Chapter Text
“So this is what you do,” Astra said.
She and Charlie sat shoulder to shoulder on her camp-issued dark green sheets. Charlie’s notebook, small and ratty and spiral bound, lay open across their middle two thighs.
“Yeah,” Charlie admitted. “When I get cross.”
Astra ran her fingertips across the deep-etched lines of Charlie’s scrawl. The red paint on her nails had chipped too much for her to deem them worth keeping, so she’d repainted them a glossy black with Charlie’s contraband polish. “Do you come up with the music for it, too?”
They smiled. “Sometimes. My mates back home help me with that end.”
“Do you…perform?”
Charlie assessed Astra’s eyes for any hint of mocking. They spotted a glimmer of something, but they ruled it to be her sharp-toothed curiosity more than any kind of derision or malice. Not that they expected malice, really—Astra’s bark was worse than her bite, and it was self-protective more than vindictive. Charlie got that.
Charlie got a lot of things about Astra, now.
“Once in a while,” they said. “Yeah. Declan’s big brother’s got a set of drums, and Ian got a guitar for Hanukkah. Gilly plays piano ‘cause her mum makes her, but she wants a bass someday.”
“That’s…cool.”
They shrugged.
Carefully, keeping her touch delicate, Astra leafed through the pages. “You must get angry a lot.”
“Lots to be angry about,” Charlie said, thinking of Atropos’s hard stare and Lachesis’s sickly-sweet smile. They looked down. “Sometimes I just wanna scream and hit something.”
Astra paused. “I get that.”
The corner of Charlie’s mouth quirked up. “I know. Who’d you reckon stopped you from chucking embers at those prisses the other day?”
Astra huffed and rolled her eyes. She leaned, very slightly, into their shoulder.
“See?” they said. “Sometimes you’ve just gotta make things into a joke. Lighten up.”
“Like you do?”
“Or you can scribble like a nutter in a journal. That works too.” Charlie shrugged. “Not like we can do much else.”
“Doesn’t that make you angry? That we’re so…so powerless?”
“’Course. Y’know what I do then?”
Astra sighed. She waggled the half of Charlie’s notebook that sat on her leg.
“Yeah, sometimes. Other times, I really do shout and break shit.” They grinned. “My tantrums are wicked. Bet they’re better than your tantrums.”
Astra knocked her bony elbow into Charlie’s side.
“Oi!”
“You’re a punk.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re a witch.”
Mona looked down at them sleepily from where she lay with a thick book in bed. “Can you guys try to be nice to each other? I’m reading.”
“Sorry, Mona.”
“Sorry, mate."
She hummed, already back to her book.
They shared secret smiles. Three weeks had been more than enough time to cement their affection for Mona, who really should’ve picked nicer friends but chose Charlie and Astra anyway. “You are nice,” she’d said, when Charlie had joked about it. “I think you just don’t know it yet.”
Charlie was pretty sure they’d never be nice, not the cute and sweet sort like Mona, but they’d learned early on not to argue with her.
“Alright,” said Astra, regaining some of her usual aloofness. She shut Charlie’s songwriting journal and handed it back. “Enough feelings talk. Let’s go to war.”
Egyptian War, which Charlie hadn’t known before camp and Mona called Ratscrew, was a card game that was basically a complicated cross between Snap and Beggar My Neighbour. It involved lots of slapping and keeping an eye out for a laundry list of card combinations like doubles, sandwiches, father-sons, daddy issues, top-bottoms, marriages, divorces, and so on. Charlie had nicked one of the hundred card decks that floated around during free time, and they and Astra had developed a knack for it.
Setting their notebook aside, Charlie reached under their bed and grabbed the cards. They shifted to the floor where they had an even surface to stack and slap. After shuffling beyond reproach, they began to deal.
“I had an idea,” Astra said.
Charlie glanced up. Astra’s eyes glittered in the way that meant she’d thought of a particularly interesting scheme. “Yeah?”
“What if we started a larger game of Egyptian War tomorrow during free time? With higher stakes.”
“Stakes like what?”
Astra’s smile showed teeth. “Half of these kids are so rich, they brought money to camp.”
Charlie didn’t mention that Astra’s taste in clothing betrayed that she came from money herself—or at least, had come from money at some point. They also didn’t mention that their own family was well-off enough to send them thousands of miles away to an American summer camp. That wasn’t the point.
The point was that, unlike the spoiled WASP kids that made up 90% of the camp’s population, Charlie and Astra didn’t have any money themselves.
“I’m listening,” Charlie said with a grin. “What do we wager, then?”
“We’ll come up with something,” Astra said, confident. She flipped over the first card.
Half an hour later, their counselor stuck her head in and announced ten minutes till lights out. Charlie and Astra packed up their game—which Charlie had been winning—and took one last trip to the bathroom with Mona to brush their teeth. Minty-mouthed and in pyjamas, they climbed into their bunks.
