The body is half submerged. He lies on his back, looking up. Sam reaches him and kneels at his side. Her knees hit stone with a weak splash. Max’s legs are twisted unnaturally beneath him. He must have landed exactly where he is now, in about six inches of slimy water. Two feet to his left, he may have hit deeper water, may have made it out with just another broken bone. His eyes are open. His chest rises and falls, fast and quivering. He sees her and gasps out loud.

  Sam moves robotically. The lanyard is off her neck, the needle in her hand. She digs her fingernail into the button on the side. Her hands are steadier than she would have imagined. “One, two, three, four,” she counts under her breath. “One, two, three. One, two, three, four.” The mouth of the metal tube furls open.

  The boy’s body shakes. In the darkness Sam sees him in pieces: the whites of his eyes, the muttering lips, the ripple of a tremor in his cheeks. His features float up to her, disconnected, inhuman.

  “You’re going to wake up,” she says out loud. “I promise. You’re going back home.” She holds one hand against his damp brow and with the other presses the needle hard into the side of his throat. A slight click ticks against her palm as the spring releases.

  Max looks at her. His jaw clenches, and he nods. His eyes fall shut.

  It takes a minute or two for the shallow breaths to stop. Sam waits, watching. She wonders if this looks the same in every circumstance, the moment a person leaves. If it makes any difference that Max is not going far. Across the water, headlights shine on the old fish hatchery. She hears the slam of the truck door, splashing footsteps approaching.

  Richard Byron crouches beside them. His hand closes gently over Sam’s, taking the keychain from her fist. With two fingers he reaches out and measures the last few feeble heartbeats in Max Gill’s neck. After a long, quiet moment, he sighs. “Okay. Good.” They stand together, and Byron lifts the sopping, broken body. With some difficulty he heaves the boy over his shoulder. His other hand strokes Sam’s hair. They walk back to dry land slowly, together.

  In the gleam of the truck’s headlights, Byron pauses. His face and shirt are soaked, rivulets of watery blood running over him. He nods sideways toward the concrete shack, the old fish hatchery that was never a hatchery at all. “You want to come?” he asks her. The question is sincere, though his voice is gruff, huffing beneath the weight of the body. “You want to see?”

  He isn’t being morbid. He isn’t just inviting her to watch him dispose of the camper, but to show her how it all works. To let her into the inner workings of his most prized possession. Sam understands, and considers. She shakes her head. Cool droplets roll like tears from her brow. She doesn’t want to stomach it, not tonight.

  He nods. “All right. Take the truck, then. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Okay.” Sam hears her own voice like a stranger’s.

  Byron grunts and shifts the burden on his shoulder. “Get those kids to the infirmary. May will give them a sedative. Tell them Max has some injuries, but he’s fine. Tell them he’s on his way home.”

  Sam nods. She doesn’t wait to see him opening up the door to the old fish hatchery. She climbs into the driver’s seat of the pickup and pulls away.

  •••

  The sun rises red in the smoky sky a few hours later. Sam sits on the steps of the infirmary porch, a cup of muddy, burnt black coffee in her hand. Inside, Poppy and the preteens are safely snoozing. They won’t wake up for hours. When they do, their world will be bright and simple again, albeit foggy. Sam is tempted to ask Nurse May for one of the little blue confusion pills herself.

  Elias drains his coffee cup. He sits beside her with an ice pack taped against his bruised right shoulder—the BB hit him in the soft spot just below his collar bone, hard enough to leave a considerable mark. They have long since worn out the jokes about him getting shot on the job, and by Hugo Baker, no less. They sit in quiet commiseration, watching the sky lighten, listening to the trill of the birds.

  “What’s the weirdest thing you can think of right now?” he asks her, toying with the mug in his hands.

  Sam considers. “Sleeping in my bed, probably. Going to class. Calling my mom.” She snorts. “What about you?”

