Author's Note: Aye! I swear I hate writer's block! But I ACTUALLY wrote a
new chapter for once. Hooray!! And it's all thanks to YOU. Yes, YOU who
read this story. So I've decided to do some shout outs this time, so here
goes, kids!
Cake Eater - I miss you, dawg! Bug, you like, are my inspiration for life, haha. Thanks, as always, for the awesome review. Yeah, it's nice to have our whole little crew (you, me, kp, fifi) together again... and Frances of course! Reading your review makes me realize how utterly incomprehensible our vocabulary is, which reminded me how much I love you! Come back to us again sometime or there will be REAL make squabbin' up in heah!
Rain - Yeah, the thought chapter was kind of just to get me back into writing. (Great job that did considering it took me another month to write this chapter... d'oh!) But I got here eventually. Thanks always for the encouragement, babe!
Drowchild - Thanks, as always, for the awesome reviews that keep me writing! I'm glad you enjoy the story even if I'm too lazy to EVER update it (besides right now! Hooray!). Yeah, the boys were just being jerks about them stalking, and using ice cream, and barber shop quartets. So what if it doesn't really make sense? Neither does most of this story right, so we can all pretend =)
Dollar Bill - haha, nice work with those quotes there dear. You got it all in eventually =) Thanks for always being my support, and for remaining sane in this crazy universe of high school. I'm glad you enjoyed my interpretation of your mind, haha, I'm always worried people are going to be like, "hey! I'm not like that!" I love you always! You're the best for reading my crap!
Kryscrossed - Har har har! Thanks for such a hot review dude! How dull would the world be without randomness? Or Bob Dole for that matter? And we all know the world would collapse in on itself were it not for the Newsies... well, I know it at least! Yeah, so tell your... uh, clone twin I saw howdy... ;-P
Lillia E - You have no idea how happy your review made me! Yeah, it's pretty disturbing when you know what's REALLY going on behind the food you eat, particularly the meats and such. Ick! Those poor animals! Are you vegetarian trying to convert to vegan? Cause if not it's sometimes helpful to be first, and then go vegan. It's less of a leap or something. *cough* anyway, not meaning to rant here, but totally keep educating people! You rock! And yes, Laney most def has more opinions to come, hehe, I'll work them in there some how...
OK, so onto the story!!
~
Emma provided a new spark of energy that the camp had been lacking the past few days. Not only was she an exuberant digger, but she even had enough energy to SING while she dug - pulling songs from everywhere. Sweet melodies such as Ave Verum Corpus from their former chorus class (which brought back fond memories for the girls of a crazy woman with flipping hair throwing chalk and jumping around on coffee highs. They all smiled.) Song from musicals - plays they had done at school (Fiddler on the Roof, Hello Dolly, and, Bug forbid, Bye Bye Birdie) as well as Broadway hits (RENT, JCS, Newsies). Whenever anyone knew a song, they'd join in with her. Whenever they didn't they'd listen along pleasantly to her gorgeous soprano. All in all, it made the morning fly by, and took the campers until their afternoon break to even remember that they were supposed to be mad at one another.
And then memory struck like a hammer. As they walked up to the truck together the cheerful humming that they had all been entertaining in the back of their throats subsided, and KP, The Hotness, Sketch, and Frances huddled together at the back of the line, glowering at the boys who sneered back.
Only Fifi continued to have a bounce in her step (which was quite impressive considering it was her first day of hole digging!) as she lined up with her friends. Soon enough, though, she noticed the mood change in the air and quieted herself down to look curiously at her friends, then the boys, then back to her friends again. They all sulked angrily back to their half finished holes.
Now, Fifi, a naturally cheerful and wonderfully friendly person, was none too happy with the state of things and felt it hear duty to set them right.
She walked into the center of the digging area and proclaimed loudly enough for everyone to hear, "Hey guys! Know what we need?!"
All of a sudden, from about a hundred yards away where the A-Tent boys were digging, Mush jumped out of his hole, throwing his shovel to the ground. His gorgeous calves were glinting in the sunlight below the rolled up legs of his jumpsuit.
He yelled loudly enough for the sound to carry all the way over to where D and G tent were settled, "WE NEED A GOOD ASS-ASS-I-NA-TION!" while completing a perfectly executed pelvic thrust directly on the "na."
"Why does he always *do* that?" Stanly wondered, quite ignored.
"That's worth a good dollar!" KP pointed out.
"We need an earthquake or a war," Q continued.
