Now when I dream, it’s about Cabin H.

Nothing important ever happens in the dreams. We do chores, or we bake bread, or we watch the bees. Curiously, no one speaks. In the dreams there’s hardly any sound at all. Just a submerged muffle, a whispering like wind in trees. I always know the dreams are about to end when the sound speeds up, rising until it verges upon a familiar hum.

This week Aspen is getting ready for the July Jubilee. When I was little, the July Jubilee just meant a chance to see our parents halfway through the summer. It’s really more of an open house, though. Prospective families will come to tour Aspen, while current families get a weekend to see what their kids have been up to. The theater kids put on staged productions, the culinary majors make meals, the ecology kids lead educational hikes, and the craft kids show off their pottery and paintings. The sports kids will, I assume, play their little games for an audience, finally.

A new feature is a farmer’s market set up on the lawn of Big Lodge, or perhaps it was always there but I never noticed it. During Apiculture, we’re told that we’ll be selling honey at a little stand. Wyatt and I still aren’t allowed in the production shed, so we spend an entire morning using twine to tie parchment labels onto jars. The labels say BOTTLED BY THE BEES OF THE ASPEN GROVE in elegant scrawl.

Our Cabin Challenge that day, and every day, turns out to be various chores to get Aspen ready for the weekend. Gone are the hours of fun, games, and budding camaraderie. Here are the hours of scrubbing moss from the shady side of the log cabins. And sweeping decks, which feels pointless. And prying mushrooms out of the stone walls, which feels evil.

The girls are given chores, too, but it’s things like making garlands and painting banners. I watch them enviously until, as though hearing my SOS, Bria saunters over to us.

“Brayden, can we borrow Mars?”

Brayden is much older than Bria, but she talks to him like an equal. And he looks at her like he thinks he has a chance.

“For what?”

“Apiculture prep. We’re making signs for the farmer’s market. It’ll just be for the day. Please?”

Brayden relents, and Bria grabs my hands and pulls me away.

The girls make working fun. They’re quick at it, too, and we finish early enough to win a few hours to ourselves. We lie in the sun among the freshly painted signs, talking and making small bracelets of grass, and I feel that limitless contentedness return. The girls are interesting. Sensitive, and smart, and funny. I want them to like me. I want them to never know I thought they were vapid, even if it was just a momentary doubt. I feel a terror that they’ll find out anyway, and I feel a strange guilt strung through it all.

It’s hard to place what exactly makes them so alluring. They are all so different that there’s no consistent trait unifying them. Yet it’s their togetherness that emanates a strange pressure. As I spend more time with them, I begin to believe that it’s nothing more than their matching sense of self-possession.

“Bitchiness,” Bria sighs. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”

We’re on the back deck of Big Lodge, the signs handed over to the craft hut for mounting. The girls have vases with long, slender necks, and they’re arranging flowers in them. I don’t know where they’re getting the flowers. Every time I look away and then look back, a new blossom bobs in the breeze.

“I don’t think you’re bitches,” I say.

“You probably did, though, right? Before you talked to us?”

I don’t have to say yes. Bria already knows, I guess. But she’s not mad.

“It’s okay, everyone does. Just comes with knowing who you are and what you’re worth. It’s easy for people to perceive a threat, but that’s usually their own insecurity talking.”

“I understand that,” I say. “Sometimes I think the way people react to me has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with them.”

Bria slots a flower into a vase, twisting it around the neck so that it faces the sun. “People tell on themselves all the time,” she whispers. “They tell you the truth about themselves, one way or another.”

After the impromptu flower arrangements, the girls go to the dining pavilion and knock on the back door until a cook opens it. She’s not surprised to see us and lets us into a low-ceilinged kitchen humid with the steam of an industrial dishwasher. The girls find the freezer and pull out Popsicles, then out to the boathouse we go.

We do the same thing the next day, Brayden not even protesting Bria’s requests for my “help.” Being with them is like traveling in a pack of ghosts. The walls of Aspen are immaterial to them; we float through restrictions I once found so claustrophobic. We are invisible to the eyes of authority, becoming an ethereal, roaming pressure just at the edge of the camp’s periphery. People seem to know we’re there and to be interested in what we do, but indirectly.

I love it. It’s thrilling. The next day when they invite me to join their crafting, I don’t even bother telling Brayden. I just go, and we spend the afternoon painting terra-cotta plant pots.

