Chapter 27: Jasper

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Levi turned off the alarm clock in our cabin. I realize this by waking up precisely five minutes before the start of morning activities.

Panic splits through my chest like an ax. I try to leap out of bed, but my legs get tangled in the sheets and I end up crashing-landing into the floor.

"Ouch," I mutter.

Levi doesn't even flinch.

Cursing softly under my breath, I tear free from the prison of sheets and stomp over to Levi's side of the room. There are at least six different pillows wedged between the folds of his blanket. I snatch up the one embroidered with a scene from Midsummer's Night Dream and whack him on the face with it.

"You"— whack —"are"— whack —"an"— whack —"idiot!"

Levi lets out a strangled yelp and flings his arms over his head. "Ow! Ow! Why are you hitting me with a pillow?"

"You turned off my alarm. I overslept, and now I'm going to be late for my morning activity!" I give his face another whack for good measure. "I just survived my first week of kitchen duty. I don't need to suffer through another!"

"If you're late to your morning activity, why are you wasting time hurting me?"

"We're both late to our morning activity, you moron. Think of this as your replacement alarm!"

"I don't want a replacement alarm. Why do you think I turned off the first one?"

"Probably because you only have two functioning brain-cells!" I lob the pillow at his chest and storm back to my side of the cabin. I'm so furious that I temporarily forget that I can't get changed in front of Levi, and I almost make the mistake of stripping out of my pajama pants. "Shit!" I rarely ever curse around other people, but this seems like the appropriate situation for foul language.

Usually, I get along pretty well with Levi; but if there's one thing I absolutely can't stand, it's people who mess with my routine. Sleep-talking about The Merchant of Venice is one thing. Making me late for my morning activity is another.

My parents practically drilled it into my head from birth that being tardy is unacceptable. I'm an only child, so they've always had high expectations for me. Can't be late. Can't swear in public. And yes, I know I've already done both of those things today. Can you blame me? This morning has been a disaster.

Feeling more frustrated than ever, I yank open my drawers—only to cause the glass of water I keep by my bedside to topple over and spill everywhere. And I'm talking everywhere. My pants, my shirt, the floor. I try to wipe some of it off but this only ingrains the stain more deeply in the fabric. "You've got to be kidding me," I groan. I wriggle into my camp t-shirt (being bare-chested doesn't bother me that much) but leave the pajama pants on. There's no time to get dressed discreetly. Today, I'm rocking the damp flannel.

My activity schedule is stuck to the wall with a piece of gum. I give it a glancing once-over as I head for the door. Eklunta Cabin. The cabin isn't too far away— I can probably make it there in five minutes if I jog.

I throw on my fleece hoodie and shoot Levi one last, scathing look. "You do realize that you're only screwing yourself over by turning off the alarm, right?"

"Of course," he replies through a yawn. "But the extra sleep makes it so, so worth it."

"I doubt it will be worth it when the counselors give you a crap-load of marks for missing your activities."

"Oh, they wouldn't do that. I've struck a deal with them. Well, one of them. Sun-Lee, to be specific." Levi tugs his blankets over his shoulders and yawns again. "She doesn't give me marks for sleeping in, as long as I don't quote Shakespeare around her. So, on the days that I have Sun-Lee as my activity leader, I can squeeze in a few extra hours of shut-eye."

"You can't just scam your way through the rest of the summer."

"It's not a scam if both people agree to it."

"That's exactly what a scam is!"

Levi yawns again. "Sorry, did you say something? I couldn't hear you over the sound of my intellectual genius."

"I said, you can't scam your way—"

"What was that? Please, speak up."

It takes all my restraint not to whack him with another pillow. "Fine. If you're going to be a jerk, go ahead and be a jerk." I kick the door open with my good foot, and a blast of frigid Alaskan air smacks me in the face. "Shakespeare isn't even that good, by the way!"

Levi sits bolt-upright in his bed. "How dare you! Jasper, take it back!"

"His plays are just a bunch of dick jokes. Also, he's super racist." I step outside. Rain is spitting from the sky. (Just what I needed— more water.) I debate trying to find my umbrella, but I'm too angry to make the effort. "Marlowe was better."

With those final words, I let the door slam shut behind me.

***

I'm not a runner. I've never been a runner. But this morning, I become one. I hustle across Lightlake like I've never hustled in my life. I sprint past the lake, the Mess Hall, and the Green. When I finally arrive at Eklunta Cabin, my legs ache and my lungs burn, but I'm only ten minutes late. It's nothing short of a miracle.

I push the door open with the tips of my fingers and tip-toe inside, trying to slip past whatever counselor is leading the activity in the hopes they haven't called attendance yet. The ancient floorboards incriminate me immediately. At the sound of the first creak, half of the heads in the room pivot towards me, all searching for the unlucky kid that decided to show up late.

