A Summer At Camp

Chapter 3

|Rylan Pov|

The next morning, we were instructed to meet in our groups after breakfast. My group met at the same Oak tree as we did last night and awkwardly waited for instruction. In this time of waiting, I realized I forgot to mark off my calendar but I tried not to focus on it then Allison spoke. "Alright campers! for the first challenge of the summer we will be doing a scavenger hunt. Each team has to find ten items and no team has the exact same items. How your group finds these things is up to you guys, highest amount of points goes to whoever finishes first and so on and so forth. Get to it guys!" and with that a few of the head counselors began distributing lists to all the groups. Lola took the list and quickly skimmed over it. "Okay guys" She spoke, "I think the best way to do this is to split up and each group finds five things" "Yeah sure" I agreed. "Great, you can go with Elianna and I'll go with Asher" She said acknowledging the others. Then she carefully ripped the list in half and handed half to me and the other half to Asher. "Then meet back here when you finish" Elianna added. Then we split ways Asher and Lola headed to the woods and Elianna and I planned to look around the main part of camp.

|Elianna pov|

I didn't mind being partnered with Rylan, he was nice and kind of cute. "Okay so our list says we need to find a pine cone, a red rock, a feather, a Y shaped stick and, a dandelion. Sounds easy enough" I said "totally" he agreed then spoke again,"if we go down to the lake we could probably find a red rock and maybe some of the other stuff." With that we headed to the lake, it did't take long before Rylan found a rock that would work and he shoved it into his pocket. While At the lake I also found a hawk feather. We decided to walk back up to the lawn on the edge of the woods to look for the stick and the pine cone. "So" Rylan spoke up "what made you want to come here?" he asked. "I didn't really have a choice in wanting too, I was just told I was coming and didn't argue" I said "Oh" he laughed "well basically me too" he said "my mom told me It would be good for me" he continued. "funny my dad said the same thing" I said "Oh look there a pine cone" I picked it up and put it into my pocket with the feather. "Nice, we make a great team" He said. "Yeah we do" I said then, "all we need is the Y stick and a dandelion" "Dandelion" Rylan repeated. He suddenly spaced out and the tension became palpable, "Can we Uhhh go to my cabin real quick, I need to do something. It'll be really quick I promise." He said with a sense of urgency. "Yeah of course" I said confused. We seemed to be making good time so I didn't see a problem with a quick pit stop. Once into the boys cabin Rylan quickly walked over to what I'm assuming is his bunk and pulled out a small booklet, covered in dandelions. He pulled out a pen and marked something off. He sighed "It's a calendar." He said quietly I uhh I use it to mark off how many days it's been since my brother died. two years one month and twenty three days" he added then cleared his throat. His eyes were locked on the ground. "Oh Rylan, I -I'm so sorry I had no idea" I said, I knew how hard it was to explain these things. "It's fine, I just started this calendar as a way to cope with it i guess and dandelion was always our code word for things so I picked a dandelion calendar. I dunno it probably sounds dumb" He mumbled. "Rylan it's not dumb." I took a deep breath, "My mom died in a car accident two years ago, I know how hard it is to cope" "I'm really sorry" He said before going silent I watched him  take a few deep breaths. Finally he spoke" I know this is kinda a moment and all, but we still have two more items to find" "Oh yeah we do" I smiled and so did he. We left the cabin and I followed him to the camp fire area. "Watch this" he said as he picked up a long stick. He then bent and snapped it a few times until it looked like a perfect Y. "Boom a Y shaped stick and item four out of five" "wow where'd you learn that? cub scouts"I said, "yes actually I did" He said proudly. I giggled and jogged to the edge of the woods to look for our last item, a dandelion. I saw a few as Rylan caught up to me but ignored them, I figured I'd let Rylan find one seeing they meant so much to him. "Got one" he said as he bent down to pick it up. "Awesome" I said "we found everything" "Wonder if the others are done" He said, "I'm not sure but hopefully they finish soon" I said turning in the direction of our Oaktree. Once there we sat in silence for a bit then we used the surrounding rocks and sticks to set up an impromptu game of tic tac toe while we waited for the others to come back. Maybe Rylan and I had more in common than I thought.

