After Vivian and the other girls had unpacked their stuff into the tiny wooden crates that passed for shelves in the cabin, they stood around examining the place in an increasingly depressed silence.
Even bubbly Sasha-from-the-Bus seemed at a loss for words.
Besides the bunks and cubbies, there was a small private room off to the side for Janet, and a tiny bathroom with three ancient sinks, one long, cracked mirror, and two shower stalls each covered by a torn and dirty shower curtain with a faded pattern of trees and flowers.
“At least there’s private showers?” Sasha-from-the-Bus finally said, but without her usual peppiness. Nobody else said anything at all, though one of the girls made a strangled noise, like she was trying, and failing, to hold back tears.
The brief flurry of unpacking was followed by a tour of the camp, given by a listless Janet. “That’s the lake, I guess,” she said as they trudged down a sandy path crisscrossed with roots that seemed purposely placed to trip as many people as possible and past a body of water that looked like something that you’d find at a sewage treatment plant, not a summer camp. “And here’s the mess hall. And over there is where people do archery? Or something with arrows. And that’s a canoe, I think. Or a kayak, maybe. Some kind of boat?”
Finally she led the group into the main activity hall, where they sat on the hard, splintery floor and listened to the camp director and the counselors spell out all the rules of Camp Shady Brook. If Vivian had any hope that boy she’d met was wrong about how strict the place was, it disappeared completely as she listened to the endless list of regulations.
“Don’t go in the lake without supervision,” Ms. Hess said firmly as she paced back and forth in front of the silent campers. “Don’t go in the woods at all. Never go out to the old boathouse, at all, ever. No food in the cabins—we don’t want bugs. And lights out is at nine p.m., no exceptions.”
Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t go there, don’t go here. It was an impossibly long list of don’ts, and every single infraction got you demerits, which lost you privileges and could only be earned off with chores like cleaning the cabin toilets and washing dishes. If Miss Hiss was telling the truth about her plans for punishments—and Vivian strongly suspected she was—all but the most strictly obedient campers would be spending half their days confined to their cabins without meals.
Vivian finally stopped paying attention. It was all too oppressive to bear.
It wasn’t until they were headed toward the mess hall for their first dinner—which Vivian was pretty confident was going to be inedible—that she finally saw a possible path out of her misery.
Mia, one of the girls in her bunk, was walking near her as they entered the large dining room that sat right next to the main activity hall. It was just as dusty and dilapidated as the rest of the camp, but filled with long wooden tables and low benches, under an arching wood ceiling that even from far below Vivian could tell was full of spiderwebs. She repressed a shiver.
At the end of the room, a group of teenagers was standing behind a counter wearing aprons and hairnets and looking like they’d rather be doing anything else but serving a bunch of younger kids. Vivian really couldn’t blame them.
One of them, a big guy with floppy hair and a hooded gray sweatshirt, looked like his only pleasure in life was spitting in people’s food. It took only a quick glance at him before Vivian decided to get in the other food line.
“Oh, is that him?” Mia said to no one in particular as she came up behind Vivian.
Vivian didn’t say anything at all, but Mia pressed on. “I think it is! I think it is him!”
Vivian took a deep breath. “Who?” she asked, since that was obviously what Mia wanted. She hoped she wasn’t talking about the big dude with the grim smile ladling out dark brown glop onto plastic plates. The less said about him, the better.
The girl turned, her eyes shining. “Didn’t you hear?” she asked in a low whisper.
“Obviously not,” Vivian replied. “Since I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Archie Drake is here! At Shady Brook!” Mia said. And then, when Vivian didn’t offer a glimmer of recognition: “The Archie Drake?”
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Vivian didn’t know why. “Okay, Archie Drake is here. And I should care about this because?”
“Because he’s, like, the son of the richest man on the planet, that’s why,” the other girl said. “I heard he’s been coming here for years. And that his parents might even own this place, though then I heard he said that wasn’t true. But his parents own, like, everything. All I know is, I never imagined I’d go to summer camp with Archie Drake!”
As she spoke, Mia poked Vivian in the arm, and then pointed toward a table on the other side of the room. Vivian looked over, bored, but then her head snapped back to look again.
“Don’t stare,” Mia hissed.
But Vivian couldn’t help herself. That rich kid Mia was talking about? The one whose parents “owned everything” and probably owned Camp Shady Brook, too? She stared for a long minute, shaking her head.
It was that awkward boy who had convinced her that having cupcakes in her cabin would be treated like an act of high treason. The kid who said it was his first summer of camp, and that his parents would be mad if he got kicked out because camp cost too much money.
But he didn’t look awkward or unsure of himself anymore. Instead he sat with a wide smile, surrounded by admirers hanging on his every word.
“Oh, right,” Vivian said, half to Mia, but more to herself. “That Archie Drake.”