  Elias shrugs. “I think I’ll ask Rosie to marry me. If the world doesn’t end before next Saturday, we’ll elope somewhere. Get a couple of desk jobs. Have a kid, name her Poppy.” He frowns at the sunrise. “What do you think about that?”

  “You’re right. That is weird.”

  He laughs, scratchily, behind closed lips. Sam snickers back. After a while she stands, stretches, and starts down the infirmary steps. She has to move; she cannot sit still in her head for another minute. They share an understanding smile before she turns away. Sam leaves him with his ice pack and his weird ideas and meanders off toward the guest cabin. She hasn’t had a chance to see the finished mural yet.

  She is standing in the brush, just uphill from the back of the cabin, when Nick finds her. He looks relieved. Dark hollows beneath his eyes punctuate a ragged smile.

  “He made it through,” he says, as soon as he is close enough to reach her, with a whisper. It’s still too early to speak out loud.

  “Hmm?”

  “Chard just called. Max is up and talking at the facility.”

  “Oh.” Sam nods. She swirls the last of her coffee, lukewarm between her palms. “That . . . took a while. You think he stopped somewhere on the way?”

  Nick steps toward her, shaking his head. He wraps his arms over her shoulders and pulls her into him. “That’s a big question.”

  They stand together in silence for some time, looking over the new mural. It’s hardly beautiful—Sam imagines it will be painted over again during pre-Camp setup week next summer. Hasty, sloppy pictures are splattered pattern-less over a white backdrop. The longer Sam looks, the more details she can make out. A pine tree with a spindly trunk. A shark. A brownish lump on four legs that might be a bear, or a goat, or a horse. Millipede Meyer was here, painted in looping purple scrawl, and just above that, a heart encasing the initials HB + LA. Toward the bottom of the wall, at about Hummingbird height, two squiggly stick figures hold hands on a flat line of grass. One is carefully labeled: Poppy. The other, Sam.

  “Did you see that one?” Nick asks. Sam follows his pointing finger upward, to the far-left side of the mural. There, a little black figure stands on a gray wall. Green waves are painted below, and on either side, flames. A lump settles in her throat. They both stare at the painting.

  “He’s a real person,” Sam says quietly, half to herself. “Danny McGee. He’s a guy I knew when I was a kid. I just used his name for the story. I wish I’d told them it was just a story.”

  Nick rests his chin against her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter what name you give it. There’s always been a ghost at Camp.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone’s always telling some version of the same story. This one just got . . . out of hand.”

  She thinks over the dark moment, the tumbling shadow. She heard them chanting: jump, Danny, jump. It was viscous, religious. Childish. Max went under the rail on his own, but in the end, there must have been a nudge. She saw the swing of his arms, the tilt of his body. She would like to blame Hugo Baker, but the words won’t rise to her lips. In the end, it doesn’t matter. They were only being kids. The fall was a natural consequence of the summer, of innocence, and Richard Byron was right to keep them from stopping it.

  Max fell as a kid, running from a ghost. There are worse ways for a summer to end. Whatever they were doing out there, holding guns and chanting, they were doing it for the same reason they loved the story so much; for the same reason they sing campfire songs and cross high tightropes and holler from clifftops; for the same reason they came to Camp Phoenix in the first place.

  For that same reason, Sam turns away from the painting of Danny McGee and leans into her own ghost.

  “Come on,” Nick says, turning her toward the trail with a hand on her back. “We can still get a couple hours of sleep before breakfast.”

  week eleven

  Logan

  The cameras look nothing like any camera Logan has ever seen. They are big and black and clunky, with dials and buttons and thick round lenses. They must be old, she assumes—Camp Phoenix must have been using them for decades.

  Everyone gets a camera. There are ten pictures loaded inside. Ten pictures they can take of whatever they want, then give back to their counselors to give to the director. The pictures will be printed and sent to them at home. To remind them, the counselors say, of the fun times they had here.

  On the last day of Camp there are no activities. Everyone runs around with their heavy cameras strapped over their necks, trying to use their ten pictures wisely. The firemen are gone, and so is the smoke. The sun shines yellow in a blue sky. Camp is bright and beautiful again, just in time for them to leave it.

