by Lexa Hillyer
When she gets to college, that is.
Zoe looks at her green plastic watch. Crap. Almost time for the breakfast bell. She had been meaning to wake up early so she could squeeze in another workout, but this whole time-travel thing has her off her game. This is not the sort of quandary she normally wakes up to—usually it’s more like Eggo waffles versus Crispix.
She throws on the first items of clothing she can locate and jogs over to the dining hall, knowing she’ll be one of the first campers to arrive. Her calf muscles are screaming. Between the impromptu relay yesterday and the hour after leaving the bonfire that she spent re-teaching herself the basics of fencing in private, using only an inadequately short stick, Zoe’s exertions may have been a bit overkill. She also did forty push-ups, and her arms feel like limp noodles.
She has practically inhaled her whole breakfast by the time she sees Tali, Joy, and Luce walk through the broad, bright barn doors to the dining hall.
“Good morning,” Joy says cheerfully when they all bang their trays down on the table.
Tali frowns at her. “Did anyone else have a horrible time trying to sleep last night?”
Joy shrugs. “Despite Sarah’s snoring, you mean?” she says, just as Luce throws in an “Ugh, yes.”
“I feel like it’s so messed up, what’s happening to us right now. Like, why us?” Tali asks.
“Who knows?” Zoe sits up straighter, trying not to let Tali’s victim attitude bother her—or the memory of how rude she was last night at the bonfire. “But we can’t sit around angsting about it. It’s already day two of being in the past. We need to stay positive and focused on what to do to get out of here.”
This was clearly the wrong thing to say, because Tali glares at her. “I’m not angsting. And who appointed you the ghost of summertimes past?”
“Tali,” Luce puts in, “I think Zoe just meant that we’re all in this together, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Tali says. But she’s still glaring at Zoe. “I just think I’m allowed to be disturbed by the recent sequence of events.”
“Or lack of sequence, technically,” Zoe says but regrets it again. How come literally everything out of her mouth ends up being the exact wrong thing?
Tali rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Well, I for one could use some help,” Luce says then, putting her fork down, grayish scrambled eggs leaving a sad trail across her Styrofoam plate. “I’m supposed to get the merit badge but Jade Marino already got it. So what do I do? Is there some way to fake it?”
It crosses Zoe’s mind that they could just try to find a way to steal the badge, but she doesn’t tell Luce that—it goes against all her goody-two-shoes morals, and besides, they should be trying to stick to the script as much as possible. Even though the more she thinks about it the less confident she feels about her whole plan. What if it doesn’t even work?
“You can’t fake history,” she informs them, although she’s not one hundred percent sure if that’s true. Still, she’s definitely sure that it isn’t worth the risk of finding out. “But maybe you can do something nice for Jade, and she’ll let you have it?”
Joy clears her throat and finally speaks up. “Or you could talk to your mom and see if she can make an exception this year. Tell her how important the badge is to you. Something like that,” she offers.
Luce is nodding. “I can try,” she says, but she sounds unconvinced. “What about you guys? Joy, don’t you need to sign up for the talent show?”
Joy doesn’t look up from her soggy cereal. “Yeah. I can go to the planning meeting today.” She nods, as though to reassure not just her friends but herself. “That’s the easy part, anyway. The hard part will be getting everyone to vote for me again. I’m really not sure how I pulled that off before. Plus I have one day less than you guys, remember? The talent show is on the night before reunion. The tournament is the day of reunion. Same with the badge ceremony.”
Luce cocks her head. “I’m sure you’ll win again, Joy. Everyone thinks you’re sweet. Don’t worry about that.”
“Besides,” Tali adds, “if we have to . . . help the votes along, we’re not above it.” She grins at Joy. She means this to be supportive, Zoe knows, just like Luce’s comment about Joy being “sweet,” but it doesn’t come off that way.
Fortunately, Joy seems not to mind.
Luce cuts the crust off her toast with precision, like her life depends on it. “What I’m more worried about is whether this plan is even going to work or not,” she says. She looks over her shoulders as if to make sure no one is listening—but with the typical morning chaos of the dining hall, it would be near impossible for any of the other campers to overhear them. “What if we really have to relive the last two years? Or what if we get back to the present but everything has changed?”
