Chapter Text
When you’re twenty one you’re kind of comfortable with the concept of letting go of things.
More or less.
Let’s say that this concept best applies to like, when your childhood pet dies or when you get your Bachelor’s degree. Or you’re about to do so, that is.
Certainly not to the concept of being tied with a rope in the back of a remote gym.
These, just to be clear, are not Jo’s thoughts at this very moment.
As she opens her eyes, slowly and with no rush, her first thought is that she should take something for her headache.
A bloody fucking headache, anyway. One of those that tear your synapses away one after one to make macrame bracelets. One of those that only shows up only during her period, when everything becomes a mass of anger red and pain gray.
But then, a second thought crosses her mind: her period came last week.
And it doesn’t feel like she’s in her bed, anyway.
With eyes wide open, she can’t see a thing. Just a thick and mold-smelling darkness.
Okay, she’s not in her bed.
The only sound she can emit is a long, very long sigh.
What should she do, anyway? Scream? She doesn’t want to scream. She just really wants to go to sleep and wake up in her room, because it’s all a dream.
It’s all a dream, or at the very least she’s actually in her room. The suffocating heath is because her brother stole the giant fan for himself, the dust is because she really needs to clean and the rope sensation is her blanket or something like that.
And the slowly breathing body behind her that keeps on touching her palm with their fingers is surely like, an insect.
Or something like that, as said before.
“Watson” the deep voice of someone that can empty four tanks of e-liquid for her vape in a day communicates to her that no. She’s definitely not in her bedroom. “Watson, are you awake?”.
Here again, no words from any current tongue are uttered.
The only thing she can do is to bump her head against the other one’s.
“Good. Great. That’s great” she continues, “do you want bad or good news first?”
“Dunno, Sherl” Jo finally decides to speak, “your pick”
“So, the good one is that we’re both awake”
Jo answers with a low growl, with her eyes closed.
“Bad one is that we’re tied. On the gym closet’s floor, I think”
“You think”
“Look” a puff, “I don’t like this either”
“No shit”.
A moment of silence, the awareness that panicking doesn’t make much sense.
So, another deep sigh.
“At least we’re together”
“Just shut up” Jo answers.
Some people think that working as a camp counselor is like a walk in the park.
There’s also to say that those people never worked a shift as a camp counselor or if they did it wasn’t this summer camp.
It’s not that tragic, let’s say.
But there’s also better.
Jo is sitting at the attendance table, a small raft of white plastic in that sea of concrete still cool in the early morning, and she’s asking herself why she still works here.
Like, she’s twenty one. When you’re twenty one you’re supposed to let go of certain things.
Like the stupid job you had in the past, what? Five years? Maybe six?
Six years have passed. She changed her hair three times, she fought monsters and she’s about to get her Bachelor’s degree.
And now?
This table, still.
It’s not even funny. The gym’s courtyard è small and shared with the only café in the span of ten kilometers at least, a thin wall dividing them. In the cool light of the morning, it looks like the set of a depressing movie on how the province sucks your soul out: a bunch of country festival-worthy tables are scattered on a sad and dirty rug of dead or dying grass, with the only company of chairs folded against them. A single tree that Jo can’t recognize stands at the centre of the patch of grass, or what looks like it, and it’s probably the only thing alive around.
Over the gate, there’s only an empty street.
A parking lot.
and another empty street.
As if the entire world was only concrete, concrete and more concrete.
Jo knows there’s something more than all of this, but she’s not that sure. Just like when you’re trying to remember a particularly vivid dream in the morning.
She doesn’t want to be here. The thought of looking after kids for an entire day makes her sick.
But she has to be strong. She has to be strong. Because there’s a lot of things she wants to buy at the end of the summer, so it’s something she has to do.
She has to do it. She has to do it. Just deep breaths and count to ten. She has to do it. She’s a big girl, and she can’t do anything but wait for the kids at this table.
She almost made peace with this plan when a distinct smell of strawberry vape shows up like the first drops of water over an outdoor party.
First drops of water that cross the little metal gate. First, she notices the ruined and grass-stained jorts. Then, her oversized Death Grips shirt (luckily with the Exmilitary cover and not The Money Store one on it) and ultimately her grin of pure malice that decorates her face surrounded by a sea of dark hair.
Sherlock Holmes. She hadn’t seen this asshole in three years and she already wants to choke her with her own intestines.
Not because she’s like, a bad person. She is surely a good person. But honestly?
Some situations don’t call for objectivity.
Jo takes the deepest breath, avoiding her gaze.
“Hey! Hi!” she says as if nothing happened, her backpack falling off her shoulder. As if nothing happened, get it?
People who act and talk as if nothing happened are people you can’t trust. Generally.
But especially if the person in question is Sherlock Holmes.
