The secret of Still Alives is that they’re portraits. Not of faces, but of minds—a moment of heart frozen in time, like a bulb wintering in the cold earth before the right gardener calls it up from the soil. Not everyone gets a portrait of their best moment. Only kings and queens, and Natalie.

The earth in my flowerbed dances with life. And from its shifting soil, a thousand blossoms unfurl. It reminds me of home.

Golden Avery

GOLDEN AVERY

Avery held the panties at arm’s length and stretched them wide. “Whose are these?” she asked. And every face turned to her, just like they always did. Her strawberry-gold hair and cold blue eyes turned every head at camp, including mine, and when I turned this time, I saw my underwear pinched in her fingers in not at all the way I had dreamed it.

The elastic strained between her fists. Her gloss-slick lip curled, then slid into a smile as stifled laughter echoed around the room.

It was a stupid question. Everyone knew they were mine. But stupid questions were just another tool in her makeup kit.

I stomped over to her, feet splashing on the tiles, my face as red as my sunburned shoulders, and I gripped the elastic waistband in my fist and pulled.

She pulled harder. “Keep stretching, they’ll fit in no time!”

If my ears hadn’t been full of lake water, the laughter might have ruptured them. A small miracle, I guess.

She let go and I fell back into a rank puddle on the locker room floor.

Avery steadied herself as if the ground shook. Girls laughed and ran out of the tiled shack.

The clammy water soaked the back of my skirt. The fabric clung to my ass as I hiked up the hill to the cabins. I was running out of clothes to change into—I hadn’t figured I’d need three outfits every day. I’d have to check in at the office and rent more uniforms. They had plenty more, in the largest size.

Avery and her groupies were already at the activity tent, so I changed in peace instead of trying to squeeze into the shadowed alcove between the bunk beds and the desk. There were no fingers pinching my rolled waist, no snapping of bra straps. I rubbed my hip where I’d landed, wondered if I’d get an ugly bruise—a target for their bony fingertips.

A wolf spider skittered from behind the trashcan. I scooped her up and slipped her between Avery’s sheets.

***

The activity tent was quiet—rows of plucked brows drawn down in concentration as teens scraped pocket knives across the bark of long branches.

“Carve a walking stick for tomorrow’s hike,” instructed the paper placed at each setting. Atop the paper sat a thin Swiss army knife. Leaning against each chair, a rough branch.