“Was it really him?”

  “It had to be. He knew our names.”

  “He called you . . .”

  “Forget it.” Logan shakes her head and nudges her glasses up on her nose. “That was the ghost. That had to be the ghost.”

  They look at each other. Hugo seems to want to argue, but he nods. “It . . . had to be,” he says slowly. Then his eyes grow bigger. “Poppy.”

  “Poppy!”

  They dash down the trail, back into the heart of Camp. To the office, they decide; Nick or Dane or Mr. Campbell will help them. It’s still afternoon activity. Everyone is stuck indoors, telling stories or playing games. The few counselors they pass look at them lazily as they sprint by—either no one realized they were missing, or no one really cared. Beneath her panic, Logan is disappointed.

  They reach the office porch and take another moment to pant and spit. Logan steps in first, swinging the screen door open in a burst.

  Four sets of eyes stare at her: Sam’s, Nick’s, Mr. Campbell’s, and another man’s, a stranger. All of them stand with their arms folded across their chests, frozen in mid-conversation. The stranger is wearing dirty pants and long sleeves and a grease-stained ball cap. His face is withered and smudged with dirt. He looks stunned at the sight of Logan, and Hugo behind her. The sudden artificial chill of the air conditioner makes her shiver.

  “Logan?” Sam steps forward. “What’s up?”

  “Where’s Poppy?!” Logan shouts, spraying a speck of drool. She wipes at her chin. “Is Poppy okay?”

  “What? Why?” Sam looks up at Mr. Campbell, who frowns. “What activity are you supposed to be at?”

  Hugo has moved his way inside the room. “Is she dead?” he cries. “Is Poppy Warbler dead?”

  Mr. Campbell stoops and grabs Hugo by the back of the neck. “Who told you to say that?” he asks quietly.

  “The ghost of Danny McGee! He’s real. We just met him!”

  “He said he’s gonna kill Poppy!”

  “No, he said he already did!”

  The man in the hat laughs, loud and bewildered. “What’s going on? Who are these two?”

  “Ah, nothing.” Mr. Campbell’s smile looks forced, not like his usual big grin. It makes him look different, wrong. “Our campers can get a little wrapped up in the ghost stories here, that’s all. Sam, why don’t you take Logan and, ah—” He pauses, coughs. “Why don’t you take them up to the infirmary? They’re probably a little dehydrated.”

  Logan shakes her head. “No, please. I don’t want to take another pill.”

  The dirty man frowns worriedly at her.

  “Logan, hon. Why are you so worked up about Poppy all the sudden?” Sam’s concerned face makes Logan’s heart sink. She feels suddenly silly, like a little kid who forgot she was playing make-believe. She looks toward Hugo. His eyes are twitching all around the room, and his hair stands up on end—a wild boy. “Danny McGee is just a story. I promise.”

  Sam walks them out onto the office porch with a hand on each of their shoulders. She tells them, in a too-sweet tone like Sadie’s, that they will go to the mess hall and get a soda, and everything will be all right. Partway along the trail, the hand on Logan’s shoulder burns red-hot. She throws it off.

  “We’re not kids!” she snaps at Sam, who tilts back and looks her over in surprise. “Stop lying to us! Tell us the truth. Why do we have to stay on the trails?”

  The counselor’s expression is hard to read. Her eyes are dull, lined in gray. She straightens up and puts her hands in her pockets, looking quickly between Logan and Hugo, and sighs.

  “Because of the ghost.”

  Logan nods. Hugo looks satisfied; he reaches out and squeezes her arm, just above the wrist. “It’s not just a story? He’s real?”

  “It’s not just a story. He is very real. If you really met him, you know. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “What about Poppy? Did he get her?”

  “Poppy’s fine.” Sam shakes her head and turns to lead them along the trail again. “He’s never going to get her.”

  Logan and Hugo share a smile. They nod to each other and follow Sam, beaming, victorious. Finally, they know the truth. They are the only campers who know what’s really going on at Camp Phoenix.

  week ten

  Sam

  Kuhn and Wicker Forest Services is a privately contracted logging and wildfire team. The best in the business, according to the print on the doors of their trucks. They’ve come from three states away to reach Smith’s Ridge.