Jo asks herself why she decided to sign the contract even though she saw her contact name showing up in the camp counselors’ group chat. Like, Sherlock (contact), three shared group chats: Wig History Project, Theatre show 2023, Nathan 18 birthday party. Which she didn’t even attend because she twisted her ankle during boxing practice so Jo had to get drunk alone.
It has been a frankly embarrassing evening. She could have got it there, honestly.
“Put that shit away” she mutters without even thinking about it, reading the names on the piece of paper in front of her as if they were actually interesting. It’s an asshole move, for sure. But this artificial strawberry flavor shit is super irritating. “Before the kids arrive, that is”
“It helps me think”
“About what?”
“The workshops, of course” after taking a rather long hit, followed by a cloud of smoke that surrounds her head for a couple of instant, Sherlock bends herself to open her ragged backpack. Jo follows her lazily with her gaze as she finally grabs something.
“The workshops”
“Yeah” after a comically long time, she shows the other what was once a jam jar, “here’s the coagulant agent” she then places it on the table, “and here”
“Alright, no blood” Jo places a hand between the table and the vial full of red liquid. “No blood”
“Why?”
“Because this is a summer camp and if we bring blood to the kids they’ll freak out and-”
“Kids love blood”
“Where did you even find it?”
“It’s not menstrual blood, by the way”
If there was some sort of competition for the deepest and most frustrated breaths, she could actually win something in her life.
“Do you understand that this info doesn’t make things better, right?”.
Sherlock stares at her with her big brown eyes, so dark they look black. As if she was caught stealing something at a high-end store, as if she just did something profoundly wrong.
And something moves, somewhere under Jo’s bra and skin. Right under her ribcage. Something that bends.
Many told her that from a manners standpoint there’s quite a lot to improve. Like, her mom always tells her she has the empathy of a shrimp, that she can’t stay in a room with a person without the whole thing ending in tragedy.
There’s also to say that her mom says a lot of things, so. Maybe some things are just tangentially to be taken at face value.
Like astrology. Maybe she’s incapable of being in a room with someone without the whole thing ending in tragedy because she’s a pisces, or maybe because her mom has the same little flaw as her she passed it down together with her long nose, grey eyes, Dire Straits and Tracy Chapman’s CDs.
Or maybe because there’s certain things that you were born with and you’ll die with, and maybe her terrible personality is one of these.
Let’s hope not.
“I mean” she quickly adds, “it seems, uh, interesting? What do you want to do?”
Saving herself at the last minute has always been one of her best trained skills.
The other’s face lights up with a weird light. Jo knows it, the one that starts in her brain and reflects in the way her mouth bends.
“There’s this coagulant agent I randomly discovered during a lab session a few months ago” Sherlock starts, her violinist fingers moving through air as if she was playing her instrument, “and before I came back home I, well”
“You stole from Oxford’s chemistry lab”
“It was for a good cause”
Be kind, she repeats herself. Be kind.
She clicks her pen at least ten times, in rapid succession, and then start turning it between her fingers.
“Oh, a good cause indeed”
“Like I said” Sherlock turns around, two children with bags bigger than their bodies show up at the gate. Jo writes an A (for ‘arrived’) next to their names, a mechanic movement. “Do you still do the gambling workshop? Irvine told me some stuff about it”.
She doesn’t say this just for the sake of being mean, from an outsider point of view. She says it lightly, as if it was a normal thing to say. Jo hopes that her voice didn’t arrive at the mother of the two kids, who smiles in a rush already thinking about the long day at work.
Let’s be clear: it’s not a gambling workshop. She teaches cards and dice games. Something that she’d done since forever, something that she likes to do. And if kids in the future want to join the gigantic mia dens at the parties where Jo learned this noble art, it’ll be their problem.
Not hers.
“What’s gambling?” Sophie, big eyes and unicorn shaped hairclips in her hair, appears next to the attendances table apparently from thin air. In her hands, paper and markers to start the day with a categories match.
Something that Jo loves to do. Of course.
She really needs to get a new job, to be honest.
“Nothing hon-”
“Gambling is when people play games to win and lose money to other players” Sherlock chirps. “Kids can’t do that, of course, but Jo is teaching you many games that you can use in the future!” she offers her hand to her, in the same way you’d do in front of your professors during the graduation ceremony. “Hello Sophie, I’m Sherlock”.
While Jo meditates on the benefits of drowning in a bog, Sophie first looks at Sherlock and then at her.
“Jo, why is her name the same as that evil witch you always talk about?”.
Okay, what’s the closest bog? Because Joanne Heather Watson here really needs to lay down there and wait for her body to be embalmed by the acidic water. Or whatever.
She takes her head in her hands, as she hears Sherlock laughing with absolute glee.
Oh well. It could have been worse.
