Lily let the postcard flutter to her chest. Chuck, she realized. Chuck hadn’t worn those green shoes since the first morning of camp, but Lily had seen her in them. She was certain of it.
Focusing her thoughts at the bridge of her nose, Lily pulled back her sleeping bag. Carefully, quietly, she slid off the top bunk to the floor, being sure not to wake Chuck on the bed below. In the next bunk over, Miles slept flat on his stomach on his bottom bed, while above him Renny was curled into a tight ball. On the far side of the room, Ellie lay all alone, her left hand grazing the floor.
Crouching on her hands and knees, Lily peered beneath the bed, where Chuck had a habit of stuffing her things. Sure enough, behind a damp beach towel, Lily spotted a single Kelly-green high-top. She focused her thoughts at the bridge of her nose and tugged the shoe out.
Lily hadn’t dreamed it at all. Someone had given her Chuck Holloway’s memory.
• • •
The sun painted the dirt path orange as Lily hurried toward the lodge. The woods were filled with the music of an early summer morning—birds chirping, leaves rustling, squirrels yut-yut-yutting. Otherwise, the camp was still. Lily scuttled to Jo’s office window. She couldn’t see past the curtain inside, and the window itself was—she tried it—locked.
But locked windows were no match for a Pinnacle.
Focusing her thoughts at the bridge of her nose, Lily concentrated on the window’s latch, through the glass pane. Slowly, it began to twist. With the window unlocked, Lily shifted her focus and pulled the window up. Cre-eeeak! The noise was thunderous in the quiet of the camp. Lily tensed her shoulders, waiting, but the only sounds she heard were the birds, the leaves, the squirrels.
Lily pulled the window open.
Pushing the curtain to one side, Lily peered inside the office. She didn’t need to look far. The shelves that lined the wall were bursting with glass jars, each of them sample-size, no larger than a Ping-Pong ball. Hundreds and hundreds of jars. And each, Lily could see as she leaned farther inside, had a bracelet nestled at the bottom, red or purple or yellow. Each jar was labeled, too, with a strip of masking tape, although even when she squinted, the words didn’t make much sense to Lily.
FROGS—that’s what was written on one of the labels.
HAIR, read another.
Focusing her thoughts at the bridge of her nose, Lily lifted a jar from the bottom shelf, where Jo would be least likely to miss it, and tugged it toward her through the air. The bracelet in the jar was orange, Max’s favorite color, and the label read HEAT.
As Lily eased the window shut, she failed to notice that one jar with a bright green bracelet inside teetered off its perch. She didn’t observe it rolling across the office floor.
And she certainly didn’t see the jar wedge itself deep beneath Jo’s filing cabinet.
• • •
“I brought you something,” Lily told Max when she got to the infirmary. Nurse Bonnie had gone to grab breakfast, so they were alone for the moment.
Lily pulled the jar from her pocket and unscrewed the lid. Then she pinched the orange bracelet between two fingers—she didn’t want the Talent to soak into her own skin and go to waste.
“A bracelet?” Max said, wrinkling his nose when he saw her gift.
“Orange is your favorite color,” Lily reminded him, stretching his arm taut. She wondered what the label HEAT meant. Controlling the temperature might make for a nice act, or even knowing how hot it was outside without a thermometer. Lily tied the bracelet around Max’s wrist.
“Where’d you get it, anyway?” Max asked, examining the orange thread against his light brown skin.
Lily wound her own length of swampy yarn around her thumb, waiting for Max’s new Talent to soak through to his bones. It hadn’t taken long at all, she remembered, with the frog.
“I made it,” she lied. “Arts and craf—”
“Look what I have for you!” came the world’s most annoying voice. Hannah’s long blond hair swished behind her as she stepped through the gap in the curtains. She was holding some sort of bright green concoction, in a tall clear glass.
Max straightened himself in the bed. “What is it?” he said. And Lily hated that his eyes lit up for the green muck Hannah brought him, when they hadn’t for her bracelet.
“Wait till you see,” Hannah told him, holding out the glass.
It happened quickly.
