Turmoil

Thanks

Phoenix

My camera is dead, it's weight heavy in my palm, fingers twisted up in the cord. Fingers long and pale and my shirt soaked through with dew, I sit, shivering. The cold prickles my skin with needles of ice. Dawn is slowly breaking.

While it's true that taking pictures at night may be one of the hardest things to do and the shittiest ideas ever, at least it gave me something to do. It lent me a purpose for the night, focusing on shadows, and playing with settings, getting the lens to kiss there air, and the images to filter through. Almost like magic.

Except now my camera is fucking dead. I think about my battery replacements, all the way at the camp, and then think about going to get them. My mind quickly skitters away from that idea. There's no way in hell that I'm going to that place.

Especially not after last night. For a second, I'm caught between feeling like a dick for running away and feeling self righteous, and then all of that is reduced to one big bunch of anxious and nerves.

I let my mind linger on Tims lips, pressed against my own, and the hot flurry of emotion that had pushed me away from him. And then it skips on, as always, onto Atlanta.

Atlanta who tried too hard to be grunge, too hard to be crazy and different, and now fucked it all up. And it's fucking Atlanta, my fucking Atlanta that I want to tell about it all. I see her face from the night before, wide eyes incredulous and deluged in question ( see even I know big words)

I feel kinda bad, I mean I did crush her whole self and centered little world (centered around her) but at the same time, I feel weirdly good. It's like, you know, those dogs that are always tied up to one spot, but when they're finally free of the leash for the first time, and they're so happy and so... confused. Because in the end it wasn't the leash that was keeping them there, it was the owner.

I've dreamt so long about putting Atlanta in her face, and now I'm faced with a single question : What now?

My stomach clenches, and I'm not sure weather it's from hunger or from all the events of last night, churning as one big mess down there and I shiver again, because it's cold and I'm alone. I hope it's hunger. Hunger is so much more easily fixed than a fucked up life.

The forest smells the way only morning air can smell, crisp, like ironed shirts, and untouched like first snow.

Uh, you do realize, you have no clue where you are, my brain says to me, as if it itself is not part of the equation. Not part of me. Even my brain has deserted me, I think wryly, with my very brain. Fucking great.

But it's true. I have no clue where I am, and can't even begin to guess which way I should be going out how I got here. All I know, is that yesterday I wanted away, away from Lorraine and Tim and Atlanta. And away I got. Even if away did come with some repercussions.

All I see is green, and more green, leaves mushed up like peas against each other. And I'm still thinking : What now?

The answer comes in a different form than expected. The horn sound, echoing from somewhere deep within the woods, calling all campers to the hut. My first thought : I don't want to go.

But replies come in all sorts of forms, so I kinda have to go. With one last shiver, I sling my camera onto my neck and begin to make my way out of the woods, towards the horn calling me to war.

They're all there when I finally untangle myself from the mess of trees, unloosing myself again. Or I guess you could say finding myself. So here they are, all three, pillars of agony and salt.

Lorraine, who stands hunched over by a tree like a crumpled piece of paper is the closest to me. Her hair is bundled up in a bun, a frizzy mess, and the tip of her nose droops like a wilted flower. She is also, in a way, neutral, at least as far as I'm concerned. I croak out a

"Good morning, " though the morning has been anything but good.

She gives me a stare. My hopes, any tiny hope of making things normal again plummet like a plane shot down by anti aircraft. What am I supposed to do, when in this was, even Switzerland hates me?

Then there's Tim. He stands between Lorraine and her, a cliff separating land from the angry raging sea. Can land be raging? I don't know.

A sleepless night has smudged charcoal under his eyes and his hair looks as if someone has gotten a scissors and snipped it off with uneven strokes. Somehow, I doubt that he has gotten a hair cut. His eyes are folded across his chest, and his gaze is fixed straight out, onto the middle of the circle, where Donna is to step out at any moment.

I offer him a greasy smile. He turns his stony face away.

It's harder than I thought it would be. There is something there, lurking, lurking beneath the surface of all the turmoil that's bubbling, and I can't quite place a finger on it, it's so slimy and slithering. But it's there, and a snake isn't any less poisonous just because it can't be seen.

And then there's her. Looking fresh as always, hair wet from a morning swim, clothes clean. And as I stare at the tiny drop of water that wriggles free from her hair and hurdles towards the ground, I hate her a little. For the fact that she went for a morning swim, and had the time and energy to clean up when the rest of us are so fucking tired.

My eyes brush past the damp pony tail and across her chin, tilting, finally to meet her eyes. She looks at me and I know. I know she got just as much sleep as the rest of us, which is none. And somehow, the world becomes a little easier to grasp.

She gives me a runny smile, so pathetic and weak and apologetic all at once. I don't smile back. My lips, my lips want to curl up and say her name, and pull her close and tell her that it's okay, that we're okay. But we're not. She screwed us over. So I don't.

She sees that, and her whole face, it folds in on itself, like one of those beach chairs, and her smile is gone too. But I'm not sorry. I refuse to be.

She's the one who fucked everything up, not me. Or so I think. Or I try to think , want to think.

Trying and doing.

Two different things.

When she walks over, I can't any longer. I want to tell her about last night, about Tim, and the kiss and this weird revulsion that I don't wan to feel, and I want her to hug me because she's the only one who doesn't judge, because she doesn't care if my teeth are crooked or straight.

She betrayed you.

And I think about the focus that she puts on herself, and I shut my mouth.

"Hi, " I say instead.

She pauses, and she's folded up and hunched over so small, bare feet digging into the ground, scratched and bruised that I'm surprised. When you're around Atlanta, you forget how tiny she is. And then she says, because she has to reply, that's how conversations work

"I brought you food, "

And her hand slips in to her pocket to retrieve an apple. It's red and glistening and so so juicy. My stomach, sensing food near by flips and I reach out and take it, I take her damned apple , because she knows, and she's telling me she knows.

She knows I haven't had breakfast, that I haven't slept. That I haven't been at the camp place, that I'm screaming inside, that I want to strangle her, squeeze her throat until the life bleeds out from her with each breath that she can't take. That I want to hug her, and kiss her and ask her if she's alright, because that's what friends do.

She knows about Tim.

"Thanks, "