It Had to be You

Chapter Five: The Tour

The activities of the day weren't exactly riveting. First they went on a tour of the camp, constantly interrupted by David's saluting of the camp flag, whose flag pole had been raised so you could see it from every single part of camp. David called it a pet project. Max called it irritating. Not to mention the fact that everyone on it had already been to camp. Not exactly Max's idea of a fun morning.

Despite David and Gwen's protests that Max wouldn't be able to pull this off, he quickly fell into his old banter with his campmates. David says something excitedly, Max says why it's stupid, the one camper who gives a fuck protests against Max not giving a fuck, repeat. It was almost mindless. Max really was far too cynical for a eleven year child.

After the endless and mind-numbingly boring tour was finished, David brought everyone back to the dining hall for lunch. Max sat with Nikki and Neil, of course, and the Quartermaster threw some sandwiches in front of them. Nikki dove in, devouring her sandwich in barely thirty seconds. Neil started nibbling on the crust, after suspiciously sneaking a look at the contents. It appeared to be some kind of grey slop. Max shuddered.

"Hey Nikki?" Max said, "You want my sandwich?"

Sure!" Nikki snatched the now mildly soggy sandwich from Max's hands. She brought it to her mouth, and was about to take a bite, before she hesitated. "You sure you don't want lunch Max?" Max looked again at the unappetizing filling, and nearly gagged.

"I think I'm good, Nikki." Max grumbled.

"More for me!" She devoured the sloppy mess, wiping the grey slime off her face with her sleeve.

"So seriously guys, what did you do this year?" Neil looked pointedly at Max. "I mean, Nikki you've texted me..." He coughed pointedly at her, while she shrugged, "...A lot. About everything. And everyone. All the time." Neil mouthed 'you dodged a bullet' in Max's direction and Max laughed. "Anyway, as I was saying, we haven't heard anything from you Max. What have you been up to?"

Max panicked, for a moment. What was he going to say? The truth was not an option, this was going well! Max took a deep breath and tried to think of something plausible to say. If he said that he had done nothing then he was almost positive Neil or Nikki would try to get him to say more. He had to say something that would end the questions. What if h-

"Max?" Neil said worriedly. "You okay? You look kinda... Pale."

Max snapped back to attention. "Yeah, fine. Just distracted by the idea that Nikki ate two of those fucking sandwiches. They looked like actual shit."

"Three actually!" Nikki said cheerfully.

"Where did you ge-" Neil began. "Nikki! Did you take my sandwich?"

"Well you weren't eating it!" Nikki protested.

"I was going to eat that!"

"Well I did eat that! I was hungry!"

"That doesn't give you the right to take mine!"

As they continued arguing over the dumb sandwich, Max settled back into his chair. That was a close one, and he knew it. He had almost blew it. What could he say he had done over the school year anyway? No one would believe that he had focused totally on school work. Technically, Max hadn't even gone to school in the last year. Turns out if a concerned father calls to tell the school that his son is going to be homeschooled due to worry over the teacher not being able to handle his demon of a son, the school is happy to oblige. For the child's best interest of course.

Maybe he could claim that it was boring, leave it at that. Just sarcastically say that it was "oh so exciting" and that he "had a real blast" and Neil and Nikki might shut up about it. But Neil seemed the type to ask about favorite parts of school. And Nikki seemed the type to bombard you with questions about friends and hobbies. Forget seemed. Max was pretty sure he remembered being interrogated with those kinds of questions last year. 

"And what if you told the truth?" Some tiny part of Max's brain spoke up. "What if you just told them what really happened? You don't even have to say all of it. Just the big picture. They wouldn't judge you. They'd understand."

Max shook his head, his unkempt and unbrushed mop of hair brushing on his shoulders. They would hate him. Or worse, pity him. He didn't want anyone's pity. Max made up his mind. He would brush them off. Make sarcastic jokes and ignore their questions. After all, he did have plenty of practice.

"Come on, campers! It's time for our afternoon activity!" David started ushering people out of the dining hall. Max stood up, dumped his tray into the bin, and followed the crowd outside.

"I know you're all wondering what we are doing this afternoon!" David said to the gathered crowd. "I thought it would be nice for you all to have some bonding time! A little bit more time to reconcile the beautiful friendships you all made last year!"

"Just spit it out David!" Max yelled.

"We're all going to go swimming in the lake!" David said. "Now who's excited?"

The crowd started cheering, everyone excited to do something more fun that a camp tour. Everyone, that was, except for Max.

An: Hey I got a part out on time! Woo! Shoutout to @pumkincoffi for inspiring me to actually publish this mess! I'm glad you like the story. Expect an update before Friday. I'm going on vacation after that so there might be a week or so of radio silence, but updates will resume after that! Thanks for reading!