Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Hi, I'm the new camp counselor?"

David supposed it could've been worse. As far as soul tattoos went, it was certainly better than the people who'd been stuck with something like "where's the bus stop" or "excuse me?" Heck, this was much easier than his first tattoo, which was scrawled in black along the inside of his left wrist and just said, "Uh . . . hi?"

But unfortunately, he worked at a summer camp. And the counselor turnover was rather high.

His friend Julia had insisted that he should just fire the new counselors the second they proved they weren't it and hire someone else, but he'd heard stories about what happened when people tried to force their destinies. Besides, it wasn't a nice thing to do. But that didn't mean his heart didn't flutter when one of his co-counselors left for college or sent him their resignation. And it didn't mean his stomach didn't sink with each new counselor who walked in the door and spoke.

Because some of them had gotten close — very, very close. So close he'd been tempted to wonder if Fate or God or Whatever had made a small typo, because did it really matter if they said "camp" or not, or "I am" instead of "I'm"?

"Hey, Dave." Kyle, still his coworker for another few hours, popped his head in the door to the storage room that served as Campbell's office. "Just wanted to see if the new kid's here yet."

"Hey, I'm the new camp counselor." Kyle had sauntered into his office calm as anything, a giant who seemed unfazed by the buildings, the Quartermaster . . . anything. He was all subdued affability and easy, lazy smiles, with sandy blond hair and the kind of deep caramel tan that made David wince — he clearly didn't wear sunscreen — but was impossible to look away from. He'd been a good counselor, too. Every suggestion was greeted with a lopsided grin and a "sounds fun," every disaster met with the same expression. Whenever David started to feel fidgety and overwhelmed, there'd be a gentle punch on his arm, a warm hand on his shoulder, and that smile that calmed him down and made his heart race at the same time.

He'd liked Kyle. He'd . . . well, he'd been hopeful about Kyle. How important were two little letters, anyway? It wasn't like they changed the meaning, after all. But that hope had lasted just long enough to get a glimpse of his coworker's wrist, where the words "Aren't you in my English class?" decorated his skin in delicate, feminine swirls the icy blue color of his eyes.

"Not yet!" he replied with a smile, shuffling through his small stack of papers. "And I'm not sure when she'll get here. Mr. Campbell didn't have much time to talk this morning."

"Shocking." Kyle flopped down onto the couch against the far wall; it was hard to keep a storage room uncluttered, especially when half of it had been turned into a makeshift office, but David was proud of how well he'd kept it together. When Mr. Campbell came back, everything would be neat and orderly for him. "Pretty sure the only time I saw him was when he hired me."

He coughed, avoiding eye contact. "Well, he has been a bit busy . . ."

Kyle stretched, arching his back in a way that David studiously avoided noticing. "So let's just hope this girl isn't a serial killer, I guess." He rolled over onto his stomach, resting his chin on the arm of the couch to meet David's gaze. "How old is she, again?"

"Ah . . ." He flipped through the application form. "22. Just graduated college."

A long, low whistle. "Not bad."

David knew what he was implying, and he frowned. This wasn't about him. It was about giving Camp Campbell the best staff they could, and there was no point in getting his hopes up, not when 4 years and 2 counselors had already gone by. "I-I appreciate what you're doing, Kyle, but —"

"Fine, fine, I won't push it. I'm just worried about you, Dave. Waiting . . . it sucks." He climbed to his feet, coming around the desk and wrapping his huge arms around David's shoulders. (The fact that Kyle was a very huggy person had been one of the reasons David had been so immediately drawn to him.) "I sometimes think knowing they're out there, that's even worse than not." Kyle squeezed his shoulders, and David wondered if that grinding sound was his bones actually crunching or if he'd imagined it. "I did some stupid things before Maddie, and I just wanna make sure you're taking care of yourself."

"I'm fine." He resisted the urge to melt back against Kyle's chest, gingerly wriggling free and giving him his best Counselor Smile. "I have the best job in the world. That's more than enough. Really," he added when his coworker didn't look convinced. "You don't need to worry, I promise!"

"Yeah, you're right." Kyle ruffled his hair; he was only 3 years older, but something about his size and attitude made David feel like a little kid. "Fuck, I'm just getting sappy because it's my last day." Stepping back, he leaned against the wall, looking out the tiny window near the low ceiling. "Can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm gonna miss this shithole."

David laughed, but before he could respond they were interrupted:

"Hi? I'm the new camp counselor?"

Kyle's head snapped up and toward the door, his blue-gray eyes huge and his mouth dropping open slightly.

David couldn't breathe.

She stood with a backpack slung over one shoulder, dressed in a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and a denim miniskirt. Half her hair was shaved close to her skull, the other half falling to her shoulder in reddish-brown waves. She gave them both an uncertain smile — it must've been alarming to watch two men suddenly have heart attacks — and it was reserved and wry and beautiful. "I'm, uh, in the right place, aren't I? There's a lot of camps on this lake, but the sign said 'Campbell' so I thought . . ."

He cleared his throat and shook his head, trying not to gawk. "Y-yes, of course! I'm sorry, I just — lost my train of thought for a second."

"Oh." The smile dropped from her face and she looked away, scuffing her Converse uneasily along the bedraggled carpet. "So you're the . . . huh. Okay."

David was tempted to pretend he didn't know what she was talking about, but she held out her arm and he saw his own words shining back at him in his messy, slanting scrawl, a startling flash of silver on brown.

She was it.

She . . . she was it?

Not that she wasn't lovely, she was — far more than he deserved, to be sure. And there was a strange, fragile toughness in the way she carried herself, hesitant but defensive, that made him want to give her a hug. (Well, he usually wanted to give people hugs, to be fair. She just looked like she could use one.) But she was watching him guardedly, warily, ready to bolt.

She . . . didn't look very impressed with him. Not that he could blame her, exactly, but he'd expected meeting his soulmate to feel a bit more . . . soulmate-y.

It certainly had the first time.

"Oh my god." The silence was broken by Kyle, who was grinning from one to the other like a proud parent. The smile made David blush, even more so because he suspected Kyle was seriously misreading the situation. "Fucking finally, Dave! Shit, I'm happy I was here for this." He stood, towering over both of them, and held out his hand to her. "Hey, I'm Kyle, the guy you're replacing." He winked and added, "Try not to be too much better than me, I don't wanna look bad."

Her big violet eyes darted between the two of them, but she reluctantly returned his handshake. "Um, Gwen. Hi." Relaxing just a hair, she stepped toward David. "Nice to meet you?"

Feeling a little like he was dreaming, he stood and took her hand, trying as inconspicuously as possible to double-check the words on her wrist. "Hello, Gwen, I'm David!"

She noticed. Pulling her hand back and putting it in her sweatshirt pocket, she bit her lip and looked away. "Okay, I guess we should . . . deal with that." She glanced back at Kyle, who waited for David's nod before giving them both a warm, sly smile.