I slide into the nearest empty seat. Next to me is Giselle, my old dish-washing partner. She blinks down at me through eyelashes thick with mascara. "You're late."

"I know."

"And you're wearing pajama pants."

"I know," I reply, with no small amount of annoyance. "It's the new fashion trend."

"Being late, or wearing pajamas to morning activity?"

My temper flares. "Both."

The word comes out harsher and more prickly than I intended it to. Seconds later, I hear an unmistakable voice ring out through the room— it's Karen. Of course it's Karen. It's always Karen.

"Jasper Sostenuto, is there something you'd like to share with the group?"

If she hadn't noticed me before, she does now. I grit my teeth together and shake my head. "No, ma'am."

"Really? You're not going to bother to tell us why you're late?" Karen smiles at me. (It's always a bad omen when she smiles like that. I've been on the receiving end of that smile too many times before.) "Please, I'd love to hear your excuse."

"I'd prefer not to, Karen."

"Well, I'd prefer that you do."

As if the situation couldn't get any more unbearable, a few of the campers decide that this is the perfect time to ooh loudly. I decide that I've never been more mortified in my life. Slowly, I sink in my chair as far as I can go without disappearing under the table completely.

Karen taps her fingernails against her clipboard. "You're wasting our time, Jasper."

"Sorry," I mutter, sinking deeper into the chair. What the hell am I supposed to say to the counselor? If I tell Karen that Levi turned our alarm off, she'll just assume that I'm trying to throw my roommate under the bus. If I try to lie, she'll catch me in seconds. I might as well ask for my second week of kitchen duty and get it over with.

Then, something sharp and bony jabs me in the leg. "Tell her you fell," Giselle whispers. "You've got water all over your clothes. She'll believe you."

"What—"

She knees me in the leg again. "Do you want more marks? Just do it."

I force myself to meet Karen's eyes. She's giving me the death-stare.

"Well?" she asks. "What's it going to be, Sostenuto?"

"I fell."

Karen's eyebrows soar upwards like the puck in a high striker game. "You... fell."

"I did. Do you want a demonstration?"

For some reason, this makes some of the campers snicker. I don't know why. I wasn't trying to be funny.

"No, I would not like a demonstration," Karen says. "I'll let you off the hook for now, Jasper, but only because this conversation is giving me a migraine. Please, pay more attention to where you're walking in the future. Clumsiness is not an excuse for being late."

More snickering. The other kids are getting a kick out of this. I can't decide what's worse— being the camp wallflower, or the camp laughingstock.

"Yes, ma'am," I murmur. "Thank you, ma'am."

Giselle grins broadly at me. "You are such a suck-up. I love it."

"Whatever."

Karen clucks her tongue disapprovingly before returning to the front of the room to collect her materials for today's activity. Slowly, the rush of adrenaline starts to leave my body. I feel like a man who was dragged up to the executioner's block and then abruptly pardoned.

"This is when you say thank you," Giselle tells me, "and I say that it was 'my pleasure'."

"I'm not thanking you. The only reason Karen noticied I was late is because you wouldn't stop talking about my pajama pants!"

Giselle grins at me, as if I've just played right into the punchline of her joke. "My pleasure."

Out of the blue, Karen slaps a sheet of paper down on the table in front of me. I jolt so hard that I smack my elbow against the chair. 

Giselle chuckles at me. "You're a little nervous today."

"Sorry. I've been on edge all morning. Levi turned off our alarm and I woke up late."

"You don't have to apologize."

"What?"

"I said, you don't have to apologize for being nervous. It was an observation, not an insult."

"Oh. Okay."

I reach for the paper Karen passed out to us. It's a black and white illustration of a forest. The scene reminds me of something my grandma would cross-stitch and hang on her wall.

"What is this?" I ask.

Giselle tilts her head, as if I'm a bit slow. "It's a coloring page. This is Arts and Crafts."

"Oh. Oh." Everything is starting to make sense now. "There's a library here too, right?"

She points to a small nook in the corning. "If you can call that a library."

I glance over at the trio of lopsided bookshelves and a pair of leaky beanbag chairs. Giselle's right— the library isn't very impressive, but with the dusty morning light filtering in through the windows, it looks like a cozy spot to spend a rainy day. 

Eklunta is bigger than most of the other cabins and outfitted with enough long tables and benches to seat half the camp. The walls are plastered with artwork: a decade's worth of identical coloring pages filled out by the hundreds of kids unlucky enough to get sent here. Out of the ten people participating in the activity, I only recognize two: Ronan and James, who are sitting side by side and laughing at something one of them drew. It's the first time I've ever seen Ronan smile in public.

