Jason held onto Frankie’s hand tightly as they walked through the camp together looking for Sean. Between his natural squirrely skittishness and his young age, all the other critter kids seemed so big and scary to the little squirrel boy, even though he knew deep down that he shouldn’t be frightened of a bunch of children. He pressed up close to Jason as they walked for safety and cuddled his fluffy tail for security.
Jason noticed the scared little camper clinging and said to him, “Don’t worry, little buddy! We’ll get you back to your own little friends soon to have a great time, okay?” Frankie looked up at the big, dependable-looking bobcat male and smiled, feeling a lot better having a grown-up helping him out.
Finally, they made it to the beach, where the group of Rick, Sean, Jack, and Marianne were drying off their fur. Frankie immediately recognized Sean as both his daughter and his big brother, with their faces battling in his memories for dominance.
“Alright, kiddo! There he his. Go get that medicine to him so we can get back to the other junior campers, okay?” Jason said, and Frankie nervously walked over toward Sean and the others.
Jack spotted Frankie heading over and tapped Sean on the tail. “Yo, your little brother’s coming over to bug us… I thought you said he’d be stuck with the babies and wouldn’t annoy us, dude!” Jack said.
Sean looked at the little squirrel kid in front of him and for a moment thought it might be Tommy, but he realized the truth as his old and new memories started to mix around in his head. “W-what the…? D-dad? Is that you?” he whispered, as Sarah’s memories came to the surface for a moment.
“Umm… I got your med’sin, big bwother…” Frankie lisped as he held out the bag he had brought, embarrassed that his daughter (Son? Big brother?) was seeing him like this. Behind Sean, Jack was holding his fingers up to his mouth to imitate Frankie’s big buck teeth, making Rick giggle and Marianne sigh in annoyance.
Sean blushed and grabbed the bag, not having realized he had forgotten it at home. In fact, he felt a bit of a headache coming on after swimming around earlier, a sure sign of low blood sugar levels, so he was glad that he had it.
“Little bro… I-I mean, dad…” Sean sputtered, trying to sort out his thoughts. “Umm… Let’s just go with Frankie. Frankie, what the heck are you doing here? Did Tom bring you here?” In his head, memories of their older stepbrother Tom the beaver were starting to flood in, making it harder and harder to tell what was real and what was the magic of Camp CritterCreek conspiring to turn them all into happy, playful little critter kids…