BEFORE THE DYING AND STUFF HAPPENS, though, I’d better tell you a little more about what life is like for the Bear Pack, day to day, so you can bond with these characters and make attachments and know who you’re supposed to root for when it all goes to shit.
Like right now, for instance, our motley collection of bad apples is arranged around their sickly campfire, dreaming about Burger King Whoppers and burritos and extralarge double-cheese pizzas as darkness falls and Amber and Christian check on the tents before lights-out.
Dawn is retelling her Origin Story: how her mom and her stepdad jacked her out of Julian’s house and kidnapped her and brought her up here, and Lucas and Kyla are listening and nodding, and even Brielle looks like she wants to contribute to the discussion, but she can’t, because just as she opens her mouth, Christian shows up out of the gloom across the fire and fixes his creepy eyes on Dawn.
“Bear Cub,” he says. “Your shelter sucks. Fix it.”
And everyone looks at Dawn, and Dawn inwardly groans and after a second she stands and circles the fire and follows Christian into the darkness, trying not to think about the way he looks at Kyla and hoping he won’t start looking at her the same way.
He doesn’t do anything weird, though, just leads Dawn through the bushes to Amber, who’s standing where Dawn strung up her bright-orange parachute cord between two saplings and draped her tarp over the top of it. It’s kind of windy tonight, and Dawn put rocks on each corner of the tarp to hold it steady, but the rocks didn’t work and now the tarp’s half blown away, and Amber’s standing there shining her flashlight on Dawn’s sleeping bag and the rest of her collection of stuff.
“Not good enough, Dawn,” Amber says, and in the dim light Dawn can see that Amber’s shaking her head, her mouth set in a thin line. “Rain’s supposed to start next week, and if you want to stay dry, you’re going to have to learn to make better shelter.”
Dawn stares at Amber, then down at her not-good-enough tarp. “Everyone else gets a tent,” she says. “This wouldn’t even be an issue if you’d just give me a tent like the rest of the Pack.”
Christian kind of snort-laughs behind her. “Gotta earn your tent,” he says, turning to leave.
Amber and Dawn watch him go. Then Amber turns back to Dawn and her expression softens. “Keep working at it,” she tells Dawn. “If you can tough it out with the tarp for a good solid week, we’ll get you a tent next time we resupply, okay?”
Dawn rolls her eyes. “What about a flashlight?” she asks, because Amber is leaving and taking the flashlight with her, leaving Dawn to tough it out with the tarp in the dark. “Can I have a little light, at least?”
Christian laughs again, from somewhere in the dark. “Gotta earn that, too,” he says, and then he and Amber are gone, and Dawn’s feeling around for her tarp like a blind person, wondering how she’s supposed to earn anything if they won’t let her see the way.
Dawn struggles with her tarp and it’s shitty and frustrating. She gets dirt all over her sleeping bag and the rest of her stuff, and she scratches her hands and her arms feeling around for bigger rocks in the bushes to hold the tarp down. It’s almost completely dark now, and she can hear Christian and Amber telling the rest of the Pack it’s time for lights-out. Dawn can’t find any big rocks, and her tarp’s flapping all over the place—
(and she’s just about to give up and sleep out in the open and hope Amber doesn’t notice and it doesn’t rain in the night)
—when something rustles beside her
and Dawn nearly screams in terror, thinking it’s a cougar—or worse, Christian—but then that something whispers her name and tells her to be quiet and it’s actually Lucas, and he holds his flashlight up to his face and gives her a goofy grin so that she knows it’s him.
“I thought you could maybe use a little help with that tarp,” Lucas says.