pulp of youth

The heat in Vermont was different than South Carolina. Less sticky. But no less stifling.

Atticus wiped the sweat from his brow with the bottom of his dirtied white shirt that rippled in the breeze— thank something for that breeze. He let out a breath of relief, light brown eyes from the sun scanning the view. They had actually made it. The lookout some of the other campers had been going on about at breakfast that morning was all he could think about, so naturally, he immediately recruited Adam to help him find it.

Adam mentioned he liked hiking, he thought anyway.

"See," As if he the landscape needed any kind of pointing out. He grinned, looking sideways to his friend with pride. "Worth the hills?" He laughed at first when Adam had proclaimed they weren't for him at the first sign of a slight slope, but the hike quickly became more advanced, and he put his foot in his mouth. Atticus was mostly used to flatlands himself— the swamps and mossy trails of Charleston— but this appealed to him just as much. Anything to be outside.

Taking a mouthful of water from the canteen he wordlessly passed it aside, his eyes still canvassing the vastness before them. They could see everything, all of Stowe, from here. "Think I might be able to see The Brewery..." He let out a laugh, shielding his brow to squint, as if he just might have. "We've earned those fries," He looked over to Adam, their tradeoff— a hike for some cheese fries.

@Adam Nguyen

Adam had bulked his backpack up significantly halfway up this hill by putting his sweatshirt in it; even though the sweatshirt wasn’t that heavy the additional bulk made his backpack more unpleasant to carry. His back was sweaty through his shirt now; he must look pretty gross, but he’d refused on principle to tie his jacket around his waist like his grandma did. He did not love hiking -- he liked walking, which was a completely different beast -- but he did love views.

“Still not worth the hills,” said Adam, but he couldn’t keep the hushed awe out of his tone: it was greener and richer than he’d expected, dotted with wildflowers and shrubs and shit. Picturesque, he found himself thinking -- his mom had bought him a single disposable camera, so he could take exactly 27 photos, six of which he’d already taken (mostly interesting trees and two very cool beetles.) If anything merited the use of another exposure it was this, though -- he swung his backpack off his shoulder to find the camera.

It made a comical clicking sound when he took the picture, and he imagined it’d be rather underwhelming when he tried to show it to his parents as proof that sending him here had been a good idea, but he had proved that he’d willingly climbed a fucking mountain, so he was happy.

“No way,” he said, and shielded his own eyes -- they were not sharp enough to distinguish between the Stowe buildings, which all seemed to blend together from here. Atticus remarked on their deal and Adam grinned, dropping his hands to rub on his pants. “Sure we did,” he said, “We just gotta walk all the way back, first.”

Atticus watched, bemused, as his friend pulled out his camera to document the moment. "That was a good one," He wasn't sure if it actually was, but he liked to think that some kind of technology would be able to capture what they were seeing as they were seeing it.

But then again, was anything quite like the real thing?

His mother had taken up photos a few years back with a bulky, but expensive, flash camera— documenting every family holiday, every Summer in South Carolina, every sleepy Sunday— as if to hold onto them for just that bit longer. The moving portraits ended up mounted alongside the main entry staircase, forgotten until someone new came to visit and she took the time to explain each and every occasion with passionate detail.

"That's the easy part," Atticus took one last look at the landscape before turning to him, unable to keep the smile from his face despite the sweat that dripped uncomfortably down the side of his face. What he wouldn't give for a body of water right about then.

"Ready?" He asked, tucking the canteen back into his backpack and wiping the back of his hand roughly to his forehead. "Think it might be easier if we cut through those trees—" He leaned up to get a look at the sprawling journey that they had only just put behind them. "Less hills..." He chuckled, accent clear as day, as he led the way in the suggested direction. "I think we should set up a bonfire this weekend," He looked over his shoulder at Adam, mind made up nights previous.

“We’ll see,” said Adam, pocketing his camera -- he was half convinced he’d get all these photos developed and find out that he’d been putting his finger in the way of the lense, or jostled it enough to blur the results. It made him want a real camera -- a digital one, he meant, not one of those massive magic ones -- but he’d learned the hard way that digital things didn’t work around magic. His sister had gotten him three Tamagotchis in the last year and he’d murdered them all.

