Surviving Camp Cedar

Chapter Three

Rejoining her friends, Elsa blended right back into their chatter, none of them having noticed either her fall or the cute boy who had helped her up. She talked with them, easily falling back into the conversation that had no beginning or ending and seemed to have lasted throughout the seven years she had known these girls. Sure, there were new girls or girls who had left, but the group was a non-changing chatter that always made Elsa feel secure as she walked in the middle of it. Somehow, she found herself sitting close to alone later that night, laying on her back on a not-too-uncomfortable log with only two or three people near her. One of them was her friend Belle, who had been going to Camp Cedar and sharing a cabin with Elsa since the two were old enough to start coming.

"So, I saw you talking to that boy earlier." Belle said in her most nonchalant voice, eyebrows wiggling at her friend. Belle was crazy about learning things, whether they were educational or gossip, and her eyes were big with that thirst now.

"Mhm." Said Elsa, smiling a little at her friend as she pretended to soak up the fading rays of light that were left in the sky.

"Well," Belle pressed, her nonchalance slipping, "who is he?"

Elsa chuckled, wondering if she really wanted to talk about Jack. She didn't know a thing about him, but he hadn't left her thoughts since they had met. She hoped, deep down, that he would bring that book to her soon. She wanted to read it, but more than that she wanted to read his copy of it. Call her crazy, but she thought maybe she was crushing on this stranger. The idiocy of that thought made her cheeks flush.

"He's Jack. I mean, really, he's no one. He just bumped into me and helped me up." She told her friend, hoping that keeping her feelings to herself was the best idea until she knew what she was thinking. Belle nodded.

"I don't believe that for a second, Elsa." Belle said, her eye roll clear in her voice. Elsa sat up, her long hair flipping over her shoulder with the motion. She gathered it up, dropping it behind her back as she spoke.

"And why not?" She demanded. Belle snickered, pointing behind Elsa.

"Uh, because he's knocking at the cabin door." She said, cracking up as Elsa strode over to the white-haired boy.

Behind her own cabin, Rapunzel had climbed up into a small cedar tree, finding a suitable hold for her to rest. She was used to being up high, and all the girls in her cabin could talk about was the one thing Rapunzel wanted to forget; Flynn Rider. He seemed to be a hot topic around Camp Cedar, with his motorcycle and his hookah cigarettes. Evidently, he hadn't been at camp any year before this. Oh, and did you know that he was apparently the prince of Vinswana, which Rapunzel was certain wasn't a real country? She was getting sick of hearing things about him.

She sighed, pressing her back against the hard bark. Through the thicket of leaves above her, she could see the sky turn slowly from pink to red to a hazy blue. As she sat there, she wondered if any of her cabinmates even noticed she was missing. It seemed unlikely, but just as she thought it someone called her name.

"Rapunzel!" Myra yelled, finally spotting the missing girl sitting up in the branches. Rapunzel gracefully, and probably very dangerously, flipped out of the tree in a stunning act of acrobatics. "Whoa. Hey, everyone's been looking for you! We're playing Truth or Dare!" She cried. Rapunzel had never played Truth or Dare, she'd never had anyone to play it with, but she couldn't turn Myra down. She was the type of bubbly girl that everyone was friends with from the first moment they met her. Rapunzel allowed herself to be lead back into the cabin, where the rest of her roommates sat in a circle on the floor.

"Yay! Okay, Myra first. Truth or Dare?" asked Kennedy, a petite gymnast who was currently in training for the Olympics at the age of only fourteen. Rapunzel was inexplicably intimidated by her.