“I’m actually a bit of an evil witch, yes” she smiles with all of her teeth exposed. “But I’ll also be one of your counselors for the summer, so put your backpack in the changing room before you start with your games, alright?”.
The girl nods, running then to the door of the gym.
Her brother is drawing on one of her tables, focused as if nothing happened.
Jo dares to look at Sherlock. Just for a second.
“How did you…”
“It was written on her baseball hat”
“Okay. Got it”.
Jo hopes to get hit by a truck as she crosses the street at the end of the day. Just saying.
In this summer camp there’s seven counselors: one is her mum, of course. She has to be her boss in every place of her life. The other is Sherlock’s sister, who has been working here for a trillion years and is regarded as the government of this small nation. There’s Gloria Lestrade, not the brightest tool in the shed but the best at every sport under the sun. There’s then Sherlock, the rookie, Jo and the boys.
The boys are a vital part of every countryside summer camp.
Because, statistically, there’s a high chance that the kids will respect them. And only them. This of course has a lot of systemic reasons, but also because kids, but mostly because they’re cool and fit.
There’s also to say that male camp counselors here are everything but cool and fit.
Example number one, Marius, is sitting on the small wall next to the attendance table basking in the late afternoon summer sun, a lollipop in his mouth. Marius is the kind of person her mom wants her to marry: he’s tall but not too much, skinny but not too skinny, blond but not too blond. He’s like a human version of Geronimo Stilton, down to the little glasses and all.
“How did your morning shift go? With Sherlock?” he asks her as she looks at the kids playing table football. “Just to understand”
“All good, actually” she mumbles, looking at the name list as she did in the morning. The day went on as expected: Sherlock took all the kids. Their trust, their respect, their love. As she lazily gazed at Sherlock guiding the kids in the experiments, she could feel the absolute quantity of admiration gushing from their eyes.
Jo thinks that envy is like a habit for her. The sensation of guts twisting on themselves, as if all of her life choices are standing in front of her like a firing squad from the ones taken in kindergarten that then led to, well. To all of this.
But every time, every time, it always feels like the first.
There’s also to say that for the majority of her life the main source of envy was, of course, Sherlock. So it’s not like she was expecting something different.
When she read her name appearing in the counselors' group chat, when her mom mentioned it at lunch a few days later, when she closed her aunt's car door to start the day here it was. The hunch. The premonition. ‘Today you’ll be envious’ her brain told her, as if it was something obvious. Just like hunger or thirst or tiredness, envy is not a human product.
She’s pretty sure it’s something natural. An evolutionary mechanism.
If she’s wrong, there’s something wrong in nature. But if it created fractals and migratory routes then she could have created envy as well.
“Well, if you say so” Marius is now chewing the lollipop, the white stick in his lips like a cigar in an old movie. “You can talk to me if this thing like, bothers you or something” a pause of reflection, “you know, after all that happened”.
Nothing happened, actually. Nothing happened during last year of high school, because wounds close with time and reality has its ways of rebooting its systems.
Like, okay. Some things shouldn’t be brought up. But Marius is too, uh, Marius to think about it. So Jo slowly nods, the day before her weighting on her back.
“She cut her hair at Oxford” is her only comment, as the kids yell because one of them scored.
“Uh, cool”
“Yeah. She looks like a 2020 alt tiktoker who does like, Mother Mother covers or something like that” she kinda needs a cigarette and an ice cold beer right now, “I’m surprised she didn’t get a piercing as well”
“Yeah?”
“To like, signal that she’s not like us and stuff” a bitter laugh, “could have gone all out with that vibe”
“You can be super acidic sometimes, you know that?”
“That’s not true”.
It’s actually true. Marius knows it’s true. Jo knows it’s true. Even the concrete knows it, at this point.
She hates working with her former classmates, anyway. They know too much.
“Oxford is overrated, anyway” Marius has this thing like he always has to say bullshit at every possible occasion, “if you need to hear that. We made great choices”
“We sure did, mate” she flunked the physical test to join the military. She then flunked the entry test for medical school. It’s a wonder she’s about to graduate in Philosophy, which was like her third choice. “I’m just saying,”
“You’re just saying that you live in your head too much, Jo” Marius taps a finger on her forehead, in the middle of her sweaty curtain bangs. “You’re too…”
“Intense?”
“Yeah, kinda. You weren’t like this in high school”.
In high school, Sherlock was there and dragged her in her gravitational field. Then she disappeared, and she was a rogue planet for a while ready to destroy other worlds. And then, Sherlock reappeared in her life, and Jo’s debating on whether or not becoming a satellite again.
Also, people change. Everything changes.
She’s about to tell him this very important truth, when someone pulls the sleeve of her shirt.
“Jo, you need to see something” little Russell, who looks like Mac DeMarco if he was four years old, has the face red and watery eyes.