If he was optimistic enough, he imagined the pictures would have to come out all right. It was only fair. Adam gave a mocking scowl to the path they’d just come up -- “Boring to have to go back the exact same way,” he complained, “All hiking trails should be loops.” He’d believed this for a long time.

Atticus seemed in agreement. Adam tilted his head to appraise the same little thicket his friend was suggesting -- “Yeah, I think so,” he agreed. “I think the path turned back that way in like, a bit.” He had no real understanding of distance or time, out here -- they’d left in late morning, and though Adam knew it couldn’t have been longer than an hour or two, it felt like they’d been marching around in the sun for an age.

They headed into the trees rather than along the path -- he regretted it immediately, since he’d worn shorts and didn’t remember how to identify poison oak, but Atticus was in front -- surely he'd notice it first. “A bonfire?” said Adam. “Is that, like, allowed?”

Not that he’d care if it wasn’t, but Adam really didn’t want to start a forest fire. He frowned, considering it -- “Maybe if there was a beach,” he said, but the lakes around here didn’t seem to have much in the way of beaches. And, on more pressing matter: “I’ll bring a lighter.”

Nodding confidently despite having no real creative skills himself, Atticus was hopeful the shot turned out. Adam had made a good point about hikes— at home, he and his friends paved their own trails, which usually led to a much longer journey than anticipated, plus a few extra cuts and bruises. He figured that was the fun of it though, the chance that you might get lost and find something you hadn't expected.

The greens of his brown eyes lit up in the sun, a mirror to the trees, following the direction that his friend was looking. He couldn't be certain, either, but he trusted Adam's memory better than his own.

"I think so—" Was a bonfire allowed? The sixteen-year-old hadn't put much thought into the logistical planning into the event (aside from inviting every girl from the other schools in their year), so he wasn't certain. "Yeah," He landed on with a noncommitted shrug of newly broadened shoulders. Minor details.

Atticus let out a chuckle as they entered the woods, temperature dropping in the shade though missing the breeze of the open hilly air. "There's that clearing, y'know, just behind the boatshed," It was no beach, but it would do. And they could see the lake from it, at least. He glanced back at Adam and jumped over a fallen log. "Where we're going, we won't be needing lighters..." His voiced deepened ominously— the line was from some muggle movie, or book, that Lila had been quoting incessantly at the start of Summer.

"But really," He leaned down to pick a long piece of straw grass and held it between his teeth like he'd grown up seeing his father do. "We can invite all those Hogwarts and Beauxbatons girls..." He quirked an eyebrow, clearly pleased with the plan.

“I just don’t wanna, like, start a forest fire,” said Adam with some nonchalance, pushing a branch out of his face. He considered letting it snap back but, nah -- he held it until Atticus was out of the danger zone, watched with mild amusement as it oscillated. His mom had asked (ordered) him to take a physics class, which was why he knew the word oscillation now, and he loved it. It was like he saw oscillations everyfuckingwhere now.

“Oh maybe,” he said, trying to remember shit all about the boatshed. “It’d be pretty quiet at least.”

Where we’re going -- “Hell no,” complained Adam, stepping gingerly onto the fallen log to climb over it. “We are not using a stick and rock like boy scouts. I’ll just bring my lighter. It’ll be fine.”

Sometimes Adam could half forget that Atticus was a bona fide Southerner; now was not one of those times. He grinned. “Ooh, Hogwarts and Beauxbatons?” he said -- he did not know how to properly pronounce Beauxbatons and did not particularly care. “Out of your league, Mr. Beauregard.”

He stuck his arms out for balance to clamber onto a rock, just for the ego boost of being on top of a rock, and squinted through the woods, trying to spot the trail. They were probably going in a straight enough line, he figured -- it wasn’t like they could have gotten turned around so long as they kept going this direction, and they’d be back on the trail soon. Hopefully. He was getting mosquito-bit. “Yo, how you gonna advertise this anyway?” he said, and pitched his voice as deep and faux sexy as it went, just to take the piss. "’Hey, wanna come to my maybe illegal fire tonight’?”

