Chapter Text
Mary was an exceptionally patient woman. She had to be; it was part and parcel of being an elementary school teacher. Over the years, she had worked with kids of all ages, but the elementary school crowd always won her heart, mostly because the little rascals were just so adorable.
Ryland was an absolute sweetheart. She didn't teach his grade during the day, since the second-graders were handled by another coworker, but he was a joy during science club activities. A remarkably bright kid, though quite easy to tick off, especially whenever anyone dared to contradict him. He got along wonderfully with the principal's daughter, though Mary strongly suspected Eva had dragged him into the club by his ear.
Thump.
Mary let her mind drift back to what had happened that morning. The club kids had been arguing fiercely. News had just broken that DuBois and Shapiro had woken up terribly sick to their stomachs and wouldn't be able to make the trip to camp. Mary had been busy tying up the final transportation loose ends, so she only caught bits and pieces of the squabble; nonetheless, the sudden absence of those two children had visibly rattled Eva. Mary couldn't understand why that girl was so hopelessly fixated on the school winning the competition at all costs. Could it be the upcoming accreditation review? Even if it was, she was far too young to carry that kind of weight. At the end of the day, she was still just a little girl.
Thump.
Mary remembered the kids bickering in the lab around eight in the morning. By first recess, she had spotted Eva cornering Ryland in the hallway. A sudden noise tore her attention away, but when she looked back, Eva stood completely alone. All that echoed down the hall were frantic footsteps; the boy must have bolted off somewhere. Eva, despite her tender age, had always carried an unnerving, solemn composure; yet right then, she was staring in the direction the blond boy had vanished with a conflicted, almost wounded expression.
Thump.
Around noon, Eva had marched straight into Mary’s office while the teacher was reviewing registration packets for the campers. With a serenity no child ought to possess, the girl announced that another student would be stepping in.
“Grace. Ryland Grace,” the redhead stated with absolute composure.
“Grace? Honey, don't you think he's a little young for a week-long sleepaway camp? The other kids are two grades ahead of him; I doubt he'll feel very comfortable around the older kids,” Mary recalled objecting.
“Grace wants to go. He said he wanted to help however he could and prove he isn't a coward.”
It wasn't Mary's place to judge a child's motivations. Still, standard protocol was protocol, so she asked for a signed consent slip from Ryland’s legal guardian before he could be enrolled. Eva pushed back immediately, explaining that since he had only volunteered that very morning, she didn't have the paperwork on hand, but swore she would track it down herself right after classes. That would be well after the passenger van had already hit the road; taking a child without a guardian's written authorization would be wildly unprofessional. The girl relentlessly insisted she would handle the paperwork herself and that her father, as the principal, could sign a temporary proxy slip in the meantime.
“I’d like to speak with Ryland first.” Something smelled utterly fishy about the whole arrangement, and the only sensible way to clear the air was hearing it straight from him. In fact, it made zero sense that Ryland wasn't standing right there, loudly boasting about wanting to compete.
“He can't talk right now.”
“And why is that?”
“He's asleep. We watched... a very boring documentary in club, and he knocked out. He told us not to wake him up or he'd get carsick on the drive.”
Thump.
Mary snapped back to the present and frowned. Those dull, repetitive thuds were completely shattering her concentration. Ryland was an angel of a boy, but right now he had been awake for three whole hours past the moment she told him to go to bed. When she went to check on him, she had found him standing smack in the center of the room: a bedsheet pinned clumsily over part of the window, with paint jars and scraps of paper strewn across the entire floor. He hadn't even washed his face since the last time they spoke! He kept swearing he had made a friend and promised he would clean up later, but that still didn't explain where those thumps were coming from!
Thump.
Mary let out a sharp gasp when she heard another impact strike right outside the glass. The blond boy darted over immediately and snatched up a piece of paper from outside. She knitted her brows and poked her head out to investigate. The window frame was heavily smeared with paint... and the culprit was a kid leaning out of the cabin directly across the clearing. The frame of the neighboring window wasn't quite as colorful as theirs, but it was thoroughly soaked. The shredded latex scraps scattered across the grass revealed that the pair had been sending messages back and forth via water balloons. Highly creative, but a dreadful mess to clean up.
“All right, young man! That is quite enough chucking balloons at the neighbor, and you are going to go wash yourself this instant! You will sleep in the adjoining bedroom, and first thing tomorrow morning, you are marching right back in here to clean this entire mess up!” She slammed the window shut and yanked down the soiled sheet.
“Aaw, but Rocky and I were right in the middle of an important conversation!” the blond boy protested, practically vibrating with excitement. Mary knew the boy didn't have many friends and she had privately worried he would end up isolated, especially after his teammates couldn't make it to camp. She felt terribly guilty seeing the poor kid stuck out here alone; even though she was keeping him company, it simply wasn't the same as having another child around.
Mary mulled it over for a long moment before finally offering him a walkie-talkie to talk with the other boy, strictly on the condition that he scrub down immediately and promise not to stay up late. She could have sworn the kid’s eyes sparkled with a brand-new light before he tore off toward the bathroom.
Ryland was thrilled. He had assumed he would spend the whole week cooped up alone with Mary, but now he had a friend! Well, he figured he was allowed to call him a friend; after all, the other kid had explicitly told him only his friends called him Rocky.
