by Mary McCoy
Vivian and Kimber mostly recovered from their time in Tania’s clutches, but from that day forth, there would always be something a little bit starry-eyed and vacant about them. Kimber, who Dora had rightly observed was beginning to be bored of her own boredom, developed a terminal case of wanderlust and spent the rest of her life traveling the globe in search of something like what she’d known during her brief time with those strange creatures. Vivian would never think to look for it at all, and it would make her sullen and bitter. But who’s to say that isn’t exactly what would have happened to them anyway?
Next, Eurydice Horne turned to Kadie, who by this time looked a little less fearful in the saddle and seemed to be almost enjoying herself.
As Kadie continued to sort out the memories that were real from the ones that weren’t, she developed a trick that she would carry with her the rest of her life. If she thought about something, and the only things she could remember about it were fluffy and bubbly and gauzily happy, then the memory was too good to be true.
Eurydice Horne whispered the story to herself, focusing on the smile that danced across Kadie’s face.
That was how she knew Cressida was her friend, that the two of them would be pissing each other off for years to come.
And speaking of friends, that brought Eurydice Horne to Cressida, the only camper from Cabin 1 she felt it would be unconscionable not to approach. The girl was suffering, and it wasn’t fair. She’d fought so hard to find Erin, only to have her ripped away before the two of them could begin to mend things between them.
Eurydice Horne knew how to ease her suffering. She approached the girl, who was sitting away from the others, perched atop a fence.
“It will be fine,” she told Cressida, patting her on the back.
Cressida flinched away from her touch and almost fell off the fence.
“What’s wrong with you?” she lashed out instinctively, softening only a bit when she turned and realized it was the author who’d approached her. “You scared me, sneaking up on me like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What were you saying? What will be fine?”
“You,” said Eurydice Horne. “You and Erin. She’s your friend, she never stopped being your friend, and the two of you will go on being friends.”
“How do you know?”
Cressida had many good qualities, but Eurydice Horne allowed that she would not miss the girl’s brusque manner and chainsaw-on-sheet-metal voice.
“Because she asked you to save her, and then you did.”
Renata found a hidden staircase that led to one of the rooftops and spent the afternoon gazing out over the lake, the mountains, and the forests. After dinner, she returned to watch the birds, and her heart swelled with longing as they skimmed over Lake So-and-So, their forms silhouetted against the sunset.
The next day, she decided it would be better if she didn’t go back up to the roof.
If the girls from Cabin 2 had been angry with Wallis for abandoning them in the woods, any lingering resentments vanished the moment she wrote the story that rescued them. Hennie and Becca even admitted they probably would have done the same thing in her shoes.
Unlike some of the other cabins, they decided they’d had quite enough of the outdoors, and resolved not to venture any farther than the pool. Instead they stayed inside, read books, stayed up all night talking, and slept the morning away. It didn’t feel right, though, Shea not being with them, and so they asked Robin if they could go into town to the hospital where Shea was being treated and visit her, and much to their surprise, Robin said they could.
One of the human staff Robin had hired for an exorbitant wage at the last minute agreed to drive (Inge F. Yancey IV grudgingly signing off on the expense), and once the engine, brakes, and everything else had been thoroughly inspected, they started to climb into one of the town cars.
It was then that Eurydice Horne found them and handed them an envelope.
“A get-well card for your friend,” she said.
At the hospital, gathered around Shea’s bed, they opened and read it.
Dear Shea,
When Becca goes away to college and two weeks into the semester feels herself start to go quiet and timid and tearful, she will recognize the feeling, and you will be the one she calls.
When Hennie feels weak and useless, she will remember the time she bandaged your wounds, and she will know that she is strong and useful.
When Corinne goes on her first major assignment, is helicoptered into the middle of a battlefield, interviews the soldiers under fire, files the story, and flies home with the sound of bombs still ringing in her ears, she won’t let on she was afraid until she gets home and tells you about it.
You will always take care of them. They know that. But for now, let them take care of you.
Warmest regards,
EURYDICE HORNE
Wallis was not mentioned in the card because just before she could get into the car with the others to go to the hospital, Eurydice Horne took her by the shoulder, pulled her aside, and said, “Would you mind staying here? We need your help.”
She asked it like it was a question, like it was a choice, but Wallis knew better.
When she could delay it no longer, Robin returned for a serious chat with another camper. They met in the English rose garden. Three times, the girl with beads in her hair tried to flap her wings and lift herself two feet onto the bench. Eventually, Robin picked her up under the belly and set her down there.
“You don’t have to stay a raven,” Robin explained. “You may find that a different animal suits you better.”
Robin found she could scarcely look the girl with beads in her hair in the eye. While she held to a certain moral code, at least by her standards, Robin had never experienced anything like guilt before. At first, she told herself it was nothing. It wasn’t like she had been the one wielding the gun. It wasn’t as though she’d asked the girl with beads in her hair to step in front of any bullets. But still, the guilt refused to budge, and because of it, Robin found she couldn’t stop trying to fix things, even though things were unfixable.
