I'm stuck deep in a nightmare involving Karen and Owen, both of whom are chasing me through the Alaskan wilderness and armed with some kind of megaphone/bazooka hybrids, when the sound of the counselor knocking on the cabin door finally reaches my ears. I'm a sound sleeper so at first I think the noise is only coming from my dream, but then I hear these words, clear as day outside my door, "Jasper Sostenuto and Levi Hoffman? Wake up, it's time for morning call!"

My eyes fly open. I glance over at Levi, but he's still sound asleep and buried under a heavy-duty layer of blankets. "Levi," I whisper. "Levi." I don't think my roommate sleeps— he hibernates. "Wake up Levi, the counselor is here."

"Go away," my roommate mumbles, somewhat incoherently. The lump of blankets shifts like a miniature avalanche as he moves to yank the pillow over his face. "I'm playing Macbeth."

"Levi, there's somebody at the front door."

"Indeed. Something wicked this way comes...."

The counselor knocks again, louder this time. "Hello? Anybody awake in there?"

"You— are— useless!" I exclaim, pulling on a different article of clothing between each word. The knocking continues while I get dressed, but I don't let it rush me— there's no way in Hell that I'm about to greet a camp counselor half-naked.

I grab one of the blankets off my bed and wrap it around my torso like a robe. Then I dash to the front door.

I fling the door open, only to immediately arrive face-to-face with Jackson, the short, dark-haired counselor with the crooked teeth. His hand is still raised, poised to knock. There's a blue drawstring-bag hanging over his shoulder— more camp t-shirts, maybe?

Jackson gives me a quick appraisal. He doesn't look very happy with what he sees.

"I've been waiting here for five minutes," he says. 

I feel myself cringe at his harsh tone of voice. I've never been any good at talking to adults, especially ones that are already annoyed at me. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, so sorry, but we don't have an alarm clock and my roommate is still asleep and I didn't hear you knocking...." Jackson raises an eyebrow at me. "Aaand you don't care. Gotcha. Sorry. Uh, what were you going to say?

"I have your activity schedules for the summer." Jackson reaches into the drawstring and pulls out two booklets, one with my name on it and one with Levi's. He hands them to me. "They include all of the times and dates that you'll need. Breakfast starts in about fifteen minutes, so it would be in your best interest to get ready and go eat now so you can be on time for your first activity this morning. I believe that you are both slotted for 'Sharing Circle'."

I don't want to share anything with these strangers. Nevertheless, I force a smile at the counselor and take the booklets from his hand. "Thanks so much for stopping by. And once again, I'm sorry for making you wait."

The counselor slings his bag back over his shoulder. "Don't let it happen again, Sostenuto." He turns away from the cabin and strides off down the path without so much as a wave. My heart sinks a little as I watch him disappear into the trees.

I just don't get it. Why would the counselors want to work at this summer camp, if it's obvious that they don't like teenagers? I don't see how it's productive for us to be spiritually "healed" at a place where all the adults already consider us to be failures. I mean, not that I need to be healed. I didn't do anything worth mentioning to get sent to Lightlake. I just messed up. Made one stupid mistake and happened to be caught doing it. Compared to the rest of the campers here, my crime was pretty minor— a waste of a summer, really.

I close the door and trudge back into the cabin. I'm getting way too hot underneath my blanket robe, so I throw the whole thing back onto my bed. I must have looked so ridiculous. The counselor probably thought I was wasting his time playing dress-up as the Wizard of Oz.

Levi's still asleep, so I throw open the curtains to let some of the morning sunlight shine into the cabin. He grumbles wordlessly and curls up deeper inside his horde of blankets.

"It's time to go to breakfast, Levi."

"Eff off."

"If you don't get ready now you're going to miss your morning activities."

"I said, eff off!"

I pick up one of his pillows and throw it at his face. It glances off and lands on the floor.

"You'll get a mark if you skip your activities. Stop being difficult and wake up."

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!"

Oh, joy. More Macbeth. I'm feeling healed already.

"Levi, please. You're going to miss breakfast."

"Not hungry. Shut up and let me sleep."

So I do. And when I start to feel guilty about letting Levi sleep in and miss breakfast, I just remind myself that he's not my responsibility— and that if I learned anything by being sent to this camp, it's that when I try to help people I only end up hurting them and myself in the process.

