Alice wasn’t practiced in mourning, at least not anymore. Mourning was inefficient, a waste of precious time she could use to be productive and fix the situation. There was little Alice couldn’t fix, and little she wanted so badly that it didn’t even matter if it shattered into pieces in front of her. Everything she surrounded herself with, from her flat to her social calendar to her sex life, was workable, good enough for her needs, but not irreplaceable. Susan was the exception. The empty feeling inside her since her death reminded Alice acutely of why avoiding caring was the better option.
‘Denial is one of the stages of grief,’ Freddie said, and Alice worried for a split second that he was going to pull out a pamphlet. But then he continued, jokingly, ‘And I hear artistic expression is another.’
Alice looked back at the landscape she had painted. To her eyes, it was angular and frantic, an explanation hastily formed which had never been asked for in the first place. ‘You know, I think you might be onto something with that one.’
Alice finally paid Cook a visit at the end of the day. As a university friend of Susan’s who’d been working at the camp since its inception, his camp preparation routine was a well-oiled machine that he didn’t allow to be disturbed.
However, there were certain things that – while predictable – Alice was required to put a stop to now that she was an authority figure. When she didn’t find him in the kitchen, she climbed the stairs that led to his room and knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’ came a deep Scottish brogue from inside.
‘It’s Alice.’ She paused. ‘Alice Hughes.’
The door swung open. ‘Alice Hughes?’ Cook echoed, sticking his head out and peering at her. ‘Can’t be. Alice doesn’t come ’round these parts anymore. She renounced our friendship years back. Called me an old coot and said she wanted nothing to do with me.’
‘I’ve missed you too,’ Alice said drily, not able to or wanting to articulate how strange it was to have Cook, an ever-present figure from her childhood, in front of her again. His hair was fully grey now, another reminder of the years she’d left behind. She wondered if it would have felt any different to see Susan in person before she’d died, because they’d kept in such close contact. And she was immediately seized by a familiar guilt – she should’ve flown home as soon as she knew Susan was dying. She should have flown home years ago, when Susan had first been diagnosed. If she hadn’t let her shame stop her, maybe things would feel different now.
‘Well, come in,’ he said, gesturing for her to step inside. ‘Let me get a look at ye in the light.’
She’d never been invited in before; it wasn’t the sort of place campers or counselors were welcome. The whole place was smaller than her room in London. But there was a record player quietly spinning The Grateful Dead’sAmerican Beautyand a few knickknacks – a family crest, an intricately-designed bong – that marked it as lived in. With her new access to the camp financial records, Alice knew that in addition to room and board, Cook made a decent salary. What he did with the money, she had no idea. Well, she maybe hadsomeidea.
‘Cozy,’ she said, eyeing the bong.
He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Well, yer a smart-ass just like Alice was. But yer missing the Goldilocks.’ He waved a hand toward his own hair.
She shrugged. ‘I’ve accepted my very boring brown hair.’
‘Ach, don’t say that,’ he scolded. ‘You’ve never been boring, always been extraordinary. Extraordinarily annoying, that is. Breaking into my kitchen with Briar at all hours, as I recall. I’d wake up and half me ingredients would be missing.’
Alice stifled a laugh. Camp was the only place she’d ever let herself break the rules. It was something she’d convinced herself was dangerous when she was eighteen and had broken the biggest rule of them all. But being back here, it felt like that was what childhood was meant to be: no academic pressure, no filling all hours of the day with meaningless resume-stuffing extracurriculars, and no perfect-girlfriend act.
‘You’d rather I’d have starved?’ she asked, folding her arms.
He scoffed. ‘As though I weren’t feeding ye well. I just hope ye haven’t taught the new counselors yer old tricks,’ he said gruffly. ‘I assume as I’ve been told yer nowcamp directorthat there’ll be no more funny business.’
He inflected her title with a warranted dose of skepticism. He had often referred to Susan as simplythe camp directorwhen he was in a mood with her, and the invocation made Alice acutely aware that Susan was gone. She swallowed.
‘Co-director,’ she corrected him. ‘Me and Briar.’
‘Well, of course,’ he said, as though anything else were inconceivable. ‘Could never separate the two of ye, could we? Even when ye were assigned different cabins for the summer, ye’d find a way ’round it.’
A laugh escaped her. ‘I forgot about that,’ she admitted.
When they were fourteen, Susan had decided the formidable Alice-Briar alliance was preventing them from properly socializing. She’d explained that it would be good for them to meet new peers, to prevent stagnation and co-dependency. Alice had paid another camper in smuggled Silly Bandz to switch bunks with her in the middle of the night, night after night, until Susan had given up on the idea.
‘What have you come to tell me?’ Cook asked, but he sounded like he already knew.
Alice shifted her weight uncomfortably. ‘I’ve heard mentions of, um, certain odors emitting from this vicinity.’
‘A snake, that Sierra is,’ Cook griped. ‘She just wants to direct the attention away from whatever she’s getting up to.’
‘Yes, well, as camp director, it’s now my responsibility to remind you that when the campers arrive in a week, you will have to partake in any substance use outside of the grounds. And, of course, outside of any working hours.’
‘Hmph,’ Cook said. ‘Yer as bad as Susan.’
She felt oddly proud at the thought. ‘Thanks, I think.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment,’ he clarified.