“Why can’t you change me back like you did for Renata?” asked the girl with beads in her hair.
“You died,” Robin said. “It’s a whole different thing. You don’t have a human body to go back to anymore.”
Tears slid down the raven’s beak and pooled on the flagstone walkway.
“What about my family?” she asked at last.
“I can make them forget you ever existed. Or we can tell them you died,” Robin said, scribbling ideas down on her clipboard. Ideas weren’t the problem. She had lots. They were just all wrong.
She continued, “You could stay here if you wanted, and help me run the place. We’d do things differently, of course. It might not be a bad life for you.”
The girl with beads in her hair shook her raven head.
“That’s not what I want,” she said.
Robin was troubled and called upon Eurydice Horne and Wallis, and the three of them stayed up to the small hours of the morning devising a solution, and then they summoned the girl with beads in her hair for a meeting.
When she hopped into the office looking as miserable as a raven can be said to look, she was both surprised and not surprised to see that Renata was already there, seated at a round rosewood table with Robin, Eurydice Horne, and Wallis.
“I’m sorry.” Tears began to stream down Renata’s cheeks as soon as she opened her mouth.
The girl with beads in her hair hopped over to the table, flapped her wings, and made an awkward ascent to the rosewood tabletop, where she met her friend eye to eye.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” she said. “You saved me.”
“It’s all my fault,” Renata said, and a jagged cry escaped her throat.
The raven whipped her head around and glared at Robin.
“Don’t say that,” she said, looking back at Renata. “Don’t ever
say that.”
Robin fidgeted in her chair, uneasy in her guilt. “I’m going to try to make this right for you.”
This is the closest she would come to an outright apology.
“How?” asked the girl with beads in her hair, pacing across the tabletop and scarring it horribly with her talons. “I’m dead. That won’t ever be all right.”
“No,” said Wallis, inserting herself between them. “It won’t be. You’ll never have anything like a normal life. You will see people living lives that might have been yours, and be filled with regret for what you have lost. You will probably be lonely. I don’t know if you’ll be happy.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better!” said the girl with beads in her hair.
“Half a minute,” Robin said, and turned to Eurydice Horne. “Let the narrator tell it.”
As long as she was in her human body, Renata could never really be happy. The girl with beads in her hair could never really be happy as a raven; however, she also could not be happy as Renata. She wanted to be herself, but since that could not be, they settled on this:
During the school year, Renata dutifully went about in her human form, but in the summertime, she and the girl with beads in her hair switched places, and in this way, both of them were a little bit happier, if not entirely so.
The girl with beads in her hair saw no reason to stay at Camp So-and-So. As there was no need to deceive her parents or be parted from them, she returned home and lived her life in the form of a variety of creatures. She was sometimes a housecat and other times a squirrel, and once she was a firefly, just because she wanted to see what it felt like.
Her family still loved her, of course, and tried their best to understand her, but it was difficult. That was the problem with quests. You came back different, if you came back at all.
The girl with beads in her hair never felt at home anywhere she went, and so she began to venture farther and farther away, for longer and longer spans of time, and for all I know, she is out there still, traveling the four corners of the earth in search of her true name.
“How do you feel about that story?” Eurydice Horne asked.
All the way around the table, their faces were inscrutable.
“It’s not the only one there is,” she said, then added, “but there was something about it that reminded me of you.”
After a long while, the girl with beads in her hair looked at Renata. The two girls nodded to one another, and Renata set the raven on her shoulder.
“It doesn’t sound very happy,” said the girl with beads in her hair. “All that wandering around.”
“Most people don’t get happy endings,” said Eurydice Horne. “Then again, that’s because most people don’t have very good imaginations when it comes to being happy.”
“I do,” said the girl with beads in her hair.
“I know you do. And should you ever change your mind, I have no doubt you will write another story that is twice as fine and suits you twice as well.”
“I think I like this one for now,” she said.
Eurydice Horne leaned forward and kissed the top of her raven head.
“Then take it,” she said. “It’s yours.”
ONE LAST NOTE FROM THE NARRATOR
“What about you?” Wallis asked once everyone else had left and we were alone.
“What about me?”
“Why haven’t you asked Tania and Robin to put you back together again? You should do it now, while they’re still feeling grateful to us.”
I wrinkled my nose, hoping that Wallis would not pursue the subject, though I should have known better.
“You could go home, see your friends,” Wallis said, adding hopefully, “You could finish writing the Isis Archimedes books.”
She knew at once it was the wrong thing to say to me.
I thought for a long time about how I might reply, explaining that I was a different person now, that it had been years since I’d thought about my old home and friends.
