“Chard’s here,” says Rosie, nudging her.

  Sam looks up. Three men enter the dining room through the kitchen, steaming coffee mugs in hand. They speak quietly to each other as their eyes scan the room. Sure enough, one of them is Richard Byron.

  Between Campbell and Nick, Byron strides like a man who owns the world. He does own the world, as they all know it. Sam can’t help but notice the way he and Nick hold their chipped mugs in the exact same manner: left-handed, elbow at a perfect ninety-degree angle, thumb on the rim. Byron smiles and pats Nick’s shoulder briskly. Whatever they were talking about seems to have been resolved to his satisfaction.

  The elder Borowitz brother is wiry and angular. Like a negative copy of Elias, his hair is dark, his eyes unnervingly pale. He gazes over the other assistant directors and nods to himself before settling into his seat. Across the circle, Sam briefly meets his eyes. He scratches his head; she turns her attention to her hands in her lap.

  “All right, all right.” Campbell claps his hands together. The resounding smack kills the rabble in the room. He clears his throat and begins with a few announcements: the belaying harnesses need to be moved to the ropes course, the horses will be arriving at the stables tomorrow morning, the shifter on the ski boat has been sticking—don’t jam it too hard. He cracks a few jokes that fall over the room with the same satisfying dry smack as his hand clap. Then Richard Byron speaks to them, for the first time this summer. His voice is low and soothing, and Sam, dreary with her hangover and the weight of the beers from earlier, finds herself absent for most of his speech. What she does catch, she remembers from last year.

  “These people have chosen to have this experience for a lot of reasons. Some of them had wonderful childhoods, and they want to revisit that time. Some of them are looking for a childhood they never really had. All of them want to live out their own story this summer. A story unique to them that they can take back to their ordinary lives. Your job . . .” Byron looks slowly around the room. When his gaze lands on Sam, she is sure his lips curl up into a tiny, private smile. “. . . Is just to treat each of them like any other kid. Because that’s what they are when they’re here. Regardless of who they are out in the world.” He delivers this final sentence firmly, each word deliberate.

  There is no pause for questions. It would not be their place to ask, anyway. Their place is cabin chore charts and mealtime etiquette and campfire skits. The thorny reality—celebrities, digital consciousness transfers, genetically engineered bodies—has to exist outside of their understanding for the summer to make sense. Richard Byron is the only person in the lake basin with a foot in each world.

  Having said what he needs to say, Byron settles back into his chair. A quiet tension breaks with his nod, and Campbell and Nick rise to begin passing out the group lists. They give each counselor a bulky binder—green covers, the Camp Phoenix insignia etched in white. As the counselors take their binders and flip through them greedily, the din in the mess hall rises.

  “Falcons!” Elias whoops when he snatches his binder from his brother’s hand. “Nice!”

  “Chickadees,” says Rosie. She smiles brightly, flipping through her list.

  Sam takes her binder wordlessly from Nick. Behind the front cover she finds her own name and the name of her intended cabin group. “Hummingbirds,” she reads aloud. Her heart sinks. “Hummingbirds?”

  Inside the binder are the profiles of every camper in the group. Each profile holds two pictures: one of the adult client, and another of the camper they will soon become. The smiling camper photos are just slightly unnatural, near-perfect digital constructions set against a plain white backdrop. Sam flips through her binder disdainfully, a sour taste on her tongue. She told Campbell when she resubmitted her application that she wanted older campers; last year she had the Sparrows, ten-year-olds, and thought her hands were full enough.

  Debra Fitzgerald, she reads the page on her lap. Age: 53. Camper age: 7. Previous summers: 0. She skims over Debra Fitzgerald’s summer goals, which go on for three pages in excruciating detail: she would like to reconnect with her youth, to form an intimate bond with nature, to overcome her childhood stage fright, and, in doing so, to lay the foundations for confidence in her professional life. Sam flips on. Maggie Geranimo, she reads. Age: 67. Camper age: 7. Lucille Summers. Camper age: 7. Margaret Fredricks. Camper age: 6. Paula Warbler. Camper age: 6.

