Top Bunk

DAY 23

⌚ 6:00 AM ON THE DOT

Someone please explain how it's raining. In California. During summertime.

Not even a light drizzle, the strong pitter-patter of raindrops against the window two feet from El's sleeping head overrides the sound of the horn she hopes is drenched enough to have finally died. She doubts it, though. That thing has been here longer than she's been alive.

Maybe El's mother heard the horn's annoying blare when it was new and shiny. Maybe she woke up to it lying next to a forty year old Lionel. Maybe El should stop disgusting herself with her own thoughts.

Anyway, she immediately regrets sleeping naked last night, since it's the first cold morning she's experienced in months. What's worse is the air is still humid, so the cold is sticking to El's skin like a flea on a dog's coat. Goosebumps span across her arms and legs and she shivers. Born and raised a Californian, rain really isn't something she's used to. (Come on, look at her during the fall - she rocks thick scarves and Uggs in not even that cold weather like nobody's business.)

Cautiously, with her thin blanket around her, El peers up at top bunk and sees Grace sleeping soundly. This is what she's talking about with the breathing. Slow and steady, like that one fable about the turtle and the other animal - the Isaac-esque animal, cocky and annoying. Grace snores slightly, the sound of a little piglet. It's better than hearing her wailing in her sleep, though, and that's a comforting thought.

El crawls back into bed, planning to relish the warmth still leftover from where her body just lay. She twists and turns, trying to find the most comfortable position and when she does find it, she realizes she's wrapped herself like a burrito in her blanket. It's warm, though, so. There's that.

Grace does get up, eventually, and miraculously doesn't fall. She's shivering as she climbs down, flinching when her feet hit the cold hardwood floor. Barely even glancing at El, she heads to the bathroom and El thinks with dread that Grace will be using up all the hot water.

Great.

⌚ 8:35 AM

The thing with rain in California is that it usually doesn't last very long. So when the sky is still grey and the clouds are still crying as ferociously as El's mother was (or is...who knows), the entirety of Camp Ashwood has a mixed air of gratefulness and disappointment. The rain is a nice break from the extremely hot sun beating down on them, that is usually making their napes as wet as if it were raining, but at the same time, it makes everyone drowsy. Cold, humid air serves only to give one the urge to curl up in bed all day.

Not quite the mood that fits a summer camp.

Especially when a particular cabin that El is the counselor of has to go hiking today.

Judging by how despicably muddy the trail is and how the rain is coming down in sheets, that certainly isn't happening.

Lionel did make an announcement this morning, declaring that all activities will "follow through despite the circumstances. That's all, have a great day, campers." Normally, the end of the statement would be followed by an exclamation point, but it sounded an awful lot like a flat, straightforward period. The way his grey eyebrows were drawn together and a pink splotch still clung to his cheek really didn't make El expect an exclamation point anyway. Considering she was the one who put him into this sour mood.

(But he put her into this sour life in the first place. Ha. He wins.)

El makes an executive decision now to disregard what Lionel said. Fuck the other counselors who have activities today that require them to compete against each other. Cabin A just has hiking - sure, it's hell on a normal day, but on a rainy day, it's perfect.