheer delight.
That migraine starts coming on.
Until: “Hey!”
Noel immediately jerks up.
Bwaaang. And there is Mischa. With a guitar. “Turn this ish off, yo!” he declares.
One of the counselors is about to protest—until Penny does it for him. Noel shoots her a look that says you’re my savior. She shoots one back that says I know.
The kids light up like the sun. Who is this strange man with the instrument? Is he here to deliver us from Katy Perry?
“Today, children,” Mischa cries with another emphatic twaaang on the strings, “we will be singing real music!”
Cheers.
Then, unexpectedly, and Noel has to recover from choking on his own spit, Mischa leans in close, to whisper in his ear. “I am sorry I left you,” he says. “I hide my guitar in supply closet. I run all the way there and back.”
After all of this, the leaning, the whispering, the “leaving” him, the only thing Noel’s dumb neurons come up with is: “You can play the guitar?”
He smirks, and that part of him that died earlier is instantly resuscitated. “You will tell me.”
It turns out, he can’t not play the guitar; what he lacks in technique, he makes up for in sheer gusto. But the chords are, generally, correct, and his voice is loud, so passionate.
Mischa’s face glows orange and bright in the light of the fire, eventually smeared with chocolate a little, from s’mores, sweat dribbling down his forehead, teeth gapped as his mouth is cracked wide to lead a chorus of children in a series of awkwardly censored renditions of the likes of “Hot in Herre” and “The Real Slim Shady.”
The tiny devils love it.
Halfway through the chorus to “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” Noel just so happens to catch his eye.
Mischa grins, big and hearty.
And, of course, Noel is doomed to fall a little harder.
* * *
Punishment for a stamp on one’s No-No Card: trash duty.
“Who raises these kids?” grumbles Penny, stabbing at a stray Wunderbar wrapper with too much force to justify. She lobs it in the bag with an equal amount of punch. “This shit’s everywhere. Don’t they still learn about respecting Mother Nature, all that crap?”
“I’ll admit, this planet’s inhabitants don’t seem to possess much of a care for its untouched wilderness.”
Ricky tagged along, because it’d be far faster with two people than just one. That’s just the right thing to do. And someone’s got to hold the trash bag and flashlight. Also, a prime leader of Zolaria would ensure nothing mauls his subjects in the dead of night.
And this Zolarian subject and holder of this particular No-No Card is very pretty when she’s puncturing litter in the moonlight. But that one’s only a little relevant.
Rustle, rustle.
Penny freezes, trash-stabber in the air. “Did you hear that?”
“I did.” And hopefully it wasn’t anything that does some kind of mauling, because he’s really not sure what he’d do about that.
Shuffle, rustle.
“Oh, my God.” Penny’s trash-stabber drops to the forest floor.
And all at once, Ricky gets it: “Oh, my God,” he agrees.
“It’s a cat,” she whisper-shouts, immediately dropping to a knee, outstretching some fingers for the customary sniff. She twists her head back to look up at him, eyes sparkling. “And it’s so friggin’ cute.”
She didn’t have to point that out for him to support, but frankly, he can’t blame her for doing so. It is, as stated, frigging cute. Kind of like someone split a brown and orange tabby straight down the middle, hair short, one eye clawed shut. “Oh, baby,” Penny mourns. The anomaly of a cat purrs in agreement, rubs up against her proffered palm like yes, that is me, I am baby.
“This poor thing has been through great turmoil,” Ricky observes, brow creasing.
“And she’s so skinny! God, she could use some of those stupid meatloaves and dinner rolls.” Wasting no time, Penny tucks her under an arm. “Come on. This is more important than repenting for my No-No sins.”
Decidedly, it is.
*
The door creaks, too loudly.
“Shhhhut up, shut up, shut up,” hisses Penny, like this might somehow oil the hinges.
Meow, concurs Kitty.
“Quiet, please, little one,” Ricky tries to reason. “We’re trying to help you without accumulating more stamps on our No-No Cards.”
Meeeoooowww, she argues, independent of these efforts.
At this opportune moment, a flashlight flicks, temporarily blinding the trio of them.
“Argh! Fuck!” whispers Penny.
“What are you two doing!” rasps what, after a flashbang, appears to be Ocean, at a barely-contained forty-decibel range. “And put that word back in your mouth!”
Her red face is ignited in the blaring light, looking on the verge of explosion. “We found a cat on trash duty,” Ricky scrambles. “It’s hurt, and emaciated. It’s too late to send it off with a chaperone to the vet, so we were trying to…” One strawberry eyebrow peaks high. “…keep it here. For the night.”
