Four hours of missing sleep was bearable, if irritating. I leaned heavily on my fellow counselors' perkiness to corral our charges to the buses. I was sharing a tent with Lexi, one of the girls that I had trained with in the Leadership program. While I had succeeded in securing a position as Leader, Lexi had more or less scraped by the training and only barely qualified for one of the Corporal positions. Still, she was still better than the average Dauntless soldier and knew how to deal with children. That was what mattered for today's "mission."
The beach trip was back on and I began the slow process of counting down the miles as we headed towards the lakefront. The nearest gate in the wall wasn't tremendously close to the campsite we left from, and we ended up needing to backtrack once we passed through into Amity's territory to get to the lake itself.
It took precisely thirty rounds of beer on the wall before I announced to my bus that "drinking is only for full Faction members" and that included singing about it. The kids stared back at me with varying levels of terror and irritation, depending on their age and whether they knew I was that Leader who stabbed the old Erudite head in the hand two years ago. I wished for just a moment that my reputation was a bit more prolific in the younger spheres of influence.
The singing switched to cheerful tunes about bullfrogs on logs and baby sharks, which was bearable. I suspected that I would have them stuck in my head until the day that I died, but such was life. Richards wasn't on the trip - he had been one of the essential officers sent back to the city - but I could hear his voice in my head reminding me that everything we were doing was to give these kids a good time.
Lexi didn't have the stones to stand up to my gag order on the "beer on the wall" song. I knew Richards would have, though. To make up for it, I joined in on a few rounds of songs that I knew from my time as a dependent.
Blissfully, we arrived at the beach and the kids piled out of the buses to scream and run towards the rough, sandy shoreline. I joined the cacophony of whistles to bring them somewhat to order. The call for a headcount went out, and then the kids were free to scamper into the water.
I hauled my gear bag to a wide rock that had a decent enough vantage point on the beach and the water. My carefully packed spare clothes and ammo bandolier had been left at home, replaced by a first aid kit, sunscreen, a towel, and a cap that I'd picked up from one of the surplus shops in the Pit. Sticking the cap on my head, I settled on the rock to nervously watch my kids.
There were ten in mine and Lexi's tent, all between eleven and thirteen years old. They were terrifying in how truly fearless they were. They dove under the lake's waves and swam farther out from the shore than I would have ever considered when I was that young and small.
I spotted the twin girls from our tent cajoling another pair of kids into some kind of fight where one sat on another's shoulders. The pairs scrabbled to knock each other into the water below. I watched carefully for a while until I was satisfied that they were deep enough out that no one was going to hit their head on the bottom of the lake when they tumbled down. It wasn't our job to interfere unless someone was going to get seriously hurt. If I had grown up in Dauntless like my mother, I wondered if I would have been like these kids, scraped and bruised but gleeful all the same.
My cap was lifted off my head, interrupting my thought process. Looking up, I scowled as Eric dropped it back onto my face. "Thanks," I grumbled. Fixing it back on my head, I watched as he moved my gear bag to sit down next to me.
"So who do you have in your tent?" he asked. I pointed out the few that I could definitely tell were actually mine and gestured vaguely towards the deeper water. Eric chuckled when I couldn't remember all their names. "I think you mixed up Kathleen and Katie because I know Kathleen is in Travis' tent, but I guess you can get away with it since this is your first time really interacting with any of them."
I nodded and pulled my knees to my chest so that I could rest my chin there. My back was starting to hate me for not finding a better outcropping with a back rest. "There's too many of them," I admitted. "I mean, it makes sense since it's the whole dang Faction worth of kids, but there's still just a lot of faces to put to names."
Eric laughed and shook his head. "Did you seriously just say 'dang?'"
I shoved him with my hand, and he leaned back comfortably onto his elbows. Even as he lounged, I could see through the sides of his sunglasses that his attention was firmly on the kids down in the water. "Richards told me we weren't supposed to be swearing in front of the kids," I explained, exasperated.
"It's still so dang funny," Eric said, his shoulders moving slightly as he continued to laugh silently.
He sat with me for a good twenty minutes, helping me with my confusion between Katie and Kathleen when the hourly call for a headcount went up. He then left me to my lifeguarding to go set up the massive charcoal grills for lunch, which suited me just fine. I was done with digging out fire pits for this week.
