Family + Camp (working title)

Chapter 33 Part 1: Enjoy the Silence

This was ridiculous. They were at camp, and she didn't have time for all this silliness. School was when she wore makeup and cared about things like zits and hair. Cash—no, not just Cash, but people—knew what she looked like. They were all teenagers, they all had hormones and B.O. and pimples, and so on.

Oh, god. She was kind of sounding like her mother. Even if it was just in her head.

But her mental mother had a point. What did it matter if she couldn't successfully clear up or at the very least hide her acne? Camp life was too messy to do much about it. She'd sweat off her makeup by nine o'clock, or wash it all away in the pool or lake. Better to be au naturel.

Nell shrugged on her robe. She'd started wearing one last year, after Jamie had come back from his first year at Cornell and he had started wearing one around the house.

"Everyone does in the dorms," he said by way of explanation. It seemed like such a grown up thing, rather than racing down the hall to the bathroom hunched over in their skivvies. She'd asked for a robe for Christmas, and her parents had gifted her this baby-blue, fluffy thing. Sure, it was a little too warm in the summer, but Nell loved it like a dear stuffed animal from childhood.

Padding in bare feet to her room, she noticed how quiet the house was. This was the way it went in summer. Her mother at work and, most of the time, her dad in the office or tooling around camp with stuff to do. Sometimes Nell wondered what he loved more—his family or camp? Not that she could blame him if the answer was the latter. Camp was pretty amazing.

In her room, Nell quickly changed into clean underwear, cut-offs, and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. With near reverence, she hung up her robe on a hook on the back of her bedroom door before grabbing a comb from her dresser. She unclipped her hair and let it tumble down, finger combing the tangles before going at it gently with the comb. Contrary to popular belief, her straight hair did get knots if she let it go for more than a day without proper brushing and care.

She took a moment to put a CD in her Discman before resuming her grooming ritual. This was a recent addition to her possessions, a birthday gift from her parents. She only had five CDs so far—her tape collection was much more expansive, still growing and still more practical than CDs—but she would add to it. She'd been obsessed—as far as Nell got obsessed about anything—with the latest from Depeche Mode, Violator. "Personal Jesus." "Enjoy the Silence." This was what she could not get enough of. As the album played, hooked up to her pink mini boombox, Nell fixed her hair before flopping onto her bed for a good, old-fashioned siesta. Soon it would be time to go to dinner, but for now she could just rest. Just meditate, think, rest...Meditate on nothing. Think about nothing. Rest her mind and body because she was doing nothing.

Or...she could let her mind buzz and feed off of the last few hours...off of her new acquaintances, coworkers...friends?

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Wattpad Friends: I vacillated between putting up a pic of a Discman and the Violator album cover. The cover is just too pretty to pass up though. If you like D-mode, what's your favorite song?