Fallen

6 months 13 days

6 months and 13 days
I resisted camp at first. I didn't want to have to follow in my parents footsteps. My parents met at a canoe camp. They are the worlds 6th best raging river canoers in the world or something. I mean, a 2 week camp to teach us to push a boat down a river with a stick? Didn't appeal to me. I was a bit kicking and screaming about the whole thing, how this wasn't my destiny, how I wouldn't ever be a professional canoer and how they couldn't change that with a stupid camp.
But, I wound up on the bus at 3 O'clock the next morning, taking me away to Camp Raymeyers. The bus ride in itself was boring as hell.
There were a bunch of canoe geeks bragging about their canoes and how they could canoe while blindfolded, holding a pit viper in each hand, over Niagara Falls. I decided not to join that conversation. There were, all together 19 people at this camp. And half of them reeked of lake water and dirt, while the other half slept, sitting alone or together.
There was a couple across from me, some blonde girl and her little Asian boyfriend who were making out. Ew. I chose to sleep alone.
By the time we got to the god forbidden canoe camp it was around noon. I was shuffled off the bus by a way too cheery counselor who's name tag said "Honey Bear".
Once off the bus, the smell hit me like a wave. Dead fish, sweat, and tears came to mind as this camps choice of scent. Not to even mention the dust cloud the swallowed me up for a good 30 seconds. Little bitty grains of sand pelting me from every direction surrounded me. I closed my eyes, but it didn't help much. Every breath I took I breathed more sand than oxygen. I started gagging. Somewhere in the very back of my mind a thought occurred to me, wasn't it in all those safety videos that told you to stop drop and roll? I dropped to my knees in the middle of the tornado, in search of breathe able air to stop the searing, stinging pain that I felt deep in my lungs.
I heard a counselor telling people not to panic. I heard someone yelling out the name Sammie. I heard a smacking sound. Like someone falling from a high dive and landing on the waters surface in a belly flop. And as soon as it came, the sand was gone.
I stood up and tried to brush myself off. It was useless though, I felt the sand in the corners of my eyes, my hair, under my nails, in my teeth, it was everywhere.
"Well! Wasn't that an adventure!" The counselor "Honey Bear" said way to happily, her ginger curls bouncing as she spoke. Half a dozen campers gathered in a cluster around her. "What a nice welcome to camp Raymeyers!" She sang out enthusiastically as though over half of us weren't here against our wills. Looking around I could tell exactly who didn't want to be here.
There was a girl with bright purple hair and 4 nose piercings, listening to music from her phone. There was a girl with black lipstick and winged eyeliner just laying on the ground, eyes closed, probably murdering her parents a thousand times over in her head for making her come here. There was a boy with short blonde with a dog on a harness in front of him.
Honey Bear walked her way over toward where I was standing and snatched the purple hair girl's phone from her.
"There will be no technology! This is a place for communing with and exploring nature. You need to leave all distractions behind you and live your life today."
I watched as a boy with brown hair swept over one eye made his fingers into a gun and mock shot himself. I laughed.
"Excuse me?" Honey Bear waltzed toward me. "Was that a distraction from finding your true self in the world around you?" She asked me and the boy who fake killed himself.
"uhhhhh.... yes?" He said proudly.
"Well we won't be having any more of that, it's high on the list if camp priorities that we have no distractions."
"Whatever", the boy mumbled. And then out groups were split down the middle. Girls to cabin one, boys to cabin two.
The cabin door squealed in protest as we opened it. There were twelve bunk beds positioned around the room. As we walked in, girls started throwing their bags onto beds claiming them.
I tossed my bag onto an empty top bunk only to have it shoved off about 5 seconds later.
"Excuse me?" I asked as a girl with bleached blonde hair and ridiculous make up sat up on the bunk. "Oh sorry, did you want this bed?" she asked tilting her head in a ridiculous way.
"Yeah I thought I did" I mumbled looking down at my feet.
"Hmm, that's what I thought", she laughed and flipped her hair before retreating out of my sight.
I rolled my eyes at the wooden cabin floor and picked a different top bunk. This time only after I checked to make sure that it wasn't occupied.
And that's where I lay for the next two hours as the other girls played Twister on the dusty floor beneath me.
I must have fallen asleep because when I came back to my senses the sky was a dark shade of grey. I rolled over onto my side, facing the inside of the cabin. No one was around.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, ignoring the bite of the splintery wood in my thighs. Everyone was gone.
I hopped down from my new bunk and walked over to the door where I could see a little slip of pink paper. I bent down to pick up the paper. I could hear crunching leaves outside. Like someone running toward my cabin. I put my ear to the door to listen to the quickly advancing sound of feet.
I could hear the running person breathing now. They were getting really close. I stood back away from the door and just as I did there was a pounding at it and a scrabbling sound at the door knob. I reached for the knob and started to twist is as a boy with light brown hair smashed through the door and into me. We crashed to the floor in a pile, but I didn't even have time to process what had happened before the boy had grabbed me and thrown me
into the broom closet.
"What the-" was all I was able to get out before he slapped his hand over my mouth.
