The Kids Aren't Alright

Chapter 18: Finn

I'm beginning to wonder if my roommate has a death wish. I thought he was going to pull a Becca the first time Owen asked him about his parents— his face turned dark so quick that I actually saw the counselor reach for his walkie-talkie, as if preparing for another chair-kicking fiasco. It's only our second week at camp, and Ronan almost has enough marks for kitchen duty. 

When he's not busy making my life a living hell, he's getting into trouble with the counselors, often times with Clancey or those two boys that act like members of the Three Stooges. Ronan breaks the rules so often that I  think he just does it for the thrill of it, to make life at camp a little more bearable in his own shitty way. It's almost painful to watch him self-destruct like this, and sometimes I want to go up to him and shake him by the shoulders and ask, who hurt you?

Not that I would ever do that, of course. I'm not asking to be punched in the face.

In the mornings, he puts on one of his own shirts instead of the mandatory camp one, and then throws on another layer, usually his army jacket or Yankees hoodie, so that the counselors won't call him out on it. I'm counting down the days until he gets caught and Karen yells at him with her megaphone. 

We don't even talk anymore— so far, the only real conversation we've had all week consisted of this:

"Hey, asshole." (This is Ronan speaking. You can tell because he either only refers to me as asshole or Fish.)

"What do you want?"

"I want to know if you moved the duffel bags under my bed."

"I didn't even know you kept your bags there."

"Sure, but you didn't answer my question. My bags were in a different place this morning than they were yesterday. Are you positive you didn't move them?"

"I don't give two shits about your duffel bags so yeah, I'm positive."

"Fine. Just leave my stuff alone."

We're part of different groups, so we rarely see each other outside of the cabin— I sit with Jasper and his friends, and Ronan buddies up with Clancey and the rest of his moron squad. It still blows my mind that Ronan decided to befriend someone like Clancey. My roommate might be an asshole, but he's got nothing on Clancey, who acts like his sole purpose in life is to make everybody at camp totally miserable.

My arm still burns from where Clancey whipped me in the arm with a wet towel one night in the bathroom. I still don't know what I did to piss him off. What are you going to do? Clancey's voice echoes through my head. Have your dad arrest me? I can almost hear him chuckling to himself. You're adorable, Fish.

Having to deal with Clancey in real life is bad enough. I don't need him mocking me in my own head, too. I push my thoughts of him away, determined not to let him get to me like that. I have more important things to worry about than a football player with an over-sized ego and zest for violence, anyways. Because today is special. Today is mail day.

Every Sunday during lunch, the counselors distribute all the letters and packages we were sent over the week. Getting mail is a privilege that the counselors can take away whenever they want, so mail day is kind of a big deal. I scraped by with only two marks this week, both for speaking when the counselors told us to be quiet, so I'm hoping for a letter from mom or one of my Cross Country friends. 

A traitorous part of me even longs for another letter from Sarah.  don't support her decision to get married at the age of twenty, but it's not like I can stop her— and if she's really going to have a wedding this summer, I want to know all the details.