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One second it was on a suicide mission with its targets set on colliding with my face, the next it was wrapped up tight in a silk web and thrashing about.

I laughed. Actually laughed out loud. It hurt but I laughed anyway.

“Thanks, buddy,” I said to the spider, cheersing it with an invisible drink. Because right now I couldn’t stomach a real one. “You might not be so bad to have around after all.”

The spider didn’t give a shit about my approval. It just went to work wrapping up its breakfast as if it owned the place. Which, when you thought about it, it kinda did. This cabin was prime spider real estate now. Alvin’s final fuck-you. A cosmic reminder that I was a waste of dick skin.

I was still grinning at the spider when the noise started.

At first, it was just background static. Yelling, feet pounding, the usual camp chaos when someone spotted a snake or decided to run naked through the woods on a dare. Teenage antics. I tuned it out and shuffled towards the dresser to hunt for my water bottle and a handful of pills.

Then the noise outside got louder. And sirens started wailing in the distance.

I stopped dead in my tracks and tuned back in. The shouting had changed. It sounded frantic. Not the fun kind of frantic, like someone had spiked the pudding cups with laxatives, but the oh-shit-something-is-actually-wrong kind.

I shuffled to the window and squinted through the glare coming off the glass. The sirens were getting closer.

“Shit…” I ditched the water plan, threw on a new shirt, grabbing the least-filthy thing off the floor, and hauled ass out the cabin door.

The whole camp was swarming towards the lake. Staff sprinting. Campers running. It looked like organized chaos, which apparently was a thing. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.

I jogged over to the dock, my brain fuzzy as hell. Was someone hurt? Was there a medical emergency? A drowning?

That last one lodged itself in my throat, reminding me of the panic I felt when I realized Alvin hadn’t come back up for air after I’d shoved him into the lake…

Then I heard the helicopter.

I peered up. The damn thing was massive, its rotors screaming, the wind it created throwing shit every which way. It was touching down in the field by the lake, and then everything snapped into focus and made zero sense at the same time.

Someone wasn’t just hurt. They were seriously hurt.

My stomach did a backflip. Couldn’t tell if it was the hangover or terror talking. I pushed closer, trying to figure out who it was, trying to determine if this was a camper or a staff member or…

That’s when I spotted Mason.

He was posted up on a picnic table. Shoeless, his sleep pants hanging loose around his waist, suggesting he hadn’t had time to tie them up properly before running outside. He wasn’t moving. Almost as if he couldn’t. His eyes staring at nothing, his whole body curled in on itself, while his face looked hollow. Like someone had reached into his chest and yanked out everything worth living for. I knew that look. I’d been wearing it for a full day.

I walked over to him. “Mason?”

He didn’t even glance at me. Just kept his eyes locked on the helicopter, on the stretcher getting loaded up, on everything going to shit around us in real time.

“Mason, what the hell happened?” I asked him.

“Trevor,” he said and sounded completely gutted.

I glanced back towards the crowd of campers, but my eyes were having trouble focusing on any one person’s face. “What about him?”

“Someone hurt him. I know they did.” Mason’s hands were balled so tight his knuckles were changing color. “Alvin pulled him off the dock.”

I felt the nausea give way inside me. “Is he⁠—”

“I don’t know.” Mason finally looked up, and I wish he hadn’t because his eyes were red and puffy and dry from crying so much he had nothing left. “They’re taking him to the hospital.”

I sat down next to him on the table, because my legs seemed to lose all ability to hold me upright anymore. “Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.” Mason shook his head. And I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get rid of all the thoughts eating him up on the inside or actively arguing with them.

I understood it. The powerlessness. That cold dread.