Everyone at the campfire looked up in alarm, to see three girls coming down the walkway towards them. One was stomping furiously in the lead, another pacing beside her – trying to talk her down, Danielle thought – and a third hung back, looking annoyed and reluctant to involve herself in whatever-this-was. The SHAD Party girls stood up, holding their staves the way they would before gym class; relaxed, held in one hand, but with that hand in the right position to move to a proper grip for practice forms as soon as the teacher called them to order. Danielle saw the second girl take notice of them with a small gasp.

  The second of the approaching girls started whispering even more fiercely in the angry girl’s ear, and got a grip on her arm to make her slow down. She finally stopped so suddenly the third girl almost ran into them, and there was a whispered conference. All three of them had both swords and staves, like Akari, and they had on both pieces of the denim uniform. Danielle looked them over more carefully as they talked. They had a few burrs and a stray leaf or two on their clothes; they must have come out of the woods. What could they want?

  The whispering girl had at least managed to calm down the angry girl, and the trio approached a bit more sedately. Danielle glanced aside at her own group. Heather looked worried, her knuckles white around her staff. Sadie had brought her sword along, like Akari, and was holding her staff in her left hand, leaving her right free to draw if necessary. Akari had her staff in her right hand, but she was left handed, so it was the same principle. Neither of them looked as worried as Heather, though. Cassy, by contrast, looked downright terrified.

  The approaching trio stopped within conversational distance, but outside of staff’s reach, and the angry girl immediately spoke up. “Where have you been?!” she demanded.

  “Have we met?” Sadie asked with a sort of exasperated confusion.

  “What? Not you – her! Cassy! You went out for firewood ages ago! We thought you got murdered or something! Why didn’t you come back?”

  “Because I didn’t want to get murdered,” Cassy said, barely loud enough to be heard.

  “What?” The whisperer looked startled and taken aback.

  “You all kicked me out, and I know you, um, asked me to chop some wood,” Cassy began. (Danielle could practically hear the air-quotes on “asked,” though Cassy didn’t actually raise her hands.) “But I got a pretty strong impression that you didn’t want wood, you just wanted me out – or maybe just gone. So I decided to give you all as long as possible to cool down, before I had to come back in again,” Cassy continued. “And these girls said I could hang out and study that Ranger’s Guide book with them, so I’ve been here, reading about snares and traps and fishing methods and stuff. I mean, after I chopped that wood,” she finished, gesturing to the remaining pile. Although she’d added several of the smallish logs from the pile to the campfire, there were still a couple campfires worth of logs there.

  “Why is it all puny?” asked the annoyed girl in back.

  “Because I was cutting up fallen branches, not chopping down whole trees with this tiny little hatchet,” Cassy said. “It worked fine for this fire! What do you care anyway? I know you didn’t chase me away just because you thought I was the best woodcutter or whatever.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course we need wood,” the annoyed girl said.

  “Adrian, aren’t you listening? You didn’t ‘convince her to contribute,’ you scared her off,” the whisperer said, looking faintly guilty.

  “Contribute, hah. None of you offered to do anything,” Cassy said bitterly. “You just talked up how there were killers everywhere and then ordered me to do chores for you and kicked me out without even letting me get any of my real weapons!”

  “What? I did n- I mean, that’s not what – look, we just needed some time to talk, all right?!” the annoyed girl (Adrian apparently) exclaimed. The whispering girl, however, was starting to look downright pale, and the angry girl seemed thoroughly taken aback.

  “These are your roommates, then?” Sadie asked Cassy, rather unnecessarily in Danielle’s estimation.

  “Yep, these are them,” Cassy said unenthusiastically.

  “Listen, we didn’t mean it to come across that way,” the angry girl said. “I didn’t even think about what it might – I mean, seriously, we were just telling you the news, not making threats. How could you even imagine we would want to kill you?? It’s like Adrian said, we just needed some space to talk. We were worried sick when you didn’t come back!”

  “You didn’t look worried, storming down the sidewalk at us,” Sadie said. “You totally looked like you wanted to hurt someone.”

