Page 38 of For Fox Sake

“Ari will be back any second.”

That stiffens her spine. She steps away from me and without another word heads down the hall. The door snicks shut right as Ari’s feet tromp in the entryway.

I clap my hands together. “Let’s go be cavemen.” I thump on my chest. “Roast meat over fire.”

She taps her chin with a finger. “Do cavemen wear capes?”

“It’s literally a requirement. Do you have one for me?”

* * *

“My family owns a camp, and we do this all the time with the kids.”

Ari’s eyes are wide in the firelight, mustard dribbling down her chin while she shoves the hot dog in her mouth.

I turn the fork over the flames. We could only find one with a long enough handle to roast the dogs, so we’re doing them one at a time.

“Can I go to your camp?”

“Maybe someday. It’s a bit of a drive.” Say, three thousand miles, give or take.

“Is it like my camp?”

I rub my chin. “I don’t think so. You go to a day camp, right?”

“Yeah. They take us to the park and to the movies sometimes and we play games.”

“At our camp, the kids stay overnight. Sometimes for a weekend, and sometimes for a week or longer. They sleep in cabins with bunk beds, eat in a mess hall, and do all kinds of things, like ice skating, paintball, hiking, fishing.”

“What’s a mess hall?” She takes a huge bite of her hot dog and ketchup plops on her shirt.

I hand her a napkin. “It’s like a cafeteria.”

She chews before speaking. “They have one of those at my school. I eat lunch there. They don’t have hot dogs, but they have carrots.”

I remove my hot dog from the fire and put it into a bun, then grab the mustard from the table and squirt a healthy dollop on it.

“You don’t like ketchup?” Ari asks, her eyes tracking me as I take a bite.

I swallow my bite and shake my head. “My sister Taylor traumatized me.”

Her eyes widen. “What did she do?”

“She dared me to chug a container of ketchup and it made me a little... sick. Haven’t had much liking for the stuff since.”

Ari laughs. “Where is your sister?”

“She’s back home.”

“At the camp?”

“She lives near there, yeah.”

“Did you make her eat ketchup too?”

“Nah. I found other methods of torturing her.”

She giggles, exposing the dimples in her cheeks.

---