On their way back from the parking lot, deep in frenzied conversation, Rosie nearly steps in something mountainous.

  “Is that a . . . turd?” They gather around it in wonder.

  “That’s a bear turd,” Elias gasps. He crouches in the center of the trail to investigate.

  Rosie stoops beside him. “Could be,” she says. “Or, we need to be seriously worried about someone here.”

  Sam laughs out loud at the two of them. Squatting in the dirt like that, focused and prodding at the mound with twigs, they could be lost campers.

  For the rest of the day, a quiet debate races through the undertow. The bear exists, that much is clear—the question is whether or not they should be afraid of it. Some people argue that a single, snack-sized camper alone on the trails after campfire could conceivably be snatched. Some—Dane, namely—have cameras and traps in mind. The fact that no one has actually seen the bear, that it lurks somewhere in the trees, haunting them, makes it all that much scarier. In their overworked imaginations, it could be a monster, a killer.

  Sam is too preoccupied to worry much about it. Her attention wears thin. Every day with the Hummingbirds presents a new challenge.

  The next morning, after breakfast, she is brushing her teeth in the bathroom when she hears a crash and clamor. Racing back inside, she finds the Hummingbirds’ cabin has exploded into pandemonium. Poppy Warbler stands in the center of the room, bawling. She looks like she has just crawled out of a train wreck. The laces of her left shoe are untied, her right shoe is missing entirely, and her face has reddened to a deep, purplish plum color as she screams. Within her wailing mouth, her one front tooth is hazardously loose and rimmed with blood. She holds two halves of a broken, sloppy ceramic bowl in her clenched fists.

  “I’m sorry, Poppy!” Rachel is crying, too. Other girls run for cover as the tantrum escalates. Daria crouches on the floor with her hands over her ears. They know what to do—this is hardly the first time.

  “You . . . did . . . it . . . on . . . purpose!” Poppy shrieks, each word a desperate gasp between the sobs.

  “No, I didn’t! I didn’t!”

  If Rachel gets too upset, she will wet herself like an overexcited puppy. Sam rushes to her first. Then she turns to Poppy. Her purple shade is darkening, and her ponytail has broken loose in wild, nearly transparent blond sprigs. Tears splatter down the front of her T-shirt, smearing the grease marks from breakfast.

  “Poppy. Poppy.” Sam reaches out to touch her, but she flinches away. She lifts one arm and throws the ceramic piece onto the cabin floor. She is strong for a six-year-old. The bowl shatters into dusty shards. The other girls squeal.

  Something in Sam snaps. She feels it crack like a dry twig inside her, and her arm hitches back. She is going to hit her. Instead, she brings her hand down hard and knocks the other piece of clay out of Poppy’s grip. It crashes to the floor, and Poppy hardly notices. Snot bubbles burst from her nose and lips. She lifts her empty hands to her face and claws at her own cheeks as she screams, her fingers drawing hard white lines in the red of her skin.

  “Stop. Poppy, stop. Hey!” Sam tries to get ahold of her wrists. Poppy wails and scratches. This isn’t about the bowl anymore. This is just chaos, flailing desperation for the sake of flailing desperation.

  In a rush, Sam reaches out and wraps the entire writhing little body in her arms. She lifts Poppy and carries her, grunting, across the cabin and out to the bathroom, stomps past the toilets, and deposits her on the damp concrete beneath a showerhead, closing the curtain with a rattle behind them. “Look at me. Poppy, look. Calm down, or I’m going to turn the water on.”

  Poppy shrieks and stomps Sam’s toes. Sam closes her eyes and turns the knob. The water hits them both. Poppy gasps. Sam kneels and lets the freezing stream run over them. She clutches her shoulders and shakes her, on the verge of tears herself. “Are you done?”

  Drenched and flushed, Poppy sputters. She blinks, as if only now realizing where she is. Three pink claw lines are etched into the skin of her cheek. She looks at Sam, wavering, deliberating, and then she laughs.

  Sam’s hair is still wet when she gets to the office later in the morning. She has one chore today: to call a man named Russell Eckart of the Gray Mountain Stables, and she is dreading it. She hates the archaic, curly-corded phone receiver and the faceless voices on the other end. When Dane bursts through the screen door to announce he is tracking bear prints behind the mess hall, she leaps up to join him.

