by Lisa Graff
Chuck found a seat in the back, at the very end of the log spiral. Del sat beside her, scratching a spot below one ear.
“Aren’t you supposed to lead the campfire?” Chuck asked him. She thought that was one of his duties as head counselor.
Del scratched a little harder. “Normally, yes.” Scratch scratch scratch. “I mean, I think so.” He kicked his feet into the air, and Chuck noticed that his laces were untied, dangling to the dirt. “I’m feeling a bit fuzzy at the moment. Teagan said she’d take over.”
As the frogs on the lake croaked their froggy songs, Teagan led the children of Camp Atropos in songs of their own. All the while, Chuck ran her fingers over the silver knot in her pocket—quirky and complicated and beautiful—watching the back of Ellie’s head as the sky slowly swallowed her braids into darkness.
When the world around them was black as ink, Teagan declared, “This is our final song of the evening. So, in Camp Atropos tradition, let’s all stand up and join hands.”
Del reached his hand for Chuck’s, and as soon as she took hold, she felt it. The icy chill worked its way up Chuck’s arm like a dip in a lake on a hot day. And it wasn’t only Del’s Talent she felt. Linked as she was with nearly every camper and counselor of Camp Atropos, Chuck felt them all. Racing up one arm and down another, the Talents came, surging through bodies they’d never inhabited before, cool when they neared her and warm as they pushed away.
As the campers’ song filled the woods, Chuck wheedled some Talents forward and urged others back, until Del had Molly’s Talent for time-telling, and Hannah could sense lies, and Miles could climb mountains with his bare hands. She tinkered with each and every Talent, savoring their varied textures. All except Ellie’s. Chuck had spent enough time with Ellie’s.
By the time the final breath had been drawn on the last note of the song, Chuck knew for certain what she was. She dropped Del’s hand, hoisting one Kelly-green high-top onto the log behind her, then the other. She stood as tall as she could, and she shouted.
“Hey!” she hollered. “Hey! Everybody!”
The campers and counselors of Camp Atropos, just finishing their song, turned in unison to look at her. And Chuck saw Ellie’s face then, her frown enhanced by the flickering fire, but she didn’t care. She didn’t. Chuck had something bubbling up inside her, and she needed to let it out.
“I!”
She belted each word.
“Am!”
She took her time with it.
“A!”
Savored each syllable.
“Coax!”
That was precisely when the first jar exploded.
Lily
“HANNAH TOLD ME ABOUT THE ACCIDENT,” MAX SAID, making his way closer. His crutch pinched his shirt at the armpit. He held out the glass of whatever it was. “Remind you of anything?”
Lily scratched below one ear, confused by her brother’s words. But when she took the glass and drank a tentative sip, the memories came flooding back.
Coffee. The drink—and the memory—tasted of coffee.
“The bookshelf,” she said softly. She remembered now, what she’d done. She wished she hadn’t.
Max’s face was scrunched in anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded. “Why’d you lie about it?”
Lily set the glass on the pier. “Max,” she said, Hannah’s beverage burning her throat.
She could apologize. Just two little words.
Instead, Lily said something else entirely. “You like her better than me.”
“What?” Max’s face scrunched even more, a rumpled shirt at the bottom of the clothes hamper. “Who?”
“Hannah!” Lily bellowed the name. She shook up everything inside her like a bottle of soda, and popped the lid. “All you care about is Hannah! I stopped a criminal, you know. I mean”—she glanced at the jars clattering against the shore, not fifty yards away—“I tried to. But isn’t that better than making some stupid drinks? I put hundreds of jars of stolen Talents inside the campfire so they’d melt away.”
“You did?” Max said. But he didn’t sound impressed, the way Lily had imagined. “Why would you do that?”
Before Lily could respond, a burst of light—sudden, dazzling, alarming—shredded the sky above them, and a grand ka-WRACK! shook the woods. For a brief moment, everything was stunned into silence. The campers, the squirrels, the frogs, even the wind. And in that moment, Lily knew in her gut where the explosion had come from.
“The fire,” she breathed. “The Talents in the fire.”