"Sure, sounds good. I'll be out by the flagpole." He turned with a quick three-fingered wave and left, closing the door behind him. (David blushed to imagine what Kyle expected to happen between them.)

"So." Gwen glanced around before gesturing to the couch. "Can I . . . ?"

"Please do!" He scrambled to take a seat himself, frantically calculating the appropriate distance between them. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable, but he also didn't want to seem aloof. At the same time he knew he had to stop staring but it was important to maintain eye contact . . . Why was this so hard? "Listen, Gwen, I know this is — sudden, but please don't feel any pressure to —"

"I have a boyfriend."

David felt the blood drain from his face. Because of course she did, he wouldn't have expected anything different — except for the fact that his words and handwriting were tattooed on her skin, that was. "Oh. Um."

"It's nothing personal, really," she added quickly, "it's just . . . I don't really believe in this whole 'soulmates' thing, you know? It's a cute superstition, but — I mean, you must know at least a couple people whose soulmates were a disaster, right?"

"R-right." His mother had been one of those people. He didn't understand exactly what'd happened or how, but he hadn't seen his father in years. "So . . ."

She shrugged, biting her lip in a way that he refused to find distracting. "I don't wanna hurt your feelings, 'cause you seem really sweet. But it's like when people thought third nipples meant you were a witch or something, you know? It's just something weird that happens, like an evolutionary glitch people take way too seriously. And I . . . I'm not gonna . . . I don't want you, like, expecting anything. Because it's not." She groaned and rested her head in one hand. "I'm not good at this kinda thing, I'm sorry."

"I get it, Gwen. And really, it's fine. Please don't worry about it." He stood, moving toward the door. Suddenly he needed air, really needed to be somewhere with a breeze and sunshine and lots of green. "Let's go?"

Not bothering to see if she was following, he slipped out of the office and hurried outside.

Chapter Text

"You're kidding me, right?" Kyle kept his voice low; Gwen was in the counselors' cabin, putting her stuff in her room, but she could come back at any minute. "She just said no?"

"N-not in so many words." It wasn't like he didn't understand. He'd heard of people who didn't put stock in soulmates, and after watching what his mom had gone through, he could see why. And it hadn't been a shock that she was seeing someone, because even if she did believe in the tattoos, it wasn't like people didn't have relationships. Heck, he and the counselor before Kyle, a young woman named Beverly, had been something of a — an item, for a while.

It got . . . lonely, waiting.

But David and Bev had had an understanding that if one of them stumbled on their soulmate, whatever they had would dissolve. They were just keeping each other company, and they both knew that.

Maybe it was selfish, but David had always assumed that when he met the person whose words were written on his skin, they'd be — well, interested in him.

"Jesus." Kyle ran a hand through his hair with a loud exhale. "So what now? Are you just gonna . . . like, wait for her to dump the boyfriend or something?" A smirk spread across his face and he leaned in conspiratorially. "I'm not saying we should break them up, but if you wanted to, I could —"

David's face warmed, and he pushed Kyle away. "No, that's . . . thank you, but I'm not going to do anything like that." He shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets and trying to look more casual than he felt. "If she doesn't want anything, she doesn't. And that's okay. It — it doesn't change anything, really."

Except that tiny spark of hope that came alight every time they hired a new counselor. But that was more of an inconvenience than anything. It was probably better this way.

Kyle frowned, glancing back at the counselors' cabin, and David grabbed his wrist. "Please, don't say anything to her. It's fine. I don't want help."

For a second he was worried Kyle was going to storm in there anyway and demand they get together — he'd always been quite the romantic, especially when it came to soulmates — but then he sighed, scrubbing at his forehead with one large hand. "Yeah, okay, Dave. Whatever you say."

"She what?!"

David sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and turning the volume down on his phone. "Julia, please, it's really not —"

"Fucking fuck it's 'really not'!" There was a loud huff on the other end of the phone, and David flopped back onto his bed.

This was going to be a long conversation.

"Okay, so let's go over this bullshit again, Sunshine." Julia kept her voice measured, but he could hear the fury simmering underneath it. "So your new counselor buddy says the words —"

"Yes. And showed me her wrist." Despite the mental gymnastics he'd spent most of the evening trying to pull off, he didn't think there was any way to deny this was his soulmate, and she didn't want anything to do with him.

"So she's it," Julia pressed, waiting for an affirmative noise from David before continuing. "And her name is Gwen . . ."

"Yeah."

There was a brief pause. "You got an address for her or anything? On that application? Maybe a last name, list of allergies, something like that?"

He groaned. "Whatever you're thinking, please stop."

"I'm coming down there," she said immediately, and he heard a frantic scuffling; like he was in the room with her, he could see Julia flitting around her messy bedroom, hunting in the chaos for a suitcase. "You shouldn't be alone —"

"Jules, no —"

"— and I don't even have to see her if you don't want. I mean, I'd be happy to tell her to get her head out of her ass and realize that she's throwing away the best person in the entire universe —"

"Please don't."

"— and she'd have to be a fucking idiot not to fall in love with you —"

"You're not helping."

"— but I can totally just hang out with you. I'll bring some stuff, we'll get high as fuck, maybe we'll light something on fire, it'll be great."

David couldn't help but smile. "I'm working, you know. We're not supposed to . . . do things like that."

Julia scoffed. "Come on, Red. Like you've never done it."

"Lit something on fire?"

"Don't change the subject." Her voice softened, became serious. "I mean it, though. I can be there in like 3 hours. You shouldn't be dealing with this all by yourself."

The genuine concern, the protectiveness in her voice, tugged at something in his chest, and he had to close his eyes against the prickly heat welling up behind them. "I'm —" The words caught in his throat and he took an unsteady breath, sitting up and running a hand through his hair. "I-I'm fine. Really."

"You know the more you say 'really' the less I believe you, right?"

David wanted to argue with her, but it was like something valuable had shaken loose inside him and all of a sudden a lot of things he'd been successfully not thinking about all day were building inside him, and it hurt, he wanted to be understanding and he wanted to be okay, he wanted to be better but he also wanted things to be very very different than they were.

He couldn't keep Jasper here and he couldn't keep Beverly here and he couldn't keep Kyle here and this was just another one, another one who wouldn't stay here and that was fine except it wasn't supposed to work like this. This was supposed to be the exception. This was the person who wasn't supposed to leave, who was literally written in his skin and he couldn't escape her but he couldn't make her want him, he didn't even want to try to do that, he wanted her to do what made her happy, but he'd . . . he'd always thought . . .

Fuck.

"It's not fair." His voice cracked on the last word, and he had to cover his mouth with his free hand to muffle the shuddering, gasping sobs he couldn't hold back anymore, couldn't stop from tearing their way out of his throat and bubbling up from some dark, wounded place deep in his belly. He screwed his eyes shut and rested his forehead on his knees, trying to get enough control of himself to talk. "I-I just — I just want —"

That was as far as he got before his voice collapsed in on itself again, and the only sounds he could make were strangled wet wheezes. He rolled onto his side and curled into a ball, putting the phone on speaker to wrap his arms around himself like he could hold himself together.