  Wicker doesn’t make an appearance at Camp, but Kuhn sits in the office for hours, sipping black coffee and negotiating pleasantly, as if the world around them is not burning as they speak. His eyes, bright and beady, are glued to Sam beneath the brim of a dirty ball cap.

  “State’s doing what they can to contain it, but you folks are pretty damn far from the nearest populated area. No one pays much attention to what happens out here, to be honest.”

  “So.” Campbell, with raised eyebrows, taps against his desktop to drag Kuhn’s attention back to himself. “What can we do?”

  “Nothing much.” The fireman shrugs and lifts his mug to his lips. “We’ll get out there and start clearing a perimeter. Smoke’s nasty, but it won’t kill you.”

  “We can’t evacuate. It can’t get near us.”

  “I understand that, and it won’t. Not this one. But you should know, you’re going to have to rethink that policy eventually. Shit gets worse every year. A place like this won’t last forever—that’s just the reality.” Kuhn swishes the dregs in his mug and winks across the room at Sam. “Can I get another refill, angel?”

  When Hugo Baker and Logan Adler run screaming into the office, Sam is nearly relieved. It’s hard not to laugh; the campers are scraped and muddy and wailing like they have seen a ghost—wailing, in fact, about the ghost they’ve seen.

  “Is Poppy Warbler dead?” Hugo looks more like a frightened boy and less like a murderer than Sam has seen him yet.

  In the confusion, Sam catches a look on Kuhn’s face: deeply disturbed and morbidly curious. He leans toward the campers, squinting, searching for the seams and zippers in their flesh. At Campbell’s tense look, Sam grabs them by the shoulders and marches them out.

  She can’t say what happened to them. In all likelihood a counselor is behind it; her best bet is on Jeremy, who has taken to spiking his morning coffee and chain-smoking joints on his free periods. He must have said something about Poppy a little too loudly in front of the campers and had to cover his tracks with the ghost story. Whatever happened, both Hugo and Logan—already fragile enough after Taps’s outburst—seem to be under the impression that they have met and spoken with the real-life ghost of Danny McGee. The silly story she started herself has grown into something monstrous over the course of the summer.

  Their faces are glazed over, ecstatic. Drunk and sloppy with excitement. They hold hands as they follow her to the mess hall. Watching them, Sam thinks of Elias. Maybe he is right. Maybe Hugo Baker is a good kid—or a kid, anyway; maybe good and bad aren’t so simple. Kids do terrible things. In another life, if someone had stopped this boy, told him no; if he learned not to take everything he wanted; he could have been another man.

  Anyway, Sam concedes to herself, he’s only a boy now. There are no lessons to be learned, no better adults to shape. Logan smiles like a toddler with his hand in hers. Sam gives them each a soda and delivers them to crafts, leaves them with a finger pressed to her lips. Don’t tell anyone. Whatever it is they think they know, they nod, assuring her that they won’t.

  The smoke from the forest fire has transformed Camp into a hellish wasteland. Sam can hardly see five feet in front of her along the trail. The dull sun casts the world in a peculiar, apocalyptic glow. They have flipped into another dimension, split the fabric and slipped between realities. Back in the office, Nick and Campbell are alone, talking across their separate desks. The way they pause and look up, half smiling, when she walks in makes her wonder self-consciously what they were talking about.

  “Kuhn left?”

  “He wasn’t too interested in sticking around once you were gone.” Campbell grimaces and gestures toward the door. “So? What in the hell was that all about?”

  “I don’t really know.” Sam explains her exchange with the campers as well as she can. “I guess they overheard something about Poppy, but they’re sort of taking it in their own way.”

  “Oh, good lord.” He runs his palms from his head down his brow, sliding his glasses out of place. “What do you mean, their own way?”

  “The ghost.”

  “The what?”

  Nick leans across his desk toward Campbell. “They’re deflecting,” he says, in a tone that suggests the comment is not meant for Sam. Campbell nods knowingly.

