When he glanced down at my feet and saw what I had on—an old pair of running sneakers—he rolled his eyes. Total confidence booster right there. “And please make sure you packed at least two liters of water with you. It’s going to be a warm day, and dehydration’s an outdoor enthusiast’s worst enemy.”
He hadn’t finished his little checklist speech, and people were already following his instructions, checking. Most of these people looked to be twice Callum’s age, but they listened to him like he was the president of the United States of Camp Kismet.
I was impressed. I couldn’t even get my parents to listen to me when I was trying to tell them that someone was on the phone for them.
“You might want to rethink those shoes,” Callum said to me, aiming eye roll number two at my shoes. “You’ve got five minutes to get to your cabin and change them. Think you can do it?”
“It wouldn’t matter if I had twenty minutes because I don’t have any other shoes than the ones I have on.” I glanced down at my old sneakers. I didn’t see what the big deal was. I’d put five hundred training miles on these babies and another couple hundred hiking around the trails or the beach back home. They were tried and true.
“You don’t have any other shoes than those?”
“Unless flip-flops or sandals are a better option, then no, this is what I’ve got.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Unbelievable. Where did you think you were going? Cheerleading camp?”
I felt a small spark of fire in me. Probably because the girl Keats was two-timing me with was on the cheerleading team. “Thanks for your concern, but I’ll be just fine.”
Callum lifted his hands and stepped aside. “Your call. Forget I mentioned it.” He moved away, in the direction of a camper who was wrestling with one of his boots. “Just be ready to head out in five.”
I checked my shoes again. They didn’t seem so unfit for the task of a six-mile hike. Why was Camp Counselor America making such a fuss?
As I scanned the other campers’ feet, I saw a trend emerging. One I was not in on. All of them were in high-top, serious-looking hiking boots. The kind that looked like a person could make a trek around the world in. Either everyone else on this hike had come way overprepared or I’d come seriously underprepared.
My eyes latched onto something familiar—a pair of small hiking boots that had been recently purchased at the giant outdoor warehouse store just off the new highway back home.
Harry, hiding behind the group of hikers.
Neither of our parents was here, and if he was hiding, that meant neither of them knew he was here, either.
I rushed over to him, keeping Callum in my sights so I could handle the Harry situation before he came over to see what was up.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, grabbing Harry’s arm and pulling him aside.
If his expression didn’t give away that he’d been caught, his voice did. “Hiking.”
“And Dad and Mom know you’re heading on a six-mile hike this morning?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted Harry to say it himself.
“They…will,” he started, rubbing the back of his head. “At least when they get up and read the note on the fridge.”
My eyes went wide. “Harry? Seriously? How do you think that’s going to go over?”
Harry’s nose crinkled. “Hopefully good?”
“Probably not.” I rubbed my forehead and thought on the fly.
Harry had been the only one who’d actually seemed excited about coming to camp this summer. He’d made friends on his first day. Plus, I looked after him. Our parents relied on me to look after Harry most of the time anyway, so why should this time be any different?
I pretended to think it over, but my decision had been made the moment he’d looked at me with those big, begging eyes of his. “Stay toward the back, where I’ll be.” Harry’s face lit up like he’d just learned he’d get to captain the next spaceship to Mars.
“I will. I promise.” He threw his arms around me and smashed the side of his head into my stomach. “Thanks, Phoenix.”
“For helping you deceive and possibly royally piss off our parents?” I mumbled, returning his hug. “Sure. Anytime.”
Someone moved up beside us. “And this must be the little brother I’ve heard so much about.” Callum’s voice was warm as he crouched down in front of Harry.
“That’s me, Harry.” He stuck out his hand, and Callum shook it without hesitating. “Who are you?”
Callum looked insulted. “You mean Phoenix doesn’t talk about me to you as much as she talks about you to me?”
Harry shook his head. “Nope. Phoenix hasn’t told me about any friends she’s made here yet. She doesn’t like it here. She didn’t want to come.”
When it looked like Harry was going to keep on spilling my secrets, I stepped in. “And how about that hike we should be getting to?”
Callum and Harry ignored me.
“So you’re telling me your sister didn’t want to come here?” Callum sounded disbelieving. “That she doesn’t like it here? The best place in the whole world?”
Harry sighed all solemn-like. “Not even a little bit.”
“That’s a bummer.” Callum slid a bit closer to Harry, angling himself so both he and my brother could look up at me. “Maybe if she’d give this place a chance, she might actually find she likes it.”
Harry lifted one shoulder. “Maybe.”
Callum and Harry exchanged a look before Callum stood up.
Callum’s attention moved from me to Harry. “Are your parents here?” He didn’t look around, because he already knew.
Harry and I swallowed at the same time. He shook his head. “No.”
“Did they sign the permission slip that says you can participate in activities at camp without them?” Callum looked Harry in the eye, man-to-man. Harry’s throat bobbed, his eyes widened, and right before he answered, he looked at me. I wasn’t sure why.
I went with my gut. “They signed it,” I jumped in. “He’s good to go.”
