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“Applesauce?” Sky asks, offering a packet emblazoned with a green apple over to Four.
Four reaches into one of the pockets on the arm of his wheelchair and retrieves a different applesauce packet. “Thanks, but I have some of my own.”
“It's the exact same.” Sky rolls his eyes, but smiles and twists the cap off the applesauce with a click for himself.
“Mine,” Four says with an unnecessary gesture, “has a red apple.” He puts it away—he just had one a minute ago and doesn't feel like eating another yet.
Sky sits on one of the wooden chairs at the same table as Four, both of them turned to face the table where Hyrule is pouring glittery confetti into a plastic tupperware without a lid. He pours carefully so he doesn't spill, one hand on top of the glitter to judge the level. Wind watches with salt drying in his hair, biting his lip to keep from startling Hyrule.
“What's going on?” Sky mutters to Four, glancing over.
Four does his best to answer in sign language—he’s been practicing. “We’re giving Twilight that water bottle as soon as he gets here. He was just unloading our stuff from the truck.”
“I know that much,” Sky answers in sign language, too. “I added my stickers to the pile. But what about the confetti?”
Four doesn't know that particular sign, but he can infer. He grins. “It’s leaf-shaped.”
“Oh, so Hyrule is doing your dirty work,” Sky says with a roll of his eyes.
Four just shrugs. It's true. He and Twilight have had a feud about putting leaves in each other’s hair for a few weeks, now. He hopes this particular move will win. And if it doesn't… maybe Twilight will start to target Wind or Hyrule instead. That would be funny.
Warriors, the last besides Twilight to show up, slips through the front door just before Wind climbs up to balance the confetti bowl on top.
“He’s on his way up,” Warriors signs, a brown paper box sized about the same as a water bottle tucked under his arm. He always looks more at-ease here at camp—a little dirtier, a little more sun-bleached, a little busier.
Everyone seems happier here, actually. Four doesn't know if it's just the escape from their “normal” jobs or something about the island, but it's nice, even if he doesn't know if he exactly wants camp year-round.
“Ooh, should we hide?” Wild asks, sorting the stickers on the table by color. There are a lot of them.
Legend yawns. “Nah. I think the confetti will be surprising enough. We don't need to give the guy a heart attack.”
Wild makes an offended noise, but he's still focused on the stickers, so it's pretty clear that his offense is just for show. “How dare you. You're heartless, Legend.”
Hyrule giggles at the joke hard enough that he has to lean on one of the glass display cases of camp paraphernalia to stay standing.
“That wasn't that funny,” Legend mutters, which just makes Hyrule laugh harder. He's turning bright red under his tanned freckles.
Over by the window, Time peeks out through the old flannel curtains without moving them. “Here he comes. He's at the bottom of the path.”
Warriors plunks the water bottle box down in the middle of the circle of stickers, where Wild is frantically putting the finishing touches on his arrangement. Wind sits down, but Hyrule heads to the dirty old fridge that hums on the wall and opens it. This one doesn't look as organized as the one at the ranch house where Hyrule, Wild, and Time live, but it's also much emptier.
“Anyone for a drink?” Hyrule asks.
“Capri-Sun!” Wind calls immediately.
Hyrule pulls out a pouch and hands it off to Wild, who tosses it through the air. Wind holds his hands up and dives off of his chair to catch the drink, landing on the old rug with an oof. Warriors rolls his eyes, but gives Wind a helping hand.
“Caffeine?” Legend asks.
“Uh. This is some kind of soda,” Hyrule says, pulling out a can. “I think.”
“Dr. Pepper, perfect—Wild! Do not throw it, or you're cleaning up the sticky mess.” Legend narrows his eyes, and Wild just grins, because if Four knows him at all, he definitely had been planning to throw it.
“Oh, can I have one of those too?” Sky says upon seeing the Dr. Pepper in Legend’s hands.
“And while you're coming over here, you can get me a Capri-Sun, too,” Four adds. He doesn't want an applesauce right now, but he's always hard-pressed to turn down a sugary drink, and Capri-Suns taste like being a kid in summer. It's still early in the season, so the fridge is mostly stocked with juices and sodas, but later on, Four knows that Legend’s fancy coffee addiction will take up a fair amount of room, and someone will probably snuggle in some cheap alcohol.
“Demanding!” Wild still takes the drinks from Hyrule and brings them over.
Four happily pokes his straw into the drink pouch while everyone else gets a drink, too. Wild even pulls out an extra island-brand root beer for Twilight and sticks it next to the water bottle.
“Three,” Time says, and everyone scrambles to sit down and look casual while the screen door squeaks and bangs outside. “Two. One—”
The door opens, and Twilight shoulders his way in. The tupperware tips several handfuls of orange confetti directly on his head and shoulders, and he stops in shock, blinking. The plastic tub bonks his head and falls to the ground.
