We back?...Yeah, we back.

Summer 2008

Phoebe Love is 15 years old, and is...honestly shocked at how much and how little has changed in her life. Friends of her parents tell her all the time, "Oh my you've gotten so big," "I've known you since you were this tall," "You're growing up aren't you kid?" Honestly, it doesn't feel like it. She's still the brooding but responsible studio musician type with a temper and style to boot. The straight edge ace who can rock hard and still get her straight A's. Life is still just another composition of classes, friends, blunders and triumphs to navigate…in retrospect that's what it's always been but now the work's been kicked up to eleven. She can see that musical barrier to the next level and wonders if she can ever break through it.

Her friends though, they've certainly had a bit of a change, they've practically stabbed her in the back. Oh it's nothing too dramatic of course, no one's had to call the police…yet. But during this time when she can see that ceiling she needs the ground to be firmer than ever. So of course this is the time her school friends choose to go goo-goo eyed over the high school boys. This kind of stuff has always been there, but they've sure cranked it up to eleven now and terrifyingly, against her will she might actually be doing the same.

High School it seems, was invented to drive each and every adolescent up the wall; the collision of major monolithic institutions and biological determinism with the fragile psyches of these sweaty, awkward teenagers being caught in the middle.

She doesn't know what it is, she can't quite put her finger on it. Perhaps it's rebellion, perhaps she's just growing up, maybe it's all that resentment over romantic bull that's had time to build up this past year, but there's a surly sensation as she sees Camp Whispering Rock come into view. Back on the same bus, to the same camp, with the same faces, same couples…Nils and Elka are still snogging in the back seat, because apparently even after five years neither of them have figured out how co-dependent relationships work.

Oh sure, Elka and Nils have been on and off again for as long as she can remember, but nowadays when their relationship is off it's a nuclear style, scorch and salt the Earth style breakup. When their relationship is on, she hears Elka moan from the backseat and she can feel her soul cringe like it's trying to swallow itself, well they're really on.

So it's not just her old classmates, everyone around her, wherever she goes seems to have lost their minds to Cupid's sudden ninja like attack on her age group. It's her own desperate, heel dug in act of defiance that sees her doing a total 180 from any of that nonsense. She's apparently the only one with her head on straight, and apparently that's all there is to Phoebe Love at age 15, wardrobe a shade darker this year and music a few decibels harder.

The bus pulls into Whispering rock like it has so many years before. Phoebe's taken this trip so many times she's even certain that the drivers are trained to pull in at the same angle and hit the breaks at a certain point along the parking lot arch.

From behind her she can her Elka quickly break off her lip lock with Nils and try to shout something after her. She ignores it like she ignores the bus driver's friendly tip of the hat to her. It hurts a little piece of her soul deep inside of her to be so flippant, but she's got to leave. There's something in her forcing her to run, run far away from this infection everyone's got and try to return to some saner plane of existence where two people can occupy the same space and not immediately start thinking about snogging the other's brains out.

So Phoebe leaves, she bolts from the bus faster than she's ever bolted before and makes straight for the main lodge. Everything else has stayed the same, the finely trimmed grass and the damp dirt paths that hitch a ride on her sneakers in clumps as she bolts up the road. Even the odd scent of fish in the air has remained the same. Camp hasn't changed, why should her interactions with anyone else?

She bursts into the lodge doors, ready to return to the one constant at all her time at Whispering Rock, the thing she's known longest. For crying out loud she's has teeth that aren't as old as her friendship with Quentin.

Yet, it's when she run through the double doors and takes two big steps that she comes to a cold stop, an uncomfortably familiar feeling swimming through her gut and an ache runs up and down her spine.

Quentin Hedgemouse is a strapping 15 years old, and in almost comical parody seems to have changed the most over the past year. Everyone tells her she's been growing like a weed and yet she can tell that, even though he's sitting down that Quentin has gained a good foot on her. Ok maybe that's hyperbole, but the bean pole dj she used to know has easily gotten a head taller. Instantly she regrets not lording her old height advantage over him while she had the chance.

