july nineteenth , nineteen seventy-eight , around 12:45 P.M.
"Hey, Cindy!" I look over at the doors of the mess hall opening, a small smile forming briefly on my face. "Can I ask you a question?"
"No, not right now. I am not in the mood for any questions. Let's just get this mess hall cleaned up, and then...then maybe you can ask questions. But right now? No. No, absolutely not." Her tone of voice and her posture made me recognize that a rant would start sooner, rather than later.
I didn't even bother to respond, knowing it would somehow make this situation worse. For about twenty minutes, there was silence between us, the only noise being the campers running around outside and Cat Stevens playing on the radio. It felt weird, for sure, but it gave me time to think about everything that's been happening. Pros and cons needed to be listed in my head on a strange day like this-sure, today could be considered a good day, but something felt weird. Making the list of good and bad helped with my anxiety. Something was going to go wrong, that's what my gut was telling me.
So! Some pros about today, let's see what I can think of. It's my birthday, I'm finally seventeen years old! One year away from legally being an adult. Tommy gave me a cupcake for breakfast, which is always a good thing! Tommy took me to a nice viewing area of the sunrise, Cindy and I danced to Grease's soundtrack, and Tommy asked me to marry him! Check, check, and check-all of those were good things. All of those were pros. So there couldn't be too many cons, right?
And here the cons go: my dad hasn't called me yet to wish me a happy birthday, Cindy's in a bad mood, and we're stuck cleaning the mess hall only for the kids to come in an hour later and screw it all up again! The pros outweighed the cons at this moment in time, so the hours left in this day could take me in several different directions. Hopefully, they were good directions, but I didn't want to dwell on it any longer for fear of jinxing it.
"I swear to God everyone just wants to...ruin my life." Cindy's annoyed and strained voice was a perfect distraction to my own thoughts, although she brought up a topic that might cause her bad mood to worsen.
"Hmm?" I asked, needing more context to her sentence.
"Alice? She's like...she just won't let it go, ya know? It's like we're still twelve years old and her whole goal in life is to punish me for something that wasn't even my fault!" She started to explain, and Tommy and I exchanged a look of disappointment.
