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It's a Tuesday. Will knows this because of the big calendar that Lee keeps on the wall, and because Carmen was dying her hair again this morning. Carmen redyes her hair vibrant red every three Tuesdays, once a month. Sometimes Will helps.
The reason Tuesday matters is because his Mama said she’d call him on Tuesday when she was back in America and had time between album planning and producing and being a famous singer. She called on his birthday, from the old-fashioned wall phone that Chiron has in the big house. He asked when she’d call again and she said Tuesday, ‘Tuesday at threeish I hope, baby, I might be too busy to call though so don’t be too upset if I can’t’. It's 2:58pm now and he sits cross legged with his back to the wall, waiting for the sonorous ring that signals her call - like he has every Tuesday for the past four weeks.
—---
He turned eleven just over a month ago. When he was five and she left him at his Nana and Grandaddy’s for the first time, Mama said that eleven was old enough to go back on tour with her again. Will’s bag is all packed and stashed underneath his bunk where Michael won’t find it and tease him for taking the stuffed mouse that Diya gave him for his birthday. He’ll miss his siblings when he leaves, but he misses his Mama more.
Diya, Toby, Milo, Felix, and Clara have all left camp to go back to school and family and the homes they have outside the magical border. Lee told Will that they’re ‘summer campers’: they leave during Autumn, and Winter, and Spring; then come back for the summer holidays to spend time at camp. It’s just Will, Lee, Michael, Carmen, August, and Maisie now. The cabin feels lonely without them, even if Lou Ellen has taken to sleeping over on the bed above Will most nights.
On the nights she doesn’t, Will crawls into bed with Lee. He’ll moan about ‘freaking kids always waking me up in the middle of the night’ but he doesn’t mind really. Without fail Will always wakes up held fast in Lee’s arms, safe and secure under the yellow blanket that wraps around them both.
———
At 3.46 the phone finally rings and Will pounces on the receiver at the second sharp trill.
“Mama!” He hears his Mama laughing on the other side of the line, warm and calming like every other aspect of her.
“Hey honey, how's camp?” He can picture her in his mind, sitting cross legged on their red and white check picnic blanket, guitar across her lap. She's smiling, afternoon sun twinkling in her blue eyes.
“Good. August’s fixin’ to go on a quest soon, fella named Orpheus lost his lyre an’ Augie has to go find it.” He scuffs his shoe against the skirting board, fiddling with the phone cord. If he presses the earpiece right up to the shell of his ear he can hear the click-clack of his Mama’s nails on a computer keyboard.
Will's image of her changes: Naomi sitting at her desk, laptop balanced on a stack of songwriting notebooks, phone cradled in the crook between her shoulder and her neck. When he was little, Will used to flick through those notebooks with pudgy toddler fingers, leaning in close to wonder at the lyrics scrawled in felt tip or glitter pen or smudged ballpoint. His Mama would lift him into her lap, resting the guitar carefully atop his legs, and play him the songs he couldn't quite sound out.
“August… he's the one who took you to Star Wars? Seems like a sweet kid,” They'd gone on his birthday: August, Will, Lee, Michael, Clara, Lou-Ellen, and August's friend from Cabin 10 (judging by the fact that August had spent most of The Empire Strikes Back with his lips locked on Indigo's, a row or two behind Will, it was a pretty safe bet that they were a little more than just friends). The cinema in town had been showing the original trilogy in order, so August had bought them tickets and popcorn, and they'd only gotten back to camp at half past two in the morning. “How excitin’! He goin’ all by himself or do y'all get to take friends on these quests?”
“Indigo's goin’, so him an’ Augie will be kissin’ alla time an’ drivin’ Zinnia up the wall. She's real nice an’ she says she’s gonna teach me how to look after the hyacinths properly ‘cause Zinnia’s Demeter and she knows that kinda stuff. Indigo's nice too, but he keeps gettin’ injured in Capture the Flag ‘cause he's distracted by August. I had to splint his arm twice in the last week, Mama, an’ his leg got done in by a spear week before that.” She laughs again, and hums a part of one of her songs absentmindedly. Then the sound of a pen scribbling against paper, and his Mama tapping out a melody on the desk.
“Oh dear, poor Indigo. Anythin’ else fun happenin’? You eatin’ enough, sweetie?” Will launches into a description of his past few weeks, telling her about Lee’s swear jar and the dining pavilion and the naiads in the lake and how ‘Lou Ellen can do magic but she says not to tell no one ‘cause her Mama ain’t very popular ‘round camp at the moment’. Naomi listens, and hums sympathetically at opportune moments. Occasionally she’ll jump in with an “Oh bless their heart” or a “Well ain’t that nice”.
—---
After a while she swears (then apologises ‘guess I’ll have to put a dollar in your Lee’s swear jar hmm?’) and there is the sound of muffled movement. “Oh drat, would you lookit the time! Baby, I’m real sorry but I gotta go. I’ll call you again just as soon as I can, okay?”
“Mama?”
“Hmm?”
“When you comin’ to get me?”
The sound of hurried shuffling stops and Naomi sighs deeply. Will waits, picking at the bracelet that Toby made him.
“Honey, we talked about this - you’re safest at camp. And you know I love you, but the back of a tour bus is no place for a kid,” He imagines her checking her watch, the delicate golden hands ticking their way around a face decorated with sunbeams “Darlin’ can we please talk about this later? I really don’t have time - I’m meetin’ with Amy for an early supper in five minutes.”
“You promised! You said when I was eleven, Mama, you PROMISED!”
“Will, baby, it's just not safe!” He starts crying at that: great, hiccuping sobs that make his chest ache. He can hear his Mama’s breath hitching on the other side of the line - she’s a sympathetic cryer, always has been.
