espiègle.

RION. SENIOR. KEOUGH.

[orioncarlson]

KATHERINE BISHOP.

“Mhm,” she hummed in agreement, though she’d had mashed fish and ketchup on a cracker for lunch the day before, so she wasn’t one to judge the habits of others. “Everybody is so disgusting,” she repeated, “-and more disgusting because they think they can get away with it in the cabins,” to her credit she was equally as disgusting in the dorms as she was in the cabins, she wasn’t taking advantage of the situation or the lack of supervision.

She laughed at his suggestion, “Wow, do you maybe want to not sound so excited to smash me in the head next time?” she advised, a smirk on her face though she tried to sound sincerely offended by his enthusiasm. “-besides, I don’t know if I can trust you, maybe-” she was cut off by Orion’s sudden shift in demeanour. The previously jovial teen’s smug smile disappeared within moments, replaced by a genuine look of concern. Maybe he was fucking with her, it wasn’t as if the blonde was particularly difficult to fool by anybody’s standards. 

“No,” she hadn’t heard anything, she was too busy enjoying the sound of her own voice or perhaps she was just enjoying the fact that she’d managed to maintain the senior’s attention for this long without protest. She paused, holding her breath for a moment, subconsciously mirroring the male’s rigid posture and that was when she heard it. “I- okay, yeah, I heard it that time,” she uttered, slightly alarmed this time. It sounded bigger than a possum, though she couldn’t be sure. “What the fuck?” she asked nobody in particular, sitting up alert on her knees on top of the picnic bench, as if whatever had made the sound might grab at her ankles if she left them vulnerable beneath the table. “Was it that way?” she pointed beyond the senior cabin in a direction her iPhone would tell her was East.

☆

𝐀𝐓 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓, 𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐄 𝐔𝐏, though she admits that she hadn’t heard the rustle. He listens closely, a cautious dread filling his stomach as he picks up on her worry. As she pulls her knees up, Rion rises from his seat, taking a couple steps forwards, daring himself to run into the woods to pin down whatever had been hiding behind the bushes.

Turning back around, he follows her finger, east of the Senior Cabin. “Yeah, I think it was,” he whispers, almost afraid that if he spoke too loud, the… person would escape their clutches. He’s almost sure it’s a person, considering the  amount of noise the rustle made, too grounded to consider anything else. Rion’s not sure if he wants to catch it yet, but he certainly wants to know what it exactly is. It’s why he takes a couple more tentative steps forwards, fumbling for his phone, turning on the flashlight to illuminate his path. “Hey, you coming?” Head turned over his shoulder, he motions towards the woods. “I think if we get there fast and quietly enough, we can catch whoever it is.”

[orioncarlson]

𝐖𝐇𝐎: Rion & @chiarangeles​ 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍: End of the school day.  𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄: History Class.

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐘, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐒 𝐓𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐔𝐓 — so much so that he almost misses the first couple minutes of class, despite always being notoriously early. His timeliness had nothing to do with the interest in the class material, and more so to do with the fact that he has nothing better to do during the day anyways. Never one of the chattier ones, he usually took the first couple of minutes to settle down, slip into a seat in the back despite the countless open desks by the front.

And perhaps it’s all of the eerie events happening around, or that he hasn’t gotten enough sleep that by the time he slips into class, most of the seats in the back are already filled. In fact, all of the seats are already filled, save for one right by the last person he ever wants to see.

Mr. Carlson? Will you? Their teacher gives him an expectant look, and he slides into the seat, head down, not daring to look over at the girl seated next to him. He’ll only have to get through the next fifty minutes, and then he can go back to sitting in the back, ignoring that part of his life —

Miss Chiara Angeles will be partnered up with Orion Carlson.

No. No — he bolts up, eyes widened towards… her. It’s almost too painful to look at her, and yet, this would be his life for the next couple of weeks. And get to work everyone! He doesn’t move; doesn’t even attempt to move closer to her, in fear of what he’d say or do. Or what she’d say or do. After all, they haven’t talked in at least a few months. 

[orioncarlson]

AMOS BREEVORT.

Truth be told, Amos was a little ashamed at himself for not thinking of something as simple as hiding Orion’s lighter in the past himself. After all there was hardly a moment he saw the student without it in his hand, or a cigarette lingering near by, hidden just enough in case of cabin checks. Just because he wasn’t the cause however, didn’t mean he wasn’t going to enjoy the irritation simmering from the other’s words, as he gazed daggers at Amos. 

