A/N: Year 15
Beca is 15, Chloe and Stacie are 16, Emily is 14, Aubrey is 18


Beca felt like she should skip to her unit from the pool. Around her wrist was a blue band. The previous summer, she was a blue band for only the last week. But now she was one for the entire session. No swim lessons. No boring free swims in the safe pool which was exciting.

This year she was assigned to the Echota unit. When she found that out during check-in, her stomach dropped. She felt could handle if she was separated from Stacie, but Emily… if she wasn't in the same unit as Emily, she knew she wouldn't have nearly as much fun as she had last year.

When she walked into the unit, Beca stopped. Fuck. Her heart sank. "Well, well, well. Look who we have here. Hi Beca. It seems as though we will be spending the summer together. Again."

"Hey Pitch." Beca mumbled. "Cabin?"

"Number Two. And Beca, no pranks this year, okay?"

"Sure Pitch, and it's great to see you, too." Bea could not hold the sarcasm from her voice as she headed towards her cabin. She pushed open the door to the cabin and about fell over backward when a body came flying at her.

"Beca! I thought they separated us." Emily was shrieking as she jumped up and down, hugging Beca at the same time. "But then I saw your trunk. I got so excited."

"Wow, this is a big cabin," Beca said nonchalantly. She was playing it cool and trying to not show her joy and relief at seeing Emily.

"Yeah twenty campers, ten per side. But no latrines this year! The showers and toilets are in the middle section. Awesome, huh?" The younger girl was bubbling over with enthusiasm, much like how Beca felt about being back at Camp Barden but did not outwardly show.

Beca noticed that the two cots across from them didn't have luggage sitting beside them, the only two empty cots in the larger cabin. "We have this whole corner to ourselves this year?" She pulled her trunk to the cot next to Emily's. "I can't believe we are back at camp." Beca made up her cot and unpacked her trunk the best she could. Taking a break, she patted the mattress beside her. "Come talk to me. Catch me up on the last few weeks. I feel like we haven't talked in forever."

Emily plunked herself down on Beca's bed, happy that Beca didn't mind when she got a little needy. The friends did talk on the phone a lot but hadn't seen each other since Spring Break when Emily had gone to stay with Beca for the week. "You are fifteen, right?" Emily's question was guarded.

"Last time I checked." Beca toyed with the leather bracelet on Emily's wrist. "Looks good now that it's all weathered and stuff."

"So, are you doing LIT this summer? You're old enough now." Emily voice was cautious. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer, but she needed to. If Beca chose to take LIT this summer, that would cut into their time together.

"Pshaw Ems. Do you really see me taking leadership classes? They'd kick me out for sure. Naw, I'm with you." She turned to Emily with a grin and put up her fist for a fist bump.

"Score!"

The two friends headed to the campfire circle to sit on the singing logs and visit with other campers as everyone checked in and got settled in their cabins. Some of the girls they knew from the previous year while others were new. As their eyes roamed around the unit, Beca's eyes settled on the steps of the counselor cabin. "What the hell is that?" She pointed.

Emily looked over, exploring the object with her eyes. The statue was an old man with Santa Clause like facial hair – white sideburns, white, bushy mustache and long, white beard. He was wearing a tall, pointed, red hat, a gray tunic, green pants brown belt and boots. "Ummmm it looks like a gnome."

Pitch walked up to the singing logs and sat on the log with her legs crossed. "It is… his name is Knobby. Knobby the Gnome." Beca didn't even try to hold back her guffaws. "He's our mascot this year. The red hat is so birds don't attack." Pitch ignored Beca's laughing and let the girls know it was time for dinner and that they should make sure they didn't need anything from their cabin before the unit left.

Beca's head was turned, talking to Emily, as she went into the cabin. She froze before getting in all the way, causing her friend to run into her back. "Becs?"

"Fuck." Two more campers had moved into Cabin One while they had been out at the fire circle. The one caddy-corner to hers had exploded in pink, complete with a pink sleeping bag and a ladybug plush pillow. "Chloe Beale."


"I can't believe the Counselor-In-Training cabin is full." Chloe was whining to Stacie as they walked to dinner. "And they put us in a cabin with her. I hope we can get some campers on the other side to switch places with us. I don't think I can stand being that close to her again."

Stacie chuckled "Beca's not that bad. I got to know her pretty well during the school year. We talked on the phone a lot. After my birthday, when I got my driver's license, I drove to see her during part of Spring Break. Emily was there, too."

Chloe glared at her taller friend. "You never told me that."

"I knew you didn't like her Chloe. I figured it would just cause problems. All we did was hang out listening to some of Beca's mixes and went to Six Flags one day."