He's still playing Mr. Too Cool, a mellow peace over his face as his head bobs, grooving out to the tune in his head. He's got that professional air about him, the one that just kind of comes with his type. He's even still rocking the scarf. That dumb knitted scarf that should've gone all the way out of fashion in 1979, but which hardly seems out of place wrapped around him. If it looked a little dorky and uncool last year it's like the style has done a total 180 since then. Her heart quickens a little, if anything Quentin might have changed more than anyone and yet somehow managed to stay exactly the same.

This isn't what grabs her attention though. What does grab her gaze is what's grabbed Quentin's arm, hanging onto him, practically sown to that striped sleeve are the long magenta locks of his greatest weakness. It's the one thing that turns her best friend from that cool as ice operator into some sort of bashful, hopelessly loopy goon, Kitty Bubai.

Instantly, she can feel her cool draining from her person like she's sprung a leak. She's seen and put up with a lot at this camp, but this…this scene before her. Kitty, every eyelash done in perfect style and Quentin still with that dorky unkempt hair, chilling by his turn table, hand in hand, giggling like…like…she can't put words to it. Rather she doesn't want to put words to it. Disgust rises from deep within her as Kitty's tittering reaches her ears. The one refuge she had has been overrun, her lifelines have all gone dark and now at long last she is completely in enemy territory.

"Hey! Phoebe!" Quentin shouts, now recognizing her presence in the mostly empty lounge. Kitty turns her gaze and gives her a little wave that barely registers in Phoebe's eyes. This one tears her up for some reason, and instantly that teenage driver angst kicks in. Oh this summer is going to suck hard.


"Like, she's obviously just going out with him now because he's so tall right? It's not like there's any other reason that Kitty, our Kitty Bubai would ever date exclusively unless she was working an angle right?" Phoebe asks from the other end of the campfire, eyes still locked onto the way to cutesy couple doing cutesy couple crap at the gangs 3rd annual midnight gathering.

"…Yeah, that's called physical attraction. It's usually how relationships begin," Lily says from beside her as she tries to inject a little common sense into Phoebe's little world of swirling teenage anger. Zonato looks near the center of the campfire where Raz is initiating Dogan into the circle, the kid sporting the tin foil hat finally old enough to join their little circle of tradition.

"Well if she doesn't stop nuzzling his neck like that I'm going to go over there and show them how relationships end," Phoebes says, almost hissing this last part, surprising even herself with the level of venom that's in her words.

"Mmm, catty," Lily returns without much edge or emotion to her voice as she files her nails in the golden glow of the fire.

There's a little part of her brain that tells her she's being ridiculous, that Lily is right, that she's blowing things out of proportion and that the best thing to do right now would be to be happy for her best friend, just back and off and let things live and let live.

Then there's the other part of her that wants to stuff Kitty into the batter baking vat that Cook Cruller keeps in the back of the kitchen and then use her pyrokinesis to fry the girl in the mixture until she's been cooked through. Maybe she can drop her in the deep fryer for good measure and give her a caramel glaze so she can be as saccarine as that dumb preppy girl act of hers.

The majority of the campers are facing away from the fire, watching the small erected podium where Raz is making Dogan raise his right hand and place the other one on his coveted copy of True Psychic Tales #17 "I'll See You In the Amygdala".

This, as it turns out, is a very good thing because the moment the final fiery thought jumps that last neuron into the conscious part of Phoebe's brain the small little campfire the society has created for itself flares into what most might consider bonfire sized proportions.

Lily nearly jumps back off their log, snapping Phoebe from her internal ranting as she quickly gives herself a mental gut punch, forcing herself to bring the fire back down to manageable levels.

"Whoa, Phoebe. Seriously..." Lily says quickly, looking around to make sure no one is looking before tentatively placing a comforting hand on her friends shoulder. "It's going to be ok."

"I didn't want to get mixed up in it. We were supposed to be different," Phoebe mumbles, her gaze still resting on the opposite log where Quentin and Kitty sit and nuzzle. Phoebe briefly ruminates on Lily's words, but it's hard not to let the whole thing sting when the person who would usually have the reigns in a situation like this seems not to have noticed a bit that she was having a flare up.