Two and a half miles into the hike up the Matterhorn, I knew I was in over my head. And I also knew why they called this hike the Matterhorn—because it was insanely steep.
The trail itself was well groomed and mostly rock and root free, but what it lacked in tripping hazards it more than made up for in elevation gain. My butt was on fire, and my heart rate was nearing the jacked zone. And I considered myself physically fit. Or I had until this hike.
Callum was keeping a nice slow and steady pace at the front, and I was doing my best to keep one eye on the hikers in front of me and the other on Harry. He would have rather been up front with Callum Almighty, who’d apparently filled in the superhero slot in Harry’s life, but he knew better than to ask. I would have said no, and since I’d already lied for him, he owed me.
“How are you doing?” I asked Harry, tapping his arm as we kept climbing the trail. We were close to the last half mile, and Callum had been calling down promises that it would start to level off here. He’d better not have been exaggerating.
“You’ve asked me that…fifty times already…Phoenix.” Harry had to pause every few words to suck in a breath. Poor kid sounded close to hyperventilating. “Ask me one more time…and I’m going to scream.”
I tapped his arm again. “How are you doing?”
Instead of screaming, he went with something else.
“Ugh, Harry, gross.” I pinched my nose and made a face. “You said you’d scream, not drop a stink bomb on me.”
He’d already been laughing over the whole fart thing, but when he saw my face and me waving to clear the air, he really started letting loose. He stopped paying any attention to the trail, and, two steps later, he went down, knees and palms first.
“Harry!” I cried, rushing toward him.
He was already pushing himself up from the ground. I dusted off his knees while he took care of his palms.
“Are you okay?”
“I
just wiped out climbing the Matterhorn and didn’t even cry.” Harry’s face lit up. “I’m phenomenal!” He dusted his palms a few more times. “Although it would have made for a better story if I’d drawn some blood.”
“You got lucky.”
Harry adjusted his glasses and shrugged, before continuing along the trail again. He was getting tired and going slower. Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea, I thought as I watched his smile fall into a frown.
After a few more minutes of what felt like vertical hiking, Harry’s legs gave out beneath him. He crashed, hard.
Rushing forward, I skidded down beside him to see what was the matter. “What is it?” I asked, lifting his arms and checking his legs again. “What hurts?”
He wouldn’t look at me. He was too occupied with staring at the ground. Actually, he was glaring at it. “Nothing,” he grumbled. And then he sniffed.
“Harry…” I lowered my head so I could look into his face. It was hard to tell how dusty his face had gotten from the hike, but I noticed a few clear streaks winding down his face. Lines that only could have been drawn by tears. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He kicked the ground with the heel of his boot.
“No one in the history of the world has cried over nothing. There’s got to be something.” I dropped my hand to his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Tell me.”
Harry kicked out both legs in front of him and glared at them like they were traitors. “I can’t do it. What are my friends going to think when I tell them I couldn’t do it?” He sniffed and tossed a pebble into the trees.
“Um, that you gave it your best and that you’re only ten years old and almost finished the climb up the Matterhorn. A hike every single one of these people have been heaving and grunting their own way up.” I found a decent-size rock on the side of the trail and handed it to Harry to toss. I was a fan of letting off steam in constructive ways, chucking rocks into the forest included.
He heaved it deep into the woods, surprising for a kid who’d apparently reached his I’m-beat level. “Not Callum. I’ve been watching him, and he hasn’t once looked like this is hard for him.”
“That’s because he’s probably done this hike dozens of times before.” Harry made a face, clearly not pacified by my explanation. “And I have a strong suspicion he could be one of those mutants with crazy-insane powers.”
“Why do you think that?”
The line of hikers had almost disappeared from view when I noticed something moving so fast it didn’t seem natural. Harry whipped around to see what I was staring at.
“Whoa…”
My nonverbalized word exactly.
Callum was bounding down the trail with speed and precision, two things that didn’t seem to go together when it came to a trail like this. Going up, it took grit, but coming down, at that pace, took some serious guts.
He skidded to a stop, kneeling beside Harry. “What happened?” he asked, his voice even, his breathing steady.
“He’s tired,” I answered. “I’m not sure if he can make it the rest of the way up.”
Callum nodded once. “Anything hurt?”
Harry sighed. “Everything hurts,” he confessed with another sigh. “But nothing’s broken.”
Callum scooted closer, a smile settling into place. “That’s my definition of a good day’s hike.” He patted Harry’s back a few times before checking up the trail. “You gave it your best—that’s something to be proud of.”
“My best didn’t get me to the top. I failed.”
“You made it two and a half miles up the three-mile climb to the Matterhorn. That’s not a failure in my book, and it shouldn’t be in yours, either.”
Harry sniffed and wiped at his face with the back of his arm.
“Besides, if we succeeded the first time at everything, life would become pretty damn boring.”
I shot a look at Callum. He shrugged at me, like damn was a perfectly acceptable word to utter in front of an almost fifth grader.