"Oh, David." Her voice was like a hug, like a hand rubbing circles on his back, and it didn't stop his tears but it was warm and gentle and he was grateful for that, it eased a bit of the throbbing emptiness in his chest. "I'm so sorry."

It was another minute or two before he could speak again. "I miss him, Julia."

"I do, too."

"I'm tired of this." He sounded like a child, petulant and blubbering, and he should've been embarrassed, would've been if there was any room inside him for feelings besides hurt.

"I know you are."

"C-could . . ." David struggled for breath, sitting up and wiping at his face with his shirt sleeve. "Could you maybe come up and visit? For a few days?"

He could hear her smile as she said, "I've already got my ticket. Should be there around midnight, okay?"

And knowing his best friend was there, that she was willing to fly up from New York just to see him, helped. It didn't fix everything, but it helped. "Tha —" His voice broke again, but he managed to keep from crying. "Thank you."

"I'm not going anywhere, Davey. I love you."

There was a knock on his door, and for a second he thought it might be a camper before he remembered that they wouldn't be here for another two days. "Just a sec, Jules, someone's here."

"Eh, I gotta drive anyway. I'll call you when I get there, all right?"

David quickly ended the call, glancing in the window's reflection and grimacing before going to open the door. He wasn't going to fool anyone, not with his face looking like this.

Gwen hovered awkwardly in the hallway, her hands on her hips and her gaze on the floor. "Hey."

"Um, hi?" Normally he would've been happy to see a coworker outside his door, would've relished the chance to get to know them before camp started for good and everything became a lot more chaotic, but right now he was just tired. And of all people, he really didn't have the energy to deal with her.

"I, uh, just wanted to say goodnight. And . . . you know, thanks for being so cool about — about everything."

It took a lot more willpower than he'd expected to smile, but he wanted Gwen to be happy here, he wanted to be her friend, even. It wasn't her fault that he'd gotten his hopes up, or that he believed in soulmates and she didn't. It wasn't her fault that whatever she was looking for, he wasn't it. And it definitely wasn't her fault that everything about her, from her hippie-punk fashion to her shy half-smile to the way her voice softened when she was nervous, drew him to her, like she'd been hand-formed out of everything he didn't know he'd always wanted. "It's no problem, really. Goodnight." He was about to close the door when she put her hand on the wood, stopping him.

"Why . . ." Gwen paused, drawing her hand back and chewing on one of her fingernails. It shouldn't have been cute. It was. Finally she swallowed and blurted out, "why do you even believe in this whole soulmate thing anyway?"

David glanced down at his watch, fiddling with the thick brown leather strap before deciding this wasn't a conversation he wanted to have now, if ever. "Just a romantic, I guess," he replied instead, giving her a half-shrug and a smile that felt wobbly and weak. "Goodnight, Gwen."

"Wa —" She cut herself off with a nod, stepping back. "Right, of course. Night."

Closing his bedroom door had never before been such a relief. It'd also never felt quite so much like the sealing of a tomb.

Chapter Text

Being friends with Gwen was easier than he'd expected. Hurt less, too.

They talked a bit about her life before coming to the camp, and it struck David like a movie: growing up just outside The City, collecting stories from college that made him blush — and then immediately work on forgetting — and building a life in the middle of Brooklyn. (David wasn't positive where Brooklyn was, exactly, but he'd heard of it!) He ate up every tiny hint about her life, and in return she seemed entertained by what she called his "weird knowledge of useless shit" and camp stories. And even though she'd roll her eyes and tell him that learning how to crochet or whittle were a waste of time, she sat next to him in the evenings, letting him walk her through the steps until she knew enough to help run the activities.

The way she grinned when she finally accomplished something, the way she'd wave the completed whatever in his face and warn him to watch out, because if he wasn't careful she'd be the best counselor at camp . . . those rare moments of genuine enthusiasm dulled from a frozen spike in his ribs to a faint, intermittent sting.

He convinced himself it was getting better. He convinced himself he was basically over it and they were just friends. He was sometimes even able to convince himself that he didn't need a soulmate, that there was someone out there who was better suited for him, who made more sense and who'd understand his love of Camp Campbell and who'd give his chest the same squishy-squeezy-trembly feeling whenever they looked his way.

David was good at convincing himself of things.

So when he found her one sweltering July evening sitting on the ground by the flagpole, glaring down at her phone with glistening eyes, it was easy to convince himself that he was simply concerned for his good friend. It was easy to cock his head to the side and ask "What's wrong?" To lean against the flagpole, to cross his arms across his chest and his legs at the ankles and settle in for a long story, because that was what good friends did.

Gwen sniffed, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand. "It's nothing," she muttered, looking away and shoving her phone in her pocket. "I'll be there in a minute. Go to dinner, it's fine."

Well, what kind of friend would he be if he just left her there? Not a good one, so instead he straightened, holding out his hands to her. "Wanna go for a walk, Gwen?"

She paused, eyes flicking between his eyes and his hands with a hesitant, almost wary look. Finally she took them and let him him pull her to her feet. He let go as soon as she was steady, taking a few steps back for good measure, taking her lead as they meandered along the shore. "It's just stupid shit from home," she finally said, watching their feet. "Not stuff you'll wanna hear about."

"Try me."

"You sure?" When he nodded she sighed. "It's just . . . okay, it's my boyfriend."

David's steps faltered for half a second, but he refused to let it throw him off. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he kept his face and voice as pleasantly neutral as possible, wrestling down the sick jealous spike that jolted through him at the mention of her boyfriend — and the implication that things weren't going well, which was a similar but even more shameful feeling. "Oh."

"He wants to have an open relationship." She laughed bitterly, kicking up a clump of dirt and grass; he bit his tongue and reminded himself to plant more grass seed there in the morning. "Except he says no soulmates. Thinks it'll cause an 'artificially inflated sense of attachment.'"

It was the closest either of them had gotten to mentioning their tattoos since her first day, and the words were a cold lead weight in his stomach. "O-oh."

"It's supposed to be fair because he wouldn't date his soulmate either. Forget the fact that he's never met them. And it's totally just coincidence that this leaves him an entire city of people to fuck all he wants, while I'm not allowed to look at the only cute guy in miles." She snorted, her steps slowing without her seeming to realize it. "I know guys are supposed to be jealous if they love you, but . . . shouldn't he also not want anyone else?" She glanced up at him, her expression more open than he was used to and filled with an almost childish hurt. "If he's gonna say that shit?"

It took David a second to respond; his ears were ringing so loudly with cute that he almost missed what she said after. "Have . . ." His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat before trying again. "Have you told him how you feel?"

