Nate was the only person in the group who would hate the idea of camping more than Stevie, but she was sure that when offered the chance to reunite with his friends and not write, he would leap at the chance. She was right.

Carson had found the perfect job for him. There was some kind of treehouse library at the camp that wasn’t used very often. Nate could be the camp librarian, which wasn’t really a position. He even arranged to quickly build a bunk space up there out of plywood so that Nate could stay up there all he wanted.

“I get to live by myself in a tree, doing some bullshit job for no one?” Nate said when Stevie told him. “This is my dream, Stevie. This is my dream.”

So Nate was in.

Next was Janelle. Janelle was the person Stevie considered to be her best friend. She was the person Stevie could go to in the middle of the night when she had a panic attack. She was the person who pushed Stevie to acknowledge her feelings. She had met her partner, Vi, on the first day of school, and the two had been together since. Janelle was a budding engineer, a maker, a crafter—someone who was only happy when she had wires in one hand and a hot glue gun in the other. Whether you needed to build a miniature drone or make a dress, Janelle was your woman.

Unlike Nate and Stevie, Janelle was fine with the idea of camp but wouldn’t be content with a pointless job with no responsibilities. Carson shuffled some things around and returned with the perfect gig—Janelle could be head of arts and crafts.

“It’s going to be a lot of crafting,” Stevie explained to her. “And there will be so many supplies to organize.”

This gave Stevie her cover job. She would be Janelle’s assistant. The two of them would share a bunk behind the art pavilion that usually went to senior staff.

Not everyone could make it. Vi, Janelle’s partner, had gone to Vietnam for the summer to visit family. This was part of the reason Stevie thought Janelle would come—she was lonely without Vi, without her friends.

This left David. That conversation had not gone how Stevie had expected. Stevie thought he would accept. His campaign position, while not voluntary, was low paid. It was the kind of job that needed you more than you needed it, and it was clear that he and Stevie missed one another.

“I want to . . .” he said. Stevie felt her chest rising, but there was a weight hanging off the end of the sentence.

“But . . .”

“But . . . this work I’m doing now, it means something to me. I didn’t apply to college yet. I’ve committed to this, and I . . .”

A strange constellation of emotions came upon her. There was a damp rush of sadness—then an urgency of feeling, something like panic, but with a duller edge. Then a punch of soft-boiled anger. Back to sadness again, with a goose egg blooming in her throat. All of this happened in about five seconds.