Camp New Leaf was burning.
Peashooter gave his cannibals permission to burn the world down. Now he had no choice but to stand upon the scorched earth and watch his master plan crumble.
If I could just find him.
I zeroed in on the docks. Found them. Peashooter had cornered Sully at the end. Her bare heels were inching toward the edge, while his back was turned to me.
Another inch and she’d be bathing in Lake Wendigo.
My feet were in flight before the rest of me knew what I was doing. I rushed onto the dock, trying not to make a sound. The wood warped beneath my feet.
Sully’s eyes left Peashooter long enough to lock on to mine.
Instant giveaway.
Peashooter spun around and slipped behind Sully, wrapping his arm around her neck.
My feet skidded to a halt, my fist withering at my side.
“Hello, Rat,” Peashooter purred. “I was starting to think you’d never make it.”
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Sully tried to free herself from his grip. “Spencer—don’t. He’s mine.”
“Good to see you, too,” I said. “Nice of you to drop in and pay a visit.”
“Well, I was in the neighborhood.”
“Shall we end this?” I asked, taking a step forward. Peashooter’s arm tightened around Sully’s throat like a boa constrictor coiling around its prey.
“Let her go,” I said. “This is between you and me.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” Peashooter whispered in Sully’s ear. “Your boyfriend has come to rescue you.” He stepped back, the lake shimmering just over his shoulder.
“Him? Rescue me?” Sully huffed. “My hero.”
“You should be ashamed, Peashooter. Picking on a defenseless girl.”
“Excuse me?” Sully prickled at my comment. “Just who do you think you’re calling defenseless?”
“Would you stay out of this, please? I’m trying to save your life!”
“If you two want to hash this out amongst yourselves,” Peashooter interrupted, growing impatient, “I’ll gladly wait until you’re done.”
“Stay out of this,” I spat back at Peashooter before returning to Sully.
She rolled her eyes at me. “You have no idea how annoying you are sometimes.”
“You can say that again,” Peashooter agreed.
“Let her go,” I said.
“I don’t need your help,” Sully growled. “This is between Peashooter and me.”
“No,” I insisted. “This is between me and him.”
“This is between all of us,” Peashooter said. Without hesitating, he flung Sully off the dock. She hit the surface of the lake with a sharp splash.
“Sully!” I lost sight of her as she sank farther below.
“What are you going to do now that your girlfriend’s gone?” he asked.
My fingers balled themselves into a fist. Peashooter grinned.
“Are you going to hit me?”
I could feel my fingernails dig into my skin as I tightened my fist.
“Come on. Take your best shot.”
I didn’t lift my arm.
“What’s the matter? Hit me! Hit me!”
Peashooter was only growing more frustrated the longer I held my ground. He picked up his deer-skulled quarterstaff from the dock and trained the antlers on me. I noticed a braided belt of rubber bands strung between them.
“Can’t take the first swing? Fine. I’ll make you.”
A crossbow. That was most definitely a crossbow. Peashooter pulled out an arrow from the quiver rattling at his back.
“No more dart guns made out of pens, huh?” I asked.
“I have an arrow with your name on it, Spencer.”
Do something, Spence.
Peashooter took aim.
Man up man up man up man up man up man up…
I stood in place.
I took in a deep breath.
I lifted my chin.
I faced Peashooter head-on and recited: “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”
“Whoever said that probably wasn’t staring down a loaded crossbow.”
“The man who said it knew how to fight back against petty tyrants like you….”
“Oh yeah?” Peashooter pinched one eye shut and took aim. “How’s that?”
As he pulled his arm back, a yellow jump rope noosed itself around Peashooter’s neck and pulled him backward.
“Collective action,” Sully answered.
Peashooter released his crossbow and the arrow shot uselessly into the sky. The quarterstaff clattered against the planks.
A soaking-wet Sully hoisted herself back onto the dock, in the process yanking Peashooter into Lake Wendigo, swapping places with him. He shouted all the way down, then was abruptly cut off the moment he took a header through the water’s smooth surface.
“You okay?” I asked.
“You said all those chauvinistic things just to throw Peashooter off and let me do my thing, didn’t you?”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
I can’t quite say that any of this had exactly been my plan, but, considering it seemed to have been successful, I wasn’t going to split hairs.
•••
It took less than an hour to corral all the cannibals. Sully’s tribe went about hog-tying the boys, binding their hands and feet behind their backs with jump rope.
The Piranhas had gone rogue, on nobody’s side but their own, leaping from one prostrate boy to the next, plucking the hems of their underwear and yanking—
“Deathbywedgiedeathbywedgiedeathbywedgiedeathbywedgiedeathbywedgie.”
The aftermath of battle was strewn all around us. Sully and I surveyed a scene eerily reminiscent of those battlefield photos taken during the Civil War.
Parents wandered through the carnage, looking for their sons.
Yardstick had finally knocked Firefly off the rooftop. The girls filled trash cans with water from Lake Wendigo and lugged them back up the path, extinguishing each blaze they stumbled across.
