Chapter Text
“C’mon Gwen! We’re gonna be laaaate!” Gayle whined, her corkscrew curls swinging wildly as she ran around the room, stuffing things haphazardly into a backpack that was almost bigger than she was, and already full to almost-bursting besides.
Gwendolyn chuckled, tucking her auburn hair behind her ear as she watched her best friend scramble around.
“I’ve been ready since last night,” she pointed out. “So I don’t know why you’re blaming me.”
Gayle made a tsk-ing noise, now overturning a pile of blankets and pillows on a recliner, trying to find something.
“Are you looking for these?” Gwen held up a pair of sturdy used-to-be-white runners, mud stained laces in a knotted mess.
“Yes! How long have you had them?!” Gayle snatched the shoes and shoved her feet into them.
Gwen just shook her head, grinning at her friend.
She glanced around the room, double checking that neither of them had forgotten anything. The large room was superficially split with a thick green curtain, a queen size bed on each side of the dividing fabric. Gwen’s side was more or less neatly organized, and Gayle’s was a font of barely contained chaos. It did look like they had everything for their camping trip, though.
Gayle almost fell over as she swung her pack over her shoulder, and Gwen snorted in amusement, grabbing her own large backpack from where it was sitting next to the door.
“C’mon, slowpoke. Let’s go. We don’t want to keep the rest of the girls waiting.”
She opened the door that led down from the loft and into the rest of the house, grabbing her keys from the hook beside the exterior door.
“I still say we should take my car,” Gayle grumbled, trailing a few feet behind Gwen.
Gwen rolled her eyes. “I barely fit in that tin-can,” she said. “And that’s before we get the packs, tent, and camping stove in there.” She pat the hood of Gayle’s little blue Kia fondly as she walked past it, unlocking her own SUV with the click of a button. “Having long legs has its disadvantages, you know.”
It was Gayle’s turn to roll her eyes, elbowing her friend as she popped the trunk on the SUV. “You know where you can shove that?”
“Directly up my ass?”
“Exactly! How’d you know?”
Gwen snorted, swinging her pack into the trunk. “Shut up and come help me get the tent.”
They went back into the house a few more times, loading the SUV with everything else they needed for a long weekend of camping on Vancouver Island before buckling themselves into the front seats.
“I get to pick the music,” Gayle announced imperiously, clicking through the car’s menu to hook her phone into the bluetooth.
Gwen sighed, but didn’t complain, starting the car. Before she pulled out, she touched the heart-shaped locket she wore, feeling the familiar swirling engravings with the tips of her fingers.
“We going or what?”
She snapped out of her brief silence and shot Gayle a grin, putting the car into gear. “I’m gonna tell the others you’re the reason we’re late.”
~~~
Gwen turned into the parking lot, pavement giving way to the crunch of gravel beneath the tires.
“You think Alix and Taylor are at each other’s throats yet?” Gayle asked with a laugh.
Gwen snorted. “Oh, probably. They’ve been here by themselves for what, half an hour? That’s too long to leave them alone unsupervised.”
“Hey, at least Jasmine and Megan are later than us,” Gayle pointed out as Gwen parked next to Alix’s black Honda.
The parking lot was empty besides the two vehicles, the sunny skies that had started off the day had given way to a thick cover of ominous, dark blue-grey clouds as they drove. Gwendolyn looked at them a bit pensively. They looked pretty bad. She didn’t relish the thought of camping in a deluge, but her and her friends had grown up in guides together, and rain wasn’t a particularly strong - or new - deterrent on their camping trips.
The pair got out of the SUV, and Gwen popped the trunk again, grabbing her pack and the handle of the bright blue cooler. “You got the tent?”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Gayle said, grabbing her things.
“How’s Joey, by the way? You haven’t brought him around in a while.”
Gayle’s eyes lit up at the mention of her boyfriend. “Same as always, you know Joey. And I don’t bring him around because we can’t have any fun while you’re in the loft,” she replied mischievously.
Gwen would have shoved her fingers in her ears if her hands weren’t full. “La la la la, I can’t hear you! Gross! I practically grew up with Joseph. I don’t wanna think about that!”
Gayle just laughed. “Do you want to be perpetually single?”
The clouds disappeared behind reaching evergreen branches as Gwen fumbled for a response.
“I- well- just because I haven’t dated-”
“I mean it’s fine if that’s whatcha want, Gwen. But if you do want to date you’re gonna have to confront the topic of s-e-x at some point.”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Sex isn’t the issue, Gayle. It’s you having sex with my childhood best friend.”
“Hmmm,” Gayle hummed, not sounding apologetic at all.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she announced a moment later as they walked past a grungy building marked with a dirty ‘restrooms’ sign. She set down the tent and her pack, leaving Gwen to watch them.
“If there’s a serial killer with a chainsaw in there, scream so I can start running,” Gwen said wryly, eyeing the building distastefully.
Gayle glanced back at her and stuck her tongue out at her before shutting the grimey door behind her.
A moment later she announced “it smells worse than Becca’s dairy farm in here.”
“Did you expect it to smell like sunshine or...?”
Gayle did not have a response for that.
Gwen set the cooler down next to their tent and stretched as much as her bulky backpack would allow her, looking around the park they were camping in.
The campsite they were using, presumably where Alix and Taylor were tearing each other apart, was still pretty far out of sight, hidden by the dense cedar and pine trees that filled the area. The undergrowth was oddly thick in this area, tangles of ferns and brambles lining the path, thorns filling the spaces between the wide tree trunks. The blackberries that should have dangled off them this time of year were gone, presumably picked clean by birds and other local wildlife.
A sudden peal of thunder filled the air, and Gwen glanced up at the break in the canopy that showed the thick, dark cloud cover.
“Great,” Gayle’s derisive voice came from the direction of the bathrooms.
“Yuh-huh,” Gwen agreed.
She was about to say something about it not being the first time they were in the woods in inclement weather, when a glint of gold caught her eye from one of the bramble bushes.
She glanced back at the restrooms, but the door still remained firmly shut. With an internal shrug, she left the cooler and tent and walked towards what had caught her eye, the gravel of the path crackling beneath her runners.
As she drew closer, she realized it was the golden chain of a necklace, tangled amongst the reaching thorns of the bramble. It was thicker than those she was used to seeing, almost like it was designed for a man.
After a moment’s hesitation, Gwen reached out and worked it free of the bushes, managing to escape with only a couple small scratches.
As the chain swung free, she saw there was a locket hanging from it. What froze her in place with confusion though, was the fact that it was very clearly a slightly larger version of the one she wore around her own neck.
She was sure it was. She had spent a long time just looking at it after her grandmother had willed it to her.
The brassy-gold heart-shaped locket hung implacably from the chain, catching the dull light that managed to make it through the thick cloud cover. The abstract swirling designs, the shape... There was no mistaking that this new locket was the more masculine twin of hers.
The only thing that had ever been wrong with the locket her grandma had given her was that she had never been able to open it.
Maybe… maybe this one would open.
A cold breeze cut through the forest as Gwen brought her other hand to the locket, put her thumbnails in the divet on the locket’s side, and popped it open.
There was a bright burst of light, and Gwendolyn Yardley was gone without a trace.