  Logan takes a picture of her bed, with Milly sitting on the bottom bunk, making a silly face. She takes a picture of all the Ravens on their front deck. She takes a picture of Elias in the stables, frowning at the saddle he is scrubbing, and another of Sam and Rosie making faces at each other on the lifeguard dock. She gives her camera to Milly, who takes a picture of her and Hugo on the mess hall steps. She sits between his knees and he hugs her around her shoulders. They are laughing when the shutter clicks.

  She would like to take a picture of Max, too. As much as they disagreed this summer, he was her friend, and she would like to have a photo to remember him by. Max went home early. Sam says the fall off the dam broke his leg and two ribs. An ambulance came to take him to the hospital, and from there he went straight home.

  Milly says Max fell. She says they were being dumb kids out there on the dam, and in all the excitement of their make-believe, Max just lost his balance. She doesn’t believe in the ghost anymore. Hugo remembers it differently. He says that Max was truly possessed by the ghost of Danny McGee, and when he jumped, he killed the ghost inside him once and for all. He says Max is a hero. He says that, if their places were switched, and he knew the ghost was in him, he would have jumped, too.

  Max didn’t jump. Not really. In the end, he wasn’t going to. Logan knows that, and she is sure Hugo does, too, but they don’t talk about it. There are some things no one ever needs to talk about.

  Whatever happened, exactly, they don’t get into much trouble for it. After another night in the infirmary, life goes back to normal. Hugo has to help repair the locker door at the air rifle shed. Mr. Campbell tells them they shouldn’t talk about the ghost of Danny McGee anymore. It’s a story, he says, and nothing else, and the more they talk about it, the more they are going to scare themselves and the other campers. Logan asks if he is going to tell their parents about what happened—if not about Max’s fall, at least about them stealing the air rifles and walking out of Camp in the middle of the night. Mr. Campbell shakes his head and gives her a funny smile. “We’ll see.”

  Despite all the warnings of being on thin ice, Logan does break the rules one last time. Two nights before their last night, she sneaks out to meet Hugo at the lake by the fishing dock. He brings his sleeping bag, and they wrap it around their shoulders. They stay out until the sun comes up, pretending to be grown-ups.

  “I’m going to be in big trouble when I get home,” he tells her, quietly, as they lie dozing on the grass.

  “Why? Because of the thing with Max?”

  “No.” Hugo shakes his head. He looks up at the stars, and Logan can see them shining on his eyes. “Something else. Something that’s not my fault.”

  He won’t tell her what, exactly. Won’t, or can’t. “Well, you’re not home yet,” she says.

  They talk about writing or calling, but it doesn’t make much sense. Neither of them knows their address or their phone number. They will find a way to see each other again, Logan imagines. Something tells her Hugo Baker will always be a part of her life.

  The final campfire is quick and silly. A few people go on stage to show off their favorite songs and skits one last time. Nick and Poppy perform again, like they did at the talent show. They sing a different song, a happier song. This time, everybody cries. Even Logan, to her own surprise—she lifts her fingers off her cheek and laughs when she finds them wet. When they finally stand up to sing the final good night song, though, the tears have all cleared, and everyone is giggling. The coals in the firepit burn low and red.

  Look up to the moon, moon, moon,

  Hug every rock and tree,

  I will take care of you, my friend,

  If you take care of me.

  She promises Milly and all the others that she will be back at Camp Phoenix again next summer. They’ll be Eagles. This is not a goodbye, they swear to each other—just a see-you-later.

  They leave Camp the same way they arrived, on the white bus with the bird’s nest logo on the side, in groups. For most of the morning they sit on the lawn in the sunshine, waiting for their names to be called. Logan hears her name in the middle of the day. Hugo is already gone. She hugs everyone, Milly last and longest. “You’re my best friend,” she tells her, funny as it feels to say out loud. Milly smiles back.