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I've tried the whole 'talking about my feelings' shit. But he starts throwing out all these philosophical arguments about man's inherent tendency toward polyamory and the patriarchal roots of the myth of monogamy. It takes too much effort to argue with him when he gets like this. So whatever, it's fine, really."

“Ah.” For a moment they were quiet, their steps crunching through dirt that was strewn with gravel from the road into camp.

“Fuck, I'm sorry.” She sniffled, stepping away from him and wiping at her face with her sleeve. “I didn't mean to — you don't — never mind.”

David had a carefully-crafted mental list of rules, informed by the Employee Handbook and strictly followed for all his campers and cocounselors. Giving anyone at the camp a hug was against virtually all of them; Kyle was one thing, Bev was something very different, and Gwen . . . she required a completely new set of rules, far stricter than anyone he’d ever worked with before.

But darn it, he could never stand watching someone cry.

“Sorry,” she mumbled into his shoulder. Her hands came up to his chest, and he prepared to be shoved away, but her fingers instead dug into his shirt, grabbing fistfuls that tugged at his collar and made it a little hard to breathe. “I'm not . . . I cry when I'm pissed off, I'm not sad or anything, sorry . . ."

Still, she let him hug her. Let him pet her hair like she was a little kid, let him whisper soothing nonsense until her breathing grew less damp and ragged and pitiful.

After a few minutes she pulled away, rubbing at her nose again and glaring at the ground. “I shouldn't have laid that shit in you, sorry. You don't need that.”

He didn't, but he thought she had. “It's fine, Gwen!” he replied, relieved that he sounded almost normal. “These things happen.”

“Not to regular people,” she muttered, backing up a few steps. “God, I feel like such an asshole, fuck . . ."

“Gwen — !”

David lunged forward just as she stumbled over the gentle incline that led to the water. He managed to snag her before she fell, and for a moment they just hovered at the edge of the beach, catching their breath. “Careful,” he said, releasing her arm when he realized his fingers were digging into her skin hard enough to leave bruises.

“Hey.” She grabbed his hands, turning them palm-up so the words “Hi, I'm the new camp counselor?” running across his right wrist in neat, forest-green, round letters.

His watch had slid up when he'd reached for her, and he winced at the messy black scribble, handwriting so familiar it made his chest hurt: “Uh . . . hi?”

He jumped to interrupt her, his throat constricting in panic as he pulled his hands away. “Listen, we should get back . . ."

“What's this?” She tightened her grip on his left hand, letting him tug back the one with her tattoo and tracing the dark letters with her free hand. She looked up at him, her eyes bright and curious. “Have you met —”

“Yes,” David admitted with a sigh. He figured he might as well give her the short version or she'd keep asking. “I went to camp with him as a kid.”

“A kid?” He couldn't blame the surprise in her tone; most people met their soulmates in their teens or later. He knew he and Jasper were . . . unique. “How old were you?”

He smiled despite himself. Also despite himself, his eyes traveled to the small patch of weedy grass a few yards and eleven years away, where a skinny redhead with an attitude problem had somehow made friends with a camper half a year older and infinitely cooler. “We were nine.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “He had light-up shoes, and I was really jealous of them.”

The second the words left his mouth he felt his face heat up. Why had he thought she'd care about that? No one needed to hear him ramble about juvenile nostalgia.

But Gwen was actually smiling, the first time all day. “That's cute.” Her expression dropped as her eyes did, returning to where her fingers skated over the tattoo. “Were you . . . like, did you get along right away?”

"Now since we have so many new faces this year, why don't we all go around and introduce each other? Davey, Jasper, you two start!"

"You literally just said our names. What's the point of an introduction?"

Darla sighed, but smiled down at David. "Because it's a nice thing to do.”

"I'm not nice."

"David!"

"Fine." He rolled his eyes, then turned to Jasper and gave him a sickeningly sweet smile. "Hi Jasper, I'm David!" he exclaimed, telegraphing his sarcasm so it could be read by the counselors all the way across the clearing.

Jasper stared at him, a strange look David wasn’t used to because it wasn’t amusement, exasperation, or dread. "Um . . . hi?" he replied hesitantly, still staring at him in disbelief as he slowly raised his hand, revealing David’s words in bright pink like a neon sunburn.

The fake grin slid off David's face as he reached for Jasper's hand to get a closer look. Reading them was like a punch in the stomach, low and winding. “Oh. Hi.” He couldn’t speak above a whisper, because even a dumb troublemaker like him knew that something momentous was happening, and that he might’ve hecked it all up by being a jerk.

Jasper let out a tiny giggle, and it was an automatic reflex to return his smile. "Hi," he repeated. “You’re not what I expected.” And he had half a second to panic before Jasper reached out and took his hand, holding it like it was the most natural thing in the world. “We’re gonna be an adventure, huh?”

David plucked her hand off his wrist, maybe a little less gently than he'd meant to. The feeling was distracting, tingly and prickly in a way he really didn't need right then. “Weirdly enough, yeah. I was . . . kind of a rotten kid, but he didn't seem to mind.”

“You?”

He shrugged, grinning at the disbelief in her voice. And how weird, that he could talk about Jasper and feel anything close to happy. “We had another friend, Julia. She kept us in line. Mostly.”

Gwen shook her head. “I can't believe it,” she said with a quiet laugh. “That's adorable.”

She'd praised him more this evening than the entire rest of the summer. And as much as he tried not to let that go to his head . . . “I guess we were,” he agreed.

The air thickened, condensed when it'd just begun to lighten. “So . . ." She trailed off, and he winced, knowing what she was going to ask. What Kyle had asked, what Beverly had asked, what his mom and Mr. Campbell and therapists and countless social workers had asked: What happened to him? “What's his name?”

David jumped. “O- . . . oh! He's — um, it was Jasper.”

She didn't ask why he used past tense. “Do you not wanna talk about it anymore?”

He didn't.

Of course he didn't.

There were two people in the world he was willing to talk to about Jasper: one of them was his therapist and one of them had loved Jasp almost as much as he did. Forget painful — it was too personal. Jasper belonged to a hurt intimate place inside David that he didn't like anyone knowing existed, let alone walking around, making themselves at home among all the things that made it hard to sleep at night.

His mouth had other ideas, and it moved fast. “No, it's okay. Unless you're bored."

“Of course not. I went to school for this kinda thing.” She winced. “Not like I see this as a case study or something, it's just — I think we're friends, and — I dunno . . ."

“It's fine, Gwen.” And it wasn't fine, couldn't be fine; it felt like a betrayal and a trick, like he was using one soulmate’s memory to win the sympathy of another, but that wasn't true and it wasn't fair.

He just . . . felt safe talking to her. Like maybe it actually would help the way his therapist said it might.

“He died when we were thirteen,” David blurted out in a cold prickly wave like nausea, because it felt like something was making its way from the confused roiling in his guts and it was either words or vomit and he made the decision before he had the chance to think about it. “Jasper. He, uh, drowned in the lake, out by Spooky Island. This kid — bully, I guess — he made a bet and Jasp took it, stole a canoe in the middle of the night, he didn't even wake me or Julia up, just . . . by himself . . ."