  Poppy’s tantrum haunts her for the rest of the day, through lifeguarding in the afternoon and evening soccer on the lawn. The scratch marks fade from her cheeks, but Sam can still picture them, red and swollen in the cold shower spray. She almost hit her. With just a shred less clarity, she would have done it. She watches Poppy laugh and smack her food through dinner and feels her skin crawl with guilt. Where is the line drawn? At what point is this person, who looks like a child, who laughs like a child, who screams like a child, not a child? If she had hit her, what would that make the both of them?

  Sam is not the only one struggling. She can see it in Elias’s eyes. His fingers, like hers, are peeled and scabbed around the nails. He twitches his foot and picks at loose threads. He snaps easily. It’s Hugo Baker, Sam knows. The Falcon, charming and popular during the day, apparently suffers from night terrors. He wakes up screaming, shrieking, like Poppy. Sometimes it takes an hour and multiple counselors to settle him down. Some nights he will get out of bed and wander, half awake, onto their porch or to another boy’s bunk, mumbling incoherently. The behavior would be spooky in any camper—but Hugo Baker is not just any camper, as much as they might try to forget it. Rumor has it that in the throes of one of his fits a few nights ago, the words I didn’t do it escaped him. That thought alone is a deeper, much more terrifying mystery than any animal or monster in the forest.

  Sam hears most of this from Taps, who has the cabin next door. Elias never talks about it. She worries about him. He isn’t exactly cold and practical, like his brother; he feels things, he reacts to changes in the air around him. He—like her—is fully capable of complete, blown-out collapse if pushed far enough. Sam has started to wonder which of the two of them might reach that point first.

  When she finally gets the Hummingbirds into bed after campfire, she is exhausted. She already has the plot of another silly story in mind and is getting ready to tell it, hoping to make it quick, when Deb squeaks up from her sleeping bag. “Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  A wide pair of eyes watches her through the top slats of the bunk, a flop of dirty hair. Her voice trembles. “Did Danny McGee get eaten by a bear?”

  It takes longer than usual to turn out the lights. Sam leaves the cabin livid. She huffs, with anger and lack of breath, as she and Rosie climb up through the Nest doorway. “Which one of you assholes killed Danny McGee?” she asks, scrambling to her feet.

  Jeremy lies sprawled on a sofa, his knuckles dragging across the rug below him. He flashes her a grin and a limp peace sign.

  “Of course.” Sam groans. “Dammit, Germ, that was my story. I just spent half an hour trying to get my girls to bed. They’re all freaked out because someone told them Danny got eaten by a bear.”

  “A bear?” Katie, prim and proud under Dane’s heavy arm, reaches out to smack him across the back of the head. “What is wrong with you?”

  Jeremy ducks forward on the cushions, away from her reach. “Who said ‘bear’? I never said it was a bear.”

  “Well, someone did. Stop stealing my story.”

  “Oh, that story’s public property now,” says Kyle from the back of the room. “My kids think he fell off the dam.”

  “Sorry, Sam. Everybody loves a dead camper.” Jeremy shrugs.

  “He’s right,” Dane agrees solemnly. “There’s one every summer. Dead campers keep them on the trails.”

  Jeremy hooks his pinky finger around the handle of the plastic vodka jug on the floor. He lifts it daintily to Rosie, who passes it to Sam with a consoling pat between her shoulders. “RIP, Danny McGee,” she sighs.

  •••

  The guest cabin is tucked into the edge of the forest behind the infirmary. It was built for potential overnight visitors who never come—nobody ever comes to Camp Phoenix, after all, unless they come through a consciousness transfer—and is full of broken mess hall benches and craft supplies, dusty futons, and a locker stacked with odd relics from years past. The assistant directors have keys to the locked front door. From time to time, they break in to drink without the younger staff around.

