Gravity Falls || malum & lashton au

1

"Welcome to Gravity Falls, Oregon," a woman with dark hair and bright eyes chirps and claps, standing on a stage. There is a medium sized crowd in the audience, Michael being one of the... Maybe three hundred people. He's as far in the back lefthand corner as possible. There's maybe two feet between him and everyone else. He is awkward to say the least.

He is on his phone, trying his hardest to obtain any glimpse of signal in this wooden and overcrowded building. It isn't working. No signal, no wifi, nothing. He feels stranded. No connection, no one here that he knows, and everything here looks old as hell. He really does miss his home down in California. Given, he could probably walk home if he truly wanted to. It was only a twenty minute drive, so he could walk there within a few hours.

"I fucking hate this place already," he grumbles beneath his breath, doing his best to hold back from slinging his Iphone 7 Plus into the crowd of bodies. Luckily, he is yet to smell anyone that smells bad. It just smells like saw dust and pine cones in this place. It could be worse. He looks back up to the lady on the stage, who has a piece of white paper in her hand.

"Right here is the list of people who are roomed together, no co-ed bunks," she giggles, looking at the crowd with happy yet tired eyes. She must be the lady who is over everything here. She seems too energetic for her own good, while Michael wishes he was that full of enthusiasm. He is only full of annoyance right now. He has anxiety near these large crowds.

"You see those picnic tables right outside the door to the meeting hall?" She asks, motioning to where everyone had entered. She hears a lot of loud 'yeses' and people rooting and shaking their fists in the air. "Whenever I call your names and say you're in the same bunk, go sit at a table together. We hand out maps but have no way of showing everyone their ways. We need everyone in a group together while finding their cabins for the summer."

Great, there's a map. How far away from this building is he going to be? He's stranded in the middle of the woods with strangers, and his bunk will be possibly a mile or two away from the base of the camp. He clenches his phone in his hand and his suit case that's in his other hand. He hears some guys making cat calls to the woman on the stage, and some girls cooing over how 'cute' she is. He envies the advisor's confidence to be on a stage alone, in front of nearly three hundred people. How many cabins do they have? How much acreage is on this camp? Once he gets back to his cabin, it may end up taking a lot longer than than just twenty minutes to walk home if he is to ever want to.

"But first, before I send you people on your way, I need to go over camps rules," she says with a happy face but a serious tone. A few guys can be heard 'booing', but aside from that the room falls surprisingly silent.
"Rule 1, you need to come to at least one camp activity a week. Rule 2, you are not to leave your cabins after 11:00 pm. Rule 3, no fighting whatsoever. Rule 4, no sneaking into the other gender's bunking area. There is specifically one side for guys and one side for girls. No mixing!"

Some people 'boo' in response, but aside from that, most people are still quiet and looking up to the lady. The rules aren't so bad. The only one Michael may have an issue with is the camp activities. At least he only has to appear at one a week. It would be horrible if there was one he had to be at every single night. He feels foolish being here. He's pretty much an adult at a summer camp. Aren't summer camps for kids? Everyone around him looks to be relatively the same age as him, so that's reassuring at least. He'd feel horribly out of place if he was the oldest person here.

"Camp activities will vary. Sometimes we have cookouts by the lake, corn hole, water balloon fights, and one in a while we have scary story sessions by the main bonfire just out front. There's a few other bonfire areas, but those are mainly meant for the use of the bunks near them."
Michael is surprised by how organized this place his. He isn't much interested in the idea of being here, but he does acknowledge the fact that the twelve year old him would have been crying in excitement to be here. A little too late now, though. He's almost eighteen and his life revolves around the internet, making videos, and gaming.