Rivals

Summer

I sat in Ivy's dad Leonard's car as he drove Ivy, Cheryl and I along the highway twenty minutes out of town. We were heading to a campsite where Hailee and Sarah were waiting for us. We were going to be out there for two nights camping by the lake, and although we would've preferred to camp where there wasn't a lot of people, we couldn't deny that this was a lot safer and more convenient. We all helped set up the tent and mosquito net and unload supplies from the truck. Because it was so time consuming to set up the tent, Hailee and Cheryl went swimming in the lake while Sarah, Ivy and I stayed back to help Leonard. It took us close to an hour to complete, and by the time we were in our bathing suits and walking to the water, Cheryl and Hailee were already making their way back to us.

"The water's getting cold," said Cheryl.

"Yeah, the sun's about to go down," Hailee pointed out.

"Ahhh, I wanted to dip my feet in," Sarah sulked.

"Where's Ivy?" Hailee asked.

"She went back into town with her dad to grab a few things; he'll be back in a little while," Sarah told them.

"Let's go dip our feet in and see how the water is," I suggested. I turned to Hailee and Cheryl "You guys don't have to come if you don't want to."

"Nah, we might as well go back," Cheryl decided.

When we got to the water, Sarah stepped in and yelped quietly. "It is cold!"

I followed him and froze as soon as I got to my ankles. Sarah continued to walk forward to Cheryl, who'd already gone fully into the water again and was swimming around. I very slowly inched deeper into the lake behind them.

"Elizabeth, if you don't hurry up and get in then I'll run and push you," Hailee threatened.

"It's cold though!"

"Yes, I know. I was just in there."

"I'm making my way in, just slowly.." I said as I took a small step forward and shivered.

"I will seriously push you," she repeated.

"You're not in the water either," I pointed out to her, to which she crossed her arms.

"I was just in there," she argued.

"No, you think it's too cold and you don't want to come in," I prodded.

"I'll come in to push you," she said as she started walking forward.

"No!" I yelled as I took a step away from her, which caused the water to inch up to my belly button and make me screech. This was as far in as I got before we dried off and went back to our campsite. 

It was soon after that that Leonard dropped Ivy off and left, and we could finally all spend time together. That night, we all roasted hot dogs by the fire. Once it started to get dark and we didn't see people walking around, we pulled out the bottles of vodka and juice and the joints we'd brought and started to illegally intoxicate ourselves. It was a lot of fun, screwing around by the fire together. We roasted marshmallows to make s'mores, and when we finally put out the fire and moved to the tent we weren't able to fall asleep and stayed up laughing for another hour. 

The next night, unfortunately, wasn't so pleasant. Well, it started off really nice. We had to take down the mosquito net because the wind was almost blowing it over, but after that everything seemed fine. 

After it got dark, Cheryl, Hailee and I decided to bring a joint down to the lake with us to sit and watch the water. Once we got there, we saw a giant flash across the water that illuminated the sky and the outline of the surrounding mountains. We had assumed that the wind would bring in a storm. The lightning continued, sometimes in sheets across the sky and sometimes like claws reaching down to touch small points in the mountains. This went on for about half an hour, and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. A full minute never went by without lightning striking, and sometimes you could see the flash for whole seconds before it disappeared and everything returned to black. 

It eventually got too windy for the joint to even stay lit, and we started feeling infrequent raindrops. In the two minutes it took to walk back to our tent, it started raining heavily. We quickly helped bring our belongings into the shelter of our massive tent and got ready to go to sleep, but the wind quickly tore one of the tent pegs out of the ground, causing it to cave in in one corner. Ivy and I quickly ran out to fix it, but the wind was so strong that it kept ripping the peg out of the dirt. We finally managed to stabilize the tent by shoving three pegs into the hole at different angles toward the tent so they wouldn't rip out. 

We rushed into the tent again and dried ourselves off as soon as we could, then continued to get ready to sleep. We all got comfortable, and talked in the dark before falling asleep to the storm.