Author's Note: Please... no one go look for when I posted the first chapter. i'm already so embarrassed about how long it took me. BUT YO LOOK. CHAPTER TWO. and there will be a chapter three sooner than a year and a half. i prooooooomise.
Saturday came and went in a whirlwind, and Artemis wasn't entirely sure how. The morning was the misleading calm before the storm, but then when one o'clock hit, so did the winds. She was paired off with Conner for driving kids into camp. And by driving, the girl meant barge-driving, boat driving, traveling by water. The camp was set up so that the middle school groups that camped there would be barged out to the various campsites around the lake (and then back out the next Saturday in the morning). Artemis, having only just gotten her boating license a week before camp started and having no actual idea of how to drive a boat and having had no time to learn how to drive said boats and considering she could barely canoe to save her life, she was completely grateful to be partnered with someone with actual boating experience.
The afternoon was a lot of fun, though a lot of work as well. Conner was quiet, so while it was awkward the first boat rides back and forth, they fell into an excited conversation about motorcycles. While she had only ever been on one once, she could definitely keep up on her end of the conversation. From motorcycles, they moved to books and TV shows, what schools they were looking into, what they hoped the summer would be like. Conner let her drive the boat a few times, though he stayed very close to her in case of an immediate need to steer them away from any shores or rocks.
It took much longer than she thought it would. Artemis had no idea how much stuff was needed for a week of camping when there were twenty pre-teens and a couple teachers. How much food did pre-teens actually need to eat? Also, she had no idea why any adult would offer to take pre-teens camp.
Oh god, she was going to have to teach them to shoot a bow and arrow. Were Oliver and Bruce insane? Probably.
As it turned out, her first lesson went pretty well. She was confident enough when it came to actually saying the lesson; she had practiced on Megan and Karen way too late into the night. Sure, there was some stumbling over her words, but could you blame her? She worked alone with a bunch of kids who all wanted to be Katniss and Hawkeye (apparently Legolas was so passé).
"Okay, so welcome to Camp Luvenis. I'm Artemis and I'll be your instructor today. Now, for those of you who are returning, can you tell me what the first rule here at Luvenis is?"
She managed to get through the rules with a surprising amount of ease. Her confidence skyrocketed when she showed the kids that she could easily string a bow and just how amazing she really was at archery. She was sure that she was going to be one of those counsellors that broke campers hearts by existing. She was very proud of that fact.
The lessons that day went by fairly smooth. There was a troublemaker in each group, of course, but no one ever got injured and only two boys were banned from archery in the first ten minutes. It would have been the highlight of her week had they not cried a bit. Ugh, men.
Each day she had six lessons, each lasting an hour. There was an hour lunch break in the middle. It wasn't a bad set up, but by the end of her first day, Artemis flopped down at the dinner table and had to be bribed into eating she was that tired. Other lessons had different lengths, like sailing that had only two three-hour lessons a day with way more campers than Artemis would ever be able to handle. She was glad to have her hour long ones.
Wednesday came by and Artemis had her first actual break: free lessons all afternoon. No pre-teens, no worrying about the fact it was probably going to start raining any moment. No, Artemis was going to get to sit in the dining hall and just fix arrows. What more could a girl ask for?
She set up her arrow fixing station at the far end of the hall and smiled when Megan sat down across from her about an hour after lunch had ended.
"How goes the mending?" the ginger girl asked. She picked up a finished arrow and looked it over. "Need any help?"
"I'm fine," the blonde answered, "I've got a flow happening. There aren't that many broken arrows, though the fact some are broken is ridiculous. Kids, they're ridiculous. But I guess in their defense, there were a bunch still broken from last summer."
"I think they're kind of funny," Megan said, giggling.
"Oh definitely, it's hilarious when they almost stab each other," she muttered.
The two girls looked at each other and laughed. They fell into a comfortable silence and Artemis continued to mend the arrows in front of her. Rain started hitting the windows of the dining hall and they both glanced up.
"There's a sailing lesson happening right now, right?" Artemis asked as she watched the sky begin to darken even more over the lake.
"Yeah," Megan said. Getting up, the kitchen staff member walked over to the window. "And it is super windy out. Those poor kids are going to have an awful time coming back in."