"Stace – you have to back me up this year. We are CIT's together. I mean, we choose our camp names tomorrow, and we start working with the younger campers. If we let one camper do mean pranks, that undermines our authority." Chloe was remembering the things Beca had pulled on her last summer in retribution for the redhead cleaning the cabin. "Please?"

The brunette CIT draped her arm around her friend's shoulders as she chose to not address Chloe's concerns. "This is going to be a great summer."


As Emily and Beca had both attended camp last year and were now in Echota together, they had access to different activities, more advanced than before. Archery, crafts, knots – as well as new ones such as outdoor cooking and most exciting of all, the high ropes course.

During archery, both girls had improved drastically. Emily's skills were impressive compared to last year as every arrow hit the target and many approached or hit the bullseye. Beca had almost mastered her archery skills last year and had started having Emily call colors of the target for her to hit. Making a game of the sport was much more entertaining.

Once the girls in their unit saw how good Beca was, they began calling for a competition between her and Pitch, the most talented staff archer. The blonde counselor rolled her eyes and resisted until her fellow archery staff began the taunts as well.

Finally Pitch relented and the other counselors pinned a tic-tac-toe target on top of the hay bales. She was grouchy about having to compete against the camper who was the bane of her camp existence and insisted on using the red arrows, leaving blue ones for Beca. "I go first." The range master, Tigger, called the range hot, and Pitch strung up her first arrow, pulled back and fired. The arrow thwacked into the center square.

"Beginner's play," Beca scoffed. She notched her first arrow and let it fly into one of the corners. The two archers continued until Tigger called a scratch, otherwise known as a draw. "My turn to go first." She played tic-tac-toe a lot at school, and unless her opponent knew her strategy, she always won.

When the camper's first arrow hit a corner square, Pitch pumped her fist and gave Tigger a high-five. Her red arrow flew into the center square since center blocks any thing from the corner. Right? Beca aimed her second arrow into the corner diagonal from her first. "Since I blocked you, you are just goofing off, huh Mitchell." Pitch chose one of the other corners.

Beca just chuckled and selected the last corner for her blue arrow. Pitch tilted her head sideways as she looked at the target, frowning. Emily saw what her friend had done and began to cheer. "Ahhhhhhhhh snap." She grabbed Beca and swung her around. "There's no beating that. She can't block you. Anywhere she shoots, you have tic-tac-toe. Boo ya." The younger camper was ecstatic for her friend.

Pitch didn't try to hide the disgust she felt of being beat by Beca. The camper approached her, hand out in a congratulatory manner. The counselor rolled her eyes, did a quick handshake before helping her fellow counselors put up the equipment.


Stacie and Chloe continued to have leadership classes, but they had identified camp skills at which they were particularly interested or talented in and would pair with older counselors to work with campers in these areas. Stacie excelled in swimming and water activities while Chloe was going to work with nature and arts and crafts.

The last step was for them to choose camp names. To the campers, they would no longer be known as Chloe and Stacie. This was an exciting moment because they were officially moving further away from being campers to counselors. They went into the crafts room and made leather name tags with their new identities. The next time they stepped in front of the campers, they would adopt their new personas.


After lunch when Echota returned to their unit, Emily excited recanted their morning, complete with how Beca smashed Pitch in the tic-tac-toe competition. "I bet she was pissed," Stacie chuckled.

Chloe didn't speak as she grabbed a book and headed out to another cabin. "Where's she headed?" Beca knew that Turtle Time was sacred and not negotiable.

"Well, CIT's have more flexibility. We can choose where to spend the down time, and I think Chloe is going to the other CIT cabin."

"She hates me," Beca said without much care of conviction.

Stacie didn't disagree but changed the subject. "Oh, Chlo and I changed our names this morning." She grinned at her cabinmates.

"Oh my stars. You got your camp names this morning." Emily sat up on her cot. "Well…"

Stacie held up her name tag and pointed to herself. "Meet 'Mama Long Legs'."

"You didn't!" Beca was laughing at her friend.

"Legs for short. I was surprised it was approved. But from here on out, you gotta call me Legs."

"Do I have to keep a straight face when I do it?"


During their swim test, Emily and Beca had both graduated to blue bands thus did not have to take swim lessons. They headed to the lake for free swim for the first hour of the afternoon. They also had water activities scheduled for that day as well. Imagine their surprise when Stacie walked up to introduce the afternoon activity.

"Hi girls. My name is Mama Long Legs, but you can call me Legs. Today we are going to try a new thing here on Lake Barden – stand-up paddle boarding. Now I know you are all blue bands, but because this is a new activity, everyone is going to wear a life jacket." As the girls picked up their vests, Legs handed each girl a whistle to hang around her neck. "In case you need help. Plus, if you ever SUP away from camp, you have to have a warning signal for other boats."