  Tonight, Nick quietly invites Elias, who brings along Sam and Rosie. It’s a little shamefully exciting for the three of them, underclassmen breaking rank. The cabin is warmer and brighter than the Nest. They play a few card games and beer pong across a folding plastic table, and as curfew approaches, the room spins around Sam’s head. She sits on the floor, leaning back against Rosie’s knees. Katie and Dane have locked themselves into the back room of the cabin to fight about something. Tearful shouts and grunts seep through the wall, ignored by the rest of them.

  At the border of Sam’s attention, Amy lectures Elias. “Listen to me!” She brandishes her beer bottle haphazardly in his face. “You can’t just ignore her. Don’t be a dick about it.”

  A tired stereo on the windowsill cuts in and out, streaming the only radio station that reaches them through the mountains: a greasy old rock channel that cycles through the same ten or fifteen staticky songs on repeat. The music is comforting. Sam sways along to it and listens to the conversation bubbling around her. A violent boredom has overcome her; she mulls over an urge to do something reckless, something stupid.

  Elias, his cheeks flushed bright red, lies back on the cabin floor with his hands in his hair. “What am I supposed to say?” he whines. “I can’t just tell her I don’t like her. That’ll break her heart.”

  “That’s a cop-out, and you know it,” says Rosie. “You’re being such a man right now. Just talk to her.” Man, the way she says it, is a slur. Sam giggles.

  Elias lifts his head to glare at her. “Smells like goddamn hypocrisy in here. Like you talk. What’d I catch you and Germ doing in the game room the other night, again?”

  Rosie smirks, winding the tip of Sam’s ponytail around her fingers. “Talking.”

  Nick sits across the room from Sam on the edge of a futon. She looks up to see him focused on the beer bottle in his hands, determinedly, deliberately peeling away the label one shred at a time. Sam watches him and thinks about reckless and stupid urges. She thinks about Elias and Sadie on the lifeguard dock. They were out past curfew. They could have been caught. She thinks about Richard Byron and his rumored self-medication, his laughing eyes. How much does he know about their free time? Would he fire them, just for breaking curfew? Or does it take something more serious—does a camper need to be hurt for someone to get fired, like Phoebe?

  At the thought of Phoebe and the accident, a cold pressure clamps over Sam’s chest. She brings her hands to her hair, like Elias. “Horse!” she shouts suddenly, making Rosie jump. “Nick, the horse!”

  He looks up at her. “What?”

  “I didn’t call the guy, the horse guy!”

  Russell Eckart of the Gray Mountain Stables. He can take back his horse tomorrow, and only tomorrow; otherwise, they will have to get rid of her any other way. Sam’s only chore in the morning was to call him back. She forgot to do it.

  She slaps her palms to the sides of her face and peers through her fingers at Nick, pleading. “Can we . . . ?”

  “It’s one a.m., Sam.”

  “We can leave him a message, can’t we? Please? In the morning it’ll be too late.” She hears her voice break.

  “Worth a shot, Nicky.” Gabe frowns. They speak over Sam’s head, like she’s a hopeless camper. “Gus is pissed it’s taking this long already. And you know how bad Dane wants to dig a hole.” He glances toward the back room of the cabin, where the shouts have fallen suddenly, questionably silent.

  Nick nods, scratching away the last shred of his label. “All right.” He shrugs at Sam. “Come on.”

  They lace up their shoes and zip into their jackets. The rest of the group is crumbling, singing along to the song on the radio as they leave. Cold, brisk air smacks them at the doorway. Sam stumbles on the first step coming down from the guest cabin porch, and Nick catches her by the arm. The walk to the office is long and silent. When Sam looks up, the stars between the branches are wilting, drifting into one another. She drifts, too.

  The porch steps creak and the screen door squeals in protest. Inside, the hum and glow of sleeping computer monitors is unsettling. Nick flicks on the desk lamp, flooding the room with a weak orange glow.

  “Do you have his number?”

  “What?” Sam squints at him. The skin on his nose is peeling with sunburn, shredding away like the label of his beer. “Oh, yeah. It’s on a sticky note. On the desk.”

  She leans back against the surface of Campbell’s desk as he rummages around her. At the dull dial tone, she blinks and sees him holding out the receiver to her, his expression as flat as ever. Sam shakes her head. Her tongue is suddenly thick and sticky in her mouth. Nick shrugs.

