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“Alright, I think that’s the last of it-” Jen swiped the net through the lake one more time for good measure, “-Who even knew one lake could have so much junk in it?”
The merfolk who was sitting over on the edge of the dock crossed her arms. “Hey! Watch your language.”
“Oh-” Jen tried her best to smile in response. It was hard to remember that while at Lumberjanes camp, certain words or names of famous historical women, for some reason, were just as serious as saying certain other four-letter words. “Sorry about that.”
The merfolk rolled their eyes, but Jen didn’t feel too bad about it. She wasn’t here to make friends with every creature who lived in the lake, she was just here to help keep it clean. And earn that Clean a Fish (Veganly!) Badge while she was at it.
She hummed as she stared out into the bright, clean lake. The lake at camp was one of the cleanest she’d ever seen, just shy of one she saw during a field trip a few years ago. It was so clean that if you looked off the edge of the dock, you’d see the bottom of it, rather than murky water.
Jen liked that. Swimming in lakes was fun, but only when you could look down and see that yes, it was just seaweed rather than some sort of underwater creature. At least, that was her opinion.
Or, of course, you could see something shiny, something golden, glint at the bottom of the lake, too. That was always nice.
Wait.
What?
Jen squinted, leaning in to try catching a good look without the sun getting in her eyes. No, there was definitely something down there.
Well. This seemed exactly like the sort of thing that would lead her face-to-face with fighting some kind of gigantic monster, for… some reason or another. Usually it was her girls who got into these sorts of messes, though, not her .
...She was supposed to clean the lake anyways.
Jen leaned her net up against a convenient tree, and stretched a little before taking her shoes off, cautiously stepping into the lake.
It wasn’t too far out, the glint - if she was careful, she probably wouldn’t even get her uniform wet. That would be nice.
Nope. Wrong. One thought-that-was-careful step, and the hem of her skirt was in the lake. That was going to be a pain later, but now that was settled, she might as well keep going.
When she finally got to it, she had to fish it out of the lake to actually see what it was - the calm waves rippled in a way that made it hard to see what was down there, clean lake or no.
It wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t slippery. There seemed to be some parts that were supposed to move…?
Jen took a good look at it once she was able to pick it up. It shone again in the sun proper this time.
A watch. An old-fashioned watch, with a shiny metal back, and plastic hands on the face of it, and roman numerals instead of numbers.
Interesting.
Despite her better judgements (God, she would have flipped if she saw any of the Roanokes do this,) she fiddled with it. It felt nice in her hands, and made a clicking sound as she spun the minute hand around.
Nothing really seemed to happen. Perhaps, for the first time this summer, something normal had happened to her. A tad unusual, sure, but still grounded in some kind of reality.
As she walked back to the shore, she thought of all the things she could use it for. Maybe the watch could still work, after a bit of TLC and a quick trip to ask Jo if that’d work? If not, Jen was looking for a new thing to keep as a fidget. Oooh, or maybe she could turn this into a compass…
She slipped her shoes back on, and looked down to see just how bad her skirt had gotten-
And it was spotless.
It was as if she hadn’t stepped into the water at all. It was as dry as it was when she’d taken it out of the camp laundry that morning.
Peculiar, she thought, as she collected the garbage she had waiting, hauling it back to camp.
Very peculiar.
She really started to figure it out when she took a look at it with Jo.
“Well, what’s so weird about it, do you think?” Jo asked, watching as Jen continued to fiddle with the minute hand.
“I don’t know, it just- seems like something isn’t right-” Jen was about to say something more, before Jo cut her off again.
“Well, what’s so weird about it, do you think?”
Jen frowned. Had she meant to repeat herself? No, Jo only did that when someone asked her to.
She turned the minute hand back again. A small experiment.
Jo leaned in the same way she did before. “Well, what’s so weird about it, do you think?”
“Oh my Madeleine L'Engle,” Jen said, “This thing turns back time.”
Jo’s eyebrows shot up. “Dang. Do you think it would work outside of camp, or is this just more time-weird on top of our already time-weird?”