"Ok, this is getting a little too morose…even for me," Lily says forcing Phoebe to look away as she drags her up from the log. She takes her by the arm and directs her to walk back down the darkened path towards camp, at her side with each and every step.

"Look, you can't change how Quentin feels," Lily begins.

"Yeah, easy for you to say." Phoebe says. She can't believe it, she's pouting over a boy. No, she quickly corrects herself. Not a boy. She's upset with Quentin. That's all this is. She's not just upset over some boy and she's certainly not pouting. Nevertheless, the next part of rebuttal comes out without much further prompting from her brain. "Since you and Ras have been attached at the hip since 5th grade."

"Hey, I've been coming to this camp for my entire life." Lily reminds her. "You know just as much as I do that boys don't make life at Summer Camp. There's lots to do to keep your mind off of whatever nonsense they're mixed up in right now. Right?"

She elbows Phoebe here, obviously trying to get some kind of positive reaction from her. They're far enough away from the camp fire now, on the trail back to the cabins, so far that even the adolescent chatter is beginning to fade off into the distance. Already, the sight of Quentin with that Cheshire cat is beginning to fade. Yeah, of course, Lily knows what she's talking about.

"Absolutely," she tries putting as much conviction as she can muster into her tone as Lily visibly cheers in the moonlight upon seeing her friends improved attitude. "There's a ton that I can do at camp without Quentin."


Ok! So as it turns out there's not a lot Phoebe Love can do at camp without Quentin. Or at least there's not a lot she can do at camp without constantly being reminded of his continuing relationship with that painted…harlot, sure that was certainly one word she could go with.

Crafts, basketball, T.V, nature walks, bike rides, psychic training…wrestling training. It's safe to say that she's tried almost everything she can think of to take her mind off of things. Yet, even her drum set, the one thing she's usually stoked to get on every day, now that it rests right in the middle of the lodge has become little more than a drag on her whole day.

With conventional avenues shuttered and traditional activities in limbo Phoebe makes the difficult decision to try and take up an activity she swore she'd never try again. Fishing. Sitting on the water is nice and all, shoes and socks off, letting that cool breeze wash over you as you take up a shady spot and just let the whole world roll on by but sitting there for hours on end…well that's really more of Quentin's thing than it is hers.

"Hey come on babe over here. This is the fishing spot I always used."

Ugh, of freaking course he would be here. Why didn't this come across her mind? Of course Quentin would drag his new gf out to waste the day away, it's what he loved best…and of course he'd be calling her babe. Oh gag.

"Do we have to? Fishing's just kind of dumb."

That ungrateful little brat, who even acts like that? Which was good…no, wait, why should she care? The voices continued lilting over and Phoebe realizes that nothing but a series of short shrubs and hedges are now separating her from the lovely new couple on the other side. Six thin feet of fauna keeping her and her reeled fishing pole concealed while she can hear just about everything from their side. It's like she's a cop sitting behind a one way mirror just waiting for perps who she already knows are guilty incriminate themselves further…ok that one just sounded mildly dirty.

"Yeah, yeah I know you said that already. Just come on babe, give me your hands, I'll show you how to do it," Quentin's voice chuckled in response to her histrionics.

"Yeah I bet he will," Phoebe mumbled under her breath, the mildest of innuendos being her way of dulling the emotional brunt of this whole affair.

"See after we make sure the line is in order, and we cast it a few times we can go ahead and attach the bait."

Even from behind the bushes Phoebe could see this one coming from a mile away. Sure enough in a matter of seconds, as soon as she heard Quentin pop the lid off of that white styrofoam container and Kitty sees a tubular pinkish purple movement a female shriek that could shatter glass pierces the valley, most certainly scaring off any fish in the vicinity.

Quentin just laughs, because of course he does, he must've been waiting for just such a reaction. She can't see it, but from her blabbering she can picture it. Kitty, hands stretched out in front of her, palms out, scooting away and making retching noises and she tries to slip behind Quentin, and clutch his scarf, begging him to get the worms away from her. Quentin for his part just keeps laughing, as always in that simple "we'll all float on," type mindset of his. Oh boy…now she really is going to be sick.

