"Will a new class mean, no friends?"
Ever since Crystal didn't make the cut for her desired stream, she is forced to "live with whatever she has". Being alienated by her old classmates, she hesitantly accepts her fate being with NONE of her fire-fo...
The wind was blowing at our tent, and I was first to notice. I got up and used my hands to stop it immediately. A few of my group mates got up instantly and kept the tent stable. And that's when every camper's nightmare came true: the torrential winds caused rain on us.
We beckoned Sophie out of our tent, putting our ponchos on and doing everything we could to unpack. Everyone got out of their tents soon after, doing everything we could to strike the tents and get to the dry as fast as we could. And for the first time in my life, I felt my shoes flood up to the brim. My glasses blurred my vision severely as I did everything we could to locate my surroundings and get everything dry as quickly as we could. - "Oh no!" I mumbled to myself, realising the Ovaltine was spilt over the pot meant for 15 (yes, I counted the coach). Someone in my team looked over me and said "that's enough. Three packets of Ovaltine would do the trick." And then the spoon used to stir it dropped, but I managed to fish it out. Yes, we had a chance to shower and our coach was making sure we were all warmed up before we headed for to our next destination—the other Pulau Ubin camp.
We dried out all the stuff for the tents because we would still need tents at Pulau Ubin Camp 2. After having our breakfast, we started packing everything up. I secured my medical bag, Sophie and I packed our expedition bag with help from the coach and we walked to the platform. Being the "water bottle girl" of my group, I brought some water bottles and we started to sail on the boat. I'll say that day was the most chill of the three days on the boat. - We started off with rowing. Honestly, pairing the art kid and the bookworm was a bad choice, as we struggled to row the boat. We did everything we could to coordinate, but ended up struggling. Yelling the commands, I overheard a conversation with the girls from the other schools.
"Alright, how about you go over and help Sophie and I'll get Crystal here?" I was then called one row down the boat and sat with Irys, the girl I introduced myself to in the boat. She was able to guide me with the two ways of rowing, backwards and forwards. Honestly, the Mary Girls School girls weren't as bad as I thought they would be. If you proved that you can be a normal human being (or try to), they would treat you like one. It's dependent on your behaviour. - "Alright Crystal, get on the ledge of the boat," my coach instructed, wanting to do a "jetty jump" to manage the heat. I got on the ledge, and he literally pushed me down the boat. I landed face first and experienced a coolness I never did before.
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Wow, the seawater was salty! And swimming for the first time in years was so comforting! I managed to reuse the freestyle method to swim back to the boat, and for a moment, it was me, YX and Sophie all at once. The Kallang Christian girls all at once. Do I have to mention our life vests had a code of consecutive even numbers?
All of us climbed up on the boat at once and continued rowing to the other Pulau Ubin camp. - When we arrived, we placed our belongings at a corner and started cooking our rice. I literally had to face the fire as I managed the fire for our luncheon meat, but thankfully my groupmates were there to help me. We then managed to eat together and I enjoyed my teammates' company. Too bad I wasn't able to say much, but I did find it bearable to be with other people now. Little Crystal wouldn't even think that's possible.
It was soon time for showering, and on the way to the female showers (praying they weren't crowded like the other Ubin camp), I bumped into Ayden, my former classmate. He used to make fun of me a lot, and I can tell now he's exploiting my popularity, but decided to play it cool because all eyes were on me and ignoring him would get me backlash, but a careless response would reignite our old fire. - Ayden: hey, Richard* likes you!
Crystal: oh, that's good
Richard shakes his head in disapproval
Ayden: come on, he's just shy!
Crystal: if you excuse me. I need to shower and I've got a deadline to adhere to. - We went through some theory despite yet another communication gap which made us late, to which the coach just told us to stop this whole "blind lead blind" thing that would lead to our tardiness. I was able to socialise still, bumping into John at this camp (that was soooo unexpected tbh-) and Jordan. We brought our Northern Lights friends to my group's campsite. - Jordan: so what's your group?
Crystal: we're blue
Jordan: I'm yellow
Zachary (Jordan's friend): like the sun!
Crystal: very fitting for you too.
Jordan: also I think I saw you get off a boat or something. What's up with your group?
Crystal: we are sailing!
Jordan: nice. I did kayaking today and tomorrow we're hiking.
Crystal: like two modes of expeditions
Jordan: yeah I tweaked it from this point because of some controversial topics Larry: so you two are like the popular kids in school?
Jordan: yea. I don't how she became popular this year, but I have always been since day 1.
Larry: wow, I figured. Are you the student council president?
Jordan: it's not that grand as you would think it is. I'm just a normal member. And I'm in Boys Brigade, and there we learn skills like CPR and fire rescue. What do you do?
Larry: I cook.
Jordan: like real food?
Larry: yes.
Jordan: he's picking up retail right now. And you two are classmates. Larry nods Jordan: do you want to know how Crystal and I met?
Crystal: I'll take it from here. A school event.
Jordan: yea. I must admit we ain't close though. We only take literature classes together and we've got our group of friends. But we text and interact with each other whenever we've got the chance.
Larry: wow, I wished I had friends like her. My best friend and I had some issues in our first year and we spilt. And I've been hopping from person to person since then, but no friendship lasted longer than a month.
Jordan: that's better than nothing. There's a girl I know that has no friends and I had no chance to talk to due to our contrasting social needs. Crystal was like that when I first met her. She was never seen along the corridors without one girl unless either was absent. I'm not mentioning her name though.
Larry; what?
Jordan: yeah, but she must have taken the step of faith to have more friends, word could've spread around about her social breakthrough and that's how where she is. Youre doing great too. Don't stop what you're doing. Shakes Larry's hand out of respect for his courage Oh, good night Crystal.
Crystal: good night Jordan. See you next week. *Crystal's classmates. Some known interactions between them are in chapter 2 and 48.
