Marigold

Chapter Six

The four of us followed the camp mistress to her office and I'm pretty sure I was the only one bothered.
This wasn't my first crime by association but this one was different in a bad way, if the authorities manage to send us home, it's going to kill dad's soul and I might even lose all trust from mom and I might end up alone forever, I wasn't ready to face THAT.
My instincts wanted me to go beg the camp mistress right there so she'll have no choice but to forgive us and give us some sort of punishment instead because begging for mercy when we are alone could be hopeless. I had the plan but I just couldn't put it into action...

"Here we are, you four get in there," she said while drawing our attention to her office which was the only building in the camp not made from wood. With that said, it still had a flower bed at each side and a flag with some sort of logo on it, it was very close to the entrance too so there was a chance it would be the first building you'll see.
When I got inside, I was hit with a cold breeze from the air conditioner but the multiple stares I got from random faces quickly turned the cold breeze to feel as warm as asphalt on a summer afternoon.
I could only recognize Ariana, the rest were strangers to me.
"Camp quill, do you know what you did?" The camp mistress finally asked but was as blank and unreadable as ever.
"N-no"
"yes, we do..."
"Yeah"
"Uh-huh"
Mam, I don't know these people, I was just visiting them from my cabin can just go now?
I never said that out loud so it stayed inside me and made me feel more like a sack with unused used words...
"Well, would you like to explain yourselves then?" She asked, and Maddie started slowly
"Well, we had a phone in front of our cabin..."
"...Then I stole the phone from there afterwards..." Emma continued
"...Then we used the phone to entice this one to follow us into the woods last night." Nicole finished making me sound like a true victim,
"And who owns this phone?" the mistress asked eventually and the three of my roommates chose to keep shut to the question creating a void of silence in the office.
"Well then quill, you'll follow counsellor Jake over there and he'll make sure you girls learn a lesson" she snapped then continued "Oh and Jake, give these clowns the extra treatment, maybe next time they'll learn to answer ALL my questions." giving us wicked glares and it was melting my spirit.

Doing what the lady told us to do, I and my roommates along with the other campers followed shaggy-looking Jake up a hill with a little old playground with dirty swings, muddy slides, turd-filled sandboxes, and merry-go-rounds overgrown with weeds.
The whole place looked like vomit, and our punishment was to clean up the place.
"Why?" Emma asked the counsellor
"Anything you tell me would be used against you" he replied
"Do we get tools?" Someone asked him
"Go find them yourselves"
"So are you going to help us?" Maddie asked him
"I want four specific girls to clean the gutters they know themselves, whatever," he said before groaning his way to a bench to take a siesta.
I looked around, some people had found some cleaning equipment while some had already started cleaning the disgusting place so I knew I couldn't be standing around. Lucky for me, the cleaning tools were easy to find so I didn't have to ask anyone. I carried a brush, a mop, and a bucket I later filled with water and made my way to one of the play forts in the playground, it was a big area surrounded by an open field and some trees but still looked creepy and out of place could've been the reason it was abandoned and used as a discipline center instead. Anyway, I decided to scrub half of the play fort while some random person would do the rest, there was no work distributor or anything but we were all still organized.

While still scrubbing the floors of the play fort, I bumped into someone I hadn't seen since the first day I got to camp. He was the maniac that tried turning my mouth to a sandpit.
I stared at him for a while before apologizing to him but it was like he didn't remember me because he was just cool with everything which was very unusual, the only problem was that he was still staring at me like he was waiting for me to burst so I asked him
"What?"
"No it's nothing, you just look familiar that's all" he made a note and went back to scrubbing. I was already done with that place anyway so I had to go to the gutters and leave that awkward air behind.
Then, he called me from behind,
"Hey Lola, good luck with the gutters"
As far as I knew, he was trying to piss me off AGAIN,
"You know what? You've been a real jerk since the first time I met you..."
"Well I'm just wishing you luck, the gutters looked real messy" He cut into the long hate speech I was about to give,
I went silent...
I tried telling him how I don't care about his luck and he could go sell it to the first naive victim he met for all I care but nothing came out of my mouth.
He stood up and walked up to me and muttered the words "I'll be waiting" in my ear and left the fort. I looked back at him and he was just stared at me for a while and continued walking away messing up the area I just scrubbed clean with his filthy soles.

There I was, standing in a play fort with so many questions being played like a mixtape in my head,
How did he know my name?
I don't remember telling any guy in the camp and last time I checked I'm not so popular,
Why did he tell me 'I'll be waiting?
Where would he be waiting and why?
Who does that?
Why isn't he as rude as day one?
Did he bump into me intentionally?

I didn't have an answer to any of these questions though, and I was pretty sure I was going to throw up, but something about his tone felt dubious and unreal like he was trying to play with my head but I wasn't that gullible, I had a little bit of knowledge about boys like him but I hadn't interacted with boys like him so I just decided to take it as a normal conversation with weird words for content instead of something completely insane like a date I don't want right now.

"Lola, down here" Emma yelled pulling me out of my thoughts.