Hey, guys, I've just come from France to Germany, because I'm on a little Eurotrip and on my way I created some completely new story in my mind and decided to share it with you immediately! ;D For those of you who read my another story – "You 're always saving me" – I know that I suck at regular updating, but I promise to get better as soon as I get home. I have a lot of ideas, they are just waiting to be written! :) Anyway, enough rambling, I hope you won't get bored, I think it's the longest chapter I have ever written! ;oo Enjoy! :)

Summary: Sent by her parents to a camp for troubled teens, Emily Fitch is desperate to show everybody that she doesn't need it. Busy with proving her normality, will she find any time for love?

'I'm telling you, Rob, that camp is the only possible solution,' Emily heard her mother's voice and in the last second stopped herself from pushing the door and coming into the kitchen. Instead she pressed her ear against the door and froze, listening. What? What camp?

'I don't know, darling,' Rob said. It was obvious that he was seriously hesitating.

'Rob, it will help her.'

If Emily could put her ear any tighter to the cold wooden surface, she would do it right at that moment. Who were they talking about?

'I'm not sure if Emily needs help.' Emily? They were talking about her?

Jenna snorted. 'Don't be ridiculous, honey, of course she does need help! If she didn't, she wouldn't be wandering around the whole house thinking about some girl!' Emily rolled her eyes at her mother's infamous overreacting.

'Um,' Rob sighed. 'Two weeks, Jen, and that's all.'

'Fine! Let's tell her then!' Emily heard the sound of two chairs being pushed against the floor and quickly ran upstairs. 'Emily, love!' her mother called her and the redhead took a deep breath – whatever they were talking about, it was definitely not going to be anything nice for her if Rob had any doubts. She plastered a fake smile to her face and slowly walked downstairs to face her mother. 'Emily. I know it's holidays and you may have different plans by now, but we want to announce you that you're going to attend a camp for troubled teens.'

Emily blinked. She was expecting strange things, but not something like that – a camp for difficult youth? 'Um, why?' she asked in a possibly most kind voice she could manage to utter.

Jenna raised her eyebrows as if that question surprised her. 'Because you have a problem, honey! We all know that!' her fake concerned voice made Emily want to vomit. No, not again, Emily begged in her mind, but she knew very well that there was no way of avoiding a discussion on her mother's favourite topic.

'I have a problem?' she asked. 'What problem?' she decided to pretend stupid.

Jenna sighed. 'Honey. Things you like are not normal, but we can cure that. I'm sure we can find you a nice boy and—'

'On the camp for troubled teens? Can you hear your own words?' Emily cut her off, trying to sound polite and serious at the same time, which didn't work quite well.

'No, after that camp, when you'll understand what's good for you.'

'I know what's good for me! It's my life, I want to live it my way, I want to be happy, do what I want to do, stop having to fulfill your fucking expectations!' Emily wanted to scream, but something stopped her. She didn't want to fight her mother, not again. All their arguments caused her so many tears and nerves that she knew she wouldn't be able to stand anymore. She glanced at Rob imploringly, but not with much hope however – her father was usually obeying her mother's decisions. Also this time, as Emily expected, he just looked her in the eye and shook his head slightly; helpless expression on his face. Emily looked down and sighed. 'When does it start?' she asked quietly, so quietly that she actually was wondering if Jenna could hear her; her voice came out bitter and hurt.

'On Monday, honey!' Jenna beamed. 'You'll see it's the best for you, you'll come back completely different, normal and happy!'

Emily nodded and kept on looking down; she didn't want her mother to see the tears that were forming in her sad, chocolate eyes. How could a person who gave her birth and should be the one to love her the most, not accept a really important part of her being at all? 'Um,' she stuttered. 'It's in three days, so maybe I should start packing now.' She turned round and walked upstairs. When she came into her room, she didn't let her tears fall down. She decided that she'll show her parents and everyone on that fucking camp that she's not the one who needs to be changed. With determination in her eyes, she opened her wardrobe and started putting her clothes into a suitcase.

When she woke up on Monday, the morning was sunny and hot – it was probably going to be a perfect day for everyone except her. She turned her head and looked at her sleeping twin sister. Katie. The perfect one – partying every night, snogging random guys and failing almost every college exam. The daughter they wanted Emily to be like. She shook her head, trying to stop her mind from creating thoughts she knew could easily make her cry; she busied herself with checking if she packed absolutely everything she might need on a camp for troubled teens – iPod, books, few chocolate bars, phone, Macbook (she hoped she'd find internet wherever that camp was going to be)… She decided that with that equipment she'll somehow survive these two weeks.