I kicked off my shoes and changed my perch to a different rock so that I could stick my feet in the water. The summer sun was scorching even with my cap keeping it off my head. I was tempted to join some of the other counselors in the water with their kids, but the promise of food coming soon was greater. My attention was torn between the kids out in the deep section of water and the grills; as soon as the first round of burgers were finished, I made the decision to whistle everyone in so that we could eat without worrying about someone drowning.
Naturally, we did another headcount. I reunited with Lexi, having gathered up four out of our ten kids. "You got six?" I asked her. She frowned and shook her head. Blanching, I tried scanning the shore for someone not grouped with their tent-mates. All around were clusters of hungry kids and tired counselors.
I left the four girls that I'd found with Lexi and told her to wait before giving the thumbs down signal that we weren't all set. "It's Tomman who's missing. Check with Charles' tent. He has friends there," she reminded me. I focused on breathing normally, trying to keep my rising stress from overruling my better judgement. I spotted thumbs up signs all around from my fellow counselors.
Charles, or Chuck as I knew him, was one of our older lieutenants who spent most of his time working with Candor to address rehabilitation methods for criminal actions. He was a good guy who had his head on straight. I felt much less calm and collected running over to where his campers were. They ignore me eyeing the dully glowing charcoal under the grills with interest.
"Chuck, have you seen Tomman? Little guy, blonde - I think?" I asked. I hoped that my voice wasn't actually shaking. My nerves felt fried.
"Uhh," Chuck grunted while he scanned his kids again. "Nah, no I haven't. I don't think he was in the water though, if that helps? All my guys were in the shallows with me playing What Time is It Sarge." I barely listened to the second half whatever he said, already storming off to the next group of campers.
Tomman was nowhere to be found. I gathered the counselors behind the grills, trying to figure out who had seen him last. It appeared that other than the prior headcount, Tomman had vanished from under our collective noses. Also missing was one of the younger girls that I actually recognized from earlier in the week. She had been following around other groups of kids, the kind of hanger-on who didn't have a lot of friends herself and clung to the hope that if she just stuck with someone long enough, they would keep her around. She'd last been seen heading towards the busses, or so the rumor was.
I relied on Chuck and the other old-guard types to retain control of the situation. Lexi I left to calm down the rest of our campers while I headed off to the buses to try and find Tomman and Christine. My hunger forgotten, I focused on ignoring the churning nerves that were now taking up residence in my stomach.
"Thanks for coming, but you don't have to babysit me," I called over my shoulder. I recognized the shadow that started following me the moment I stepped away from the grills. Eric smoothly moved into step next to me, his usual cocky grin absent.
He was worried, I realized as I took in his expression from the corner of my eye. "Don't take it personally, Tris," he said flatly. "You're not the only one who lost a camper. Christine's in my tent."
I didn't reply and matched his increasing pace. The buses were all locked up and the windows were too high up to be climbed by just two kids. Tomman was short; I had to help him up onto his bunk every time he needed to get up there.
Still, Eric and I were of one mind and we didn't leave the makeshift parking area until we'd unlocked, gone in, and checked under every single seat for the two missing kids. My frustration kicked up another notch when that turned up nothing.
"Where would they have gone from here?" I wondered, trying to think like a Dauntless dependent. The lakeshore was the most interesting thing, I would have thought. Beyond that, this region of Amity consisted of fallow fields out of rotation and some low brush.
Eric put a hand over his eyes and squinted, no longer wearing his sunglasses. "Well they have to be somewhere no further than an hour's walk since they were both at last headcount. And they know we do them every hour. If I had to bet, they think they have another twenty minutes and are gonna be back around then," he mused. Still, I wasn't convinced.
"What if we're looking in the wrong direction?" I wondered aloud. Empty fields of scrub grass weren't nearly as interesting to explore as the rocky lakeshore that I was now scanning. The area that we'd been sitting around was the sandiest part, selected intentionally and partially maintained by Amity workers. The rest of the lake's edge was like the outcropping I'd perched on - large boulders with gullies and tide pools and all sorts of interesting, impossible to spot hiding holes. To top it off, the closest sections were invisible from the beach or even the parking lot from the large swath of brush surrounding the area.
I started off towards the lake once again, spotting a much less travelled but still visible trail that lead in the opposite direction of the nicely groomed beach. Eric pointed out a few scuff marks in the ground as we went along, noting how small they were and as fresh as the footprints we ourselves were leaving.
"We're on the right trail, I think," I said between sharp inhales of breath.