The girls are fascinated with themselves, too. Almost as fascinated as I am. The way they talk about themselves—with such frankness—it feels like all people are wet clay, all the shapes that define us self-imposed. I realize this fits into the way I’ve always seen myself, which is: art, attempted, though often spoiled by the demands of another’s taste. It makes me wonder what shape I’d be if I’d never met another human being.

“I think I will be famous,” one of the girls might say, or, “I want to be an internet poet,” or, “Maybe I’ll revolutionize ballet.” They say it with such easy authority that it feels practically real, like the hardest part is believing and, once that’s over, the actual task of acting it out is just mundane paperwork. Inconsequential to the dream itself.

It’s thrilling, and it’s powerful. I see why Caroline loved them, but what I can’t see is what replaced that love with fear. What could have been so dreadful that she wouldn’t have wanted to come back to Aspen at all? The past is the strangest thing to imagine, as I sit here among them, watching them boss about the dolls of the future.

“What about you, Mars?” Mimi asks me on a golden afternoon as we sip honey-sweetened lemonade at the edge of the athletic field. All of us are crowded onto a few blankets, legs kicked out into the grass. “What’s in your future?”

I nearly give some dreamy projection, but I sense the Honeys would clock the insincerity. From experience, they have a taste for truth, even if it’s a little bitter.

“I don’t know. I don’t think any of us know. I think it’s pointless to try.”

“It’s not pointless. It’s manifestation,” Mimi says studiously. “You put that energy out into the universe, and the universe hears you. There are studies on, like, positive thinking and subconscious action.”

Bria scoffs. “So what, people who get into totally random car accidents just weren’t giving the right vibes? That’s a hideous way to blame people for things they can’t control.”

The conversation devolves into a philosophical debate about energy. Our higher selves dancing in higher dimensions of pure light and love. God. Gods. Unfathomable forces that drive us, divinely of course, toward our destiny or our doom. Magical thinking, Bria calls it, before sliding a cool hand over my wrist to get my attention. She says: “Mars, help me. You’re into science and stuff. Tell them it’s all bullshit.”

I stare skyward. A fleet of butterflies floats over us. “Actually, there are higher dimensions. We use them all the time in math and physics to make sense of complex problems.”

“Like astral projecting,” Mimi adds, vindicated.

“No,” I laugh. “Space-time. Einstein stuff. String theory requires at least ten dimensions to work out. Theoretically, I mean.”

“Ten dimensions? And not one of them astral? Mimi, I’m so sorry, you must be crushed.”

“Shut up, Bria,” Mimi says sweetly. “Call it math or call it magic, but it’s the same. There are higher dimensions, and if we influence them, we can manifest our own reality. It’s possible, right, Mars? Theoretically?”

Bria and Mimi turn toward me in unison, like it’s up to me to settle this debate.

“Maybe,” I say. “But we wouldn’t know. We experience reality as a three-dimensional projection in our brains. Our geometric instincts are 3D. So things in higher dimensions are kinda impossible for us to even visualize. That doesn’t mean other dimensions aren’t real, though. It just means we aren’t able to comprehend them.”

I fully expect silence, or to be outright declared a nerd and booted from the blanket. But instead, the Honeys have sat up around me. Their interest makes me desperate to keep going, but I’m not sure what else to say. Then a butterfly flits down onto the blanket to probe a fallen droplet of honey. It gives me an idea.

“Here, it’s like that game you play. With the tiles. Hand me that glass.”

I’m passed one of the curved glass cups we smuggled from the dishwashers. I raise it so that the sunlight passes through the water in its belly, projecting a glowing shadow onto the butterfly.

“Imagine that butterfly can only see in two dimensions. Its world is flat. If we asked it to describe the glass, it could only see that 2D shadow and tell us 2D things about it. But we humans, one dimension up, understand the glass’s shape and depth. Our world is 3D. But what if we’re like the butterfly, and we’re trapped in what we can perceive? What if our world is just the light and shadow of some higher dimension’s design? And if only we could comprehend it, we could change it? Well, physics tells us that just might be true. But we can’t grasp it, so we can’t change it, so we’re just a butterfly. Trapped, but unaware. Theoretically.”

I look around, like a magician at a children’s birthday party. Ta-da! And my confetti falls to no applause.

“Now that’s ridiculous,” Mimi scoffs.

