It's like she's just another camper for Mulan to look after.
"Aurora," Mulan says, "You don't have your counselor ID attached to your belt. We're supposed to have them attached to our belt all the time."
"Aurora, don't you want to refill your water? You're going to get dehydrated."
"Aurora. We're supposed to wear hiking boots. You'll get blisters."
Aurora insists she'll be fine in her flimsy white sneakers. Mulan swears she must be doing this just to annoy her, because the shoes are ridiculous little things. And later, when her feet are cut to shreds, Mulan is the one who tends to the blisters.
"Let me do it," she insists. "I know how."
Aurora smiles as Mulan takes her foot in her hand and strategically applies bandages and blister pads.
"You're so careful," Aurora observes, like it's an option instead of the job description. "Always so careful. I could just leap off a cliff and you'd be right there to catch me."
Mulan grips Aurora's ankle, because she keeps moving when she talks. "Don't leap off a cliff."
Aurora's lips curl upwards. "because you'd be devastated without me?"
Mulan glances over at a cluster of female campers, who are all dressed exactly like Aurora, tending to their own mangled feet.
"Because every single one of those girls would leap after you, and I'd have to explain it to the camp's lawyers."
Aurora just shrugs, cool as a cat.
"You'll break some rules before the summer's over. Probably just as many as me. Probably more." And then she begins to put her shoes back on.
Mulan feels a flutter of strangeness in her stomach. Aurora said it so casually. Not a possibility, not a dare, but a certainty.
It happens again when Aurora steals the popsicles.
Aurora sneaks into the camp kitchen, pilfers two dozen of Mulan's favorite popsicles, and doles them out to group. ("it was hot," she says with a shrug, as if that makes it okay.)
In the end, Mulan takes one. (They're already melting, there's no point wasting food.) And as soon as she takes off the plastic wrapper, there's Aurora at her side.
"See?" She daintily dabs pink popsicle off her lips. "And you'll break more rules before the summer's up."
This time, Mulan is ready with a comeback.
(She imight/i have mentally rehearsed what she was going to say. Just in case. It was a reasonable thing to do.)
She says to Aurora, "And before the summer's over, you'll enforce some rules."
Aurora raises her eyebrows.
Mulan mentally berates herself. It sounded all wrong. She didn't sound casual and sure like Aurora. She sounded like she was issuing a challenge.
Perhaps she did. Because the next day, Aurora accepts it.
It's late afternoon. One of the girls in their cabin has lost her inhaler, and claims she has literally no idea, out of the whole of the camp, where it could be. Mulan and Aurora are searching the woods around the cabin. They stay a little ways apart to cover more ground.
Mulan is shining a flashlight into the creek when she hears Aurora snap,
"Both of you, out!"
Mulan squints. Aurora is standing at the edge of a thick grove of trees, bordered on one side by a rock wall. It's so thick and dark, Mulan can't see who's in the grove. Then, as a teen boy and girl step out, she realizes that was the point. They are still pulling the last of their clothes back on, buttoning up shirts and pants.
Aurora stands up tall, imperious, her chin raised high. She looks like real authority figure, despite her sparkly tank top and total lack of counselor uniform.
"You're breaking about twenty camp regulations, including section 2A, section 4B, and section 7 - surely you must know the consequences of those. What are your names?"
She marches them off to the main office, with Mulan trailing behind her, gaping. After they're gone, Mulan says,
"There is no section 2A, 4B, and section 7."
Aurora shrugs her slender shoulders. "Of course not. I made it up."
Mulan tilts her head, studying her. "Why did you send them to the head of camp? Normally you don't care if people break the rules."
All Aurora says is,
"It's an important spot." And then she trots off down the hill, her hair flying out behind her.
Mulan is not supposed to stray this far from the cabin at night. But the pull of the mystery is too strong. She clicks on her flashlight and heads into the woods.
(Just to look around. that's all. she's just going to look around.)
It looks like a normal little grove of trees to her. She walks all around it, searching with her flashlight. It's pretty, but not unusual.
Then a voice behind her says,
"I knew it."
Mulan whirls around. Aurora is ten feet away, wearing a lavender tank top and shiny purple pajama shorts. Her pale skin is luminous in the moonlight. How did Mulan not hear someone behind her? And Aurora, of all people?
"You knew what?" Mulan asks.
Aurora's eyes sparkle in the dark. "You couldn't resist the mystery of why I would actually go to the trouble of enforcing a rule."
Mulan shakes her head. "And why did you?"
Aurora walks closer. She is so close. She smells of vanilla and coffee and sunblock, and Mulan inhales deeply. Aurora twines her slender fingers in Mulan's hair.
"Because it would get you out here alone." Her breath is warm on Mulan's lips. "I told you that you'd break some rules."
Her hands are soft on Mulan's shoulders, sliding along her arm, tugging her hand. As Aurora tugs her through the curtain of trees and into the grove, Mulan wonders what else Aurora already knows about her, that she does not yet know about herself.
And then she happily lets Aurora lead her into the dark.