There's the whizz of the line and reel, the breaking swish as the hook flies through the air and the gentle sound of line hitting water, before natures noises overtake them once again.

"So what now?" she hears Kitty ask. Impatient little brat piping up without even so much as a thank you…not like she'd been any different when it was her in that situation five years ago when Quentin had taught her how to fish. As a friend of course, not that should make any difference, let alone make her feel like she's being eaten alive from the inside out.

"Now we wait, could be a while. Sometimes they don't bite for hours."

"Mmm so you're saying you took me out to your secret little spot by the lake to be alone for a few hours."

That's it, that's all she can take. With one silent motion she grabs her pole and shoes and rolls off to the side, back into the dense thicket of trees. There's a red hot anger welling up in her chest, a roiling emotion she can't explain. That's a lie, of course she can explain it, she knows what it is, she knows exactly why this pairing makes her feel the way she does. She's not going to acknowledge it though. She can't, she's above it all. She can't and she won't.

So without so much as a look back over her shoulder, she leaves her best friend and his new girlfriend there, giggling away like maniacs as she returns to…do whatever the heck angry loveless teenagers with time on their hands do.


"Come on Phoebe. Time to get going already," Lili's voice breaks her from what was a perfectly good session of pretending to be asleep. It's been about a week since the little fishing excursion and while it feels like she's being repeatedly stabbed in the soul whenever she thinks about it, the whole incident really did push her to take more naps. It's been great, now she can get angrier for longer periods every day!

"No, I like it up here," she snaps back, pushing herself further beneath the covers. It's a Saturday anyways, they don't have training today, they don't have to do anything today. And doing nothing sounds absolutely preferable to dragging herself out of bed, making herself look presentable, moping through the public square only to witness Quentin and Kitty making kissy faces at each other over a shared two scoop rocky road ice cream cone, (she knows its going to be rocky road because that was Quentins favorite) which in turn would cause her to turn around and come back to the cabin to do exactly what she'd planned to do all along.

"Phoebe, you can't just spend all day in bed," Lili says, in what sounds distinctly like a challenge.

"Watch me." Let it never be said that Phoebe Love backed down in the face of a little competition.

"It's not healthy Phoebe," Lili replies, a little sickened herself by just how much like her mom she sounds. The other girls in the cabin, Milka and Elka snicker just a little at the fact it's Lili of all people who has to play caretaker to the brooding one. It just figures doesn't it? Her first summer of her high school years and she's already turned into a brooding, shut-in who hates social interaction, sunshine and most probably the laughter of children. "You've got to come down and eat sometime."

There's a dull rumbling and shuffling as Phoebe, without even looking crams her hand into her duffel bag and mindlessly pulls out a handful of chocolate almond protein bars, displaying them as high as her tired arms will reach before stuffing them back in the bag.

"You're going to get bored up there Phoebe."

"You call it bored, I call it zen."

"Phoebe!"

"No!"

"Come down here right now!"

"You can't make me!"

"Quentin and Kitty are breaking up!"

It takes the shrill panicked scream of this newcomer to bring a halt to the proceedings. Lili turns her head slowly and Phoebe actually emerges from the blankets and leans off the edge of the second bunk as they both try to process this new information.

The speaker, on the bottom bunk by the door, none other than Elka Doom has her hands over her mouth, eyes looking wide like she just sent out a set of nuclear launch codes in a mass email. Now normally this would be a bit of unfounded unbridled gossip, but then again Elka does come from a long line of precognizant psychics, and judging from the way she's reacting to her own outburst this statement might have more weight than all the other times she's stated that she and Nils "are through for real this time."

"W-what?" Phoebe's the first one to speak up, she knows it's not polite or really even all that nice to hope that this is true, but judging by the way her stomach did a double summersault when she heard it .03 seconds after the words came from Elka's mouth it's more like a reflex than a conscious thought.

All eyes are on Elka now, wide and ready to hold on tight to whatever next comes out of her mouth. Elka, for her part is looking around nervously, trying to figure out what just possessed her to say that.

"But you can't tell anyone!" she says sternly, as she gathers her bearings, making Lili's 'motherly tone' seem like a 7th graders first attempt at babysitting. "The instant someone else outside the precognitor gains this insight the chances of this future coming to fruition immediately go down. It decreases exponentially for every additional insider with whom the information is shared, just how it works statistically."

