The Camp

Chapter 10

I was woken up to Emily's head dangling over mine. "Chocolate." She mumbled and in my tired state I had no idea what she was talking about, my eyes were sore and puffy from crying and my hair was straggled across my face. "It's on your hand." She pointed over from the top of the bunk to my palm where the smallest speck of last night's chocolate remained. "Where did you get it?" She asked and I pulled myself into and upright position, blinking away the gritty crust around my eyes. "Its just dirt..." I muttered and Emily's smile faltered, of course I was desperate to tell her, but I had started to become weary of the other girls who had been giving me some menacing looks since Rachel's announcement the previous day. "Are you sure?" She asked, squinting her shiny eyes at me with a determination that said that she was doubting what I'd said. "I'm sure." I mumbled as my feet slipped into the stiff pair of walking boots. The backs of my heels had already been rubbed raw and the end of the boot was rubbing my toe so much that I'd developed a blister right at the end of my largest toe. "Why are you so tired today?" Emily asked as I winced over my blister and painful feet. "Couldn't sleep last night. I had something on my mind." I explained and a cheeky grin snuck onto her pallid face. "Was that something called Jack?" I looked at her with squinted eyes, the daylight coming in through the windows was far too bright. "No. It was actually a cat called Chowder." I explained as I wound the string around my cool hair. Tying the final bow, I patted my knees and stood up only to remember that there hadn't been an alarm this morning. "Did I miss the alarm?" Emily, who was shimmying down the ladder forwards shook her head. She already had her boots on, and her hair was down, judging by her face she'd already been up for quite a while. "Rachel came in this morning and told us that breakfast would be served before we did any trials today," A glimmer of hope lit up in my belly, if we were being fed then surely that was a good thing, "I think she wanted you because her camera drone zoomed in on you and she tried to get a response but you were dead, for a second when I woke up I thought you might actually be dead." She'd reached the floor and was messing around with the curls of her hair. "Not that I know of." I retorted and she laughed, releasing her locks and rolling her eyes. Her small hand clasped my wrist just like Jack had done the night before and she begun to pull me towards the door of the cabin. "We better get in the line so that we get something decent though." She explained as I was led out into the yard.

Waiting in the outdoor line under the baking sun with about and hour of sleep was one of the worst experiences of my life. Emily kept trying to initiate a conversation but every effort she made was thwarted by my inability to pay attention for more than five seconds and so we ended up stood in silence.

Once inside we followed the mass of bustling people over to the buffet style food bar and collected or standard issue porridge. I overheard the girl in front of me complaining to her friend about having to eat bland porridge, but this bowl was more flavoursome than anything Emily or myself had ever eaten back in Oregon. There was a huge shortage of meat around this time of the year and disease was predominant among flocks or herds. Moreover, the locusts were booming and had eaten the majority of our crops which meant that any remaining oats and corn were snapped up to feed the livestock. Emily overtook me, carrying her bowl of oats with great pride and a grinning face. She collected a spoon from the cutlery table then pushed forwards to find a seat at one of the feeble-looking tables. I followed in pursuit, stopping for just a second to admire the range of steel cutlery. Back home we didn't have this much, we had the minimum knife and fork and that was about it. I clasped the cool metal of the spoon and slid it into the side of my grainy porridge, resuming my two-handed approach to holding the bowl, a safeguard against spillage. By that point Emily had disappeared somewhere into the crowd and I spent a good few minutes scanning heads until I found her at a virtually empty table with a mouth stuffed full of oats.

I joined her dutifully, placing my bowl onto the table then giving the wooden bench a little shake before sitting down. All the while I watched Emily stuff oats upon oats into her mouth. "Don't forget to chew." I joke and she said something which sounded like gibberish, speckles of chewed oats sprayed across the table and I shielded my bowl from her shower of food. Picking up my spoon I took a small amount of oats up to my mouth and began to chew through the sweet soupy porridge. It wasn't exactly warm, and it wasn't made by the best chef because they had used far too much water, but its richness filled my stomach up far better than eggs. With tingling teeth, I began to shovel the food in just as little Emily had and then when I looked up and saw that Jack was taking his slow and steady, I loosened up a little. The celebrities were offered a range of meals and were even able to request whatever they wanted and et Jack was eating the same runny oat mash as us. He was picking through it with his spoon and occasionally taking mouthfuls of it as he chatted to Finn and Jaeden. Everyone else at his table had bacon, toast and eggs and thin meat that I'd never seen before in my life.