Ka-WRACK!
Max jumped at the sound of another explosion, and watched, dumbfounded, as another yellow-purple orb blazed a path through the darkness.
“You did that?” he asked.
Ka-WRACK! Ka-WRACK!
“I was trying to help,” Lily said, her voice a whimper. Ka-WRACK! Ka-WRACK! “I was trying to help everybody.”
There was shouting, from the woods. Terrified yelps.
“You didn’t help at all!” Max hollered above the clamor of more and more explosions. The sky was awash with Talents now, dozens of yellow-purple sparks. It might have been beautiful, if not for the frightened shrieking from the campers at the fire. “You made everything worse!”
As the Talents skimmed across the water and the explosions continued, shouts growing louder and louder, Max stomped on his good foot back into the trees, leaving Lily alone on the pier.
“She’s not your sister, Max!” Lily called after him. She wound the length of yarn around her thumb, faster faster faster. “I’m your sister!” But in the chaos, she was certain he didn’t hear.
Renny
KA-WRACK!
When the first spark shot into the sky, Renny was so startled, he tripped over the log behind him, flat into the dirt.
Ka-WRACK! Ka-WRACK!
As orbs of yellow-purple were launched into the blackness around him, Renny pulled himself to his knees, his hands fidgeting wildly as a tiny scrap of something whistled past his nose. The object sizzled when it hit the dirt. A fiery shard of shattered glass.
“Miles!” Renny hollered, searching for his brother. All around him, campers were shrieking. Racing away with heavy footsteps. Hopping over logs. Thudding into one another, trying to avoid burning bits of glass. More and more sparks shot from the fire.
Ka-WRACK! Ka-WRACK!
Amid the chaos, Renny found Miles, on his belly in the dirt, his arm stretched under a log. He seemed to be grabbing for something.
“Come on, Miles,” Renny shouted, tugging at his brother’s arm. Ka-WRACK! “We have to get out of here.”
But Miles wouldn’t budge. “You lost it,” he insisted, arm wedged under the log. “I have to get it for you.”
Ka-WRACK!
“You don’t have to get anything,” Renny argued. Ka-WRACK! He dodged another glass shard. “We have to go.”
When at last Miles dislodged whatever it was he’d been grabbing for, Renny was able to tug him to his feet.
“Here.” Miles held the object out to Renny. It was the jar from Jo’s office, with the yellow Talent bracelet inside. “You lost it.” He pressed the jar into Renny’s hand.
Ka-WRACK!
Renny yanked his brother away from the fire, pulling him toward the lodge, where the other campers and counselors were streaming.
All the while, his hand, with the jar inside it, twitched.
Lily
LILY STOOD ON THE ROUGH WOODEN PLANKS OF THE pier, watching the Talents dance like fireflies across the water, vanishing into the night.
You didn’t help at all, Max had said. You made everything worse.
Around and around she twisted the length of yarn at her thumb. Lily had tried to destroy the jars from Jo’s office, but there were hundreds more already, clattering in the water not fifty yards away. And the j
ars Lily had put in the fire . . . The shrieks from the woods had died down, but Lily was terrified to return to camp, to face the damage she knew she’d caused.
Something caught Lily’s eye. Among the pebbles and the clattering jars on the shore, Jo’s harmonica glittered in the moonlight. Focusing her thoughts at the bridge of her nose, Lily lifted the instrument, one inch, then two. Focused, focused, she dragged it through the air, snatching it from the sky.
An Artifact, Lily thought, flipping it end over end in her palm. It was well used and well loved, silver, scuffed, and slightly dented at one end. Somehow Jo had used this instrument to Mimic campers’ Talents. Somehow she had used it to draw jars out of the water.
Lily knew quite a bit about Artifacts, more than most people, and she knew they could be used to do great things. But they could be dangerous, too.
I think you’re more dangerous than she is.
That’s what Renny had told Lily, just that afternoon.
Around and around went the yarn at her thumb.
Pickles.
Just when the length of yarn threatened to snap in two from the twisting, a new memory wiggled its way into Lily’s mind. A very recent one, from someone at the campfire. The memory tasted tangy, like pickles.
