“Wrong again. I’ve only ever lived in Austin, Texas.”
“Who’s your favorite baseball team, then?” one of the campers asks.
“The Rangers, of course. Who else?”
This starts a cabin-wide discussion of baseball teams, and which ones are the best. There’s a pretty even split between Rangers and Astros fans, with a couple of kids with outlier teams like the Dodgers or Yankees.
I clap my hands together to get their attention back. “Okay, who’s going next?”
One by one, the boys introduce themselves and share three statements. We all try to guess which one is a lie. Some of them make it easy—like a boy named Liam who says he rides a dragon to school—but most do a great job of making their lies believable and their truths suspicious.
When it’s Duncan’s turn, the boys remind me that I’m not allowed to guess.
“Um …” Duncan begins. “I have a dog named Biscuit. I love anything having to do with math. And … this is my first summer at Camp Prairie Star.”
I know the Gray family has a dog named Macy because Maggie made a big deal about naming the dog after a singer she loved when she was a teenager, so that must be the lie. Of course, I know it’s Duncan’s first summer here, but I didn’t know that he loves math so much. That’s pretty cool.
I realize that Duncan’s become this whole little person when I wasn’t looking. I mean, I know he’s always been a person, but when he was born, he was the baby, and then I kind of thought of him as a generic little kid. But I’ve gotten older, and he has, too. At ten years old, he’s got interests and hobbies and a whole personality that I haven’t gotten to fully understand because I don’t see him often enough.
I’m really looking forward to changing that this week.
By lunchtime on Monday, all the boys in my cabin are best friends, including Duncan, whose typical shy demeanor has disappeared. He’s wrestling with the other boys, coming up with ideas for pranks, and racing his canoe across the lake.
For Wacky Wednesday, our cabin decides to coordinate outfits. The boys have Nina help them tie-dye shirts during craft time on Tuesday—including ones for Jayden and me—and use up the rest of my mousse the next morning on their crazy hairstyles. Mostly it looks like they had a competition to see who could get their hair to stick straight up the highest.
We eat waffles with whipped cream and bacon for dinner. Duncan, who’s sitting next to me, smothers his waffles in syrup while talking a mile a minute. “Mom says waffles are better than pancakes because waffles hold your syrup for you in these little boxes.”
“Yeah, but pancakes can have fruit inside them, like blueberries or bananas,” I counter.
He looks at me like I’m the biggest idiot on the planet. “You can put fruit in waffle batter, too.”
I hold up my hands. “Point conceded. My apologies.”
Duncan laughs and looks up at me, his brown eyes sincere and his mouth half full of waffles and syrup. “This has been, like, the best day of my life.”
I’m inclined to agree with him. These past few days with Duncan have been my favorite at camp so far—not counting the weekends. It’s been almost magical at Camp Prairie Star, and I understand why Maggie clings so tightly to her memories here.
I don’t know why those thoughts make my eyes well up, but they do. I hide the sudden onslaught of emotion by shoveling an enormous bite of waffle in my own mouth.
Chapter thirty
Gage
LateWednesdaynight,ormaybe early the next morning, a finger poking into my shoulder nudges me awake. “Gage?” a little voice whispers loudly, and I open my eyes enough to check the time on my phone. Five in the morning.
“Gage?” the voice says again, and this time I recognize it as Duncan’s.
“What’s going on, bud? You okay?” I rub my face, trying to wake up enough to deal with whatever this is.
“I don’t know. I got up to go to the bathroom, and my face felt weird, and I looked in the mirror and … look!”
I blink my eyes. Then blink again. Finally, I can make out Duncan’s features in the low light. Except they aren’t exactly Duncan’s normal features.
His face is puffy, the skin around his eyes so swollen that he’s looking at me through narrow slits. I touch my hand to his forehead and then his cheek. His skin is warm.
My first instinct is to swear, but I remember myself and instead draw from everything I learned in training and remain calm, at least on the outside.
Through all the training though, if I imagined an emergency at all, it was one involving a kid I was responsible for but didn’t really know. But this is Duncan, who I held in my arms for the first time when he was hours old. Who toddled around the yard after me those summers in Fort Worth when I was in middle school. This is my little brother, and it takes all my willpower to tamp down the panic and think through the problem rationally.
