Summer Girl

One

Name: Sawyer Heyes

Interests: Hanging round the skate park, rocking out to hard core heavy metal, watching horror movies, swearing, drinking

“Be realistic, Amy,” I said, tapping the last two answers. “They’ll see us and know they’ve been played.”

Amy sighed. “Fine,” she muttered, striking out those last two words. “Better?”

“Much.”

Music interests:

“Do you know any heavy metal bands?” Amy asked thoughtfully, gazing at the paper.

“Do I look like I would know any heavy metal bands?” I asked, eyebrow raised.

She gave me a quick once-over. “No, I guess not.”

“Thank you.”

After all, most people who rocked out to heavy metal did not wear jean shorts and cute t-shirts and pink Converse. Now, I know we’re not supposed to judge someone by how they look, but my personality was pretty much the same as how I dressed – nothing major.

“Okay, I know some rock bands, we’ll just have to put them instead.”

Green Day, Nirvana, Blink 182, Cage the Elephant

“I think that last one is more indie,” I interjected.

Amy narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s just taking it too far.”

“That’s a bit rich coming from someone who just signed herself up for three weeks in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with two random strangers without even asking her best friend if she was okay with being signed up too! If that’s not taking it too far, I don’t know what is!”

“Shut up.”

Style: Punk rocker

“Or maybe I should put skinhead,” she mused, chewing on the rubber at the top of her pencil.

“Uh, no.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Age: 16

Religious views:

“Catholic, obviously,” I said.

“I’m an atheist, Sawyer.”

“Okay, well, first of all, this is my form, not yours. And secondly, I don’t think a youth club run by a Catholic church would accept a form from an atheist, because you’re not even supposed to belong to the youth club if you don’t believe in God.”

Amy blushed, looking at the floor. “The food’s good,” she mumbled.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Put Catholic.”

Religious views: Catholic.

Favourite TV shows:

“We need to put some sort of gory, violent show on here, because I hate them,” Amy said. “So think.”

“Yeah, because that really makes sense,” I replied sarcastically, racking my brains for any horror shows I knew of.

“Well, the guys we get paired with will be our total opposites, according to the website. And I want my boyfriend to be a guy who isn’t going to force me to watch stuff like Saw. Ooh, put Saw for favourite movies!”

“How about Criminal Minds? My cousin told me that’s pretty sadistic.”

Favourite TV shows: Criminal Minds

Favourite movie: Saw, The Human Centipede, The Blairwitch Project

Favourite books: The Angel Collector

“Is that everything?”

Amy checked over the sheet. “Yeah. Now we just need to get our parents to sign the consent forms.”

“Wait, we haven’t filled your sheet in yet.”

“Oh, I did that yesterday. Here’s your consent form, give it to your dad tonight, okay?”

This was where I saw my shining light. See, I didn’t want to go to an isolated log cabin with two random guys we didn’t know, because even if Amy’s plan worked, well…who knew what they’d pull?

I didn’t even get why a youth club run by a church was doing a ‘project’ which involved putting hormonal teenagers of the opposite sex in a log cabin without adult supervision. I guess they thought the only people who would sign up for something like this would be innocent little church kids…but things like this could quickly turn far from innocent, if you get my meaning.

I guess it was the only way to successfully force friendships between people who would normally never talk. After all, three weeks in a log cabin with someone, and you were bound to leave with some kind of friendship having been formed.

Amy’s plan was to fill our personality forms with the complete opposite with what we were looking for in a guy, so that we would get paired up with our perfect guys.

Let me explain. For the past sixteen years, both of us had had extremely – extremely – bland love lives. The only guy who’d ever kissed me was my dad, and Amy had even less experience than me. We weren’t exactly boy magnets – our looks were only average, and we liked to read, which most girls our age didn’t really enjoy.

But our dream boys weren’t as shallow as the boys at our school, who only went out with girls if they were hot, or good in the sack, and if Amy’s plan worked, it was our dream boys we’d be spending three weeks with.

So, after three weeks, it would be humanly impossible for us to not have struck up at least a friendship with these guys, even though I was socially awkward and Amy had a tendency to do and say embarrassing things around members of the opposite sex.

“Amy, I have found a number of flaws in your plan,” I said, after reading through the consent form she’d handed me.

“Really? I didn’t find any.”

“Yeah, yeah. Firstly, when my dad will never agree to this.”

“What? Why not?!”

“Two teenage, hormonal boys and two, virgin girls. In a log cabin. In the middle of nowhere. Without adult supervision. What was the church thinking when it set this up, anyway?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Sexual intercourse, my dear. A lot of pregnant teenagers will be coming home after this.”

“Oh. Sex, you mean. Sawyer, our dream boys are above stuff like this. They don’t believe in sex before marriage. And even if they did, they would never force us into stuff. And we’re getting paired up with our dream boys, remember?”

“That’s another thing I was coming to. What if it goes wrong and we end up stuck with two total psychos for the next three weeks? Or we get paired up with girls?”

Amy considered this. “No. Won’t happen.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“Have some faith already, Sawyer! Just trust me. We won’t get paired up with girls, that’s a given – ”

“This is run by a church, remember.”

“ – we won’t, I promise, and if we do, then too bad. We wait for plan B.”

“There’s a plan B?”

“Not yet. But there will be if we get paired up with girls. Just think of it like this; we’ll make some friends. And if we end up with two psycho guys, we can back out. No biggie.”

I shook my head.

“This will never work.”

“Don’t knock it before you try it. This may be our one and only chance to find ourselves husbands,” she told me ominously.

The words rang in my head like funeral bells.

She had a point.