The Kids Aren't Alright

Chapter 35: Ronan

"This birthday party sucks," Jasper says gloomily.

Giselle purses her lips. She's wearing some sort of flavored lip-gloss, and the fruity scent is almost overpowering. I'm not surprised that she decided to go overboard with her make-up. Everything Giselle does is too much. It's like she's constantly trying to one-up the rest of the camp, but in a competition of her own making. "I thought more people would show," she says, equally disappointed. "I invited at least half the camp."

"Well, as of now, there's only five of us," Becca points out. This isn't a very helpful observation, but Becca hasn't been very helpful all night— in fact, she's been going out of her way to be unhelpful, leading me to believe she only showed up out of spite. "And I doubt anyone else is going to magically appear. Not in this storm."

At least she's right about one thing— the weather is shit. Outside, raindrops bigger than marbles pounds against the cabin, while thick gusts of winds howl through the trees, jostling the electric lines and threatening our power supply (because a black-out is exactly what we need right now). Someone, probably Finn, has placed bowls (stolen from the Mess Hall, of course) around the cabin to collect the profuse amount of water leaking from the ceiling, and the sound of the droplets plunking against the plastic is enough to drive me crazy. Combined, the various sounds form a discordant cacophony that does nothing to lighten the mood.

It doesn't help that Finn and Becca have been eyeing each other up the entire time. I don't know why Giselle invited Becca (maybe she thought more people would show up?) or why Finn agreed to host Jasper's birthday party (maybe he thought Becca wouldn't come?)— but knowing their motives doesn't change the fact that they're both here, and that neither of them looks very happy about it. And it's not like their fight is the only thing messing with the group dynamic. Jasper hasn't spoken to me since I found out about his prosthetic leg, Giselle is still pissed at Becca and Finn for stealing the flag she was supposed to defend, and I'm just trying not to think about my conversation with James. If you take that and throw in all the weird, unspoken crushes, you get this whole Molotov cocktail of teenage hormones and craziness that's threatening to explode at any moment.

Finally, the tension builds to an unbearable level, and Giselle pushes herself to her feet. "We've got to do something. I'm going to go insane if we don't do something."

"I agree," says Jasper, in a soft voice that barely carries over the wailing over the wind. He lifts his gaze from the floor and stares at us, looking vaguely surprised, as if he didn't expect anybody to be listening. "I don't want to spend my seventeenth birthday sitting around inside and doing nothing," he explains. "We should play a game."

"What kind of game?" Becca asks apprehensively. I can't help but recall how the last game we played, Capture the Flag, didn't exactly end well for her. Or any of us, really. Maybe we should just away from games altogether. That would be the smart idea (as if any of us are actually smart). "We can't go outside. It's raining too hard."

"Not an outside game," Giselle retorts. "We'll stay inside, obviously. We can play Truth or Dare or Never Have I Ever."

"I don't want to play a game," says Finn. He's looking more miserable than usual, and he keeps casting mournful looks at Becca when he thinks she isn't paying attention. (I, however, am always paying attention. Why wouldn't I? It's like watching a poorly written TV drama play out in real-time.) He finishes, "I want to go to sleep."

"Well, I want to celebrate my seventeenth birthday like a normal teenager," Jasper says, in a rare show of confidence. "I say we play a game. So let's play a game."

Giselle grins at him, pleased by his decision. Then, she grins even more broadly at the friendship bracelet on his wrist. "Actually, let's not play Truth or Dare. It's not like we can do any fun dares since it's raining too hard to leave the cabin. It'll be easier to play Never Have I Ever."