“Perhaps it fell into the lake, or a puddle, those things do die eventually. Are you sure you didn’t misplace is, I hear certain substances can affect your memory.” His own smile still wide across his face, teeth shining in the afternoon light as he refused to look to the other’s hand that stayed hovering in mid air. His own words sharp, teasing. Daring Orion to snap at him. “What makes you think I even have one?”

He did have a lighter, and some matches for the candles he keeps by his bunk half burnt, and the incense that occasionally makes makes the cabin smell of a chapel when all the others are out, and Amos prays in quiet where he thinks no one knows. Just as he had lost something, a script in fact. But admitting it didn’t sound like any fun. “Now, if I told you what I’d lost it only gives you ammunition to hold it over me if you were to find it.” 

☆

𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍’𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐎𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐕𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐏𝐀𝐋𝐏𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐈𝐑, though he isn’t quite sure why he’d assumed Amos would have a lighter. Maybe because he seemed like the type of guy who revelled in setting things on fire. Not necessarily arson level, but petty little things, that no one would miss. Amos’s entire I-want-the-world-burn-and-I’ll-sit-by-and-watch-it attitude is precisely why Rion had suspected him in the first place. “I don’t know,” he snaps, all moody. “And fuck off. I haven’t been smoking any recently, anyways.” A lie, considering he’d just scored some weed, but he isn’t going to give Amos the smug satisfaction of proving his memory loss at the hands of marijuana.

“Wow, you are so clever,” he deadpans, shaking his head. “Nice that you think of me in that way.” Not that he wouldn’t have considered it, of course, but ultimately, Rion would like to think that he’d return someone’s belongings. “If you don’t tell people what you lost, no one’s going to return it, dipshit.” Sighing, he lowers himself down on the bottom bunk, half-thinking about how he could get a box of matches in the cabins. “All right, let’s say it wasn’t you, or me. Who do you think did it?”

[orioncarlson]

LUCY GUNDERSON.

Lucy sat up straight, a smug smile on her face. “Absolutely not. If you didn’t want it mentioned again then you shouldn’t have told me.” She nudged Orion, like she was trying to keep him awake when he closed his eyes. His tiredness was rubbing off on her. Typical, she could hardly fall asleep and the second something seemed interesting her eyes felt droopy.

She leaned forward her chin in her hand, “Theories?” she frowned. “Probably a dumb junior trying to freak people out but not doing it very well. Maybe some animal like… a skunk? Ooh- maybe it’s an escaped prisoner?” Although it hadn’t sounded like something any of those things could make. “This is the perfect prisoner-squatter hideout. Or it would be if they hadn’t dumped a bunch of teenagers here.”

“𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐋𝐘, 𝐀𝐍 𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐁𝐄 𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆,” he deadpans, yawning. “Nothing ever happens here anyways, and maybe they’ll actually see that these cabins are absolute shit holes of —” Rion doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because he’s interrupted by a rustle, a snap of a twig further into the woods by the bridge. His head shoots up towards the noise, and he furrows his brow. “Is someone on the bridge? Did you see anything?” Rion isn’t scared of the dark, but even he wouldn’t be rash enough to use the bridge in the middle of the night. One wrong step and the bridge could collapse into the river, and they’d be a goner.

[orioncarlson]

YANA BORTNIK.

“Extremely,” Yana replied, then shot Rion a little smile like See? Over the moon. She liked being right as much as the next person, after all. “But you admitting your own weirdness was way more satisfying than anything else.” Most of the time she didn’t actually find him weird in the strict sense of the word. He was a man of few words, and that could be interpreted as brooding, or a little haunted by something carefully tucked away into some far-flung corner of his mind. And maybe that was true, but when Yana usually thought of Rion—his quiet presence, his lonesome figure, a paperback book in his hands—she thought of the word shy. Not in the ordinary bashful, blushing way, but in a way that was more subdued. Somber. She didn’t feel like she had to pull him out from under whatever gray cloud followed him, but she was curious nevertheless. She liked getting to the bottom of things—and of people. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? I might’ve had to strong-arm you a little, but still.”

