“Black is boring,” Mariana said. “It’s the new gray.” Claire could tell she was still trying for upbeat and casual chatter, but the waver beneath her words was unmistakable. All of them were on edge.
“Everyone looks good in black,” Reyva said.
“Patently untrue,” Mariana said. “Look at Claire. She’d look like a corpse in black.”
Both of them looked at Claire. “Can you please stop imagining me as a corpse? And I like green.” Although after being stranded in the woods, she thought she might change her mind about that. She never wanted to see a tree again. She briefly fantasized about taking a chain saw to the forest, and then her brain helpfully supplied a litany of images of chain saw injuries.
Reyva resumed twisting the stick.
“All right,” Mariana said. “Good start with the getting-to-know-you bonding. How about we jump a little deeper? What’s your greatest secret, or your greatest fear? Speak up and don’t be shy. This is what summer camp is supposed to be for.”
“Oh? Stranded, hungry, thirsty, and failing to start a fire?” Reyva waved her red palm in the air for emphasis, then continued trying to twist the stick as fast as she could.
“Notthisthis, but intense emotional bonding with virtual strangers is supposed to be part of the experience. So, spill. Tell us your deepest, darkest desire.”
Claire held still. She felt like an alarm siren was wailing inside her head. This was definitelynota conversation she wanted to have. Her deepest, darkest thoughts deserved to be buried as deep as she could bury them. The other girls didn’t want her darkness. They wanted surface desires—like what normal people wished for on stars and birthday candles.
On the other hand, she couldn’t help but wonder what Reyva and Mariana would answer. What kind of thoughts were they holding inside?
“I desire a spark,” Reyva said. “One that stays lit and spreads.”
“Okay, fine, a spark, but what’s in the depths of your soul...”Mariana trailed off, then slapped her forehead dramatically. “Batteries!”
Reyva stopped twisting the stick. “What?”
“I should have thought of it sooner. We can use a battery to make a spark!” She pawed through her backpack. “Here we go! Knew I packed a nail dryer.”
She produced a travel-size nail dryer and held it up as if it were a grand prize.
Raising her eyebrows, Reyva said, “Okay. First, you packed a nail dryer. For summer camp. Second, when you sorted your belongings to take only the essentials... youstillpacked the nail dryer.”
“Enrichment retreat,” Mariana corrected. “And I believe in the importance of self-care. Manicures are soothing and provide the illusion of control over life. A situation can’t be entirely hopeless if you’re able to maintain your cuticles.”
“Uh-huh.”
Claire folded her hands to hide her chewed fingernails.
“Next, we need gum.” Returning to her backpack, she muttered to herself. “Have to connect positive to negative... Ah, here it is!” She waved a pack of chewing gum in the air.
What did that...
Pulling out a stick of gum, Mariana unwrapped it and stuck the gum in her mouth. She chewed and hummed at the same time as she pried off the plastic back of her nail dryer and dumped out a double-A battery. “Claire, can I borrow your knife?”
Claire handed her the Swiss Army knife.
Carefully, Mariana sliced a thin strip of gum wrapper. “Mycousin did this as a party trick once. The key is you need a wrapper made of both foil and paper, and you have to cut it so it’s narrow in the center....” She sliced it into an hourglass shape. “Get the tinder bundle ready, Reyva. If this works, it’ll go fast.”
Reyva didn’t hesitate. She held it out in her hands, low, to keep it out of the wind as much as possible, and Mariana knelt opposite her.
Excited, Claire inched forward to watch.Please work, she thought.Please!
Mariana pressed one end of the metallic gum wrapper to one side of the battery and one end to the other. She held it—and the center of the strip of wrapper caught fire with a bright, beautiful flame! “Quick!” Mariana yelped.
Reyva shoved the tinder bundle closer to it, and the flame hopped to the cotton. Reverently, she lowered the flaming bundle to the pyramid of twigs and tucked it within. The flames spread, hopping from dry stick to dry stick. Scrambling, the three of them fed the fire the sticks and branches they’d gathered. They placed each one carefully, so as not to smother the baby fire as it crackled and grew and spread.
“Brilliant,” Claire said to Mariana. “You’re brilliant.”
“I am smarter than I look,” Mariana said, “which, by the way, is a terrible phrase. Why should how I look have anything to do with how well my synapses fire? Do you know how many times I’ve had to argue with our school guidance counselor about what class I should be in? Like, every year. He’d look at me, see a teenage girl with excellent makeup skills whose fits are on point, with the name Mariana Ortiz-Rodriguez, and assume I couldn’tpossibly handle AP Chem. Sexismandracism, with a splash of biphobia, in one mustached package. Fabulous fun. And my parents are zero help when it comes to taking time from their own issues to talk to my school. Their lives and their problems always take precedence over mine. Never mind how their bad choices affect me. They never even asked me how I felt when—” She cut herself off. “They never ask me.”
