Day One: Complete. Only six to go. Inwardly sighing to herself, Lily juggled her laptop on one knee and scratched Wookie with the other hand as she clicked on the Wi-Fi icon at the bottom right corner of the screen.

No networks available.

She supposed it had been too much to ask that the campground had Wi-Fi. She dug her cell phone out of her purse and powered it up.

Nothing. A flickering bar of signal. No 4G or 3G network -- not even an edge network.

“Let’s hope Ruby has internet somewhere on this campground, or else I’m going to have to break rules so I can get the first article to Rob on time.” Her stomach growled at the prospect of real food rather than cold noodles three times a day.She didn’t even have a way to make coffee! The adrenaline from dealing with the spider earlier had long since worn off. If she had to go into town to upload the article, there might be a restaurant... No. She couldn’t go there, it was against the rules. Considering the killer article she’d just written describing every detail of her new fire-starting skills, she didn’t want to go against the rules. She wanted to see this thing through the right way.

She cracked a caffeine-deprived yawn as she packed up her laptop and slung the case over her shoulder. Wookie’s ears perked up as she realized they were venturing outside. Lily nodded. “Yes, girl. Come on, let’s go. But don’t go to Ethan’s cabin or next time you’ll have to stay inside.”

Wookie snorted, as if to say, why would I do that?

Ten minutes later, Ruby led her past a fridge door littered with compliance notifications from the Greendale Council. What was that about? Lily tried to crane her neck, but Ruby’s surprisingly quick pace and stream of chatter prevented her from being able to read them fully. If this campground had compliance violations against local by-laws…

Well, she was only here for a week and she’d seen for herself how run-down the campground had become. Ruby had probably hired Ethan as her handyman after she received those notices. He certainly seemed to be pulling his weight around here. He even took time out of his day to remove a spider from her cabin … even if he had teased her about it. She smiled, remembering the look on his face as he’d held the spider at the end of the stick and carried it into the trees. It was the first time she’d seen him do anything but scowl or look grumpy.

His smile was a bit dreamy…

“Lily?”

She mentally shook herself, reminding herself that she was not alone. Ruby stood in front of her, a curious look on her face as she gestured to an old computer.

“You can use this.”

Old? No. This thing was a dinosaur. Before the days of flat-screen monitors. As Ruby pushed the button to turn it on, the computer filled the room with white noise.

“I’ll give you some privacy. I’ll put on a pot of coffee in the kitchen, in case you’d like some.”

Lily nodded, speechless, as Ruby exited into the kitchen through the narrow doorway and shut Lily and Wookie into this tiny, cluttered room. There was barely enough space with the cardboard boxes piled haphazardly along the walls for Lily to wheel the chair far enough away from the desk to sit. Although she tried to stifle her curiosity as to the contents of the boxes, the whirring computer sounded as though it would take until the next millennium to fully boot. Part of that was undoubtedly because of the Windows: ME logo that fluttered to life on the black screen.

Great. Could this ancient machine even handle sending an email? She hoped so.

As it finished loading, she idly scratched the spot above Wookie’s tail that she loved so much. The dog’s foot thumped against the ground as she wheezed in bliss. The boxes drew Lily’s attention.

Those are private. Ruby is graciously allowing you into her home for this. Not wanting to disclose the true nature of her stay here, Lily had laughed off the question of why she needed a computer and kept the answer vague. “I need to send a few work emails this week. Never stops, not even when I’m on vacation!”

“Vacation, I wish,” Lily muttered into the small room. She turned her attention back to the screen. It still wasn’t finished loading.

She groaned. It was going to take forever to get this dinosaur up and running. Did it even have a USB port for her to transfer the file to upload? After glancing at the door, Lily decided to take matters into her own hands. She got down on her hands and knees and searched for the Ethernet cable to disconnect it from the computer tower and connect it directly to her laptop.

Instead, she found a cord and followed it to a phone jack in the wall. “Dial up? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Was her laptop old enough to still contain a dial up modem? She glanced at the screen on the monitor. Still loading. It seemed as though she had to try.

“The last time I had dial up I was twelve,” she muttered under her breath as she examined the ports on her laptop. The phone jack looked as though it would fit in one along the back, so she slipped it in and held her breath. Having spent her entire life with computers, she found the Network and Internet settings in the Control Panel easily. Lo and behold, when she clicked to add a new connection, “Dial up” was an option.

One thing she hadn’t missed in the past fifteen years was that ear-splitting screech. Wookie whimpered and hid beneath the chair.

“I don’t blame you, girl.”

When the connection prompted her for the admin name and passcode, she found both on a paper taped to the screen of the computer. It still took a minute for the internet to connect. It was better than nothing, wasn’t it?

She nearly amended that opinion when it took over a minute for her to load her email. As she waited for the page to refresh, she stood and turned to the boxes again. How personal could the contents be? They were right next to the kitchen -- they probably held old pots and pans, stuff that Ruby didn’t have room for in the cupboards.

When Lily opened one, seeking confirmation, instead she found a neat stack of picture frames. She glanced at her laptop, finding that the page had finally loaded. Resisting temptation, she returned to the agonizing task of composing a new email and attaching her first of seven articles. As it loaded, she found her gaze returning to the cardboard box.

Those pictures were personal, but the reporter in her had questions. Why were they relegated to the never-used computer room? They had been stacked neatly, lovingly in the box before being packed away. Lily still had five minutes, at the least, before her attachment finished uploading. Glancing at the door, she listened for sounds beyond that of her dog’s snuffling. She didn’t hear Ruby.

She peeked into the box, overturning the top picture frame. It showed an old photograph of a lake that looked like the same one the cabins at Pinecrest Lodge overlooked. Poised in front of that lake, Ruby, a much younger woman, laughed in her wedding dress as her husband kissed her cheek.

“No wonder Ruby refuses to give up on the campground,” Lily whispered, emotion choking her. She stroked the glass of the picture. “She was married here.” In Ruby’s place, Lily wouldn’t want to admit defeat, either.

Hyper-aware in case she was disturbed, when movement flickered at the edge of her vision, a figure was outside near the tree line, Lily jumped. She placed the frame back into the pile and shut the box, her heart beating fast. Had it been Ruby? Ethan? When she peeked out the window, she saw no signs of the figure.

Thoughts of Ethan distracted her. It had been nice of him to move the spider. Even though he’d poked fun at her a little, he hadn’t been too mean about it. And he’d helped her build that fire. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as she’d first thought. She glanced out the window again. Still nothing.

What was she expecting to see? Hopefully not Ethan. The last thing she needed was to start looking for him around every corner. Nope. She was here for one purpose and one purpose only. She had a contest to win and she couldn’t do that while mooning over her neighbor.