“Keep it here?” she splutters.
“Shhh.”
“Keep it. Here,” she repeats, marginally quieter. “We can’t even smuggle Lays Sour Cream and Onion chips in here. You can’t keep a cat! You're going to get Stamped! You just c— crap on a stick!”
She flails, wildly, nearly knocking in the face Constance, whose glasses are now skewed slightly to the right. “Ocean, Ocean, it's me! Sorry.” She sighs. “The hand was not a good idea.”
Ocean clutches at her chest, falls back down, after hiking up nearly a foot in the air. In truth, Ricky (and, he's pretty sure, also Penny) saw her hand creeping out of the milky darkness to tap her shoulder, but said nothing. Because it's funnier this way. “Oh. Connie.” She softens—gross—then, promptly seems to remember she was in the middle of freaking out. “A cat!” she screeches. “Connie, they're trying to keep a cat in here! A—mnghffg.”
Constance steps in with a palm around her mouth, then turns, to address their trio. “Maybe it's best you guys stay in the storage cabin tonight,” she suggests, as Ocean’s face rapidly grows pinker by the second. “Nobody'll find you, you can keep it safe 'til morning, and I'm pretty sure there's kibble in some kind of crevice there.”
She removes her palm. Ocean gasps.
“Fine,” she acquiesces, after a brief stare-down with Constance that she appears to lose. “Go. But if you get your final Stamp, I can’t save you.”
“Awesome, sure, got it,” breathes Penny, clutching Chimera—Ricky will try that name with her later—close. “Thanks, you guys.”
A brief trek across camp later, Chimera (Penny did, indeed, approve) is fed, watered, and dozing peacefully, on a ripped and ragged mess hall tablecloth from at least two decades ago.
Ricky and Penny are both propped up against the far wall, not asleep in the least.
Maybe, he could say, it was the commotion that kept him wide awake. The possibility Chimera might blink awake, in need of some TLC, maybe; or that a chaperone might wander in looking for a beach ball and find instead two teenagers and a feline.
But really, he’s smarter than that. Really, he’s in a trance.
Penny watches Chimera with such a softly fond look on her face, and Ricky watches Penny, loses himself in the intricacies of her every solitary mannerism.
She strokes the little thing, sweetly, even though it isn’t conscious to feel it, appreciate it. Won't have known her for long enough to remember the care she was so kind to treat it with. But is that not what care and kindness are? Doing things not for the reward or recognition of them, but for the sake of them?
What a woman, Ricky thinks. What a woman.
“You're a very kind being, Penny Lamb,” Ricky signs, before he can chicken out of doing so.
Even in the dark, Penny hears him, always watching; always listening, from the corner of her eye, for anything he might have to say. What a woman.
She flushes in the light of the moon, a silky pink that gnaws at his guts, in a way that’s not bad in the least. “You're one to talk,” she says, signing along. The edges of her fingers shimmer in silver. “You didn't have to come with me today.”
“I wanted to,” he tells her, utterly truthful. “And I'm glad I did.”
Penny's smile grows wistful. It's beautiful, but—no, no, he never wanted to make her look like that.
So, “I had to make sure you didn't get rabies,” Ricky says.
Penny snorts, once. Then, she bursts into full on chortling giggles, wild.
It’s gorgeous. All unashamed like; nostrils flaring, cheeks dimpling, never afraid to show true joy. She does it with her whole body, her whole self, inside and out, inadvertently coaxing others—including himself—to do the very same.
There's nothing better on this planet, nor all the other ones.
What a woman Penny Lamb is.
“Man, I love you,” she laughs, unabashedly.
Then stops, along with his heart.
“Oh.” Penny chokes. Her smile fades quicker than he's ever seen it. The numbers in his brain are still computing. “Oh, man. Oh, I did not mean to— dude, I, I’m so sorry, that was—”
Ricky takes her face in his hands and kisses her.
She yelps, momentarily. And then melts, happily trusting him with the weight of her body as she twines her arms around his neck, and it's a sensation of intergalactic proportions.
When he pulls from her, the whole world twinkles in her eyes.
“Never mind,” Penny breathes. “I so meant it.”
”Man, I love you, too,” he tells her, straight back.
It’s at this opportune moment that Chimera, happily awake, headbutts them both firmly in the chin, and as Ricky laughs some more, Penny looks at him like he put the rings on Saturn.