She was watching Chuck, she remembered. Chuck had hauled herself up on a log to declare something.
A Coax, Lily remembered. That was what Chuck had said. Lily worked the pickle-flavored memory around in her mind, until she was absolutely certain of it.
Around and around and around.
When the sky was black as a fresh chalkboard, no Talents in sight, Lily let her gaze settle on the harmonica. Perhaps she had a way to fix things once and for all.
Chuck
“YOU GOT INCREDIBLY LUCKY THERE, CHILD,” NURSE Bonnie said, dabbing at Chuck’s forehead with some sort of chilly goop. Chuck flinched as it stung her skin. “I saw the sight from here. It was terrifying.” Immediately after the explosion, the infirmary had been packed with campers, crowding the beds, perched on the dressers, smushed into corners, all of them needing Nurse Bonnie’s attention. Most had suffered only minor scrapes and bruises. After administering a salve or three, Nurse Bonnie shuttled the children off to the lodge for the slumber party. Now, hours later, only Chuck remained. “I’ve never had so many campers injured all at once. And you got it worse than anyone.”
“I’m fine,” Chuck replied, although she didn’t feel entirely fine. As it turned out, standing atop a log was precisely the worst place to be in an explosion.
“Two inches lower, and this one would’ve taken your eye,” Nurse Bonnie told her. “The salve will heal your burns in a few hours, but you’re staying here overnight. No slumber party for you.”
Chuck found she wasn’t upset about that one. She hadn’t much been looking forward to watching a movie squeezed up against Ellie anyway. At least in the infirmary, Chuck could avoid her sister’s disapproving frown.
“Ellie!” Nurse Bonnie said as Chuck’s twin stepped through the curtains. The nurse took the girl in, head to toe. “No cuts or bruises. Don’t tell me—you’ve lost a memory. We’ve had a rash of forgetfulness this session. Molly was just in here, all worked up about forgetting the name of her puppy. And Jason couldn’t even recall tonight’s campfire.” Nurse Bonnie dabbed another smear of goop on Chuck’s forehead. “I would have Hannah whip you up one of her drinks, but I’m afraid her Talent wound up with someone else, and I haven’t had a moment to figure out who.”
“No, it’s not a”—Ellie wouldn’t even look at Chuck—“a memory. Del needs Chuck in the lodge. He said she has to come and Eke everyone’s Talent’s back right away.”
“It’s not Eking,” Chuck said. “I’m a Coax.” But she’d hardly gotten the words out before Ellie snapped her eyes up. Her frown was so furious that Chuck wished she’d go back to staring at the floor.
Nurse Bonnie set the salve on the shelf behind her with a soft clack. “You tell Del,” she said, “that my patient needs to rest. She can swap Talents in the morning.”
“But everyone has the wrong ones!” Ellie cried. “No one knows what to do!”
“I’m sure you’ll all survive the evening. Now, if you don’t mind . . .” She plopped a pair of folded camp pajamas on the chair beside the bed. The toes of Chuck’s Kelly-green high-tops poked out underneath. “Chuck, I’ll run to your cabin to get your toothbrush. You girls can visit for a moment, but our patient needs her rest.” She fixed a stern look on Ellie when she said that last word.
When Nurse Bonnie left the room, Ellie didn’t sit beside Chuck above the blankets, or put a hand to Chuck’s forehead, or ask if she was okay. Instead, she stared at the floor and said, “You switched all the Talents.”
Chuck must have been holding the sigh inside her for ages, because when she let it out, it was the biggest thing in the room. “I know you want me to be a Frog Twin,” she told her sister. “But I can’t. I’m not.”
“You switched all the Talents,” Ellie repeated, to the floor and not to Chuck, “except mine.”
At that, Chuck snorted. “The person who got it would’ve been so mad. I mean, seriously, Ellie. Identifying frogs is so boring.”
The look on her sister’s face then—sad and small and stricken—was worse than any frown. Chuck could apologize. Just two little words.
She didn’t.
Instead she said nothing.