This wasn't coming out right. It didn't make sense the way he wanted it to, it was disjointed and broken and not like a story, but he didn't know how to say all the things he wanted to, to make her get it. That feeling of immeasurable relief the first time they examined each other's wrists, that sense of something beginning, and they didn't have to understand what was beginning or why or how or what it all meant; they'd gotten their first taste of magic and were young enough to just enjoy it without all the doubts and complications. The way it never stopped feeling weird, that rightness, that magic, especially when there were days — a lot of them, even — where it made no sense that such different people fit together like they did, where they clashed over the value of nature and camping and even Pokémon, almost to the point of throwing punches. How every adult who saw them together was bemused, would say, “these two? Really?” like they didn't understand what a good kid like Jasper would want with a troublemaker like Davey. How David was too young to question it then, but as he'd grown up he couldn't help but wonder the same thing, if maybe the universe made a mistake — because Jasper was the best of them, of everyone he'd ever met, and it didn't seem fair sometimes how much David had lucked out.

The feeling of confusion, as they laid sprawled out with Jasper's head on Davey’s stomach and their fingers interlinked, when Jasper would raise up David's wrists and wonder aloud why David had two tattoos, green and vibrant like the forest he hated, and Jasper's left wrist was bare. Why David had a second soulmate, and if he thought the three of them would get along. The pure childlike confidence with which David could reassure him — no anxiety disorder demanding small orange pills every morning, not yet — that of course they would, that no soulmate hooey would matter unless they loved Jasper as much as he did. The unshakeable, thoughtless conviction that everything would be fine, because soulmates meant forever.

How “best friends” had grown warm and speeded up like water coming to a boil, until Jasper's hand in his had made his breath catch — how even the memory of it still did. How he looked at an increasingly-caustic, awkward pimply teenager with messy blond hair and those same silly light-up shoes and been struck dumb by knee-weakening surreal sublime beauty. How for the first few weeks of their last summer together he'd caught himself watching Jasper out of the corner of his eye, how he couldn't stop hounding himself with thoughts of what it might be like to kiss him. How the feeling of finding out Jasper felt the same way had been ticklish and sugary like soda in his chest. How the first time they got up the courage to try it they'd knocked teeth hard enough to make David's ears ring, and how each subsequent attempt had been softer and sweeter until Jasper joked breathlessly that they were pros, they could teach a seminar on this kissing thing and it'd be the first camp activity in years he'd actually enjoy . And how David had had to admit, blushing and stammering, that he wouldn't like that, he wanted these shy fumbling sticky blood-hot evenings all to himself. How Jasper had kissed his nose and promised that he'd never tell a soul what they'd been up to (except Jules, but she didn't count), not unless Davey wanted to. “I've got a reputation anyway,” he'd teased. “Can't let anyone know what a bad influence the camp troublemaker is.”

How those words haunted him years later, kept him awake at night prowling the campgrounds and checking the tents to make sure everyone was asleep.

Because maybe Jasper never would've felt compelled to agree to a stupid bet if David hadn't encouraged him to be more reckless, hadn't convinced Jasper he was brave and invincible.

Maybe he would have at least told his best friends if David hadn't grown increasingly cautious over the years, fretting like a mother hen over pranks he would've led the charge on in earlier summers.

Maybe he wouldn't have drowned if David hadn't distracted him so much with jokes and games and secret kisses during Swimming Camp.

Maybe Jasper would still be alive if David wasn't such a heavy sleeper.

He couldn't tell his still-too-new coworker any of that, but he did anyway. And Gwen couldn't have understood it all, not when his words were so muddled and rushed and thick and damp, but she listened like she did, nodding and looking out over the water and never interrupting as he just kept talking, endless streams of nonsense but she pretended they were important, and her pretending let him pretend that sharing all this helped in any way.

When he finally finished, breathing like he'd been running through the years instead of just recounting them, it was a minute or two before she spoke up, her voice quieter and more hesitant than he'd ever heard it. “Have you ever wondered . . . ?” She trailed off, biting her lip.

And it felt almost wrong, to be talking about Jasper and still marveling at such a simple thing as a lip bite, how wars could be started over a lip bite like that. “Probably.” He'd thought over everything there was to remember about Jasper, combed through the memories and the theories and the could-have-beens until if they were tangible they'd be threadbare and see-through.

She chuckled, a low bitter huff of air that he'd never heard before and didn't exactly want to hear again — not in a context like this — but that was close enough to genuine amusement to make something flutter and rattle in his stomach. “I guess I just . . .” She sounded quiet, nervous, her voice with an oddly hopeful lilt and her eyes carrying something dark and apprehensive. The kind of voice Gregg had when he said Mr. Campbell would find Jasper right away, the kind of eyes Darla had as she wiped at his left wrist with a wet paper towel and increasingly-harsh strokes, the voice and eyes of his mother when she drove up to camp and offered to take him home early, of Jasper’s parents when they told him it wasn’t his fault.

It was the voice and eyes of someone trying to be a rational adult, to comfort a scared, sad little boy and pretend they aren’t scared and sad themselves. David didn’t know what Gwen had to be afraid of, but it was a look he’d practically memorized.

“What if he wasn’t your soulmate?” She flinched as he turned to her, and he couldn’t imagine what his face looked like. “I — I mean maybe there’s someone else, you guys were so young and people fall in love with not-soulmates all the time and maybe . . .”

He realized what she was saying a second before she did, he was pretty sure: Maybe there’s still a chance.

Maybe there’s still a chance that someone’s out there waiting for you.

Another rational adult trying to help. They were always just trying to help.

“Gwen.” David took a deep breath and unclenched his hands, which had curled into fists so tight his fingers ached. “If you care about me at all, please . . . please never say anything like that again.”

“Sorry. I just thought . . .” She trailed off.

“I know.” There wasn’t anything she could’ve possibly thought that hadn’t already run through his mind a thousand times. “Do you notice anything weird about this tattoo?” He couldn’t meet her eyes, so he looked away and thrust his left arm in her general direction.

Still, he could feel her gaze on him, heavy and crackling. He felt it like a physical touch, like her fingers as they closed around his wrist and turned it to the setting sun. “It’s black, but . . .”

“It’s not supposed to be. It . . . didn’t used to be.” David prayed he wouldn’t have to explain that any further, to spell out his heartbreak in letters as tangible as Jasper’s first words on his skin, but he heard a soft intake of breath, the quiet gasp that meant she knew.

Soul tattoos came in literally every color, and they varied as much as skin tone. They sometimes darkened with tanning and freckles and sun-spots, sometimes faded over time — and of course sometimes they didn’t, for all the same unpredictable reasons skin normally did. His second tattoo — the one that belonged to the twilit woman beside him — had its own discoloring, a narrow white line that made the ink bleed and pale into an almost-mustardy yellow along the scar. It wasn’t unheard of for someone with multiple tattoos to have different colors for each; it was uncommon, but not impossible. And it was even less strange to have a black one.

