Chapter 9: Finn

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A valley, encompassed by mountains and rolling hills, spans out below me; dozens of cabins scattered randomly across its grassy floor. The camp itself is made out of a labyrinth of trees, crisscrossing streams, and twist dirt trails that spiral outwards across the valley floor. The only straight line interspersing the chaos is a long span of gravel road that manifests at the edge of the forest and leads all the way to the center of camp, where I see the largest cabin of them all. When the sun breaks through the clouds, its rays hit the cabin at a striking angle, and turn the shingles into pure gold.

On the fringes of camp, a drove of horses grazes on a meadow so green that it almost looks fake, like a scene out of a touched-up postcard. I didn't know that the camp kept horses. I wonder if we'll ever be able to visit them.

Beyond the meadow, I can see the lake the camp was named after. It's dark and glassy and stretches all the way from the camp to the mountains, where the water abruptly disappears into a ghost-grey mist that shrouds the banks. From my vantage point, the lake doesn't look very "light" at all.

(If you look hard enough, you'll probably find a metaphor in there somewhere.)

No fear, I remind myself. Then I start hiking mechanically down the hill.

Walking down is much easier than climbing up, and it takes me less than twenty minutes to reach the bottom of the hill. From there, I head towards the big cabin in the middle of camp, hoping to find a counselor who can sign me in, or at least somebody who can direct me to the nearest authority figure.

Nobody stops me on my way to the cabin. Nobody pulls me over to check my bag, or even to get my ID. Save for a few stray cats that saunter between my legs before being distracted by a flock of birds, the camp is pretty much deserted; almost creepily so. But I'm determined not to get sidetracked so I just keep walking, until I finally reach the cabin and find a list of names, handwritten, nailed to the door.

I squint at the piece of paper and see that it's not just some random list of names. It's the cabin registrar. My eyes trail down the list until they land on my own name, and the roommate assignment listed next to it— I've been put in Becharof Cabin along with some other unlucky kid named Ronan Lockwood.

One roommate. I only have to share the cabin with one roommate. What a relief— I thought they'd be stuffing us into cabins like sardines in a can. How bad can one roommate possibly be?

Snap! I hear a twig crack behind me. The noise takes me by surprise, and I whip around so quickly that I nearly run headfirst into the first human I've seen since I left Moe's taxi. It's a girl, around my age, with fluffy Bonnie Tyler hair (brown, instead of blonde) and golden-brown skin. She's wearing a fleecy denim jacket, black platform boots, and a cross expression. There's something off about her, but it takes me a moment to realize what it is: her eyes aren't the same color. One is brown. The other is blue. And neither look very happy with me.

"Sorry," I say, not sure what I've done to offend her. "Did you want to read the...?"

But the girl just scowls and shoves past me, glancing quickly over the list before striding away down one of the many dirt trails. Her backpack, slung loosely over one shoulders, thumps against her side as she walks; one hit for every step. It doesn't look very full.

I turn back towards the list. The girl clearly knows where her cabin is; now, all I have to do is find my own. Becharof Cabin. Now, this would be a lot easier to do with a map....

I'm beginning to see more campers now, all flocking to the cabin, duffel bags weighing down on their arms, backpacks strapped across their chest. They all look like the girl with the mismatched eyes: annoyed, disgruntled, tired. I've never been afraid of meeting new people (in fact, Sarah says that I'm one of the most aggressive extroverts she knows), but something about the groups of kids makes me feel tense. I decide to leave the introductions for later, when everybody is feeling a little more friendly. I choose a trail at random and follow it into the woods.

I wander the grounds aimlessly for the next half hour, checking every cabin I come across for the name Becharof. I don't have any luck. The camp is huge, and completely unnavigable without a map.

I keep walking. And walking. Eventually, the shoelaces of my Converse give out, and I pull over to the side of the trail to retie them. That's when I get my first formal introduction to the campers of Lightlake.

I don't hear the blow coming, but I do feel the knee collide with my back, knocking me to the ground. It all happens so quickly— one moment I'm bending down to tie my shoe, and then next I'm lying face-first in the dirt, blood starting to leak out of a scrape on my elbow.