One second, Max was holding the glass, bringing it in for a sip.
The next second, he said, “Oh.” Very quietly, but Lily heard it. And his eyes were wide. Worried.
The next second after that, Lily saw the first bubble, on the surface of the green juice. It burst with an audible pop!
In the second that followed, more bubbles appeared. More and more and more. Until, only five seconds after it had all begun, the juice was boiling over, splashing out of the glass, sticky and scalding, and Max shrieked, and Hannah screamed, too, and Lily leapt to her feet, and the glass smashed to the ground, spraying boiling green muck everywhere.
“What happened?” Hannah cried, grabbing for Max’s hands. They were unnaturally red. Swollen. Max howled, tears welling in his eyes.
“I have no ide—”
Lily’s fingers clasped around the small glass jar.
HEAT—that’s what was written on the top.
“I’ll find Nurse Bonnie,” Lily said. And she raced out of the room, out of the infirmary, running, running, kicking up dirt along the path to the lodge. She took the steps to the mess deck two at a time, and pressed through the campers crowded in the breakfast line. She spotted Chuck and Ellie near the front.
“No cutting!” called a kid behind her, but Lily ignored him.
“Have you seen Nurse Bonnie?” Lily asked the twins.
“Are you sick?” Ellie asked.
“Haven’t seen her,” Chuck replied. “Why is this line taking so long?”
Still searching the crowd, Lily followed Chuck’s gaze to the far end of the breakfast line. A group was clustered at the beverage station watching one of the older campers, Hal—who was thirteen or fourteen, and large, with an unfortunate bowl haircut—take a cup of ice water. “Let’s see this mind-blowing Talent show act,” the counselor Teagan told him. And, with the drama of a magician performing a card trick, Hal took the cup, raising his eyebrows at his audience.
Lily could see it even from where she stood—the bubbles at the top of the cup. The beverage was boiling between Hal’s hands.
With a flourish, Hal poured in a sprinkling of hot cocoa powder, and gave the cup’s contents a quick stir with a plastic spoon. “There you are,” he told Teagan, handing over the cup. “Faster than a microwave.”
Teagan’s hair shifted from electric blue bob to stark white, growing six inches. “Very nice,” she told Hal.
“His act’s going to be so much better than identifying frogs,” Chuck said, turning back to Lily with a sigh.
Around and around Lily wound the length of yarn at her thumb. Suddenly lots of new thoughts were clamoring for space in her brain.
She looked at Chuck and Ellie. The Frog Twins, everyone called them.
FROGS.
That had been written on one of the jars in Jo’s office.
Lily’s gaze shifted to Teagan, now sporting a blond pixie cut.
HAIR.
That was one, too.
And finally Lily’s eyes settled on Hal, who was bowing for his adoring audience.
HEAT.
Lily wound the length of swampy yarn around and around her thumb, working it faster and faster.
“Lily?” Ellie said. “Are you okay?”
Something strange was going on at Camp Atropos. Something very, very strange.
Lily just had to figure out what.
Chuck’s Frozen Mint Hot Chocolate
a dr
ink reminiscent of a cool swim on a hot day
FOR THE FROZEN HOT CHOCOLATE:
1 1/2 cups whole milk, divided
6 sprigs fresh mint (plus more for garnish if desired)
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tbsp sugar
5 cups ice
whipped cream (optional)
1. In a small saucepan, combine ½ cup of the milk and 6 sprigs of mint. Heat on the lowest setting for 4 minutes, stirring constantly and smashing the mint into the milk. Do not let the mixture boil.
2. Using tongs or a fork, remove the mint sprigs from the milk and discard them.
3. Add the chocolate chips, cocoa powder, and sugar to the milk. Stirring constantly, continue heating on the lowest setting until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth, 3 to 5 minutes.
4. Remove the chocolate mixture from the heat. Stir in the remaining 1 cup milk, mixing well.
5. Put the ice in the blender and carefully pour in the chocolate mixture. Blend on high until smooth. Pour into two tall glasses and top with whipped cream and fresh mint sprigs, if desired. Serve with drinking straws or spoons.
