The Hours Before...

First chapter!

            I woke up and stretched in my small bunk bed. The sky was a light gray and a small amount of sunlight poured in through the crack of the door. It was a peaceful moment, but was soon interrupted by a small group of junior counselors. They opened the door and came in quietly, then looked at each other and one mouthed, “1…2…3!”

            “Rise and shine, and give God the glory, glory!!” they sang loudly, “Rise and shine, and give God the glory, glory, RISE AND SHINE AND”-stomp!-“GIVE GOD THE GLORY, GLORY, CHILDREN OF OUR LORD!!” By this time our entire cabin had woken up. The counselors laughed lightheartedly and one said, “Fifteen minutes girls, and then we’re meeting by Singing Steps to discuss things that need to be discussed. I hope you all picked out names!!” They fled out of the cabin to wake up 8a, so we took advantage of the time to get ready. Today was when campers came, so most of us were scared beyond belief. What should I wear? Said a little voice inside my head, not anything with designer, not anything TOO fashionable…oh! My purple shirt…is in the dirty laundry bag. My orange shirt…wait, I left that at home…ooh, this is a nice yellow shirt. I settled on the yellow shirt and began to comb through my hair.

            “Hey, Courtney, can I borrow a scrunchi? I seem to have lost my pack...” Addie asked, then, with a wicked smile, she added, “or should I ask Rumble?” Rumble was Courtney’s camp name, and Addie enjoyed making fun of it.

            “Oh, come on, your name is Roo. You cannot judge!” Courtney laughed.

            “You’re just mad because- ” Addie stopped talking . We knew why Courtney was a little more antsy and temperamental, but we didn’t want to point it out to her. It would only make her angrier. Addie tried to cover her tracks and said, “Well, I’m just happy I get Twix as a counselor…” Addie couldn’t hide her smile. She was happy about getting Twix.

            “Mm, we only have fifteen minutes? I should have woken up early! What would Molly say if she heard this?!” Grace rolled out of bed and began changing franticly. We all cringed at the mention of Molly, a word we were trying to avoid.

            “Oh, no. I don’t want you to be late for that.” Courtney mumbled. She had always deemed herself the most outdoorsy girl in our cabin, so when Grace had gotten the most outdoorsy counselor, Courtney was absolutely crushed. She was working with George, an elk counselor. George was really nice. She loved her elk groups and she was rather athletic. On normal circumstances, Courtney would have been overjoyed to be working with George, but it only reminded her that she wasn’t good enough to be with Molly. Yesterday had been a very tense day, and it looked like today would be even worse. Courtney got ready quickly and stormed out of the cabin ten minutes early. Addie looked concerned and chased after her, probably to remind her that Grace meant no harm. I waited for Grace and traveled with her.

            “This is going to be so fun!” Grace cooed as we walked.

            “Yeah, I’m really excited,” I agreed. I was working with the smallest group 6-8 year olds, also known as “bunnies”. 9-11 were “cats”, and 12-14 were “elks”. I was working in 1b, which is the relaxed group, more about friendship than adventure. There were twelve children, one senior counselor, one junior counselor, and me. I could barely hold my excitement.

            “Molly is so cool! I feel like we really connected on the hike. We didn’t talk too much because we were running rather competitively, but she is so fast! I hope that one day,” Grace stopped for air and looked at me. My eyes had glazed over. “Are you listening?!” She asked, annoyed.

            “Mm. Yes, you hope that one day you’ll hike, right?” I guessed from the clips what I had listened to.

            “Are you kidding me? Ok, well whatever,” Grace sighed and jogged ahead. I didn’t take it as an insult, Grace just felt compelled to run sometimes. I walked blissfully. Today I will meet with thirteen cute little cuddy kids and they will all love me! Nara will be very impressed with my awesome skills and nature love for children. Next year I’ll be a junior counselor, and maybe go on to be president, or- I reached singing steps and was forced to come back to earth. Singing steps was right outside of the lodge, and was a large clearing that was slightly slanted. There were short pieces of wood that could pass for benches if you looked really quickly or were too tired to care. The ground was cover with woodchips, like most of the main trails at camp. I sat next to Addie as a few counselors started talking from the center of the clearing.

            “Girls!” Aster shouted enthusiastically, and we all stopped talking. “Ok, today, obliviously, campers are coming”-she paused while we all cheered-“and we have to go through the tiniest bit of orientation. All of you will meet with your counselor pairs and they we will help you out. We have three hours, girls, make it work!”

