Camp Mendinghell Part 5/?
Rated: T
Disclaimer: I don't own the O.C. characters or actors. This is a work of fiction and not meant to infringe on any copyrights.
Summary: This is an AU in which Ryan meets the Newport kids at a tough love wilderness camp.
Unbetaed: (Because I don’t have one.)
Sitting by the fire, long after the others had gone to bed; Ryan gazed into the coals and tried to slow the beating of his own heart.
The events of that afternoon kept replaying in his head, as much as he wanted to forget them.
Oliver had come and yelled at A.J. and him to follow, saying that something awful had happened. They’d gone to the stables, and seen the blood and the pitchfork, and Luke…
As bad as it had looked, he didn’t really believe that Luke had killed that horse.
The look on his face had been one of genuine shock and horror, mirroring Ryan’s own shock and horror as he watched the flies buzz over the corpse of the mutilated stallion.
Oliver stood transfixed, as though he was looking at a girl dancing on a pole rather than a body already beginning to decay.
A.J. screamed and cursed, kicking Luke repeatedly for the position the boy had put him in.
Having seven campers in his group, one of which was a ‘difficult case’ had earned him a substantial pay increase, as well as a bonus at the end of the summer; turning Luke over to Bob and having to explain away a dead horse was not an option.
With the boys’ help, A.J. managed to slide a tarp under the animal’s body, and with Oliver standing lookout, they dragged the carcass a couple hundred feet away from the stable yard into some concealing brush in the nearby woods.
Come nightfall, the coyotes would find it and the evidence would be devoured.
He heard the sound of a zipper being opened; a moment later Taylor sat beside him, her warm little fingers curled around his own.
He kissed her soft, perfectly formed lips, yanking his consciousness back to the present.
…
Seth was learning what it meant to be truly hungry.
He had experienced peckish before; that milder ‘just-got-home-from-school, time-to-eat-a-bowl-of-cereal’ feeling, even ravenousness on occasion; that ‘what’s-taking-the-pizza-guy-so-long,-I’m-about-to-eat-my-hand’ kind of hunger, which was intense but short lived.
The hunger around camp was of a duller, more persistent variety.
It was the kind of hunger that made tempers wear thin and slowed time down; breaking hours into minutes, and dividing each one by sixty.
Blessed with the metabolism of a hummingbird, Seth’s knees had already become knobbier and his ribs more pronounced, making the transition from ‘skinny’ to ‘gaunt’.
The food situation had definitely worsened since Oliver had joined the group. Dividing the rations by seven meant that everyone was hungrier and weaker, and more on edge around camp.
“Care packages,” A.J. hollered, dropping a box beside the fire. “Although I can’t understand why anyone would ‘care’ about any of you.
Anna pulled it away from the fire, as one of the box’s flaps began to smoke, and began pulling out parcels and reading the labels aloud.
Luke accepted a package with his mother’s spidery writing across the front.
Opening it eagerly, he whistled at the sight of a batch of his favourite peanut butter cookies. There were notes too, from Chip and the team and a letter from his mom and the twins; nothing from his dad.
Seth caught the oversized envelope that Anna tossed him, and opened it without hesitation.
His parents had sent him a batch of Rosa’s peanut butter cookies and a letter telling him that they loved him and missed him, and hoped he was learning a lesson, but making some friends too. He bit into one of the cookies, chewing slowly before swallowing it along with the big lump that had suddenly formed in his throat.
A blue envelope contained a thick catalogue of upholstery colours and paint chips from Lexus, a few crisp hundred dollar bills, and three words on a piece of his grandfather’s monogrammed stationery.
Remember our agreement.
As if he could forget.
It was good to be reminded of why he was here, and the money was a nice gesture; even though it wasn’t exactly useful in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest convenience store.
Oliver received the biggest package- a gift basket wrapped in cellophane, filled with chocolate and tied with an obnoxiously large bow. The card was blank; his father’s secretary must have forgotten his name again.
Anna handed small packages to Summer and Taylor and pulled out the last parcel which bore her own name.
Ryan was embarrassed.
He’d known he wouldn’t get a care package of course, for the simple reason that nobody cared- there was nobody to care- but it embarrassed him to have to stand there and shrug his shoulders, pretending not to care.
“That sucks, it must have gotten lost in the mail,” Anna said, crushing the empty box and tossing it into the fire.