She took a second to think on his question. “Depends, I guess. I mostly follow friends and family, and then some news sources and a psychic from Texas. Couple of meme pages and celebrities.” More accounts dedicated to ‘famous’ pets than she was willing to admit too. “If it’s a news story, a really striking or shocking photo of the person or event or whatever the story is about catches my attention. So we definitely need to think about the kind of imagery we want to use, because no one ever really wants to read some wall of text on Instagram. So the shitty bathroom, maybe? Or the tightly-packed beds in one of the cabin rooms…” When it came to celebrities, they mostly just had to be good-looking. And she sort of mindlessly liked all her friends’ and family’s photos of whatever they posted as she scrolled through her feed. She snorted. “Individuality, mainly. I mean, we have all obviously been hardwired from a freakishly young age by capitalism to froth at the mouth on command, but I know some people are angrier about certain things than others. We should specifically address them. That might make everyone feel… seen, or understood.” Yana nodded toward him. “Name three things you’ve heard people complain about.”

Her grin turned wide and genuine at good idea, and she dropped her hands from her face. “Emma Hayashi. I can’t imagine she’s very passionate about our next steps here, but I do think she’d help. She’s a friend. And a great photographer.” She paused, cracking a couple knuckles on her right hand. “Lucy Gunderson, too. We’re both in Women of Broadripple and she’s pretty political. I don’t know how she feels about all of this, but she might like a cause to get behind.” She straightened and pressed her lips together. Arlo might’ve helped if she asked him—and a simple picture of his face would likely catch enough attention to get people to swipe to the next photo in hopes of another, only to be met with their soon-to-be-penned mission statement—but she didn’t want to poke that particular bruise. “Francis Montgomery? He’s VP. He’d definitely have some sway with the admin. What do you think?”

☆

𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐆-𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐍 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓; Yana had been working on him for a while now, and he’d finally given in, only because sleep deprivation made him terribly weak. Mostly, he just wanted her to stop looking at him like some sort of puzzle that she could figure out with enough work. He’d tentatively agreed to help her, not divulge every single little detail of his personal feelings and life and so on. “No need to push it,” he comments gloomily. “Isn’t it enough that I just said so? Doesn’t have to be easy or hard or whatever.”

“A psychic?” Incredulous, he shakes his head, chuckling, never one to believe in the metaphysical as much as some of his other peers did. “What, are they any good? You think they could help us channel the ghost of Edith Lynch?” He snorts at his joke, though there is nothing funny about the supposed story students passed around. Like Instagram, like everything else, he’d chosen to tune the noise out in favor of something he found important. He supposes if he’d came across a grimy picture of their bathrooms, or how their accommodations mimicked that of a prison’s, he would stop to read the caption. It’s surprising, to him at least, that someone else here actually has a brain to speak of, and one that he actually admires. And in a Junior, no less. “Fair enough. You mentioned the bathrooms, that’s a big one. Bedrooms too, like you said, but we’re probably breaking some fire code with the amount of people they’ve managed to stuff inside, right? Maybe pair up with the pictures with some facts about how harmful it actually is, instead of painting it as something we’re whining about.”

And there it is, a real idea from Rion’s mind, the first coherent, non-sarcastic one of the day. He should really applaud himself, considering he’s running on such little sleep ( and again, sleep deprivation isn’t good for him ), but he doesn’t; instead, he leans himself back into the picnic bench and yawns, almost as if to water down the earnestness of his earlier suggestion. “I can get behind Lucy. And Francis.” Lucy is his friend, despite their constant jabs at each other, and Francis… well, he didn’t have much of an opinion of someone as timid as him. He conveniently leaves Emma out, only because of their near-hostile interaction during Speech & Debate Club. Funnily enough, her demeanor is similar enough to his; sullen, a tad abrasive at times, and yet, of course he hesitates at including her in their plan. Not that he has a strong opinion of her, but he hardly wants to work with someone who had that sort of attitude.

[orioncarlson]

DAMIAN FITZGERALD.

“It might very well be.” Damian wasn’t afraid to share the thought. It was a dastardly one but sleep and security were being threatened here. They were all in the same boat being at the Retreat but it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that if not a mischievous animal than an unhappy camper was taking their dissatisfaction out on everyone else. “Did you actually hear the noise?” Damian couldn’t help but ask. He said this because it was so close to his window and to him, it most certainly did not sound like an animal screaming like a baby. “It was like… rattling but… not like a snake, like some crash.”