Levi sleeps. I get dressed.

The one upside to my roommate being soundly asleep is that I can finally change like a normal person, instead of having to crouch behind the bed like I did yesterday. (Levi didn't even question my behavior— he already thinks I'm weird, so I bet he assumed that it was just another quirk of mine.) I tug off my Canucks shirt and replace it with one of the blue camp tees that we're required to wear, and then, after double-checking that Levi is still asleep, I slip into my fleece-lined joggers and pull on a pair of wool socks and my sneakers.

"Jasper?"

My heart stops. "Uh, what is it?" I ask, in a strangled voice. Levi couldn't have seen. He couldn't have— I checked to make sure he was asleep, I checked. But what if he saw— what if he saw—

"Can you grab me some OJ and a bagel at breakfast?"

A relieved sigh escapes my throat. I close my eyes for a brief moment before replying, letting all the excess adrenaline drain out of my body as if I pulled an imaginary plug. "Sure. I'll do that."

"Good man." Levi draws the curtains shut and pulls the blankets back over his head. "See you later, Jasper."

"Later," I say, a bit breathlessly.

I yank my hoodie on over my head and shuffle out the door. I keep my head down, hands jammed in my pockets. Even though it's obvious Levi didn't see anything I didn't want him to see, my heart is still racing a mile a minute in my chest. Fear. One of my constant companions. Fear and secrecy, that's all I am. God, how pathetic am I— I can't even get dressed without having an anxiety attack.

I limp down the forest trail, kicking up dirt as I go. Secrets. I can already tell that this camp is overflowing with them, but that doesn't mean that mine is safe from discovery. I'm going to be a lot more careful if I want to keep people from figuring me out— a lot.

No more slip-ups. No more mistakes.

My first activity is called "Sharing Circle" and is at eight o'clock in Tustumena Cabin. I'm one of the first campers to arrive, probably because I get there fifteen minutes early just to be on the safe side. The cabin is pretty sparse inside, nothing more than a single room and a dozen or so folding chairs arranged in a circle. There's a few cheesy inspirational posters hanging on the walls ("Determination will get you anywhere!" one very enthusiastic basketball player claims, while a tiny kitten hanging from a branch cries, "Hang in there!") but looking at them doesn't inspire me in the slightest. The posters just look old and sad, and they make me feel old and sad, too.

The second camper to arrive is Emily. She was one of the first people I met at camp, but I can't decide if I like her or not yet. There's something sharp about her, and I'm always worried that I'm going to cut myself on one of her invisible edges.

Emily plops down in the chair next to me and sticks her legs out into the circle, slouching like she's Bender from the Breakfast Club come to life. "Hey." She twirls one of her eyebrow piercings. "You ready to spill your deepest, darkest secrets?"

I nearly choke on the rest of my bagel. "Um, excuse me?"

"Why do you think they call this 'Sharing Circle', dummy? It's 'cause we're going to have to talk about ourselves. About our problems. Healing through communication, and all that bullshit. Oh, look, here comes our savior himself."

Owen struts into the room, tucking his blue camp tee into a pair of khaki shorts as he goes. I've never seen someone look so at home in khakis.  "Hello, campers!" His smile diminishes when he sees that we're the only ones here. "All... two of you."

Emily gives him a sarcastic wave. I just keep my head down and hope that he doesn't remember me from the woods.

"Sostenuto," Owen says.

I keep my gaze fixed to the floor. "Yes?"

"Have you been staying out of trouble lately?"

I nod. 

"Good. I get the feeling that you're a good kid, Jasper. Don't forget about your kitchen duty— it starts next week."

Emily knees me in the leg. "Kitchen duty?" she says, keeping her voice down low so that Owen doesn't hear. "What the hell did you do to already get kitchen duty?"

I watch as the counselor takes a seat on the opposite side of the circle and starts rifling through his papers. He must remember me from out encounter in the woods, but he's not acting like I know a secret that could get him fired. He's just so... relaxed. Like we're buddies, and that's all.

Owen glances down at his wrist to check the time. When he looks up, he catches my gaze and grins. It's a friendly grin, absolutely nothing malicious hidden behind it. I look away so quickly that a muscle in my neck jumps.

"Jasper, what did you do?" Emily pesters.

