cabin 5

chapter 1.

"Don't leave me!" A kid in a yellow shirt screeches, his arms wrapping tightly around his mother's neck. There's snot leaking out of his nose and tears pouring out of his big eyes. I sigh.

"I hate those kids," Arita mutters beside me, her chin resting against her palm. Her legs are stretched out in the lawn chair beside mine, her sandals shoved into the grass, her skin marked with the scars of years spent climbing trees and falling during tag. "There's, like, five each summer. They don't stop crying for a whole week - just constant bawling. I could cut my own fucking ears off, seriously."

I snort, looking away from the mother struggling to pull her kid off and not choke in the process. Pik jogs over to her from the main lodge, his large key ring jingling in his pocket. He shoots us a look, his eyes flicking between the rest of the parents lined up behind the screaming kid and Arita and me. I can hear him say, Go help, dipshits, from our spot in the shade.

I nudge Arita with my elbow, causing her to scoff and stand up from the chair. She brushes off her matching yellow shirt, the same mustard colour as the screaming kid's. My shirt is green, an emerald that matches the water in the lake. Thankfully, all the kids who were handed one like mine weren't crying, or weren't doing it loud enough for us to hear. The first-year campers are usually old enough to handle leaving their parents for an entire summer, but some of them get scared. It's not that I don't understand - I cried my first time here. It was a plea for help, honestly, to get my mother's attention for once. Make a scene and she'll look. If anything, it just made her leave faster.

I place a hand over my eyes, surveying the whole camp from the entrance. The large sign above us that's keeping away the harsh sunlight, the red wood with Camp Kawei written across, starts the dirt path that takes you to every building or activity centre. The showers are closest to us, connected to the cafeteria, rec room, and Pik's office. The cabins are on the other side of the path, one to twenty three sitting in a wide ring around the campfire pit, surrounded by logs that we use to sit while making s'mores every night. The lake, where we swim and canoe, is at the end of the path. It's pretty much fully sectioned off with a rope, to keep the kids away as a safety precaution. The dock is the only way onto the sand, and that's blocked off by a locked gate that only Pik has a key to.

Arita grabs my other arm, dragging me with her. I stumble forward and we head to the kid as Pik is wiping away his tears with an orange handkerchief. I smile up at the mother, sticking out my hand, a few of the woven bracelets Arita and me had made over the summers sliding forward on my wrist.

"Don't worry," I say, shaking her hand a few times. She looks exhausted, her blouse and slacks wrinkled from wrestling her kid. I make sure the kid can hear me, too. "He'll be having fun in no time. We've got a ton of activities lined up for the whole summer!" The mother smiles weakly back at me, wiping her hand on her slacks as we pull away. Okay, ouch. I rub my hands together, checking if they're clammy. It's not hot enough out for me to be sweating everywhere.

"Thanks..." the woman trails off, looking at the little painted name tag attached to my shirt in the shape of a four-leaf clover. "Uh... Button?"

I laugh as she eyes Arita's name tag, then Pik's, then back to mine.

"It's a game we play with the campers. A sort of tradition," I explain, the confused expression melting from her face. "Button is a nickname, and we let the first-year campers try and guess our real names all summer." She nods, and Arita forces a grin. Her nickname, Karma, is from the story of how her and I met. She'd been terrorizing this one kid by chopping scissors in front of her face - I guess he was scared of scissors - and she accidentally cut her top lip. She was bleeding everywhere, she still has the scar. I was in the nurse's cabin when they brought her in to get it bandaged, but I'd only been in there to clean the new callouses on my fingers. Pik has been teaching me how to play the guitar since my first year, and my skin never really liked the roughness of guitar strings.