The Summer at Camazotz

Three

It's still early in the afternoon, but all I want to do is flop onto my bed and lie there until dinner. With the sun so bright and my stomach full, the pull to fall asleep is strong and hard to ignore. Unfortunately, I can't. I still have ten hours left for the day, though, and I'm going to have to power through it.

Lunch was a nice break from the craziness of today. While the other counsellors and I ate, we talked about where we all come from, how old we are, and why we're at Camazotz.

Astrid had explained that since last year, being a counsellor would be her summer job for the next few years. She'll be turning eighteen in a few months and needs the extra job to help pay for college in the fall.

Tammy has been itching to get a job, but her parents keep telling her that they "aren't ready for her to start working". After a lot of begging, they had agreed to her coming to Camp Camazotz for the month of July to see how she would feel in a work environment. If she does well, they'll let her apply for a year round job and return to Camazotz the following summer if she wants to.

Then there's Jordan. Jordan doesn't have a basic story about how he needs the money or how he needs to do something for the summer so that his parents don't ship him off to a remote location (which they kind of did anyway). His mom just suggested trying it out and, naturally, he agreed to the idea. I'm honestly surprised that someone like Jordan would be okay with leaving his regular life for a month to watch over a bunch of kids. I can tell that he misses his friends and family from the way his eyes lose their shine when he talks about them.

Okay, that sounds different from what I actually mean, but it's true. His eyes light up when he's enjoying himself and it's noticeable.

Now standing in between the cabins, my mind drifts back to the kids I'm going to have. Are they going to be troublemakers or good listeners? Loud or quiet? Will they like me or will they totally hate my guts?

I look around, taking a deep breath. There are four cabins in total. Two to the left and two to the right. Each cabin is the typical wooden cabin you would see in a movie. Each one has a different carving above the door to represent it. One has a bear claw and the one next to it has a paw print—a wolf maybe? The other two cabins on the other side of the clearing have some kind of wild cat and another paw print that I can't identify.

Mikayla is standing at the front of the group with a clipboard in her hands. She grins as she looks around at all of the campers that are gathered outside the cabins. How she's so happy at one in the afternoon on a warm summer's day surrounded by forty children, I don't know.

"Campers!" she blows her whistle and everyone goes silent. "Thank you. To my left are our female cabins; Bobcat and Coyote. Astrid will be leading the Bobcats and Tammy will be leading the Coyotes."

The two girls nod and take their places in front of their respective cabins.

Mikayla grins at the counsellors reassuringly before fixing her attention back on the group. "And to my right are our male cabins. Our Grizzly leader is Jordan and Carter will lead Wolf."

"Seeing as I have the coolest animal of the four, my cabin will definitely be winning," I say to Jordan.

He scoffs and follows me over to the cabins. "Didn't you hear what Astrid said? Grizzly Cabin won last year and I intend to keep that streak."

With that said, he backs away and moves to stand in front of his cabin. I watch him with my arms crossed over my chest. Could this guy actually become a good friend?

Mikayla goes through the list of names on her clipboard and assigns each one to a cabin. Each cabin has ten campers. Since there will only be one counsellor in every cabin, there needs to be an appropriate number of kids for each leader to handle. Before camp, I was confident with five campers, but ten? I won't even remember their names by the end of the day and that's something I was told that I absolutely should do.