"Nothing. Please don't ask me again."

"What a goddamn man of mystery you are."

Minutes pass. Eventually more campers start to trickle into the room, most of them still looking half-asleep, even after breakfast. I recognize a few familiar faces— Finn, Selena, and the blonde-haired girl who butted into my conversation with Levi at Initiation. Giselle, or Antelope or some fancy name like that.  

The circle fills up quickly so I'm stuck sitting next to Emily and some stranger, but Finn does make an effort to smile and wave at me from his side of the room, which makes me feel a little bit better.

The last person to arrive is the girl with different colored eyes. I can't remember her name, and that's probably because I haven't talked to her at all yet— out of all the people at camp, I think the only person scarier than her is Clancey. She scowls around the room before slouching down in the last available chair, and then crosses her arms so tightly across her chest that I almost expect to hear bones cracking. 

The girl kicks her feet out into the center of the circle, showing off a pair of mud-splattered Doc Martens. The campers sitting next to her try to discreetly inch away.

I think everybody in the room is watching her now. Not that she seems to care— she's too busy picking at a hangnail on her thumb to realize she's suddenly been placed in the spotlight.

"Nice shoes," Emily says.

The girl ignores her.

There's a long pause. Owen finally breaks it by clapping his hands together eagerly and declaring, "Alright! It looks like everyone is here, so I say that we begin. Are you all excited for your first Sharing Circle of the summer?"

The silence continues, but this time it's punctuated by nervous looks and whispers as all the campers in the room try to figure out what a "Sharing Circle" could possibly mean. Owen doesn't seem put off by the tension. Instead his eyes start to gleam, like this is some exciting board-game. Connect Four Traumatic Memories or Sorry! You're A Failure To Your Friends And Family. I'd laugh if I didn't feel so nauseous. 

"C'mon guys, don't be shy! I have an idea— let's go around the circle and each say our names, age, and something interesting about ourselves. Who wants to go first?"

Nobody volunteers. I can practically hear crickets chirping in the background.

"I don't like picking on people, but it looks like I'm going to have to today," Owen says. He gestures to the Doc Martens girl. "Would you like to start us off?"

More nervous looks. More whispers. I wonder if Owen purposefully chose the most difficult looking camper in the room just to make an example out of her, or if he's just another clueless adult.

"You can start talking whenever you feel ready," Owen says with a bright smile. 

The girl's expression clearly says that she isn't ready, and probably never will be, but she manages to force out a few sentences about herself. "My name's Becca Fisher. I'm sixteen years old. I'm a junior, and I run on my school's track team."

I see Finn frown to himself on the other side of the circle, and remember him saying something about competing in high school Cross Country. 

"Thank you for that, Becca," says Owen, a little too enthusiastically for someone who barely put in any effort at all. The girl doesn't even acknowledge him— she just keeps glaring at her muddy shoes. "Now, let's continue clockwise around the circle."

Next up is Matt, who's fifteen years old and just went to a Van Halen concert. (Apparently, it was totally radical.) Then there's Giselle— the blonde haired girl from Initiation— who's seventeen and loves Pretty In Pink. She accents this with a flip of her long blonde hair, which seems to have an irritating way of defying gravity. After Giselle is Angela and Parker, then Camille and Eric, and then a few more campers whose names and 'interesting' facts I promptly forget. 

After everyone has said their piece, Owen claps his hands together again and beams at us all broadly. "Now, that was fun, but it wouldn't be a Sharing Circle if we didn't get much sharing done! I'd like to start getting more in-depth. Becca— how about since you started us off, you answer a few of my questions first?"

Her blue-brown eyes blink once, twice. "I'd rather not."

"It will only be a few quick questions," Owen reassures her. "Nothing too invasive, I promise."

Her expression remains blank.

"Great!" Owen exclaims. "Let's begin."

He starts off with a few normal questions about her favorite classes and hobbies, and then gets more into her friends at school, as well as her teachers and mentors and any other people she consider to be positive influences in her life. Becca never answers with anything longer than a sentence. I run track. I do distance and sprints. Her replies are always bored, detached. My positive influence is my grandmother. My cousin, Julia. Her expression never falters. She just sits there, eyes narrowed, arms folded, and speaks in her monotone voice as if she does interrogations like this everyday.