She looked at her watch. 7:30. Her mother was told to drive her to Gloucester before ten, so Emily took a shower, dressed up quickly and at eight she was in the kitchen, preparing some chocolate cereals for breakfast. After few minutes she heard her mother opening bedroom door and having a bath. When Jenna appeared in the kitchen, Emily didn't answer her sweet 'hello, darling', completely focusing on the spoon she was holding tightly in her hand. Since Jenna didn't say anything more, they got into their car in a complete silence; earlier Emily said goodbye to her father and sister. Katie hugged her, muttering short but how meaningful 'bye, lezzer', but the redhead could see in her eyes that she didn't agree with their mother and she was going to miss her.

The journey was so exhausting (sitting in silence with Jenna Fitch no more that half metre away is never an easy thing) that when they got stuck in a huge traffic jam, Emily didn't know if she should be happy that she'll come to that camp later or scream for help because Jenna was acting so cold that there was a possibility of freezing.

When finally they reached the place, it was impossible not to notice that something was definitely wrong. Emily got out from the car, took her luggage and looked around, shocked; disbelief all over her face. 'What the fuck?' she muttered to herself quietly and blinked, hoping that it'd all turn out to be a dream and she'll wake up in her comfortable, warm bed. It didn't. Obviously, when her mother said 'camp', she really meant it. Emily was standing in the middle of a forest, next to few big tents and a wooden chalet; there were trees all around and it didn't seem that there was any contact with the outside world. Her mother talked with some young man for a while, kissed her on the cheek quickly and drove away. Emily couldn't believe what she was seeing and hardly stopped herself from kneeling in front of Jenna and begging her to let her come back home; she was so terrified that she was almost ready to even promise her mother that she'd find herself a boyfriend as soon as they reach Bristol. However, she didn't do it and now was left in the middle of somewhere with group of people she not only didn't know, but also didn't have a chance to see yet. Her thoughts were interrupted when the same man who was talking to Jenna earlier appeared behind her back and spoke loudly, almost making her jump out of her skin. She turned round and raised her eyebrow at him sarcastically, which he pretended not to notice. 'Emily Fitch, right? Go to the common room, everyone is in there already, we were waiting just for you. I will join you in few minutes.'

Emily frowned; she was expecting some explanation on what at all that camp was about, or at least that the man will introduce himself to her and she'll feel safer, but all she got were some rude words and his hand pointing at the chalet (so called 'common room', obviously) she noticed before. She sighed, trying to hide irritation that seemed to be taking control all over her body now and directed her steps towards the green door in front of the chalet. She walked inside and blinked immediately as she was blinded with clouds of grey cigarettes' smoke and her ears were invaded with loud rap music and vulgar conversations. She looked around to see a lot of young people sitting by small plastic tables; she noticed the only empty chair, came closer and sat down. 'Hey!' she looked up and saw some blonde girl who was sitting opposite and smiling insanely at her. 'Um, hi?' she replied, not even trying to sound polite; the girl didn't seem to care. 'I'm Pandora, what's your name?' Emily sighed. These two weeks were going to be even harder than she thought. 'Emily,' she said, looked around the table and saw two other girls; one was looking at her with rather disinterest and the other one obviously didn't even seem to notice her presence, busy with eye-fucking some guy on the other end of the room. 'Bonkers!' she turned her attention back to the girl opposite and raised her eyebrow. 'Excuse me?'

'Bonkers! They're Effy and Karen,' Pandora pointed at two girls; the eye-fucker looked at the redhead for a second and smiled, but immediately turned her attention back to the object of her affection. The other girl smirked mysteriously; 'Hi,' she said and reached a packet of Black Devil's over Emily. 'Oh,' Emily blinked. 'No, thanks, I, um, don't smoke.' Effy seemed amused; 'sure,' was all she said, the smirk still on her face. Pandora was glaring at the brunette with absolute adoration all the time; now she looked back at Emily and started talking again. 'Effy is my bestie now, we were smoking a spliff together and she told me about her brother, who is totally amazing and—' her words were interrupted as the door opened; because of the thick smoke hanging all over the room, Emily couldn't see who it was; she figured that it had to be the man she got to know earlier when her ears were invaded with a loud whistle. 'Everybody out!' she heard the man yelling; she wanted to get up, but then noticed that no one even moved. Some people said 'fuck off' and everyone seemed to come back to whatever they were doing before. 'I said everybody out' the man obviously wasn't going to give up 'or you won't get anything to eat till tomorrow!' On that people started getting up, complaining. When they were standing on the grass in front of the chalet, the man slammed the door and turned his face to them.