 

***

Hour One

            I shuffled to Nara and we walked to cabin site 1. We talked about how exciting it would be to work with the bunnies. Nara told me about previous years, and a few cute stories. Cabin site 1 was very adorable, with four cabins, all of them with light brown paint and red roofs. They had triangle-shaped windows on every side. In the middle of the site was a small fire pit. Nara rambled about making s’mores with the girls the next night and how exciting it was for them. She showed me a quick tour (where the cleaning supplies were, where the emergency walkie talkie was, etc.) and then lead me on a small trail to a small shack-like building. I knew what it was; I had passed them just about everywhere at camp. It was an outhouse, and it really smelled, even for an outhouse.

            “Camp is about fun times, friendships, and appreciating the outdoors,” Nara said as she stood by the outhouse, “not about the scary outhouses that are filled with spiders, which this one is,” Nara grimaced and looked pained as she said the next sentence, “so, you are going to clean it…” She handed me a very long toilet cleaner rod, “just try and smush the spiders and we’ll clean them after they’re all dead.” Even Nara, who was always lighthearted and happy, looked scared at the thought of spiders and dead things. “There are only daddy long legs, so don’t be scared that you’re going to get bitten and die,” Then she walked away. I hadn’t been thinking of dying from spiders until she had mentioned that last part. I took a breath of air and walked in the spider infested bathroom.

Hour Two

            I had finally cleared out the last cobweb and scrubbed everything so it shined when about an hour had passed. Nara looked pleased we me. She was reading Seventeen and eating a donut.

            “Oh!” she exclaimed as she ate the last bit of her pastry, “that didn’t take long at all! Now we have to go over greeting our campers.” She rehearsed and taught me what to say and do when I first met our bunnies. Then we made a sign to hold up for the campers to recognize us. When we were done, it said Cabin 1b! in bright colorful letters. The background was covered in stars, flowers, and swirly Qs. I was in high school and was having probably too much fun with decorating a sign. We set up the craft for the bunnies to do when they first came to the cabin site. Nara was going to call for a well deserved break, when Bubbly came to the site.

 Bubbly was 16, only the age for a second year junior counselor (it goes CIT, first year junior counselor, second year, then senior counselor), but she was a senior counselor. At first I thought that it was because she was just that good, but I learned from the other girls that her dad was co-owner of the camp. Bubbly was allowed special privileges because of this fact, which I didn’t think was fair at all. Bubbly was tall, had fluffy blonde hair, and big…um…brains. She wore a pink wide-strapped tank top and overalls. She had cut the bottoms of the overalls to look like short shorts. From a distance she looked like an over-grown toddler, but I wasn’t going to say anything.

“Hi!” Bubbly called, giddily, “aren’t you so excited?! This is only my second time at camp, but it’s still as exciting as the first year!” Second year? She shouldn’t be a senior counselor…heck, she shouldn’t be a junior counselor, really…

“Mm, that’s true, Bubbly. Where’s your CIT?” Nara asked, seeming more absorbed in her nails than the childish counselor.

“Oh, her! I forgot about her! There was a girl following me who said that she was my CIT, and I was like, No! I’m not a CIT! I’m a counselor! Go away! But she kept following me until I was like, I’m going to call the cops! But I was going to call the cops, but I didn’t tell her that. She thought I was going to call the cops. Stupid CIT. Why didn’t she follow me?” Bubbly groaned and stomped her foot stubbornly.

Nara gave her an are-you-serious? look and shrugged. “She’s probably checking with another counselor to see who she was paired with. Ella, what’s your camp name? You need to make a name tag.” Nara handed me a CD disk, and shove a handful of sharpies into my hand. I wrote Wiggy on the shiny part of the CD, which is what all of the other CIT and counselors were doing. I didn’t know why I liked the name; it was just a pleasant slur of letters. I decorated my nametag with squiggles and lines while Nara messed with our outdoor sink.

Bubbly sat on the picnic table next to me, and started chewing gum. Food was a big no-no, unless you put it in the food shack. Bubbly didn’t seem to care.

“Ooh, CIT’s! I remember! I picked that girl with the sparkly shoes.” Bubbly exclaimed.

I stopped coloring. Ashley had sparkly Pumas. I put my head on the picnic table and silently groaned. I didn’t like Ashley. She was ditzy and quite annoying.

“Wait, she got taken,” Bubbly remembered, and made an over exaggerated pouty face. I chose that girl with the ruffled top, wait, she was taken…OH! I took that girl with the red streak in her hair. She looked so hard-core.” Bubbly looked pleased at herself. She looked at me, “you don’t talk much, do you?”

“Well, you see-” I started to explain, but I was cut off.

“Raven reaching Bubbly, Raven to Bubbly!” said a walkie talkie in a muffled voice. It was Nara’s walkie talkie.

“Bubbly,” I asked, “where’s your walkie?”

“That? I left it…somewhere…maybe I could borrow Nara’s talkie-thingie,” then, without asking, she grabbed it and started pressing buttons, “How…do…I?” She drawled and pressed the same button repeatedly. I cringed and hoped she wouldn’t break it. Finally I grabbed it and held down the talk button.