“A lot of people are really mad at you, you know,” Ellie said at last, “for Eking their Talents without even asking.”
“It’s not Eking,” Chuck said again. “It’s Coaxing. It’s really unique, Ellie.”
“Well,” Ellie replied, “at least only one of us has to be boring.”
And with that, she left the infirmary.
As she changed into the pajamas Nurse Bonnie had left, Chuck clenched and unclenched her hand, trying to push away the memory of that look on Ellie’s face, sad and small and stricken. But it was stuck in Chuck’s mind like peanut butter on crackers.
Chuck flopped back on her pillow, ready for a long night’s sleep.
It wasn’t a full second before the next unexpected visitor burst into the infirmary.
Lily
“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?” CHUCK ASKED, wrinkling her nose at the harmonica. Lily nodded. They didn’t have much time, she knew, before Nurse Bonnie returned.
She reached for Chuck’s hand.
There was a cold pinch, like a snowflake, that started in Lily’s chest, then worked its way down her arm. Lily saw Chuck breathe deep as the Talent reached her hand, clutched tight in Lily’s. Moments later, the harmonica in Chuck’s other hand let out a sudden, loud waaaaah! And, with the note, speckles of dust escaped, glinting against the moonlight as they wafted out the open window, the Artifact’s former Talent dissipating into the night sky, lost forever.
Lily let her hand drop to the covers. “Try it,” she told Chuck, darting her eyes to the harmonica.
Chuck lifted the instrument to her lips. “I don’t know any real songs,” she said, and then she began a shaky tune.
In-out-in-out.
In-out-in-out.
As Chuck played, she kept her gaze fixed on a container of salve on the shelf across the room. It rose into the air.
One inch.
Two.
Chuck stopped playing, and the container rattled to the shelf.
“It worked.” Lily might have imagined it, but she felt lighter without her Pinnacle Talent. She floundered a bit when she shifted on the bed, the movement of her loose limbs newly unfamiliar. She wondered if this was how Evrim Boz’s brother had felt, all those hundreds of years ago, when his Talent had been Coaxed into those scissors.
“And can you still . . . ?” Chuck asked.
Lily knew she didn’t need to check, but she did, just in case. Focusing her th
oughts at the bridge of her nose, she set her gaze on the harmonica in Chuck’s lap. Focused, focused . . .
The instrument wouldn’t budge.
“I could try to Coax it back to you,” Chuck said. “If you want.”
“There’s no way to get my Talent back now,” Lily replied, waving a hand at the harmonica. “Trust me. I know a lot about Artifacts.”
“Oh.” Chuck seemed worried.
“No. It’s good. Don’t you see? This helps everyone.” And she even managed a smile. “I’d like to see Jo try to steal our Talents now.”
As she made her way to the lodge for the slumber party, Lily wound the length of yarn around her thumb, imagining the look on Max’s face when she told him what she’d done.
Renny
“DO YOU WANT SOME PUNCH?” RENNY ASKED HIS brother as they rolled their sleeping bags onto the lodge floor. Miles had picked the spot by the door to the kitchen, which had the absolute worst view of the screen Del had set up for the movie. “Hannah made it this afternoon. I could get you some.”
“No, thank you,” Miles replied, crawling inside his sleeping bag.
Renny pressed his hands against his sides to stop them from fidgeting. Ever since the campfire, he couldn’t manage to keep them still. “You sure you don’t want to . . . climb the wall?” he joked. “Try out Nolan’s Talent before you have to give it back?” Chuck had Coaxed new Talents to everyone, it seemed, at the campfire—everyone except Renny. Chuck hadn’t given him anything.
(She had, in fact. But Renny didn’t know that.)
“You could”—Renny’s eyes swept the lodge, searching for a good punch line to his joke—“kiss the moose up there.”
Miles zipped his bag around him. “I don’t like kissing moose.”
Renny settled himself into his own sleeping bag, not even bothering to change into his pajamas. When he was sure Miles wasn’t watching, he pulled the jar from his pocket, squinting at the smeared ink on the label. CODE, it could be. Or COOS.