by Lisa Graff
Hal gasped in surprise. And with that gasp—Lily watched it happen—he swallowed the glowing orb of yellow-purple Talent down.
Lily continued to play—in then out, in then out—and one by one, each frog found his way to the correct camper, and burped out a Talent. One by one, each camper swallowed the Talent down.
A frog burped at Chuck.
A frog burped at Max.
A frog burped at Hannah.
A frog burped at every person who had lost a Talent in the lake. (Well, all except one, but Lily didn’t know that yet.)
When the final frog had burped out the final Talent, and the final camper had swallowed it down, Lily slipped the harmonica deep into her pocket and stepped into the water, where her father was paddling closer to shore. Lily helped him tug the canoe onto the rocks, and the campers scrambled out.
Max nearly stumbled, awkward on his cast. Then, rolling his shoulders as though testing out his rediscovered Talent, he balanced himself, hopping easily to shore. Lily led him to drier land. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she told him.
Max surveyed the scene around him. “I can’t believe you did this,” he said. And he sounded impressed.
“Well.” Lily glanced at her Cabin Eight bunkmates. “I had some help.”
Lily was so focused on the hug Max gave her then that she didn’t notice Jo making her way toward them. But she needn’t have worried.
“Juan?” Jo said. Her canoe paddle clanked to the ground. “What are you doing here? Did Jenny tell you to—?”
Lily squinted at her camp director, dripping with madness, and then at her father.
“Joley?” he said, his face dawning with recognition.
“You know each other?” Lily asked. But then she was struck by something even more troubling. “Dad, your pocket watch.”
Lily’s father’s Artifact—the source of his great Talent and the object he’d protected obsessively since before Lily was born—hung from its chain at his waistband, rivulets of lake water escaping the hinge. He must have jumped into the water without thinking to remove it.
Horrified, Lily snatched the watch. “Maybe it can still . . .” She popped open the face and twisted the watch key. But the gears would not budge.
It was Jo who said it. “You lost your Talent,” she breathed. She sounded even more distraught than Lily.
Lily’s father drew one arm around his daughter. With the other, he tugged Max closer, too. “Oh, Joley,” he said. “I don’t need Talent to be happy.”
And Jo did something surprising then.
She began to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she told Lily’s father. “I wanted to erase things. But I’m sorry. I should have said so, long ago.”
In most ways, Lily thought, Jolene Mallory was someone whose behavior she would never, ever want to copy. But there was one thing Jo had done that didn’t seem so terrible.
“Max?” Lily said, leaning across her father to face her brother.
“Yeah?”
Lily reached for her thumb, where for so many weeks she’d twisted that swampy length of yarn. But the yarn wasn’t there. She glanced down and found it draped across the toe of her sneaker. Just as she bent to pick it up, the frog that had been squatting beside her—bright green on top and white at the throat, with bulby pads at the ends of his toes—opened his froggy mouth, stretched out his pink tongue, and gulped the length of yarn down.
When he spit it out a moment later, the yarn had been twisted into the most intricate knot Lily had ever seen. She plucked it up.
As the frog disappeared into the thick of the trees, Lily turned the knot over in her palm, inspecting it. It was quirky and complicated and beautiful . . . and completely impossible to tie around a thumb.
“Yeah?” Max said again.
Lily slid the knot into her pocket beside the harmonica.
“I’m sorry,” she told her brother.
It was time, she decided, to make some new memories.
Camp Atropos Sunset Punch
a drink that combines an entire summer’s worth of memories
FOR THE ORANGE LAYER:
2 cups fresh-squeezed or store-bought orange juice
FOR THE WATERMELON LAYER:
1 cup chopped watermelon, from 2 to 5 slices of watermelon
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups cold water
FOR THE BLACKBERRY LAYER:
1 cup (6 oz) fresh or thawed frozen blackberries
4 cups ginger ale
FOR THE MINT LAYER:
10 to 20 fresh mint leaves
FOR THE ASSEMBLY:
approximately 10 cups ice
1. In a blender or food processor, blend the watermelon, sugar, and water until smooth. Carefully pour through a wire-mesh strainer into a pitcher or large bowl. Set aside.
2. Rinse the blender or food processor, as well as the strainer.
3. In the clean blender or food processor, blend the blackberries and ginger ale. Carefully pour through the clean wire-mesh strainer into a second pitcher or large bowl. (Do not combine it with the watermelon juice.) Set aside.
4. Fill 10 tall, clear glasses to the top with ice (see Note). Distribute the orange juice evenly among the glasses, filling each approximately one-quarter full.
5. Pouring very slowly, add the watermelon mixture to each glass, until the liquid reaches approximately two-thirds of the way up the side.
