Recipients of the Lumberjane Time After Time badge know that people who were around a long time ago used the sun and moon to tell time.
The earth going around the sun once = a year.
A full orbit of the moon = a month.
Eventually, to make thing easier and more exact, some scientific types came up with (ta da!) the second.
A second is an actual thing that exists outside whatever it is you use to tell time (cuckoo clock, cell phone, oldtimey pocket watch). Which you can find out more about by looking up the number: 9192631770.
Sixty seconds is a minute. Sixty minutes is an hour. Twenty-four hours is a day. Three hundred and sixty-five days makes a year.
A decade is how long a night feels when you’re nervous about something and don’t know what to do.
Jo had spent her night silently arguing with the letter, still shoved in her pocket, about alternate realities.
Specifically, the letter had made its case for the undeniable benefits of the program it was now calling S.T.A.A.R.
Think of it this way, the letter said, its voice sure, being a scientist is your destiny, correct?
Correct, Jo thought. I mean, I think so.
That’s a yes?
Yes.
So then what’s the problem? The letter seemed on the edge of exasperated.
By the time the sun rose, the voice in Jo’s head was hoarse. And Jo still didn’t know what to do, although she was pretty sure lying awake in bed, arguing with a voice no one else could hear, wasn’t helping.
This is what scientists DO, the letter insisted. They don’t sit around at summer camp getting baking badges and canoeing. They move on and spend their summers in rooms lit with energy-saving bulbs and get down to the matter of improving the world as we know it with knowledge!
But, Jo thought. I don’t want to leave.
Well, the letter began, only to be interrupted by—
“RISE AND SHINE!” April’s eyes peeked over the edge of the bunk. “What are you doing? Let me guess.”
“Thinking,” Jo said quietly, because that seemed to be the most accessible description for what was going on in her head.
April scrunched her eyebrows up in a concerned BFF look that said, but did not say out loud, “I am worried about whatever it is you’re thinking about.”
Jo felt her best friend’s worried gaze like a small weight in her hand.
This is the thing about having a friend with whom you have developed a psychic bond. There’s a part of you that’s always connected to them and vice versa, like a string you cannot break.
It is the greatest and most complicated phenomenon known to scouts, this bond. This string that is endlessly stretchable and able to tie you in knots.
Which is not to say April knew what to do over on her side of the string, except send Jo an endless stream of psychic emails saying, “I’m here. No matter what.”
“Ready for breakfast?” Jo asked.
Which was weird because when was the last time Jo even ate breakfast?
“I’m ready when you are,” April said.
“Hey,” Mal sat up in bed. “Have either of you seen our fuzzy guest and our blue-haired cabin mate?”
It was early enough that the camp still had that “just woke up” vibe, the sun just starting to turn the sky blue from purple.
Few enough people were up that no one had spotted Castor. Not when she crept out of Roanoke cabin, not when she scurried across the grass to the kitchen, not even as she sat crouched next to the back door of the mess hall, sniffing at the air with her little pink nose, her eyes darting this way and that as she slowly, but surely, crept forward.
No one except . . .
“WHO goes there?” BunBun hollered from behind the screen door. She was dressed in a tinfoil cap and tiger ears and was carrying a drum made out of a can of beans.
“I beg your pardon!” Castor tumbled backward.
“Hey, BunBun! It’s me and my new friend, Castor,” Ripley chirped, appearing from around the corner.
“Oh,” said Castor. “Uh. Yes. Hello.”
BunBun turned and marched back into the mess hall. “I’M VERY BUSY.”
“Your guards are very robust in their duties,” Castor said, nervously rubbing her paws together.
“Ha ha, BunBun’s not a guard!” Ripley pressed her face against the screen. “She’s just awesome.”
Castor looked like she wanted to run. Her tail twitched.
“Are you hungry?” Ripley asked.
“Oh.” Castor twitched her tail again. “Um, not terribly. Just perhaps a mite peckish.”
Ripley grinned. “You like cheese, right? Cuz we have lots of cheese. I like Beemster and Burrata and American Cheddar but there’s regular Canadian Cheddar too if you like.”
“Oh,” Castor said lightly, running a paw over her ear in a casual mousey gesture. “Is there?”
Pushing open the door, Ripley peered inside. “Yeah! Technically we’re supposed to wait for breakfast but sometimes Kzzyzy lets me grab a snack. HEY, KZZYZY!”
“WHAT?!”
Kzzyzy was in an acrobatic flurry of pots and pans, and she barely looked up to see that Ripley had a guest.
“I’m just getting a snack,” Ripley called out.
“Don’t mess up my larder!” Kzzyzy called back over the howling of Mama Cass.
“I’M VERY BUSY!” BunBun shouted from somewhere in the kitchen.
Ripley and Castor wound their way past many mixing bowls and a series of burners, all of which had things furiously bubbling on the top.
“Here is where they keep the bird seed,” Ripley said, as they walked past a room full of barrels.
“Here is where Rosie keeps all her special stuff,” Ripley said, pointing at a door that seemed to have a bit of a green glow coming out from underneath.
“Here’s where we keep all the stuff I think you’ll like,” Ripley said, pushing open a metal door.
Inside were shelves and shelves and shelves of cheese.
So much cheese that the air seemed to be heavy with mozzarella.
Castor’s whiskers quivered. “This is q-quite a supply,” she stammered.
Ripley took a tiny chunk of cheddar from one of the wheels and handed it to Castor. “Here you go!”
“Thank you,” Castor said, as she curled her claw around the slice, her eyes still roaming here and there, taking in the cheese, the door, and the missing padlock that was no longer on the door, because BunBun was using it as a necklace.
Not that anyone had noticed.
Except for Castor.
“We should get going,” Ripley said, stepping out. “Breakfast is soon. There will be tons more food there.”
“Tons. Quite,” Castor whispered, running her claw along the shelf, careful to pick up her tail as Ripley shut the door. “Indeed.”