I spit grit out of my mouth and push myself to my feet. "What the f—"

Then I see who I'm up against, and my words die in my mouth.

Three campers stand in front of me, all of them at least a foot taller than me. There's a pair of weedy-looking boys, both wearing similar expression of glee, and a giant blonde dude that looks like he could be one of the starting linebackers for the Hoosiers. Even though I'm seeing red, I can see that I'm outnumbered.

This is not a fight that I will win.

"Sorry," the linebacker says. He's smiling, too, but in a way that seems to friendly for his face. "I didn't see you there."

Ah. A short joke. I'm rarely on the receiving end of those, but of course the linebacker's height easily makes my 5'11 look minuscule.

I force myself to smile, like this is all just some big joke. "Has anybody told you that should take up comedy?"

One of the other boys starts laughing. His friend— I'm guessing that they're brothers, they look too much alike— joins in, and then they're both cracking up like me falling was the funniest thing they've seen in their entire life. I want to knock them into the ground, just to see how they'd like it, but instead I just keep smiling to the point where my cheeks start to twitch. These guys are just your garden-variety juvenile delinquents, desperate for attention— and I'm not going to let them get under my skin. Also, I don't want to get my ass kicked on the first day of camp.

The linebacker smiles at me kindly, as if he didn't just knee me into the dirt. He's handsome, but in a vaguely threatening way; like how the replicant from Blade Runner was handsome even though he was an evil robot trying to kill Harrison Ford. "You're funny, kid. What's your name?"

"You can call me Finn."

One of the brothers lets out an elated cackle. "Your name is Fish?"

"No, it's—"

"I've never heard of somebody being named Fish before," the other brother remarks. "Your parents must be crazy."

"Actually, my name is—"

The linebacker slaps me on the back in what I assume was supposed to be a friendly gesture, but actually ends up knocking all the air out of my lungs. "It's been nice meeting you, Fish. See you around."

I can only wheeze.

The linebacker and the two brothers stroll leisurely away, probably looking for more campers to terrorize. Once I'm able to breathe properly again, I brush the dust off my jeans, pick my duffel bag up off the ground, and start walking— in the opposite direction, of course.

My journey continues. I see more cabins, and more campers. But no counselors. It feels like a miracle when I finally stumble upon Becharof Cabin, half-hidden in the woods at the end of a long, winding trail, about half an hour later. I realize that I must have circled around the cabin at least twice during my long walk, always missing it because the sign was too faded to read from a distance. Up close, the letters are still smudged; and the more I stare at it, the more it reads as "Barf Cabin".

Barf Cabin, unsurprisingly, doesn't look very inviting. When I look at it I'm reminded of the wooden shed that used to stand in my backyard back at home, where dad used to store the lawnmower and all his other tools— until the day that termites starting eating through the wood and we had to knock the whole thing down. Just like the shed, I can tell that Becharof Cabin has seen better days. Its screen door has more patches than a quilt-work blanket, and the four concrete stilts supporting the floor are crumbly enough to make me question the structural integrity. As I squint at the cabin, trying to absorb the idea that I'm going to have to spend my entire summer here, an image of the floor collapsing underneath my bed in the middle of the night pops into my head. I give my head a frantic shake. I'm not going down that road— the one of total catastrophism— yet.

I look up. The only thing connecting our isolated cabin to the real world is a single, thread-like power-line snaking between the branches of a graying oak tree that looks ready to keel over and die at any moment. I sigh. This isn't exactly the life of luxury I was hoping for, but I might as well try and tolerate it. I find myself thinking back to what Moe said— there's no point in making myself miserable for the rest of the summer.

I lug my duffel halfheartedly up the gritty concrete steps. With my free hand, I try the door. It's unlocked. I push it open, and heave my bag inside. The interior is just as dilapidated as the outside of the cabin, but also more dusty, cobwebbed, and worn down with use. The room can only be described as spartan: the furniture consists of two cots, two shaky night-tables, and a rusty lamp, and there are no paintings or photographs, or any attempt at all to make the cabin more homey. There are two windows, but they're currently covered by a pair of moth-eaten blackout curtains. I forgot about how the sun sets later here in the summer.