[Serves 2]
Chuck
HER CHEEKS PUFFED WIDE AND HER EYES SQUEEZED tight, Chuck dunked her head beneath the surface of Lake Atropos, letting the chill prickle her skin through her swimsuit. Every day, it seemed, the lake grew colder and colder, as though some water-warming spell it had been enchanted with was quickly wearing off. But Chuck didn’t mind so much. Since the morning they’d arrived at camp, the only seconds she’d had to herself were the ones she spent underwater.
“Hey, Chuck!” Ellie cried, as soon as Chuck popped her head above the surface. “Want to leave free swim early to practice for the Talent show?” Chuck drew fresh air into her straining lungs. “Dress rehearsal’s tomorrow, and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I want to swim.”
“But we really need to work on the act,” Ellie argued, windmilling her arms and legs to stay upright in the water. “I still need to show you how to—”
“I’m going to play Squid,” Chuck cut in. And she dove beneath the surface again, splashing as she swam for the wooden platform floating farther out in the water, where a few dozen campers and counselors were gathered.
Ellie followed her, of course. But Chuck did her best not to be bothered.
The rules of Squid were simple. One person acted as a “squid” and sat at the edge of the platform with her toes in the water, guarding “Neptune’s gold”—which was really, in this case, a pair of swim goggles perched on the platform behind her. The other players tried to grab the gold, but if the squid tagged one of them first, then that player became part of the squid’s “tentacles,” holding on to the squid’s hands or feet. As more players were tagged, the tentacles grew longer, stretching far out into the water in all directions, and it became more difficult to get the gold. The player to grab the goggles became the new squid.
The first round went quickly. A girl named Molly was the squid, and she put up a noble effort to guard the gold, but little Gracie was using her Talent for lie-detecting to know when Molly was fibbing about how far she could reach, and one of the boys, Jason, could hold his breath for up to seventeen minutes, so no one ever knew where or when he was going to pop up from under the water.
“This is fun, Chuck,” Ellie said, grabbing tight to her hand as they rested for a moment at the edge of the platform. Chuck’s arm grew chilly as she soaked in their shared Talent. There were ninety-seven frogs swimming along the southernmost bank of Lake Atropos at that moment. Fifty-five male, the rest female. Seven different species. “Playing Squid was a good idea.”
Chuck released her hand from Ellie’s grip, then immediately squeezed the Talent back.
During the second round of the game, with Jason as the squid, Chuck was tagged right away. She took her place as Jason’s tentacle—her right hand in his left—wishing she had a Talent of her own. Something that she didn’t have to share with Ellie. Something utterly unique, like that silver knot she kept in her shorts pocket. Quirky and complicated and beautiful. Was that too much to ask?
An icy chill trickled up Chuck’s arm, precisely the same feeling she got when the frog Talent passed to her from Ellie. Only it wasn’t Ellie’s hand Chuck was holding.
It was Jason’s.
Chuck gasped in surprise, and when she did, her lungs—she could feel them—they expanded. Right inside her chest.
She glanced at Jason, still sitting on the platform, still trying to tag the other campers. He looked exactly the same as he had a moment earlier. But Chuck couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps he wasn’t, really. That perhaps she wasn’t.
Chuck sank below the water, down down down.
A long minute passed. Maybe two. Chuck opened her eyes, watching the fish swim past her in the murky water.
“Are you okay?” Ellie asked her, when she managed to tug Chuck above the surface. “I thought you were drowning. You were down there for so long.”
“I was?” Her lungs didn’t ache. Not in the slightest.
Chuck squeezed Jason’s Talent back into his arm, warm like hot chocolate.
“Hey, Ellie?” she asked her sister, kicking her legs underneath her. “Have you ever been able to share a Talent with anyone else? Besides me, I mean?”
Ellie squinted at her, water dripping off her hundreds of braids onto the straps of her swimsuit. “Are you sure you weren’t down there too long?”
“Never mind,” Chuck said.