Cats really do lend to the greatest things, he decides then.
* * *
Once, Constance believed she knew everything there was to know about Ocean.
Being best friends—BFFs, to be specific—since the Buddy System in grade two will do that to you. Once, she operated under the assumption she possessed each and every deepest, darkest secret: the fact she cheated on a pre-algebra quiz in grade four and proceeded to cry herself to sleep, once used Sharpie instead of eyeliner and swore off makeup ever since, actually ate a Starburst on Halloween. (Okay, that one doesn't sound bad, but for Ocean, it's bad.)
Others, too. Knows why she doesn't trust gummies with nothing but fruit in them, only eats what she's watched being made. Why she sleeps with the nightlight still flickering on in her corner of the cabin. Why she used to cry when two of the reserved seats to all her spelling and geography and science bees stayed forever cold, never sat in.
“Miss Rosenberg, lifeguard duty for today.”
Not three hours ago, upon hearing such a thing, she’d stiffened, imperceptibly.
Usually, she was the first to trill a yes, sir after hearing the day’s assignment, raring to just get going already, stuffed to the brim with that Ocean Energy of hers. But, because Constance Knows her, that brief heartbeat of delay before the “Absolutely, Mr. Markus” was terribly apparent.
And before she could think about it, Constance’s legs shot her upright. “I’ll go, too,” she spewed out, all at once.
Both Ocean’s and Mr. Markus’s heads wheeled to face her. The former’s mouth corked open, to say what, Constance wasn’t so sure, but the latter beat her to it.
“Very well, Miss Blackwood,” Mr. Markus said.
And that was that.
Now, on the way there, rescue tubes stuck under one arm, sunscreen smothered like war paint on skin, Ocean nibbles her lip—which, she only did when she was caught in a lie. Or, wearing chapstick. Or both.
A chip of concern firmly implants itself in Constance’s brain, but she says nothing of the nibbling, or the possibility of chapstick. Instead, she indulges in soft chatter, maybe with about fifty percent more marked distraction on Ocean’s part than is typical, until the lake draws into view.
Constance tosses her one last lingering look, and they split ways, to stations parked on opposite ends of the beach.
It’s a small strip of sand, really, but better to cover more ground—and also, the whole lifeguard situation is a lot less official than it probably should be. She doesn’t have one of those big tall chairs, nor did she ever have to dunk her head in the water and get a certificate saying she didn’t die and could therefore prevent young children from dying, but she figures she could still do it anyway, so it’s not the biggest deal. Camp Athabasca is better without the lawsuits.
Between keeping a hawk’s eye on the kids, though, is a lot of glancing in Ocean’s general direction. Constance would hesitate to call it “checking in,” really, but—well, okay, yes. She’s checking in on her, because something in that chip she recently had installed is just begging to, and so she does. Sue her.
Every time, Ocean would still be there—and of course she would be. Constance really is losing her mind, maybe. Ocean tends to have that strange, strange effect on her—it’s not like the Loch Ness Monster is going to drag her by the life preserver off the deep end.
Only then, five minutes later, she is not there.
Constance has to do a double-take. She’s not there. Is there a mythical creature population at Athabasca? God, she so should’ve Googled. This is a small beach, so where—
Splash.
Constance whips to the left.
Noel and Mischa. On the dock, staring at a suspicious crowd of bubbles.
Faster than she might’ve done for a drowning child, Constance kicks up sand as she shoots up off the floor and books it the fifty feet. The boys pivot around.
“Where’s Ocean?” she tries her damndest not to yell in the same instant they cross earshot.
They look suspiciously guilty. “Well,” starts Mischa, after a longer delay than Constance would surely prefer, “we think is funny. We throw A-hole off deck.”
“But, uh,” adds Noel, shifting from foot to foot, “funny story, she’s not swimming back.”
Once, Constance believed she knew everything there was to know about Ocean.
But it clicks, now, that Constance, indeed, does not.
The heartbeat of delay. The staying back to bead bracelets in grade four, the weird.
She can’t swim.
Noel’s and Mischa’s mouths cork open in tandem, as this realization, too, smacks them, and Constance could similarly clock them both right in their facial regions herself. But the sound of frantic bubbling and swashing in the water yanks her attention to one fateful spot—about an Ocean’s throw away.
“You two,” Constance grits to the perpetrators, primes on the deck, “are so dead!”
And takes a running leap.
