Benchmark

By Georgie Hanlin and Shannon Swann

Harper Kingsley has the perfect life until her brother, Braydon, commits suicide. After his death, Harper returns to North Star, a sailing camp on Whidbey Island where she and Braydon spent eight summers together. Joining her are her three best friends who are ready to rule Senior Hill. Harper just wants to escape to the only place she feels is truly magical.

At North Star, Harper tries to forget her reality, but it’s impossible because she comes face-to-face with her brother at a hidden bench in the garden. Is it really him or just her imagination? She knows Braydon is dead. Why is appearing in front of her? Scared at first, Harper rejects his presence, but once he explains that she is the one who brought him back, she wants to hear him out.

Harper chooses to keep these encounters to herself. Who would believe her anyway? It’s Jeremy Miller, the camp’s ultimate heartthrob and Piper’s ex, to whom she will eventually reveal her secret. And he has a secret of his own. Their camp romance turns Harper’s friends against her, giving her one more thing to juggle this summer at North Star.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Teen
• Release date: Dec 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781772331516

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Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

www.evernightteen.com

Copyright© 2014 Georgie Hanlin & Shannon Swann

ISBN: 978-1-77233-151-6

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor: JC Chute

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

In memory of Brandon Barker, whose laughter is missed every day and to Four Winds for the memories and friendships ~ G.H.

For Sophia Yin, whose light shined brightly for all of us ~ S.S.

BENCHMARK

Georgie Hanlin & Shannon Swann

Copyright © 2014

May this story be a light to those who find themselves in darkness.

Chapter One

Escaping Reality

Pass it here, Harp. Quick… pass it over here. I’m wide open, Braydon hollered, completely out of breath, his face drenched in sweat. Hurry up, Harp … time’s going to run out. Pass me the ball!

No, Bray… it’s not clear. It’ll get intercepted, I shouted back, winded myself. The rowdy crowd that had gathered around to watch the end of our game began to chant: ten… nine…eight… The louder they got, the more aware I became that time really was running out and the eighth annual Capture the Flag challenge at North Star was about to be over for another summer. I couldn’t disappoint my big brother. I had to get the flag into his hands. In high school, Braydon had channeled his academic challenges into sports and had become a fiercely competitive athlete, counting on a college track scholarship that he ultimately never received. And it screwed everything up. Forever.

Look for the opening, Harp, he’d urged with intensity over the loud cheers of the crowd. He wanted nothing to stand in the way of his summer trophy. Relieved when I finally spotted an opening with only a second or two left, I wadded up the tattered orange cotton flag as tightly as possible and hurled it directly at my brother’s chest with all my might. It felt like sand seeping through my hand, but by some miracle, my pass turned out to be perfect, and the game ended. I sighed with relief and collapsed onto the grass.

Yesssss! he sang out, dancing around the flag he had just victoriously discarded onto the grass next to me. The Kingsleys do it again!

The damp blades of grass felt like a cool feather bed against my tired body. Just as I was contemplating pulling myself up off the ground, he came running toward me at top speed. Scooping me up and cradling me like a baby, Braydon twirled me around and around until we fell, dizzy, to the ground. Rolling in laughter, I opened my eyes to all of our friends standing above us in a victorious circle.

That was one of my favorite camp memories, and I had to pinch my wrist with my thumb and index finger to snap out of it. I can’t keep looking back anymore. Now, I wonder if I’ll ever have moments of pure happiness like that again. The past is the past and it’ll never change my reality…though I’ll admit, sometimes it’s nice to find myself lost in memories of Braydon, especially now that six months have passed. The problem is: the memories are really only a painful reminder of how it all could have been, and that truth is hard to face.

And here I was, finally on the plane that would take me away from all my problems. I felt dizzy but relieved as I yanked on the strap as hard as I could to tighten my seatbelt, firmly assuring that my destiny was in the pilot’s hands now. I’m not a fan of flying––planes suffocate me. It’s not something I advertise out loud, because it makes me sound like a paranoid freak, but ever since my brother died I hate feeling trapped with large crowds of people. It reminds me of his funeral, one of the worst days of my life.

