"Don't worry Bunny," Mina said soothingly to the teary-eyed, baby-faced blonde before her. "Leets will be here any minute with that lotion for you, and I've got plenty of cotton balls from my makeup bag. We'll fix you up right. I promise you, the rash won't even show by Friday's dance…which reminds me. I've got to talk to Keegan before then and ask him to go with me..."
Mina paused and her eyes went vacant, causing her to look, for the moment, like every possible stereotype of the gorgeous but dizzy blonde, though everyone knew she was far from it. Dizzy, that was. Because Mina, with her warm tan, honey toned hair and azure eyes, was truly, naturally stunning. Though she knew it, she never rubbed it in, and her sweet nature and bubbly sense of humor had made her a favorite with most of the girls in camp. She was also gleefully conniving, intent on hooking up with the intense, grey eyed older boy who'd caught her interest. Bunny almost felt sorry for Keegan, he was so doomed.
Abruptly Mina resumed the thread of her conversation as if she'd never left it. "But what I don't understand is how you got into the poison ivy in the first place. There's only one single patch of the stuff in the whole camp and it's even roped off."
"Because she's an idiot and a klutz, that's how," interjected an acidic voice. "She's the only person I know who could fall over her own hair."
"I just tripped," whined a blotchy, miserable Bunny, holding her arms out at her sides so as not to spread around the itchy ailment to her fellow tent-mates. "Darien called me over to ask if I was doing any better with my canoeing, and when I ran over to tell him how I'd managed to get in without tipping it even once yesterday, I tripped over my shoelace, which had come untied, and fell headlong into the stuff."
"Oh…"
"I got the calamine lotion from the nurse," called a pony-tailed brunette who bounced through the flaps into the tent, a decidedly energetic spring in her step. "Do you need some help applying that, Bunny?"
"Thanks Lita," sniffled the patient pitifully. "But I think I can handle it."
"Ooooh…it's the resident charity case tomboy. You must have to do all the nursing AND errand running to pay for your keep. Probably do windows too. Good preparation for your future as a domestic servant. Tell me, has that cute Nate gotten sick of you drooling all over him yet?" The speaker tucked a strand of carroty red hair behind her ear and mimed a gag reflex.
"Shut up Beryl!" Mina growled as she watched the tall, chestnut-haired girl slouch in on herself in embarrassment.
Bunny's tears dried up as she turned and winked at Lita, who had blushed to the roots of her hair when the viperous redhead's words struck home. "Don't mind her, Leets. She's just jealous because she overheard Nate ask you to meet him at the camp dance, but when she tried to ask Dare the same thing, he told her he couldn't because he'd already asked me." She began humming a slightly off key rendition of 'Kiss the Girl.'
Beryl glared at the silver-toned blonde and muttered something under her breath, picking at her nails. She'd begun the Camp Luna Plata session with blood-red, dragon lady nails that Mina, the resident authority on all things beauty related, had whispered were far too long to be real. They were still hemoglobin red, repainted practically every night, but they now bore the marks of the rigors of camp. Two thirds had snapped off short, drawing a curse from the teen every time…and giggles from the others.
"And Nate is a cutie," added Bunny with another wink, accepting the pink bottle from Lita, who looked a little starry-eyed at the mention of the dark haired, dark-eyed object of her crush.
"Yeah…he looks just like what I always imagined for my boyfriend," she sighed dreamily, Beryl's nastiness forgotten.
"Almost as cute as Darey-beary," cooed Bunny, shooting a challenging look at Beryl and dabbing putty-pink lotion on her arms and face. Beryl made another gagging motion.
"Yeah," Mina muttered loyally. "Anyway, she forgets that her precious Darien, who hasn't noticed she's even alive," –she shot the girl a triumphant look– "is one of the sponsored orphans too. And it doesn't matter. In any case, we'd much rather have you here, Lita, than her. You're great and nice and you even kicked her ample backside at campfire cooking during the hike, even though you'd never been in the woods before. If it had been left to her alone, we'd have all died of ptomaine poisoning."
"I wish," came the acerbic retort. "They shouldn't let low class, Fresh-Air Fund trash bunk in with their betters."
Mina stuck her tongue out at Beryl. "Some betters. Miss Cash Cow, Trust Fund, I'm-Better-Than-Everybody-Else here is just proof that money can't buy class. Her parents orphan her here all summer…by choice. They probably send her here to see if the counselors can make something of her over the summer. Maybe through Arts and Crafts. Like instead of making lanyards, making a silk purse out of a sow's butt."
"Ear, you moron! Sow's ear! What's the matter with you? You must've been dropped on your head as a baby!" screeched the vitriolic redhead, shoving her way out of the tent. She practically knocked over the petite, towel-wrapped bluenette who was on her way in, but left without apologizing, merely muttering evilly as she departed about stupid geniuses who didn't know enough to look where they were going.
"And Beryl wonders why nobody likes her," Bunny said, deadpan.
"Whoops, sorry Ames," gasped Mina, holding her stomach and laughing out loud as she eyed the dazed looking, blue-eyed girl in the swimsuit. "We forgot to sound the dragon lady alert. Sorry you got caught in the crossfire. But at least the company in the tent has improved."