"How 'bout a crooked politician?" Laney offered.
At that Q, KP, and Emma picked up clods of dirt and chucked them at her, yelling, "Dude, you're never going to get laid!"
And that seemed to end it, so the girls, minus Emma, went back to their respective holes. But KP was done, and she slipped in slyly under her breath, "Unless it's by a whore." Laney shot a bright smile in her direction.
Fifi shook her head to clear it, "No, no. Wait I *meant* to say was that we need..." she hesitated, looking towards A-Tent, but Mush had long since disappeared back into his hole, "... it to, um, dance!"
She hadn't really known what she'd been planning on saying, but once the word dance popped out she realized how silly it sounded. Yet she was resourceful, so she decided to just wing it from there.
"...dance?" Caveman questioned.
"Yeah! You know, liven things up a bit!" Emma cheerfully walked over to Caveman's hole and offered her hand to him - an invitation to dance.
Now, before Stanley had come to Camp Green Lake he had never had many friends. This made him desperate ever since he arrived there to prove himself and fit in. To be one of the guys. That meant taking the guy's side no matter what, even in this battle with G-Tent.
And yet, the other things Stanley had never had was much luck with girls... or any luck for that matter. He had never had a girlfriend, and any interaction with the opposite sex had always ended in stuttering, humiliating disaster. And now here was a girl reaching her hand out to *him*, of any of the D-Tent boys she could have picked. It was too much, so though the strings of loyalty tugged at him, he reached up and took her hand, using it to help himself out of his hole.
Multiple people gasped. A few sighed. Many breathed in deeply, no realizing that they had been holding their breaths. All truth be told, Emma was probably the most shocked and relieved of anyone. The awkwardness of standing there, sticking out her hand, waiting for Caveman as he struggled with his internal conflict has begun to make her nervous.
As soon as he took her hand, though, she snapped out of it. She instantly began thinking back to the last dance she had attended (a drag ball!) and concentrated on picking a song to sing. She contented herself with the decision of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."
As she broke into song, she started to spin around Caveman, dancing and grooving to her own beats. Caveman, as much as he tried to prevent it, turned a bright new shade of red.
He had been thinking so hard about the fact that a *girl* was holding her hand out to him, he had completely forgotten that accepting would mean he'd have to *dance*! He didn't want to let Fifi down though, so he tried his best, which was an awkward bobbing from side to side, with the occasional swing of an arm and nod of the head.
Everyone else just looked on, speechless. What the hell were they doing?! Then again... it did kind of look like fun... but no! They all forced themselves to look away - some feigning thirst and grabbing for their canteens to provide a distraction, other reaching for their shovels and trying to continue with their day's work.
Emma was a bid discouraged, so she slowly let the song fade out as she stopped her dancing. She turned to Stanley, "Well, thanks for the dance..." she trailed off, raising her voice in question.
"Caveman," he complied, happy to tell her his name.
"Caveman," she repeated (using a nice tip from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: repeat a name when it's told to you to better remember it), "Guess we better finish those holes," she smiled and walked away, Caveman's eyes watching her, his face full of embarrassment and elation, his mind screaming, "Woah! A girl!"
Emma sighed as she returned to work. So she hadn't solved the problem, but at least she had tried. She even made a small dent, breaking the ice with that one boy, Caveman. And hey, if nothing else, she decided, she had planted a seed in their minds; given them something to thing about.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Magnet ran to catch up to Laney as she headed towards the Wreck room, grabbing her arm and spinning her to face him.
"Hey," he stammered.
She eyed him curiously, that stated as coldly as she could muster, "Hey."
"I'm sorry for the way," he started, stumbling his words over each other.
"Forget it," Laney averted her eyes and began to turn away, be he grabbed her arm and pulled her back again.
"Aye, you're difficult," he muttered.
She let out a loud, "HA," though it lacked much humor, "This from the boy who's refused to make eye contact with me for the past week!"
"Well... that's what I'm trying to apologize for! Geez!" he tried hard to stay calm.
"You're not doing a very good job of it. What would the guys think if they knew you were here talking to me, huh?" she spoke maliciously.
"I don't care what the guys think," he told her.
"Really?" she asked, with more than just a hint of sarcasm.
"Really!" he tried to convince her.
But Laney would have none of it, "Yeah, just like you didn't care what they thought for the past few days, right?"
"I *said* I didn't!" he was getting exasperated.
