I begged my dad to let me stay home. There was no way on earth he was going to get me to spend four whole weeks at band camp with no one I knew except for my clarinet. There was nothing he could do to get me to go, nothing.
I can't believe he got me to do it.
That was my first thought and the thought that would swim in my head for the next three hours that I would spend on that stinky, smelly cramped bus filled with hyper teenagers and sing-alongs.
I sat in the seat near the front clutching my pillow and trying to drown out the constant laughter with my CD player. I watched the trees go by one by one, as if they were all bidding me farewell. After a while the trees became cars and I got bored with my window and the buildings. They were all the same.
I looked across the isle to the seat next to me. A girl who looked about my age had a notebook in her lap, with a pen in her hand moving back and forth on the paper so fast it looked like a black blur. I paused my music and leaned across in my seat. "What are you doing?"
She jumped and her pen had made a zig-zagged line on her paper. She stared at it, then looked at me and sighed. "I was writing a story." I started to apologize for the mess I caused but she held a hand out and smiled genuinely. "Don't worry about it. This is just the rough draft."
She had brown wavy hair that fell way past her shoulders and at the moment she had it spilling down her the front of her white shirt like coffee. There were a few oddball braids here and there, and there was a single blue streak near her face. I asked her name.
"Oh, sorry, I'm Pru. I uh, play the clarinet." She indicated the black case in the floor. My eyes lit up and I bounced a bit in my seat.
"Me clarinet too! I mean," I laughed, "I play the clarinet too." I pointed at my case that was next to me in the seat. It was decorated with my favorite music bands and where me and my friends had scribbled on it with white gel pen. We had all wrote our names and random phrases. Pru leaned over and narrowed her eyes at where I had wrote something crude about my band director.
"Oh, don't worry about that." I pushed it aside. "So," I began, making myself comfortable in my seat, "are you excited about band camp?" I put an emphasis on band camp as if it were a bad word.
"Yes. I love band." She answered simply. I stared at her open-mouthed.
"But, but- band camp! Have you ever seen American Pie?"
"Have you ever been to an actual band camp?" She asked sharply. I shook my head. "Then don't label it yet. Band camp is so much more than what the average movie show it to be, and how it is said to be 'nerdy' and 'geeky' and all those things. It's...I mean," She looked up towards the roof of the bus, "extraordinary. I've had all my good memories here. I've been to this camp tons of times. You'll love it, I swear. If not, you can have all my Colgate Orange-Crush toothpaste." I stared at her. "I....love Colgate Orange-Crush toothpaste." I nodded and put on a fake look of 'of course, it's great'.
I suddenly realized she was looking out her window with her face pressed to the glass. Her nose was squished. "We're here!" She said, her voice sounding nasally. I sat up on my knees in my seat to see out her window. There it was.
We rolled onto a gravel driveway, leaving the busy highway and my old self. Little did I know I would be coming back a whole new person.
---
"Welcome to Blaremount. I hope you all enjoyed the bus ride over here." All the kids groaned and there was mumbling coming from every mouth.
We were all in a football stadium, situated on the bleachers listening to the camp lead counselor, Jordan. He was wearing a red t-shirt with white writing that read 'Blaremount' on the front and 'Band Camp' on the back. He was in his twenties and hot. I don't think I ever heard a word he said that day during orientation.
--
After it was over, we were dismissed to walk up the hill to our "dorms". It was a large brick building that was stacked high with many levels and balconies. I stood with Pru at the bottom of the hill looking up.
"Wow. That's ..wow." I mumbled stupidly, my head laid back as far as it would go. Pru grabbed my arm and started walking. "Come on. We have to get the good dorm. I've had it every year. I hope Brey is saving me a bunk." She stopped walking and turned to stare at me. "Um, it's okay, you can share mine."
--
Brey was the craziest girl I had ever met. She was a mix between random, bi-polar, hilarious, and confused. I loved her to death the first moment I met her.
"Yay-ah! You brought the orange-crush toothpaste! I hope you know you'll be wearing it when you wake up." Brey was hanging off her bunk upside down, watching Pru unpack her stuff. Pru stuck out her tongue and went back to unpacking.
I, however, had not even begun to unpack. I was sitting beside Pru on 'our' bunk and looking around the room.
Pru did a roll and slid off her bunk, then ran and jumped onto our bed, making Pru and I bob up and down a bit. "Kiddo, you seem uptight." Brey grabbed up my red hair in her hands and began playing with it.
"No, Brey. You are not doing your famous cornrows." Pru said loudly, and tried to push Brey off the bed. But Brey laughed and anchored herself to the covers. "You have to ask nicely!" Brey laughed. She had the most contagious laugh I've ever heard.
Somehow we all ended up under the covers together talking about all the important things in life: boys, why you shouldn't sleep in eyeliner because you'll have rings under your eyes, why fresh cut grass smells the way it does, and why sunsets are so sad.
I don't know how we all fit on the same bunk, but we did, and I was glad. I didn't mind Brey's legs across my stomach or Pru's foot on my head.
"Wendy," Pru asked, "what was your first kiss like?"
I shifted under the covers a bit and thought about it. "Well I don't remember. I was six or seven, and it was under the mistletoe at my family's Christmas dinner. I think it was my cousin." I squinted my eyes as I thought about how weird that sounded. There was silence.
"Ew."
"What was yours like, Brey?" Pru asked, "I don't think you've ever told me."
I could feel Pru's cheeks rise against my arm and I knew she was smiling. "It was last year, in the rain and I can still remember what his lips felt like. It was a Sunday morning and I was standing under the awning of my school and..he pulled me out in the rain and kissed me." She broke the silence and started making kissy noises with her mouth. I laughed.
"Brey- you ruined your own moment!" I slapped her on the stomach.
It was quiet for a while as we all enjoyed each other's company. Then I realized none of us had asked Pru yet. And I think Pru knew it, but she wasn't about to say anything. I decided not to being it up.
--
I opened my eyes. I forgot where I was and found myself laying with two girls on a tiny bunk bed. I screamed and jumped up to my feet, hitting my head on the ceiling. It seemed I had forgot it was the top bunk, too. My screaming woke up Brey and Pru, then I tripped on somebody's leg and fell off the side of the bed onto the floor. It thumped.
"What's going on? What was that I just heard?" Pru asked, rubbing her eyes. Brey had been sitting up but she laid back down and pulled the covers back over her.
"Nothing. Wendy fell off the bed. Go back to sleep."
"Nah, we have to get up anyway."
I lay on the floor moaning and feeling like the biggest idiot in the world. "Get up, Skittish." Pru jumped onto the floor and tried to hoist me up onto my feet. I wouldn't budge so she grabbed a pillow and started whacking me with it.
"Okay I'm up I'm up!" I groaned and slowly stood up, stretching.
"Next time you guys hear me screaming, please grab one of my appendages so I won't break my face again."
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