A forest fire? Atticus let out a laugh while making a mental note to figure out how, without magic, people were meant to put out a fire. Sand, perhaps? He thought he'd seen that back home, someone dumping a bag of sand over a pit and covering it in soot. As it turned out he really hadn't put all that much thought into his plan.

"It'll be fiiine," He coaxed reassuringly, though, it seemed that Adam had moved on too. Burning down the camp was a bridge they would cross if and when they got there.

He made a face, pausing to pointedly roll his eyes in his friend's direction before stepping over a mound of tall grass that he was inherently trained to assume was home to a snake nest. "Look out for that—" He pointed down his side and then resumed where he left off. First, the lighter, and then the league. "Hey, you never know..." The wizard couldn't help but grin. "Reckon they might just like a Southern accent," He turned up the dial on his South Carolina as if that wasn't exactly how he sounded when he was home for a few months.

"Exactly like that," Atticus laughed, pointing a finger in the air. Well, maybe not exactly, but— "You're onto something with the illegal thing," He ran a hand over his chin in thought, more seriously. Again, logistics, not his strong suit. "It's Summer Camp," He half-shrugged as if it was the only rationale needed.

"Have you, met, many of them yet?" By them, he meant the foreign girls. The teen glanced up at Adam who was then perched atop a rock and scanning their journey ahead. It was still early in camp, they had some time, but infuriatingly Atticus had yet to be paired up with one of the floaty French girls or any who had an Irish accent. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the girls at Ilvermorny, absolutely not, but when else was he going to get the opportunity.

Adam was skeptical -- Atticus was not from the lovely dry-grass hills of San Jose, where Adam had once seen a “Fire Danger Today: HIGH" sign on fire. Atticus was from, like, the American South, which probably wasn’t regularly on fire.

"Sure," he said anyway. If they started a forest fire, they'd at least be near a lake. Atticus pointed out a mound of unexceptional, perfectly normal grass -- “Yo, what?" said Adam, giving it a wide berth anyway. The summer heat was starting to bother him -- not for the first time in three years of friendship, he pondered how much fatter he was than Atticus, who was pondering whether a Southern accent would help his chances with women.

He grinned -- “Yeah, if you do it like that,” he said. “That’s gotta beat the Italians, at least.” And presumably French people didn’t find French accents all that sexy -- not that Adam personally thought French accents were sexy. He already had no love for France, which had subjugated his country for like a hundred years, but pretending that their language was beautiful was one of the greatest shortcomings of Americans nationwide. Language of love? Please.

“Hey, girls love bad boys,” he said, rolling his eyes. "Illegal is probably your strongest selling point." Now that they were talking about it more seriously, he was stoked -- he scratched his ear thoughtfully. “Do you think we can lift some marshmallows from that dessert bar? There are so fuckin’ many, they probably won’t miss a bag or two.”

With his arms out to the sides, balanced like an idiot on a rock, Adam thought the answer was clear: “Naw,” he said. It didn’t even matter that much to him -- it wasn’t like he’d come to summer camp specifically to meet girls -- but it was still embarrassing. Besides, how was he supposed to flirt with international witches? It wasn’t like he could ask for their numbers.

Adam climbed off the rock with minimal arm windmilling, roughly sure of where they were headed. “Meeting girls is harder when you don’t have a Southern accent. I did one of those science experiments with a French girl, though.” She’d been pretty stuck-up.

"Coulda been a snakepit," Atticus said over his shoulder as if it were just that common.

He watched his step as they made their way down the subtle curvature of the Earth through the dense nature avoided on the way up the trail. It would be faster, of course, but far less clean cut. "You think?" He discarded the stem of grass held previously in the corner of his mouth as he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. "Here I thought it might be the accent..." He cooed jokingly, all too aware of the allure of the bad boy thing.

Not for lack of trying, that had never been him.

"Hell yeah," Atticus looked proudly at his friend who seemed to be getting into the spirit himself with newfound plans of stealing marshmallows. They were a far cry from being actual badasses, but it was a start, he thought.