  Sam sits heavily in the chair Kuhn abandoned and crosses her legs, folding her arms over her chest. Her foot twitches sporadically in the air. “They seem . . . happy,” she says. “For what it’s worth.”

  “They’re in a state of extreme distress.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Campbell casts her a disapproving look. He takes off his glasses to rub his eyes—comically small, watery and bare. “I don’t know what the right move is here. We’ll just have to keep a close eye on them until Richard’s available.”

  “Where is Chard? Shouldn’t he be here?”

  “He’s busy.”

  “Busy?” Nick laughs. “He’s on a bender up at his cabin. Sam’s an AD now, remember? We don’t need to lie to her.”

  “Christ, Nicky. You don’t need to be so blunt with her, either.”

  “You don’t have to say her, I’m right here.”

  They both look up at her, surprised. Outside, the bell chimes for dinner. Sam rises from her seat.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” says Campbell slowly. “This summer has been . . . You shouldn’t have to be . . .” He falters.

  Sam glances between the two of them. An empty, haunting sort of fear rattles her. It feels like crossing a tightrope only to realize the belay was never attached, like growing up and learning that adults don’t have all the answers, either. No one is steering the ship; they’ve been lost at sea this whole time. “It’s fine,” she says.

  On her way out the door, she catches Nick’s eye. He looks uncharacteristically apologetic. It’s over, whatever it was. Or maybe not. Somehow, it isn’t up to either of them to decide.

  The Hummingbirds will not stop singing the latest version of their favorite campfire song. Deb, who has grown more confident in the past weeks, conducts them through dinner. “Late last night, while we were all in bed . . .” Her mouth is rimmed red with tomato sauce.

  “Fire, fire, fire!”

  “Water, water, water!” Maggie F. brandishes her water glass triumphantly, slopping an ice cube onto the table.

  “Jump, Danny, jump!” they shout. “Aaaaah, splat!” All seven girls pound their fists on the tabletop. The spaghetti dish trembles. They giggle, showing off the food in their mouths.

  “Okay, now I’m fire, fire, fire—no you’re fire, Rachel—I’m water, water . . . Sam! Sam, are you watching?”

  Sam smiles. “I’m watching. Let me see it again.”

  After campfire, she volunteers to cover Sadie’s spot on the patrol schedule. She has been staying in more often; she is tired, and the overdrinking and dirty jokes and judgment have lost their fun. She sits alone on her cabin porch and looks out over the quiet smoke and starlight. A bizarre sense of peace has come over her. Even as everything buckles and twists and comes undone around her, she feels strangely serene. Maybe stress has an endpoint, she reasons, and she has finally found it.

  About an hour before curfew, as she makes her way back down the trail from a stroll around the cabins, she hears a pair of voices from the Chickadees’ porch. Sam pauses and peers around the corner of the cabin. In the weak light, she sees a silvery blond head, bent low. She hears a murmur, then a giggle she is sure she has never heard Rosie make before. As she watches, the two shadows wrap together, rocking back and forth. Sam smiles and turns back up the trail before they can spot her.

  Her radio goes off early in the morning, around the time she should be waking up for her walk to the gold-panning claim. Campbell is calling the assistant directors to meet in the mess hall. They arrive bleary-eyed in their sweatpants and messy hair, murmuring about an apparently wild night. Richard Byron waits for them there. He is calm, tidily dressed, composed aside from red and swollen eyes. They gather around him at a table in the back of the mess hall. He smiles at Sam and tells her how nice it is to see her; how happy he is to have her included in these meetings. They are all so tough and resilient, he says, and the finish line is just around the corner.

  “This smoke is obnoxious, but it isn’t going to kill us,” he says, echoing Kuhn. “Last I heard, we’re not in the fire’s direct path. It should clear out by the end of the week.”

  That seems logical enough, Sam thinks. Nothing can really touch them here, politics or storms or disasters. She can imagine any number of ways for the summer to end—in smoke and confusion, in collapse, but not in flames.

  When she tunes back in, they are talking about Taps. “He’s been paid in full for the summer,” says Campbell grimly. “Last I heard from him, he got home safe. That’s the end of it.”