That I wanted Isis Archimedes’s story to remain unfinished.
“Wallis . . .” I began, dragging it out as long as possible.
“Spit it out.”
“There is a world above and a world beneath and a world between . . .” I said, quoting the third Isis Archimedes to her.
Everybody always loved that part, but Wallis rolled her eyes, and I realized how obvious it must have sounded to her. After all, that was the quote that was printed on birthday cards and inspirational posters. It was what I wrote to every fan who ever asked me for an autograph.
But just because I wrote it to everyone doesn’t mean I didn’t mean it. I meant it every single time.
“I wrote that because I wanted it to be true,” I told her. “That’s the only reason I ever wrote anything in the first place.”
Wallis looked at me—well, at the half of me that was standing in front of her—and I saw understanding dawn on her face.
“And now it is true.”
“Precisely.”
I sat down at the rosewood table, took up a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote a letter of introduction, which I addressed to my farmhouse in New York.
“If I can be your friend in at least two worlds, I think that would make me very happy.”
This time, Wallis did not roll her eyes.
“You’re saying I should just show up at her house? I mean, your house?”
“You have five good ways to bring Isis Archimedes back from the dead,” I said, handing her the letter. “Trust me, she’ll be delighted to see you.”
Despite my assurances, Wallis never could bring herself to deliver the letter to my farmhouse.
This is probably for the best.
My intentions were good, but I’ve probably been living at Camp So-and-So a little too long to be trusted entirely. Who knows what might have happened if she’d gone? The other me might have asked her to stay. She might have ended up stuck there, trying to finish someone else’s story when she should have been telling her own.
Wallis didn’t go, but she kept my letter.
She never told anyone about it, but she kept it near her as a good luck charm when she wrote her first book.
And her second.
And her seventh.
[Exeunt.]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d just about given up on this story when a number of magical things puffed air beneath its raven wings, and sent its spirit hurtling across Lake So-and-So and, eventually, into the world.
The first magical thing: Brady Potts bought me a Miranda July novel, inside which he had written, “To the Head Counselor of Camp So-and-So: Stranger books have been published.” Brady, you always believed in this story and its strangeness, and you always believe in me and mine. I love you.
The second magical thing: I met Patricia Nelson—it was at a party full of sociologists, so naturally, we found each other and holed up in a corner talking about books. At the time, I had no idea this would be a significant conversation, that like all the best stories, it would become important later, when I least expected it, when I realized that I couldn’t imagine it having happened any other way.
The third magical thing: Alix Reid, who is magical in and of herself; who dived into this manuscript with the optimism of Kadie, the vision of Wallis, the bravery of the girl with beads in her hair, the heart of Verity, and the sheer grit of the girls in Cabin 5. Alix, I am in awe of you.
An uproarious Camp So-and-So cheer to the friends who have given me encouragement and support when I needed it the most: Glen Creason, Leah DiVincenzo, Joanna Fabicon, Rachel Kitzmann, Stacey Lee, Carolina and Sarah Marvin, Bob Peterson, Christina Rice, Jon Rosenberg, Angela Serranzana, Gwen Sharp, Mark Walker, Marc Weitz, and John Woolf.
A lanyard, a tie-dye t-shirt, and a duct-tape wallet to my family at the Los Angeles Public Library and to my tribe of YA writers both nearby and far-flung, who always turn my gripes into smiles and my roadblocks into inspiration.
A ca
mpfire sing-along and unlimited s’mores to John and Karla McCoy, for sending me to Camp Ligonier, where unbeknownst to everyone (including myself) I was socking away the geography, memories, and lessons about what it means to be brave that would become this book. You are the best parents in the world, and I love you.
And finally, to X.J. Kennedy, who wrote the story about the moonflower that made me want to write this one, I whisper into your ear the secret ending of the Isis Archimedes books, the true name of Camp So-and-So, and the words, “Thank you.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary McCoy was born and raised in western Pennsylvania. She holds degrees from Rhodes College and the University of Wisconsin. She now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son, and works as a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library. She is also the author of Dead To Me.
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Camp So-and-So
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
Act 1
Cabin 1
The All-Camp Sport & Follies
Cabin 2
Killer in the Woods
Cabin 3
The Hero's Quest
Cabin 4
Soul Mates
Cabin 5
Survival
Act 2
Cabin 1
The All-Camp Sport & Follies
A Note from the Narrator
Cabin 2
Killer in the Woods
Intermission
Cabin 3
The Hero's Quest
Intermission
Cabin 4
Soul Mates
Cabin 5
Survival
Act 3
Cabin 1
The All-Camp Sport & Follies
Cabin 2
Killer in the Woods
Cabin 3
The Hero's Quest
Intermission
Cabin 4
Soul Mates
Cabin 5
Survival
Act 4
A Note from the Narrator
Cabin 1
The All-Camp Sport & Follies