The problem was that Jasper’s tattoo had been green. And being born with a black tattoo was one thing, but a marking that suddenly turned black one morning, when a kid woke up in his tent alone and looked down at his watch and saw that his words, Jasper’s words, his favorite words in the entire world, were no longer the beautiful mossy color that David thought was a perfect match for Jasper’s very essence, his soul . . . when instead the bed next to his was empty and the entire tent was empty and there was nothing but shrieking cicadas and the cold impersonal light of early morning . . .

Was it any wonder that David’s screams had woken the entire camp?

“I knew he was dead before anyone else realized he’d gone missing.” And the counselors, the police, his friends had all tried to convince him that it didn’t mean anything, that he’d been out in the sun a lot more the past few days and it was probably just the pink of his sunburn discoloring it, but he’d known and so had everyone else, even though no one wanted to admit it; they just wanted him to stop sobbing and thrashing because he was a danger to himself and others. More rational people doing the best they could to help.

Sometimes David wondered how he would’ve responded, if he’d been Gregg or Darla or Mr. Campbell. If one of his campers tomorrow morning came up to him with a tear-streaked face and insisted they knew, they knew their soulmate was dead . . .

“Christ.” She didn’t tell him she was sorry. She didn’t tell him it’d be okay. She just did something he’d never anticipated, not twice in one night, and certainly never initiated by her. But the next thing he knew he was enveloped in warmth, her cheek against his shoulder and her arms squeezing his ribs hard enough to stutter his breathing; it was awkward, clumsy in a hard-to-define way that made him think his co-counselor didn’t often give or get hugs. And there was something about that thought, the thought of a little girl who hadn’t grown up with a mom to smother her in affection — or a bright-haired neon eyesore of a best friend who groped for her hand when he got lonely, twined around her like ivy climbing a house and planted damp kisses on her cheek —

It hurt. Even feeling the way he did, it hurt thinking about what it must’ve been like to grow up not learning how to hug, not being held and touched and cuddled so often it became second nature. As hard as it was missing Jasper, the pain like a physical ache sometimes, he’d never felt as vulnerable as the uncertain, skittish bundle of sadness curled up against his chest right then.

And so he tightened his arms around her shoulders, let himself clutch at the worn cotton sweatshirt that was fraying and falling apart, let her awkwardly stroke the nape of his neck with one slightly-shaky hand, let a few indulgent, fat tears leak onto the frizzy strands of her hair.

The shaved side was growing out, he noticed, peach fuzz giving way to fluff that reminded him of a baby duck. The sweatshirt she liked to wear over her counselor’s uniform was getting threadbare as well; things tended to fall apart more quickly at Camp Campbell, and he suspected that by the end of the summer the worn cloth would be removed, put somewhere safe from fire and knives and everything else the camp could throw at its counselors. Her shampoo smelled nice.

He wished he didn’t notice these things. Not ever, but especially not now, not with Jasper’s memory crowding his mind. There shouldn’t be room for those things. Those things didn’t do him any good and just hurt, and David had had enough pain to last a lifetime.

It didn’t matter. He noticed them anyway. And when she pulled away a few minutes later with an embarrassed huff, he noticed their absence even more. “God, I'm sappy tonight,” she muttered, playing with a loose string on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“It's okay.” He was sappy all the time, at least compared to Gwen. “It's been a big day.”

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have thrown all that on you, or made you talk about . . . or anything. That it happened. I'm just really sorry, I guess.” There was dry humor in her voice, the smallest flash of bitter wit that twisted his heart.

He didn't want to say it was okay (and it wouldn't be true, anyway), so he just shrugged, looking out over the water. He loved how the lake turned into a sheet of pink fire in the evenings, rippling with orange and yellow and touches of purple as the sun set. It was beautiful, calm and yet somehow the most vibrant and explosive thing he'd ever seen.

It reminded him of Jasper.

It reminded him of Gwen.

His eyes dropped to the gold-bathed dirt, suddenly feeling a little sick.

“We should get back to dinner before the kids revolt, huh?”

David nodded, having trouble meeting her eyes. “Give me a minute? I just need . . .” He didn't know what he needed. “I need a minute.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Her hand alighted hesitantly on his shoulder, a soft warm weight that disappeared almost immediately, but not before searing through the thin layers of his shirt and vest. “See you in there, David.”

He listened to her footsteps fade away. Listened to the quiet sounds of birds going to sleep and insects waking up. Took a few steps up onto the first dock, listening to the old wood creak and groan under his weight.

Underneath that — underneath it, inside it, around it and through it — he heard splashing, laughter, the harried voices of two young counselors trying to teach the campers how to scuba dive. Right beneath where he was standing, a stupid teenage boy had shoved someone better and more beautiful up against the dock’s thick splintery supports, inexperienced sloppy kisses that were mostly tongue and teeth.

“We’re gonna get in trouble, Davey!”

“You think all this is hooey anyway, don’tcha? Just smile real big at Darla and Gregg and they’ll forgive us.”

David listened to a quiet laugh, one he hadn’t heard in eleven years. He slowly dropped into a crouch, wrapping his arms around his shins and resting his forehead on his knees and listening to voices floating in on the barely-existent waves of Lake Lilac.

“Be quiet or we’ll get caught!”

“S-stop doing that, then!”

This wasn’t like the crush he’d had on Kyle. That was sweet, innocent, wreathed in comforting fantasy that reminded him of the hours he’d spend lolling around on Jasper’s bed, flipping through old magazines and trying to guess who might be “their” mysterious third soulmate. (Jasp had been convinced it would either be Marky Mark or one of the Spice Girls; he was hoping for Posh Spice, but David had always harbored a secret crush on Mel B.)

“Has anyone seen Jasper and Davey? Gregg, where did they — ?”

This wasn’t like whatever he’d had with Beverly, either. That'd been something of a cul-de-sac, where they both knew it wouldn’t go anywhere and when it was over they’d be back where they’d started. It was a way to kill time, to distract himself from the fact that it was his first summer as a Camp Campbell counselor and Jasper was supposed to be there with him.

“I can’t cover for you dorks anymore! Stop sucking face and get back out here!”

“Sorry, Julia . . .”

This wasn’t a crush. It wasn’t friends with benefits. He thought Jasper could forgive those.

“Hey, Davey. One sec.”

His chest hurt.

“What’s wrong?”

He couldn’t breathe.

“You . . . you love me, right? Not just because you have to?”

Everything hurt.

“Of course I do, Jasper.”

Everything felt wrong.

“I could never love anyone as much as you. Not in a million years.”

Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was the wrong one.

“Thanks, Davey. I needed that.”

Jasper deserved better.

Gwen deserved better.

“Y-you know I love you too, right?”

