The Summer Camp Diaries

• Braden •

At some point Ria stopped believing me.

I told her, "I'm alright. Seriously, it was a one night thing."

She stopped believing me along time ago, and the thing was, if I were her, I would have stopped believing me too. Sometimes I wished that she didn't care so much, because I knew that when I was down even a little, it brought her down a lot. I knew all too well the feeling of knowing that someone you're close to is definitely not okay. It's a helplessness and even though you know that it has absolutely nothing to do with you; you blame yourself because there's nothing else you can do, but that.

Nothing.

I left the arts and crafts hall before lunch, in a world of steam. Every five minutes or so, my phone would go off with yet another text or skype call, trying to get me to open up my head. I was pointedly ignoring her with a hope that she would give it a rest for a little while. A guy is allowed to be alone every now and then, right? I mean she was a thousand miles away from here and, yet she wouldn't leave me alone. For the first time since I got to this cliché out of stories, I regretted not leaving my phone back at the cabin.

When the world is pissing you off and everything feels like an empty bottle of expensive whipped cream, there is nothing like a good old fashioned sparring match with the local plant life to work off some steam. I ducked out of Travis's watchful eyes as I made my way back toward the bear cabins with the hope that I could quickly leave my phone, grab my sabre, and ditch to the outer edge of the woods before someone made me do something productive with my time.

I was coming in from the East side when I paused to listen to a strange sound emanating around from the front of the cabin. It only grew louder as I made my way toward it, rounding the guys' cabin to find a couple making out in the open doorway. I groaned inwardly and sank back behind the corner. From the looks of it, they were the same two who had kicked me out of my leisure time last week.

And there was no way in hell I would make it into the cabin with those two blocking the door frame. I peered around the corner again, only to catch an eyeful of the guy (rainbow shirt) shoving his hands up the girl's shirt (black) while said girl sank her fingers down into said boy's waistband.

Nope. Not going in there. No. Way. In. Hell.

With a sigh, I turned on my heel and hiked it back the way I came.

And the way I came, happened to be this new fangled contraption that the other campers called, socialization and 'lunch'. It would be the first time I actually ate among the peasants (I can feel you all silently judging me and saying that I lie for effect, well you're the one listening to my internal monologue so I can lie for effect to my devil heart's content, and there's nothing y'all can do about it. So just deal with it, muggles) and I didn't want to come off as too godly, just in case some of the mortals were scared off by my presence.

I did a quick survey of my food options. There was pizza, spaghetti, hamburguesa del carne sorpresa, something that was probably supposed to be mac'n'cheese, and pizza. In all honesty, I wasn't really that hungry, but since I was already there, it would have been suspicious if I walked back out without so much as a granola bar (and FYI, there were no granola bars).