Damian nodded at Orion’s shared information. He took his words for face value. Then as the boy went on, something he mentioned made a light go off in the Fenwick captain’s head. “That’s it,” Damian said, sitting up straighter now. “Maybe something fell. It would make sense it was from the cabin.” It wouldn’t be wrong to describe the cabins as ‘falling apart’. They were that neglected in Damian’s opinion. “Maybe it was like… roofing?” Damian didn’t know much about roofs, much more what parts of it were called. “Like… what do you call those things on the side of roofs? That catch rain water and fallen leaves?” He elaborated, making motions with his hands as he did. “Perhaps it could have fallen off and landed in a bush somewhere.” Rion was a genius.

𝐌𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐄 𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋𝐒 𝐀 𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 Damian actually agrees with his answer that he’s actually disappointed that he can’t give the other any more than pure speculation. “Nah, man. Whatever you heard, I heard.” His eyes dart around the Retreat, finding juniors and seniors alike milling about, all equally as confused as everyone else. “Looks like everyone else heard too…” Shrugging, he leans back into his elbows, cheeks in his palms, staring straight ahead — but it’s only after he’s not searching that he finds an anomaly, something that could help them figure out what the hell the noise had been.

“Hey…” Rion’s eyes snap open, sleep wiped away, tugging at the guy’s arm. “Do you see that? Over there?” Footprints. “Shit, maybe some really did try to pull a prank.” Is that... relief, that he feels? He’s almost quite sure now that someone had decided to pull a petty prank, messed up, and had hastily hid the evidence before running away. The evidence couldn’t point to anything else. Swinging his legs around the bench, he squints over towards the cabin. “Well, that’s not creepy at all. You think they’re hiding inside the well or something?”  

[orioncarlson]

ANDREA PEARSON.

“ obviously they wouldn’t let us, it’s not like this is the anarchist cookbook ” she wiggled a page of her textbook as she spoke, trying to emphasise what she was saying. “ but there’s still the risk if you make a mistake. ” she asked drea didn’t even like chemistry that much, but she liked being right and that made her stubborn as a bull. “ like if you didn’t memorise the atomic weight of the elements you’re messing with, for example. think you’re just gonna get a little fizz then– boom. ” even keeping her voice kinda low, the boom earned a hush from the table next to them and a side eye from drea followed by a roll of her eyes as she returned her eyes to her work.

there was only a few moments of silence before orion spoke again. a small disturbance, sure, drea could deal with that. what was five, ten minutes, right? it was back and forth that annoyed her. “ okay, no offence, orion but you’re completely throwing off the energy here. ” she said, waving a hand just in front of her as if gesturing to the so called energy he was destroying. “ school sucks, everything sucks. ” and andrea did not have a career in motivational speaking in her future. “ but you’ve gotta do it. ”

☆

“𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐘? 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐔𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐍𝐎 𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄,” Rion replies, grumbling. He’s right, in a sense, when you consider that the library is virtually silent, save for the occasional shuffle of papers or the frustrated huff of a student. Fingers gingerly flipping the pages of his textbook, he absentmindedly searches for an example problem that could help him solve the one he’d been stuck on. “Anyways, it’s bull — crap that we have to do school because they tell us to.” He remembers where he is ( school property ) and he hardly wants to stick around and be yelled at for cursing on school property. “Like, when are you ever going to use this information in the future?” Gesturing to their textbooks, he huffs, leaning into his hand. “I’ll bet you fifty bucks that I’ll never have to find the integral of a function with respect to x ever again.” Pausing, he shrugs. “A hundred bucks.” 

[orioncarlson]

EMMA HAYASHI.

“Yeah, I believe in equity,” Emma responded flatly, making it difficult to discern whether she was being serious or whether it was her typical dry humor. The displeased look Rion shot her didn’t have its intended effect, the Melleray junior entirely unbothered, features unchanged. A lot of people thought her honesty was mean. Crass. Rude. Whatever. But Emma didn’t really care. She believed in authenticity. It wasn’t her problem if other people didn’t. “I can’t stress how little I think about you,” she told Rion after his question. See? Honest. May not have been the nicest, but at least there was no room for misinterpretation if Rion ever wondered how she felt about him. 

Emma turned back to her own brief when Rion did, taking it as a sign that the interaction was over, but then he mumbled something under his breath. Slight frown, the junior turned her head to the side and addressed him with a sigh. “You know, if you want people to hear what you have to say, you have to speak louder.” She didn’t mean to be patronizing but shit, she didn’t have the ears of a bat. “I’d ask you to repeat it for the class but we’ve since learned you suck at addressing a room, so just loud enough for me to hear would be good.”

𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐃𝐍’𝐓 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐂𝐇 about Emma’s dogged apathy. It’s more of the same thing for him, the not caring; even going as far as liking it, as much as could. Anonymity is important to him, yet the way she frames it makes it sounds like he’s unmemorable — and that? That’s something entirely different. And yet, he’s distinctly aware of how getting upset at her in the middle of debate wouldn’t solve anything, so he turns, huffing to himself, wondering how he’d gotten stuck with such a disagreeable partner.

“Christ, I can’t even have a thought to myself?” He replies, lightly groaning. Rion can’t help it, it’s covert insult after insult with her. “So let me get this straight: you’re just rude to everyone, regardless of what they’ve done to you?” And though he isn’t the friendliest guy in their year, he’s decent enough to everybody else, albeit a tad cold. And yet, he is never this blatantly snippy, unless the other gives him a reason to be. “Glad you take such a sick pleasure in being a bitch.”

[orioncarlson]

CONNOR ROBERTS.

“ what about it? ” connor repeats the question back to rion, “ you don’t think it’s weird? it’s, like, the middle of the night, ” he pointed out. a crash in the middle of the day, when everyone was awake and milling about? that was normal. middle of the night, totally different fucking story. or was he being crazy? was general lack of sleep finally starting to have an effect on his psyche? it was hard to say, but even if it was just assholes starting shit connor thought that was reason enough to be spooked. people were just as scary as ghosts. but it didn’t matter. “ i didn’t see anyone out there, asshole or otherwise. ” he commented, but then a thought crossed his mind. “ you don’t think it could be the same person who went through everyone’s stuff, do you? ” yeah, if it was a person. a real, live person, and not a pissed off ghost that’d been dead for centuries and didn’t like all the jokes he and casey had been making about the place.

☆

𝐃𝐀𝐘, 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓, 𝐈𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐃𝐍’𝐓 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐘 𝐃𝐈𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍. Noises are just that… noises, and he isn’t really in the business of speculating wildly about something that he hadn’t even heard properly, let alone seen. “Possible,” he answers, shrugging. “What’d they take from you?” Only because he’s curious. So far, nothing the culprit had stolen seemed particularly interesting, though it did annoy quite a few of his classmates, including himself. “Or it could be, you know, an animal, something falling off the roof, a tree…” Tilting his head, he looks at the guy with a curious expression. “Do I need to rattle off any more theories?”

[orioncarlson]

LUNA TURNER.

Luna nodded, her eyes still fixed on the small crowd that had formed around the outside of the Seniors cabin. “What the fuck was that about?” She asked more to herself than for him to answer. Whatever that noise had been had gotten her out of bed faster than if she had heard the fire alrm going off. She couldn’t help to wonder if this had been the doing of whoever had pulled that stupid stunt on them, if this was the doing of whoever thought making a mess out of the place would be a good idea for a prank. “Yeah, an animal or something, not that dude!” Luna said glancing back and only then she realized who had spoken in the first place. She was going to say something before a different thought interrupted her. “Are you planing on sleeping there or?” She pointed around the bench. 

☆

𝐋𝐔𝐍𝐀 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐎𝐘𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐌, which marginally satisfies him. Weird, how shared suffering could make Rion a bit more tolerable than his usually cranky self, and he nods. “Maybe, if everyone keeps this shit up,” he groans. “Honestly, it’s way more comfortable than you’d think.” Leaning into his arms, face-down on the table, he mimes sleeping for five seconds. “See? Maybe I’ll move out here full-time…”

And yet, he isn’t sure if he’s ready to go back to sleep yet. Turning around, back against the picnic table, he nods at the cabin. “Even from here the cabins look shitty.” Of course, even the school’s haphazard rehab of the buildings couldn’t salvage how sad they’d looked. “Could use a good scrub, for one; and oh, look, shit is already falling apart…” He gestures to the window, wooden piece snapped off and on the ground and… huh. Despite his sleepy state, he’s almost positive that that hadn’t been there when he’d passed by ten minutes ago. “Did that just break off?” 

[orioncarlson]

KATHERINE BISHOP.