Okay, what happened now? A fight, a joke turned sour, a fall? Knees and elbows look healthy, so…
“Jo, you have to come with us” adds Sandy, her Lelli Kelly kicking rocks.
“Alright, alright” she stands up from the chair, trying to keep up with the counselor that definitely wants to do this look. The two guide her to the left side of the gym, an ugly grey container, with dying plants and bushes full of forgotten balls. “You shouldn’t even play here…” she grunts without any force behind it, as the others stop right in front of a stain.
It’s large, right next to the door that leads to the gym’s broom closet.
The dust around it is red, and on the concrete is like a darkish brown.
Something died here.
“Oh, it might be a uh,” they’re four and six. Be kind. “A cat ate a rat here. Nature works like this, kids. Now go play near the tables, will you?”.
The two nod, they’re adorable, then run as if nothing happened.
“No rat is this big” Marius appears behind her shoulders, biting the stick with a certain determination.
“You’re right” Jo squats next to the stain, as if to study it.
There’s objectively nothing to see, here. Rats get eaten every day.
So.
“But?”
“But there’s nothing here, mr Morstan” she turns to him, her hand on her hip. When she was in high school they did a frankly embarrassing production of The taming of the shrew, and she had to be Bianca. The teacher told her too many times that it was an exercise in empathy and that no Watson I won’t change your role. But that arm off your hip. “Didn’t they teach it to you in uni? That kids don’t have to know everything?”
“I think it’s more of a health hazard” Marius points at the stain, “all this blood…”
“We already have too many problems, another one is just unnecessary”
“This is blood, Joanne”
“Rat’s blood” she passes a hand on her face. “Let’s think of something tomorrow, okay? Who are you on shift with, tomorrow? Morning shift?”
“Nah, afternoon’s one. With Irvine, I think. You are…”
“Don’t tell me” a puff, “I know”
Fuck this stupid summer camp. Fuck this stupid summer camp. Fuck this stupid summer camp.
Jo thinks she’ll lose her mind if she keeps up with this. Like, she’s genuinely scared to go mad and have a nice day, guys. Have a nice day.
She opens the house’s door and throws her backpack in a corner and her already untied shoes together with the others. There’s a blood stain in a corner of the courtyard. There’s a big blood stain in a corner of the courtyard.
Should she tell mom? Is mom at home? What should she do tomorrow? A bucket of water? And if the kids find the dead rat? Because it was a rat, right? Right?
And if people find out about this? The parents? The mayor? Or, worst case scenario, the pro loco?
They’ll kill her. They’ll put her head on a stick. It’ll be a disaster. And if one of the kids gets sick? Rats’ blood is like, super filled with germs, right? They could eat lunch there, or lick it. They’re capable of doing so. They’re capable of doing so and they get ill and they’ll die and-
“Jo? Are you okay?” her brother has a foot up in the air and the other on the stairs. He takes off one of his headphones, as if her presence was like a mosquito’s.
“Yeah” she doesn’t want to talk about it, “y’know, the usual”
“You were saying ‘fuck this summer camp’. Over and over. Quite loudly”
Oh, sure. No rest for the wicked.
“It was a long day” she tries to smile, as she always does.
Henry raises an eyebrow, he’s her brother and has a smell for bullshit, when the steps that could be of only one person echoes in the corridor.
“What do you mean that James disappeared?” Chiara Watson is on her phone. Not only that, she’s on her phone yelling. One of her favorite hobbies together with making excuses for her husband, reminding her firstborn daughter that all of her school dance alumnus are better than her in every possible way and watching Grey’s Anatomy.
The two siblings look at each other like only siblings can do, just before Henry runs to his room.
The fucking coward.
Jo thinks absentmindedly to cower next to the living room’s cabinet, but her mum is right in front of it. And, generally, Jo doesn’t run away.
“James is- what are you even-” her mum is biting her nails. “That's not true, come on! What are you even saying? He went” now she’s sitting on the sofa, “she’s on vacation with her mistress” a pause, “yes Sarah, everyone knows he cheats on his wife. It’s Pulcinella’s secret and- you know what a Pulcinella’s secret is! I told you a hundred times! It’s an open secret. So don’t panic, okay? He’ll come back sooner or later”.
Jo’s about to open her mouth, but her mother continues. “and who cares if he doesn’t reply to texts. He’s like somewhere far from civilization. Or his phone is down because he’s fucking like a rabbit” another pause, Sarah on the other side has a lot to say. “And his wife won’t press charges and you know why? Because she knows his husband is a cheater. He’ll come back, sooner or later” an evil smile on her face, “and his wife and the pro loco will kick his ass like a football. Easy as that. Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. Bye bye!”.
And she closes the call. Chiara looks at Jo, Jo looks at Chiara.
“Hello honeycomb, do you need something?”
“No” time to run to her room, “call me when dinner is ready”.