“I… don’t know.” Jen stared at it a little longer. She hadn’t even figured out what the hour hand did yet, let alone anything else. “I think… I’m going to hold on to this for now. And then tell Rosie about it, of course.”
Jo smiled. “Riiiight. Sounds great, Jen! I’m super proud of you for doing the right thing. ”
“What are you-” Jen frowned. “Was that sarcasm?”
“What?” Jo just kept smiling, and shrugged dramatically. “Me? Sarcastic? Never. I’m just telling you how onboard I am with how you’re totally going to turn this in to Rosie rather than keep it to yourself! Very noble. ”
Jen shook her head. “No, I- I’m definitely giving this to Rosie. I’m just holding onto it for now until I can find a time to give it to her that wouldn’t disrupt… any other plans she has.”
Jo’s tone didn’t change. “If you say so!”
She did swear that she’d turn it in. Of course she would! Why wouldn’t she? This sort of thing seemed like something that would prove to be ridiculously useful in day to day life at camp, but there had to be some kind of catch, right? Best to get rid of it before anything had a chance to happen.
But… that wouldn’t stop her from fixing up a few things here or there. Just for today.
For example, it was helpful to give April and Barney that heads up - otherwise, they would have tripped over Marigold, and that ridiculously big tray of cupcakes they had baked together would have been ruined! Completely ruined!
Or, what could have been even worse, Molly was about to say something that Mal would have completely misinterpreted that one time! Who knew what would have happened if Jen just… let that happen? Nobody would, now that she’d fixed it all up!
And Ripley… oh, Ripley.
Ripley was… disaster prone.
There was a reason that kid was almost always covered in a handful of band-aids at any given time. “ JEN WATCH THIS! ” She’d say, or “ JEN CHECK THIS OUT! ” and occasionally a “ JEN LOOK LOOK LOOK! ” Right before slamming her head into the branch of a tree, or tripping over her own untied shoelaces, or nearly giving herself a papercut.
Usually, Jen could only swoop in to the rescue about half the time. But with this? She had all the time in the world, and Ripley didn’t have a scratch on her.
Finally, she was calm enough to go on a peaceful nature walk, without any worries that Ripley would get some kind of poison ivy/mosquito bite/werewolf bite/oh goodness some awful combination of the three.
“Jen look what I found!” Ripley held up a stick a little too close to Jen’s face. A singular ant crawled around on it. “Isn’t it neat?”
Jen smiled. Today was a good day, one where she wasn’t bothered to have a bug so close to her face. “Yes, it is! I’ll bet it’s from a colony near here.”
Ripley’s eyes sparkled. “I bet I could find it. I bet you two nickels!”
“Wouldn’t that be a dime?” Jen tried not to laugh. “Also, I think it says somewhere in the Lumberjanes manual that I’m not allowed to make money bets with campers. Sorry.”
“Well,” Ripley said, already searching around, “We just don’t have to tell Rosie. It’ll be like in the… thing where people couldn’t trade alcohol. But I wouldn’t have to be 21. You won’t have to be 21, either.”
“No,” Jen shook her head, “Even if we don’t tell Rosie, it’s still against the rules.”
“Okay…” Ripley hopped over a branch, instead of tripping over it, thanks to some quick-thinking time work on Jen’s part, “But if Rosie doesn’t know, nobody could do anything about us breaking a rule. We wouldn’t get moose stables or anything.”
“I mean, sure, there wouldn’t be consequences…” Dang, Ripley was smart, Jen thought to herself, “But wouldn’t you feel bad?”
Ripley gave Jen a blank look, before answering. “No.”
And with that, she dropped the ant-stick, and promptly started to climb an interesting tree.
Jen watched carefully as Ripley climbed up the tree. Trees were something Ripley was good at getting up, but pretty bad at getting down, just like all the magical kittens she’d summoned up at the start of the summer.
But no matter what, Ripley would be fine. Even as usual, a tumble from a tree wasn’t enough to do much to Ripley aside from a short cry. This time, though, Jen had the power of time on her side. Like some kind of superhero.
