Family + Camp (working title)

Chapter 1: Bad News

Penelope Annabelle Min-Yi Harte, known to her friends and family as Nell, tried not to slam the door to her bedroom, even though she really, really, really wanted to.

What was happening to her dad was some kind of bullshit. What was happening to her family was all kinds of fucked up. And what was happening to her, well, that was just freaking typical, wasn't it?

"Nellie, come back." She heard her father's voice through the thin fiberboard that made up her door and walls.

"Let her go, Morrie," Nell's mom said, her strong, persuasive, no-bullshit tone delivering Nell the privacy to steam all she wanted in peace.

Their voices settled down to murmurs. For one whole minute, Nell waited, staring at the beige carpet their entire house was done in, except for the kitchen. Even the bathrooms were wall-to-wall in this ugly stuff, probably moldy as a piece of bread left out in the rain.

She loved every inch of it.

Taking a deep breath, Nell came out of her fugue state. She gave herself a little shake before turning on the ball of one bare foot and launching herself onto her twin bed. Something burned in her eyes. Was that tears? Oh, hell no. She would not let the GG have her tears. They could kiss her ass before she let the institution that was firing her dad—and kicking her family out of the only home she'd ever really known in her seventeen years—cause her to sob like a little baby bitch.

Nell reached for her phone. It sat, pride of place, on her bedside table. This sleek, red baby with the black handset had been installed when she entered high school three years ago, a combination birthday gift plus straight-A's throughout junior high reward. Not even Jolene Evans, the most popular girl in their little backwoods community, had her own goddamn bedroom phone. Oh, no. Jolene, like the rest of the scabs in the village of Fields Creek, had to drag the kitchen phone into the hallway in order to get some privacy whenever she wanted to gossip with her girlfriends or flirt with a boy. If that failed, she could sit on the side of her parents' bed—the master bedroom's all having a second phone jack—and drag the extended cord into their walk-in closet. It was absolutely pathetic.

Not so for Nell. She had all the comforts of her own phone within her own bedroom. This was one of the perks of being a beloved second child, a position in the family she'd never felt bad about. Her older brother Jamie could suck it. 

Quickly, she keyed in the seven digits of her best friend's number by heart. She had several numbers memorized—how could she not? It was the way the world worked when you had as many friends and acquaintances and teammates as Nell did.

"What up," Leonardo Rodriguez said, his greeting more like a command than a question. In the Rodriguez home, Len had his own phone too. Nell could picture him lying on his bed, head propped on his one soggy pillow, no shirt covering his scrawny chest, shorts and tube socks his only garb. He was probably reading comics and shooting hoops into the toy-sized basket suctioned to the back of his bedroom door with a soft, spongy Nerf basketball.

"It's happening," Nell said, making a conscious effort to make her voice fierce rather than whiney. "My dad got the shaft."

Pause on the line. "Are you for real?"

"Yup."

Len sputtered, all sense of affected coolness gone. "But, but, but—"

"I know."

"That's bullshit. This sucks! I mean, what the fuck? What the actual..."

Nell let him go spiraling on, saying all the things she herself had said and thought. After a while, he stopped. He said, "I'm so sorry, Nell."

She shook her head. They let the silence spool between them. It was good. Almost as good as standing next to each other and sharing that magical, ephemeral offering of comfort and solace: a bear hug that seems like it's not ever going to end.

"I feel...I feel like I've been holding my breath."

"Yeah," he said.

"And now I've let it out, and I'm swallowing water." She gritted her teeth. Fuck you, tears! "I've let out my breath and I'm drowning."

He tsked. "Nell."

She took shaky breaths. Still holding those tears at bay.

"What does this mean?" Len asked. "What's going to happen?"

Nell shrugged and shook her head. "They're giving him the boot, so we have to move. We have to go. They give a shit that my dad has worked and lived here for twenty years. That he has devoted his life to this goddamn camp. That Jamie and I grew up here or that my mom is a nurse at the clinic. That we are part of this fricking community."

"So, none of our letters worked? The petition, the showing up at their meetings?"

"Nope." Nell bit off the word. "They said he should have told them. But even if he had, this still would have happened."

She gave Len a moment to process this. "So, like, are they giving you the heave-ho ASAP? Like, all you can do is run off with the shirts on your backs?"

Nell laughed at that, but it was bitter. "Nah. We have a month, which they say is generous 'cause they could've made it one week."

"That's...good. I guess." Len paused. "I'll, like, help you pack and shit."

Nell narrowed her eyes and experienced her own pause. Len was her best friend. They razzed each other, rode bikes and horses around camp. They'd known each other since diaper days, as his mom worked in the kitchen and her dad ran the camp. They'd gone to school together in town, and hung out in the summers by the side of the camp's swimming pool. Sure, they had a wider circle of friends, and Len and his mom lived 10 miles down the road in the town proper, even though they'd been offered staff housing. But Len's people were locals. Nell's were not, technically. Her dad was from the Mid West, her mom from the East Coast. Neither were from Oregon. Nell considered herself an Oregonian. After all, she'd been born there, lived pretty much her whole life there.

And that was all ending.

But what made her pause was the tone in Len's voice. He seemed...cautious. Like, he was afraid she'd say no rather than not giving a shit if she did.

It was only a split second, the thoughts roaring through her head at the speed of light, whatever that was, and she almost shouted: "You'd better!"

She heard him suck on his teeth. "Wouldn't leave you hanging, Nellie. What would you do without me?"

And now the silence that hung between them was full of something else. Because soon she would be without him, and he without her.

"The question is," she said, "what'll you do without me? Probably sit inside Big Jefe in the fetal position every day and rock yourself to sleep crying like a baby."

"You got me."

Big Jefe was a Jeffrey's Pine in the camp's forest that had a hollowed out trunk from some crazy forest fire over a hundred years ago. Campers liked to turn it into a hideout and teenagers liked to turn it into a love shack in the dark of the night.

"Okay then," Len said. "I'll be there tomorrow at ten."

"Yeah right."

"Fine. Eleven."

"I'll be here."

And she would be. But only for a little while more.

==

Hi Wattpad Fam! Thanks for reading the first part of my new story, FAMILY + CAMP. This is brand new, not beta read, very raw, and unfinished (although I have an ending in my brain). As a Wattpad Creator, I will be posting at least 500 fresh new words every week (most likely on Sundays), so please check it out, save it to your shelves, like it, and comment. 

By the way, the image above is a picture I found of the phone Nell describes in this part, and yes, it was a phone I loved and cherished in my youth (and there I go, dating myself). Thank you! — Olivia