'What you did was unacceptable! I thought we were going to work in peace, as civilized people, but now I see you're a group of idiots who can't be left alone for a second! I will let you know that smoking is forbidden in here, as well as a lot of other things which I will mention later. You will be forgiven, though – for the first and last time, because you may didn't know the rules earlier, but don't think I'm stupid – I'm pretty sure you were all pretty aware that it's impossible for smoking to be allowed on a camp like that. Anyway, I don't want to start our collaboration with forcing you to run twenty kilometers or something like that,' some whistles could be heard. The man cleared his throat and changed his voice so that now it seemed that he was saying something he learnt by heart or at least repeated many times before. 'Welcome to the Gloucester Camp for Troubled Teens! My name is Paul and from now on I will be your guardian and teacher. I won't be talking for a long time now; I'll just let you know that smoking, alcohol and drugs are strictly forbidden here, along with sex, any kind of weapons and any electric devices,' now everybody was shouting what and whistling loudly. Paul pretended not to care. 'These are the rules, you have to completely focus on working on your personality.' Emily started to think that it had to be a nightmare – it couldn't be that bad, could it?

'Every single person will receive their own version of the regulation, so that you'll be able to get to know it properly, since breaking any rule will cause huge consequences for you,' he showed them his hand full of paper sheets. 'Now I will subdivide you to groups in which you will be working and living till the end of the camp. Group one,' he glanced down at a notebook he was holding in his hand, 'Brookes, Cole, Cox, Eaton, group two: Fitch, McClair, Moon, Stonem, group three: Cook, Jones, McClair, Tomone, group four…' he said some other names, gave them their regulations and spoke again. 'I know that there are no mixed groups, I believe you are not surprised – as I said, you have to focus.' Emily snorted, thinking 'you have a lot to learn about the world, Paul' and noticed Effy smirking at her, as if she knew exactly what was going on in the redhead's mind. 'You have to leave all your luggage in the common room. It will be checked and you'll get it back till evening,' Paul spoke again. 'Now you will have an hour to get to know each other before the first activities today. You'll spend that time in your groups, you can sit in your tents – every group has their own, they are signed – go for a walk or anything, but you have to be here in an hour. Understood?' nobody answered him; it didn't seem that any of them liked being treated like a child. Some people snorted, other spitted on the ground. 'Great! Our first activity today is playing hide and seek so that you'll have a chance to get to know people from other groups. Now go away and we'll see each other in an hour!'

They directed their steps towards their tents and Emily was surprised to see that she was in the group with Pandora, Effy and Karen. They sat down on their sleeping bags; no one except for Panda seemed to be interested in 'getting to know each other'.

'Paul doesn't seem to be the nicest person in the world, does he?' Emily said into nowhere, not even expecting an answer. To her surprise, Karen snorted.

'Wait with judging till you see his assistant. We had a pleasure of meeting her earlier, but she went away just before your arrival; seems that she had some really important things to do,' she rolled her eyes, letting them know what she thought about 'important things' that assistant could have to do. 'Anyway, I'm sure she'll be back soon. It's not a place for nice people, girl,' Emily smiled; there was something in Karen she liked immediately. She was right, for a while the redhead almost forgot what kind of place it was.

'I'm here because my mom thinks that I'm showing an unhealthy interest in boys as for a girl in my age, plus I was getting drunk a lot recently and she isn't quite pleased,' Pandora said, suddenly completely changing the subject of their conversation. 'Why are you here?'

'Drugs,' Effy answered simply, not even looking up from her regulation sheet.

'Skipping school and sex with random guys, my dad found me in our house once while a threesome,' Karen said. 'What about you, Em?' she nudged Emily slightly on the thigh. The redhead blinked. What was she supposed to say? I killed a puppy? Caused a fire? It's now or never, Emily. You can tell them the truth or pretend, she thought to herself and made a decision.

'I'm gay,' Karen choked on the water she was drinking.

'What?'

Emily started; she was getting tired of people making a huge issue out of her sexuality. 'I'm gay, do you have any—'

'Nonono,' Karen shook her head at Emily. 'I didn't mean it like that! I mean, you haven't done anything… wrong?' Emily pretended to be wondering. 'Except for liking girls? Um, no. However, it seems that it's wrong enough for my mother.'