  “I – well, that’s just because I was worried!” the other girl exclaimed.

  The whispering girl sighed. “Let’s start over, shall we? Hi, I’m Candice, and my friends here are Bethany and Adrian. Together we’re The ABCs – it’s basically just a System club from school, you know how it is, but it’s a little bit useful out here. Beth was just upset because we were so worried about Cassy here not coming back, and we kind of hunted all over the woods for her, and then we got almost all the way home and here she is, so now that we know she’s safe, well. You know how it goes when you’re relived someone’s OK but mad that they made you worry, right?”

  “Hi Candice, I’m Danielle, and my friends are Sadie, Heather, and Akari. We named our system org from our initials: S, H, A, D makes the SHAD Party. We’re on the bottom floor of building six, like you.”

  “There’s no E,” Adrian said. “You need an E to make it sound like that.”

  “It’s our org, we can pronounce the name however we want,” Sadie replied aggressively. “We say it’s a long A, so it’s a long A.”

  “But that’s not how you spell shade,” Adrian began.

  “Adrian, let them pronounce their club name how they want. We have so many, much bigger things to worry about,” Candice said. “Like how all our snares were just gone?”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” Danielle said. “My snare got blown out of place yesterday, but it didn’t just disappear!”

  “Do you think someone took them?” Heather asked, still looking very concerned.

  “Probably,” Candice said darkly. “I don’t know how they expect this many people to find food around here with just traps and snares. Uh, if you don’t mind my asking, um, what’s in the pot?”

  “My snare got a rabbit yesterday,” Akari said. “But we all hiked a whole hour away before we set them. It seems like too many people are trying to set their snares right here next to the buildings, and yesterday this area was real noisy, too.”

  “Oh. That’s a long way,” Adrian said. “I can’t believe you went so far just to tie your snares.”

  “That was smart, though,” Candice said.

  “How is it smart to have to walk a whole hour to just maybe get your food?” Adrian asked.

  “Because,” Candice said patiently, “They actually got food out of it. And they didn’t have to fight with anyone else over the spot, since they were so far out; and like they said, it was noisy close to the buildings. It might have scared away whatever we’re all trying to catch. An hour away, nobody was scaring everything.”

  “We still only got one rabbit with four traps,” Sadie said. “We’ll have to set more of them. The books talk about having whole trap lines, because not every trap will ever catch something every single day.”

  “Oh no,” Adrian moaned. “Don’t tell me the books are actually useful. I don’t want to have to be Sent into the wilderness and still have homework!”

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  Everyone laughed at that, and some of the tension between the two groups melted away. “We actually all switched back to our Academy Student careers for a while to work on the definitely-not-homework,” Danielle said. “We kind of overdid the walking yesterday, so we’re a bit sore, but with dinner in the pot, we figured we could afford to let Sunday stay a rest day.”

  “Speaking of which, though, we should probably do those stretches I’ve been talking about, and then get on with the cooking,” Akari said. “And now that Cassy and you all have cleared up the misunderstanding, she can go back to the room for her own canteen and things, right?”

  “Yes, of course,” Bethany said. “We have our own dinner to make. Or eat, anyway.”

  “We for-real need that firewood, or we’ll be trying to chew cold dry hardtack,” Adrian said.

  “About the pot,” Candice said cautiously. “Do you think maybe, when you’re done with it for the night, we could use it? We’ll give it back, I promise. Clean, even!”

  “Oh, right, a lot of people probably didn’t manage to get a pot all the way here,” Danielle said in a tone of realization. “We were lucky to find those camp cookware sets, low quality as they are; and they didn’t fit in the satchels at all – we put them in the bottom of the backpacks, remember? And then there was the hill.”

  “You really got that from a necessities store?” Bethany asked. “Wow, I don’t think ours had anything like that at all.”

  “It had some glass bowls that were pretty big, but they didn’t fit in my school bag very well, and I didn’t trust myself to get it through a two mile hike without breaking it,” Candice said.