  There are seven or eight other kids on the bus with her. Katie drives. She drops them off at the side door of a big log cabin. A doctor in a white coat greets them there. She says she will give them all a checkup and then send them upstairs, where their parents are waiting.

  The doctor leads them down a long hallway, into a cramped room cooled by a blasting air conditioner. The floor is white tile, and the walls are blank. “Wait right here,” she says cheerfully and leaves, shutting the door behind her.

  Logan blinks. She looks down at her arms, tanned and scraped and stacked with woven friendship bracelets. Confused, she turns toward Oscar, the Finch, who has taken a seat on the floor. Just as she is opening her mouth to ask him what he thinks is going on, a loud whirring fills her ears.

  Sam

  Camp Phoenix is closing. There is going to be an investigation. They have made it through one fire only to fall right into the next.

  The case against Richard Byron’s company was opened already, a few years ago, after someone complained of immoral treatment of clients. There wasn’t enough evidence to take any real action at the time. Until three days ago, that is, when Phoebe Jackson, Christian Rodrigues, and a man named Tom Kuhn approached the case detective together. Byron was notified that his camp will have to be shut down while the investigation takes place. If anything comes out of it, he could end up with charges of cloning a human being, and abuse. Not child abuse, of course—no one involved with Camp Phoenix is a legal minor—but abuse of his power, a breach of contract with his clients. It all comes down, Campbell says, to the little blue pills: memory-altering drugs administered without consent.

  Campbell tells this to the assistant directors in the office after the final campfire. They are toasting the end of the summer with champagne in coffee cups when he breaks the news to them. They should keep this quiet, he says, even after their summer contracts are up. Until the case goes public.

  He doesn’t think anything is going to come of the investigation. Richard feels confident, he tells them, and so does he. “We’ll be closed for a summer. Maybe two. Then everything will be back to normal. If anything, an investigation that comes up clean is going to look good on us.”

  “But it is all true,” Sam says to Nick in private, later that night. “Poppy was technically a clone. For half the summer. And they all took those pills.”

  Nick laughs. “No one’s saying he’s not guilty. They’re saying he’s going to come out clean.”

  “Will you come back and work here? When it opens again?”

  Without a shred of hesitation, he nods. “Chard won’t always be around to run the place,” he says. “Camp is good. It’s a good idea, and people need it. Someday, when someone else takes over, it won’t have to be so ugly and secretive.”

  “When you take over, you mean?” she asks him. Nick smiles. He squeezes her hand and changes the subject.

  Sam isn’t around to watch Poppy board the bus back to the facility the next morning. She says her goodbyes to the Hummingbirds quickly, after breakfast, then runs off to help Rosie and Elias box up supplies in the boathouse.

  She chooses not to think about it. She knows, as it happens, that the light is going out in Poppy’s eyes. Her body will be wrapped in plastic, piled into a van, shuttled down to the old hatchery, while up at the facility the machines keeping her alive quit beeping. Sam can look the other way. It’s over, and she is tired. There was never anything she could do. Poppy Warbler vanishes from the world on the last morning of Camp exactly as Sam knew her: pure, wild, and young.

  The funny thing about the end of the summer is how easy it is, how quickly it all wraps up. What took them a week to set up in early June takes a single afternoon in late August to take down again. They work feverishly, laughing, shaking off the summer. Old mannerisms and references slip back into place; the wall comes down as the magic of Camp is swept away. By the time they are done—all the guns and the bows and the crafts boxed away, the boats locked in the boathouse and the boots and saddles packed up—the campers are gone. Camp is empty again, exactly as they found it eleven weeks ago.

  Pizzas and coolers of drinks are laid out on the lawn. Campbell wanders from group to group with his plate in hand, saying his goodbyes, urging them—with a little twinkle in his eye—not to party too hard tonight. He catches Sam at the picnic table as the rest of them are splitting up for a frisbee game. “Richard couldn’t be here,” he says quietly. “He asked me to tell you goodbye for him.”