Here she looks up at Phoebe, still leaning off the bed looking like a deer in the headlights. Elka locks eyes with her, and says in a voice more serious than any Phoebe has ever heard her use before. "I'm not going to say when or where, but they break up. Don't act on this information and do your best not to let it influence your day to day. Always in motion is the future."

With this she stands up, quite properly, trying to regain some of that poise she thinks everyone sees her with and turns for the door.

"D-did you just quote Star Wars?" Lili asks after a long pause.

"I have hobbies," Elka looks back over her shoulder and shrugs with a smug smile on her face. Her eyes turn to Phoebe one last time. "But that doesn't mean you can just hang out on the top bunk all day alright? The Phoebe Love I know would let something as petty as this come between her and her DJ."

With that she's gone. As annoying and as much of a social vampire as she can be, to Phoebe Elka Doom is at her most annoying when she's right…Ok, so maybe she really did plan to mope around in the cabin all day…and until camp was over. Still, she was right. Eventually, she'd pull herself back up, eventually she'd want her best friend back; and because she was the way she was she'd get him back, platonically or…well that was a different thought entirely. Lingering resentment, best pushed to the back of her brain to stew a bit longer.


1, 2, 3, 4, she kept time in her head the monogrammed sticks tapping away with a old big band standard. The sticks begin to fly as the beat begins to build, that pent up energy surging inside her, frustrations of the summer begin to burst through the cracks in her drummers façade as she moves faster and faster, still keeping time in her head.

Ok so it was more than a little mean taking up this much satisfaction in knowing that a happy couple was going to break up this summer, even if it hadn't been one that she was particularly rooting for. It was also an emotion she could only call sobering, to know that this whole incident had provoked such a reaction from her. Not that many people could truly say they were above it all in the end could they?

"Hackey sack, man you're really going hard there aren't you?"

The speed and rhythm begin winding down as Phoebe brings her head up…and up, and up. There beside her was her colossus of a friend, at the peak of his growth spurt smiling down at her. Oh yeah, Kitty had totally just dated him because he was tall now.

"Hackey sack?" she asks incredulously, smile creeping onto her face. "Quentin I'm pretty sure even the most blitzed out of his mind hippy never used that one as a compliment. You've been hanging out in Millas mind to much."

"It's a levitators thing I guess. I can make up slang to you know," Quentin grins back at her, and for a second it feels like the spark between them never left. From the back he hauls out his old DJ turn style with one hand and sets it down next to her as delicately as he can. "I can be an innovator sometimes. I do have a little linguistic talent I've been working on these past few months."

"Hey forgive me for not noticing with the way you've been running around with the bratty katty doing…" she lets the sentence run off as she begins tapping the beat to the Grease song Summer Nights on the bass drum. Quentin just grins and shakes his head, getting into the rhythm of the classic.

"Oh come on, I always make time for my mates," he smiles, nodding along with the beat, hangs beginning to move. "And yeah I've been a little busy, but I'll always make time for the band. You know that right?"

No, no she doesn't apparently. Perhaps she's ashamed to admit that, but she's had enough of psychoanalyzing herself for one summer. Right now she's back, she's jamming out and doing what she loves. It's here in this moment that she realizes that there's nothing in the world that she'd rather be doing than this. Time's moving on, they're both in high school now, eveyone's getting romantically involved, heck it's Mikhails last year here at Whispering Rock, he's going off to college next year. College! Can you even begin to fathom that? It's there she decides, it doesn't matter whether or not Quentin and Kitty do break up, no matter what happens she's going to make this her friendships work even if they relocate to the moon.

The beat dips and flows, and with it the camps two resident musicians grove on just like they've done so many summers before, and the sun dips beneath the horizon before they know it. Finally, Phoebe interrupts her groove just long enough to pipe up.

"Quentin?"

"Yeah dude?"

"You're my best friend, you know that right?"

"Of course man."

And it's all that needs to be said. 3 weeks later, Quentin and Kitty break up, apparently it had something to do with band responsibilities.