'Wowzer!' Pandora exclaimed. Effy was still sitting with a smirk on her face; it caused Emily an impression that somehow the brunette knew about her sexual orientation even before her. Looking at the girls in the same tent, for the first time she felt hope that maybe it wasn't going to be that bad.

That hope disappeared soon. It quickly became obvious that when they said 'difficult youth', they literally meant it – there were people who were sent to that place by the government, before or instead of going to jail, people who were beating on their parents, thieves, drug dealers… Emily has never felt so insecure in her entire life, especially that most girls weren't going to miss the opportunity of insulting a short, pale redhead, who was apparently scared and no one knew what someone like her was doing on a camp like that, while she probably fitted more into a painting course or something like that. Fortunately, it seemed that Effy and Karen had some kind of respect from the rest (probably because Karen's brother, who was at the same time in love with Effy, was on that camp too and had a friend, Cook, who was causing fear everywhere since it seemed that he's not afraid of anything and never hesitates to hit someone), so when Emily was with them, no one had courage to anyhow hurt her or Panda, who was in quite similar situation.

Playing hide and seek was also a disaster – Paul came up with an idea that they will be playing in the whole forest, everybody hiding and seeking everybody (nonsense) and someone who finds another person has a right to ask that person a question and you have to give a true answer. Of course no one (except for Pandora) obeyed these rules; people were using an opportunity of being alone in the forest to take drugs, smoke, drink alcohol they somehow managed to hide, have fights or other activities and so when Paul find out about that (which didn't take a long time), he made them run ten kilometers, that time being with them all the time and making sure that no one dares to run away. Emily finished the run all sweaty and exhausted, only to be informed that if they want to get clean, they have to bath in the river, which was unbelievably cold. Anyway, most of them, including Emily, decided to take a chance and wash themselves.

When Emily showed up in the common room for a dinner, she was shivering because of cold and the fact that she still had wet hair since they weren't allowed to use hair-dryers after their 'bath'. She sat down by her table, next to Karen, Effy and Panda, all with wet hair and expressions full of sorrow on their faces. It only got worse when they saw that 'dinner' meant a lot of potatoes and even more bean, no meat or sauce (Emily didn't care anyway, being a vegetarian since she was nine) and only water to drink.

'Right everyone, you'll have washing dishes duties everyday,' said Paul when everybody finished eating, 'which will be chosen by accident. People to wash the dishes for today and tomorrow are Moon, Cole and Fitch. The rest – go to your tents and I recommend you to fall asleep as soon as possible since we are waking up at five tomorrow.' People were even too tired to complain, everyone got up slowly and directed their steps towards their tents, leaving Emily, Pandora and a boy called Cole alone with Paul, who said 'Wash the dishes quickly and you can go to your tents' and left too. Emily cursed under her breath and started picking up the dishes from tables. When they came into the kitchen, it became obvious that the water pressure was really low, so it was taking ages to wash even one plate, not to mention all the dishes; it even seemed that there are definitely too many of them, considering how many people were eating dinner. Emily busied herself with drying everything, taking her time to somehow punish Paul who was so stupid to give her the first washing duty.

'Hurry up, it's not your fucking holiday,' she heard a fierce female voice behind her back and turned round to face the sea-blue eyes, peroxide blonde hair and the rest of the body (impressive, she had to admit) of some girl she hadn't seen before. The redhead blinked and looked her in the eye, ignoring Pandora, who was shaking her head and waving her hands behind the blonde's back insanely, her lips were shouting a soundless 'no!'; terrified expression on her face.

'Excuse me,' Emily started, 'who are you to tell me what I should do?' The girl looked confused for a second, obviously surprised by Emily's reaction, but finally she raised her eyebrow sarcastically and spoke.

'I'm Naomi Campbell, Paul's assistant and, believe me, I have a right to tell you to do anything,' she looked at Pandora and the boy they got to know as John Cole. 'Go back to your tents, guys, little miss I-am-the-goddess will finish washing by her own.' Emily couldn't believe her ears. Pandora looked at her sadly, muttering 'good luck' and left the kitchen, the boy followed her without saying a word. When Emily and Naomi were left alone, the blonde looked down at the redhead and smirked. 'Do the washing, then dust the tables in the common room, vacuum everywhere and mop the floor,' Emily's eyes widened. 'Tomorrow I'll make sure you did everything properly. And,' she looked at her watch, 'I advise you to hurry up if you don't want to spend the whole night here,' with that she was gone, leaving Emily with the sink full of dirty dishes and completely shocked expression on her face.

Fucking bitch. That night was going to be so much longer than Emily expected.