Chapter Text
Her name is Kathleen Nora Jensen.
She's thirty-seven and obsessed with not looking her age. The cupboards are stacked with her children's plates from when they were young enough to need them, various mixes for diet shakes and pantry staples she is forever finding ways to avoid using.
“Mom! Bryan’th being a jerk again!”
“Gimme back the controller!”
“It'th my turn!”
Kathleen downs the two Tylenol pills with her glass of sugar-free sparkling water and, still willing the pain of her headache not to show on her face, slowly walks up the creaking wooden steps of the Jensen family’s townhouse. Pictures line the stairway wall, pictures of Katie when she was small, of Bryan when he was about six months and Katie was just old enough to be trusted with a baby for a few minutes, of their old Labrador Snoopy who Katie buried in the backyard herself when his time came, of her broad-faced husband Jack who's still at work at the garage. Her hand grips the railing tightly as she walks up to the kids’ shared room.
She opens the white wooden door and it protests when she does so. She gets a good look at her children, sixteen-year-old Katelyn Rebecca Jensen and thirteen-year-old Bryan Avery Jensen, two steps from a slap fight over the Super Nintendo. She'll be honest, the grayish box with its two controllers doesn't look like too much, but she was an adult by the time video games started out. Every so often she looks at the box the damn thing came in and marvels at how it got from Midway arcades to home televisions in, what, fifteen years? Less?
“Mom, it'th my turn to play and he won't give me the damn controller!”
Katie turns to her with pleading, indignant green eyes.
Every so often those eyes strike up a memory within her. The high school Katie calls home, Harlow River Central High, is the same high school she attended before she married Jack. And a good few years behind her, the class of '87, there was a boy by the name of Richard Simmons who attended the middle school a few streets down. She never talked to him, had no reason to. He was barely in middle school when she was about to graduate. She barely has a reason to think of him now except when Katie looks at her with pain in her eyes and suddenly they look just like his, a bright and frightened green behind those glasses that were always broken and held together with duct tape, just above a spray of freckles on pale, thin skin, and none of the boys could ever lay off him for any of it. She remembers having to hold her skirt down as a pack of middle school boys chased Richard Simmons across the quad where the high school football team practiced.
It's funny what sticks around.
“Bryan, give her the controller. You've had your turn, you know better.”
“Ugh, fine! Jeez, Kate, you're such a whiner…”
Bryan rolls his eyes with the force of a thousand suns as he flippantly passes the controller to Kate. She scowls at him, baring her braced teeth, the teeth that give her a lisp that can't be trained out.
“Kate, when you're done, I want you to come down. There's something I'd like to talk about.”
She uses her gentlest voice and Bryan still snickers.
“Oooh, you're in trouble.”
“I'm not!”
The air conditioning buzzes and hums as she sighs and leaves the room, traipsing back down the way she came and checking her watch. It's 3:56 PM. Almost time for that SlimFast she's got in the cabinet.
It can't take that long.
Seventeen minutes later, the glass Kathleen drank her SlimFast in is empty and washed, sitting in the strainer to dry. (It tastes awful, especially when it isn't cold, but women of her age have got to be extra careful about their waistlines! She's seen what happened to John’s mother after the divorce. She won't let it happen to her.)
Katie finally bounds down the stairs, crimson hair swishing behind her. When she gets to the kitchen table, she's slightly out of breath.
“Tho… uh… what'd you need, Mom?”
She looks at her expectantly, but also somewhat impudently, as if she was somehow in the middle of something vital that could not have been put off. She wants to laugh. She doesn't.
“Katie, I want you to look at this.”
She passes her a pamphlet printed on laminated paper. Katie takes it and reads it quickly, flipping it around.
“Uh… Camp Blood Gulch? Mom, what the hell ith thith?”
“Language. And it's… an option for your summer.”
“What?”
“Katie, you can't just stay inside and play your video games. You need to… to go outside! I was outside nearly every day of the summer when I was your age, and all you've done is lounge in your room, argue with Bryan and hound your father about work.”
“Mom, I can't – I athk him about it becauthe I like it! I wish I had a job like that! I know what I'm doing!”
“Kate, please, you've only got so much time –”
“If thith ith thome thtupid plot, it won't work. It ithn’t just fun for me. I love carth. I love tagging along with Dad, all the guyth at the garage love me!”
“I know that, Katie! But that isn't the point! You can't stay holed up in here forever! I know you're annoyed, but I really think it would help you be a more well-rounded person. You'll meet some new friends, get outdoors, you'll learn new skills –”
“My thkillth are fine!”
“I know! Good God, Kate, I'm not trying to be mean to you for no reason! This is an amazing opportunity! I've also talked with your friends’ parents about this whole thing, and they're all on board.”
“My friendth…?”
“Yes! John and Charles and Anthony, I've talked to their parents over the phone, they're sending your friends over for the summer.”
“Wait, the whole thummer?!”
“It is a sleep away camp, Katie.”
She fumes silently in front of her. She wonders if it was such a good idea to suggest it… but she holds firm. There's no backing down, Katie either will or won't. Do not show weakness when arguing with a teenager.
“Would you please give it some thought? At least think about it? Talk to your friends? Camp Blood Gulch is very highly regarded, it would be a great opportunity. I know it.”
“Mom, I…”
She seems almost as if someone's betrayed her, pulled the rug out from under her. She fiddles with the hem of her shirt, a nervous habit.
“Think about this, please. Wouldn't it be nice to get a break from everything, to get in touch with other people? What if you make a new best friend?”
“The guyth are the only friendth I want.”
She crosses her arms petulantly.
“Well, their parents are sending them to camp. Think about it, Katie. Your whole summer without your friends. No calling them or seeing them at all.”
Katie stops in her tracks and grits her teeth, suddenly sullen.
“Ugh, fine. But no promitheth.”
“The sign up deadline is in a week. I'll give you a bit of time to think, but you've got to tell me your answer before the 5th.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Katie huffs a great sigh and stomps back up to her room, probably about to start a fresh argument with Bryan. She doesn't pretend to know her child’s mind… but she did know the previous director of this camp before he died, and his wife as well. It seems Allison Church stayed even after Leonard passed on. She recognizes some of the names on the staff list in the pamphlet, even though it wasn't complete. There was a Franklin Delano, for some reason referred to as “Donut” like some inside joke she's not in on, and a David Washington, whom she remembers the welcoming ceremony for when he got back from the Gulf. There even seems to be Leonard Church’s son, who she guesses he named after himself. Funny, she didn't know he had a son.
She has a good feeling about this.