  “I kind of meant the backpacks, too,” Bethany clarified. “Ours had purses, and makeup bags, and reusable shopping bags – I got a handful of those – but I don’t think there were backpacks.”

  “Tell you what,” Danielle said. “If you mostly just want some hot water to soften your hardtack in, why don’t you get the hardtack and pemmican, and join us; we’ll be taking our rabbit bits out to toast, and we can heat the water we boiled it in, and you can crumble in a little of the hardtack and make gravy to soften the rest instead of just plain water. No fuss, no waste, and we can all hang out and relax together.”

  “That sounds amazing,” Candice said.

  “I don’t know about amazing, but it probably beats plain water,” Bethany agreed.

  “I’ve never had rabbit gravy before,” Adrian said. “Do you think it’ll be good?”

  “Who knows?” Akari asked rhetorically. “I guess you get to find out for us all.”

  “The Ranger’s Guide says you can make a stew with the hardtack and pemmican,” Cassy suggested. “Maybe instead of gravy, we can take the rabbit-water and all put in half a hardtack cracker, or whatever it’s called, and some of the pemmican, and see how that goes?”

  “That could be a good option, too.” Candice said. “Let’s go get our contributions, anyway, and get back here before they change their minds!”

  Everyone laughed again, and the ABCs moved off. Cassy turned back to the SHAD girls just long enough to whisper “Thank you,” before following them back to the building.

  Akari got busy putting the rabbit quarters on skewers and passing them around. Soon everyone from their room was holding part of a rabbit over the fire to toast.

  “You know, it just occurred to me we could have just gotten another pot for them,” Heather said. “We have three.”

  “Yeah, but do you want to give it away?” Danielle asked. “We just met them, and Cassy kept saying they resented her for having more money before we got Sent, so I figured it was better not to rub their noses in our relative wealth any more than strictly necessary right now.”

  “See, it’s like I said this morning,” Sadie said. “Danielle is sent-rich.”

  “So are you, when it comes to stuff like having a pot,” Danielle said.

  “Because of your ideas, though,” Sadie said. “You are a generous sent-rich person!”

  Danielle snerked. “OK, you’re hilarious, but seriously – not in front of the ABCs.”

  Heather turned her skewer. “This is going to be annoying to eat,” she said. “All those little bones.”

  “Not as bad as fish with bones in,” Akari said. “And we’ll probably have to eat that too, pretty soon. We’ll just have to get used to dealing with it.”

  Danielle turned her own skewer, but the meat slid back around to its original position. She sighed, and let it – it was hard enough to keep it from sliding back toward her hand. She found herself staring into the fire again, thinking of all the things they were going to have to get used to. The windowless rooms, gutting wild game, carrying weapons at all times. It was only the third day – the second, even, if she didn’t count Decision Day – and already school and church and her family and everything Inside were starting to feel infinitely distant from the reality in front of her. A week ago, she hadn’t even imagined that people her age could be Sent; now she was in a Sent base camp, trying to decide if it was worth it to try and fish with ordinary twine instead of fishing line, or if it was better used for snares.

  The other four girls came back with the mugs from their footlockers – they were even the same four-color set as the ones in the SHAD girls’ room; one sky blue, one burnt orange, one forest green, and one brick red. The ABC girls turned out to have the red, green, and blue mugs, and Cassy the orange one. Danielle doubted they’d had any way to know what colors they were getting when they picked their footlockers, but it seemed strangely fitting to their room dynamics, somehow.

  It turned out they’d had a look at the book while they were back in their room, and decided to go with the stew plan, so they each added half a serving of pemmican and hardtack to the pot, reserving the other half in case something went horribly wrong with the stew. The spices in the pemmican dominated the scent coming off the pot, but the rabbit pieces were starting to sizzle and put off their own scent. Danielle drank her water faster, trying to silence her gurgling stomach, and remind herself that there was no point in pulling the meat off the skewer before it was properly browned. It would be done soon enough!