“It’s theoretical physics!” I insist.

Mimi shakes her head. “I don’t like the idea that we’re trapped in a design. I have free will, don’t I? I make choices.”

“She does,” Kyle says grimly. “Those bangs from last year prove it.”

The girls dissolve into laughter and Mimi lunges for Kyle, but it’s playful. Fun. The philosophy of manifestation is abandoned. But I remain within the riddle of perspective and illusion.

I stare at the pastel shadows curving over the butterfly, transfixed at the way I can pinch them together by adjusting the glass in my hand. Does the butterfly know the rainbow is just the shadow of something greater? Would we? What beauty in our reality is simply an unfathomable refraction across space, light, and time?

Maybe ghosts, I think, as I watch the rainbows pull together upon the butterfly’s wings. Maybe magic.

And then the butterfly erupts into light.

“Mars!”

I snap from my trance as the girls rush to put out the tiny, smoldering fire that’s appeared on the blanket. Right where the butterfly was.

Oh no.

The glass of water in my hand and the sunlight magnified through it. It must have formed a beam, and …

The smoke curls away from a pile of blackened, ruined wings. I’m shocked at what I’ve done. I drop the glass, and beads of water crawl down my thighs. I—

“Mars.”

Bria, her voice cool and calm. I look up. The amusement in her lips douses my panic. It’s just me and her for a second as she raises a hand and there, on her knuckle, quivers the butterfly. When I look at the blanket, the crumpled body is gone. It’s just a hole eaten away by the light. Just a void in the curious shape of wings.

“Close call,” Bria says. She’s scolding me, but there’s a playfulness behind the warning. Like we share a secret.

The butterfly flits away, and it seems like the most marvelous thing in the world as I try to remember what just happened.

“Oh, Mars, here,” Kyle says, pulling us back to the others. She’s brought me a bundle of clothes, which she’s been promising to do. I forget the butterfly and, right in front of them, exchange my wet uniform for a cute little crop top.

“I wish I had arms like that,” Kyle sighs, flexing.

“Your arms are great, Kyle. Shut up,” Bria says. “But she’s right, Mars. You should go sleeveless all the time. I bet Wyatt would finally make a move if you did.”

Again I catch that sly amusement just under Bria’s words. Are we friends with inside jokes now? I swat her knee, playfully. She swats back, and my heart sings.

“You should try to talk with him more,” Bria urges. “Maybe we’ve been too selfish, hoarding you to ourselves. I think we frighten him away.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It comes and it goes with Wyatt. Sometimes I think he’s into me, sometimes I think he’s just curious.”

“Could be the same thing,” Mimi says.

“Could be,” I say.

The Honeys involve themselves in a complicated scheme to lock Wyatt and me in a cedar closet together, or somewhere in the dark behind the theater’s curtain, or the damp tile maze of the pool locker rooms.

“Would you?” Mimi asks. She deepens her voice when she does, filling it with the scarlet of scandal.

“He’s older,” I say.

“By a year.”

“By nine months, actually.” I’m blushing.

“See?” Mimi claps. “It’s love. You’re in love.”

“Answer the question, though,” Bria says, much cooler. “Would you?”

I never answer, because Wyatt himself appears at the edge of our dreaming little bubble. I half expect him to knock, as if the partition between us and the rest of the lawn is physical.

“We’re heading back to Hunter Village,” he says, jerking his thumb. He’s clipped and mechanical, like he gets around the girls. For a second, I don’t move—I pretend that it’s me that makes his nonchalance fumble, stretched atop the blanket in a crop top. Comfortable. Myself.

He walks off, blushing.

“You say you can’t manifest the future,” Mimi murmurs. “But that crop top implies otherwise.”

We stifle our laughter so that Wyatt doesn’t hear. Then I gather my things and saunter after.

The next day, the girls don’t come into camp after lunch, so I hang with the boys during Cabin Challenge. Our assignment is to drag kayaks out of the boathouse and into the nearby woods so they can make room for some sort of presentation. We turn it into a race, and Andrea and I dominate the others. Eventually the boys get into one of the kayaks and slide it down the grassy hill. We take turns until Wyatt gets us to stop, but when he’s gone, we just do it again.

It’s strange, playing with them. Fun. Nice. It makes me wonder: Why oh why, Mars, didn’t you become friends with them sooner?