"Yeah, but that's not what I've been seeing... and actions speak louder than words, Buddy!"
Now he was more than just slightly ticked. He was trying to apologize after all! For some reason, her calling him Buddy was the last straw.
"Actions, eh?" he steamed.
"Look at that, the boy is listening!" Laney sneered, mockingly, "Let's give him a round of - " but she never finished for Magnet had leaned forward (and down of course, considering The Hotness's vertical challenge) and caught her mouth, mid-sentence, in an angry kiss.
"What does *that* say then?" he asked while pulling away, his voice getting softer and more timid the more he spoke as his angry passion drained out of him and was replaced by nervous embarrassment.
Laney, too, had lost the anger and was stuck in a state of shock. Her first instinct was to run, but she knew better than that thanks to the experience of her friends... oh, let's call them Connie and Averman.
But before Laney had time to think of an appropriate response a catcall ("Ow! Ow!") followed by a long whistle was heard. Magnet and The Hotness turned quickly towards to Wreck Room just in time to see Armpit wink at them from the porch before ducking through the door.
The two felt the heat rising in their cheeks, but the embarrassment wasn't over yet. A crazily tall and lanky boy from A-Tent, who always wore a baseball cap, had been walking past, and he called out, "Better watch it, Hotness, Bush just passed the law banning certain kinds of abortion. Who knows where that will lead? Damn conservatives. Hey, I'm a liberal now!" He ended cheerfully before walking away.
Laney smiled briefly, "We've taught you well, Brock!" before scowling at the government's advance to trample on a woman's rights. Laney, so impassioned by political thoughts, forgot to be embarrassed. Magnet on the other hand was now a shade of red even brighter than his sunburn.
After a moment, The Hotness cooled the political fire that was raging in her mind, and decided to finally end the awkwardness. She turned back to Magnet and a smile slowly appeared on her face, "I missed you, kid!" she punched him on the arm.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he grabbed her in a hug around the neck and ruffled her dusty hair.
They walked into the Wreck Room like that, together, to the surprise of the girls and boys of G and D Tents - all except Armpit that is.
Twitch looked up from his spot on the floor where he had been trying to convince Zigzag of the broken state of the TV, to no avail, "Wait, wait!" he cried, "Do we not hate each other any more?"
~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHORS NOTE: Ok! There you go! Chapter 10 is over and done with. Finally! Thanks for reading, as always... much love!
Cake Eater - I miss you, dawg! Bug, you like, are my inspiration for life, haha. Thanks, as always, for the awesome review. Yeah, it's nice to have our whole little crew (you, me, kp, fifi) together again... and Frances of course! Reading your review makes me realize how utterly incomprehensible our vocabulary is, which reminded me how much I love you! Come back to us again sometime or there will be REAL make squabbin' up in heah!
Rain - Yeah, the thought chapter was kind of just to get me back into writing. (Great job that did considering it took me another month to write this chapter... d'oh!) But I got here eventually. Thanks always for the encouragement, babe!
Drowchild - Thanks, as always, for the awesome reviews that keep me writing! I'm glad you enjoy the story even if I'm too lazy to EVER update it (besides right now! Hooray!). Yeah, the boys were just being jerks about them stalking, and using ice cream, and barber shop quartets. So what if it doesn't really make sense? Neither does most of this story right, so we can all pretend =)
Dollar Bill - haha, nice work with those quotes there dear. You got it all in eventually =) Thanks for always being my support, and for remaining sane in this crazy universe of high school. I'm glad you enjoyed my interpretation of your mind, haha, I'm always worried people are going to be like, "hey! I'm not like that!" I love you always! You're the best for reading my crap!
Kryscrossed - Har har har! Thanks for such a hot review dude! How dull would the world be without randomness? Or Bob Dole for that matter? And we all know the world would collapse in on itself were it not for the Newsies... well, I know it at least! Yeah, so tell your... uh, clone twin I saw howdy... ;-P
Lillia E - You have no idea how happy your review made me! Yeah, it's pretty disturbing when you know what's REALLY going on behind the food you eat, particularly the meats and such. Ick! Those poor animals! Are you vegetarian trying to convert to vegan? Cause if not it's sometimes helpful to be first, and then go vegan. It's less of a leap or something. *cough* anyway, not meaning to rant here, but totally keep educating people! You rock! And yes, Laney most def has more opinions to come, hehe, I'll work them in there some how...
OK, so onto the story!!
