“No, what did he say.”
“Just to stay clear of him.”
“I’d already gotten that vibe.” Her shoulders shook. “Creepy. See, you do like me.”
With the whole group gathered and the breaking dawn, we were divided into various teams for different bonding activities. Most kids in the group seemed nice, with only a few like George being more on the antisocial side.
At noon, we broke for lunch. Our work duty team realized that meal was the easiest to clean up after as they served sandwiches, salad, and fruit. Frida found me on my bed writing during rest time.
“You going to do that all the time?”
“Not sure what else there is to do.”
“I brought cards.”
“Okay.” I sat up, and we gathered the rest of our tent mates for a game of rummy.
In the afternoon, we played more games, including ultimate Frisbee, and soccer till the sun set just before four. After adding another layer of clothes, I met Dr. Antos at his tent.
“Come in.” He motioned for me to sit in a camp chair across from his makeshift desk. Asking about how I was adjusting and my view on the event so far, he then began to probe into more serious topics such as my visions.
“I have your document. Can you go through it from the beginning with me?”
“Sure.” I started to tell about how I’d seen Alena and her mother at the library with Hunter and how Alena went back to find him the next day. Thirty minutes in, he stopped me.
“We’ll go through this a little each day. I’m taking notes, and I’ll ask questions when I have them. You haven’t had any symptoms today?”
“No.”
“Have you thought about Ivy, or Alena, or Hunter?”
“Not unless someone mentions my condition.”
“Do you miss seeing them?”
“Not really.” I wondered if I might be lying a bit with that answer. They were certainly a known in the sea of unknowns at the camp.
“And no further visions or migraine symptoms today?”
“No.”
“Great, okay, I want to do a test. Take off your bracelet.”
Unsure of what he expected the outcome to be, I slid the jewelry from my wrist and set it on the table. As I let it go, the low hum started. It intensified at an alarming pace, and I grabbed my temples. The room started to spin, and I doubled over. This can’t be happening, I thought. My palms started to sweat as Dr. Antos’s hands gripped my shoulders.
“What’s going on?”
“The migraine.” A huge pulse shot through my brain, and everything went dark.
I woke to silence. A cool cloth lay on my head, and the nurse sat beside me. I tried to sit up.
“There, there, you just rest,” the woman said, patting my arm.
Dr. Antos’s face appeared above hers. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” I noted the heaviness on my wrist and lifted my arm to see the bracelet there. “Guess this thing really works.”
Dr. Antos took the nurse’s place. “What did you experience?”
“Just the hum and then an intense burst, like energy surging through my brain.”
“Nothing else, no visions, no dreams?”
“How long have I been out?”
“Half an hour.”
“What?” I shot up. “I have kitchen duty.”
“It’s okay, your team leader has been notified.”
God, I was the biggest freak ever. Why couldn’t I be normal? “I want to participate with the rest of the campers.”
“Okay.” He scooted the stool back. “At least drink some orange juice. We order it fresh squeezed.”
“Thanks.” I handed him the towel and took the cup from him.
Slipping on my coat, gloves, and hat, I made my way to the mess tent.
“What happened to you?” Frida asked right off.
“I got a migraine.”
“After your session with Dr. Antos?”
“Yes.” I cut my eyes to the floor, feeling the weight of the group’s gaze on me. “What’s the menu?”
Jude handed me an apron. “You can help me make the pasta.”
“We’re making pasta? Like from scratch.”
“That’s what the directions say.” Asa held up a sheet of paper. “There’s fresh venison, tomatoes for sauce, and tons of vegetables.”
“Deer? Wonderful.” I shuddered.
“What’s your deal with meat?” George spoke to me for the first time.
“I’m kind of an animal person. My mom’s a vet, and I want to be one too.”
“Everything’s got to eat. It’s the food chain.” George let his cleaver fall on the slab of deer.
I cringed, wondering if he looked at us as potential food chain material. Deciding Jude to be the safest of the crowd, I joined him at the pasta table as he started to roll out the dough.
“Have you done this before?” I asked him.
“You haven’t? It’s fun. I’ll show you.”
“Guess not,” I told him, feeling like a total social Neanderthal.
He instructed me on rolling out the dough thin and feeding it through the slicer. As Frida readied the boiling water, we transferred the thin strips to the pot.
“Here, try it.” Jude held a cooked piece up above my head and lowered it into my mouth.
“That may be the best pasta I’ve ever had.”
“The secret is the fine flower.”
“Very cool.”
“I’m thinking we’re going to be ready for chef school after this. We could call the restaurant The Crazy Trio,” Frida said.
“What about me and George?” Asa’s hand went to her hip.
“Oh, you can come eat there.” Frida snorted.
I rolled my eyes and set to cleaning up the workstation.
“You don’t have to do that. The cleanup crew will.” Jude appeared behind me.
“I need to keep busy.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, well, if you do, you know where to find me.”
Finishing wiping down the prep table, I joined the group at a table.
“You see what we’re doing tomorrow?” Frida asked. “All day hike. They’re waking us at six, eat breakfast, make sandwiches, and head out.”
