Chapter Text
Chloe woke up to the sound of rain beating on metal. It was nearly black outside the bus windows; dark enough that when she tried to make out where they were, all she saw was her face reflected by the exit light. The bus jolted forward hard and then came to an abrupt stop.
“Welcome to Camp Cascade,” the driver's voice crackled through the intercom. There was a collective groan as the speakers shrieked with feedback. “Don’t forget to pick up all your trash when you leave. I’m looking at you, Colin.”
Chloe grabbed her bag and held it against her chest like a shield as she shuffled up the aisle. Victoria Chase--whose only remarkable features were her long legs and legendary temper--cut in front of her, dragging several overstuffed luggage bags. The camp director was waiting outside under an umbrella, waving everyone into a building with cedar shake siding and a tin roof.
“My name is Ms. Perry, it’s nice to meet all of you. This is the lodge,” the director told them as they filed in. “It will be your mess hall, game room, and gathering place. This is the heart of the camp.” She sounded like a proud mother bragging about a child. “You might be homesick at first but I hope you all learn to love it as much as I do.”
Chloe didn’t care how old and grand the camp was--she didn’t want to be there. She had fought her mom for a week, yelling until her throat was raw and her words stopped making sense, but she was packed up and pushed onto the bus anyway. Joyce had told her it was because she needed to go somewhere other than the skate park this summer, but she knew that it had more to do with her mom’s new boyfriend, David.
The main room had a cathedral ceiling and was made entirely of wood. There were a dozen tables with benches that looked older than the building itself and a massive stone hearth that took up a third of the back wall. It smelled strongly of Pinesol and wood-smoke and more faintly of thyme and cooking meat.
“It’s tacky,” Victoria said once the director was out of earshot. She quite literally turned up her nose as she dropped all her bags on the floor for someone else to deal with.
“No way, Vicky, this place is hella nice.” Rachel Amber--Arcadia Bay’s golden girl, and maybe the most beautiful person Chloe had ever seen in real life--walked in dragging a sopping wet and sour-faced Dana Ward behind her. “I look forward to being ax-murdered here.”
Chloe ducked her head and studied her shoes. Rachel was the sort of girl she couldn’t afford getting caught staring at, but it was also hard not to stare.
“Stop! I’m going to have nightmares all summer.” Dana groaned, wringing out her jacket sleeves. “I hear the cabins are infested with jumping spiders.”
“Forget spiders and murderers,” Victoria said, “you should be more worried about what the hard water is going to do to your hair. Or what I’m going to do to you if you ever call me Vicky again.”
Chloe slipped past them, avoiding eye contact. Everyone at Blackwell was careful around Victoria. She was easy to wind up, and although getting her red-faced and spitting vitriol was satisfying, it wasn’t worth the consequences.
Dinner was fast and uncomplicated: stew and rolls that were too hard to pass as edible. Chloe sat with Alyssa, Kate, Warren, and Stella at a table that nobody else seemed to see. Blackwell’s misfit kids always managed to settle somewhere together.
Chloe sat at the far end of the table and listened to their conversation while pushing her spoon around in her bowl. Warren was talking about some robot movie he’d seen with Stella last week. He was a nice enough guy, but the intensity with which he ranted about the most boring shit set Chloe’s teeth on edge. She wished that Trevor and Justin were here. They were the closest thing she had to friends lately.
A counselor with ash-brown hair and a badge that said Becky walked to the center of the room and got everyone’s attention by blowing a bright red lifeguard whistle.
“Welcome to Camp Cascade, everyone.” Her voice had a strong valley girl lilt that Chloe knew everyone would be imitating by tomorrow. “I’m going to separate you by cabin now, okay?” Nobody said anything. “Okay, cool. Jessica Aaron? Hi girl! You’re in Elm.”
It was a long process. Becky tripped over names and stopped every few minutes to hush the boys who were hooting and cat-calling her incessantly. Chloe was completely zoned out by the time her name was called.
“Chloe Price, you’re in goldenrod.”
There was a brief silence after her name was called and Chloe could feel the target on her back before she even heard Victoria’s snide voice.
“Thank god the lesbo isn’t in my cabin.”
The rest of Victoria’s table—all Vortex club members, all idiots—tittered at this.
“Make sure you lock the shower door just in case.” Nathan Prescott, a boy with too much money and too few people telling him “no”. Chloe had heard people describe him as handsome but he had a face that she could only ever see as punchable. How he’d managed to date both Victoria and Rachel in succession was Blackwell’s greatest mystery.
It did give Chloe an idea, though.
Chloe turned to look Victoria in the eye. Like a bird of prey or a rabid dog, Victoria always took that as a challenge. She straightened in her seat and smirked as if she were excited to see what Chloe would counter with.