Plumes of smoke continued to drift up from the cabins, blackening the air.
“This is one Parents’ Day these parents won’t forget,” said Sully.
I stopped.
Sully noticed and turned back. “What is it?”
“I thought you had booked it for good.”
“As far as Peashooter was concerned, I had. But somebody needed to save your ass—again. This is like the fifth time I’ve come to your rescue.”
“But who’s counting, right?”
“You’re a real regular damsel in distress, Spencer. You know that?”
Silence. I couldn’t help but stare.
Six months. It had been six months since I’d last seen Sully. I had imagined this moment so many times, so many different ways. But in the million-and-one scenarios I conjured up in my head (Sully showing up at my front door, Sully popping out of my locker, Sully dropping down the chimney), none of them had looked like this.
“Getting googly-eyed on me already?” she asked, her words punctuated with a slight laugh. Her joke was meant to break the tension, but I couldn’t relax.
“Why did you leave?”
The question hung in the air. “We had no choice.”
“You had a choice.”
“I wasn’t about to abandon my friends.”
“You abandoned me.”
“You’re pretty easy to find.”
“So you’ve been following me?”
“Something like that.”
I took Sully’s hand. “These last six months were the worst months of my life.”
“Spencer…”
“I thought you were gone. Gone for good.
”
Sully leaned in and kissed me. The cicadas grinding away in the woods engulfed the air. I swore I felt the buzzing of their wings in my lips.
Sully stepped back, blinking.
“What?” I asked.
“Usually you’d be having an asthma attack by now.”
She was right. But my lungs felt sturdy. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t needed My Little Friend for almost twenty-four hours straight.
I took in a lungful of fresh air and slowly exhaled.
No constricted throat.
No dizziness.
Just then, from over Sully’s shoulder, I noticed Yardstick racing down the path. His face was painted with an expression of pure panic. “Spencer—look out!”
I turned.
There, from the dock, Peashooter took aim with his crossbow.
Time thickened as he pulled the arrow back through the antlers.
Its trajectory seemed off-kilter. The arrow would miss me by a mile.
That’s when I realized Peashooter hadn’t been aiming for me.
Sully’s knees softened. She folded into herself and landed on her back.
“Sully!”
The arrow had buried itself into her shoulder. Her white cotton T-shirt quickly went red, her own blood eclipsing the maple-leafed moose head. The goose feathers lining her shoulders grew crimson, like a pillow fight gone bloody.
“Did Peashooter just shoot me?” Sully actually sounded more incredulous than hurt. “I can’t believe that jerk just shot me….”
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, struggling to force the anxiety out of my voice. “Just stay still, alright? Here—hold on to my hand.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Don’t—just don’t talk. We’ll get you to a doc—”
Sully yanked the arrow out with her own hand, her face contorting in pain. A shout seethed out from her gritted teeth.
“What are you doing?” I took off my T-shirt and pressed it against her wound. “This badass attitude is a little much, don’t you think?”
“Peashooter should stick to his spitballs,” she said, and limply laughed. “He’s a much better aim with his dart gun.”
Peashooter.
I turned back to the dock to discover he had reloaded his crossbow.
“To the Law of Claw and Fang,” he said, pinching one eye shut.
Ready…
Aim…
Good-bye, Spence.
“…Jason?”
The name cut through camp.
Nearly everyone seemed to freeze, turning their heads to see who had said it.
A bashful-looking woman stood on the main path, startled by the aftermath of battle spread out before her. Her gray eyes remained on Peashooter.
Where had she come from?
She wasn’t one of the parents who had been corralled in the amphitheater.
Who she was, nobody knew.
Except for Peashooter. His lower lip began to tremble.
“Mom…?”
DAY EIGHT: 1200 HOURS
o guess who had pressed SEND on an e-mail to the parents of each Tribesman earlier that morning?
Dear (),
This will no doubt come as a shock, but you’ve got to believe me….
Your son/daughter, (), is very much alive—and I know where you can find him/her. THIS IS NOT A PRANK.
My name is Spencer and I’m attending a summer camp in the middle of absolutely nowhere called Camp New Leaf. I don’t have any way of proving this, but () is here. He/she is safe—but you’ve got to hurry. He/she bound to bolt if he/she find out that you’re on your way.
No matter how preposterous this sounds, trust me—if you want to see your son/daughter, hop in the car and head to New Leaf right now….
Signed,
Spencer Pendleton
It was hard to tell who was more shocked at the impromptu reunion—Peashooter or his mother. Both looked as if they’d just seen a ghost.
“I saw the smoke,” Peashooter’s mom said, her voice catching in her throat.
I could immediately see the resemblance between them. They shared the same eyes. She was the matriarch of the mastermind behind the Tribe.
And she wasn’t alone.
Another pair of parents hurried into the amphitheater. They looked lost, searching through the crowd of campers for that one familiar face.
I recognized them from their photos stuck to the cave’s walls.