She couldn’t help but laugh at the words as Rion repeated them. Somehow they sounded even more ridiculous coming from him than they had when she’d first uttered them, “Okay, not my theory- I don’t believe in that dumb shit,” she clarified. She was gullible as hell, Jay and Drea would attest to that fact but for whatever reason, she wasn’t even remotely phased by the idea of ghosts and ghouls, it just sounded silly to her. “I think it’s just bats in the trees because we keep leaving trash and food everywhere and they figured out that inside the cabins there’s even more food and trash and it’s warm,” she spoke with confidence though she had no reason to believe that what she was saying was fact.

She clicked her tongue and nodded her head, “Good thinking,” she complimented, realizing that he was probably right. Rather than the source of the noise being from outside the cabin, it was probably the cabins themselves falling apart at the seams. She looked over her shoulder to observe the old wooden structure nearest to them, “I don’t know if it would crush anybody, it’s pretty shitty wood,” she noted, “A bump on the head and a few splinters maybe, if it could even manage that,” she turned back to Rion now, “At least with a bump on the head I might actually get some sleep,” she noted bitterly, still evidently annoyed that she was going to be exhausted for class the following morning by no choice of her own.

☆

𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐎𝐑𝐘, it made perfect sense, and the sure-fire way the blonde explains it only reinforces the strength of her argument. He’s much too tired to be a contrarian anyways that quite frankly, if she’d have pushed the ghost bat theory a bit more, Rion would’ve gone along with it. “Yeah, yeah; I can see that,” he replies, imprinting his palm further into his cheek. “Everyone here is so disgusting.” As if he isn’t a part of that exact crew, with his mess by his bunk. Perhaps one good thing from the stolen item debacle had been that everyone’s bunks had been trashed.

“Want me to knock you out?” Sarcastic quip, only because he wishes for the same thing, as morbid as it is. “Maybe we can borrow baseball bats. You know, knock each other out at the same —” Doesn’t even get to finish his thought, because it’s interjected by a loud rustle, right by the senior cabin, though by the time he turns towards the direction of the noise, he doesn’t see much. “Did - did you hear that?” His voice is lower now, barely above a whisper. Wide-awake, he scans the darkened area by his cabin — and right as he chalks it up to his imagination, or maybe the wind or a wild animal, again. Right on cue, as if it’d been biding its time, waiting for the right moment to run away. “What... what the hell was that?” 

[orioncarlson]

NICO DI GIOVANNI.

Domenico cuckled back, a bit awkwardly perhaps, still slightly startled by Orion’s sudden appearance.

“Yeah you’re right…” His determination to test his theory though, well, that was still there.

Besides, perhaps it was better this way, in between the two it would be easier to actually catch someone even if they tried to run.

“And yeah… Woke me up actually. And I was having a fucking sweet dream.” He smirked. “So I am a tad pissed.” He went back to whispering.

“Got any idea about what the hell might it be?”

“My bet… it’s the asshole who had gone through our stuff on Friday. Must be working on another prank or something… Gonna catch him in the act… are you in?”

“I mean, the prank was fine, but I’m still salty as fuck about it, he took my lucky zippo.” Sure he could always get a new one, it was just a cheap novelty lighter after all, but it was a present and the sentimental value couldn’t be replaced so easily.

“Let’s take a look ok?” He clenched the baseball bat again, just in case.

☆

“𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓’𝐒 𝐀 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐀, 𝐌𝐀𝐍?” Rion furrows his brow, yawning, gesturing to the bat. If it is indeed a prank gone wrong, he’s sure the culprit wouldn’t want to be beaten to a pulp by the soccer team captain. Not that he particularly cares about another person’s well-being, but attempting to weasel his way out of standing over a gravely injured classmate didn’t sound like his idea of a fun time. “I mean, we don’t need a freakin’ bat to catch them in the act, right?”

“It’s probably just a loose board or some shit on the roof,” he offers. Certainly not the most exciting theory, but he supposes it’s the most likely one. “But I guess I’m down.” If only to prove his utterly mundane theory. “But seriously, dude, you should put down the bat —”

From afar, a twig snaps, with hurried footsteps following, as if whomever is out there is rushing to cover their tracks and hide. God fucking damn it, could Nico be right? But before he can ponder the idea any more, he sees Nico take off into the woods, bat in his hands. “Well, shit! Wait up!” Rion runs after him, all-too reluctant.

[orioncarlson]

JOCELYN CONWAY.