“Not interested, Vicky. If I wanted Prescott’s sloppy seconds, I’d pick the hot one.” Chloe smiled viciously.
There was a stunned silence, and then the Vortex table dissolved into a mess of poorly concealed laughter. Victoria was seething, her jaw clenched fast in a sneer. Everyone, even nobodies like Chloe, knew about her rivalry with Rachel.
Shortly after transferring to Blackwell, Rachel took Victoria’s place as the drama department's darling, was voted president of the Vortex club, and had Nathan wrapped around her finger—only to unceremoniously dump him weeks later. She had a habit of effortlessly getting, and tossing aside, everything Victoria so openly wanted.
Chloe risked a glance at Rachel to find that she was staring straight at her, mouth quirked into an almost smile. At least she didn’t look upset. Pissing off Victoria was stupid but in a predictable way. She had no idea what Rachel’s anger might feel like. For all their close brushes—glimpses of Rachel picking up from Frank or in the halls--they had never spoken.
After all the cabins were assigned, they were instructed to get into their groups and gather under one of the little laminated signs hanging along the walls. Chloe leaned against the wall under “Goldenrod” and waited. Eventually, Courtney (the more tolerable of Victoria’s two favorite lackeys), Stella, and Alyssa, joined her. Maybe they planned it this way, all the extras in one cabin. They stood in increasingly uncomfortable silence waiting for their fifth to arrive.
Chloe hadn’t been paying much attention when the cabins were assigned; if she had, then she might not have experienced such an unpleasant jolt when she realized Rachel was walking their way.
“Hey ladies,” Rachel said, mimicking Becky’s perky intonation with impressive accuracy, “can’t wait to bond with all of you!”
“Oh my god, I was thinking the same thing!” Courtney said cheerfully, apparently not catching the joke.
“Just so everyone knows, boys are not allowed in the cabins after dark, and I have no problem going to Ms. Perry if one happens to show up,” Stella said, arms crossed defiantly.
Rachel caught Chloe’s eye and grinned.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
***
Goldenrod was just north of the mess hall, along with a dozen other cabins lining the dirt road. The road looped around a grove of trees containing the bathrooms and counselor cabins. Every 20 feet or so there was a tall wood post with a dim pink floodlight. Roughly half of them were flickering and several were burnt out altogether, leaving long dark swaths of road. In the middle of one of those swaths was Goldenrod.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Courtney groaned, and it was easy to see why. It looked like someone had driven into the cabin with a snowplow.
The tin roof was warped and dented, and one of the front windows was covered by a sheet of plywood. A huge rotting tree branch jutted out from between Goldenrod and the neighboring cabin. Chloe assumed it was the culprit.
“Oh good! You guys got the hovel. Price will feel right at home then,” Victoria snipped as she passed by with her group of girls. They were already doting on her and heeling when she stopped, like good little pets.
Chloe ignored her and walked up the rickety front steps. The creak they let out didn’t bode well for her half-baked plan to sneak out at midnight and leg it to the nearest bus station.
There was a set of bunk beds on either side of the room followed by a lone single bed. In the center there was a woven rug, a low wood table painted a rather retro shade of green, and an assortment of mismatched wood and rattan chairs all with cushions the same color as the table. The windows between the bunks were warped and framed by dusty curtains. The back wall was dominated by a long low bookshelf with a dozen ancient board games and a slightly less ancient stereo.
Rachel immediately started poking through the CDs while everyone else squabbled over beds. Chloe looked at them over her shoulder. Diana Ross, Bonnie Tyler, Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell. Things hadn’t been updated in a while. She chose one that Chloe couldn’t quite make out and blew the dust off of the CD slot before popping it in.
Macy Gray’s raspy voice filled the room and Rachel swayed along to it. Chloe didn’t want to get caught staring, but it was impossible to look away. She told herself it was purely anthropological, a rare opportunity to observe certified Blackwell royalty acting like a regular girl. Weak reasoning, given that she didn’t care about Blackwell in general, but it was easier to swallow than the real reason she was so unwilling to take her eyes off Rachel.
Watching Rachel dance made her stomach bunch up in a confusing knot that she didn’t even want to try to detangle. Victoria’s taunts still lingered in the back of her head, and she didn’t want them to be true. Just the thought of Victoria’s smug face if her theory were proven true… Chloe couldn’t stand it.
All she knew for sure was that her skin felt like it was dusted with gunpowder and she suspected that if Rachel were to touch her, she might combust. She pretended to browse the bookshelf, trying to balance herself somewhere between the stab of adrenaline she got from the glimpses of Rachel’s skin and the wash of guilt that followed.
“Guys?” Stella stared them down, raising her eyebrows impatiently.
Rachel turned down the music.
“Where are you sleeping?” Stella asked.