“That sounds awesome,” I told her.
“You like hiking in the dark?”
“I think it will be cool. We should make the summit by sunrise, right?”
“I guess. I wish I had your cheery attitude. Or maybe I don’t.”
“I haven’t lived here all my life.”
As the trays of food were set out, we made our way to the line. If I didn’t think about the meat it’d been cooked in being deer, the sauce tasted better than any I’d ever had. At least I was getting my money’s worth with the food. I’d started to doubt the therapy part. Would I need to wear this heavy bracelet for the rest of my life? I stopped my mental spiral by reminding myself that it beat the haze the anti-psychotic meds caused.
There were lots of mumbled complaints the next morning as we were roused at six and ate a quick breakfast of bagels, cheese, and fruit.
“Man, I can’t believe we don’t get coffee,” Frida complained.
“Coffee is an addictive substance.” Dr. Antos leaned over her shoulder.
“That half the world consumes.” She made bug eyes at him.
We made our sandwiches, packed our day bags, fitted lamps on our heads, and headed up the trail single file. It seemed Frida, Jude, and I had formed a small pack, and I walked behind them, wondering if the bonds would last when we were switched to other teams. Frida and I shared a tent, so at least that offered some consistency.
Only the lead hiker used his headlight, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out the landforms in front of us. Thinking I could be the luckiest person in the world to get to come on this trip, I lifted one foot after the other as we ascended, following only Frida in front
of me.
If the point of the hike were to cause sensory desensitization, I would’ve thought it a success as the tiny spots of light in the sky brightened as we climbed. The smell of damp earth surrounded me, and the repeated motion of my legs on the ground had my mind clearing like no other time I’d known.
What was important to me? What did I want to achieve? Why was it so crucial for me to come on this trip? The answers came in quick succession. I needed to do well in school to get into a good program in the States. I wanted to be happy, healthy, and present for all of life’s moments, not only for myself, but for Mom and Tyler.
Nearing the top of the ridge, the sky began to lighten. As we crested the summit the sun rose from the ocean, like an orange ball of fire. Wishing Tyler and Mom were there, a tear escaped my eye. We can come back here in the spring, I told myself. Perched on the rocks, we watched as the star rose from the water, shining white in the sky. The group was silent, until George cut in.
“Well, that was da bomb. Can we go back now?”
“George.” A chorus of complaints went up.
Dr. Antos gave us instructions on not straying too far. We were given two hours of exploration time before meeting back for the descent.
“So, is it you, me, and Jude?” Frida asked as the group broke.
“We should ask Asa and George,” I told her.
“Really?” Frida set her hand on her hip. But she got her wish, as Asa joined our tent group and George his. “What are the three guys?” Frida asked as we set off around a lake.
“Dumas’s three musketeers?” Jude put in.
“Dumas?”
“He originally wrote the book.”
She spun to face him. “So, what are you, like some kind of literature genius?”
“No, I have a photographic memory.”
Frida’s smile spread from ear to ear. “I’d like to photograph you in my memory.”
“Come on, guys.” I tugged at Frida. “I want to get around the lake.”
“And she’s little miss overachiever.”
“If you don’t like us, why do you keep hanging around?”
“Got to keep you from breaking any rules.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes, thinking she would be the first one to pucker up to Jude. With little other discussion, we reached the opposite side of the lake and parked on a boulder to eat our lunch. By some miracle, we’d nabbed one of the ten sunny days in the month for our outing, and I wasn’t going to waste a second. Shedding my coat and long-sleeved shirt, I lay on the rock, soaking up the sun.
“You’re crazy,” Frida told me.
“Try it! There’s no wind. It feels amazing.”
“With that white skin of yours, you’re going to end up with a sunburn.”
“I don’t care.”
We lay on the rocks with bare arms. Rolling up our pant legs, we baked our legs. The sun behind my eyelids burned a black spot in my mind, and I slipped into a light slumber.
Jude’s alarm brought me out of my sleep.
“That’s time to head back.” He jumped to the ground, offering his hand to help us down. We reached the group with five minutes to spare. About half the campers were present, and when the rest arrived, Dr. Antos took a head count. Afterwards, we trekked down the mountain. Glad to have light for the descent, I followed Jude, copying his footing.
Once we unpacked at the camp site, I met with Dr. Antos. It seemed only Jude and I had sessions with him every day, and I wondered what the other campers thought of it. When I posed the question to Frida that night, she was quick with an answer.
“There is crazy, and there is crazy. And you’re crazy, love. At least that’s the word on the street.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it. Why are you hanging out with us then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe underneath this druggie, I got a little crazy too.”
“So, you’re it? No one else is going to be friends with me?”
“You’ve got Jude. Who else do you need? Plus, every girl here wants to be you.”
“We’ve been here forty-eight hours, and they’ve already put Jude and me together?”
“Seems so.”
We walked back to our tent in silence, and I slipped into my sleeping bag, thinking I might be the only sane girl there.