He stood up with a sigh, looking down at the dock like he could see through it to the dumb kids who'd thought soulmates lasted forever and love was easy.

“Because I do. More than anything.”

David lifted his fist to his mouth, pressing it hard against his lips as his body was wracked with a dry sob, a silent, tearless heaving that nearly bent him over double.

That was it. One self-indulgent outpouring of misery, and then he took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut, then straightened up. Rubbed his face with one palm, wiped the few wet salty drops off his fingers and onto the leg of his shorts.

Took another deep breath.

“I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Jasp,” he murmured, adding his own weak voice to the cacophonous sounds of his memories. “And I’m so sorry.”

The dock creaked as he stepped off it, passing through a sudden brief cold snap. A stick crackled under his foot as he returned to the road. A bird shrieked, and the sound woke up a chorus of grasshoppers.

With all those sounds buried under the din of his thoughts, David didn’t have a chance of hearing the whisper-quiet sigh from behind him, the words carried away by a breeze far louder than it was:

“It’s okay, Davey.”

Chapter Text

Gwen starts having strange dreams.

She isn't sure when exactly they begin. She’s never been one for remembering her dreams, so for over a week now she’s just woken up with the vaguest sense of almost-memory: the lapping of water against a boat, the sharp, clean smell of wet vegetation, the echo of a voice too faint to turn into memory. But they're getting increasingly detailed, though not any more comprehensible, and she isn't one for dream interpretation or any of that weird bullshit but she is starting to wonder if her subconscious is trying to tell her something.

It isn't normal to have variations of the same dream every night for days on end, is it?

She asks David about it at breakfast one morning.

“Dreams?” He shrugs, playing with his scrambled egg mush. “I don’t really have dreams.” He falls silent, looking into his orange juice (which is a disturbingly uneven color -- yellow or white in patches, almost clear near the bottom), and she figures he's done talking. After their conversation by the dock, she and David are . . . not more awkward, exactly; their relationship's been uncomfortable ever since they said each other’s soul words. 

But something's shifted, regardless. She doesn't even know how, exactly, but it's impossible to ignore. A low wall's gone up between them, as though he's embarrassed or ashamed of what happened. He acts happier, but it's not a light happiness -- his cheerful attitude seems to sit heavily on his shoulders, bowing his back in a slight, constant hunch that's even more pronounced than when they first met.

“I guess I had some after Jasper died,” he says suddenly, making her jump. “Dreams, I mean. While I was still at camp, before the end of the summer, it was . . .” He lets out a sigh that seems to weigh more than she does. “But they mostly went away when I came home. Or . . . not went away. Changed.”

Gwen's not sure she has the right to ask him to elaborate, but it's the first time in days that the spackled-on Camp Counselor sunshine has cracked. “Changed?”

“They -- nightmares.” His lips tremble almost imperceptibly, and for a moment she's terrified he’ll start crying in the middle of the Mess Hall. “I don’t know why, but at camp I dreamed about Jasper all the time, but . . . they weren’t bad dreams.” He looks up at her, eyes wide and unshuttered. “Happy, I guess. Sometimes they were memories, sometimes it was just like I could feel him . . .” He shakes his head abruptly, smiling a little. “That must sound silly, doesn’t it?”

I could feel him. “No,” she replies, feeling something tug at a distant corner of her mind.

“Well, it was nice. Comforting.” He gives his juice a last wary look before tossing it back, visibly repressing a shudder. “After I returned from camp the dreams became more . . . what you might expect.”

The downing of orange juice is a dismissal, and Gwen knows they're done for now. She stirs her eggs -- which have over the course of ten minutes dissolved into a consistency similar to pudding -- hoping that David won't completely disappear back into his Counselor persona. She likes this, these little moments of honesty. She also likes how he could see the bright side in any situation, his genuine love of camping and nature and these kids, but she likes knowing the guy she sometimes sees isn't the same one he puts on in the morning for the campers. She feels privileged, allowed to know that there's more to David than campe diem.

“They were never bad dreams.” His voice startles her again, and he gives her a small apologetic smile as he scoops up their dishes. “At camp, I mean. I had more dreams about Jasper here than in the entire rest of the year combined, but not nightmares.” He laughs. “Must just be the magic of Camp Campbell!”

“Do you still have them?” she blurts out as he prepared to leave, almost reaching out to touch his wrist before thinking better of it. “The dreams, I mean.”

David shrugs, and she knows for sure their conversation is over. “Not really, no,” he replies, his gaze already roving over the Mess Hall, planning ahead for the day’s activities. “But I guess I don’t sleep all that much anymore, either.”

That night she dreams of something terrible, something that wakes her in the middle of the night with her heart racing and her face wet with tears. She doesn't remember anything -- a burst of color, quicksilver that grows fuzzier the more she tries to pin it down -- but she can't fall asleep again afterward, and spends the rest of the night staring out the window and feeling like there's something she needs to be doing.

In the shower the next morning she hears the faintest wisp of a voice pouring from the showerhead and falling past her ears on the spray of the water. With it an image flashes across her mind: sticks on a shore, scattered almost haphazardly but like they used to be organized into something before being dashed about, and if she concentrates hard enough on it she can see a few shapes, letters barely suggested by the layout of the sticks:

S    y   land

By the time the mental picture fades from her vision, the water is icy and she's shivering, staring at the wet tiles with no idea how much time has passed.

S    y   land.

If this is what her dreams were leading up to, she's disappointed in their sense of drama, because she has no idea what on earth that means. The only thing that comes to mind is “Shitty Land,” which sounds less like a grand prophecy than a terrible theme park. The crappiest place on earth.

“Good morning, Gwen!” David calls, breezing past her fast enough that she's almost spun around in his wake. He's laden with seven large paint cans stacked precariously on top of another, and she's already dreading what they’ll be used for. “I hope you’re ready for a fun day of Scenery Painting Camp!”

“Scenery?” Despite her plan to have as little to do with whatever dumb thing David's come up with, Gwen breaks into a trot to catch up with him. She considers taking some of the cans, but his balance seemed precarious enough without her risking throwing him off. “For Theater Camp?”

“Uhhhh . . . almost!” He wobbles slightly as they approach the Mess Hall, and she hovers a few paces away; he manages to right himself without upsetting the paint, though, and not for the first time she finds herself impressed. For someone who looks like a stretched-out Gumby, he's stronger and less clumsy than she tends to assume. “Mr. Campbell called --” She can hear the sparkles around their boss’s name and resists the urge to roll her eyes, “-- and suggested that it would be a great time to give the buildings around camp a good freshening-up! Investors tend to stop by around this time of year -- from Camp Corp; they’re nice people, you’ll like them a lot -- and we haven’t had a chance to spruce up the camp for a few years now, so I thought . . .”

She tunes him out. So today's going to be another day of Unpaid Labor Camp. The kids will be thrilled.