  His voice, speaking into the phone, is spectacularly composed. It sounds unreal in the dim, empty office, like someone has turned on a radio in another room. “Hi, Russell, this is Nick Borowitz, from Camp Phoenix.” He carries on.

  Sam watches him. A nasty internal voice gnaws at the back of her mind. This is it, it tells her. Three weeks into the summer, and this is where she breaks. Missing phone calls, burying horses, slapping campers. Her throat clenches. The room spins. She feels sick.

  “. . . And if you’re still willing, our director wanted to let you know we’d be able to meet you halfway.” Nick looks up at her as he talks, fixated, then alarmed. Sam realizes there are hot tears on her cheeks. Mortified, she turns her face toward the ceiling and swallows hard. “Again, sorry to call you at this time. Hope we’ll hear back from you in the morning.”

  She hears a click, a heavy breath, then a resounding, devastating silence.

  Sam shakes her head, feeling the tears roll faster. She can’t stop them. She desperately wants to explain, but when she manages to wedge her mouth open, what she says is: “We should probably go back soon, or everyone will think we’re hooking up.”

  In the pause that follows, the sob in her throat breaks free as a hiccup. They look at each other.

  “Okay. Here.” Blank-faced, Nick digs into the neck of his sweatshirt and drags out his looped keychain. Sam thinks he is going to take it off and offer it to her. Instead, he swivels the clanking keys around to the back of his neck. He lifts a hand. “Look. Like this.” He brings his palm down hard against his chest. Thump. Then again. Thump. The sound is firm, satisfying.

  Sam mirrors him, raising her right hand. Thump. She smacks herself just below the collarbones. “Why?”

  “Feels good. Doesn’t it?”

  It does. She repeats the motion. Thump. Thump. Thump. Each beat resonates, shaking something loose inside her chest. Flaky rust and mold, chunking apart, rattling clean. Like Poppy scratching her own face, there is method to this. Purpose. They stand together, a foot or so of dim orange space between them, and hit themselves in the chest. Their hands fall just out of pace with each other. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. “I can’t do this,” she says out loud.

  “What?”

  “All of it. Poppy. The horse. I shouldn’t be in charge of any of this. I can’t stop screwing it all up.”

  Nick’s hand slows for a moment to a gentle drum. He clears his throat, then picks up the beat again. “I’m going to tell you something.”

  “Okay?”

  “It wasn’t always college kids,” he begins slowly. “When Camp opened, those first couple summers, they hired psychologists and teachers to be the counselors. Professionals. And it didn’t work.”

  Sam taps steadily against her chest. “What do you mean?”

  “The campers didn’t like it. They knew something was up—some of them started remembering their consciousness transfers, and that can be really bad. So, Chard started hiring younger counselors. He brought in college kids, let them really get into it, mess around and drink and stuff, and then it felt like the real thing. A real camp.”

  “Oh.” Sam watches the tears plop and spread on the front of her jacket. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, no one does. Hey.” He bobs his head, urging her to look up at him. Sam meets his eyes and finds them entirely honest. “It’s all a part of it. Accidents. Bears. Kids throwing tantrums and getting hurt. That stuff’s supposed to happen. We’re supposed to be screwing up. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be real.”

  Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

  “Don’t tell anyone I told you that, all right?” Nick says. Then he smiles, quick and uncomfortable. “And I don’t think anyone thinks we’re hooking up. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Okay.” Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

  After some time, dizzy and embarrassed, Sam pushes herself off the desk and leaves the office.

  She is awake before the alarm in her watch goes off the next morning. In the bunk beside her, Poppy’s dewy, pink face comes slowly into focus. Her lips are parted in a perfect O, her body curled to half its size in the sleeping bag.

  Bleary-eyed, head pounding, Sam leaves the cabin and stumbles to the mess hall for coffee. The taste makes her gag, but the warmth of the mug in her hands grounds her. She shuffles along through the gray morning mist to the gold-panning claim, where she rests her mug on the bank and kneels to splash her face with cold water. A rustle in the bushes makes her pause and look up. It takes a few seconds to realize what she is looking at. When she does, she inhales sharply, falls back into the creek bed, and topples her scalding coffee with a flailing arm.