He smelled like pine needles and Carmel apples. "Don't move", he whispered.
I froze.
I heard footsteps outside the door. "ALEX!", a man yelled.
The boy, that now had the name Alex, pushed me backwards behind a pile of rubber ponchos. He slipped in beside me soundlessly.
Doors were banging outside, and the sounds were getting closer.
"DAMN IT ALEX WHERE ARE YOU!",
the voice yelled again.
Then the broom closet door opened. The light spread slowly across our hiding place. "ALEX!?", he called. I started to move thinking we were caught, but Alex put a strong hand on my arm and almost imperceptibly shook his head of light brown waves.
I nodded, being able to see him only through the dim light.
The man searching for us had left the cabin, but left the door to the closet slightly open, just enough to cast eerie shadows across my fellow hiders face.
Alex stood up slowly, sticking out a hand to help me to my feet.
"Who was-" he cuts me off again by lifting his index finger to his lips. He peers through the curtain of ponchos, and peeks his head out through the yellow rubber. His hand motions for me to follow him. I sneak out into the dim light of the cabin. He dusts himself off.
"Who was that?" I asked, referring to the man who had just left the cabin.
"Oh him? Thats just Whistling Eagle".
Basically the equivalent of my Honey Bear.
"Why is he after you?" I asked.
"He's hated me ever since my first day, I got here at the beginning of the summer and I've got two more months to go. He's pretty pissed today though.. like more than normal, I just put whipped cream on his ceiling fan blades so when they spun", he made a rain-like motion with his hands, "He got smothered, it was hilarious."
Which explained pretty much why "Whistling Eagle" wanted him dead or alive.
He stuck out his hand to me, "Alex, if you hadn't already guessed that", he said with a laugh.
I laughed too, "Lia", I smiled and took his hand.
"Lia?", he questioned turning his head to the side.
I just nodded.
"That can't be it. Just Lia?" he said lifting one eyebrow. Goddamn he was attractive. His firm hand, brown waves, even the eyebrow wiggle, everything was perfectly placed.
I blushed feeling like an idiot as the red flush spread across my face, "Amelia", I admitted.
"Amalia"..." Alex scratched his chin comically as if contemplating, "Amalia", he said again before declaring, "I like it".
"Well that's good to hear but it wouldn't change anything even if you didn't like-"
And then my arm was just about wrenched out of its socket.
Alex grabbed my hand and started pulling me.
"You have to go" Alex says while dragging me behind him. "Mandatory Camp Bonfire by the lake". He dropped my hand. The breeze felt so cold on my hand without his in it.
I hesitated.
"Now", he made a pushing motion with his hands. "Shoo shoo! Quick before the beans get cold".
I started to walk in the direction he had shooed me. I hesitated and turned around. But Alex was gone.
The bonfire was boring to say the least. They sung songs we were supposed to memorize before coming here, they went something along the lines of, YEE-KEEY-OOCHIE-AHHHH
YEE-KEEY-OOCHIE-AHHHH
WALLIE-WALLIE-SIDDIE-DOOP
WALLIE-WINGIE-SQUIDY-DIP
And then repeated. Over and over again. Alex wasn't at the fire, i noticed, even though I remember him calling it mandatory. He was probably still on the run from that Whistling counselor. I snuck away after I finished my "dinner" of beans and a rock-hard biscuit.
I walked for about ten minutes in the darkness. It was almost quite if it weren't for a few animal sounds. The woods were dense. So dense in fact that I couldn't see the lake before I fell in.
But I knew when I fell. I dropped maybe six feet before I was met with ice cold lake waters. I sank like a rock.
The cold water rushed by my head. I kept feeling myself going down. I would have to hit the bottom eventually... wouldn't I? Was there even a bottom? I didn't know, and I never did find out, because a felt a hand clamp around my wrist. I opened my mouth, only to lose a few bubbles of air, and to taste lake water. I was lifted upward, or I assumed it was upward, it was hard to tell.
The girl with the purple hair greeted me as I rose from the water. "You aren't supposed to be here". she whispered in my face.
"Neither are you". I said, wringing out my hair.
"But aren't you glad I am?" she turned the piercing in her nose. It was a small emerald green stone that sparkled in the reflection of the lake.
"Thanks", I muttered not wanting to look defeated.
Purple girl started walking into the woods. I walked after her, shaking the water out of my ears.
"Zoee". She said glancing back at me, "I'm Zoee".
"Lia"
"Are you the Lia in bunk 44?" she asked, suddenly insistent.
"I think so yeah" I hadn't checked the bunk number when I had claimed it.
"You're the trumpet?"
I cannot even begin to tell you how often I had been called that. In band class I was never "Lia" or even "Amalia" I was always "that blonde chick trumpet".
"That's me", I laughed.
Zoee flipped her hair over her shoulder. "And you brought your trumpet to a canoe camp because...?" She started.
"It calms me down". I shrugged.
We walked up to the door of the cabin, it was still open from my short adventure with Alex.
"Go to bed, if you're asleep they won't ask you questions", Zoee instructed and I laid down in my bunk, doing my best to ignore the mattress stuffed with hay I lay on top of.