You arrive at the campsite early to pick your tent. Several other girls warn you not to pick Tent 6. No one ever picks Tent 6, they say. You don’t know why, but it has a sign on it that reads “Skeeter’s Shadow.” You daren’t ask.
You go into the bathroom. There are spiders everywhere, and it smells like Lysol. You think you hear screams. You decide to minimize your bathroom trips over the whole weekend.
You eat your first meal in the camp cafeteria. About twenty minutes in, you hear thunderous pounding and yelling from the other side of the room. It’s a Junior troop, slamming their fists on the table and demanding to know where Table 2 is. Table 2, a Daisy troop, responds in a high-pitched squeal. They do this every year, a Daisy explains to you. You really are new here.
Your tent mate sprays the perimeter of your tent with OFF. When you ask what she’s doing, she just murmurs, “They’re coming.”
All the other girls in your troop have gone to sleep in the Lodge. You and your tent mate are truly alone. You hope the OFF holds.
The next morning, twenty lines of young girls all march to breakfast, screaming and chanting the whole way there, declaring themselves immortal. It’s so loud.
They have their yelling contest again at breakfast. You join in this time. You aren’t sure what you’ve become.
You go hiking later that morning. You see an abandoned, decrepit section of tents that no one has bothered to repair. It looks like it burned a long, long time ago. They call it Far Horizons.
Your troop goes to do paddleboats after lunch. “Be careful,” says the lifeguard, smiling. There’s something off with her teeth. “The lake is very deep.”
A tree catches on fire near Far Horizons. It burns itself out in an hour and doesn’t spread to anything nearby. You aren’t sure how it started.
Campfire is that night. Every troop is sitting on something different, so as to avoid the wet grass. There are buckets, cushions, cloth, bones, and nails, all decorated with gaudy, patterned duct tape and sequins.
Every troop has prepared at least one presentation for Campfire. You’ve seen the invisible bench skit at least seven times now.
You make yourself sick on s’mores that night. Something tastes funny about them, but you keep eating. What’s that running down your chin?
After breakfast, the troop leader tells you to go stand by the flagpole. Everyone joins you. There must be hundreds, all in a big circle. They’ve all joined hands, and they’re singing a song you don’t know. You’re not sure it’s even in a language you recognize…