“Please, Mama. I’ll be so good an’ you won’t even notice I’m there-”
“Will.”
“- an’ I’ll do all my homework an’ help with anything you need an’ I’ll be good I promise, Mama.”
“William. You can’t come with me. It just ain’t possible,” She sniffs, trying to reign in her tears “I have to go now, love you.” The click of his Mama putting down the phone and ending the call. He tries to scrub the tears from his face.
“Love you too, Mama.” Will puts the phone back how it was, and sits down against the wall. He’s still crying quietly, knees drawn up to his chest. He wishes his Mama was here to wipe his tears and give him one of her tight, perfumey hugs.
—---
The big house is always quiet this time of day. Apart from the infirmary, but the infirmary is always busy. Michael will be in there now, stitching up wounds and antagonizing any Ares kids that are unfortunate enough to be injured. Probably swearing as well, because Lee will be out of hearing range at the archery targets, teaching other cabins to shoot.
He tried to teach Will once, finding a bow that he could use, and positioning him so that the bowstring didn’t graze his arm as it loosed. Will failed spectacularly, and didn’t even hit the target until his third attempt. Lee laughed, ruffled his hair, and said it would come with practice. Lee laughs and ruffles Will’s hair a lot.
—---
The wall across from Will is painted eggshell blue, with white skirting boards. In some places the paint has chipped, showing plaster or dark wood. There are pictures hung on the wall: past campers, present campers. There is a small snapshot of Lee, Michael, his sisters, a collection of girls in silver jackets, and a dark haired girl wearing a silver circlet posing in front of a mural depicting Artemis and Will’s dad. The girl in the circlet is frowning slightly, but she is confusedly copying Michael’s double middle fingers. Lee is grinning at the camera, and his elbow is blurred in the motion of elbowing Michael.
“Heya Squirt. What’re you doing here?” Like his Nana used to say: ‘Speak of the devil’. Will rubs furiously at his eyes, avoiding his brother’s gaze.
“Nothin’. Go ‘way Mike.” Michael is still wearing his scrub pants but he has stripped off his scrub shirt in favour of a t-shirt that says ‘Fletcher? You betcha!’ in bold, bright yellow, block letters. Will is 99% sure that shirt belongs to Lee, but it’s also possible that he bought it for Michael as a joke.
“You’d deny yourself the pleasure of my company? Poor you,” he squints down at Will, blowing a lock of unruly, brown hair out of his face “Want me to beat up whoever made you cry?”
“I’m not crying! An’ beating people up is mean.” Will frowns at Michael, crossing his arms over his chest in a rough approximation of Lee's ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’ stance.
“Sure squirt,” His gaze moves past Will to the phone on the wall, cord still slightly tangled from when Will was toying with it “Who were you calling just now?”
“Mama.”
“Ah.”
A pause, where Michael glares thoughtfully at the phone and Will sniffs away the last of his tears.
“She won’t let me go with her.”
“Parents suck sometimes,” Michael squats down in front of Will so he can make eye contact properly “Sorry, I know how much you wanted to see her.”
“Mmm. I miss her.”
“Want a piggyback over to Seven?” Will considers for a moment, weighing the risk of Michael tipping him into the lake again. He seems sincere for once.
“Yes please.”
—---
When they get back to the cabin, Maisie is sprawled out on the floor sifting through a mound of clear plastic CD cases. Her shirt seems to match Michaels, and reads ‘Yew wish you were me’ in similarly big, bright letters. Carmen is braiding her newly crimson hair and shouting her input down from one of the top bunks (maybe Michaels). August and Lee are nowhere to be seen, and their shoes are missing from the communal footwear pile so they are both likely out being well rounded campers.
Neither Carmen or Maisie turn around when Michael kicks the door shut behind him, only pausing for a moment in their ruthless CD culling to tell Michael to take his shoes off and remember to go find Will before dinner.
“CARMEN GET OFF MY FUCKING BED! And you’re worried about mud inside? There’s hair dye all over my FUCKING PILLOW, YOU LITTLE SHIT,” Carmen laughs and jumps down from the bunk, singsonging something about the swear jar being on the windowsill “And thats MY shirt Maisie. Gods I HATE this family.”
“And yours is Lee’s, dipshit. Glass houses and stones you know.” Michael groans and flips her off. Carmen has seated herself on the floor near Maisie, and is pulling more CD boxes from underneath Maisie’s bed.
Michael lets Will down off his back, unlaces his shoes and chucks them in the pile atop Maisie’s ballet flats and Carmen's Doc Martens. Will places his neatly off to the side and runs past Michael to throw himself down next to (half on top of) Maisie.
“Oh hi, Monkey. I thought you were still talking to your Mum?” Michael mimes a cutting motion behind Will’s back while shaking his head hurriedly “I mean, thank Dad you’re here, I desperately need someone to see if my Taylor Swift’s are worth keeping! Car, can you chuck me Fearless? I think it's in the box labeled Country/Death Metal, or maybe Country/Mildly Psychedelic Pop?”
“Why those specific genres together?” Carmen shuffles the boxes until she finds the ones mentioned, and quickly unearths Fearless from next to Taylor’s debut album.
“I arrange by colour. The concept of specific genres ‘belonging’ with each other is too restricting. Anyway, Fearless. Will, thoughts?”
“Oh, just shoot me already, why is it always bloody Taylor?!”
“Shut up, Mike! Will is trying to listen.”
—---
That night, after Maisie lets him play Fearless over and over again, and he dances with her - jumping up and down on the bed as Taylor sings about dancing in her best dress in a storm, he crawls in with Lee again. Lee mumbles something, half asleep, and cuddles Will close.