“Be careful up there!” She shouted up, just in case.
“I am!” Ripley said, climbing up from one branch to another.
Just as sudden as she’d said it, a branch snapped.
Instinctively, Jen quickly turned back time.
“Ripley!” She shouted up the tree. “Get down from there, or- choose another branch, or-”
“I’m fine!” Ripley said, right before-
Snap.
Rewind. Try again.
Maybe she could figure out some way to catch Ripley? But the fall was so high up, and even doing that would risk Ripley getting hurt by hitting a branch on the way down, and-
Snap.
Rewind. Try again.
She wasn’t running out of time by any meaning of the word, but Jen still felt like she didn’t have anywhere near enough of it to fix this.
She stared down at the watch in her hands. At the plastic minute and hour hand on the face of it.
She took a deep breath, and started to rewind the hour hand, as her vision got dizzy.
“ JEN! ”
Jen wobbled a little. She was trying to get up, but her face was on the ground, her hands hurt, and her knees were covered in dirt.
Normally, she would have been able to get up just fine from something like this - she was Jen, she was a camp counselor at a camp for hardcore lady-types. But she wasn’t a hardcore lady-type right now. Right now, she was six, and she was in her backyard.
She turned over one of her hands to look at it. There was blood, and dirt, and something about those two things together made tears well up in her eyes.
“Oh, no, no, no-” Her brother was there. In one quick sprint, he ran up next to her, crouching down a little to look. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Jen croaked out. She looked around on the ground. “I think- I think I swallowed a tooth.”
Her brother squinted a little. “Open your mouth?” He hmm’d and haa’d at her grin. “Yup! You’re gonna get a nickel from the tooth fairy. Lucky.”
Jen just cried even more. You weren’t supposed to swallow teeth. You weren’t supposed to go climbing too high in the tree in the backyard, she knew that.
“Wait, don’t cry-” Her brother looked around. Their mom was still at work, he was supposed to be looking after her. He leaned in a little more, holding out his hand. “Let’s wash up and then I’ll get you some ice cream from the freezer. Deal?”
Jen hesitated. They weren’t allowed to have ice cream before dinner. But also, it sounded like a very good treat right now, so…
“Okay.” She took his hand, and wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand. “Thanks.”
“Of course!” Her brother smiled now, the cheesy kind of grin that made Jen want to hit him with a pillow. “I’m the best brother in the world!”
This time, though, there was no pillow for Jen to attack her brother with. So she smiled, too.
“ JEN! ”
Jen’s focus snapped back to reality. The delicate pieces of metal and plastic that put the watch in her hands together had broken, somehow - all the parts looked like they never fit together in the first place.
But her attention wasn’t focused on that. It was on Ripley, who was on the forest floor, whose knee was scraped with a bright red, and who had tears in her eyes.
She tucked the watch into her pocket, no matter how much she wanted to toss it aside, onto the ground - she still had standards. It would find its rightful place in a recycling bin back at camp.
And now, she had ran over to Ripley, doing her best to check the injury.
Jen nodded. “It’s just a scrape,” She said, putting a hand on Ripley’s shoulder. “You’re going to be okay.”
Ripley nodded slowly, still shaking a little, like a baby deer that had just accidentally fallen off-balance. “Sorry.”
“You don’t need to say sorry.” Jen helped her back up, and she let Ripley lean on her a little bit, so she wouldn’t have to put her full weight on the leg that got hurt the most. “Let’s bring you over to the camp nurse to get cleaned up. Does that sound good?”
“Yeah.” Ripley nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that sounds really good. Can you get me Mr. Sparkles after…? I miss him. His tears heal wounds.”
“Sure, I’ll get him while you wait there.” Jen kept leading her, and when she looked down, she saw just the hint of a smile from Ripley before she got a surprise-attack hug from her.
“Thanks, Jen,” Ripley said, squeezing her a little too tight.
“Of course,” She said, smiling too. “Anytime.”