I often wonder if one day I’ll end up just like my senile great-aunt, Sissy, who once barricaded herself inside her nursing home, convinced people were trying to steal all her jewelry. She was just hallucinating, of course. No one was trying to steal a thing. Mom had asked Braydon and me to bring her some homemade shortbread that morning, arguing it was healthy for Sissy to be around young spirits. Fair enough. But when we arrived, Aunt Sissy wouldn’t open up her door. Instead, she stood behind it screaming for us to go away. I had nightmares about that disastrous scene for weeks. Needless to say, that was my last visit there. Braydon teased me about it endlessly, saying that I cried like a baby all the way home. But as I recall, he was clutching my arm pretty tightly as we ran at breakneck speed back to our car. My brother played tough, but he was sweet and sensitive––a total softie.

Despite hating to fly, being on the airplane today didn’t faze me one bit. Truthfully, there was no place I’d rather be, and getting out of my warm bed at 4:00 a.m. was a piece of cake even though I had become pretty accustomed to sleeping in past 9:00 a.m. on weekends, now that school was out for the summer. How I escaped the confined hell that my life had turned into after my brother died seemed like the least solvable mystery in the world. Some days, I could hardly accept that this was now my actual life, and not just some bad, never-ending dream. Mom and Dad say it was an accident, but I think that’s the easiest way for them not to acknowledge the truth. I get it––I hate thinking about the truth too. Thankfully, for the next four weeks none of it would matter. This plane was my ticket far away. From everything.

Can you believe it, Harp? Piper whispered excitedly as we settled into Row 14 of the plane. She sounded like a little kid about to ride a carousel for the very first time. Our last summer as campers. We’re finally gonna rule Senior Hill.

Piper was my best and oldest friend. She was also my neighbor. We’d carpooled to school and done our homework together after school for the past eleven years. I was as excited about getting to North Star as she was, but for different reasons. I couldn’t care less about ruling Senior Hill. My sole goal was to get out of my house, out of San Francisco, and pretty much out of my head for the next month. I was counting on camp to let me totally reinvent myself.

Piper and I had been going to North Star, a sailing camp on Whidbey Island in Washington State, together for eight summers. Some of our friends at school think it’s strange that we go so far away to live in wooden cabins with earthy names like Buckeye for an entire month. They roll their eyes and say our parents are just shipping us off for an extra-long break. Never mattered to me. I looked forward to camp every year. Over time, I have even grown used to the relentless Pacific Northwest rain and I actually kind of like the camp uniform. Sure, it would be totally embarrassing to wear in public, but on the island, rules didn’t apply the way they did back in San Francisco. I guess you could say that after eight years, the red bloomers, white sailor tops and blue ties were just a part of the North Star tradition.

Piper and I were only two of the sixty campers traveling from the Bay Area to North Star today, and since it took a whole day to get there, we always took the earliest morning flight out. North Star is the ultimate escape: nothing bad ever happens there. It’s where I sailed my first boat, rode my first horse, had my first crush (even if it was on the hot Australian sailing instructor who didn’t actually know my name), capsized my first canoe and jumped off a cliff for the very first time. On that island, it feels like time stands still. We get to enjoy the very best parts of growing up: friendships, hobbies, entertainment and best of all, summer love.

Over the summers, Piper and I had grown close to two other girls, who, like us, returned to camp every year: Anna and Charlie, short for Charlotte. Anna lived just outside of Seattle and Charlie lived in Malibu, in a glass mansion right on the beach. Sometimes, I felt like the ugly duckling of the group. Maybe not ugly, but plain. Average. At 5’5", I wasn’t quite as tall as Anna, who rivaled the height of most of the guys our age. And the fact she had long, perfectly straight jet-black hair somehow made her seem even taller. My eyes were green like Piper’s, but they just didn’t seem to sparkle like hers and, to top it off, my face was sprinkled with a handful of dreadful freckles. On the bright side, they masked my pale complexion, unlike the Southern California sun-kissed glow that Charlie wore year-round.

I am pretty ordinary: a run-of-the-mill teenager––except, of course, that I live in a bubble in Pacific Heights. If I had a penny for each time my mom said there was a ‘timeless look’ about me, by the time I turned sixteen, I’d be able to afford my very own BMW convertible to match Piper’s. Mom and Dad repeatedly exclaimed that a BMW was totally outrageous, and completely out of the question. They sounded like such broken records. And just to be clear, half of my classmates had parents who thought otherwise. But I knew I was lucky in many other ways. At least until my brother died.

At camp, Piper, Anna, Charlie and I were known as the ‘Fabulous Four’––my brother, Braydon, had coined the term a few summers ago and it stuck with us ever since.

Are you doing okay, Harp? Piper wondered, turning toward me as she inserted her headphones into her iPod.