Despite Legs being so tall, she was surprisingly agile. She demonstrated proper standing up techniques, staying balanced, and paddling. She also showed what to do if someone should fall off and how to get back on the board. "SUP strokes are the same as what you learned for canoeing – there's the forward stroke." She took a few strokes forward. "The back stroke." She stroked backwards in the water. "And the sweeping stroke for turning." She completed a 360-turn.

Each girl got about thirty-minutes of board time which was more than enough in the afternoon heat which was capable of just sucking the energy right out of the campers. The others sat under the shade of one of the camp's old sprawling oak trees. They were excited that they were the first to use the SUP boards, and the counselor in charge of teaching them was a CIT from their own unit.


"Stacie, I know you have some clear fingernail polish hidden over there." Beca tried to keep the excitement out of her voice so that Stacie wouldn't get suspicious but of course she did. "Come on," she whined. When her new friend cocked up one eyebrow, Beca pulled her hair to one side and tucked it behind an ear. "If I tell you, that makes you an accomplice."

The CIT grinned. "And what if I want to be an accomplice…?" She stared at Beca hard. "Is it for Chloe or Pitch?"

"What if I said both?" Beca had a devilish look on her face.

"I shouldn't help, but I want to!" Stacie was laughing. The girls discussed how Beca was not allowed in the counselor hut where Pitch kept her shower supplies, so Stacie would take care of her if Beca would handle Chloe.

"So just coat the bar of soap completely with the clear polish. Every bit. Or it won't work. Keeps the soap from lathering. I read on the internet that it's frustrating as hell." Beca demonstrated as she coated Chloe's soap bar then gingerly put it back in her caddy to dry.

Stacie laughed as she high-fived Beca. "Just a harmless practical joke, right?"

"Right. Not bullying."

CIT's were allowed to take morning showers, so Beca got one last good night of sleep before finding how Chloe would react to her prank. The redhead always got up early, and Beca listened carefully to be sure she'd be ready for her return.

She must have dozed off again because the next thing Beca knew, she was jolted awake as her head and half her body was drenched with cold water. She quickly sat up and saw Chloe standing a few feet away with a now empty bucket. Chloe didn't say anything, just threw her sabotaged bar of soap at Beca and went out to help some younger cabins get ready for breakfast.

When Beca looked over at her camp buddy, Emily had her fist shoved in her mouth to muffle the laughing. When she had herself under control, she said, "Well you can't say you didn't deserve that Beca."


Imagine Beca's surprise when she and Emily showed up to Vitamin N class that morning to find the lead counselor was none other than Chloe. Emily stuck her sharp elbow into her friend's ribs to stop the audible groan which had escaped.

"Hi girls. I'm Redbird." Beca's eyes widened as she turned to her fellow camper and mouthed Redbird?. "Welcome to Vitamin N Squared, your advanced nature class." Her sweet chipperness almost gave Beca a cavity. "I know you've had some exposure to plants and trees. Today we are going to talk about berries."

The redhead went on to explain the edible nature of certain berries. "And Camp Barden even has patches of wild blackberries." Redbird had the group spread out and collect small pails of blackberries and elderberries. She also had them to pick Black-Eyed Susan flowers but wouldn't tell them why.

Beca did an excellent job of avoiding the CIT and keeping her mouth shut when she had so many retorts waiting to spill out during class. She and Emily simply listened to the CIT and obeyed the directions of Redbird. Despite Beca's personal issues with the CIT, she had decided to respect Chloe in front of the other campers.


A bolt of jagged light struck right across the lake along with an instantaneous crash of thunder, rattling the frame of the Echota cabin. Beca stretched her legs out beneath her sheet, poking a foot from under her sheet. She rolled over to get a better look at the storm. The screened-in windows provided an excellent view of the electrical storm. The lightening periodically lit up the night sky like daylight and thunder shook the cabin floor like an eighteen-wheel truck passing a Prius in a windstorm.

Beca always loved summer storms. The reverberation of the thunder was reminiscent of the beats she mixed when she was home. This electrical storm was her favorite type because it was not accompanied by annoying rain which makes for a messy following day as the campers had to tromp through the mud and muck.

This storm was lasting a particularly long time which was fine with Beca, the longer, the better. Perfect sleeping weather. The tiny camper turned back over and snuggled down to fall back to sleep. As she closed her eyes to sleep, she heard a whimper coming from within the cabin. Beca sat up listening to determine if someone was having a nightmare.