“I don’t have an answer for that. All I know is that a plan is better than no plan. And that I am seriously behind on my end of the bargain,” Zoe announces. “Last night I literally tried to do a balestra into a lunge and ended up in a corps a corps with a freaking ash tree.”
Tali snorts. “I literally have no idea what you just said.”
“I’m basically a mess,” Zoe clarifies.
“Don’t worry, we have your back,” Joy says. “We’ll figure this out. We all will. If the relays were yesterday, that means we still have four days left until reunion night, including today.”
“All right.” Zoe stands and picks up her tray. “I gotta go. The countdown is on.”
Joy looks up at her. “You’re leaving?”
Zoe pauses, tempted to blurt out: You’re the one who left. Two years ago. You left all of us, with no explanation. Why did you do it? Why did you drop us? But for once, she bites her tongue. She has to focus on the problem at hand. “I need to get back in mental shape if I’m gonna win this thing.”
Joy seems deflated. “Okay.”
“And I need to go talk to my mom about the badge,” Luce adds.
“But we should all reconvene later,” Tali says, finishing her yogurt. “Tonight’s Casino Cruise Night, remember? Blake was there two years ago. So obviously we all have to go.”
“Why do we all have to go?” Zoe asks, still standing there with her tray of dirty dishes in her hands.
“Well, I’m not planning on going alone,” Tali answers. “How unsexy would that look?”
This is precisely one of those statements that people who understand popularity make all the time, while people who are not Most Likely to Be Asked to Prom find completely selfish.
“So you expect us to be your backup dancers?” Zoe says sarcastically.
“Come on, Zoe,” Tali says, turning her head just enough to make eye contact and smirking slightly. “You know you want to. This is your chance to see what the notorious Cruise is really all about.”
Zoe is perfectly aware of the Casino Cruise Night rep—it’s basically an unofficial booze cruise, because the counselors are famous for smuggling alcohol on board the big boat, which departs just after sunset and glides across the lake and back, taking a couple of hours. In fact, it is the perfect occasion for Tali to hook up with Blake. He’ll be trapped.
Of course, being trapped is exactly why Zoe didn’t go on the Casino Cruise two summers ago. Or more specifically, Russ Allen is the reason she didn’t go. After that awful, fumbling hookup on Water Wars day, he’d been all slobbery and clingy for the rest of the summer. She knew he’d corner her out there on the cruise.
But this time around she hasn’t even glimpsed Russ yet. And she has enough breakups under her belt by now to know how to handle Russ if it comes to that.
The image of Cal trying to help fix her old junker of a bike flashes into her mind. The look on his face when she told him it was over. His offer to give her a ride anyway. Maybe she should say she’s sorry. As soon as they get back, she will. She owes him that. Her chest aches from mis
sing him, but she tries to focus on what’s happening now.
Zoe sighs. “Fine, I’m in. But only because I understand the immense importance of you getting some tonight so we can all get the hell out of here in one piece. Anyway, why are you strung out about this? You have the easiest job of all of us—been there, hit that. Right?”
Tali had never been super explicit about what had happened between her and Blake, but the possession of his boxers had said enough.
Tali shrugs, turning back to her tray. “Of course. But an entourage never hurts.”
“Great!” Joy says, with real enthusiasm.
“It’ll be fun,” Luce adds, though whether she means it or is just trying to convince herself, Zoe can’t tell.
Zoe is still aching and exhausted by the time she files into line with the other girls on the fencing team and slips on her helmet. She forgot how sticky and clammy it is under these fencing masks—hard helmets with firm metal mesh covering the entire face area. She already feels off her game, and practice hasn’t even begun. Coach Patelski walks up and down the double lineup of girls—each of them facing a random opponent—checking off names and verifying that everyone has appropriate equipment.
Zoe is facing Samantha Puliver. It’s hard to tell which girl is which with the masks disguising their faces, but Sam is all muscle—one of the strongest girls at camp, in fact—and Zoe recognizes her pregame foot bounce, almost like she’s about to start boxing or something. Great. Zoe doesn’t even get to warm up on someone easy.