She hits the water with a resounding smack, cannonballs under with the fizz of a thousand sodas. Her eyes fling open, and instantly catch sight of Ocean’s flailing, gangly limbs. The irony is not lost on her that a name like Ocean should really entail at least some doggy-paddling prowess, but frankly, at this moment, she couldn’t give half of a shit.
Constance speeds forward, swims faster than she’s ever swum, nearly gets punted by a stray thrashing of Ocean’s poor foot, is effectively barricaded from reaching her. Then, she sees it: Her hand.
She darts for it, clasps it, and twines their fingers together, tight.
Instantly, the kicking wanes—or rather, orients itself away from the direction of her face—and, there’s an avenue. Constance lunges in with two arms around her waist, and bursts them both to the surface.
Ocean hacks and splutters, mane of wavy hair plastered to her face, limbs trembling from exertion, and all murderous instinct drains from Constance. There’s just Ocean.
“Connie,” she blubbers, watery, sopping.
“Hey, hey, hey,” soothes Constance, keeps them afloat with her legs while one hand shoots up to stroke her hair, dark crimson rather than strawberry blonde. She deteriorates in her grip, melds into the crook of her neck, and there’s a fair chance she might never let go. “I’ve got you, Oce. You’re safe, now. It’s cool, we’re all cool. I love you.”
She goes stiff against her skin.
Oh.
Well, that part was not meant to come out.
The correct thing to say in this hurricane of a situation simply does not present itself, because why the hell would it? Right, saving your best friend from drowning, a fantastic time to drop the casual oh, by the way, I’m in love with you. Constance, actually, as soon as she safely returns Ocean to shore, that is, might plop herself right back in, so she can go ahead and pray that whole Loch Ness situation is still a possibility.
“I love you, too.”
Constance is electrically shocked back into reality.
Ocean, clinging on for dear life, looks straight at her, eyes wide, like the greatest discovery ever was just made. “I love you,” she says again, with all the conviction in the world this time, and Constance could do a synchronized swimming routine with her right here, right now.
All at once, away from prying eyes, she plunges back down into the clear water with her, half as manically, this time. Constance holds her steady, assures her silently with the arms looped round her waist that she won’t ever let her sink. Her hair floats, a waving, reddish, gleaming halo, squinting, smiling features blurry in a way that’s almost ethereal.
There among the water, Constance tips forward. Ocean meets her halfway there, as she tends to do in all things.
And she kisses her.
Maybe Noel and Mischa can be off the hook, just this one time.
* * *
Truthfully, upon first arriving to Camp Athabasca, Mischa did not do so with what people might call an “open mind.” In fact, the intention was to hate it, vehemently and completely, because who was really in the business of appreciating their own glorified prison sentence?
He knew, what it was: Lake Athabasca was banishment; a monthlong vacation, from himself, for his adopters to forget about the inconvenience of housing a child. It wasn’t intended to be enjoyable whatsoever, that was plenty clear.
But against all odds, it is.
This place is a monthlong safe haven, for the people that made him believe Canada was not, in fact, the Abyss. There’s purpose, here; a closeness that’s missing from the place he now has to call home for the rest of the year, but here is where he finds it.
A sweating Penny Lamb, one of the people in question, inserts herself at Mischa’s side and sighs, heavy. “Last day, huh?”
He whistles. “Last day.”
Like last year, it’s a whirlwind of cleansing cabins, playing games to entertain packs of feral children, and packing away personal belongings. Similarly, it’s got the same bittersweetness to it, the zips of suitcases filling the staff cabin promising the fact it’ll be empty come afternoon tomorrow, but mingled with it laughter; chucking of worn, gross socks across the room; playful argument to mask the shared knowledge they’re all mourning, just a little.
“Have you seen Noel?”
Regrettably, that’s the thing that’s been most missing, as compared to the last time they all did this: Noel Gruber. Smith of words, poet of songs.
Too quickly, too suddenly, he has become one of the closest of close. There is something strange about him, and his huge mind, huge heart. It’s scary, sometimes.
But Mischa has always enjoyed facing his biggest fears.
“No,” he answers Penny, “I have not.”
“Okay, well, we’re gonna check the mess hall,” she says, prodding a thumb in the general direction. “Would you mind going down to the lake?”
Mischa nods. “I will go.”
He does.
Setting sun lights Lake Athabasca on fire, glints off lazy rolling waves in blinding flashes. Drifting down the beach in peaceful serenity was never Mischa Bachinski’s thing, if there ever was one; quiet feels clashing, almost, with the near constant energy and music always rumbling, always blaring in his ears. Camp is just so full of sound.