~
Emma provided a new spark of energy that the camp had been lacking the past few days. Not only was she an exuberant digger, but she even had enough energy to SING while she dug - pulling songs from everywhere. Sweet melodies such as Ave Verum Corpus from their former chorus class (which brought back fond memories for the girls of a crazy woman with flipping hair throwing chalk and jumping around on coffee highs. They all smiled.) Song from musicals - plays they had done at school (Fiddler on the Roof, Hello Dolly, and, Bug forbid, Bye Bye Birdie) as well as Broadway hits (RENT, JCS, Newsies). Whenever anyone knew a song, they'd join in with her. Whenever they didn't they'd listen along pleasantly to her gorgeous soprano. All in all, it made the morning fly by, and took the campers until their afternoon break to even remember that they were supposed to be mad at one another.
And then memory struck like a hammer. As they walked up to the truck together the cheerful humming that they had all been entertaining in the back of their throats subsided, and KP, The Hotness, Sketch, and Frances huddled together at the back of the line, glowering at the boys who sneered back.
Only Fifi continued to have a bounce in her step (which was quite impressive considering it was her first day of hole digging!) as she lined up with her friends. Soon enough, though, she noticed the mood change in the air and quieted herself down to look curiously at her friends, then the boys, then back to her friends again. They all sulked angrily back to their half finished holes.
Now, Fifi, a naturally cheerful and wonderfully friendly person, was none too happy with the state of things and felt it hear duty to set them right.
She walked into the center of the digging area and proclaimed loudly enough for everyone to hear, "Hey guys! Know what we need?!"
All of a sudden, from about a hundred yards away where the A-Tent boys were digging, Mush jumped out of his hole, throwing his shovel to the ground. His gorgeous calves were glinting in the sunlight below the rolled up legs of his jumpsuit.
He yelled loudly enough for the sound to carry all the way over to where D and G tent were settled, "WE NEED A GOOD ASS-ASS-I-NA-TION!" while completing a perfectly executed pelvic thrust directly on the "na."
"Why does he always *do* that?" Stanly wondered, quite ignored.
"That's worth a good dollar!" KP pointed out.
"We need an earthquake or a war," Q continued.
"How 'bout a crooked politician?" Laney offered.
At that Q, KP, and Emma picked up clods of dirt and chucked them at her, yelling, "Dude, you're never going to get laid!"
And that seemed to end it, so the girls, minus Emma, went back to their respective holes. But KP was done, and she slipped in slyly under her breath, "Unless it's by a whore." Laney shot a bright smile in her direction.
Fifi shook her head to clear it, "No, no. Wait I *meant* to say was that we need..." she hesitated, looking towards A-Tent, but Mush had long since disappeared back into his hole, "... it to, um, dance!"
She hadn't really known what she'd been planning on saying, but once the word dance popped out she realized how silly it sounded. Yet she was resourceful, so she decided to just wing it from there.
"...dance?" Caveman questioned.
"Yeah! You know, liven things up a bit!" Emma cheerfully walked over to Caveman's hole and offered her hand to him - an invitation to dance.
Now, before Stanley had come to Camp Green Lake he had never had many friends. This made him desperate ever since he arrived there to prove himself and fit in. To be one of the guys. That meant taking the guy's side no matter what, even in this battle with G-Tent.
And yet, the other things Stanley had never had was much luck with girls... or any luck for that matter. He had never had a girlfriend, and any interaction with the opposite sex had always ended in stuttering, humiliating disaster. And now here was a girl reaching her hand out to *him*, of any of the D-Tent boys she could have picked. It was too much, so though the strings of loyalty tugged at him, he reached up and took her hand, using it to help himself out of his hole.
Multiple people gasped. A few sighed. Many breathed in deeply, no realizing that they had been holding their breaths. All truth be told, Emma was probably the most shocked and relieved of anyone. The awkwardness of standing there, sticking out her hand, waiting for Caveman as he struggled with his internal conflict has begun to make her nervous.
As soon as he took her hand, though, she snapped out of it. She instantly began thinking back to the last dance she had attended (a drag ball!) and concentrated on picking a song to sing. She contented herself with the decision of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."
As she broke into song, she started to spin around Caveman, dancing and grooving to her own beats. Caveman, as much as he tried to prevent it, turned a bright new shade of red.
He had been thinking so hard about the fact that a *girl* was holding her hand out to him, he had completely forgotten that accepting would mean he'd have to *dance*! He didn't want to let Fifi down though, so he tried his best, which was an awkward bobbing from side to side, with the occasional swing of an arm and nod of the head.