They begin sparring. Just as she expected, Sam is a beast, but Zoe parries decently and Sam gets in only one direct hit. Every two minutes, Patelski blows his whistle and makes everybody switch partners—the north line stays still while the south line does an about-face and takes a stride to the right, facing a new opponent. Zoe takes the moments between bouts to adjust her helmet, remembering how she used to love the sense of anonymity and power that came with wearing one. Now she just feels humid and damp.
Sam steps down and next Zoe’s facing Indigo Perez, aka camp slut. Zoe would feel bad about the label, but Indigo seems to be into it. She breathes a sigh of relief. Indigo sucks at fencing—Zoe has literally no idea why she continues to sign up for it, summer after summer. Zoe easily bests her four times before the whistle blows again.
“Hold on, women,” Patelski shouts before they begin their next engagement. He points to Zoe and her new opponent. “I want everyone to check out Zoe’s back foot. Zoe and Ellis, you two alone, please.”
The other girls turn so they can watch, while Zoe begins her bout with Ellis, a girl she only dimly remembers. Ellis isn’t in Bunk Blue Heron with them, which means she’s either younger or a day camper. Zoe can make out her sharp blue eyes through the mesh mask—if Zoe has to guess, she’d say the girl looks pleased to have the attention.
“See how she tracks that back foot, people?” Patelski says, and Zoe experiences a rush of pleasure. At least she hasn’t forgotten everything. “It’s right under her, every time. That’s how she’s able to make those lunges with so much control. See what I’m talking about?”
Zoe feels a blaze of heat in her face. Confident, she lunges again, more aggressively than before. Ellis is surprisingly agile and easily deflects with an opposition parry, never losing contact with Zoe’s épée. Zoe racks her mind to recall her strategy—how did she beat Ellis last time?—but comes up blank. Even the stronger fencers, like Sam, have their weaknesses. Sam is too eager in her attacks—she loses her footing in the forward momentum. Sarah Hawking is bold but erratic and can’t keep her lines. Cherry Brentworth and most of the other Bunk Wolf girls are simply easy to intimidate—once you get them focusing on defense, they become scared, powerless to make a hit, and give way too much space.
But this girl is different. She doesn’t back up when Zoe attacks, and her rhythm is unusual, making her appear like a hummingbird, flitting in and out of Zoe’s range seemingly at random. She can’t anticipate Ellis’s next move, and she’s starting to lose her balance. Thankfully, Patelski blows the whistle again, just as Ellis leaps past Zoe’s sightline, attempting a flèche. Zoe quickly steps backward, out of bounds. Ellis would have scored her hit had it not been for the whistle.
Zoe realizes she’s been holding her breath. Shit. She may not recall Ellis from two summers ago as anyone special, but if she’s that good at distracting Zoe this time around, it’s very possible she’ll be Zoe’s biggest competition for the gold.
Zoe brushes herself off and readies for the next bout of sparring, but in her mind she keeps turning over that last flèche, how Ellis breached the space between them as though she were invincible, flying out of Zoe’s peripheral vision in a flash of white and rendering her completely off balance. If there’s anything Zoe hates, it’s the inability to see what’s coming next. Especially when she’s about to get hit.
“Are you serious?” Tali asks that evening after dinner, standing behind Zoe and staring at her in the single, highly coveted bunk mirror. “At least fix your hair,” she insists, and reaches up to yank on Zoe’s ponytail.
“Ow!” Zoe spins around and slaps Tali’s hand out of her face. The demands of the day are catching up to her and her patience is about as thin as Tali’s trendy little tissue T-shirt. “I will let my hair down, and I will come on the cruise tonight, but that is the last thing I’m agreeing to tonight, ’kay?” she says, keeping her voice tense but low, so Tali will get that she’s serious.
“Fine,” Tali says with a shrug as she walks back over to her cubbies, as though she hasn’t been harassing all of them about their outfit choices for the last half hour. “Here, you can use my brush.”