The first few minutes passed fairly loudly. Some kids tossed and turned upon creaky bedsprings, trying to get comfortable. Others whispered or spoke softly to their friends. One bunk glowed an iridescent green, a hidden torch seeping through the covers. Eventually, though, the conversations tapered off, the squirming settled, and the torch winked out.
Charlie stared out into the dark. They kind of liked this time of night, when the moonlight slipped in through the small windows and silvered the cabin in thick shadows. As far as the nine other kids they had to be stuck with all summer went, they’d done alright, but all the hard r’s and nasal vowels got exhausting. Sometimes it was nice to hear…nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. Just breathing. Ten sets of lungs, breathing softly.
Except—
Someone wasn’t breathing so softly.
They heard a snuffle and the rustle of sheets. Then came a suppressed choking noise, and more snuffling.
Slowly, Charlie pushed themselves up. Taking care to place their feet on the smooth wooden frame of the bed, not the squeaky mattress, they reached up to grab the edge of the upper bunk and pull themself to standing.
“Mona?” they murmured, looking over the wooden slats. “You alright?”
“Yes,” mumbled a small voice, tear-clogged and entirely unconvincing.
“Yeah, can’t put that one over on me. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Nuh.” Charlie reached out and pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Come on, now. I’ve gotta go hit up old biff. Be my buddy?”
“We just went,” she said, but she took the blanket off her head. She wiped at her nose and eyes.
“C’mon, I’m busting. For me?”
Mona’s breathing stuttered. She glanced around, scared that someone had heard her, but nobody else stirred. Finally, she nodded.
The two of them climbed down. In violation of the closed-toe policy, they slipped on their shower shoes. Carefully, they padded through the dark cabin and crept down the porch. Hooking her arm through Mona’s, Charlie led her over to a nearby log. They sat.
“I thought you had to go to the biffy,” Mona said.
BIFFY, or Bathroom In the Forest For You, was what Camp Walden called its toilets. After making fun of it for the first few days, Charlie had come to appreciate the nickname—biff had all the shortness of loo without the American staring to go along with it.
Charlie shook their head. “I said that because you wouldn’t fess up to what’s wrong.”
“Won’t we get in trouble?”
“No, no. Anybody comes out, we just say that my stomach’s upset, and we moved out here in case I couldn’t make it in time.”
“Oh.” Mona sniffled. In the moonlit clearing, Charlie could see now the trembling of her lips, the puffy wetness of her eyes. “Okay.”
“So what’s wrong? Horrible earache? Favorite character in your book die?”
“What? No.” Mona leaned into Charlie’s side, so she wouldn’t have to look them in the eye. “I’m…I’m homesick.”
“Oh. That’s all?”
“All?” Mona sounded hurt.
Charlie winced. They didn’t know what homesickness felt like, not really—they were enjoying the reprieve from their own household. But the last thing they wanted to do was make Mona feel worse. “Aw, no, I didn’t mean how that came out. You just seemed embarrassed to tell me, and I thought it was gonna be some big secret or something.”
“Oh. No, I just…I miss being home. I miss my own bedroom, and my dad. And my home food. The food here sucks.” As she talked, Mona’s words blurred more and more into sobs. “And I just– I just– I–”
“Shh,” Charlie said, rubbing her shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”
Mona had a good cry. By the end of it, both their pyjama tops had a nice wet patch to show for it.
“Better?” they asked.
“Yeah,” Mona said quietly. She looked up at them. “Thanks.”
“Course, mate. What’re friends for?”
Mona gave a watery smile. “I don’t even know why I miss it so much.”
“Is it just you and your dad?”
She shook her head. “No, I have a mom. She…I don’t think she’s happy with me. She says I spend too much time playing pretend. Sometimes she tells my dad that they must be failing as parents.”
“Well, she sounds like a right piece of work.”
“No, it’s that… I don’t know. She and my dad have worked really hard. She wants a better life for me.”
“Doesn’t give her a right to talk to you like that. You’re brilliant.”
Another small smile. “Thanks, Charlie.”
“I’m just putting down truth.”
She paused. “I think I feel better now.”
“Good,” Charlie said. They squeezed the arm still wrapped around Mona, both for comfort and because the cold was getting to them. At least their bonnet kept their head slightly warmer. Next time they ran out of the cabin for a moonlit heart-to-heart, they were taking the time to put on socks.
Mona looked up at the dark branches above them. Charlie followed her gaze. In the gaps, they could see gashes of the starry sky. The only place they’d been to that had so many was their grandmother’s village in Greece.
“You know how you thought I had a secret?”
Charlie blinked. “Yeah?”
“I might have one.” Mona’s tone had shifted from melancholy to conspiratorial.
Charlie grinned. “Been holding out on me?”
Mona looked straight at them, dark eyes wide. “You have to promise not to tell.”
“Swear on my mother’s grave.”
“Your mom’s dead?”
Charlie waved a hand. “Never met her. Could be. Anyway, I won’t tell.”
“Okay.” Mona took a deep breath. “I’m part wolf.”
