Summer of '07

Summer '07

Chapter 10

June 2007

~TRAVIS~

Oh, the summer of '07! Here we go, it's time to relive that crazy summer where I hit a number of milestones and endured a shitload of teenage hormones. So as you must know up front, this was the summer where I first experimented with drugs and alcohol to the point of even getting cross-faded once, lost my virginity in a musty motel room, and came to some pretty shocking realizations not only about myself but some of my friends who I thought I knew up to that point completely. Unfortunately, with so many good memories I have from that summer, there's bound to be a good mix of bad memories as well, like losing my best friend who stopped talking to me once summer ended. Like the ensuing drama that followed straight into senior year. But it's all apart of the story and the story would be incomplete if I were to leave out the bad, despite how much it pains me to remember it. So here it goes... the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So first off, to recap the last couple of years since the beginning of freshman year, Elijah and I had become pretty close friends during the ninth grade. As the year went on, we began to hang out more outside of school and by the second semester his friends had finally warmed up to me. I was invited to parties and kickbacks and was no longer being treated like shit by any of the other guys anymore. It felt good to actually be apart of the "popular crowd" again after being a total loner my eighth grade year.

Then sophomore year came along faster than I had expected and by that point I think it was safe to say that Elijah and I had officially become best friends as we began to spend an even greater amount of time together, just the two of us. Damn, I look back on the early days of sophomore year with such fondness as I recall the memories of me and him just hanging out together literally every day in the school library right after eighth period as we waited for our parents to pick us up. Back in the good 'ole days!

By second semester, he had finally gotten his driver's license so we didn't really need to do that anymore. Or at least he didn't anyways. I still did and it kinda sucked that he wasn't always available to drive me home like he did when he first got his license. By the latter half of sophomore year he had begun an on-and-off relationship with an older girl who was a junior at the time named Hannah Pascal. God, I fucking hated her. I mean, she was nice at first but was very high-maintenance and super clingy. They dated pretty much the entire summer of 2006 and frequently broke up and got back together throughout junior year until the very end when Elijah finally pulled the plug on her ass. She was graduating anyway so it made sense that Elijah was finally done with putting up with her. Unfortunately thanks to her though, Elijah and I didn't really hangout anymore like we used to during freshman and sophomore years. But that all changed once he broke up with her for good and I couldn't have been happier that she was officially out of the picture.

Once the summer of 2007 rolled around, we decided that to make up for lost time, Elijah and I were both going to head back to camp for the first time since the summer of '04 before the start of freshman year.

I had planned on going the summer of '05, but my parents instead ended up taking me on a last minute vacation to Barbados so I didn't get the chance to that year. Elijah didn't go either because that was the summer that his family had started to struggle financially, so I didn't really miss much anyways. I didn't go during the summer of '06 either, simply because Elijah didn't go, as he was always spending time with Hannah and didn't really care much about going to camp anymore. At that point I had stopped caring too, and I no longer had any intention of returning the following summer. Afterall, summer camps were mostly for kids, anyways.

But by the time the summer of '07 rolled around, I was quick to change my mind about that. And damn, I can only imagine how differently things would have turned out between Elijah and I had we not decided to go back to camp that summer. I mean, considering how our friendship turned out by the time school started up again, sometimes I just wonder what it would have been like if Elijah and I had stayed friends throughout senior year. I wonder what it would have been like if we had just stayed away from that damn girl... the one that set off the chain of events that led to my falling out with Elijah. I mean, I'm sure everything would have been different. Perhaps it would have been better? Who knows? It's like they say, everything happens for a reason... I guess.

Anyhow... without further ado, it's time for me to finally revisit the beginning of the summer of '07 before I end up giving away the whole story when I didn't even get the chance to tell it thoroughly.

So it was around the last week of June that summer camp officially commenced. Elijah and I were still thick as thieves and we both thought it was gonna be a pretty chill summer before the start of our senior year. That was until we ran into a particularly familiar face as we were getting out of the car that I had not spoken to in a number of years, and it caught me by surprise too because this was the girl that we both used to have a crush on just three summers ago. You guessed it, it was Heather Highsmith, who looked even prettier and more mature than the last time I had seen her. "Hey, guys," she said awkwardly as she walked up to us. "Long time, no see," she added as she took a glance at me, barely making eye contact with Elijah as she said that.

"It sure has been," I said, equally as awkward. I was honestly surprised that she was even talking to us, given the fact that she completely ignored us the past three years of high school and was suddenly interested in rekindling... whatever kind of friendship we had three years ago?

"Why you talking to us?" Elijah asked rudely, as if annoyed by her presence.

"What do you mean?"

"You've completely ignored the both of us for the past couple of years and now you're suddenly interested in making conversation with us? After all this time?" Damn, that fucker completely read my mind.

"The both of you, huh?" she muttered suspiciously as she narrowed her eyes at him. "Anyways, um... I'm talking to you guys again cuz I want to? ... ya know, this is where we all first met... and I haven't seen you guys here in a while."

"No, but you've seen us at school..." Elijah asserted contemptuously.

"Yeah, we haven't been coming around since freshman year..." I said to her, disregarding Elijah's bitter remark.

"Why's that?"

"We just didn't want to..."

"But now you want to? What changed?"

"We just figured, why not? Got nothing better to do this summer... might as well, since it's our last summer to do so before we reach the camp's age limit."

She smiled and said, "Cool, I'll see you guys around..."

"You gonna toy with us this summer too, like you did three years ago?" Elijah added before giving her the chance to walk off. It was as if he, for some reason, had a stronger vendetta for her than I did and I didn't understand why at the time. I mean, I had gotten over it. It'd been three years for fuck's sake... but for him, there was apparently more to it than just that.

"Look, Elijah, I'm sorry for—"

He didn't give her the chance to finish and instead just brushed her off as he pulled me with him to walk away from her.

"Why'd you go off on her like that? What happened with us happened a long time ago..."

"I know... I just want to get as far away from her as possible. People like her don't deserve my respect..." Sure, we'll see about that.

Yeah, about that whole mission to stay as far away from her as possible... that quickly went to shit later that night when we went to a bonfire party and of course, she was there.

The bonfire party itself was pretty fun. We all danced around to some pretty funky music and got wasted on the shores of the lake. To be honest, I don't really remember any of it. Other than the fact that it was my first time ever getting wasted as hell. Yeah, unfortunately that's one of the many downsides to getting super drunk... you won't remember whatever the fuck you did the next morning.

Anyways, about a couple of days after that, we both continued to see Heather around like, literally all the time and it was driving Elijah insane. It wasn't until a week or so into camp, that Elijah was done trying to avoid the unavoidable. It was a Saturday night and a bunch of us were all crowded around this small campfire, telling scary stories to each other like they do in those horror movies where the killer in the hockey mask goes around killing a bunch of camp counselors. I always forget the name of those movies in particular, but anyhow, it was a pretty cool time that I actually remember pretty thoroughly. Heather was there of course, which made Elijah greatly discomfited. But it was that night that I finally found out what exactly went on between those two that I didn't already know at the time. And boy, it wasn't pretty!