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cigarette butts from the cracks in the riflery hut’s plank floor. Even a single butt left behind would be a giveaway to the first activity group in the morning, so we had to be thorough. Looking for something to put the stinky butts in, I searched the floor and ledges around me.
    â€œHere,” Ransome said, offering his dip bottle. When I reflexively squinched my nose at the disgusting inch of brown viscous liquid in the bottom, he laughed and instead held out his hand. As I tipped my palm to let the butts fall into his, our fingers touched. It was only a second, but again I felt the current pass through me.
    â€œThanks.” I smiled and quickly looked away, embarrassed at how obvious I felt my attraction had to be.
    Ransome put the butts one by one into the dip bottle and, after tightly screwing on the top, slid the bottle into the pocket of his baggy, stained khakis. Buzz was waiting for him on the path back to Brownstone.
    â€œGood night, y’all,” Ransome said, ducking to clear the roof of the hut and loping toward Buzz.
    â€œSleep tight.” It slipped. It was the last thing my father used to say to me before bed. While my dad had left me, the habit hadn’t. I cringed now at how childish it sounded.
    But again Ransome surprised me. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he called before being swallowed up by the pines and dark. My heart nearly exploded.
    â€œYou ready?” Winn asked. Sarah had already left, bored with the final rounds of the game.
    â€œYep,” I answered, still unable to wipe the smile from my face. Without thinking, I swung the beam of the flashlight around to light our way back to the cabins.
    â€œNo,” Winn startled me by saying sharply. She jumped to switch the flashlight’s power button off. “Campers might see it,” she explained, sounding apologetic for her brusque tone.
    â€œOh, right.” My head was swimming with the crazy notion that Ransome wasn’t someone I had to just admire from afar anymore. “I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.”
    â€œDon’t worry.” Winn sighed, entwining her arm in mine and turning us toward the shadowy path back to the cabins. “You’ll learn, little grasshopper.”
    The only thing I was worried about was seeing Ransome again, but I hoped she was right. As a counselor, there was still a lot I didn’t know.

Chapter 5
    I had been wrong when I thought, returning from the riflery range, that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. When I slipped quietly into my bed, not even bothering to change my clothes, just removing my smoky fleece and kicking off my boots, all the excitement of the last two days caught up with me. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
    I woke to the sound of Reveille the next morning, and the day began like any other at camp. Bleary-eyed and rumpled, I slipped on my flip-flops and padded with the other girls to the flagpole that stood always at attention in a clearing at the middle of the cabins. In front of it were a very chipper Marjorie and Butter.
    Once we had all lined up, Marjorie placed her hand over her heart. We followed her lead as two counselors carefully unfolded and raised a large American flag. When the metal of the clasps clinked against the top of the pole, and Old Glory hung limply in the windless morning, we launched into a plodding recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
    â€œSee you at breakfast . . . pancakes and bacon!” Marjorie called cheerfully as Butter bounded behind her back to the Mess. The woman had an inhuman supply of energy. Southpoint didn’t have cows, but if it had, I could picture Marjorie rising and shining at four a.m. to milk them for fresh cream to make butter for our pancakes.
    At Southpoint we ate family-style at long wooden tables (although whose family it was styled after I didn’t know, because it certainly wasn’t mine). That morning it was both