And so when Mischa finds Noel here, he understands: Maybe the artist needs his silence.
He creaks down the dock and knows Noel hears him as he does, but doesn’t say a word to break the fragility of—something he’s doing.
Plink, plonk, plunk, thud.
Stones, smoother than Mischa’s ever seen, are piled meticulously at his feet. He picks one; scans it up and down with squinted, critical eyes; aims, then, fires, tossing it across the water like an infinitely more graceful ultimate frisbee. Then, it prances on the surface, magic, almost, before sinking back down into the depths below.
It’s mesmerizing, actually. Incredible, calculated, beautiful.
“What is this you are doing?” Mischa can no longer help but ask, now, more than a little breathless.
Noel doesn’t jump. He only turns over one shoulder, dark against the last light of the day. “Skipping stones,” he tells him, with a faint twist of his lips. “Every year, on the last day of Camp. Need to get away from all the hustle and bustle, just for a second. You know?” He turns a stone over in his hand, runs a finger thoughtfully along the grooves and bumps. He thinks deeply, always. “I think I got pretty good.”
“It is a beautiful thing,” Mischa agrees. “You do it like it is—is art.”
This causes Noel to look up from his stone, something more than gratitude embedded in the lines of his face. He leans down, and picks a new one from the pile—particularly smooth, particularly good, for this skipping. “Wanna try?” he offers, ever generous.
Mischa was never so good at art. But: “Yes,” he still finds himself saying, and takes it, a little selfish.
All at once, a chin is on his shoulder; hands, along his arms, plucking his fingers and meticulously arranging his stance, and it was once his philosophy never to let another tell him how to be, but maybe, this is fine.
“Bend your knee,” Noel directs him, and for the first time, he happily listens. “On top of your middle finger, and hold it still with your thumb. Then, use your index—no, your other index, yeah, there, that one, great—and once you let go, use that to spin it around, give it some force. Ready? One, two, and a-three!”
Thwack, clunk.
Realistically, it’s a rock in some water. It is so very dumb to be upset about it.
Still.
“I think, I am too rough,” Mischa murmurs. For the grace Noel throws his stones with; for the serenity he needs.
But Noel simply shrugs. “That’s fine,” he says. “I can’t punt a football for the life of me. Maybe someone with grit is good. For a little balance.”
Balance. The rock in his chest lifts, and he grins.
“I am happy I can spend summer with you, and our friends,” Mischa says. “I thought, I will want to leave. But I don’t.”
Noel huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, you know, every year my mom drives me up here, and I’m thinking about throwing myself in the lake at orientation. But then, by the end, I wish I could just stay here forever.” He smiles, joyless. “Isn’t this place so funny that way? Like a parasite that grows on you.”
Mischa thinks of getting his shoes vomited on by a kid who ate one too many s’mores, but then thinks of guitars, and winning volleyball, and skipping stones.
“There is bad, but there is also good,” he deduces. “Is like this country. Noel Gruber, when I first come here, I think, all of Canada is bad. But”—he likes to face fears, he reminds himself—”when I meet you, and I find this place, I think, it has some good. If you are looking for it.”
Noel’s whole being softens. “You are what makes this place so great.”
* * *
Noel doesn’t kiss him.
Instead, he asks, if he’ll be here again next year, and he says yes, he will be, again and again, and so Noel figures, there’s time.
He does, however, skip some more stones with him, manages to even get him to coax one into rolling off the water more than once before it thwops into the depths, and the look of triumph on his face might be more exhilarating than any sensation of lips on lips ever could be.
The next morning, as everyone’s packing up, there is, indeed, a pervasive sort of melancholy. His duffel’s slung over his shoulder, everyone wet with tears as parents and caretakers come to whisk them off, for the rest of the months until next season. But one thing, at least, is his silver lining this time around.
“Fifty dollars, please,” Noel says to Penny, one expectant palm outstretched.
He hears her grumble faintly as a cluster of bills is deposited into his possession. Useless, didn’t kiss, homosexual disaster.
Oh, well, Noel thinks, glancing around at Ocean tearfully reminding children to double- and triple-check their belongings; Constance lovingly smearing said tears from her cheeks; Ricky promising to win Penny a stuffed animal at the arcade as compensation for her lost fifty.
Mischa, rummaging in his pocket to produce a stone for skipping, grinning toothily at him from across the clearing.
There’s always next year.