Sporkboy’s mom and dad—the Greenwoods.
Charles finally released Sporkboy from his jaws, which had been clamped down on Sporkboy’s throat this whole time, pinning him in place.
Sporkboy sat upright, a ring of teeth marks sunk into his skin.
“Mom…? Dad?”
His parents remained frozen, speechless.
“It’s me, Mom,” he said as he stood up and held out his arms at his sides like an infant learning how to walk, struggling to maintain his balance as he took his first few steps toward his mother.
Mrs. Greenwood’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Sporkboy stumbled directly into his mother and broke down.
“Can we go home now?” His muffled voice seeped out, face buried in her chest. Mrs. Greenwood lifted her arms and tightly wrapped them around her son.
Mr. Tulliver was the next to arrive at the amphitheater. As soon as Sully saw him, her breath caught in her chest.
“Dad?”
He saw Sully lying on the ground and rushed to her without a second’s hesitation, his face a mixture of bliss and panic.
“What happened to you?” he asked. Once the questions started, the dam broke. “Who did this? Are you okay? Where have you been?”
“Dad—I’m fine, I swear.”
“We’ve got to get you to a doctor. We’ve got to get you out of here. We’ve got to get you home. We’ve got to—”
“Dad, please—I’m okay, really.”
He picked her up and cradled his daughter against his chest as if she were a newborn. She resisted at first, squirming in his grip.
“I thought…” he started to say, choking. “I thought you were dead.”
Sully slowly melted into her father’s arms. She buried her face into his shoulder and sobbed.
Yardstick’s mom—Ms. Cumberland—entered the amphitheater, clutching her purse. Upon first glimpse of her boy—now as tall as a man—she immediately went about fussing over him. She wet her finger with her tongue and attempted to clean the smudges of dirt spread across his forehead.
“Look at you! You look like you haven’t taken a bath in years.”
“Mom…not in front of everybody.” Yardstick stood stock-still while she wiped his face, then the two of them fell into each others arms and squeezed.
The Piranhas had scampered off, leaving behind a stunned Compass to stumble above the amphitheater on his own. He nearly collided into his own parents as they entered. The Winters had a much harder time showing their emotions, looking none too happy to be here. His dad possessed a sternness that barely cracked around the corners. He held himself back, arms crossed at his chest.
“Can someone please explain what this is all about?” Mrs. Winters asked.
Before Compass could answer, Mr. Winters cut in. “How could you have done this? To us? Your own parents! Do you know what you put your mother through?”
“Stanley,” Mrs. Winters admonished her husband. “Not now.”
“We’re leaving,” Mr. Winters declared. “Say good-bye to your friends.”
“But…” Compass started.
“This instant, Jim. Don’t make me say it twice.”
“No.”
Mr. Winters’s features froze. “What did you say to me?”
Compass’s hands, clasped in front of h
im, shook—but he stood his ground. “I said no.”
Mr. Winters stormed over to his son. Staring Compass right in the eye, he whispered—“You have three seconds, you hear? Starting now.”
Compass took one last look at Peashooter on the docks.
“Three…”
Compass turned to Sporkboy, pleading with his eyes.
“Two…”
Compass slowly bowed his head.
“One.”
Mr. Winters cupped the nape of Compass’s neck with his palm, as if to make sure he wouldn’t run. The reunited Winters family shuffled up the main path together and disappeared into the smoke-ridden parking lot without another word.
The rest of us just watched Jimmy Winters walk away with his parents.
Compass was gone.
I turned to Peashooter, expecting him to say something. To stop this from happening. Nothing.
Peashooter’s mother took an uncertain step out onto the wobbly dock.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” she said. “After all these years, I—I just couldn’t. But I had to come. I needed to see if it was really you.” She hesitantly reached out her hand. “Is it? Is it really you…?”
Just as she was about to touch his cheek, Peashooter ran off the dock. His face was wet with tears.
“Jason? Jason, please—come back!”
I stepped into Peashooter’s path, blocking him. He pushed against me, but I grabbed his arm. I had to dig my heels into the ground just to keep my grip.
“Let go of me!” Peashooter was sobbing.
Actually sobbing.
“Let go!”
His mother followed. “It’s okay, baby…Everything is going to be okay.”
“It’s not going to be okay!”
“Jason…”
Peashooter’s jaw tensed. “Don’t call me that. Nobody calls me that.”
“Jason, please—”
“Jason is dead, you hear me? Jason doesn’t exist anymore.”
“That’s not true….”
“You want to know what happened to your Jason?” Peashooter asked. “Let me remind you. Jason never met his father. His real father. For the longest time, it was just him and his mother—and they were happy. Up until when Henry came along. His mom remarried when Jason was only six years old. Henry never cared much for his new stepson. Henry thought the lack of a father figure had softened Jason up. Henry believed the boy needed to be disciplined. Taught respect. He made it his mission to turn Jason into a proper young man. Is this ringing a bell?”
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