“You have water?” Callum asked me. His voice was more formal—he was in trainer mode.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
“Here, just in case.” He unclipped one of his water bottles and gave it to me. “I’ll try to hurry them through their lunches, so hopefully we’ll be able to meet up with you in an hour. Two at the most.”
I wasn’t thrilled that Harry and I would be trapped here alone, but there wasn’t any other option. “We’ll be here.”
Callum gave a brisk nod. “Are you okay?”
Something about Callum asking if I was okay made my heart squeeze. “My little brother’s body is refusing to cooperate, we’re trapped in the middle of the steepest piece of trail I’ve ever seen, and I’m pretty sure I just failed my first task as a camp counselor since not every camper completed the hike.”
Before he replied, I beat him to it. “Let me guess, you’re about to give me a pep talk about only failing if that’s what I tell myself, right?”
“Oh no. You definitely failed your first task,” Callum called as he started climbing the trail.
“But you just said—”
“I just said that to a camper. You’re a counselor. The rules are different.” He raced up the trail.
“You suck at pep talks! Boss!” I hollered, but he was already out of sight.
From up above, a low laugh echoed down the trail. At least he had a sense of humor while he was on the clock.
“What are you doing?” Harry asked as I started unbuckling my pack.
“Getting you up this damn trail.”
Harry’s brows hit his hairline.
“Oh, sure, so when Super Callum says it, no big deal, but when I say it, you look at me like I just committed a felony.” I shrugged out of the pack and perched it up against a tree, where it would be easy to find on the way down. I rolled my shoulders and flexed my back, feeling so light I could have flown. Crouching down beside him, I waited. “Well? Come on. Climb aboard the Phoenix Express.”
Harry finally registered what I was suggesting. “No way. I weigh too much. This trail’s sick without me strapped to your back.” Harry’s eyes wandered up the trail—it wasn’t just steep at this point; it was vertical.
“We’re doing this, no matter how long you sit here making up your mind. Climb on now or later, whatever, but you’re getting to the top of this thing.”
He held out for another ten seconds before he started crawling toward me. When he wound his arms around my neck, I braced myself and stood up, hooking my arms beneath his legs.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got you. We won’t fall.” I looked over my shoulder and gave him a smile.
He had the most unconcerned look on his face I’d ever seen. He beamed at the trail. “I know. I trust you.”
I felt like I’d just scaled an entire mountain with a person strapped to my back…instead of what I’d really done—walked the last half mile of a flattening trail with a ten-year-old riding piggyback. A small ten-year-old.
“Wow, Phoenix. Check it out.” Harry’s breathing was back to normal as he squirmed around until I let him go.
My breaths sounded more like I’d spent the past six hours blowing up air mattresses and beach balls. “It’s…” One shallow breath in. One sharp pant out. Repeat. “…great.” One shallow breath in. One sharp pant out. Repeat. Repeat again.
“I can see everything from up here!” Harry sprinted across the meadow, his legs bounding through the grasses and weeds and wildflowers.
“You made it.”
I’d been too busy overworking my lungs and watching Harry to notice someone had crept up beside me.
I didn’t trust that any words would come out clear, so I went with the classic thumbs-up.
“Hungry?” Callum shook a couple of paper lunch sacks, giving me what I guessed was a concerned look. I went with another thumbs-up. I wasn’t hungry—I’d probably throw up whatever I tried to get down right now—but I guessed Harry would be. That is, once
he stopped tearing through the field like he’d just been hooked up to a sugar-caffeine drip.
“Do you…you know…need anything?” Callum looked like he wasn’t sure what to do. Probably a first since he was the guy with all the answers and seemed to know everything about everything.
Since my thumbs-up wasn’t going to work in this situation, I made myself put some words together.
“I’m…good.” Progress. At least I’d gotten those two gems out in one breath instead of the five it would have taken a few minutes ago. “Thanks.” Another thumbs-up. Dammit. What was the matter with me?
“Yeah, Phoenix, you don’t look like you’re ‘good.’ ” Callum leaned down a little, the skin between his brows still pinched.
Finally, I felt my heartbeat slowing, enough so that I could inhale through my nose instead of sucking in lungfuls of air through my mouth. “I’m okay.” Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. “Thanks for checking.”
“Okay.” Callum bobbed his head from side to side, considering that. “Now, see, that I believe. Good was a stretch. Okay is more like the truth.”
He’d lost the flannel, but while it had been too big, his T-shirt seemed to be too small. It pulled at his chest and arms, even a little on his upper back. I pretended not to notice. I pretended again that if I had noticed, I didn’t like it.
I sucked at pretending.
“Glad you two made it.” He gave me another one of those infuriating nudges that made me feel like my insides were liquefying, before heading for a group of campers snapping photos of themselves doing handstands with the view behind them. He didn’t make it far before he was intercepted.
One of the campers was holding Callum’s radio, and just from his face I could tell something was wrong.
I moved a little closer, but I couldn’t hear what was being said. Callum started talking into the radio, that line between his brows going deep. A few seconds later, his face went from worried to something else. That was when his eyes narrowed on me.