Tyler is the only one who hangs back now. When I crawl from the toppled kayak, breathless with laughter, the sight of him glaring at me from the shade snatches the air from my lungs.

The Honeys asked me why he and I hate each other. I said we don’t. We just survive in different ways. Tyler assimilates, and since I can’t do that, I resort to exceptionalism. We both cost the other their advantage if we circle too close.

When we break in a circle below the willow tree, the boys resume their pastime of discussing, in grotesque detail, the girls of Aspen. This time is different, though, because they ask me to join.

“Mars, be honest. Who’s actually the hottest?”

The boys stare at me with a remote hunger that I know isn’t for me, but for what they assume I’ve seen. Still, it’s me they’re staring at. I’m not being ignored or dismissed. Inside myself I register the faintest, darkest glee in response to their invitation. I shiver. Who am I becoming?

“Ew, fuck off,” I laugh, hoping they listen.

“Oh, come on,” Ray says. “We won’t tell. We Bear Swear it, right, guys?”

They shout Bear Swear! and shower me in macho begging. I wave it away and they switch to badgering questions.

“You’re close with Mimi, right?” Mitch asks. “You think she’d be into this?” And he rubs his palm down his stomach. Then lower.

“Nah, man,” another boy answers for me. “Mimi’s a prude. You gotta target the sluts.”

“Stop,” I say. I think I say. They roll on until Wyatt cuts in and tells them, Guys, cut that shit out. I’m glaring at Brayden, who’s lying against the willow trunk grinning as this happens. Finally, I catch his eye and he just looks away. But he’s still grinning.

“They’re all sluts, I bet,” says Mitch.

“Not Mimi; not when it comes to you,” Ray claps back.

“Stop,” I say, louder this time. “They’re my friends.”

“Yeah, but you’re not one of them. You’re one of us. So come on, man.” Mitch puts his hands on his hip. The power pose. “Play matchmaker. What are they into?”

I stare at Mitch. He just keeps that smug smile on his lips, testing me. My jaw hurts from clenching so hard. I’m furious with myself. I don’t want to be in with the boys if this is what it costs.

I take in a long, slow breath.

“What are they into? Not a seventeen-year-old with weapons-grade halitosis.”

Mitch’s smug face ices over and the boys erupt in laughter. It makes me even madder. I point at the next one.

“And not those marshmallow-puffed gums. Try flossing.”

And the next one.

“Not that inbred-looking Hapsburg jaw. You look like a deep-sea fish.”

And the next. Chinless lawn gnome with haunted Victorian doll hands.

And the next. Anthropomorphic stubbed toe.

Until I’ve snipped off a portion of each of their bodies.

“Not any of you,” I say. “None of you have any idea how disgusting you are.”

The laughter peters out long before I get through them all. I’m ready for them to strike back, but they don’t. I dare them to with my glare, then look to Brayden.

“Not cool, man,” he says, shaking his head with well-practiced disappointment.

Man.

“Are you kidding me? What about calling a group of girls sluts?”

Brayden keeps shaking his head. I don’t see who, but one of the boys murmurs, “Well, they are,” and this gets a dark chuckle out of the downturned faces.

I sweep aside a curtain of willow branches and leave the circle. Wyatt chases me down.

“You can’t just run to them,” he says.

We’re at the maw of the covered bridge. I’m breathing hard, and angry tears push through my lashes. Confused tears. I don’t know what I’m becoming, here at Aspen. I barely look at Wyatt until he grasps my shoulders and turns me toward him.

“Don’t listen to those guys,” Wyatt says. “It’s nothing. They’re just being boys.”

“What about Brayden?” I say. But I want to say, What about me?

I ask Wyatt: “What’s a man got to do with the bad behavior of boys?”

Wyatt’s jaw flexes like maybe he’s thought about this, too. He doesn’t ask me to get back to work, but I do, dragging out one kayak after another with no help as the boys murmur behind my back. I’m soaked with sweat by the time I’m done, and sore, and I take too long in the showers. The boys are quiet when I exit the bathroom, and even quieter when I get to my bunk. On my sheets is Caroline’s candle. I’d almost forgotten that it went missing.

Taken, I remind myself. After I reported Callum.

When I pick the candle up, it slides apart, shattered like a bone still connected by the sinew of the wick. I have to cradle it. It can’t be fixed. It’s no longer a candle. It’s a message, received.