Chicken

4. Chicken For Lunch?

Oh. My. God. I. Am. Going. To. Pop.

Anna's bladder is so full that she can't stand upright. Worse still, there's no sign of a toilet. The class is inside the camp now, cabins all around, but there are no signs for the bathrooms. She can't even go behind a tree any more because there are loads of people milling around—students like her, and older kids in yellow T-shirts that must be the camp counselors. If one of them stumbles on her peeing into a bush she'd never live it down.

Not that wetting herself would be any better for her reputation...

The panic isn't helping. She actually feels cold with it, the way a lake brings down the temperature of a valley. And that's what it feels like, now, a lake, sloshing around inside her. Why hadn't she just gone in the coach?

"Nearly there, people," says Crawford from somewhere behind her. "If you actually start walking a little faster we might be able to register ourselves before the end of the week."

If she starts peeing now, there's a chance she might still be going by the end of the week.

"Some of these guys are hot," says O, peering into the trees at the counselors. Anna just grunts. She needs the toilet so bad her eyes have gone blurry. Is that bad? She remembers hearing that if you hold it in for long enough your kidneys explode. She half thinks about waiting for Crawford, asking him where the toilets are. But what if he tells her to leave it? To wait? What if he marches her to the assembly point and she gets trapped there? She likes having kidneys, she doesn't think life will be anywhere near as much fun without them.

Then she spots a cabin, the door open. They're probably en suite, she thinks, and before the thought is even finished she's off the path and scuttling across a flowerbed, throwing herself through the door.

Bunk, bunk, sofa, chair, more bunks, TV, beanbags, footlockers.

Goddammit.

It's too late, though. She's going to have to pee inside somebody's locker. She runs for the far corner, unbuckling her jeans as she goes, and it's only when she's halfway there that she notices the wooden door in the wooden wall, almost invisible. She rips it open and she almost cries when she sees the toilet. It's probably the happiest she has ever been in her life and slowly the colour seems to flow back into the world, the knowledge that there is more to existence than her aching bladder.

Flushing, she pulls up her jeans and makes for the exit. She can't have been long, but when she steps into the sun again there isn't a soul in sight. Even the guys in yellow have gone. A different kind of panic settles into the marrow of her bones and she runs back onto the meandering path, following it around two more cabins until she reaches a fork. She stops, cocking her head, wondering if the relief of using the toilet has somehow deafened her, because the camp is completely, utterly quiet.

"Hello?" she says, and her voice makes it maybe ten feet before being snuffed out by that great big weight of silence. Both sides of the forked path wind out of view behind cabins and there's no clue to which one her class took. She listens again, but it's like the camp is a ghost town, it's the kind of silence that hasn't been disturbed for centuries, ancient and unbreakable.

Stop being a dick, she tells herself, and she heads right just to hear the sound of her feet on the gravel. The path leads past half a dozen more cabins, all deserted, and she's about ready to turn around when she hears a noise up ahead. She can't quite figure out what it is, it's soft, and wet, and unpleasant. But it's a noise, and the quiet is starting to get to her, it's starting to leach into her veins, into her skull, like cold, dark water. It's a noise, and any noise right now is good.