I glance around in the cabin in dismay, my resolve from earlier quickly fading away. There's no way I'm going to survive a summer in this glorified shed. No way.... Then I realize that the cabin isn't empty. The light is turned on and there's a green army jacket hanging on a hook by the door. Next to one of the cots, there's three leather bags strewn across the floor, each monogrammed with initials ROL. The bags look fancy, like they're designer or something.

My eyes shift across the room, drawn to where the (gray? Or just moldy?) curtains have been cast open, letting dirty sunlight spill across the military-issue cot and illuminate the the lean, black-haired boy sprawled across it. He shows no interest in my arrival, doesn't even acknowledge my existence. He just continues to leaf through some sort of magazine, blinking every so often like a perfectly programmed automaton. This I why I didn't notice him earlier— he's so still that he blends in with the rest of the cabin.

I drop my duffel unceremoniously on the floor, and his head lifts slowly.

"Hey," I say.

He looks up at me. I stare down at him. He isn't anything special; just an average-looking teenage boy with dark eyes and spiky black hair; but there is something different about his posture. The way he carries himself, you'd think he's someone important.

I'm unsure of what to say next, so I just repeat, "Hey." I hear Sarah's voice in my head— hay is for horses, silly. "I'm your roommate. My name is Finn." My voice cracks, and I feel my face flush with heat. I can't believe it— I've only known this guy for a few seconds and I've already embarrassed myself. This has got to be some kind of personal record.

My roommate looks me up and down in a casual, detached manner. "I know who you are." He tilts his head to the side. "You've got dirt on your nose."

"You have a black-eye," I blurt out.

He stares at me. In the light, the bruise is even more pronounced; swollen and every color of the rainbow. "I know," he says again. "You should see the other guy."

"Oh."

He smiles at me like he already knows where he's going to aim his punches. "I'm sure you already saw the cabin registrar, but if you didn't, I'm Ronan Lockwood. If my last name sounds familiar to you I don't want to hear about it."

"Okay," I say, slightly dumbfounded.

"I'm glad that's settled. Now, let's start setting some ground rules. We're going to be living together all summer, and there are a few things I want you to know."

"Um... okay?"

"Here goes. Rule number one: we are not friends. We may be roommates, or whatever, but that does not make us friends. I didn't come to this camp planning to make friends, and I'm not changing those plans anytime soon. Do you understand?" I don't respond, but he smiles at me anyways. "Great. I'm loving the enthusiasm. Rule number two: don't ask me about my family. I will not tell you anything about them, or the company. If you want information then I suggest you go read the Wall Street Journal instead. Got it?"

"Your family owns a company?"

"My mother owns a company," he corrects. "And that's all you're going to hear about it from me. Well, that's it from me— is there anything else you'd like to add? Any rules of your own?"

"I'm on the Cross Country team at my school, so I like to go for runs sometimes. Is that okay with you?"

"As long as you're not doing laps in the cabin, I really don't care what you do. Anything else?"

"No. That's it."

"Good." Ronan gives me another cold smile, and then turns back to his magazine. No— it's a comic book. I can see Superman glaring at me out of one of the frames. "Also, I'd appreciate it if you don't try to talk to me when I'm reading."

"Message received, loud and clear."

Ronan rewards me with a sarcastic thumbs-up. I roll my eyes at him when he isn't looking.

So, my roommate is an asshole. That's awesome. I was counting on having a friendly, funny roommate to make the summer easier, but I guess I'm not that lucky. Instead I get the roommate with a black-eye, a bad attitude, and apparently, the family fortune. This is going to be fun.

I kick my duffel bag over to the other cot. There aren't as many cobwebs over here, but the night stand does looks particularly rickety, like one wrong gust of wind could knock it down for good. Someone's etched their initials into the side of it: E. H. was here. There's more graffiti on the walls and floors, crude drawings and names etched into the wood with contraband blades. I sit down on the cot, and dust explodes into the air. Coughing, I pull my duffel bag up next to me and start unpacking my things.

