Camp Counselor

Chapter Seven

It's been 4 days now that I've been here at this camp, 3 since I began to seriously wonder what type of camp this really was. I had heard two very different stories about camp in my life time, and none of them mixed like this. The first story I heard was about how camp is gross, it's muggy and full of bacteria and sicknesses. I heard that the bunks were very uncomfortable, the food was tasteless and the air was full of must and mosquitoes. That one I found to be very true on every level.

The second story I heard about camp was that it was a place of reunion. Where kids from all over the states would look forward to the very first day of summer in which they could finally return to that one special place in the middle of absolute no wheres and reunite with their true friends. Their favorite time of the year in which they could play camp games like hide and go seek, or tag. Do fun activities such as arts and crafts, archery, canoeing and soccer or some sport like that, the first half of this is true.

Instead here at Camp Maverick Cat is like a energetic machine. She makes us all wake up at the literal crack of dawn, we eat breakfast, usually rock hard tasteless pancakes, and then she makes us all go on a huge run. It's like a mile run through the woods and for some reason I seem to be the only one complaining while we're running, as everyone else runs through the exercise with no hesitation. Kat makes us climb this huge wall thing that has pegged steps in order to help us move as Kat times each of us to see how long it would take us to reach the top and each day I am more surprised with how every other camper makes it up and down the wall in less than a minute.

We go on swimming races, we do jumping jacks, we go through obstacle courses as we run through car tires that are placed on the ground and the whole camp is basically set up as some boot camp. I wouldn't be surprised if my mother signed me up for a bootcamp, I just hope she's ready for my whole year of complaining if I find out that this is true.

I mean apart from the extreme working out this place seems relatively normal for a summer camp. There's disgusting porta-potties, there's gazillions of mosquitoes, and everyone else seems to be enjoying the heck out of it as Kat simply states "To enjoy camp, you first must get into shape." As she also conducts "Over the school year a lot of you let yourselves fall behind, this week we're all getting back into the process." Which for everyone else it's probably easy and enjoyable as they've been through this before.

Meanwhile for me, a girl whose never done any cardio in her life, I'm sitting up against a big tree, taking deep and heavy breaths as I'm sure I look like a Saint Bernard, drooling from the heat. For once I am thankful for being surrounded by trees as they gave me perfect shelter from the intense sun as I sat up against the trunk.

Kara hasn't spoke to me either, in fact she's been going to great lengths to ignore me and I began to feel like she wouldn't ever speak to me again. We still have four days left in the Buddy Cabin though, yet things still felt hopeless. Not only was she my only possible friend here but she was the only one who spoke to me. Nobody else would give me the time of day, unless they were laughing at my incompatibility to meet ends with this camp.

For heavens sake even now as I sat breathless up against this tree there was a group of campers laughing at me. I gave them all a death glare as I noticed their rudeness and that had sent them all scurrying off as if they had things to do. I rolled my eyes still even though they were gone and then I brought my eyes up to the sky. I saw that it was still a bright blue and began to internally groan, "when will this day be over?" I ask myself in a fed up tone, hearing a small amused laugh come from near me.

I jumped at the sudden presence of somebody else and looked over to see who the laugh belonged to. I was then met with a plate of disgusting camp food and Kara standing beside me, holding the plate out suggestively. I eyed her, then the plate and then back up at her as I grew angry. She gives me the silent treatment for 3 days and then just like that out of the blue she tries to fix things by offering me a tasteless plate of food? No thank you.