"Of course we are. That's what I was saying," he retorted. The forced march was tiring, but I shuddered to think how awful I would feel to not be hurrying and discover one of the kids had slipped and hurt themself on a boulder. I might not care tremendously for how reckless and excitable these dependents were, but I also didn't want them to get hurt.
Eric went ahead of me as the trail narrowed and the shrubs around us grew closer, moving branches aside or outright breaking them to clear the way for our much larger adult bodies. Finally, we emerged on shore, standing atop a boulder taller than both of us combined. To the left was a sharp decline. "That's too steep for either of them to go down without getting hurt," I reasoned, earning a nod of agreement from Eric. That left our path to be to the right, even further from the actual beach.
Before moving from our vantage point, I scanned ahead and tried to spot any indication of the two dependents. Eric blew on his whistle, killing my eardrums in the process.
"A warning would have been nice," I complained, rubbing at my ears. He ignored me, which was fine. Once we found the kids, we would no longer be at one another's throats. Feelings were less important right now.
Still, my pride demanded that I ignore his offered arm and scoot off of the boulder under my own power. Thankfully high tide had been hours before, but the rocks along the shoreline in this little inlet were slick with mossy growth that retained the wetness all the same. My hands were grimy from clinging to the stones around me as we made our way further along the shore. We no longer had a path of scuffed dirt to follow, but I kept my eyes peeled for scrapes in the moss or a damp handprint like the ones I was leaving on the sides of the stones that hadn't yet been covered in growth.
The sun was too powerful, I decided. Sweat dripped down my neck and any moisture on the smooth rock face was quickly dried. Eric kept at my back, silent. I held up my whistle, giving him a look over my shoulder, and then blew three hard squawks.
"Ow," he deadpanned. I rolled my eyes, preparing a comeback that I never would say as I finally heard young voices.
"Oh shit." That was more than likely Tomman and not Christine, but with the rushing of waves only feet away, it was hard to say for certain. I scrambled up the closest, tallest boulder and searched the vicinity with newfound vigor.
Calling out the kids names, I didn't bother to keep my tone from drifting into the "angry" territory. I was angry. These dependents knew better. The rules were simple; stick close enough to the counselors so that you can show up for headcount. A blonde head bobbed up from a tide pool, vanishing as soon as wide eyes met my squinting, furious ones.
I snapped my fingers to catch Eric's attention and pointed in the direction of the pool. He would be able to get there quicker as there was no direct route from the boulder I'd jumped up on. He gave me a thumbs up and started off. "You two are coming back to camp, now," I snarled, certain now that they could hear me.
"Christine's ankle hurts," Tomman whined, risking poking his head out again. I couldn't see from my perch, but it sounded like he could have been crying. Eric got to the tide pool and his sudden jerk to a stop made me pause before I shouted at the kids again.
Eric's shoulders lifted and fell - a sigh? He reached down and pulled Tomman up, pausing to wipe under the boy's eyes. They exchanged quick, quiet words before Tomman darted off towards me. He was as surefooted as a goat, scampering up the slippery, craggy rocks far too fast. No wonder Christine had gotten hurt trying to keep up with him. She was younger and not very graceful even on flat ground.
There was a bit of dirt on his face now and his eyes were red, but there were no tears. I swallowed my sour expression in favor of not making the boy cry again. The lesson had been learned - don't run off and get hurt. That wasn't to say that I wouldn't be keeping a close eye on him for the rest of the weekend, but I was fairly confident that showing a bit of understanding would be more effective than undue sternness. Damn Richards rubbing off on me.
Eric slid down and out of my view. I counted my heartbeats, hating how fast they were going. Tomman edged onto my boulder and wormed his hand into mine. "If you wanted to look at tide pools, you should have asked. I'm sure one of the counselors would have been happy to bring you," I said.
Perhaps it wasn't that reassuring, but I could have been a lot more upset. To soften the blow, I added, "I'll have Lexi ask if anyone else wants to come after lunch. There are burgers and barbecued chicken sandwiches back at the beach."
Tomman nodded stoically and his mouth turned up at the mention of food. Eric popped back into view, now touting a giggling Christine atop his shoulders. He held on to her knees to keep her steady, one foot missing a shoe and wrapped up in a bit of elastic bandage. I was grateful once again of all the random miscellany that Eric carried around in his pockets; I hadn't even thought of grabbing a first aid kit.
I turned and looked at Tomman, nudging him with my elbow. "Come on, kid. Let's go eat before I turn into dust from hunger," I teased.