The Kids Aren't Alright

Chapter 55: Finn

It's been three days since Ronan and Becca found Clancey in the woods. His name hasn't been mentioned since.

The counselors took him away that day— where exactly, I don't know. They just heaved him into the back of some camp car on a rattling gurney and drove away, giving us one last, fleeting glance of his bloodless face before transporting him to some unknown, distant location. Home, I heard some of the campers say. But I don't believe that.

None of us are that lucky.

I'm doing kitchen duty now. Plates wash and dry mechanically beneath my hands, warm water and soap suds washing over my skin like a summer shower. Ronan is next to me, cleaning briskly, his face an icy mask. He's angry. I can tell. He's been angry since we started washing; angry at Clancey for disappearing without an explanation, angry at this camp for withholding its secrets from him, and most of all, angry at Owen for sticking us with this stupid job in the first place.

You see, after we helped haul Clancey back to the campsite, things got a little crazy. Eric and Sean were descending into hysterics, claiming that their friend had been murdered, even though Clancey wasn't dead. (Drama queens.) Other campers were trying to use the chaos as a distraction and sneak off. (Matt, of course, was looking for a quiet place to light up.) Becca had sprained her ankle (she's wearing a brace now) and couldn't walk by herself, three unfortunate hikers had bad cases of poison ivy (and wouldn't stop whining about it), and on top of all this chaos, Ronan and I were bombarding the counselors with questions about Clancey.

"What do you think happened to him?"

"Do you think he'll be okay?"

"Where are you taking him?"

"Nowhere that concerns you," Karen snapped, distractedly waving us away with her hand. She had a walkie pressed to her ear and a worried frown stretched across her lips; primed and ready for business, whether that be tending to an injured and delusional camper or sweeping the whole mess under the carpet. "Now stop asking questions and walk back with the others."

At this point, Maria and Sun-Lee were leading all of the campers on the hike back to camp. I also knew that at this time the car that was to retrieve Clancey already on its way up the mountain, summoned by one of the counselors' talkies, but I only figured this out from brief snippets of conversations I'd overhead between Karen and Owen. Everything else was a mystery, as obscure as the mist on the lake.

I scowled at Karen, feeling both offended by her attempt to brush us away and angry that she thought she could avoid our questions. "Like hell you're leaving us in the dark," I protested. "Tell us what's going to happen to Clancey."

Ronan pushed forward, planting himself directly in front of Karen so she had no choice but to look at him. He was wearing one of his classic Ronan expressions— the one that says, listen to me, I'm important— and I wondered, for a moment, if he was purposefully impersonating his mother, or if this was only a subconscious reflection of her. "We just want to know where you're taking him," Ronan said. "We're both campers here, it's our business to know."

"It is your business to know nothing, Lockwood," Karen said coolly.

"I think I've got the right to know what happened to Clancey when the same thing could very well happen to me—!"

That's when Owen appeared out of thin air, snapping, "Two marks, Lockwood. And if you don't quit bothering your counselors, I'll give you two more."

Ronan's black eyes widened in disbelief— I doubt many people have ever had the audacity to disagree with him when he's using his fancy Sabrina voice. He snapped open his mouth to retort something back. I beat him to it.