“I need a bottom bunk,” Chloe said, gesturing lamely to her legs, “the top bunks look at least 4 inches shorter. My legs won’t fi—”
“Yeah, well, I sleepwalk so I can’t be on the top bunk unless you want me to fall,” Alyssa said, already setting her clothes out on the bottom bunk of the bed across the room.
“Honestly, I don’t care,” Rachel said moving over to the bunk across from Alyssa. “Top bunk gives me an advantage if someone breaks in to kill us in our sleep. Chloe, do you want to share?”
Her name sounded so natural in Rachel’s mouth, like they had been friends for years.
“Uh, sure.”
Rachel climbed up the ladder and flung the sheets back, freeing them of their neat hospital corners.
“Everyone should probably check for spiders,” she said before shaking the pillow out of the case.
Courtney’s eyes went wide and she jumped up off her bed. “Wait, really?”
“We’re in the woods, Courtney,” Rachel said in a soothing voice, “that’s their home turf.”
“Are they poisonous?” Courtney asked, sounding more distressed.
“No way, totally harmless,” Rachel replied. “You just go bald if they bite you.”
Courtney ripped her pillow out of its case and Chloe had to stifle a laugh when a ball of lint rolled out, sending Courtney into hysterics.
***
The next morning, Chloe woke up before the sun. Arming herself with her shower supplies and one of her precious few cigarettes, she crept out as quietly as she could. The camp looked sunken and blue in the low light, every cabin like a dollhouse dropped to the bottom of a murky swimming pool. The streetlamps cast dim spheres of light, already failing to compete with the dawn. Chloe liked catching them switching off for the day; it seemed like good luck.
The bathroom’s fluorescent lights flickered with moths that slammed into them relentlessly. The walls and ceiling were whitewashed, an attempt to look quaint and homey that only succeeded in highlighting the dozens of jumping spiders. Chloe wasn’t particularly afraid of spiders, but it was still unsettling to feel 800 pin-prick eyes follow her into the shower stall.
Chloe pulled the curtain closed and hoisted herself onto the small wooden ledge inside. She cranked open the tiny rectangular window near the ceiling and lit a cigarette. The pamphlet had been clear about the camp’s drug and tobacco policy. Anyone caught with cigarettes would earn a strike, and they only gave you two strikes. That threat wasn’t enough to deter Chloe from sneaking a few packs in. At least if they sent her home, she could spend the summer the way she wanted—alone and stoned out of her mind.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket and her hand flew to it immediately. It was a reflex, leftover from when Max wasn’t icing her out.
I had a dream about you last night ;)
Fucking Eliot. A wave of nausea hit her along with the unwelcome thoughts his name conjured up. The floral couch in his basement. The stolen bottle of Gordon’s. Him panting over her with his sweaty stomach sealing itself against hers. She knew it wasn’t fair; he had no way of knowing how much that night repulsed her, but after a month of unanswered messages, he should have been getting the hint.
She snapped the phone closed and stubbed out her cigarette on the windowsill.
The shower handle was rusted and required two hands to turn. The pipes groaned and creaked for a moment before the water came hissing and spitting out of the showerhead. She undressed, throwing her clothes in a heap on the bench, and stepped under the stream. The water pressure was terrible but the heat helped loosen the stress binding her shoulders.
She was just pulling her jeans back on when she heard the steps squeak outside and then the door opening. Bright, excited girl voices bounced off the rafters and made Chloe bristle.
“Okay, so you just have to tell me everything that went down in Goldenrod!” Victoria’s voice was instantly recognizable. It had a distinctively snobbish, upturned quality to it.
“Uh, nothing happened.” That was definitely Rachel. “Courtney nearly pissed herself over a lint ball.”
“Stop!” Courtney whined. “I thought it was one of those spiders that make you bald!”
“What the hell are you even talking about?” A fourth voice, maybe Taylor.
Chloe didn’t want to leave while they were all out there so she’d have to time her exit for when they were in the showers. It would be a bonus to hear Courtney’s reaction when she finally noticed the jumping spiders covering the bathroom.
“What about Price?” Victoria prodded. “Did she do anything gross? Make a move on you?”
“Mhm, totally. Stole the underwear straight off my ass.”
“Ew, stop!” Courtney squeaked. “She was, like, drooling over you while you were dancing.”
“Really?” Rachel sounded like she didn’t believe it.
Chloe felt like she might faint.
“Yeah. It was, like, way gross.”
“You should ask for a transfer,” Victoria said. “Seriously, what if she tries to like, touch you in your sleep, or collect a lock of your hair?”
“I wouldn’t blame her,” Rachel’s voice moved further away, toward the open stalls. “I’m adorable when I sleep, and have you seen how shiny my hair is?”
Chloe waited for the sound of the girls’ showers to start running before pulling back the curtain and darting out the door.