Early morning Monday, the first of two city buses arrived at the small parking lot for Camp Morning Dew, loaded with about forty kids that just got done being third, fourth, or fifth-graders. It was the older kids from both major Desert Tree schools that made up the bulk of the passengers, and Wessy and his crew were among the first to step off, each of them dressed in khaki shorts and light shirts, a few of them having donned hats as well. The piney wilderness scent hit their noses right away.

           Under a sign that still had most of the original metal letters from the camp’s early days nailed to it, four camp counselors began greeting the students that poured out and gathered at the entrance. The second bus, delayed by several red lights on the way up the hillside, would catch up in a few minutes and double the crowd size.

           “It’s more run-down than I expected,” Wessy said. “Nothing like in that book.”

           “It needs some repairs,” Colin, looking happy to be back, replied. “But it’s still in good shape. Mostly.” He watched as December left the comfort of the bus before he added, “I wonder who all Marianne convinced to attend…”

           “It really is a bit cooler up here,” Ash said. “And there’s plenty of shade.”

           “Hey, someone remembered to bring link cables for our Game Boys, right?” Arthur asked the others. “Getting in some two-player in the wilderness would be rad.”

           “You guys didn’t come all the way out here just to play two-player games on a tiny green screen,” Sadie told him. “Some of the real-life games will involve a lot of kids.”

           “Yeah, but we also got younger ones that might screw up our teams,” Wessy said, watching as Lucy stepped off right after Lex, still wearing her yellow jacket.

           “Me and Colin did just fine last year. The counselors will make things fair.”

           Felicity, Tammy, and Trudy, also camp veterans, joined the crowd and had a nostalgic look in their eyes. They merged with the other DTE kids who were all congregating, with the group of “Ms. Porter’s Reps” growing the fastest.

           “Some of these are Miller kids from last year,” Felicity mentioned to Sadie. “A few of ‘em are tough. Others, not really. Some will be crying for their parents soon.”

           “Uh, Sadie, are you two secretly friends now or something?” Wessy asked her.

           Sadie shrugged and explained, “We teamed up in the competitions a few times last year and did pretty well. Felicity’s actually… kind of normal when she’s in the zone.”

           Felicity replied, “It’s a break from the shallow everyday junk. And it’s nice here.”

           Perfect Little Marianne was among the last to step off the bus, giving her glasses a nudge and already making observational judgments from its bottom step before she even set foot on the old, cracked asphalt. She was clearly sizing up the school rivals.

           “Yeah, we should be able to win,” she said and joined her classmates. “As long as the other bus isn’t full of slackers and kids here to ‘enjoy the nature.’”

           Sadie crossed her arms and shot back, “Marianne, you know the counselors don’t keep score from all the activities. Heck, they don’t even split the two schools into teams. That’s all something your sister started when it was her turn to be a dictator years ago.”

           Marianne smiled glibly, shook her head, and scoffed, “Oh, Sadie. You just don’t appreciate what Carla did for this camp. Morning Dew was becoming a joke back in ’89, and then she turned it into a place where the two schools could prove who was on top each year. Suddenly, DTE attendance doubled in 1990 once word got around!”

           “The camp has ‘lore’ too, huh?” Arthur replied. “How come I hadn’t heard it?”

           “Because it doesn’t matter?” Ash groaned. “Can’t we just have fun instead?”

           “Winning will be plenty fun!” Marianne assured, and looked over at December. “Besides, we have a star player. Ms. Helvetica over there won so many games last year.”

           Their bus departed to make room for the other one, which parked and idled, its diesel engine powering the last of the local air-conditioning for the next two weeks. The group watched expectantly to see who else would be joining them. There was some surprise when Millie of all kids was the first one down the steps, wearing a smile.

           “Oh, no…” Arthur sighed. “Of all the places…”

           “Millie. Um…” Sadie tried to be friendly. “I didn’t expect you to come here.”

           “Well, khaki shorts aren’t really my style…” Millie looked down at her pair and tugged at the wrinkles. “But I figured it was my last shot to try camp with this age group. Besides, my dad thought it might be a good chance to learn about survival situations against machete-wielding maniacs. Heh, yeah…” She looked at the quiet stares she received, and added, “Truth is, I didn’t want to tell anyone before I showed up. In case I made any of you want to, you know… Cancel. Just because I’m here.”