6. Pouring very slowly, add the blackberry mixture to each glass, filling to the top.
7. Garnish each glass with one or two mint leaves. Serve immediately.
[Serves 10]
NOTE: To achieve the sunset-like layering in this punch, it is important that the glasses be completely filled with ice. Pour each juice layer very slowly, letting the stream of liquid hit an ice cube before flowing into the glass. This punch is especially lovely served in jars, with drinking straws.
One Year Later . . .
Epilogue
CADY HAD NEVER IMAGINED THAT SHE’D HAD SO MUCH family just waiting to be discovered. And she’d never imagined that she’d discover them here, at Camp Atropos.
“I’ve never heard of a summer camp with an ice-skating rink,” she said, strolling down the dirt path to the lodge. Through the trees, the icy sheet of Lake Atropos glittered, white and stunning, in the summer sun.
Cady’s mother, linked arm in arm with Cady’s stepfather-to-be, looked where her daughter was pointing. Jennifer had been linked with Juan for the better part of the past year, but Cady didn’t mind. Once a mitten found its missing match, she figured, it most likely never wanted to lose it again.
“Del said he froze the lake to avoid any further shenanigans,” Jennifer explained.
Cady’s aunt Jo nodded. “Plus, now Camp Atropos is the only summer camp in the country to offer ice hockey.”
Cady knew that her aunt Jo had once been the camp director, back when Camp Atropos was exclusively for Singular children, and before that, when it was a camp for Fair kids. Now that it was open to everybody, Jo had passed the responsibility of running things to her former head counselor, Del. “I need to clear my head for a while,” she’d said. “Try to remember what’s important.” Aunt Jo liked to talk a lot about remembering.
“Cady!”
Poking their heads out from the double doors of the lodge were Cady’s soon-to-be stepsiblings, Max and Lily, along with their stepsister, Hannah. When Cady had dreamed of a family all those years ago, she’d had no idea how quirky and complicated and beautiful families could be.
Together, Cady and the others entered the lodge, passing beneath the moose head keeping guard above, and found an empty row of seats to settle into. The room was bustling with campers and parents and siblings, preparing for the all-camp Talent show. Hannah and Max scurried off but returned quickly, Max balancing sev
eral cups of punch on his fingertips. “You have to try some,” he told Cady.
From the seat beside her, Lily lifted her harmonica to her lips and began to play. Her song was shaky, but she’d improved considerably over the past year. As Lily played, a single cup of punch floated from Max’s fingertips, through the air, bobbing before Cady’s nose.
“The punch is really good this year,” Lily said when Cady plucked the cup from the air. “Hannah’s getting better and better.”
Hannah beamed.
Cady examined the drink’s layers—fiery orange nearest the bottom, edging into watermelon pink farther up, then, at its height, a deep blackberry. A mint leaf, like a lily pad, floated on top. She took a sip. The punch brought to mind Cady’s best memories of summer—baking cakes on a breezy afternoon with her mother in the kitchen, humming beside her.
“Delicious,” Cady said.
“Peanut butter’s even better,” came a voice from behind her.
Cady turned to discover two boys, one tall and broad, the other a bit skinnier, both with auburn hair and pasty white knees.
“This is Miles,” Lily told her. “And his brother, Renny. They were in Cabin Eight last year, too.”
“What are you doing for the Talent show?” Cady asked them. She knew that Renny had gotten his brother’s Talent for a brief spell. But she also knew that Renny had insisted their friend Chuck Coax it back.
“Renny taught me how to take wallets from people’s pockets,” Miles said.
Renny’s face flushed red. “We always put them back,” he assured everyone.
Miles had already returned to his previous topic of conversation. “Peanut butter’s better than punch,” he said again. “But not as good as Caramel Crème bars.” His fingers began to flick—flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!—until Renny put a calming hand on his shoulder and the flicking died down. “Peanut butter candy bars would be better than anything.”
Max was busy handing out cups. “But you can’t put memories in peanut butter bars.” He took a sip of punch, and by the time he’d swallowed, Cady could tell that he was thinking the exact thought she was. “Could you?”
“Peanut butter memory bars,” Renny said, his eyes brightening. “Now, that sounds like an investment opportunity.”
“It sounds like an adventure,” Cady’s mother piped up. And when Cady turned to look at her, Jennifer raised her eyebrows at her daughter.
Beside her, Lily flipped her harmonica end over end in her palm. “You’d need,” she said, “some way to get the memories into the candy bars.”
Cady’s eyes landed on the two girls climbing to the stage for the first act of the evening—two girls Cady had met so many years ago, when they were toddlers at her mother’s orphanage. Chuck and Ellie. The Frog Twins, they liked to call themselves.
As the sisters tapped their microphones and the audience settled into an excited silence, Cady rolled an idea over in her mind. “Perhaps,” she said—and the more she thought on it, the more delicious the idea seemed—“perhaps you might Coax the memories inside?”
Hdup-hdup! agreed a frog in the distance.
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