Camp Reunion || Maxneil, Dadvid

Hey, Nikki?

Neil chased the peas around with his fork on his plate, making light scratches on the porcelain with the stainless steel. The faint clattering of plates as Candy - now his step-mother - loaded a pile of plates into the kitchen sink and started to wash them with a yellow sponge and blue dishsoap bothers him. He doesn't really understand why they can't just get a dishwasher.

He looked up at his step-sister thoughtfully. "Hey, Nikki?"

She looked at Neil with her bright pink eyes shining in curiosity. He interpreted this as a 'Yeah?'

"Do you ever miss.. Max?"

Nikki remained silent for a little, as if considering if she did while Neil fully knew the answer.

"All the time," she laughed inwardly, "I do miss him."

Neil made a small, hardly-noticeable hum of agreement as he spooned - well, forked, the last couple of peas into his mouth.

Candy approached the table, wearing a concerned look on her face.

"Hey, kids, why so glum?" She commented in a questioning tone, picking up the last plate from the table.

Nikki shrugged, presumably not wanting to talk about Max in front of her mom.

The door could be heard opening and closing from the kitchen-dining room and Neil's dad entered the room. He was wearing that one yellow turtleneck (urgh, he hates when they match; this is why Neil got a new baby blue one to match his eyes) and a black messenger bag full of textbooks and the like. He had recently gotten a job at a university.

Carl dumped his bag onto the kitchen island counter and pulled his laptop out of its case, greeting Candy and the kids.

"Hey, honey, Neil, Nikki," he listed off, glancing in he general direction of the moody teenagers. "Neil? Why the long face?"

Candy rolls her eyes. "They've been moody ever since they got  downstairs. Not sayin' anything," she shrugs, "Teens, I'll never understand 'em."

Carl chuckles at this, and continues preparing for tomorrow's lecture.

Neil can't really stand it; the way he feels like he doesn't want to talk about anything to do with camp, but dissapointed at his parents' dismissal. He thinks Nikki feels the same.

He's running out of time for going to camp, a few years from outside the age bracket. Of course, every summer - without fail -  he and Nikki returned to camp campbell.

It's around the time they would be at camp, but they're not. It's August, and freshman year starts in a couple weeks.

Nikki feels foolish. It's something that she doesn't feel very often despite her childish nature. Foolish because every single year in the past five they went to camp, and not one year had Max showed up. The other campers did, and they even reeled in new ones, but it wasn't camp camp. It was just... camp campbell.

Neil noticed that David had become slightly more and more apathetic but recovered from this in the third and fourth year.

Every time Max is mentioned, David has either an excited or sombre appearance in his eyes. Like a dad was hiding something like crippling debt from his kids, trying to mask their financial problems and gambling addiction (that feels oddly specific). But it's not really anything close to that.

Nikki reminds Neil of the science project he was going to do. It lifts his spirits, even just a little. Thanks, Nikki.