           “We’ll make the best of it,” Sadie spoke before anyone else could voice their opinion. “It’ll be great. Just… stick by me, I’ll show you the ropes and all that stuff.”

           “No spying…” Wessy aggressively reminded Millie as she settled into the crowd.

           Delilah was off next, followed by Hutch—another surprise.

           “Hutch, aren’t you too old to be here?” Colin asked him.

           “Oh, um, I guess not,” the biggest boy around replied. “I was still in fifth grade, and I don’t turn twelve until a few days after camp ends, so… I guess it’s, like, legal.”

           Robby joined the crowd following the arrival of a few Miller kids, and he looked particularly excited about attending, since he was now all about the outdoors. It occurred to Jace that he, Millie, and himself must have been the three kids that were not here in the original timeline. But try not to worry about that too much, he told himself.

           Celeste looked right at home as soon as she stepped off the bus, having both a wild nature and a love for red flannel outerwear. She ignored the gathering of kids from her school to say hi to Ash, Sadie, and all the others, rushing over with a grin.

           “Sadie! You’re wearing those boots Jason got you, huh? They look nice!”

           Sadie replied, “Yep. I see you got some new shoes, too. Great to be back…”

           “Um, Sadie?” Marianne interrupted and intruded. “Celeste here was a menace at camp last year, in case you forgot. And she’s from Sherman Miller. She should go, like, be with her own kind. This competition is serious. Friendships can be put on pause.”

           “Are you for real right now?” Sadie fired back angrily. “Celly’s been my friend for years. I’m not going to ruin a good thing just because you want to win something.”

           “Oh, great, Mary just had to come back for more, didn’t she?” Celeste moaned.

           “It’s Marianne Lowell,” she asserted. “And your school won’t win two in a row.”

           “Pfft, if that’s how you’re going to be, then I’ll just kick your ass personally.”

           Sadie chuckled, but Marianne gasped, “Wow! Were you raised in a barn?”

           Kyle, the owner of Sherman Miller’s hideout, slid over to them from seemingly nowhere, hands in his pockets and his loose tie still his fashion statement of choice.

           “Heeey, living in a barn sounds cool. I could dig that bohemian lifestyle.”

           “Hey, Kyle,” Celeste greeted. “Guys, Kyle got to run The Shade at our school.”

           “Oh, so you’re here again, too?” Marianne grumbled and walked away. “Ugh.”

           Kyle looked around at the DTE kids and asked, “Aw, did that Zach mad lad not make it this year, either? He ran your club, right? We could’a made this place real cool.”

           Sadie replied, “Celly says you mostly just sit around being ‘real chill.’ So, why…”

           “My folks think I’m ‘lazy’ and send me here every year, thinkin’ I’m being active. And… hey, you two,” he said to Jace and Wessy. “Thanks for helping Cel’. Her book report was something special. Witnessing it actually almost made me feel an emotion.”

           The second bus closed its door and took off, leaving the kids alone with the four counselors for a few moments. It wasn’t long before four more staffers walked over to welcome the campers. They included an older woman who was clearly the camp cook, and the groundskeeper, a mustached man who looked a little sleepy.

           It was the final two camp counselors that got some attention among Wessy and his friends. Two familiar faces; but seeing one of them here was hardly a shock.

           “Wait, hold on, is that the guy from the laser tag game?” Wessy exclaimed.

           “Huh. Yeah, it is,” Colin replied. “I haven’t seen him as a counselor here before.”

           Bailey, dressed in a pair of khakis that made him look even more like a dork, tried to get the entrance speakers working as Min Myung, at his side, made her boredom apparent with a yawn. She eventually ended up grabbing the speaker microphone and giving it a bash with her palm before handing it back to Bailey.

           He pressed its button and his voice was amplified over the aging, crackling speakers nailed to the wooden entrance posts. “Hello? Testing… Testing…”

           “Park’s sister is a counselor, too?” Wessy continued. “Sheesh, this is weird.”

           “She was here last year,” Sadie said. “But I didn’t expect her to come back.”