  Akari handed her skewer off to Danielle a few minutes later, and took the books inside so they wouldn’t risk getting rabbit grease or other foodstuffs on them. She came back with her camping mess kit’s metal plate, and a tube of crackers from the scavenged food. Sadie pulled her own plate out of her bag, and then the skewers got passed around again so that Danielle and Heather could go put away their notebooks and get their own plates. Even then, it was at least fifteen minutes after everyone was back before Candice declared the stew done, and everyone suddenly decided the rabbit pieces were brown enough.

  The two rooms ate their respective meals quickly and without much discussion. Everyone was too focused on the food to talk. Afterward, the ABC girls pronounced the stew “not bad,” and the SHAD girls admitted that rabbit was “gamey, but what would we expect?” and Akari and Bethany took the bones further into the woods to bury. They got to talking about snares, and possible trap designs from the Ranger’s Guide, and the others joined the discussion when they got back. It was an altogether different discussion than any Danielle had heard around the cafeteria tables at school, but for all it was much more serious, there was an increasingly familiar sense of casual comradery about it.

  After a while, Akari even managed to convince all seven of them to get up and join her in some stretches and light isometric type exercises. Danielle managed to suppress her laugh at how Akari played off of the presence of the girls from the other room to convince even Sadie to join in, though it was a near thing, and Sadie’s glare told her that both the manipulation and her amusement had been noticed.

  The sun was still up after that, even though it was just past seven pm. Nobody seemed to really want to head back to their rooms yet, so they all sat back down around the slowly dying fire and turned the discussion to Skills. The ABCs were as cagey as the SHAD girls about what Skills they actually had, but everyone was fine with talking about what Skills they wanted, or had heard of at the field outside the gates on Decision Day, or hadn’t heard of but hoped might exist.

  Danielle was about ready to call it all a good, calm day, exactly as they hoped in spite of a few hiccups, when the sound of shouting interrupted the conversation. She couldn’t make out the words at first, but whoever was shouting seemed to be out on the road between the odd-numbered buildings. The voice started moving closer, calling out at intervals as it came, until whoever-it-was came into the area between building five and six and the words became clear.

  “Are there any Healers around? This is Ranger Juliette, and I need one or more Healers. You will be compensated!”

  Danielle and her roommates immediately looked at Heather. Heather looked scared.

  “Are you going to - ?” Akari asked, not finishing her sentence as Heather shook her head.

  “What if it’s a trick?” she asked. “The Rangers aren’t supposed to be patrolling the town, the camp, whatever it is. They said they wouldn’t be back after yesterday, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Akari frowned.

  The person who came around the end of the building was too old to be one of the Sent, however, and she was dressed in a brown Ranger’s uniform. She saw them from down in the walkway, and called out, “Hello! Do any of you know where I might find a Basic Healer or two? We’ve had our first emergency call of the Sending, and it’s bad. There was a fight in a Room. I called for a Ranger Healer, but policy is not to let Rangers take away experience from Sent if the Sent can do it, and frankly, our Healer is too far away. I was closest, but I don’t have the right Skills.”

  Everyone looked at Heather again. “W-why would you even heal people that attacked their own roommates?” she asked.

  “Well, philosophical issues aside, that’s not really what I’m asking for. The one that started the attacking is probably beyond help, anyway,” the Ranger said seriously. “He was still awake and talking, and he didn’t really try to hide it, so I’m pretty sure I’ve got the story straight. He started the fight, and he’s the one that escalated it from shouting to knives, too. The one who was next most involved is also too injured to be a level 1 Healer’s problem; either the high level Healer gets here, or he’s done. The third one, though, he got involved trying to defend the second one, and he’s got a bad cut – deep, and nicked an artery, but it’s not too long. If I can get someone to come help, they can probably save him. Even a good medic-type Skill might do it, but I’m hoping for someone with Close Wounds. Surely in this many Sent, there’s got to be at least a few who took Basic Healer!”

  “I – I did. I have the right Skill,” Heather admitted.

  English as their required second language.

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