Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (general ebook reader .TXT) 📗

have been a policeman, or the owner of the preschool, or a social worker. I got moved around for days between different strangers’ houses. I still had your tights, which was the only thing I had that was supposedly my own, even if they weren’t really mine.”

“That’s so crazy,” says Amy. “I had no idea. Why have you never said anything?”

“I guess I was embarrassed.”

Amy nods.

“Maybe you were right. Maybe I really do want things because they’re yours.”

“Really?”

“Not Mason Hawk, I swear. But you know, a nice grandmother from Denmark, like your Momo. Or just the fact that people worry about you if you don’t come home at night. I want all those things.”

“My family loves you.”

“Yeah, but they’re still yours.”

They watch their campers lazily yawning next to the fire, mesmerized by the flames. Fiona doesn’t remember ever feeling that content when she was six.

“Someone told me they saw you and Mason together that night,” Amy says quietly.

“So why didn’t you say anything before now?”

“I guess I was embarrassed too. And also jealous and hurt.”

Fiona understands being embarrassed. But Amy really didn’t need to be jealous or hurt.

“He just wanted to ask me about you. He told me not to say anything, but that’s all I was doing with him, answering questions about you. But then we got fired and you were so mad…I honestly forgot about it.”

“Oh my God.” Amy puts her face in her hands. “Fiona, I really thought…”

“Yeah, I know.”

She remembers the camp director’s squinty eyes. You don’t seem to be making a lot of friends among the counselors, Fiona.

“I really jumped to the worst conclusion, didn’t I?” says Amy.

Andrew has crawled into Fiona’s lap, covered in ketchup and snot and mosquito blood, and fallen asleep. He’s already snoring.

“It’s just hard, you know,” Amy says. “Believing you sometimes. I wish it wasn’t like that.”

“I want us to be friends in fifty years,” says Fiona. “How do we make sure that happens?”

“Well, for starters, I can’t just let everything roll off me anymore.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too.”

“And you have to trust me.”

It’s true; Fiona trusts barely anyone. But Amy isn’t just anyone.

“I will try harder, I promise.”

Another thing she’s always liked about Amy is that she knows when to stop talking.

“Come on, let’s get these guys in their tents,” says Amy.

In the firelight, their campers have just fallen asleep wherever they’ve landed. Some still hold charred willow sticks in their grubby fists, their bodies and faces covered in so many layers of food and dirt and dead bugs, they may need archaeologists to come in and dig them out to find their real skin.

Amy and Fiona nudge their little Jell-O bodies, trying to get them to walk, then finally give up and carry the ones that have collapsed.

“It’s solstice tonight,” Amy says.

“Is it?” asks Fiona as she picks up a groggy camper still wearing a sandy pink swimsuit. Do these girls even have any real clothes?

“The other counselors are having some kind of celebration. Finn told me to meet him by the lake.”

“I thought we only did that in the winter?” whispers Fiona. “You know, when the sun comes back. Who wants to celebrate shorter days ahead?”

“I guess people do it because it’s the longest day of the year,” Amy says. “Just another thing we didn’t get the memo about.” She holds up a melted shoe that was too close to the fire.

“Yeah, I bet everyone thinks Alaska was wasted on us,” says Fiona.

“Maybe, but I might go down and celebrate, if you don’t mind. Payback for doing all the setup?” She holds her hands together as if in prayer and blinks rapidly at Fiona. “Please?”

“Sure, of course. Have fun.”

Fiona needs to read Poppy’s intake sheet before she says anything about Finn. Even though Amy just said they should be honest, if Fiona accuses Finn and is wrong, it will be the last straw for her and Amy.

But her gut tells her she’s not wrong.

She carries Andrew to his tent and puts him down next to his Snoopy backpack. Nick and Franky stare at her in disbelief as Andrew’s snores rev into gear. Fiona laughs and whispers, “Aw, c’mon, you guys. Give him a break.”

They cover their ears with sweatshirts and pillows, then curl up together and slowly fall asleep beneath the midnight sun.

After Amy goes to meet Finn and the others, Fiona sits alone at the fire, holding Poppy’s information. For a second, she thinks about just tossing it into the flames—why stir the pot? But then she hears Poppy’s voice saying she’s not scared, but “Elizabeth is, though.”

She opens Poppy’s intake sheet and reads.

What do you hope your child will gain from camp? Poppy suffered a traumatic loss when her best friend went missing and was never found. They were both six at the time. She’s been doing much better since we moved to Alaska, and we hope she’ll make some friends her own age at Camp Wildwood.

Any concerns that we should know about? For quite a while after the loss of her friend, Poppy developed an intense relationship with an invisible friend she called Elizabeth. She’s eight now, and too old for invisible friends—we hope. For the past six months, she seems to have moved on and no longer needs Elizabeth quite as much. If Elizabeth were to surface again at camp, it would signal that Poppy may have had some kind of relapse, and we would appreciate being contacted immediately.

Even if Finn had done nothing to make Poppy afraid, he was supposed to have read the intake sheet. Shouldn’t he have let her family know that Elizabeth is back?

“Fiona! Come quick! Nick was peeing and then something shot out of his butt! Hurry!”

She must have fallen asleep by the fire.

Oh, Nick, no, no, no. No. Please. Not again.

Franky and Andrew are hiding behind a tree, watching Nick, whose pants are down around his ankles.

There’s also a bear about fifty yards away on the trail, sniffing, nose in the air.

Fiona cannot breathe. Or move. She