"You're joking?" He watched as Adam jumped from the rock and joined him on the ground once more, eyes wide. He glanced ahead at an opening, already directionally turned around. "Trade you, next time. I got paired up with this guy from Durmstrang, who I think might want to kill me..." Atticus made a face and paused at the intersection. It was possible he just wasn't that great with English.

"Fork in the road..." He clicked his tongue, wiping his hands on his shorts in thought. "Any idea which way?" He looked sideways at Adam.

“Oh yeah,” said Adam, as though it was the sort of thing that would have occurred naturally to him. He was from San Jose. He’d seen like, one snake in his life, in a zoo. Warily he glanced over his shoulder at the possible snake pit and grimaced; he was grateful Atticus, had taken the lead. Adam might have a better sense of direction but he sure as hell didn’t have a better sense of the outdoors.

Atticus was going to beat his Southern accent into the dust trying to prove that it was hot, and Adam was beginning to not care. The accent existed, which was better than anything Adam had going for him. A Californian accent wasn’t noticeable unless you were from San Fernando Valley, and his barest hint of a Vietnamese accent wasn’t interesting either. No -- Adam needed bad boys to have some sort of appeal, that was probably his best shot at not dying a virgin or, worse, graduating one.

Not that he was that much of a badass.

“No, I don’t want a Durmstrang guy,” he said, “They’re like, wizard racists. Hate magbobs and shit.” He’d heard it somewhere, at least -- and from another Ilvermorny student, which made him more inclined to believe it. Hogwarts students didn’t really have any ground to stand on, with the hating-magbobs thing -- they’d had a war about it like, barely five years ago. His roommate Ki had brought it up once.

They were at a crossroads; he waved one hand down the left fork without comment and let Atticus keep leading the way. Now that he knew to look out for patches of grass, he was seeing them everywhere, and surely they weren’t all snake pits. “What you doing for the rest of summer?” he said, “After we leave.” Atticus, like Adam, had only talked his parents into letting him spend two weeks in Vermont -- that left the rest of the summer to do whatever it was Atticus did during the summers.

The wizard let out a dramatic breath of air. He couldn't blame him. Adam would be a fool to trade what Atticus could only imagine was his beautiful, French female partner. "Really? All of them?" The news of the war those years ago had been tough for him to truly understand, having felt so far removed from it. That wasn't to say that the same problems didn't exist to some degree in America, even in his small town of Charleston he could see it.

His face went hot with something that felt like embarrassment when he remembered a particular dinner conversation among his parents and a few of their peers— upperclass purebloods. They weren't supremacists, but he was starting to see the cracks in the veneer the more time he spent away from home. "Just don't get that..." he thought aloud.

Atticus nodded and led the way down the far more open path that the brains of the operation had confirmed. If it were up to him, he would have chosen the right and they wouldn't have even made it back to the brewery in time for dinner. His stomach grumbled at the reminder of the burger at the end of the journey. "I'll be back in Charleston, do some work for my dad," He confirmed. "Kinda wished I'd signed up for the longer camp, now," He smiled.

Being outside, the water, bonfires, foreign girls. It was like a dream.

"What about you? Back to California?" He looked over at Adam, kicking a fallen twig out of his path.

“I mean, probably not all of them,” said Adam, with something of a shrug. “But, like, they don’t accept magbobs as students.” He was mostly sure that was definitely true -- it had come up in Wizards of History when they’d been talking Grindelwald, and it was a private school -- that said plenty more, all on its own.

Atticus looked constipated, or possibly nauseous (Adam could never read faces) and though Adam was ready to suggest that they stop and have a drink of water, maybe, it turned out that Atticus was just thinking about racism. Sometimes Adam got the sense that Atticus was from a bubble of a community -- a little like Adam’s, even, though closed-off in a different way. Adam had grown up knowing that his community didn’t fit into the rest of the country, though, and he couldn’t imagine Atticus had felt quite the same.

It was a good thing that Atticus didn’t relate to the kinds of purebloods that looked down on anyone else, but it always made Adam grin a little to hear that his friend just didn’t get it, as though racism was a complicated branch of math. “Me either,” he said. “So dumb.”