"Will they end the lesson early?"
"Why do you ask, curious is a certain ginger will get off work soon?" the girl at the window threw over her shoulder.
"What, no!" the blonde exclaimed, looking back down that the arrows in front of her. "I was just wondering. Cause I'm new here. I don't know how things are handled. Remember?"
Megan smiled as she sat back down. "Of course," she said.
"Whatever."
"You know, you two would make a great couple. And I don't mean just a camp one. You two work well together," she said.
"Um, hate to burst your bubble, but Wally and I have only known each other for a week and I'm pretty sure we've spent half that time fighting with each other," Artemis said, pointing an arrow at the girl across from her. "I think you're mistaken on us being a match."
"I found your 'fighting' more like a verbal sparring match in which you two keep the other on their toes," Megan said, shrugging. "A perfect match. And besides, camp moves quickly. I've seen people get together the moment they arrive here."
"Okay, sure. Whatever you say, weirdo," the blonde said, shaking her head.
Artemis reached for the final arrow in front of her, trying to ignore the words from her friend. Okay, so maybe Wally and her did fight a lot, but it was really more like a verbal sparring match. And when they weren't sparring, they got along well. Like, really well. Maybe they did already start drifting towards each other when they were eating meals or just hanging out around the camp or when there were odd jobs to do. Maybe she had started enjoying the way he waited for her on the morning jobs when he got too far ahead of her.
Maybe. But she wasn't about to go and admit that one out loud. It's only been a week, she's not crazy.
When the blonde started cleaning up the supplies around her, the doors to the dining hall flew up and two very wet waterfront instructors came in.
"I swear to God, Logan, if you don't learn to drive a damn 9.9 soon, I'm going to throw you off the dock every day left in the summer," Wally shouted, shaking his arms to get the water off them.
Megan giggled and glanced at Artemis, who was keeping her head and eyes down on her work.
"Oh, right, because the entire lesson was my fault. It's my fault it rained," the younger lifeguard shouted back.
"Whatever, learn to drive the fucking boat already!" Wally yelled walking into the kitchen.
"Wally, get out of there now, you can't eat anything out!" Megan yelled, running after her friend.
Artemis rolled her eyes, and finished cleaning up her supplies. She gathered up the arrows and glanced outside again. She needed to run down to the storage room before dinner but she didn't really want to run out into the rain. She glanced at the large clock in the room and sighed. It was four and she really needed to get this down there.
She grabbed the arrows and her bag of mending supplies and made for the door.
"Wait up!" Wally called from behind her. He jogged up to her, smiling. "I can take that for you, if you want. I'm already wet."
"It's fine, I'm going to have to go outside anyway. I have to get to my cabin before dinner," the blonde replied, shrugging. She made her way out of the building and groaned immediately. The rain was cold.
"Come on, stubborn. The faster you finish the faster you get to change into your uniform for dinner," the boy next to her said, grinning.
"Great," she muttered.
They made their way to the storage room and quickly stored everything. They stood inside waiting to see if the rain would let up. After five minutes of shivering, they decided that it was going to be going strong for the foreseeable future.
"Race you to the cabins?" Wally suggested, raising an eyebrow at the blonde.
"Sure!" she answered and she ran out of the room. She heard the boy yell after but she only continued to run and smiled. She knew he would have to close up the room and if she could make it to the top of the stairs before him she had a good chance of maybe beating him. Artemis ran as fast as she dared over the slippery wood and then mud. She could hear the ginger calling at her now and it made her run faster. She ran down the road towards the cabins, ignore the slight incline in it.
It was when she slipped on the grass in front of all the cabin that she realized just how close Wally was behind her. Damn his speed.
"Careful," he laughed as he wrapped his arms around her fast to steady her. The result wasn't successful as he began to slip as well. Soon, both teens were sitting in the mud, laughing. "A draw?"
"Excuse you, but I clearly reached the cabin area first, I definitely won," the girl said, standing up. Artemis smirked when she looked at her jeans. "Looks like it's laundry night."
"Aw, come on," Wally groaned, standing up after her. He ran a hand through his hair before frowning at her. "Can't you wait till my day off?"