  Sam’s eyes catch on that name. She holds her breath, thoughts whirring.

  “Hey, at least we’re going to be neighbors,” Rosie says, studying her own list. “We can cover each other’s cabins when we’re—” Sam reaches out to smack her with the back of her hand, stopping her mid-sentence. “—Ow! What?”

  “Look.” She shoves the open profile at her. Rosie blinks, then squints at the page, and the look on her face melts from annoyance, to disbelief, to reverence. The woman in the picture is blond and familiar, wearing an iconic pout.

  “Oh my God.” Rosie gasps. “Oh my God. Dude, that’s Poppy Warbler. El, look!” She thrusts a flapping hand across Sam’s lap. “Sam has Poppy Warbler!”

  Elias seems to have vanished into himself. He stares at his open binder, chewing on his lip. As counselors shove back their chairs and dash to compare group lists around them, he looks up. “I have Hugo Baker,” he says. A hush falls over the three of them.

  Logan

  Logan is awake.

  She’s not sure how long she has been awake, exactly, and she can’t quite say when she fell asleep. She only knows that she is awake, and sounds, shapes, colors are settling into place around her.

  Her belly aches with a stabbing fear. She must have been having a nightmare. It was black and suffocating, like being squeezed through a dark tunnel. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. Now it’s over, and she is washed in a tremendous, sleepy laziness, warm and safe and bright like Sunday morning.

  She hears voices. People in blurry blue are moving around her. They have been talking to her for some time. She has to get up, Logan thinks. She is going to be late, late for . . . something.

  She is up, she realizes. She is sitting. She can move. Time is sticky and thick as syrup.

  “Logan.” Fingers snap in her ear. “Logan. Come on, now.”

  She wiggles in place on a crunchy sheet of paper. The walls around her are covered in bright pictures. A woman in a white coat bends to look at her, examining her. She writes on her clipboard. “Logan,” she says again. “Let me hear that voice.”

  Logan locates her hands and brings them to her face. She is so heavy. Her lips move first, and her voice comes after. “Glasses.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Glasses,” she rasps. “Where are my glasses?”

  A friendly weight settles onto her nose. Suddenly, everything is clear. Logan blinks in surprise. The doctor gives her a paper cup of cool water to drink. She asks her questions as she shuffles around her.

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Logan.”

  “Your full name?”

  “Logan Marie Adler.”

  “Excellent.” The doctor takes her temperature. The metal of the rolling thermometer is cold against her forehead. “How old are you, Logan?”

  Logan thumbs the waxy brim of the cup in her hands. It crumples satisfyingly to her touch. “Twelve.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  What a weird question. Of course she does.

  “You’re on your way to Camp, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Camp Phoenix.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your parents just dropped you off. We have to give you a checkup, just to make sure you’re healthy, before you get on the bus.”

  Logan nods. Mom hugged her tight. Dad ruffled her hair so hard, she had to redo her ponytail in the reflection of the car window. Her baby brother is still too little to come to Camp. He sat in his booster seat, pouting.

  “Yeah.” She squeezes and releases the paper cup in her hand. It moves like a gabbing mouth. It’s funny. “So, am I healthy?”

  “Yes, sweet girl. You’re perfectly healthy.”

  She is outside under a hot, bright sun. It feels nice on her shoulders and the top of her head. She sees dirt under her feet and trees all around, tastes a sticky grape sucker in her mouth. The world is brown and green and blue and yellow, in that order, bottom to top. She is wearing white sneakers and denim shorts and a plain red T-shirt—it’s her favorite color, the same bright scarlet as the frames of her glasses. The sucker makes her saliva syrupy and sweet. She spits on the ground and sees purple.

  There are other kids around her. Eight or ten of them. Most of them are boys, and most of them are littler than her. Adults guide them toward a little white bus stained with red dirt. Painted on the side of the bus in dark green is a picture of two straight tree branches, crossed in an X, with a round bird’s nest on top. On either side of the nest are the letters C and P.