           “Hello! Hello, happy campers!” Bailey began. “Goodness, what a crowd! I hear that this is the first year in a long time that Morning Dew has maxed-out its capacity. But, not to worry—our expert counselors will keep things…” he trailed off as the kids turned to watch a fancy red convertible come to a sudden stop into the dirt by the entrance.

           “Moooom!” Spice shouted as she was forced out of the car by her sunglass-wearing mother. “I don’t want to go to summer camp! I don’t want to wear gross khaki shorts! I won’t get along with anyone, and it’s too hot! Please just take me to Spain, too!”

           “Sorry, mija, maybe we’ll bring you next time. You’ll have fun if you try!”

           Spice’s mom handed her two small suitcases, and then drove off. Realizing that everyone had just witnessed the scene, Spice grumbled loudly and grudgingly joined the kids from her school. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it, but got ahead of any gossip.

           “My parents want to have a ‘second honeymoon’ in Madrid,” she muttered. “Last second sort of thing, paid extra just to fit me in late at this… backwoods place.”

           “Hey, it’ll be great,” Sadie told her, trying to be upbeat. “Just… give it a chance.”

           “Yeah, whatever,” she huffed and looked around. “What a dump.”

           After some speaker feedback, Bailey continued, “Ah, anyway, where were… Oh, yes. My name is Bailey, one of the senior camp counselors! This isn’t my first rodeo, because I worked at a summer camp out in Oregon before I moved here this year! And this…” he gestured to his unenthusiastic partner, “Is Min! It’s her second year!”

           “Yeah, um, hi,” Min said into the microphone with a sigh. “And these junior counselors here, they’re, uh…” She looked at the red-haired girl with freckles and the shorter one with blond hair and a cheerful disposition, trying to remember their names. “Oh, yeah. Peggy and Kate. They’ll be sharing the girls’ cabins with the, you know, girls.”

           “And these two cool cats are Stan and Larry!” Bailey introduced two older teens, one of them a little round and the other tall and lanky with a mild case of acne. “We’ll all work together to keep things in order and supervise all the many fun activities we have planned over our next two weeks together! Let me also introduce you to our two long-time staffers—your chef, Ms. Marsdale, and our camp custodian, Mr. Jasper!”

           As the kids weren’t told to clap and weren’t really compelled to, most of them just stared at the only two people at camp who were fully adults. They stared back, in a way that conveyed that they had been doing this for far too long. It wouldn’t surprise Jace if both of them had been working summers here since the camp opened.

           Bailey let out a cough and continued, “Okay, well, let’s get you to your cabins—we have four in all, with plenty of bunk beds. Oh, and we should probably show you where the mess hall and bathrooms are, too. And, yes, we do have running water!”

           “Well, at least it has a ceiling fan,” Wessy said after he and his friends entered one of the two boys’ cabins. “That’s gotta be some kind of luxury for these places.”

           “It’s nice to be back…” Colin sighed as he picked a bunk and dropped his duffle bag of clothes into one of the footlockers. “Ya know, I’ve only spent a combined month here over the years, but it still feels nostalgic. I guess I just think about it a lot.”

           Robby, trying to pick a bunk as they quickly filled up, asked them, “You think we should’ve maybe, I dunno, mixed it up with the Sherman Miller kids? We’re going to be going to Cookton with a lot of ‘em. Could’ve been a chance to meet new people.”

           “This feels new and weird enough to me already,” Wessy replied. “Hanging out with my fellow Dee-Teers helps. Even if there are a few fourth and third-graders here,” he added when some of the school’s younger boys raced past them towards the back.

           They watched Hutch and Reynold Weichster go by and say hi to the five other DTE students from other classes that had just graduated—Hutch by far the biggest of the kids in the cabin. Wessy had to let out a snicker at the size differences he saw.

           Colin, settling into a bottom bed, picked up on it and told Wessy, “Hutch might end up being our best friend if the Miller kids get mean, Wes. Summer camp has a lot of ‘self-policing.’ The counselors aren’t like teachers who will break up every fight.”

           Wessy replied, “Y-yeah, but it’s not totally the Wild West out here, right?”