“I’ll pass,” Cody said.
We’d found a lake. A motherfucking lake with motherfucking fish in it. Didn’t help that none of us had fishing poles. Didn’t stop us from talking about all the fish we were going to catch, either. You want a good laugh? Go watch a bunch of city kids wading in a lake trying to snatch fish out of the water with their bare hands. That shit’ll keep you laughing for days.
The others had gathered around to listen to Cody’s story as we’d walked. Even Tino, though he’d tried to pretend he wasn’t listening. I spent some time after Cody’d finished, trying to pick out the shards of truth from the fiction and wondering whether he’d told us what had really happened or only what he’d wished had happened. Sometimes it’s easy to spot the truth in a story. Sometimes it’s lit-up neon and you can’t help but see it. Other times it’s not as easy.
I was looking for a nice-size rock, thinking I could beat a fish with it, while Jaila sat by herself sharpening a stick against the side of a boulder. David kept circling her, his orbit decaying until she finally said without looking up, “What?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“I’m kind of busy here, David,” she said.
“I know, but still. Do you think they’re real?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“I saw a ghost once—”
Jaila stood, holding her stick like a spear. “That’s great and all, but I’m hungry, so if you’ll excuse me.”
Turned out, Jaila had the right idea. It took her a solid hour, but she finally managed to spear a fish. It didn’t take long for the others to sharpen their own sticks, strip to their underthings, and start making hilarious attempts to spear fish of their own.
Might as well get this out of the way. You’re thinking it’s weird that our little group was a mix of boys and girls, right? Figure it’s strange that Doug and the other camp leaders didn’t worry about us having mad orgies or some shit. It wasn’t like that, though. Despite the garbage that movies and TV shows try to fill our heads with, boys and girls are completely capable of spending time together without trying to get in each other’s pants. The only sex-crazed boy in our group was David, and he was too scared of the girls to try anything. Any one of them could have easily knocked him on his ass if he’d gotten inappropriate. And the rest of us would have kicked the shit out of him while he was down.
Plus, there’s nothing hot about being dirty and sweaty and hungry. And after you’ve seen someone take a shit in the woods, all thoughts of sex nope the fuck right out of your brain.
Once we’d caught our fish—three total to split between us—we had to figure out what to do with our freshly dead food. Jaila knew how to clean them, but she didn’t have a knife. Luckily, Tino did.
“Where’d you get that?” Georgia asked as she slipped back into her uniform.
“Mind your own fucking business,” he said.
Cody stood beside Georgia, clenching his fists. I kept waiting for that boy to pop. Figured it was coming sooner or later, but Jackie snatched the knife from Tino’s hand before he could stop her, and gave him a shove back. She handed it to Jaila, who set about gutting our fish.
The sun was starting to sink to the west, but we still had a few hours of sunlight left, and even though we were hungry, Jaila said, and most everyone agreed, that we should keep walking until dark before trying to set up a camp and cook.
“Who the fuck does she think she is?” Tino was saying to David. I’d fallen back to listen to him complain.
“Do you know how to clean fish?” David asked.
“Not the point.”
“It’s kind of the point.”
“Jaila’s nothing special,” Tino went on. “She probably doesn’t even know where we’re going.”
“I don’t know,” Cody said, wandering toward them. “I’d put my money on her getting us back to camp.”
Tino rolled his eyes. “You didn’t steal any cash. A fucking wuss like you? Probably the only part of that story that’s true is the part where you got humiliated.”
“You don’t know anything!” Cody stomped ahead to where Georgia was walking with Jenna.
David was having trouble breathing because of the pace we’d set, and he constantly touched his pocket where his inhaler was, but he hadn’t used it in hours. “I got a true story. This one time—”
“Save it for your shrink, perv,” Tino said, and moved away, leaving David to bring up the rear alone.
We walked until the sun was starting to set, and then found a clearing surrounded by trees to make camp. Tino was barking orders, but I ignored him and wandered out to find wood with Georgia and Cody.
“You should tell it,” Cody was saying.
Georgia shook her head and glanced back at me. I didn’t say anything, but I got the feeling she didn’t like me much. Or maybe she liked me a little and that was why she didn’t like me.
“It’s a good story,” he said. “And I bet it would scare Tino so bad he wouldn’t sleep until we got back to camp.”
“Don’t let what he said bother you, Cody.” Georgia touched his arm lightly, and he drew back.
“I just don’t understand why he’s got to be so mean.”
“He’s scared,” she said. “Like we all are. And we all deal with fear in different ways.” Georgia gave me another look and lowered her voice.
I went off on my own, keeping Cody and Georgia in view but getting far enough away that they could talk without me hearing. When I got back to camp, Lucinda was standing on one side of the fire pit someone had built, while Tino stood on the other side, Jackie and Jaila holding his arms, and blood was running down his nose.
“You bitch!” he yelled.
“You don’t scare me, you limp-dick psycho,” she said. “If you knew the reason I was really here, you’d—”
“Laugh?” Tino said. “Probably. Because you’re a phony.” He looked around the camp. “You’re all phonies.”
Sunday stepped forward to try to calm the situation while Jenna sat by the fire pit, staring into the empty space, like she was trying to will the flames to life with her mind. But things were getting deliciously out of hand.
“Why do you hate men so much?” I asked Lucinda. “I mean, that’s what Tino said, anyway.”
“I didn’t—”
But Lucinda was already moving toward Tino again, and David and Sunday had to hold her back.
“Do you guys want to hear a ghost story?”
Georgia stood off to the side with Cody, but her voice was loud and carried through the campsite. There was something commanding about it that made the others stop.
“I mean, it’s not really a ghost story. It’s something that happened when I was a kid at summer camp. But I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have happened the way it did if it hadn’t been for the ghost stories.”
“I want to hear it,” Sunday said. “I mean, as long as it’s not too scary.”
“You calm?” Jackie asked Tino.