  Logan remembers that picture. She has been to Camp Phoenix before. It was a long time ago, and she can’t remember much about it.

  “Come on, Logan. Time to go.”

  She sits on a squishy bus seat next to a little boy with watery red eyes. He sniffles.

  “What’s your name?” Logan asks him.

  “Oscar.”

  “Hi, Oscar. My name’s Logan.”

  Oscar sniffs and turns his puffy eyes on her, frowning like she said something mean to him. “That’s a boy’s name,” he says.

  The bus goes down a winding road, through the forest. They come out on a bridge. Out the window, Logan can see a mossy gray wall of concrete and the lake behind it. Water runs down the face of the wall like a stream of drool into a black pool far below them. She shivers—she doesn’t like heights. When they get to Camp, people come running to greet them. Pretty, tan people in matching green T-shirts. Logan likes them immediately. They smile and laugh and pull on each other’s arms like they’re all best friends. “This guy,” they say to the campers. “Don’t listen to this guy, he picks his nose.”

  Her own counselor is named Sadie. She has a round face and long blond braids that swing over a very round chest. She hugs Logan tight around the shoulders, barely an inch taller than her. “We’re so happy you’re here, Logan! Come on, I have so much to show you.”

  It’s beautiful. The forest is green and flowering. Tiny birds twitter and flutter from branch to bush. The lake is huge, deep green, and welcoming, shining in the spaces between tree trunks. Dust kicks up in rusty brown clouds at their feet. Sadie takes Logan along a trail, away from the parking lot and through the trees. They pass the barnyard, a muddy spat of land level with the lakeshore, and the stables just behind. Four or five horses are out grazing in the yard. Logan squeals at the sight of them, their chestnut and black and speckled coats, sleek and shiny in the sunlight. They nicker and flick their manes and twitch their tails at flies.

  “You like horses, right?” Sadie asks her with a smile.

  Logan nods. “I really do. Last time I came to Camp, I went on the trail rides every day. I think.”

  The girls’ cabins are uphill from the barn and stables. Their trail weaves around stumps and boulders and patches of shrubby grass. “You have to stay on the trails,” Sadie tells her, huffing as they walk. “That’s the number-one rule at Camp. Always stay on the trails.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is.”

  High up the hill, almost at the tippy-top, is Logan’s cabin: the Ravens. They’re the second oldest at Camp, Sadie says. Their cabin is squat and friendly, with a green metal roof and a wide porch out front. Three girls are sitting on the porch already. Their names are Donna and Joy and Liz. They all have tired faces and wear plain-colored T-shirts like Logan’s: orange, hot pink, and cotton candy blue.

  Inside the cabin is a single shady room. Bunk beds line the walls, with tall wooden lockers between them. Windows with four panes let in the green world. The bathroom is outside, under an awning, closed off by half-walls. There are two toilet stalls, a shower with a plastic curtain, and a row of toothbrushes in colorful plastic cups. Logan spots a scarlet cup, and orange, hot pink, and cotton candy blue.

  Sadie shows her to her bunk.

  “Top?” Logan looks worriedly up at it, chewing her lip. A stacked set of sheets and a rolled flannel sleeping bag sit waiting on the bare mattress. “Can I trade?”

  “No, sweetie. We don’t do trades. Look, all your clothes are already here, and your journal, your flashlight . . .” Sadie gestures at the locker against the wall.

  “But I’m scared of heights.”

  Before Sadie can answer, a raspy laugh rings at their knees. Logan is surprised to notice someone stretched out on the bottom bunk already. “You’re scared of the top bunk? It’s not that high!”

  “Logan, this is Milly,” the counselor says. She glances out the door of the cabin, suddenly irritated. “I have to go meet our next camper, girls. Milly, hon, why don’t you help Logan get her bed set up?”