“Surprise!” Wild says, but he's the only one. He cackles at himself.
Twilight looks up, then down. A second shower of confetti falls from his head and flutters to the ground.
Four can't hold back his laughter. He swallows his last sip of juice with difficulty and joins Wild in cracking up. Everyone else starts up, too, because Twilight with glitter on his shoulders is funny, but Twilight zeroes in on Four.
“You little—” he starts, heading toward Four and wearing a playfully irate expression.
“It wasn't me!” Four says, dropping his empty Capri-Sun and wheeling back from the table so he has a greater chance of getting away. “It wasn't me! It was Wind and Hyrule!”
“Bull,” Legend calls calmly.
Four laughs and hurriedly wheels backward a bit. “I promise, Twi!”
Twilight shakes his head, dislodging more confetti. There's a trail on the ground behind him. “Like you promised you'd do the dishes before we left?”
Okay, so that one really was Four's fault. He stops moving, gasping for breath between laughs.
“We really did do it,” Hyrule laughs.
“Yeah!” Wind chimes in, holding a hand up to his face. Had he snorted out his Sprite? Ew and ouch. “We’re getting paid in future desserts!”
Twilight puts his hand on his hip and eyes Four. “Since I can't dump you off the dock for that, maybe I'll just wake you up with a cold glass of water tomorrow morning.”
“You wouldn't dare.”
“Okay,” Time interrupts, leaning against one of the tables. “Twilight, before you kill your brother, take a look over here. We got you something.”
Twilight pauses in his prowl and looks over. His eyebrows rise. “You what?”
Warriors points very deliberately to the water bottle box in the middle of the table nearby. He uses both hands to gesture, showing it off like he's a model revealing a prize on a game show.
“What the,” Twilight says, heading over. “A water bottle?”
“We got one that you can open and close one-handed,” Sky explains, then pauses. “Okay, so Warriors found it, but we all pitched in. And there are stickers!”
“The textured ones are from me,” Hyrule says with a smile, leaning his head on his hands and his elbows on the table.
Twilight hesitantly picks up the box and looks it over. When he speaks again, it's with a tone that almost sounds like he's going to cry. “Y'all got me a special water bottle?”
“It's green,” Legend says flatly.
“Yeah, it is.” Twilight’s smile grows and grows as he sets the box down and opens it up. He pulls out the bottle inside—a nice metal one colored hunter green with a bright orange band around the top and a blue silicone cover on the bottom.
Twilight’s thumb presses the button on the front. The top of the bottle flips open, spring-loaded, and the straw pops out. He grins at it and uses a finger to shut the lid again. “Why haven't I seen one of these before?”
“No idea,” Warriors signs, standing in Twilight’s field of vision on the other side of the table. “They're fairly common.”
“And stickers!” Twilight sets the bottle aside to poke through Wild's rainbow. “There are way too many here for one bottle.”
Time moves over to sit in his own chair. Everyone tends to shuffle around the counselor cabin chairs, except for Time. His chair is the blue one. “We figured that you could take several that you want, and share the rest around.”
“Except for these ones,” Legend says, leaning forward to poke an envelope out of the group. “Those are yours.”
“Oh my gosh, ” Twilight says once he sees what's inside of the envelope.
Curious, Four moves to park next to Twilight, and Twilight obligingly shows him the stickers: a tied green bandana with a paw print, accompanied by the words “Twi’s Wolf Pack.”
Four snatches that sticker out of Twilight's fingers. “Mine.”
“Hey,” Twilight says, but laughs. He shakes off a bit more confetti from his shoulders, making sure it lands in Four’s lap.
The group spends another hour or so sorting through the stickers and giving Twilight awful advice about what he should put where. Warriors and Legend bicker over different shades of green again. Wind slaps one of this year’s orange camp logo stickers on his phone case, covering up last year’s purple one.
In the end, Twilight arranges several stickers in a haphazard pattern, leaving a bit of room for more, but not much. He decides on a stylized illustration of the island map that's a gift from Time, a logo sticker, one of the wolf pack ones that Legend drew, a relevant flag or two, some textured ones from Hyrule that are just pictures of flowers, a big sword one from Sky, some memes from Wild and Wind, and a photo sticker of the cat named Link from his and Four’s hometown.
It's chaotic, messy, and very much Twilight. Four snags a few stickers for his crutches and his own water bottle, too. They all get a couple new ones, and the extras get shoved into a drawer, probably to find unexpectedly next year.
The stickers are all new and clean and shiny. Four looks forward to seeing them all dinged up at the end of the summer.