Zoe reacts quickly, reaching for the brush Tali tosses to her. “How generous.”
She turns back to the mirror and catches Joy’s eye in its reflection as Joy slides gloss across her lips. It’s just a momentary glance, but it makes her feel better. And then the soothing feeling turns into something else—a sharp pang in her chest. When Joy disappeared, the threads that held them together unraveled. The friendship between the four of them fell apart at the seams like an old sweater. So how is it that after all this time, Joy can still have that same effect on her—an instant calm, like staring into the lake itself?
While Zoe fixes herself up in the mirror, she can see Uma Finkelstein repainting her toenails and Hadley straightening her hair. Zoe has a sudden memory—that is, a flash from the future. She remembers that Uma will get into Brown with some sort of prestigious scholarship for brainiacs. It’s posted all over the internet. Or it will be, in two years, when it happens. Zoe realizes she never even noticed that Uma was so smart. She’s the kind of girl who always has her head down, whether she’s focused on her toenails or achieving academic greatness. Not for the first time, Zoe’s awash in that Twilight Zone feeling, causing her skin to tingle. Everyone around her—everyone on earth, in fact—is constantly pursuing his or her own separate journey through life, going mostly unnoticed. She’s just one of infinite possibilities and realities. She plays a minor, passing role in Uma’s life—if that.
Finally, they’re all ready. Tali is wearing a lime-green tissue T-shirt through which her black bra is visible and a pair of Luce’s black shorts, which look super short on Tali (which was, apparently, the whole point of borrowing them, even though Tali has her own black shorts as well). Luce is in a simple yellow sundress and wedges, and Joy has on a flowing, patterned top Tali insisted she wear, along with her skinny jeans and sandals. Bringing up the rear is Zoe, in—surprise, surprise—cutoff shorts and a men’s white T-shirt. She holds her breath, ducking through the cloud of peach- and passion fruit–scented body sprays as she heads out the cabin door, letting it slam behind her.
They trek across the grass with their flashlights toward the pick-up spot on the docks at the far lake. Okahatchee is too small for the cruise, which always takes place on the far bigger and more famous Lake Tabaldak. As they a
pproach, the noise of other gathering campers and the flames of various lanterns fill the night with a buzzing energy. Zoe can make out the basic shape of the boat, strung with Christmas lights, and one large, blinking sign that reads, in cheesy-looking cursive, WELCOME TO VEGAS.
Just as she’s starting to think this was a bad idea, Joy turns around and smiles. There’s something about Joy’s smile—it’s unlike anyone else’s. Maybe it’s the way it causes her eyes to turn down at the sides, radiating sympathy. Maybe it’s the way she can hold a gaze, making it more than clear that she’s not just listening, she’s absorbing. “Isn’t it kind of perfect?” Joy says, gesturing at all the activity surrounding the bobbing boat and the steps leading up to it from the dock.
“Perfect how?” Zoe asks quietly. Some part of her is terrified by that smile, afraid to let Joy back in.
Afraid to lose everything all over again.
“You know, this whole experience. The idea of a gambling night. Don’t you feel like we’re kind of gambling on our fates? Like we’re cheating the house somehow? I don’t know.” She shrugs.
Zoe takes a deep breath, inhaling the mineral smell of the lake and the citronella of the torches. “I guess, when you put it that way,” she replies. “We are getting a do-over.”
“Exactly,” Joy says with a laugh, following the other girls onto the dock. “And we’re getting away with it. Pretty awesome, when you think about it.”
“Yeah,” Zoe says. But then, under her breath, she adds, “At least, we think we’re getting away with it.”
As soon as the boat leaves the dock, Zoe’s heart rate picks up. There’s no running back to the safety of the cabin now. Andrew appears almost immediately and whisks Luce away to play one of the casino games, grabbing their allotment of fifty chips each and leaving Zoe with Joy and Tali. But it doesn’t take long for Tali to spot Blake, who is, as usual, hanging out with Jacob-something (Zoe always thought that was funny: Jake and Blake, douche-bag besties), and some other guy whose name Zoe forgets.