“Luke says his mom makes the best peanut butter cookies, but that’s impossible, because my family’s housekeeper Rosa already holds that title. Settle a bet?” Seth asked, handing Ryan one of each.
Taylor came and put her arm around Ryan. Her mother could be beastly, but she’d cared enough to write a postcard from Cabo and send along some sugarless gum and a digitally altered ‘incentive picture’.
“I’ve got something for you too,” she whispered in his ear.
“Trident?”
“Nope, this has lots of sugar…”
Anna was flipping through the manga comic that had been in her package. She smiled at the ‘to my favourite anarchist’ inscription post-it noted over the plastic sleeve; her mom was smart enough not to defile a mint condition graphic novel, even with endearments.
The king sized pack of peanut butter cups had to be from her dad; he’d been angry when she was arrested, but he had a sense of humour and shared her love of the candy.
The pack of original flavoured Bazooka gum had to be from her youngest brother Charlie. She had taught him to blow a bubble with it the previous spring, so he wouldn’t be the only one on his team who couldn’t.
Nibbling a chocolate, she read the cards and notes included from her other brothers and a few of her friends.
She hoped Ryan’s package was just late, and that he had people somewhere who loved him.
…
‘What are you afraid of?’
The prompt was easy enough; Seth figured he could just make a point form list rather than go into great detail over each individual fear.
He spent the next ten minutes scribbling furiously before backtracking to censor his response; it was probably best not to mention A.J. or horses, in case they were planning an elaborate ‘face your fears’ kind of exercise.
Ryan wondered if he could cross ‘heights’ off of the list of things that scared him; sure he had scaled the climbing wall, but he was in no hurry to do it again.
He decided that he must be in the grey place between confronting and conquering; a kind of fear purgatory.
When he really thought about it, ‘falling’ was a more rational fear than ‘heights’, but it was the possibility of imminent disaster that he found truly frightening; that moment when your foot slipped, not the perilous descent.
His memories harkened him back to his mother’s final moments.
Her hair whipping around in the wind.
A.J. yelling, his mom crying.
Pelting rain and coked out reasoning… a dangerous combination.
And falling... his mother plunging from the Golden Gate to the Pearly Gates.
“Are you okay, man? You were moaning…”
Ryan opened his eyes to see Luke looking at him with concern; he must have fallen asleep.
“Fine, I must have nodded off. Dreaming about a large pepperoni pizza,” he lied.
“I hear you, man. If I never see another bowl of oatmeal again it will be too soon,” Luke smiled. “Look… about what happened in the stables yesterday… that horse…”
Ryan nodded to show that he was listening, quickly checking to make sure all of the counsellors were a safe distance away over by the coffee maker.
“I know you didn’t do it, you don’t have to explain.”
“One minute I’m shovelling shit, and the next there’s this awful scream, and I go running into the barn… it was horrible.”
“I know,” Ryan said, shuddering at the memory.
“I heard A.J. and Bob talking about the camping trip; I think we’re leaving tomorrow.”
Ryan shrugged his shoulders; hiking would be a change of pace from hauling boulders.
“Look, I’m not a pussy or anything… but that Oliver kid freaks me out. He killed the horse, and we both know it. I can’t sleep knowing that psychopath is a foot away. What’s stopping him from taking the axe and hacking us to bits during the night? Out in the mountains, miles away from the nearest phone… we won’t stand a chance.”
“I know, but what can we do about it? A.J. doesn’t care; Oliver just means a fatter pay check for him. He’s never going to agree to turn him in.”
“I know; which is why you need to do it. I’d do it myself, but A.J. is always watching me- ever since the stables… and he can’t know it was one of us.”
Ryan nodded emphatically.
If A.J. found out that he’d squealed, Oliver would be the least of his worries.
“After journaling, I’ll create a diversion to keep A.J. busy so you can talk to Bob.”
Ryan shifted his weight uneasily, but didn’t say anything. Trouble always seemed to find him- he didn’t need to actively seek it out.
“Think of Taylor, and the other girls… and even Seth. Do you want them to end up like Johnny?”
“So you think it was him, too.”
“The rope being held by psycho-boy mysteriously breaks? Yeah, I think it was him.”
Bob gave two short blasts of the whistle signalling that time was up.
TBC