“Talk,” I told her, pointing to the walkie talkie.

“Oh, hey guys. I lost my walkie. I can’t find my CIT. It’s not my fault-” Bubbly started, but I couldn’t stand it.

“Bubbly to Raven,” I called, repeating basic walkie talkie protocol.

“Good, switch to channel two,” Raven called, and I turned a dial to go to the private channel.

“Talk,” I mouthed to Bubbly again.

“Oh, hey guys, again. I lost my walkie, I can’t find my CIT. It’s not my fault because she wasn’t listening to me,” I face-palmed and cringed as she drawled along.

“Oh, um, I’m sorry about your walkie, you’ll have to find that, but I have your CIT. Her name is Kat, right?” Raven asked, her voice messed up from the walkie.

“No, my name is Bubbly.” Bubbly answered, annoyed.

“Does she have a red streak in her hair?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“Yeah,” Raven said.

“That’s her CIT,” I announced, “We’re at cabin site 1.”

“ Ok, thanks, um…” Raven didn’t know my name.

“Wiggy, I’m a CIT,” I said, smiling that I got to use my new camp name.

“Right, Wiggy, thank you so much!” the talkie clicked and I switched it to the main dial, handing it back to Bubbly, “You may want to ask someone how it works, ok?” Nara came back, apparently having fixed the sink, and we checked our cabins to make sure they were spotless.

 

Hour Three

 

            I was sweeping up one of 1b’s cabins when Kat came. She looked nervous and a little annoyed. I would be annoyed if I was paired with Bubbly, personally. Bubbly greeted Kat in a big hug, then spent a lot of time asking her about her red highlight. Kat looked tense and a little uncomfortable. She suggested that they start on the sign for the kids. Bubbly told her to “go to that” and then she pulled out her phone and began texting. Kat sighed and began to do the sign.

I swept the cabin and doubled checked everything until I told Nara it was clean. Nara went over how we would lead the girls to the cabin site and play a game to memorize names. They were new at camp, and she kept on reminding me to not rush them. I listened to Nara intently, as if somewhere in there she would tell me the secrets of life. We walked to the main area, where the parking was, at about 9:45. I saw Courtney, Addie, and Grace, who were all wearing t-shirts that said CAMP LAKEWOOD in big bright letters.

“Aren’t you so excited?!” Addie squealed.

“I am super nervous!” Grace confided, breathing hard.

“Well, I’m ready for camp,” mumbled Courtney, still in an ornery mood.

“Oh! This is yours,” Addie handed me a t-shirt from a pile of t-shirts in a box behind her. It was a light green and matched the other girl’s shirts. I put it on over my wide-strapped yellow tank top and gushed with my friends and how excited we were. Courtney stood there and kicked the ground, barely participating in the conversation. By 9:50, all of the camp was taking their places. It was like a big theatrical production.

Aster stood by the registration building and called out, “and a HUSH fell over the land!”’

“Hush!” we all shouted simultaneously. Then we fell silent.

“Ok girls, soon, the early parents will be coming. They are usually slightly more irritable than the parents that come on time, though let’s not label people. Everyone get in your groups and hold up your signs! It’s time for camp!”

It was a little messy to start with. Every CIT was trying to find their counselor and every counselor was trying to find their CIT. The lifeguards and activity counselors were getting to the registration building to help parents and children. The children had to turn in any medicine and get checked for lice and foot fungus, and then were supposed to go to their cabin numbers.

I found Nara and I held up our sign proudly as the first cars pulled in, but then I heard her walkie talkie almost exploding with noise.

“Raven to Cookie! Raven to Cookie! Zara to Twix! Zara to Twix!” It blared from Nara’s pocket. It was all gibberish nonsense with all of the voices, but then I heard, loud and clear, “Aster to Nara! Aster to Nara!”

“This is Nara to Aster,” Nara answered calmly.

“Switch to channel six,” Aster said through the walkie and Nara did.

“On channel six.” Nara said.

“Good. We’re one short, since Bubbly applied to help with sign in and then remembered she was a counselor. I know you have a CIT, so could you fill in for a bit?”

“Would you be fine with leading the girls yourself?” Nara asked me, “Here’s the check off sheet, just check their names off as they come until you have them all checked, ok?” She shoved the chart at me.

“Um, I think I can do it,” I said, trying to hold the tall sign and the chart without falling over.

“Thank you, so much! I’m so sorry to push it on you. When you’ve got everyone, head down to camp, though make sure they pick buddies first. Make a count-off too, we don’t want them to get lost. Oh! Don’t scare them! Don’t rush them! Don’t-”

“Aster to Nara!” The walkie screamed.

“Coming,” Nara said into the walkie talkie, and gave me a wave.

Author's Note

Hope you like it! Tell me ANYTHING i should improve!