“Eh, something like that. I don’t think I pay enough attention during mass,” she confessed with a chuckle. She was far more interested in watching the clock than she was in watching Father Doheney during his long monologues about the teachings of the bible and whatnot. “They do say he works in mysterious ways, right?” like stealing a pair of dirty socks and a lighter from a couple of teenagers, sure.

She pulled a face briefly, “I’m going to have to show you where I think I keep them,” she corrected him. She had a pretty good idea of where they would be from her brief visits to the main hall to talk to Coach Cobb when he was around the Retreat but otherwise, she was just going on instinct and a lot of hoping for the best.  “Uh,” she uttered hesitantly, trying to follow Orion’s train of thought. Ultimately, she came up short, she didn’t know where the hell he was going with that. “You lost me, why would the school take my socks?” she asked sceptically, raising an eyebrow as she turned to the male, already leading in the direction of the main hall. “Don’t tell me you think it’s some creepy Catholic voodoo thing,” she’d heard enough ghost stories around the Retreat to have had enough of them for a lifetime.

☆

𝐆𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐓 𝐉𝐎𝐒𝐒, 𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒. Of course. “You don’t even know where they are.” Posing it as a statement, rather than a question, he groans lightly. “All right, but if we’re caught snooping, it’s every man for himself.” His tone is wary, well-practiced in it’s cautionary tone — for as someone who liked pulling pranks as much as Rion did, he didn’t like getting caught. “The Coach probably likes you, huh? Star athlete and all that. Sad to say that I cannot say the same for myself, so…” He taps his fingers behind his ears. “You hear me?”  

“I’m saying… what if they were looking for contraband and ransacked our shit to make sure we got the message?” And now that he says it out loud, it sounds absolutely ridiculous. Imagining any of the staff on a frenzy through their belongings elicits a hint of an exasperated smile, but he pulls his face back into his usual smug stare. “You socks, my lighter... just stuff that got lost in the shuffle. Or maybe they took it and are hiding it somewhere.” Now that he knows his theory is complete bullshit, he feels comfortable making up ridiculous ideas up on the spot, and he wiggles his eyebrows for dramatic effect.

[orioncarlson]

KATHERINE BISHOP.

 In her tiredness, it was only half irritating that she’d been dragged out of bed over something so foolish and half entertaining, so Kat laughed at the idea that it was a ghost or a demonic presence. Whatever the fuck it was, she was confident that it wasn’t that. “Okay, that’s dumb but even if it is it’s probably a ghost opossum or a demon bat or something- when it’s humid like this they try to get indoors, that’s probably all it was,” she offered with a shrug of her shoulders. “Nico thought it was whoever went through all of our shit trying to pull another prank on everybody and maybe fucking it up,” a decent theory, she thought but she was still more convinced that it was an animal being intrusive, rather than a person being clumsy.

☆

𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀 𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐖, 𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐑𝐊𝐒. Situating himself to face her, he nods. “Okay, let me get this straight: your theory isn’t just any old opossum or bat — you think it’s a ghost opossum. Or a demon bat.” Chuckling, he continues to nod. “I’d love to hear the explanation for supernatural animals flying into my cabin.” 

“Yeah, right,” he continues. A part of him is skeptical of the noise having… non-magical origins. He’s not sure one person pulling a prank is capable of making a noise so loud and not leaving a trace. “My money’s on the cabin. It’s already falling apart. It’s probably going to cave in and crush all of us but, hey,” he raises his palms, “maybe this will finally get the school to actually get us decent accommodations.” Or one could hope. 

[orioncarlson]

LUCY GUNDERSON.

Lucy had wandered out on a whim. She had been struggling to get to sleep anyway before the noise came, listening to the sounds of her bunkmates steady breaths as they slept peacefully. When she heard the noise she thought it was her imagination, but then someone else sat up and seemed to notice. She got up and crept outside, curiosity getting the best of her.

“So you’re scared of demonic noises but this is fine?” Lucy asked as she sat herself down next to him. She sat directly next to him, their shoulder brushing together. She was still wide awake, more than could be said for her companion. She wasn’t sure whether to be amused or unsettled. 

☆

“𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐍’𝐓 𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐂,” he insists, nudging her shoulder. Of course Lucy would bring that up. "You’re never going to let me live that one down, huh?” Shaking his head, he sighs, closing his eyes. A beat passes, before he turns back to the girl, raising a sleepy brow. “All right, go,” he starts. “Your three best theories on what this noise was.” Only because he’s sure that Lucy would have some good ( note: sane ) ideas as to what it could be. Most everyone else had been running around with a terrified look in their eyes, as if something would come tumbling down to eat them at any second.