Since Braydon died, I was pretty sure Piper was on permanent eggshells around me, afraid I could snap and lose it at any moment. I nodded to acknowledge her. I was okay, all things considered. But, this would be my first trip back to North Star since his death, and I knew it was going to be hard. How could it not be? Braydon and I’d spent every summer there together since I was seven and he was nine.

This summer, Braydon would have been a counselor. He always said he couldn’t wait to finally be a counselor. He was the typical overprotective big brother: a bother at times, and comforting at others. No matter what, he was always there when I needed him: if I was homesick, if my feelings were hurt or if I got injured. Just like two summers ago, when I fell off my horse and had to wear a sling around my shoulder for three weeks of camp, which, by the way, felt like an eternity. Late one afternoon just before dinner, I was in the art shed struggling to put on my fleece jacket. Totally flustered with my jacket wrapped around me all the wrong ways, Braydon appeared out of the blue to help, as if he had known just how desperate I had been right then. Don’t get me wrong––he teased me about it plenty.

Harp, we need to put you in the circus as one of those contorted performers, he laughed, mocking my awkward position. But, he was a big jokester and I knew he messed with me out of love. He was there for me no matter what. Until six months ago.

My own thoughts had distracted me from noticing that our plane had been in the air for a whole thirty minutes. Piper, who had a stack of gossip magazines on her lap, tapped my knee, all at once, bringing me back from my nostalgia.

"Oh my god, she shrieked. Look at this, Harp! I can’t believe it." I glanced over to see her waving a full-page spread of Charlie’s mom.

Look, she’s on this week’s best dressed list. Does it get any better than that? Look at her shoes. They must be six inches high.

Charlie’s mom, Micha Larkin, happened to be a very famous, two-time Academy Award-winning actress. Last summer she flew to camp in her own private sea plane. No one could ever forget the sight of her: skintight jeans and a black leather crop top, paired with sky-high purple patent leather platform heels and of course, enormous black and gold sunglasses that practically covered her entire face. For someone trying to blend in and not be recognized, she stood out like a sore thumb, albeit a stunning one, in a glamorous, Hollywood kind of way.

She was accompanied by a four-person entourage: larger-than-life bald men, all dressed in black, wearing special Secret Service-type earpieces. Charlie later confirmed what I had assumed the whole time––they were her bodyguards. Though, it was strange, I figured camp would have been about the only place on the planet she wouldn’t have needed her own bodyguards. There is nothing on the island besides North Star, a handful of homes, a post office and a pint-sized grocery store. Other than that, it was just the Madrona trees and the Puget Sound.

That afternoon, Charlie and Cain got to leave camp to have lunch with their mom at a fancy resort on the next island over. The whole scenario was like a scene right out of one of Micha’s movies.

North Star was far from prison, but it was pretty rare for parents to come visit their kids at summer camp, and even rarer for any of us to leave the camp grounds––not that we didn’t try. From a young age, we considered escaping in pursuit of scoring as much candy as possible (from the local store on our horse and buggy mail runs during riding class) to be the ultimate challenge. Trust me: stealthily running into the store while the counselor’s back was turned was an acquired skill, taking years and years to perfect. There was no junk food allowed at camp either. So, of course, we urged people back home to hide candy in our care packages, which, if hidden well enough to actually make it past inspection, we’d then stash under our bunk mattresses. Piper’s older sister, Hilary, was known as the craftiest candy hider. She always cut a perfect rectangle from the middle pages of a long novel and stuffed gobs of candy in the secret hole. That method had been totally foolproof for years. Honestly, did the office staff really think we would read Moby Dick at summer camp?

I just wish it didn’t take a full day to get there, I explained to Piper as I restlessly reached into my backpack for All Quiet on the Western Front, the first book on my summer reading list for Junior Lit class.

I know I say this every year, but I really hope we’re all in the same cabin. Wouldn’t it be amazing for our last summer as campers? Piper wished aloud.

I already knew that wasn’t going to happen––they liked to separate friends so we could make new ones. Still, we held out hope every single summer. Next summer would be different, because we’d all be CTs (counselors-in-training) together. The following summer we’d spend as AC’s (assistant counselors), like Braydon did last summer, and then finally, we would spend the summer after that as actual counselors.

Fanning the pages of my book in procrastination, I spotted a small sealed envelope with my name neatly printed on its front. It had been tightly tucked between the pages of my book.

What is that? asked Piper, curiously pointing to the envelope that caught her eye. Pulling it out, I slid my