Camp Paya

Monday

A/N: Welcome to my new book! It'll be seven chapters, all of them are written except the last, though I may do some editing still. I've been working on it forever, it feels crazy to actually post it =D

Violet sighed from the back seat of her grandmother's old car. It still smelled like her and Violet couldn't help but remember the day when she had taken her own life. She was eleven at the time and in the same room when it happened. She had been numb to it for a long time, and then she was mad.

Mad that her grandma had been so selfish to do something like that with her granddaughter in the same room. Mad that by killing herself she had taken away Violet's only safe haven. Mad that because of it she got sent to a boarding school.

Now, after years of lost friendships and loneliness, Violet understood just the tiniest bit of what her grandmother must have been going through. The sort of desperation she must have felt to not be able to make it even another second in this life.

Violet didn't feel that desperate, but she did feel alone. Her parents shipped her off to 'Ericson's Boarding School for Troubled Youth'. She's only home for a couple of months in the Summer and what do they do? They send her off to Summer camp. They can't even bare her presence for two short months. Even though her dad's a drunk and her mom's never there, it still hurts that they want her gone as much as possible. Whatever though, she didn't care. Coming to camp was more like coming home than actually going home was. She had been coming here since she was five years old.

It was a week away from that awful boarding school and away from her suffocating trailer. A week of singing by the camp fire, arts and crafts, and talking about boys.

Okay, she didn't necessarily enjoy all of that but at least some of the friends she knew from the boarding school were going to be there. Minerva and Sophie were even coming again this year. Violet hadn't seen the two of them in over a year, when they were released from Ericson's and deemed 'cured'. She was missing them both something fierce but Minerva more so. They hadn't been 'dating' per se when they were at Ericson's together, but they had flirted.

At least it felt like flirting to Violet. She never got a chance to ask if Minerva felt the same. If she had those same feelings about girls that most girls seemed to have about boys, the same way Violet did.

Maybe this would be the summer she would find out. Her and Minerva could reconnect and become something more...

The oldsmobile drove underneath a big entryway that read "Camp Paya", she felt a pang of nostalgia as they drove down the long dirt driveway. She had been coming to this camp for years, it was the Summer before her last year of school, this would be her last time attending camp here. It was bittersweet but she intended to enjoy ever second of it.

The car came to a stop,  her mom twisted around in the driver's seat to look at Violet. "Need help with your luggage?" she asked with a half smile.

"No, I got it. Thanks for driving me." Violet said, opening up the door.

"Hey Vi." Her mom said, causing Violet to pause halfway out of the car. "Have fun, I love you."

"Love you too Mom." Violet smiled back, grabbing her luggage and backpack from the seat beside her as she got out, slamming the door closed, she took a few steps away from the road, taking in a deep breath and admiring her surroundings. This was going to be a great week.

Her mom drove off without looking back and in her spot parked a blue pickup truck. Violet couldn't help but watch as a girl in a cream colored dress and a baseball cap bounded out of the back seat of the truck, followed by a boy that looked to be around six years old. A tall dark skinned woman and a shorter man got out of the front shortly after. The man was smiling and shaking his head at the teenager's enthusiasm. She couldn't have been more than a year or two younger than Violet herself, she thought, as she sized the girl up with her eyes.