|Asher pov|

It's not that I had a problem with Lola, I just would've preferred to be partnered with Rylan, someone I had already met and spent time with. Lola and I took off into the woods with our portion of the list, "k so it says we need to find a cleaver, an acorn, something purple, moss and a berry." I read off the items on the list. "What was the first one again?" Lola asked reaching for the list, I handed it over to her. "Oh" she said "this says clover not cleaver" "Oh sorry, I must've read that wrong, I'm dyslexic" I said embarrassed. "It's fine" she responded, "even if it was a cleaver I'd be totally stoked" she laughed and I couldn't help but smile. The both of us looked in the grass near where the edge of the woods met the lake and I quickly found a clover and she found an acorn. "See we're pretty good at this" Lola spoke up. Then she said, "Ya know you don't talk much for a buff sportsy guy" I didn't respond mostly because I didn't have a good reason why I'm this way, "I'm not that scary" she continued. I took a deep breath, "Just shy I guess" I said, "I'm not really good with meeting people and stuff" "good to know" she said, "there's a difference between shy and disliking someone, glad you don't hate me... yet" She lead the way down to towards the lake. "We should be able to find the rest of this stuff down here" I said, "Hopefully" she agreed. Down near the lake I decided to try again at conversation, "You seem so confident and sure of yourself. How?" "Well" she responded "It wasn't easy at first, then I realized if you aren't yourself your never gonna know who your real friends are ya know? ooo found a purple flower" "Nice two more things to go" I said, then Lola continued; "You have to do you for you and be yourself because if you don't believe in yourself how will others believe in you, hard thing to grasp but I got it eventually." She finished. "I wish I could grasp it" I mumbled. "I'm sure you will eventually"she said with a smile, something about her smile made me trust her. We both went back to looking for our items when I heard a small yelp and turned around just in time to see Lola completely wipe put on some mud. "ow" she cried, "Woah are you ok?" I asked as I made my way to her. "Yeah I'm fine" she said with a grimace on her face, I extended my hand down to help her up. "On the bright side I found the moss" she said holding up a small chunk in her opposite hand as I pulled her up. I could tell she was hurt, she was avoiding putting pressure on her left foot yet still trying to act fine. "You know I can tell your hurt right? I'm an athlete who is no stranger to ankleinjuries" I said looking at her foot. "It's just an ankle twist I'll be fine" she said, "just be careful" I replied. We decided to walk back up to camp. About halfway up the hill I had placed an arm around Lola's shoulders to support her and lessen the pressure on her ankle. "oh wait look there" she pointed to a bush near a pine tree and sure enough it was freckled with small red berries, I removed my arm and made my way over and picked and placed a berry into my pocket with the clover. We continued and made it to the top of the hill and were headed to our meeting spot, Lola had insisted walking on her own and was trying hard to hide it but the limp was still obviously there. Then we made it back.

|Lola pov|

Asher and I had made it back to the others and counted up our total of 10 items. We were headed to the mess hall to show that we finished when Elianna said, "Lola are you ok? you've been limping since you came back" I mentally cursed, nobody was supposed to notice. "Yeah I just twisted my ankle down by the lake, I slipped in the mud" I said "Hmm, you should probably ice that later." She replied, "yeah I should" I said as we reached the building. I had taken note that Rylan was being exceptionally quiet since we had all regrouped, he was usually the talkative one; besides me of course. We turned in our items and it turns out we finished third place, we were pretty proud of ourselves. After a round of high fives we decided to split up, guys and girls to go chill or do something else. The boys headed to the basketball court and Ellie and I to our cabin, after stopping in the nurses cabin for an ice pack.

Once situated in the cabin I asked, "So how were things with Rylan" "It was- good we have a lot in common" she replied, she seemed to choose her words carefully but I couldn't figure out why. She then returned the question "How were things with Asher? before you hurt yourself" she gestured to the ice pack resting on my ankle. "It was good I guess, he's just really shy" "Yeah I can kinda tell" Ellie replied, "Poor kid liked like he was gonna throw up yesterday when we met" "Yeah" I agreed "he's not the talkative type" We then filled the time with small talk and I did some reading and Elianna wrote in some sort of journal until it was time to do something else or to eat lunch.