Giselle snatches a cup of colored pencils from the other side of the table and places it in front of us. Then she flips over her paper and starts drawing dress forms. "I'm going to fashion school after I graduate," she says conversationally, sketching the outline of a skirt. "What are you going to draw?"

"I'm just going to color a normal forest, I guess."

"That's boring."

"I'm a boring person."

In response to this, Giselle pokes me with the sharpened end of a colored pencil. "Your self-pity is boring. What do you really want to be, Jasper?"

I scowl at her. "Fine. I'll color mine in with dots. Like Monet."

"Monet. You're such a nerd, Sostenuto."

We get to work on our coloring. I attack the deer with varying shades of brown pencils, trying to imitate the pointillism theory we studied in high school art class. It doesn't work out very well. The deer looks less like an artistic masterpiece and more the victim of a serious affliction of chickenpox.

Giselle's piece comes out much better than mine. Her dresses are awash with hues of lavender, violet, and fuchsia, reminding me of a fantastical twilight land. The patterns, a deep maroon, are filled with whorling, golden spheres and a single crescent moon.

"That's very nice," I say politely. While I was drawing, I realized that even though Giselle is a pain in my ass, she's one of the only people at camp who actually talks to me. I'd rather have a friend that steals my clothes than no friends at all.

"It's inspired by my star sign. I'm a Cancer, so my ruling planet is the moon."

"Wow. That's, um, cool."

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Uh, no. I don't read horoscopes."

"It's fine. Astrology isn't for everyone." Giselle hums softly under her breath as she sketches in a bejeweled neckline. "Do you at least know your star sign?"

"Nope."

"Well, when is your birthday?"

"June twenty-sixth."

"Jasper! That's less than a week away."

"I know."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't really like celebrating my birthday."

"Why not?"

I shrug. "I just don't." This isn't exactly true, but it's better than admitting I've never had enough friends to celebrate with. "The whole concept is weird. Your friends sing a song to you in all the wrong notes, and then you get to eat a stale cake covered in candle wax. It just doesn't seem very fun to me."

"That settles it. Sostenuto, I am throwing you a birthday party. Don't even try to disagree. It's happening whether you like it or not. What year are you turning?"

"Seventeen."

"Same as me. Which means I'm older than you. This is going to be so much fun!"

I poke another dot into my diseased deer. This time, the tip of the pencil punctures the paper and embeds itself in the soft wood of the table. "Yeah. So much fun."

"Don't sound so glum. We'll have the party at your cabin, late at night when the counselors won't find out. Everybody will be invited."

"No, that won't work. Levi will never agree. He loves sleeping too much."

Giselle is unfazed. "Not a problem. We'll just have it somewhere else. We can't do my place— Emily hates other people— but I'm sure someone else will lend out their cabin for the night." She gazes around the room, assessing the small group of campers. "Hold on. I have the perfect idea."

She marches over to where Ronan and James are sitting. The three briefly exchange words, and then Giselle walks back to our table, grinning triumphantly. "It's decided. We're going to have the party at Ronan's cabin."

"How the hell did you get him to agree to that?"

"Easy. I just told him I'd steal all of Finn's camp shirts."

"I don't want you to—"

"Relax, it was a fair deal. And I'll give the shirts back afterward." Giselle slips me a sheet of paper. "Look what else I stole."

I glance down. It's the same coloring page that we received. "What's so special about it?"

Giselle flips the paper over, revealing an eye-catching sketch of Superman. The drawing is precise down to the smallest detail. If I didn't know better, I would have mistaken it for the actual comic. "Turns out Ronan is quite the artist," she remarks.

"I didn't know he could draw."

"You don't much about the people at this camp." Noticing my hurt expression, Giselle adds, "Once again, that's an observation, not an insult."

"It feels a lot like an insult."

Giselle folds the coloring page into a paper airplane and aims it at Ronan's head. "Watch and learn." She flicks her wrist, and the airplane flies fast and true before making an emergency landing in Ronan's spiky hair.

He pivots around and scowls at her. "The hell was that for?"

"Proof," she replies. "I'll make good on my side of the bargain if you make good on yours."

"Fine. But no more stealing my shit."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Ronan turns his back on us and passes the Superman drawing to James. He unfolds the paper, smooths out the creases, and tucks it in his pocket.

"Point proven," Giselle says.

I have no idea what she's talking about, and I'm fine with that. Sometimes the best way to deal with Giselle is to just let her be herself.

This reminds me of the conversation we had on our first night of kitchen duty. "Hey, Giselle," I say. "Can you tell me the stories your brother told you about Lightlake?"

"Ooh, of course. You wouldn't believe how much weird shit goes on at camp. I'm talking some really messed-up, supernatural shit. What's your opinion on ghosts?"

"I don't believe in ghosts."

She grins at me. "Well, I've got just the story to change your mind."

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