Page 26

JASON

T he mess hall’s packed. Not like food-fight packed, but elbow-to-elbow, sticky-sweaty-summertime kind of packed.

Every bench is crammed with campers, half the staff is hovering near the back wall sipping lemonade out of chipped enamel mugs, and Hazel—twelve-year-old witch and part-time social dictator—is center stage in a sequined cape, holding a wooden spoon like a microphone.

“Welcome,” she declares, “to the Camp Lightring End-of-Summer Talent Extravaganza!”

The kids erupt into cheers. Nolan lets out a dragon-roar that rattles the rafters. Rubi, somehow already wearing three different camp T-shirts at once, waves two handmade flags like she’s about to lead a magical coup.

I’m standing stage right with a clipboard and a lopsided grin, half-playing emcee backup and half-babysitter to Ferix, who’s dressed in what I think is supposed to be a Shakespearean cape made out of a bedsheet and duct tape.

Alice is across the room near the snack table, surrounded by kids and gently separating a glitter spill from a bowl of popcorn. When our eyes meet, she gives me this smile—soft, proud, a little amused.

And yeah, I’d walk through fire just to keep seeing that look.

The first act is Nolan.

He marches onstage with a hand-drawn comic book tucked under his arm and a poster-sized page he unrolls for the crowd. The title says THE DAY THE DRAGON SAVED HIMSELF in jagged letters.

He clears his throat, and his voice shakes a little, but he plants his feet.

“This is a story about a dragon who didn’t want to fight anymore. Who just wanted to build things. So he did.”

The room goes quiet.

He flips the first page.

And then the next.

By the end of the story, half the campers are leaning forward like it’s a real-life bedtime tale and Rubi’s actually crying into a marshmallow.

When he bows, the whole room claps like it’s Broadway.

I step up beside him, squeeze his shoulder. “Nailed it, bud.”

He beams. “Did you see them? They listened. ”

“Yeah, they did.”

Because you’re magic, kid.

You always were.

Next is a musical number from Cabin E, some weird fusion of kazoo and ukulele that somehow turns into a choreographed interpretive dance. Halfway through, a camper shifts into a tiny raccoon and just starts clapping with his paws.

Ryder, the merman lifeguard, heckles them with sea puns from the snack bar.

Ferix does his “orc monologue” next, which is mostly him yelling in faux-Shakespearean about honor and peanut butter sandwiches, but honestly? It slaps. The crowd goes wild.

When Rubi and two other campers perform a synchronized baton routine with glow sticks and minor levitation spells, Alice leans into me from where she’s now standing at my side and whispers, “I think I’m witnessing actual chaos magic.”

I whisper back, “It’s the Rubi effect. She’s the real head counselor here.”

She laughs, and the sound burrows under my ribs like a warm ember.

Just when I think we’ve made it through without incident—no surprise slime explosions, no unscheduled transformations—there’s a loud bang from behind the stage curtain.

A puff of green smoke bursts out from the side exit.

Every head in the room swivels.

“Oh no,” Alice mutters beside me, eyes already scanning the crowd.

I don’t even need to ask.

I know that smell.

That’s prank potion. Unfiltered.

I bolt toward the curtain just in time to see Levi—tiny, gremlin-like, and armed with a suspiciously dented cauldron—about to launch what looks like a balloon filled with shapeshifting mist into the crowd.

“Levi,” I bark. “Don’t you dare. ”

He freezes, hand mid-air, eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights—and also maybe high on fizzing mushroom extract.

“I was just gonna add a little chaos, ” he says, voice high and crackly.

“You were about to turn half the crowd into frogs.”

“Only temporarily!”

I don’t slow.

I grab the cauldron, pluck the balloon from his hand, and very calmly deposit both into the enchanted containment bin we keep for “Hazardous Hijinks”—thank you, Julie.

“Nice try, bud,” I say, crouching to his eye level. “But you pull a stunt like that again during someone else’s big moment? You’re cleaning the latrine and apologizing with interpretive dance.”

His eyes widen in horror. “You wouldn’t.”

“Ask Ferix. He still shudders at the memory.”

Levi gulps and nods.

Crisis averted.

I lead him back out into the crowd just as Alice rushes over, concern still in her eyes.

“He okay?”

“Yeah. Just hopped up on mischief and poor timing.”

She exhales and smiles. “You handled that like a pro.”

“I’ve leveled up. Counselor slash chaos negotiator.”

She laughs and grabs my hand.

The crowd’s still buzzing, the energy of the show lingering like fireflies in the air.

And as Levi quietly slides back into the crowd under Hazel’s watchful glare, I realize something else:

This is the job.

Not just the sparkle and applause.

It’s the almost-disasters.

The close calls.

The choosing to stay steady when the chaos tries to tip the whole room.

I don’t mind holding the line.

Not when it’s for them.

The last act is a group number from the older campers—a mashup of magical illusions and emotional monologues set to an acoustic version of a pop song I pretend not to know.

They finish with glitter canons.

Literal. Glitter. Canons.

The whole front row gets sparkled.

Hazel claps her hands three times and shouts, “That concludes the 103rd Camp Lightring Talent Show!”

Thunderous applause.

Screaming.

A small raccoon gets hoisted like Simba.

And I’m standing there, sticky with sweat and glitter and maybe a little bit of awe, realizing, this is it.

This is what we do.

We take weird, wild, wonderful kids and we give them a stage.

We let them be loud.

We let them be seen.

And we never— ever —tell them they’re too much.

Later, as we start helping the kids file out to evening snacks and firefly watching, Alice sidles up beside me, brushing some glitter out of my hair.

“Think we pulled it off?”

I grin. “Hazel might demand a director credit next year.”

“She’s earned it.”

I reach for her hand, just for a second, and squeeze.

“They were amazing,” I say quietly.

She nods. “They really were.”

And just like that, surrounded by noise and color and the afterglow of a hundred tiny triumphs.

This place is really me, somewhere I belong.