Everyone else just looked on, speechless. What the hell were they doing?! Then again... it did kind of look like fun... but no! They all forced themselves to look away - some feigning thirst and grabbing for their canteens to provide a distraction, other reaching for their shovels and trying to continue with their day's work.
Emma was a bid discouraged, so she slowly let the song fade out as she stopped her dancing. She turned to Stanley, "Well, thanks for the dance..." she trailed off, raising her voice in question.
"Caveman," he complied, happy to tell her his name.
"Caveman," she repeated (using a nice tip from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: repeat a name when it's told to you to better remember it), "Guess we better finish those holes," she smiled and walked away, Caveman's eyes watching her, his face full of embarrassment and elation, his mind screaming, "Woah! A girl!"
Emma sighed as she returned to work. So she hadn't solved the problem, but at least she had tried. She even made a small dent, breaking the ice with that one boy, Caveman. And hey, if nothing else, she decided, she had planted a seed in their minds; given them something to thing about.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Magnet ran to catch up to Laney as she headed towards the Wreck room, grabbing her arm and spinning her to face him.
"Hey," he stammered.
She eyed him curiously, that stated as coldly as she could muster, "Hey."
"I'm sorry for the way," he started, stumbling his words over each other.
"Forget it," Laney averted her eyes and began to turn away, be he grabbed her arm and pulled her back again.
"Aye, you're difficult," he muttered.
She let out a loud, "HA," though it lacked much humor, "This from the boy who's refused to make eye contact with me for the past week!"
"Well... that's what I'm trying to apologize for! Geez!" he tried hard to stay calm.
"You're not doing a very good job of it. What would the guys think if they knew you were here talking to me, huh?" she spoke maliciously.
"I don't care what the guys think," he told her.
"Really?" she asked, with more than just a hint of sarcasm.
"Really!" he tried to convince her.
But Laney would have none of it, "Yeah, just like you didn't care what they thought for the past few days, right?"
"I *said* I didn't!" he was getting exasperated.
"Yeah, but that's not what I've been seeing... and actions speak louder than words, Buddy!"
Now he was more than just slightly ticked. He was trying to apologize after all! For some reason, her calling him Buddy was the last straw.
"Actions, eh?" he steamed.
"Look at that, the boy is listening!" Laney sneered, mockingly, "Let's give him a round of - " but she never finished for Magnet had leaned forward (and down of course, considering The Hotness's vertical challenge) and caught her mouth, mid-sentence, in an angry kiss.
"What does *that* say then?" he asked while pulling away, his voice getting softer and more timid the more he spoke as his angry passion drained out of him and was replaced by nervous embarrassment.
Laney, too, had lost the anger and was stuck in a state of shock. Her first instinct was to run, but she knew better than that thanks to the experience of her friends... oh, let's call them Connie and Averman.
But before Laney had time to think of an appropriate response a catcall ("Ow! Ow!") followed by a long whistle was heard. Magnet and The Hotness turned quickly towards to Wreck Room just in time to see Armpit wink at them from the porch before ducking through the door.
The two felt the heat rising in their cheeks, but the embarrassment wasn't over yet. A crazily tall and lanky boy from A-Tent, who always wore a baseball cap, had been walking past, and he called out, "Better watch it, Hotness, Bush just passed the law banning certain kinds of abortion. Who knows where that will lead? Damn conservatives. Hey, I'm a liberal now!" He ended cheerfully before walking away.
Laney smiled briefly, "We've taught you well, Brock!" before scowling at the government's advance to trample on a woman's rights. Laney, so impassioned by political thoughts, forgot to be embarrassed. Magnet on the other hand was now a shade of red even brighter than his sunburn.
After a moment, The Hotness cooled the political fire that was raging in her mind, and decided to finally end the awkwardness. She turned back to Magnet and a smile slowly appeared on her face, "I missed you, kid!" she punched him on the arm.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he grabbed her in a hug around the neck and ruffled her dusty hair.
They walked into the Wreck Room like that, together, to the surprise of the girls and boys of G and D Tents - all except Armpit that is.
Twitch looked up from his spot on the floor where he had been trying to convince Zigzag of the broken state of the TV, to no avail, "Wait, wait!" he cried, "Do we not hate each other any more?"
~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHORS NOTE: Ok! There you go! Chapter 10 is over and done with. Finally! Thanks for reading, as always... much love!