"It's okay," Ami said, blinking in confusion as she unwrapped her towel, revealing her modest ice-blue tankini still damp from the chill waters of the lake. "I suppose it's nothing more than usual."
"Just Beryl being Beryl," confirmed Lita with a scrunch of her nose and a toss of her ponytail. "Soooo….did you have any luck teaching Zane how to swim today?" she inquired eagerly, cocking her head to one side. "I saw you working pretty hard when I went to the nurse for Bunny."
The damp young woman dropped onto her bunk, toweling off her arms and running a hand through her closely cropped blue-black waves. "He almost drowned and I nearly had to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation." She groaned. "I don't know how anyone so otherwise athletic can have so much trouble with a simple dead-man's float."
"It's because he's faking it," whispered Mina to Lita, who nearly giggled, then quickly clapped a hand over her mouth before the sound could escape.
"Really," she whispered back through her fingers. Her eyes, the color of the ferns in the nearby woods, twinkled merrily.
"Yup," Mina whispered back, for Lita's ears only. "I saw him when I was following Keegan the other night. He and his friends in the Senior Boys tent had snuck out of bounds to go swimming. That Zane swims better than a fish. He's going to kiss her yet. Mark my words. The Love Goddess knows."
"What'd you say, Mina?" asked Ami, shaking her head and picking at her ear. "I think I've still got some water in my ears."
"Nothing," chorused Mina and Lita together, grinning wickedly and looking anything but innocent.
A shriek from the far side of the tent turned all heads. "Ooooooh…he is so dead!" vowed the exotic looking, raven-haired girl at the far end, holding up something black and plastic-wrapped by its…tail?
"Ewwww!"
"What IS that?"
"Is that a rat?! Gross!"
"Worse," sniffed the girl, the black creature dropping with a boneless plop onto her sleeping bag. She wiped her fingers as if it carried the Black Death plague.
Ami, still dripping, ambled over and peered at the rodent. "It's not even alive."
Bunny let out a shocked squeal, nearly dropping a calamine-sodden cotton ball down her camp shirt's open neck. "Somebody put a dead rat in Raye's bed?! Eeeeeeeuw! That's disgusting!"
"No," Ami said with a gentle smile, picking the thing up and jiggling it. "Somebody put a gummi rat in Raye's bed. Licorice flavor, by the looks of it. I guess it's not exactly a mint on the pillow, but…"
"Oooh…look! There's a note tied around its neck with a cute little yarn bow," gushed Mina, pointing. "Who is it from? You've got a boyfriend at camp, Raye and you didn't tell us?"
"It doesn't matter." Completely red-faced, Raye snatched the candy from Ami's hand. "And I don't have a boyfriend."
"Oh, but I think it does matter," pronounced Lita, sidling close and winking conspiratorially at Mina, who grinned broadly and winked back. "It matters a lot."
Without warning, Lita struck, whisking the gummi rat from Raye's grasp and hurling it like a football toward Mina, who caught it neatly and bolted from the tent. Raye's mulberry colored eyes shot wide open and she let out a shriek, racing after the speedy blonde, who was running hell bent for leather across the nearest playing field. Their erratic zigzag path interrupted a baseball game in progress, but the sight of the outrageous blonde beauty drew a begrudging grin and a shake of the head from a silver-haired young man on the pitcher's mound anyway.
"A sweet treat for my sweetheart," quoted Mina, laughing, somehow managing to read the tag as she ran and dodged to avoid the now out-for-blood girl. "Save a kiss for me after the dance, firefly!"
"Mina, so help me, I am going to KILL you!" screamed Raye at the top of her lungs, hot in pursuit. "I SWEAR IT!"
A madly giggling Bunny, no longer red and blotchy, but quite pink and blotchy from the calamine lotion, stuck her head out of the tent, calling loudly. "WHO'S IT FROM, MINA?! TELL US!!!"
The instant before Raye tackled her into the dust, Mina began singing at the top of her lungs. "RAYE AND JACOB, SITTING IN A TREE! K-I-S-S…Ack!"
"I-N-G!" chorused the three girls from the tent as they caught sight of a certain smugly smiling blond young man, whose crystal blue eyes were twinkling mischievously as he snapped a photo of the fiery girl. Her curvy backside was displayed to its best advantage in her brief cutoff shorts, as it presented itself to the camera while she tried to wrestle the candy rat from Mina's grasp.
"I knew giving her candy would do the trick," he said to himself with no little bit of satisfaction.
"What have you done now, Jacob?" groaned his ebony-haired companion, rolling sapphire blue eyes heavenward and praying for patience. Clearly he knew exactly where to lay the blame for any trouble within the camp's environs.
The camera's shutter clicked a few more times in rapid succession and Jacob smirked, wondering just how red he could make Raye blush if she should catch sight of herself in the pictures. They might look very well for the front page of the next edition of the camp newsletter…if he could slip them past Keegan's eagle eyes.
Of course he'd be keeping the negatives for himself.
"Just capturing a few choice summer camp memories for posterity, Dare. Just making memories."
(This is AU, obviously. But fun! Summer camp hijinks.)