Rocky was ten years old and in his final year of elementary school. Ten. His age was already double digits: he was practically a grown-up. Just like Ryland, he had traveled to represent his school in the tournament, though he probably actually knew what he was getting into. Rocky loved building contraptions and took it for granted that he was leagues smarter than Ryland. Besides that, he wouldn't stop bringing up someone named Adrian and talking about how much he missed him. His school was in an entirely different country, so he spoke with a peculiar accent and his English came out rather clumsy; he gave the distinct impression of being much farther away from home than Ryland.
They had been chatting back and forth using the balloons for nearly two hours. Ryland had honed his aim quite a bit, but the system proved rather sluggish for both of them. Luckily, Mary had handed over the walkie-talkies. True to his word, Ryland had washed his face and changed into fresh pajamas, and now he had spent an hour curled up in the second bedroom chatting away with the boy across the lawn.
“I think I'm going to sleep now. I'm wiped out.” Ryland let out a cavernous yawn. As much as he wanted to keep talking, exhaustion was finally overtaking him.
“You have schedule of baby. It barely midnight. Stay little more,” Rocky urged.
“Won't your cabin mates get mad that you're talking to me this late?”
“They not here.”
“Are you alone?”. A dense silence settled over the speaker. Rocky was still on the line; the blond kid could hear the rustle of sheets as the boy shifted around.
“If you go sleep... can you leave talkie on near you?” Throughout the night, Rocky had acted pushy, bouncy, and demanding, grilling Ryland with endless questions; but with that single request, all his bluster vanished, leaving him sounding fragile and unusually small.
“Are you trying to record my snoring or something?”
“Just want hear you breathe while sleep...”
“Okay, that’s super weird.”
“Please. Mean very much to me...” Ryland could have sworn he heard a faint sniffle on the line. He would feel utterly awful if he brought his brand-new buddy to tears, so he caved. He didn't want to admit it out loud, but listening to the gentle rustling of the other kid tossing in bed brought him an odd sense of peace, a quiet assurance that neither of them was truly adrift in the dark. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, Ryland was buzzing with nervous anticipation. He was finally going to meet Rocky face to face! The night before, they had promised each other they would head to the opening event together. So he wolfed down the breakfast Mary made him, threw on his clothes, and dashed outside to wait in the clearing between their two cabins. Hands jammed into his pockets, glasses perched on his nose, he rocked back and forth on his heels with fidgety excitement. He had deliberately hunted down his nerdiest tee to establish intellectual dominance and show he was exceptionally clever. He was worried he might have shown up late after struggling to drag himself out of bed, but Rocky didn't seem to be around yet.
“You late.” Ryland’s soul practically shot right out of his chest. A boy slightly taller than him, his skin dotted with moles and doodles of pen ink, had materialized directly behind his back. He had black hair styled into a slight pompadour, dark brown eyes, and wore glasses of his own. "Bad, bad, bad," the boy added, shaking his head with aggressive rhythm.
Rocky had a habit of repeating words whenever he wanted to add emphasis. According to him, there was no deep reason behind it; he just liked the way it sounded. A sudden wave of shyness seized Ryland by the throat: standing right before him was his new friend, who didn't just attend another school, but lived in an entire country clear across the world. It was wild! They broke the ice by laughing about the water balloons and paint splatters from the night before. It took a minute or two, but Grace gradually relaxed around Rocky, found his footing, and together they made their way down the trail toward the main campfire circle for the first activity.
The opening trial involved scouring the campgrounds for tiny pebbles painted crimson: Astrophages. The camp director, Irina Petrova, announced that everyone had to team up in squads of two or three, and whichever crew amassed the largest pile of stones would win a prize. The obvious goal was to encourage students to mingle with other delegations, though it surprised no one when most kids immediately grouped up with their usual peers. At least Ryland had Rocky, even if he still caught himself wondering where the rest of the boy's cabin mates had disappeared to; he decided not to poke the bear; the subject had clearly struck a nerve the night before.
Petrova briefly projected a map marked with various cryptic clues before shutting the projector off. A few kids managed to scribble quick sketches on loose paper. Ryland barely held a foggy grasp of the camp landmarks, hopelessly disoriented by the sheer size of the grounds. Rocky, however, insisted he had committed every detail to memory down to the millimeter, grabbing Ryland by the hand to steer him straight to their first target: a massive, turquoise-streaked boulder perched in the middle of a willow-ringed pond. According to the older boy, that spot held the greatest concentration of pebbles.
Both dropped to their knees along the bank to search, and the blond boy's face lit up. There were dozens of them! He unzipped his backpack and began shoveling scarlet stones inside before any other groups could reach the water. When he turned around to check Rocky’s haul, however, he froze: Rocky was picking up a stone, inspecting it against the sunlight with a severe scowl, and tossing it right back into the dirt. A messy heap of ordinary and crimson pebbles sat scrambled at his feet.
“What are you doing?” Ryland asked, hurrying over to scoop up the samples his partner had rejected.
“That lady lied to us. Here is zero red rocks,” Rocky declared, visibly annoyed.
“What are you talking about? You have a whole pile right here!”
“No, those are gray. Have no paint.”
Ryland blinked, looking back and forth between the brilliant red stones tucked inside his pack and the pebbles his friend was trampling into the mud. Every single one of them was unmistakably crimson. Yet no matter how hard he pressed the issue, Rocky remained stubbornly adamant that they were dull gray basalt. Ryland was just beginning to suspect his new companion had some form of color blindness, but before he could put the hypothesis into words, a sharp snap tore through the brush behind them.
Something tore through the leaves at breakneck speed and plunged into the pond, instantly tinting the surface with a dark crimson cloud.
“Is that... blood?”