===== Sale C. Sale - New Deal =====

//Graduation day. It seemed so far away when they first made it to camp. So much had changed between now and then…//

…geez, is this really how I want to write this? It’s so cliché. Ivy and Margot would probably have a heart attack if they read it. No, no. This won’t do. Okay, let’s roll it back and try again.

Salé sighed, mentally scribbling the passage out. This writing stuff was hard, really damn hard: they’d been sitting in front of their notepad for two hours at this point, with nothing to show for it. Throughout the past week, motivated by their friends’ artistic pursuits, Salé had written a short story inspired by the… frankly insane events that had taken place throughout their camp stay. Pixies, deals, love and drama, the whole shebang. It wasn’t the best, and Salé had been having a lot of difficulty being able to get the emotions down on paper, but at least they’d been making progress. Now, they’d hit an unskippable ad with no end in sight, the first line of paper worn thin from repeated erasures. Salé sighed, tore the sheet off the pad, and threw it in the bin with its siblings. One day they’d nail this damn ending.

But that ending could wait. Right now, they had theirs.

The graduation ceremony was, in a single word, charged. Some brought a more somber energy, silently mourning the end of summer as the first leaves of faultumn floated to the ground. Others came in with excitement at the possibilities this sejour had opened up: new friendships, new inspiration, new loves and the like. Salé wasn’t sure where they lay on that spectrum. There was a lot to celebrate, sure, but they couldn’t quite give themselves over completely to the manic hope that others seemed to have. As evening fell and the official ceremony came to a close, many began gearing up for the inevitable afterparty. Not Salé, though. They had a story to end.

The dorm wasn’t doing it. Too many drunk campers (guys, the party hasn’t even started, come on) and not enough air. A change of scenery was sorely needed, and who knows? Maybe with it, there’d come some new-found inspiration for how to end this. So they gathered their notepad and pen and head for somewhere they hadn’t been all too often: the lake. The last time Salé had been here, it was much more similar to the dorms: full of drunk partygoers, in no small part due to Salé. They winced at the memory. It was much more peaceful now: faultumn had hit the trees here much harder, and the lake had turned golden in the setting sun. Salé sat down at the coast and just looked into the water.

What looked back was a face like theirs, or what it looked like six weeks ago. Messy, stringy hair, unbuttoned flannel shirt with naught but binder underneath. Salé sighed, looking away back to their notepad. Nothing. A grumble of frustration as they reached into their pocket for their phone, but they came across something else. A coin. Their first coin, from their first sale. It was a fancy limited mint one too, with a compass on the back instead of the usual governmental insignia. This was from the moment they had decided to go all in on marketing. From the moment that led them to that deal, and who knows to where else? Salé rolled it around between their fingers. It felt heavy, and no matter how they flipped or rolled it, the compass always pointed in the same direction.

A chuckle. They got it now. This camp had been a story for sure, and they were absolutely in it… but it was never their story. From the start, someone else had always held the reins, whether that be Chartereuse, Jamesby, Margot or someone else. Everything they did had been a reaction, for better or for worse.

//Well, no more.//

They tossed the coin far into the lake, and looked back into the rippling water. Their own eyes stared back, shimmering as the ripples passed over them, but remaining clear. Turning back to their notepad, they left a blank page before scrawling down a new title. It was time to begin their story, how they wanted to tell it.


//by Cravo Salé//

//Written by Alyssa A//