[orioncarlson]

LILUYE NARVAEZ.

liluye stayed quiet while he spoke about his god fearing upbringing, listening to each word but not sure what to do with the information. they weren’t the type to open up and as a result they didn’t usually inspire a lot of openness from others. that didn’t mean they weren’t curious now that orion had brought up a fraction of his childhood “ moved here or … ? ” they raised a brow to finish their question. was he talking about moving to broadripple or moving somewhere away from his christian upbringing. 

they’re about to agree that yeah, the fact that the cross was probably big enough to actually crucify someone was probably adding to the unnerving feeling that came with its presence then he mentioned a prank and they were out. “ like tie someone to it or something? that’s pretty fucked up, don’t you think? ” his next question made their chest feel tight. if they were a freshman and not a senior it might have visibly upset them. liluye didn’t like to offer up the information that they were there on scholarship. and though they didn’t think he meant it in the way some crueler people might, it didn’t stop the question from feeling like a test they had to pass. “ last i checked it’s a catholic school, not a catholic only school. ” they answered, tone cool again. “ what are you doing here? ” 

☆

𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐇 𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆, 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆, 𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃. Rion doesn’t even realize what he’d said until Liluye spoke, and he drops a stiff chuckle, gaze falling to his lap. “Um, moved to New York. Used to live in Maine,” he clarifies, omitting the change in guardians along the way. But he can’t help himself; the thought of his home state inspires a surge of nostalgia within him. “I miss it, actually. Maine, not New York. We lived in Portland, but every summer, we’d drive up near the border and go camping — and all of that was fun and all, but the best part was just… the sky. Endless. At night, all these stars like - like you could look up once and get lost forever.”

Swimming in his thoughts, when he looks up, he’s all-too sheepish. “Uh, sorry. I didn’t mean to talk at you.” Embarrassed, only because he’s inadvertently revealed bits of his past he’d rarely recalled for himself. “Oh — yeah, no. That’s not what I meant,” he says, easing back into his normal cadence. “You know, I was going to hang a scarecrow, cover it in fake blood. In the dark, it’s all the same, right?” Laughing awkwardly, Rion shrugs at their next question. “Yeah. Just saying. I kind of picked Broadripple at random. My aunt wanted me out of her house, so… here I am.”

[orioncarlson]

JOCELYN CONWAY.

She narrowed her eyes slightly, her features contorting as she tried to imagine what exactly God was trying to say to her by  snagging her lucky socks. Don’t be disgusting, perhaps? “Maybe it’s something like uh- make your own luck,” she suggested, though it sounded more like a quote from one of those handbooks on how to survive and thrive in business.

“Yeah,” she could agree with that much, “It fucking sucks,” she concurred, even if that hadn’t been his sentiment exactly. “I’m trying not to think about somebody going through all of my things to get to the stuff that was missing or tossed out into the yard like trash,” she confessed, it made her skin crawl to think of somebody- anybody for that matter, handling her underwear and personal effects. “One-hundred and ten percent sure,” she confirmed without hesitation, she knew they were missing because she knew she would never let them slip into the wash and lose all of their magic mojo. “Are you going over to the main hall to get matches? I’m coming with,” she insisted, now she wanted some of her own to bargain with other students without lighters and she wanted to see what was up with the rest of the camp, now that she’d pretty much secured her things.

☆

𝐌𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐄 𝐇𝐄’𝐒 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐎𝐎𝐊 his sarcastic quip seriously, but he lets out an amused snort, shaking his head. “Right, make your own luck — so basically, do a good job and don’t rely on a random occurrence for success to happen?” Crossing his arms over his chest, he leans into the door frame. “You know what, you’re probably right; God is definitely trying to tell us something here.” Sarcasm personified, his smugness is unbridled today without his usual fix of nicotine.

“Yeah, guess so.” Rion doesn’t really want company for his walk over, but she seems to know where the matches would be. It’s only an added bonus that none of the teachers or Sisters would suspect a thing if he’s walking around with Joss. “You’ll probably have to show me where they keep them anyways,” he adds. Not that he’d been snooping per se, but he almost wonders if this is some sort of tactic used by Broadripple to look for contraband. “Hey, you don’t think the school did it, do you?”