And then, Owen finally asks a question that makes her do a double-take:

"And what about your family, Becca?"

A shadow crosses her face. "I live with my grandmother, in Arizona. My cousin lives a few blocks away from us. I already told you all of this."

"That's nice," Owen says. "And what about your parents?"

"What about them?"

"Well, I'd like to hear you talk about them."

Her brown-blue eyes shoot daggers at the wooden floorboards. "I don't like to talk about my parents."

"I understand that, Becca. But the point of this sharing circle is to discuss things we feel uncomfortable about."

Becca's eyes jerk away from the floor, and she glares at Owen so intensely that I see his smile stagger, if just for a second.

"I'm not uncomfortable about anything," she says. "I just don't want to talk about them."

"Look, Becca," Owen begins, in a strained sort of voice. "Normally, I would let you off the hook for this. But you haven't shared anything of value with the circle yet, so I'm afraid that if you don't start answering my questions, I'm going to have to give you a mark."

Please answer, I think, hoping that I can somehow convey this message through the airwaves and into her brain. I really don't want to have to do kitchen duty with you.

The whole room is staring at Becca again, and she still doesn't seem to care. "I'm not telling you about my parents," Becca says. She scuffs her Doc Martens aggressively against the floorboards, making the mud caked to her heels fly off in every direction. "You can't make me talk about them. Not now. Not ever."

"Becca, please—"

"I don't live with them, okay? They're not a part of my life. They never have been. They're not important, they're not relevant, and I'm not going to talk to you about them."

"Fisher—"

Her eyes flash. "No," she says. She doesn't shout, but the anger in her voice speaks louder than any shout ever could. "I just— no."

She rises sharply to her feet. "Don't ask me about my parents again." And then, just to prove how serious she is about this, she kicks over her chair and storms out of the cabin.

The screen door slams behind her, once, twice. The noise echoes through the silence. It makes more than a few campers jump.

Nobody talks, but I can judge the others' reactions by watching their body language— Selena holds a hand over her mouth, gleefully shocked; Finn stares at the fallen chair with wide eyes; Emily stops twirling her nose ring to watch the door, still swinging back and forth in its frame. The only person that doesn't look surprised by Becca's abrupt exit is Owen. All he does is close his eyes and sigh and pinch at the bridge of his nose in what could be disappointment or frustration or even unhappiness. He's not clueless— he really was picking on Becca deliberately, just pushing to see how hard he could push. I don't think he meant to push that hard. 

Owen doesn't get up to go after Becca. He doesn't even shout after her. He just plucks his walkie-talkie off his belt and says into the crackling static, "Report, this is Owen. Hey there, Karen. I've got a situation yellow outside the sharing cabin— no, no intervention needed. Just make sure she gets back to her cabin. Over."

Owen tucks his talkie away. Sighs. (Why do adults sigh so much?) The cabin is still utterly silent.

"Would someone please pick up that chair? We've got thirty more minutes left, and I want at least five more of you to get the chance to share," he says. There's no anger in his voice— he just sounds tired.

One of the campers— Angela, I think— hops out of their seat to fix the chair.

"Elvis has left the building."

Owen gives the camper who spoke a stern look. "This is not the time for jokes, Matt."

"Sorry, sorry. It's just— that girl has guts."

"There's a difference between guts and disrespect, Matt. It's a fine line that, today, Becca definitely crossed."

"How do you know?" Matt asks. "Maybe disrespect is just another form of self-expression."

"I don't think it was Becca's fault," Giselle adds. She's twirling a gold locket that I'm pretty sure I saw Selena wearing earlier. "She did say she that she didn't want to talk about her parents. "Maybe you were the one being disrespectful to her."

"Yeah," Matt says. "You can't push someone like that and not expect them to snap."

"Quiet!" It's the only time Owen has raised his voice all day, and it shuts Matt and Giselle up instantly. "Please. Just be quiet. Matt— that's a mark for speaking out of turn. You too, Giselle. I don't want to hear anything else about Becca Fisher for the rest of our sharing circle. Do I make myself clear?"

Neither Giselle nor Matt look very happy about this new development, but Owen's voice has made clear that he won't be disagreed with. "That's more like it," Owen says calmly. "Now. I believe it's Emily's turn to share."