Summer Camp

Summer. Where everyone gets to stay up late and go to week-long sleepovers with their friends. Where you go to pool parties and on vacation to some extraordinary place. School had ended about 30 minutes ago, and people were already in their cars on their way to Cancun. Me? I was on my way to summer camp.

I WAS going to go to Cancun with my friends, but my mother said it was too much money and too dangerous. I mean, we were soon-to-be Juniors, which meant we were basically able to be on our own. But apparently not. My mom saw how disappointed I was, so she decided to enroll me in summer camp. "Camp Lakeshore," my she had told me. "They have a lake. It's in their name. This way, you can still go swimming and have fun without paying as much money as we would have done with Cancun." I wasn't going to stay home for the whole summer either, so what choice did I have? And now, here I was, on my way to summer camp.

Don't be so negative, Rosie," Mom told me. "We're almost here." Sure enough, we were there about seven minutes later. I stepped off the car and grabbed my stuff from the trunk. Great. We were about 45 minutes away from home, and I didn't know anybody here. Why? Because everybody was in Hawaii or Cancun. Or even Chicago. And I was, well... here. Although it really wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. It was surrounded by trees, and I'm not talking ordinary trees either. They were HUGE. And the grass was very green. "Seriously mom, we're already late, are you really going to look at yourself in the mirror?"

"Alright, alright, I'm going," she protested. We walked towards a building right in front of us that looked like the office. As soon as we entered, a man came out of a room saying, "Now don't you let that happen again, alright little bud?" He turned to walk outside, and saw us standing right in front of the two glass doors. He looked shocked for a moment. I wouldn't blame him, either. A girl and her mother standing in front of him ten minutes after the assigned time. What a sight. But he just smiled and walked over to us.

"Hey," he said, stretching his arm out towards my mom, a smile still on his face. "I'm Nick, the camp director. And this must be Rosalie." He then turned towards me.

"Umm, yes, this is my daughter Rosalie," mom said dreamily. "Is it okay if we get a tour of the campus?"

"I can give you one, but Rosalie has to go to her cabin, she'll just have to get her tour later."

"Alright, bye Rosie. Take care." Mom gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek. "Okay, shall we go now, Nick?" I rolled my eyes. I couldn't judge her, though. I mean she was a single mom. She could check out ay guy she wanted to. And the guy looked like David Beckham, for crying out loud. "Sure thing," he said. "Oh, hey I almost forgot. Rosalie, your cabin number is B4." He handed me a notebook and a pen. "Just in case," he told me." Then he and mom started walking outside. Mom looked back at me. "Really?" I mouthed.

"What?" she mouthed back, smiling. Then she turned back around, and I saw them walk around the building. Then it was just me. Alone. I sighed, picked up my cross-over bag, my suitcase, then walked out through the back. When I came outside, I froze. There's cool things, there's pretty things, but this was just incredible. There were basketball, volleyball, and tennis courts, a giant field followed by one huge hill full of flowers and tall grass. And sure enough, right smack in the middle of everything, surrounded by a few trees, was the lake. A beautiful, giant, sparkling blue lake. I stayed in shock for literally a minute, then realized I didn't want to be any more late than I already was, so I walked towards all the cabins, and looked for B4. It wasn't hard, since it was in the first row, three cabins over. I stepped right in front of the door, took a deep breath, then opened the door and stepped in.

There were three girls about my age in there, and they all stopped and turned to look at me. We all kind of just stayed there, then I spoke. "Hey, um, I'm Rosalie. Nick told me to stay here." They all looked at each other, then back at me. Finally, a curly blonde-haired one walked to me and said, "I want the top bunk." She stayed quiet again, then spoke up, "My name's Chloe." She smiled at me, then walked off to finish unpacking. I walked to my bunk and decided to start unpacking, too. "Hey," one of the other girls said. I turned around. She stayed still, then said, "I'm Allison, but everyone calls me Ally." Allison had medium, golden-orange hair and hazel eyes. She smiled at me and I smiled back. "I'm Raquel," the last one said. "Welcome to Lakeshore, newbie." She smiled at me jokingly, then went back to unpacking. Raquel had long, straight black hair with cut bangs right across her forehead. It looked great with her tan skin and green eyes.