Monday donned the beginning of our school week. We ate breakfast and worked in the tech tent on computers until after sun up. The sunrise did little as thick clouds hung in the sky as we broke for exercise and lunch. In the afternoon, we had group sessions, lessons on ropes, rock climbing, mountaineering, ice climbing, and various physical skills combined with some psychological or emotional lesson. Wrap-ups for these classes focused on sharing a personal learning or status.
Save my hallucinations, I began to think of myself as well adjusted compared to many of the others. My four o’clock sessions continued with Dr. Antos sifting through the details of my visions. Otherwise, Frida, Jude, and I always seemed to find each other during free time. As the week wore on, tensions between us and Asa and George heightened. I tried to team up with Asa during chore time, but it didn’t seem to help.
The weather didn’t help the mood around camp as each sunrise and sunset came and went, shrouded behind a bank of clouds.
“Welcome to Iceland,” George told Jude when he complained at lunch Friday. “Didn’t you request this session especially because you’d never been to Iceland? Maybe you should have done your homework. October is the rainiest month of the year.”
The tone lifted Saturday as we were allowed to sleep in, skip chores, wander freely, and talk with family.
“Camille. It’s so good to hear your voice.” Mom sounded as if she might be crying as she answered the phone. “How are you?”
“Really good.”
“Did you make some friends?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“How are you doing? I’ve been so worried.”
I skipped telling her about passing out, choosing to focus on our hike to the summit and various activities during the week. Describing the camp setup, I told her about our trip to the glacier the next day.
“Dr. Antos said you were good without the meds,” she commented when I finished.
“Yes.” I realized Dr. Antos also left out the episode where I took my bracelet off. “No meds. It’s great to feel normal and not worry about anything.”
“Well, I hope you’re thinking about schoolwork and grades.”
“My coursework is going well. Don’t worry.”
“Okay, well, I love you.”
“Love you too.” I ended the call.
That night after dinner we had a campfire. Dr. Antos assigned our teams for the next week. My group included Jude, two girls from the other tent—Beth Anne and Ruth—and another boy, John. John roomed with Jude, and he said John was cool. I’d only talked to the other girls a couple of times, so I hoped we would get along. The odd thing was I’d never worried about getting along with people before. There hadn’t been a single person I’d had a serious problem with. Perhaps the close camp setting had me on edge. Maybe Frida’s paranoia was rubbing off. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it and reaffirmed my vow to be inclusive rather than exclusive in my relationships.
I approached Beth Ann the next morning when we reported for breakfast cook duty. “Hi, I’m Camille. I don’t think we met formally.”
“I know who you are. You’re with Jude and Frida.”
“It’s not like we’re married or anything.”
“Frida is seriously scary, and I’m not sure about you and Jude. You have this whole bracelet thing going. You’re the only ones who see Dr. Antos every day. There must be something there. Sorry, but I’m picking my friends carefully. We only have a month here. It’s not worth drama.”
“That’s okay. I get it. Recovery first.” I smiled, rubbed my hand to my pants, and retreated to find the eggs.
“Hey, save a couple of those for me.” Jude’s voice startled me.
“A cou
ple, like two?”
“Three.” His smile stretched across his face, and he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.
Setting three eggs in a small bowl, I carried the rest to the prep table.
“Jude wants raw eggs?” Ruth asked as I started to crack and scrambled the small quail eggs.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“I was on breakfast cook duty last week too. He eats them raw every day.” She scrunched up her nose. “Must be some bodybuilding thing. Whatever he does, it’s working. He is some kind of hot.”
“I guess.” I kept my eyes on the bowl in front of me. Truth be told, I tried to not look at Jude as much as possible. The couple of times we’d been in separate groups, I’d caught him glance my way. He diverted his eyes when our gaze met. Still I couldn’t look away. He favored someone and I hadn’t figured it out until the previous day. He looked like Theron, Hunter’s evil half-brother. So, I’d added Jude’s resemblance to Theron to my paranoia of Dr. Antos being the evil wizard Thanatos.
“You like him?” Ruth’s words brought me out of my spiral.
“We’re friends, I guess.” I realized Frida supplied most of the conversation between the three of us, and I hadn’t talked to him one on one since the first day.
Ruth bumped into me, making the egg I’d been cracking spill to the table. “So, he’s fair game?”
“Course.”
She peppered me with questions as we worked. They were mostly about Frida and Jude so I deflected almost all of them. I tried to get to know her, but she seemed intent on learning all she could about Jude.
“You should go talk to him.” I glanced over to where he stood kneading a round of dough. He smiled and winked at me, and I shot him a glaring stare. “I’ll get the fruit ready.” I spun to face the coolers.
As I returned to the table, I saw Ruth had positioned herself beside Jude.
“Want help with the fruit?” John stepped up to the table, knife in hand.
“Sure.” I finished wiping down the work surface with the cleaner they’d provided us.
“So, we have Beth Ann who hates you, and Ruth who just wants Jude. This should be interesting.”
“I must have been sleeping through high school because I haven’t ever witnessed drama like this.”
The Kingdom Journals Complete Series Box Set Page 31