Gwen lets herself fall behind, watching her co-counselor bounce along without seeming to notice that she isn't right there (though to be fair, there are a lot of paint cans between him and peripheral vision), and, also not for the first time, wonders how in the world she ended up here.

If she hadn’t already been convinced that soulmates were an evolutionary hiccup instead of the wise machinations of fate, the final straw would be that she’s ended up shackled to someone like David Greenwood.

The campers take to painting the Mess Hall surprisingly well, though their affinity for mayhem and bright colors keep David and Gwen running around the building, stopping them from adding their own artistic flourishes to what's supposed to be just plain olive green. Though Gwen's pretty sure, looking at the paint's sickly-dishwater consistency and its alarming safety warnings, they'll be lucky if the color stays up a full month before peeling off in long lead-filled strips.

If this stupid camp kills her she's going to haunt it. Aggressively.

She almost shares this determination with David before catching herself and quickly mumbling something about the activity instead. She has to be careful or she could forget that their friendship is wobbly and tenuous, not as rock-solid as his sunshine makes it seem. He smiles at her like every moment is eternal, would keep stretching forever into golden evenings scented with bonfire smoke and nights where the stars number in the thousands, would then tuck under itself and loop all over again into another blinding sweat-sticky day, like he's living in an effortless Groundhog Day and is genuinely happy about it.

Even when they're both irritated and exhausted and would kill for a snowstorm to bury the camp, something about him always feels easy. Painless. It's a ridiculous fiction for someone who holds as much pain as David, but she can't help but stand a little closer and orient her body toward his, like a flower unconsciously turning toward the sun, because it's easy to do and harder not to.

It's . . . annoying. Another inconvenient blip on the timeline of evolutionary history. Darren would tell her so, if she ever spoke to him about it; he has lots of opinions about soulmates and biology and instincts and cultural delusion. But for the last couple days, she just hasn’t been very interested in hearing about them.

At the moment, the only thing that can capture her attention is that stupid snippet, all that remains of a week's worth of dreams. She catches a glimpse of one of the campers -- someone who arrived for Mystery Camp and was thoroughly unimpressed with the idea of painting a building green, and successfully ducked out of the activity to sit underneath a tree next to the remaining paint cans, apparently “taking inventory” -- and hurries over to her. “Hey, kid?” she says, remembering the camper’s name a split second too late. “I mean, Clayre? Can you do me a favor?”

She doesn't lift her head, but places one hand protectively on the paint can sitting next to her. “I am in the middle of inventorying the remaining paint,” she replies warily, her shoulders tensing like she's preparing to be hit. (Or forced to do actual work.)

Gwen rolls her eyes, bending down to approximate eye level. “Yeah, yeah, I’m not gonna make you do the activity,” she says, waving the idea away with one hand before taking Clayre’s pen, scribbling the strange words on the corner of the camper’s open notebook before standing back up. “What d’ya make of this?”

She frowns, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Is this supposed to be for a mystery you’re writing?” she asks dubiously. “Because if so, it’s not very good.”

“No,” Gwen replies, trying not to sound (or feel) defensive. “I mean, I don’t think so. What does it look like? If it was a word.”

“Probably two words,” Clayre points out, an observation Gwen immediately feels stupid for not making herself. She peers down at the paper, her forehead wrinkling. “Sssssly land? No, that’s too short, hmm . . . Sorry? Sorry, gland . . .”

Gwen bounces on the balls of her feet, trying to will away the buzzing sense of impatience growing in her chest. She hasn’t been able to figure it out all day, after all. Asking a kid to put it together in a few seconds is highly unfair, even if that kid's some sort of Sherlock Holmes wunderkind.

“Slowly, land?” She looks up from the paper with a shrug, carefully tearing off the defiled corner and passing it back to Gwen. “Like for boats maybe?”

“Maybe,” she replies, shoving it in her pocket. Though what the hell that could mean, she has no idea. “Thanks, kid.”

Clayre doesn't say anything, studying Gwen with eyes magnified behind her thick glasses. She has a good detective gaze, Gwen has to admit. Makes her feel like this eleven-year-old knows everything about her. (She tugs the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her wrist, rubbing at her soul mark like she could scrub it away.)

“I’ll mull it over,” she says after a moment, returning her attention to her notebook, which is filled with notes, diagrams, and drawings of things around the camp. “I’m sure you have other things on your mind.”

“Yeah,” Gwen mutters.

No sooner has the word left her mouth than there's an unholy shrieking from behind the Mess Hall and David tears past, drenched in bright red paint (where did it even come from?) and wiping at his eyes. 

“Gweennnnn!”

She sighs and puts the dream out of her mind, crossing the scrubby grass to lead her coworker gingerly back to their cabin.

The waking world needs her, at least for now.

“Okay, campers!” David flashes the loosely-assembled crowd a bright smile, his gaze settling briefly on Gwen before bouncing away. “This afternoon we’re going to have a very careful Rowing Camp! Doesn’t that sound fun?”

She resists the urge to flinch. He hates activities involving the lake, and she wonders if he feels like he can't put it off any longer. She steps forward, settling a hand on his shoulder for strength before turning to the campers. “Listen up, you little brats --” He frowns at her, alarmed, and she ignores him in favor of staring each kid down in turn. “-- there’s a zero tolerance policy on any of you doing something dangerous, so the second David or I see one of you even thinking about pulling some shit, the entire activity is called off and you all get to have Sitting Quietly and Not Having Fun Camp. Got it?”

They all nod, their faces reflecting varying levels of resentment, and Gwen lets out a sigh of relief. This gives David an out, if he needs one. The campers are always doing stupid, dangerous things, so if he feels like things are too much, she can make up an excuse and end the activity.

She resolves to keep an eye on him as they pull the battered rowboats from the supplies shed and set them up by the dock.

“Mr. David?” one of the kids, someone with unruly yellow hair and an unfortunate case of early acne, whose name she couldn’t quite remember, tugs at the leg of David’s shorts. “Are we going out there?” He points to the tree-covered island in the middle of the lake.

Gwen freezes, her expression blank but her mind racing with ways to cancel the activity before it's even started. Can she kick one of them into the water and insist one of the campers did it?

David, however, recovers admirably after a moment, his shocked expression giving way to a friendly grin. “I’m afraid not, Finn! We’re just going to do a circle around the lake.”

“Why?”

His smile seems just a little strained. “We haven’t had the chance to make sure it’s safe for you campers! And until it has a thorough inspection, I don’t want to see any of you near Spooky Island.”

Gwen hears Clayre gasp quietly, and their eyes lock. Finn asks something else, but the words themselves are drowned out in the realization:

Spooky Island.

She helps David lower the first rowboat into the water, ignoring the rest of his speech about water safety. Her mind is buzzing, flashes of memory and dreams and things that might be both, or neither. 

There's something waiting for her at Spooky Island. Either that, or she’s gone completely insane.

And she knows she won't be able to sleep until she finds out which.