  Sadie leaves Logan standing sheepishly next to the bed. Milly sits up on her mattress. She has a bony, skeptical face and a royal purple T-shirt. Her hair is short, almost like a boy’s, in tidy dreadlocks just long enough to tuck behind her ears.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” They size each other up. Then Milly stands and gestures to the locker shelves. “The bottom two are mine. Those top two are yours. We split that one in the middle—Sadie says that’s our books and binoculars and stuff.” She points to a low cubby at the foot of the bunk. “Those are our shoes.”

  Logan looks. She sees two pairs of strappy sandals, two pairs of sneakers, two pairs of hiking boots. “How do I know which ones are mine?”

  “The ones that fit you, I guess.” Milly shrugs, then flops back onto her mattress. Logan stares at her springy hair. She wants to touch it. She knows better than to ask. Milly looks up at her with squinty eyes. “Are you really scared of heights?”

  “Umm. Yeah.”

  “Well, you know they have a tightrope at the ropes course that’s, like, fifty feet high?”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m gonna do it this summer.” Logan knows this exactly as she says it.

  Milly laughs again. She has a breathless, gravelly laugh, like an old lady. “Seriously? You’re too scared to sleep on the top bunk, but you want to do the fifty-foot tightrope?”

  Logan frowns. “It’s different.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” She turns to look through the clothes on her shelves. There are wool socks, T-shirts, pullovers, and hats. Swimsuits, both one-piece and two-piece. Even a few thin cotton bras. Logan twists her lips as she runs the fabric between her fingers. She doesn’t wear a bra. The girls on the porch look like they might; the fact that they’re in her locker means girls her age are expected to.

  Milly doesn’t look like she wears bras, either. She’s scrawny and smaller than Logan. “Sorry for making fun of you,” she says plainly. “I’m scared of sharks, so . . . you know. You want help setting up your bunk?”

  They work together to stretch the starchy sheet over the mattress corners. The mattress has a plastic coating that crinkles as they move. Logan sits, with a hand on each side rail like she’s in a boat, and looks around the cabin. There is hardly any space between the bunks, no privacy at all. Panic begins to set in through her tiredness—she is suddenly, intensely aware that she will have to change, and towel off, and poop, in this tiny cabin with all the other girls around. She nudges her glasses into place on her nose.

  Milly faces her on the mattress, crisscrossed. She picks at her fingernails. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Me too. I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. I’m really tired.”

  Logan nods. A flash of confusion passes through her head, but it’s gone when she blinks, replaced by another rush of embarrassment as she looks back toward the front window, the other girls on the porch. “Yeah. Me too.” She smiles nervously at her new bunkmate. Milly smiles back.

  There are seven Ravens in total. Annie arrives next—she’s as little as Milly. After her is Mei, who came all the way from Japan. Sadie tours them around in their line of seven. She shows them their table in the mess hall, their bench at announcements, and their log at campfire. She tells them about the swimming dock rules and the qualifications at the ropes course. Logan catches Donna and Joy rolling their eyes at each other when the counselor isn’t looking. Milly doesn’t roll her eyes, but she doesn’t pay Sadie much attention, either. In the reeds at the fishing dock, she catches a snake and hands it to Logan. It winds around her wrist, cool and smooth against her skin. Logan laughs with glee at the tiny, beady eyes, the flicking tongue.

  Dinner—crusty lasagna, garlic bread, lemonade in a dingy plastic pitcher—is over before she knows it. Night falls, and then Sadie leads them to the first campfire. They sit on a semicircle of flat log benches. Flames dance and flicker in a rusted metal ring. Every so often there is a loud crack, and a smatter of sparks shoots upward, up toward a fading sky, shades of painted blue blurring to black. The stage is a bare wood platform behind the fire. The counselors standing on it tell them a story about a magical lake in the wilderness, where there used to be a fish hatchery.

  Mr. Campbell is bald and smiley. He tells them to stay on the trails, and Logan isn’t sure what else. Her world is spinning on its axis, day and night blurring, head swimming, sparks trailing up into stars. Someone plays a guitar and sings a soft song on the stage. Her glasses slip down her nose, and she can’t seem to lift a hand to fix them. She slumps against Sadie’s side and lets her hug her.