The contents of my duffel bag look like the rubble left behind after a tornado. I dump everything out onto the cot, and try to sort through it by hand. "So, Ronan, where are you from?" I ask. I know that he asked for no interruptions while he was reading, but I feel like I have the right to know where my roommate for the summer lives. "I'm from Beauville, Indiana. You've probably never heard of Beauville before. We're an hour away from Indianapolis, but because we're kind of a small town in the middle of nowhere we don't get many tourists. We were ranked number eight on a list of the best suburbs in America once, which was pretty neat."

"I'm from Manhattan," Ronan says shortly.

"That's cool," I say. I'm impressed by this, but because Ronan has been so rude to me, I try not to let it show. "I've always wanted to go to New York City. My mom thinks it's super trashy, so we've never been. No offense to you, of course. She thinks every city is trashy. She even claims that someone tried to sell her crack in Times Square, but I think that's a lie."

Ronan smiles, an ironic expression. The skin is stretched so tightly across his face that it's a miracle he's able to move his lips at all. Everything about him is so jagged and angular, all sharp corners and unforgiving edges. "Fascinating," he says.

I turn back to my duffel bag, and all of the shit spread out across the cot. It's still a disaster. Why can't my messes ever clean themselves up for once?

I crack my knuckles and get started. For the next hour, I'm busy stuffing clothing into drawers, hanging jackets on hooks, wrestling my fitted sheet and bed-bug protector on over the cot, and finding places for the rest of my miscellaneous crap— my toiletries, hairbrush, shoes, comic books, deck of cards, and a few pieces of paper that look suspiciously like math homework I forgot to turn in. Every so often I sneak a look at Ronan, trying to get a sense of who he really is.

Ronan's clothes are an interesting disguise. Outwardly, they look like casual day clothes any guy on the street could be wearing, but after taking a closer look I see that they probably cost more than my airplane ticket to Alaska. All of his clothes looked fitted in a way that makes me think they were custom-made. His khaki pants are crisply ironed, and his black shirt (plain, except for three silver buttons lined up neatly beneath the collar) is made out of a fabric that looks way too smooth and clean to be from your typical Sears or Macy's. Something tells me that the buttons aren't just plastic painted over, either— they're real metal, maybe with a real silver coating. Ronan wasn't joking about his family owning a company. This kid must be loaded!

If Ronan notices me observing him, he doesn't mention it. He doesn't pay me the slightest bit of attention, not until something rolls out of a pile of my clothing and lands with a loud thunk! on the wooden floorboards.

We both look over at the object. It's clunky and yellow, and wrapped in some sort of multicolored fabric. My heart does a double-beat. The object is a Walkman.

"Is that what I think it is?" Ronan demands.

I stride over to the Walkman and pick it up. That's when I see that it isn't wrapped in some random piece of fabric— it's wrapped in a miniature Union Jacket.

Slowly, the realization dawns on me. Sarah's gift. She had wrapped it in the Union Flag, to show off her knowledge of all things British. I had chucked the gift without opening it into a distant corner of my room— and into a pile of clothes that I must have stuffed into my duffel bag later, when mom was hurrying me out the door. My gut clenches. I wish it telepathic communication between siblings was possible, if only so I could scream at Sarah for fucking up my life once again.

"Yes," I say. "It's a Walkman."

"But electronics are banned from camp. How the hell did you manage to sneak it past the counselors?"

My anger towards Sarah fades away, replaced by confusion. "The counselors didn't check my bag. Were they supposed to?"

Ronan raises an eyebrow. "Duh, this isn't Meatballs. We're delinquents, remember?"

"Like I could ever forget," I mutter.

"What entrance did you come in from, anyways? As far as I could tell there were counselors checking bags at all of them."

"Um, I didn't come in from an official entrance. My cabbie wouldn't drive all the way up to camp, so I had to walk the last few miles on some dirt trail in the woods. I ended up by the cabin registrar and then found my way over here. Nobody ever stopped to check my bag along the way."

"Where was the trail?"

"I don't remember. Somewhere in the mountains. Why do you want to know?"

Ronan doesn't respond to this. "You should hide that Walkman somewhere good. If the counselors find it, we're both going to get in trouble."

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it."

"Hide it someplace original, too. I'm sure

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