The Bright Light

Summer Camp

There will never be a worse feeling then waking up to a girl shrieking because she found a snake in her sleeping bag. Sydney Brown was one of the meanest girls on the face of the planet. Every summer she would stalk every camper until she found her perfect victim. This year she picked some over the top diva named Molly. And come on you can't name your kid Molly and expect her not to become the most dramatic person you will ever meet. Drama aside, a snake is a snake, and Molly woke the whole camp up.

I got out of my tent and went to meet with my group of friends before the councilors started lecturing us about the stunt pulled this morning. My closest friend at the camp, Emily, called me over.

"Sydney strikes again." She said as she rolled her eyes.
"Yeah I know I'm so sick of her."
" Me too. But at least she didn't pick one of us to mess with this summer."
"True. Hey you kn—

"Aurora! Emily!" Some random voice interrupted.
We turned our heads and there was Jermey and Olivia staring at us from a tiny blue tent. Emily And I begin walking over to them.

"There you are. Get in here." I followed Emily into the tent and sat down once we got inside. The four of us sat in a circle and began talking about the prank. It wasn't anything new, pranks like these happened all the time. Especially with Sydney around. She never got in trouble because she was such a good liar and the camp counselors are extremely gullible. Our friend group despised Sydney because she had tormented us all. She would pick on Emily for being too skinny even though they were the same size. She would pick on Olivia for her "unnatural" hair color even though they had the exact same shade of Barbie blonde hair. And she even had the audacity to pick on Jermey for being short even though he had at least a foot on her.

None of her insults ever made sense but she made fun of people so often that eventually they started to question if she had a point. I never understood how she was so good at messing with peoples minds. Emily had a theory that maybe she was a witch and the group all happily agreed with it.

"CAMPERS! MEETING IN THE DINING HALL!"

"Ugh here we go." I said sarcastically. We all got up out of our circle and unzipped the tent. Every year the four of us were forced to come to this stupid summer camp that our small suburban town has every summer. The townspeople think this camp builds moral when in reality it is the definition of soul sucking. The food here sucks, majority of the people suck, and the only thing that makes any of this bearable are the three people walking with me to this run down building the counselors like to call a cafeteria.

The four of us sat down and began listening to the lecture that we get nearly every year.

"Us councilors here at Camp Leafside take deep pride in providing a safe environment for all campers and —-

Blah. Blah. Blah. Same stuff different week.

After listening to that terrible lecture by the camps most annoying councilor we were finally aloud to eat. Not that the food was any good, but anything was better then listening to her high pitched voice for longer than necessary.

Today we were being served what looked like eggs but tasted like dog food.

"Still better than what I ate last night." Jermey mumbled under his breath. Olivia hit him under the table and he nearly chocked on his food.

"But we didn't eat dinner last night? We went to the creek instead remember?" Emily said confusingly.

"Shut up and eat your food." I replied bluntly.

"So how do you guys wanna get out of today's camp activity?" Olivia questioned as an attempt to change the subject.

See the thing is none of us actually want to be here so as a way to be rebellious we sneak out of as many activities as we can. We normally wander off to a nearby creek, lake, or hiking trail as a way to escape. That begun to get boring as this was our fifth year at this camp and we had been everywhere within a mile of the camp by now.

"I say we go back down to the creek. Maybe we could try to catch some fish with sticks." Jermey suggested.

"Sure." I agreed. There was really nothing else to do so there was no reason to protest that idea.

We were almost done eating when Alex Gardener sat down next to Jermey. The Alex Gardener sat down next to Jermey. The guy I had a crush on since I first started coming to this camp sat down next to Jermey.

"Mind if I join you guys? I heard the activity was volleyball and I would rather die then play that."

"Sure." Olivia replies. Obviously not thinking that by saying yes she was immediately signing me up for an afternoon full of awkwardness as I attempted to impress my crush but ultimately fail because I have the sex appeal as a newly ripened watermelon.

This is going to be an extremely long summer.