DAY FOUR
It’s the spider that makes up Mack’s mind.
Ava, Brandon, and LeGrand are gathered by the overflowing table, making a plan for the day. Beautiful Ava and Jaden are on the other end of the camp, carrying on a whispered conversation in harsh tones. Ian and Christian are hovering near their cots, debating whether they feel left out enough to overcome their inherent ambivalence about each other.
A solitary spider drops from the ceiling of the pavilion, nearly invisible in the low orange lights, right in Mack’s path. It hangs, legs caressing its strand, between her and the others.
Maddie hated spiders. She’d scream bloody murder whenever she found one. But Mack didn’t like killing spiders—the way they shrank in on themselves, legs curling up, sinister beauty reduced to small, tangled waste—so she’d have to painstakingly capture them, carry them outside, and release them. It got to the point where, as soon as Mack heard Maddie shriek, she’d immediately go for a glass jar and a sheet of paper.
But the time Maddie screamed when it mattered was just like the scream yesterday. Mack stayed hidden, and her sister was reduced to small, tangled waste.
Mack looks at the spider, looks past it to Ava, and then slips into the trees. Alone. It’s better that Ava know now that Mack can’t be counted on. Shouldn’t be trusted. Last night, again, Ava slept next to her as though that were any guarantee of safety. After what Ava saw on the trellis—how easily Mack simply stayed put rather than trying to help—how could she sleep?
Doesn’t matter. Mack’s not a mystical person by any means, but she’s going to win. It feels inevitable. It’s not a triumphant feeling, though. It’s heavy and monstrous.
Familiar.
At least this time, her sin is passive abandonment, not active betrayal.
* * *
—
“What do you think, man? Want an alliance or whatever?” Christian warily eyes where the hot ones are debating whether it’s better to head into the park first or second and the weird ones are calmly gathering supplies.
Ian is in neither of those groups, and doesn’t want to be. He definitely doesn’t want to be. He’s told himself so several times as he tears apart his bag for the fiftieth time. He can’t find his pen. How can he write without his pen? All this inspiration, and he can’t even—the back of his neck is already sticky with sweat, and he can feel several bug bites, not to mention a blistering sunburn on one patch of arm that he missed with the sunblock yesterday, and no, he is not feeling inspired, he is feeling drained and exhausted and annoyed and where the hell is his pen?
All this inspiration, and he can’t even write because he doesn’t have his pen. That’s what’s holding him back. It has to be what’s holding him back, because if there’s not some magical formula for writing, some mystical combination of the right objects and mood and setting and music, that means there’s no way for him to find the right way to do it. That means all there is to writing is just…writing. And it’s hard. It’s so hard. He hasn’t finished a piece since he graduated. What if he never does again?
“So?” Christian prods.
“Do you really think you’re going to win?” Ian asks, staring up with slightly more malice than he intended. Christian’s not going to win, and neither is Ian. He never wins anything, not ever.
Why did he agree to this? That stupid DNA ancestry test he took, hoping for some unknown connection to a culture he could tap into. To something that would infuse him with purpose, with story. Instead all he got was a random woman, second cousin or one-eighth cousin fourteen times removed or whatever, reaching out to him and telling him about this contest. Why had he thought it could be good? When was anything ever good in his life?
Christian lets out an angry huff and stomps away into the early morning darkness. Just as well. Ian doesn’t have any desire for an ally, any will to play whatever game the others have decided to turn this into. Wasn’t it a stupid enough game on its own without making it more complicated? They’re playing hide-and-go-seek, for god’s sake.
Despondent, penless, and knowing that even if he did have the pen he wouldn’t write today, Ian abandons his heavy bag and wanders out of camp into the overarching shrubbery. He walks aimlessly, shoulders hunched, hands shoved into his pockets. How can he be chilled and sweaty at the same time? He hates it here. He hates it everywhere.
If he were someone else, doubtless he could have found a story in all this, but he doesn’t want to be one of those cheap genre writers, vomiting out word garbage for the tasteless masses. He has an MFA. He wants to make art. He wants to write things that matter. He wants to give interviews in a masculine, casual, big-money study, surrounded by classics—none of his own books, of course, because he wouldn’t need to do anything as gauche as show them off. Obviously whoever interviewed him would note the lack of ostentatious self-advertising. He wouldn’t need to promote himself. The work would be enough. There would be a photo of him, unsmiling, staring boldly at the camera, which would make his face handsome somehow. And he’d have a pipe that he’d smoke during the interview without apology, lit by his sleek, expensive lighter.