In the third round of the game, Teagan was the squid, sitting on the platform in front of the goggles, her hair shifting from black to red to purple as she taunted the campers. Chuck let herself be tagged on purpose. She went to join little strawberry-haired Gracie, who was hanging on to Teagan’s left hand. And, the instant Chuck thought about soaking up a new Talent, it happened.
The icy spark climbed Chuck’s arm, the Talent for lie-detecting sprinting into her chest. When Jason swore he wouldn’t sneak underwater, Chuck knew for certain he was lying. Chuck was so overwhelmed with her new ability, it took her a moment to notice that Teagan’s hair—which mere moments ago had been a black-and-white checkerboard, reaching out at all angles to tag swimming campers—was now a perfectly plain brown. Slightly frizzy. Pulled back behind her ears.
But even stranger than that was the sight of Gracie’s hair. With one hand gripping Teagan’s and the other clutched in Chuck’s, Gracie’s usual strawberry hair was slowly turning . . . violet.
In a blink, Gracie’s hair returned to normal. But Chuck was certain she had seen it. Somehow, Gracie had absorbed Teagan’s Talent, just as Chuck had absorbed hers. Somehow—
A second icy spark crept up Chuck’s arm.
While everyone else was focused on the platform, where Molly had just snatched the gold, Chuck shifted her gaze to her shoulder, her breathing heavy. There was a peculiar tickling at her neck.
Chuck’s sweepy black cornrows were slowly, slowly, unwinding. She could see them from the corner of her eye, even though normally they didn’t reach past her chin. Her cornrows were growing, and they were turning green. Pistachio green. As the campers watched Molly’s victory dance and Chuck did her best not to faint right into the water, her hair wove itself into one long, thick green braid.
Shocked, Chuck let go of Gracie’s hand. And then, on a hunch, she grabbed it again.
It wasn’t ice this time that traveled through her, but warmth, like a bath after a day of sledding. The Talent gushed out of Chuck’s chest, back down the length of her arm, and back into Gracie’s hand. Beside her, Gracie—still focused on the platform and the dancing—rolled her shoulders as though something peculiar had passed through them. Her hair began to change again, working its way into a tangerine Mohawk, and still she kept laughi
ng, none the wiser. Chuck squeezed harder, and Gracie’s hair went back to normal, and then Teagan, still tentacle-gripped with Gracie, transformed from a normally coiffed counselor to checkerboard crazy once more. At the same time, Chuck could feel the warmth of the lie-detecting Talent leaving her chest, working its way back to its rightful owner.
Chuck dropped Gracie’s hand and dunked herself fully under the water again, letting the coolness envelop her, trying to gather her thoughts.
All this time, Chuck thought. All this time, Chuck had assumed she and Ellie shared a Talent for identifying frogs. But—she kicked down into the chilly depths a little harder—what if Chuck had never had the frog Talent at all? What if it had been Ellie’s all along, and Chuck had merely borrowed it, just as she’d borrowed Gracie’s a moment ago? Just as she’d borrowed Teagan’s, and Jason’s?
Maybe, Chuck thought as she kicked for shore, ignoring Ellie’s hollering behind her, she wasn’t a Frog Twin. Maybe she never had been.
Maybe, just maybe, she was something a little more . . .
Unique.
Renny
“YOU KNOW, I PICKED YOU FOR MY TEAM, FENNELBRIDGE,” Hal grumbled, tossing a plastic water bottle between his two hands, “because I thought you’d be able to tell me where the Blue Team hid their flag.”
“That would be cheating,” Renny replied, tugging at the top of his right sock.
Miles had insisted on sitting out of Capture the Flag, because one side of the field backed up onto the lake. (“No water!” he’d shouted, and Renny had needed to grab hold of his fingers to stop the flicking.) So now, after gobbling down three Caramel Crème bars and handing the empty wrappers to Renny, Miles was passing his afternoon examining bugs at the edge of the field farthest from the water.
“That’s cheating, too, by the way,” Renny told Hal, pointing at the team captain’s water bottle. Whenever members of the Blue Team neared the rock that hid the Red Team’s flag, Hal would heat up the water and use it to chase them off.