Adam nodded -- he, too, spent his summers doing work for his parents, though he didn’t think he’d regret going home early. Five weeks was a long time to be away when he was only on break for two months. “Yeah, back to California,” he said, “I get to babysit. Maybe in my spare time I’ll wait tables for free.” Only recently had Adam started to get annoyed at all the free labor he was being used for.

Complaining, though, was his least favorite thing to do, so he shook his head slightly and added, “I won’t mind it, though, I guess I missed everyone, kinda.”

"Yeah," Atticus let out a chuckle. The subject matter was decidedly not laugh-worthy but he felt the need to fill the silence before he blurted out that he suspected his parents, and most of the adults he knew in Charleston, wouldn't think it was all that dumb. Settling into that uncomfortable realization, he was happy when the subject changed. Self-awareness, he had to take in small doses.

"Wait tables, for free?" However, he too worked for free on the farm, helping with the family business. As his dad put it his payment was the roof over his head and food in his mouth. "For your family?" Atticus wondered if Adam had a similar set up in California. 

At the mention of missing everyone, the wizard thought of Charleston. Who he was missing. He'd tried relentlessly to get Lila to sign up to camp but she was actually working that Summer, for real money. "That's true," Atticus offered the canteen of water to his friend before taking a sip himself. The sun seemed to be starting its descent into the ground and thankfully it was starting to cool off.

"I think I'd like California," He thought aloud. "The farthest west I've been is— I don't know, Louisiana," He laughed at how ridiculous it sounded out loud.

Adam nodded -- “My parents own a restaurant,” he said; “Or, my parents and my uncle. But they just, don’t like to give me money.” He’d babysat eight of his cousins and his sister when his chú Duy had gotten no-kids-allowed married, and when he’d asked would he be paid, his mom had just laughed.

The laughing had annoyed him so much that he’d been a nightmare -- he’d never threatened to kick so many asses at once before -- but the alternative was to be considered ungrateful, which would probably have made him feel worse. And his grandma had felt bad the next day and slipped him a twenty, which was a lousy wage of like, a buck fifty an hour, but was better than what his mom had given him when one of the cousins complained.

“It’s like, they think I’d spend it irresponsibly,” he said. His parents -- so far, knock on wood -- only suspected he was buying weed, so he thought that was an unfair assumption.

Atticus offered the canteen; Adam drank as quickly as he could, without touching the rim of the bottle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The path was starting to slope more downward, getting a little rocky, and Adam was starting to doubt they’d make it to the brewery before sunset. Not with enough urgency to hurry, though. “You prob’ly would,” he said, “The weather’s nice. Lotsa palm trees.”

It was odd to describe California to non-Californians; Adam lived in a pretty ugly stretch of it, far from anything cool -- there were no sandy beaches or Sierra Nevadas or anything in San Jose.

"Oh yeah, that's right," Atticus recalled Adam talking about his family's restaurant before. The food part of it appealed to him but the customer service part, less so. He was perfectly happy to work alone, outside, getting his hands dirty. "Free food, at least?" He asked over his shoulder with a grin. "I know what you mean, though— my dad says that my paycheck is the roof over my head," He conjured up the most fatherly voice possible with a roll of his eyes.

"Maybe next summer we'll have real jobs," The kind that paid. "Lila's a lifeguard, y'know?" He mentioned his friend from home who was in their year. "Might try that out," He shrugged. The saving people in the ocean sounded nice but sitting a chair all day doing nothing, he imagined, might get old. 

California, in his mind, was some kind of tropical paradise. He bypassed the reality of the rugged coast in favor of beautiful beaches and boardwalks and sunshine. Nothing like South Carolina that was the amalgamation of swampland, beaches, and forest. He wouldn't trade where he lived for anything, though. "The ocean is cold, I heard," He wondered, looking to Adam to confirm when he spotted some kind of orangish animal in the three.

"Look!" He whispered, stopping in his tracks. "A red squirrel," Atticus couldn't help but grin as another whipped around the tree to get a look at the strangers. "They're so small," He laughed a little when thinking of the size of the grey squirrels back home. "Pretty cute," He began their trek downhill. "Gotta be getting close..." He hoped so at least.