Max kicked a clod of dirt and grass outside his tent, his hood pulled up over his hair and his face drawn up in a scowl. He hated this feeling, he hated this camp, he hated this summer. There was the sound of rustling inside the tent and Max knew that it was Neil packing up his things. Max didn't want to say goodbye. He didn't want to be alone again.

"Maaaxxx," Neil called, that sing-song lilt making Max cringe. "We have to be packed by noon!"

Max huffed and headed into the tent, dreading the idea of packing. Neil already had his clothes all folded and packed into his bag, leaving just a few last minute things to grab like pictures and some remnants of camp activities. Max took a deep sigh and cursed under his breath. He hated this.

Grabbing his backpack off the back of his bed post, he began to unceremoniously shove clothes into his bag. He carefully set Mr. Honeynuts on top of his clothes, then slung the bag over his shoulder.

"There, butt-munch, I'm done packing," Max said sarcastically to Neil. Neil just huffed at him.

"You didn't take anything else."

"What else would I take?"

Neil just pointed across the tent to the little table they had in the corner. There were still some pictures, half of the Sparrow staff, and some crafts Max had done begrudgingly. Max just huffed. He didn't need pictures. He didn't need crafts. He didn't need reminders of how badly he wanted love and affection and how badly he would miss the people here at camp.

"At least take the ones of us terrorizing David," Neil reasoned. Max looked over at the picture Neil was holding up. You could barely make out a blur of green hair in the background running in front of David, who was tied to a tree, while Neil and Max posed in the foreground.

Neil waved it slightly and Max caved. He grabbed the photo, as well as a few others, and shrugged off his bag to shove them in. When Neil turned away, he grabbed the Sparrow staff, too, but he didn't need anyone else to know he was taking it. With that last thing, Max slung his bag back over his shoulder and sat down on the bed. He watched Neil go through some more photos, putting some aside for packing and other to leave behind.

"Campers!"

It was David, gathering everyone in the camp square by the flagpole. Max made a little gagging noise which sent Neil into a fit of giggles.

"How is he so fucking happy all the time?"

"He's like a Chuck-E-Cheese animatronic," Neil joked, getting a dry laugh from Max.

"Better get out there," Max said as he pushed his way out of the tent, Neil following right behind him. Nikki, Ered, Dolph, and Preston were already out there, but Nerris, Nerf, Space Kid, and Harrison were all still packing.

"There's Max and Neil!" David said happily, pointing across the camp as the they got closer. "Alright, everyone, why don't we all put our stuff down for later and we can get to our wonderful activities for today!"

Max threw down his bag angrily and dug his hands into his pockets, steeling himself for whatever horrific activity he was in store for next.

"Since the other campers are still packing things up, why don't we head over to the mess hall and start on some macaroni pictures!"

Max and Neil followed David to the mess hall, each one kind of dragging their feet. Neil didn't want to make macaroni art. Max didn't want the day to end.

David set everyone down at a couple of tables and pulled out paper, glue, and pasta. Everyone was passed a piece of brightly colored paper and a tube of glue. "Just a second, campers," David said when he was done passing those out. He got out some Dixie cups and started dividing the pasta into cups for everyone. "There you go! Everyone can make whatever they want. Maybe we could all do portraits of our houses! You'll all be going home soon, that must be so exciting!"

Max huffed. He didn't want to do a picture of his shitty house. Instead, he began to stick macaroni to the paper haphazardly without any rhyme or reason. Looking over, he saw that Neil was carefully drawing a house before pasting macaroni into the lines, Nikki was just coating the entire paper in glue and sticking it to her own arms, Ered and Preston were both ignoring the project - Ered was listening to music and Preston was reading a play - and Dolph, ever the Picasso, was carefully arranging his macaroni so the image was created by the different directions he pasted the macaroni into.

David came by and peeked over each of the campers' shoulders and looked over all the pieces. He complimented Dolph on his impressive piece, he had to pull a gluey paper off Nikki's arms before she got glued together and her mom came to pick her up. He told Neil his piece was nice and scolded Preston and Ered for not participating.

When he got to Max, David faltered a little.

"Max. Yours isn't a house." There wasn't a criticism behind it, just an observation.

"It's abstract, fucker, take one of Gwen's useless art classes and learn something."

"Language," David warned. "I like it, Max. It's really nice."

Max just huffed again. He hated that David made him feel better - made him feel loved. He was dreading tonight worse now, way worse, and nothing he did could make it better.

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The sun had set. Gwen was organizing the office for the third time that day, making sure everything was in place so Campbell could come back in a couple weeks and find everything he needed to commit tax fraud. It wasn't like she needed to do it, she just needed something to do. They'd been here hours, now, and they should have been on the road back home nearly 3 hours ago.

But Max was here. He was still waiting for a parent to pick him up, David sitting with him so he wasn't alone in the woods in the dark. Gwen took a glance outside, where David and Max were sitting at a picnic table.

David put his hand on Max's shoulder and Gwen tensed, waiting for Max to shrug it off and call David some shitty name, but instead, he leaned into it.

David said something. Max wiped away a couple tears before talking.

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