  Sam chances a glance across the table at Gabe, whose face is an empty slate.

  “It’s not, actually.” Byron drums his fingers over the tabletop. “We have his mess to clean up. Hugo Baker, Camilla Meyer, Max Gill, Logan Gill.” He counts each name on a fingertip, gesturing broadly.

  “Adler-Gill,” Sam corrects him.

  “Probably soon to be just Adler,” Nick adds. Sam nearly laughs. He casts her a flicker of a smile across the seats between them. “What are your thoughts?”

  “My thoughts are, it could be worse. These things happen. What matters now is that they’re still enjoying themselves. That’s our priority.” Byron leans back in his seat, scratching at his beard. In the dim, shadowy light of the windows, he appears older and wiser than usual, almost stoic. Sam watches him and wonders if she dreamed up the afternoon on the other side of the lake, the bright room, the bottle shattering against the wall. “What matters is what they’re looking back on a week from Saturday. If they’re still immersed enough in the experience, a little crack in the paint won’t mean much to them. In the end.”

  “A week from Saturday,” Dane mumbles. He has been leaning back in his chair so the front legs hover upward; he lets them fall to the wood floor with a clank. “Is it really that soon?”

  “Someone should be watching them,” says Campbell. “I don’t know what Hugo and Logan were doing wandering around by themselves in the middle of the day yesterday, but that can’t be happening.”

  “It’s not the wandering we need to worry about. It’s the talking. I think we can get those four happily through to the end of the summer, but if they start talking . . . if they break through again and start telling other campers . . .” Byron huffs and waves a hand, indicating that the end of his thought is too much of an inconvenience to speak out loud. “I agree with you, though. We need to keep a close eye on them.”

  “What if we take them on a campout?”

  Nick grunts, bobbing his head toward the smoky windows. “I don’t think out is a good idea right now.”

  “A camp-in?” Amy suggests. “We can isolate them. Come up with a project or something. Keep them busy.”

  “Play some games.”

  “Tell stories,” Sam adds. Richard Byron turns a glowing smile on her.

  By the time the wake-up bell rings, they have laid out a loose plan. They will keep the four distressed campers together in the guest cabin, supervising them in shifts, until everything Taps told them on the office porch has passed into meaningless memory. Until the paint has dried. Or, until they crack again—in which case, they will have to be sedated and sent back across the lake to their summers’ end.

  “I don’t understand,” Sam says aloud, hardly aware that she is speaking. “How can they just forget and move on? He told them everything. Do they just . . . not want to believe it?”

  After a quiet, tense pause, Nick answers her: “Would you?” The rest of the group glances uneasily between the two of them. Sam shakes her head, and the question dies there.

  His mind made up, Byron sends them off with the chime of the bell. Sam lingers for a moment in the mess hall, looking at him. He is talking to Campbell, their heads bent together and their voices low and serious. When he looks up at her, whatever she was planning to ask dashes from her mind. He doesn’t wait long for her to say anything.

  “How is Poppy, Sam?”

  “Fine.”

  “Looks like she’ll make it through to next week healthy and happy, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  He straightens up in his seat, shifting his weight and attention toward her. “You do understand, don’t you, that next week is the end of the road?” he says soberly. “The campers aren’t designed to last longer than a few months. You do know that every day she spends wired into the consciousness transfer is money out of my pocket. Right?”

  Don’t do anything stupid, he is telling her. As if he has read right into her daydreams.

  “I’m sorry to say it so bluntly, but that’s the reality of the situation. You know that, right, Sam?”

  Sam nods. She hesitates, then realizes she has nothing to say. She leaves the two men to their discussion and walks back to her cabin.

  Logan

  The counselors are scared. Logan can see it in their faces. They constantly tell the campers, all day long, not to worry about the smoke, but there is plenty of worry in their own high voices and fidgeting fingers. When adults get scared, they tell more lies. They tell them the fire is still far away, but suddenly there are strange men in big trucks and dirty pants littered across Camp. They carry chainsaws and axes.