Beca crawled out of bed and padded around the cabin until she found the source of the whimpering. A fellow camper was curled up beneath a sheet and thin blanket. With each crash of thunder, the lump shook and gave a small cry. Beca looked around at the belongings and realized that the terrified camper was Chloe. As much as she and the redhead did not get along, Beca couldn't let her nemesis lay here alone when she was obviously terrified.

The jokester squatted down, put her arm around Chloe and squeezed. "Chloe… are you okay? It's Beca." The redhead scooted as close to the edge of her cot and to Beca as she could get. Each time the thunder would crash, she let out another whimper. Beca wasn't quite sure what to do so she sat cross-legged on the cabin floor, slid her arm around the redhead, and pressed her forehead against Chloe's which was still buried under the covers, whispering comforting words to the older CIT.

Before Beca knew it, dawn was breaking across the sky. Her butt was sore from sitting on the floor for so long. When the electrical storm had stopped, Chloe had emerged from her cocoon of covers and had latched onto Beca's arm with a death grip. Her mop of curly red hair seemed to stick out every which way. Beca eased herself out of Chloe's clutch and tiptoed back over to her own cot to try to get a bit more sleep before morning wake-up call.


At wake-up Beca struggled to open her eyes. Emily came over and crouched down beside her cot. "You okay? Looks like that storm kept you up last night. How much sleep did you get?"

Beca did not want to say anything about spending most of the night comforting Chloe. She wasn't sure how the redhead would react the next morning now that the perceived danger was over. "Mmm I'm okay Ems. Thanks." The tiny camper pulled herself out of her cot and quickly readied for the day. She felt guilty for not being honest with her best friend, but she didn't see a reason to embarrass Chloe.


Chloe avoided Beca during breakfast which was confusing. Hadn't the brunette camper helped her through her stressful night? The longer Beca thought about it, the more frustrated she got. She knew that she and Chloe had never really gotten along, but she'd hoped that the night before would have melted some of the ice between them. Then again, what did she expect when Beca had always treated Chloe poorly. Did she really think that one night would make up for that?

When the unit went to crafts and learned that Redbird was also teaching that class, Beca groaned out of instinct. However, this time, she did not share her misgivings with Emily. The CIT explained that the group would be recycling scrap paper to make their own paper. "I know it seems silly to use paper to make paper, but it's a good way to cut down on waste in the landfills." Chloe's voice was chipper and displayed no outward sign of the trauma she'd experienced the night before.

The tables had some wooden frames with screens as bottoms, tubs, and lots of scrap paper. The campers were instructed to tear scrap pieces of paper into small pieces, maybe one-inch square, or so. These were then put into hot water to soak. Redbird set these aside explaining that she had some that already been soaking a while and theirs would be used for another group.

Following the directions given, Beca put more water and some of the paper into a blender and blended the mixture into a slurry which was poured into a tub. She and Emily took turns dipping their wooden frames into the tub to fill them with fibers. They drained the water and used their hands to press even more water out of the paper.

Emily carefully flipped her frame upside down onto a towel and lifted the frame, leaving the paper. She covered this with another towel and used a bottle to roll along the top to squeeze out yet more water and to align the fibers. Beca asked Emily to get her paper out of her frame, too, because she was afraid of messing it up. Finally, the girls labeled their towels so they could come back the next day and claim their dried paper.

"That was pretty neat. Redbird is a super good teacher." Emily had been increasingly impressed with their cabin mate as Chloe taught them more things. Beca mumbled something under her breath as they finished cleaning up their area and got ready to go to lunch.

As the campers were leaving, Redbird called after them. "Beca could you stay back a minute? Help me with some supplies?" Beca rolled her eyes and told Emily she'd be along shortly and went back into the crafts room. Chloe shut the door behind her cabin mate.

"Is this where you dip me in a vat of acid where nobody can even find my bones?" Beca didn't mean for her sarcasm to come out with such a bite; it was just who she was.

"No. I didn't mean to ignore you this morning; I guess I was embarrassed. But I wanted to thank you."

"For?" Beca was leaning against the door jamb with her arms crossed.

"For… helping me last night. Storms, well, storms terrify me. They always have. I thought I had grown out of it, but I guess not. Thank you Beca. I know you don't like me much, and you could have easily ignored me and gone back to sleep.

Beca shoved har hands into her pockets. "Naw. You were keeping me awake. Seriously Chloe. No big deal."

"It's a big deal for me." Chloe shot forward, wrapped her arms around Beca, and gave her a tremendous hug.

Beca fought all her instincts to not fight against Chloe's affection. "S'ok Chloe. You can let go now."