I’m betting you’re getting a bit weary of all this telling on my part. I do know better. After all, I’ve had three years of middle school writing instruction. Time for more action and, finally, a touch of dialogue. My eyes crave a few short lines when treading down a dense page.

  Even a camp noob like me knows it’s not a good idea to wake your bunk roommates in the middle of the night by shouting wildly at glowing apparitions, so I whisper-hissed “Stop!” at the advancing imps. Undeterred, the imps still advanced, so I swiped at them, and they jabbed at my hand with their sticks.

  I scrunched back in the bunk and grabbed my lumpy pillow for a shield. Now, concealed under my pillow was a bag of gummy bears. Of my many weaknesses, gummy bears are monumental, and though I shouldn’t be proud of that, my sweet tooth did save me some belly pokes. The imps’ reaction to my multi-colored, cellophane-packed ursine horde was startling.

  They gasped. Heavy-lidded eyes agog, semi-reptilian jaws dropped, they froze. I’m not saying I understood why, but I went with it and shoved the gummy bag their way.

  What followed next was savage, so I advise any gummy-critter-loving soul to brace themselves before reading on. The imps leapt on the bag and thrust their sharp sticks helter-skelter through the plastic film, shredding the bag and spilling my rainbow bears in all their sugary plumpness around them where the three-toed fiends proceeded to feverishly skewer each and every gelatinous cub.

  The horror. The horror.

  But I couldn’t look away. Not until the imps’ bearlust had been spent and they collapsed amongst the riddled gummies did I finally sense someone bunkside.

  “Unexpected,” the girl who’d hexed me softly noted with the clinical detachment of a chemist.

  I wanted to knock her cold little head off. Rage. That was kind of a new thing for me. And I have to say, it was a rush--a twenty-story-tall wooden roller coaster rush. Syl definitely did that to people. At least to me, TimTim, Que and Hell. She enraged us. She thrilled us.

  “You. You. You.” I warned with a finger of my subliminal intention to decapitate her.

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  “Call me Syl.”

  And I did. But not until she scooped up the imps and led me outside to the main camp washroom, seemingly held together by equal parts cinder blocks, mildew, cobwebs, and musty teen angst. Inside, Syl dropped the imps in a sink, where they shielded their eyes from the seizure-inducing fluorescent lights. She unceremoniously opened the taps and washed them down the gaping drain.

  “It’s like a waterslide to them,” she explained to my disbelieving stare.

  “And what are gummy bears to your imp thingies?”

  “Mortal enemies, evidently.”

  “Or some kind of trigger,” I added, as if I had any insight into deep-seated imp trauma.

  “We all have triggers,” Syl acknowledged. “Getting headbutted is one of mine. That’s why I hexed you. It’s kind of a reflex.”

  “A reflex hex.”

  Her lip curled. “Never cared for word play, so let’s just stop that before it becomes another trigger.”

  Unexpectedly, some latent suburban cordiality in me rose to counter Syl’s implied threat. “I’m Charlotte.” I said, extending a hand.

  Syl seemed to consider both my name and my outstretched hand.

  “Char. That’s doable. Handshakes, hugs, that kind of thing. Off limits.”

  “Triggers?”

  “Cooties.”

  We avoided eye contact for a few moments, until being in an old, poorly lit washroom in the middle of the night, in the middle of a forest, where I had recently been attacked by imps conjured by this smallish girl named Syl, forced a certain intimacy upon us.

  I nodded to the drain Syl had flushed the imps down. “So, your little minions going to be okay?”

  Syl shrugged. “I’m never sure. They kind of go their own way, until I invite them back.”

  “Invite? That’s a polite way to put it. You hexed me and they came to do your bidding. Did they really have a choice?”

  Syl gave me a look I was to get to know very well. Dark brow knitted, chin dipped, bright eyes questioning. A look of genuine surprise. I always figured that Syl assumed I knew nothing. In reality she thought everyone knew as much as she did, and that we were all being as sly and protective of that knowledge as she’d had to be.

  “Of course they have a choice. That’s the only thing the living and the dead really have in common.”

  Well, what do you say to that kind of jaw-dropper? Hopefully not what Charlotte Skrimm

  squeaked, which was, “I gotta pee.”

  To her credit, Syl was gone when I exited the rust-fringed stall. When I went to rinse my hands, I heard sibilant whispers echoing from far down the drain. I backed away and hightailed it to my bunk.