Charlie couldn’t help it. They let out a delighted laugh. “Wolf?”
Mona glared at them. “Yeah,” she said. “Wolf.”
Charlie beamed. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve heard all week.”
“You believe me?”
“Yeah, ‘course!” Believing it was much more fun than not believing it, and measure of fun was how they made most of their judgment calls. “How’s it work?”
Mona perked up. “It’s like this alter ego that comes out sometimes, especially when I’m mad. My wolf side takes over.”
“Knew you couldn’t be so nice all the time.”
Jokingly, Mona raised her hand in claws.
“Look at you,” Charlie said. “Our own little Wolfie.”
Mona smiled. She leaned into Charlie again. “Now you tell me one,” she said.
“What?”
“A secret.”
“Oh, I can’t beat Wolfie.”
“Charlie….”
“Well…” Charlie felt their stomach twist, like right before they jumped off the platform on the high ropes course for the Leap of Faith. “Alright, there is this thing.”
Mona’s face lit up.
Did they really want to do this?
Their tongue was dry and heavy in their mouth. They swallowed.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Mona said, when the quiet stretched like taffy.
“No, it’s….” Charlie ran their fingers along the hard, cracked surface of the fallen oak. “You know how Nate’s a guy.”
“Yeah?”
“Even though some of the counselors, the ones who are gits, they can’t get that through their thick heads.”
“Yeah,” Mona repeated. “He’s trans, he said.”
“Exactly.” Charlie let out a breath. This hadn’t been so hard to say to Nate, because he got it. His parents still thought he was just a really dedicated tomboy, even after he’d cut his own hair in their bathroom and told them he wanted to be called Nate like Big Nate, but it was more than that. It ran deeper. “I don’t really…I don’t feel like a girl.”
“Oh. So are you a boy, too?”
“No, I–“ Charlie shook their head. “I don’t really feel like a boy either. Nate tried it out, calling me he and him. And it was fun, not being a she. I liked it. But it didn’t feel like me either. I’m like a boy, and a girl, and neither? Though I dunno really what being a boy or a girl even means.”
“Whoa,” said Mona, drawing it out. She rubbed her cheek, considering. “That’s so cool.”
“Cool?”
“Have you read the Alanna series?”
Charlie shook their head, thrown. “Uh, no.”
Mona got that talking-about-books spark in her eyes. “They’re some of my favorites of all time. The main character, Alanna, she’s like this kid who wants to become a knight. Except she’s a girl, right, and girls have to go to the convent.”
“Boo.”
“I know. So she pretends to be a boy. And she goes by Alan, at least for the first two books. And I always thought that was super cool—she was both Alanna and Alan at the same time. The book calls her he and she. Except you’re not pretending, which makes it even cooler.”
Charlie frowned. “That’s not really it, though. I’m not switching back and forth to be what I am. I just wanna be me. Like– Like Bowie.”
Mona paused. “Bowie?”
Charlie sighed. “Never mind.”
“No, keep going.”
“It’s like– I don't like being treated like a girl, but I don’t… I don’t wanna be treated like a boy either. It's all bollocks. I just wanna say screw it and be Charlie, so nobody can try and tell me who or how I’m s’posed to be.”
“Is that why you like Charlie better than your real name?”
Charlie felt their shoulders tighten. “It is my real name. I hate my other name.”
“Sorry.” Mona glanced down, chastened. “I guess then…be Charlie? How about… I won’t call you she or he or anything. I’ll just say Charlie. And if I’m talking about your stuff, I’ll say ‘that’s Charlie’s’.”
“You’d do that?”
“Duh,” said Mona. And Christ, she was so fucking earnest, all hush-voiced and wide-eyed and holding Charlie’s arm gently. She said every syllable like it mattered. “It’s not hard. And you care about it, so it’s important.”
Something warm and soft uncurled in Charlie’s chest. “Thanks, Wolfie. That means a lot.”
Mona grinned. “Are you gonna tell everybody else?”
The idea of the other kids laughing or rolling their eyes made their gut churn. The cabin had accepted Nate well enough, bar a few incidents that Nate’s friends had sorted, but this wasn’t as simple as he’s a boy, got it? This was something they didn’t even have a word for. “Mm, I don’t think so. Not yet. Maybe just Astra.”
“Are you scared?”
“No!” The scoff came out slightly too loud, and they snuck a glance towards the counselors’ cabin to make sure nobody meant to come investigate. “I mean, no.”
Mona started to say something, but a yawn interrupted her. She raised a sleepy hand to her mouth.
Charlie suddenly ached to be back beneath their blanket. “Alright, I’m full up on heart-to-hearts tonight, Mo.”
“Aww.” But Mona stood up, offering a hand. They took it. When they were both on their feet, Mona said, “Thanks, Charlie."
“Thank yourself,” Charlie said. They ruffled Mona’s short bob. “Now let’s get in, I’m freezing my bananas off.”
“Your bananas?”
“My bananas,” Charlie agreed, and led her back towards the warm darkness of their cabin.