"I need my jeans, I only have two pairs!"
"You're just trying to torment me," he said, bumping her with his shoulder. She laughed and nodded as they began to walk to their respected cabins. "Fine, I'll come to your cabin after dinner to grab what you want washed, monster."
"Thank you so much, Wally. You're truly a life saver," Artemis called after him as she opening her cabin door. Artemis watched him disappear, a smile dancing across her face.
"Yeah, yeah," he answered with a wave of his hand and then disappearing into his own cabin.
(If anyone asked what she had been up to that night, she would have denied the fact she spent her time with Wally as he did their laundry and that she almost fell asleep when they were watching a movie together on his bed. She'd also deny how it was a very enjoyable night.)
The next was a full day of work for pretty much everyone at the camp, but it was the event after dinner that was getting them through it. As best they could, every week would have some sort of camp activity. Races of all sorts, water fights, capture the flag; the list went on. The event that night was the annual race. Artemis was definitely looking forward to it.
It was the one consistent event they had. As many of the junior staff members could enter except for one this year. Wally wasn't allowed to actually race because of the fact he was a star track member at his high school and had won each time the last three years. The yelling match between Roy and Wally during lunch was mostly definitely heard by the entire camp and the staff had to keep from laughing as the junior staff member stormed out of the hall, lunch half eaten. The rest of the staff was then allowed to sign up for the race if they wanted to. If they weren't running, they'd be helping out somehow.
The contestants were as following: Artemis, Mal, Logan, Cassie, Virgil, Kaldur, Babs, Karen, and Raquel. The returning staff were all shocked when Conner choose to not participate, as he was a close second last year. It turned out that he wanted to just help Megan with refreshments at the end of the race.
The afternoon went by quickly and all through dinner, Wally sulked next to Artemis. He picked at his would, grumbling about how Roy changed since his promotion. Dick sat across the table, laughing openly at him friend. It wasn't until the end of the meal that he said Wally was allowed to run, just not compete. The ginger perked up at the worlds and went about finishing his food.
They were given an hour to change and get ready. They were to meet outside of the dining hall and then run halfway to the main end of the camp (the guest camping sites were located here, for when family of the staff wanted to visit for a few days).
Artemis did a quick warm up around the cabin area before heading down to the start of the race. Almost everyone was down at the starting line, though Wally was one of the staff members missing. The blonde paid no mind to it and she went to stand with Karen and Mal. The three of them chatted and playfully told each other how they were going down.
"Okay everyone, can the racers line up?" Roy called. The nine competing lined up in front of the program supervisor and got into starting positions. "Now, Jaime will be at the end up the race and he'll have a stop watch to keep track of the top three times. No purposely trying to trip each other. No running off of the road for short cuts," the ginger shot a glare at Dick who was standing behind him, "but if you see Wally, feel free to push him off the road. We'll turn a blind eye to that."
Everyone chuckled and waited for Wally to respond. The boy still hadn't arrived.
"Okay, if there aren't any questions, let's get started," he said. "On your marks, get set... GO!"
A whistle blew and the nine took off. They made it about a hundred feet from meters from the dining hall when they heard what had to be a war cry coming from behind them. Glancing over their shoulders, they saw Wally come running out of the dining hall and towards them, covered in red and yellow paint. Everyone picked up their pace, not wanting the ginger to gain on them. Unfortunately, the boy was made for running. He soon had a lead on the group.
Artemis felt her thighs begin to burn about halfway through. She was delighted with the fact she had been running this path everyday, but that had only been just over a week. Everyone else had time on her.
When she made it across the finish line, it took all of her willpower to not collapse on the ground. Tim handed her a cup of water that she gingerly started sipping. The girl felt a weight on her shoulder and looked for the cause.
"Good race, you did pretty well," Wally said, resting his arm on her shoulder. Artemis laughed, almost spitting her water into his face. "No, I mean it! You had a great time!"
"I came in like, fourth place. And that's not including you," the girl retorted.
"Well, I don't count so you better make sure you aren't including me," he said gravely. He grinned at her. "But man, that Cassie. She's quite the runner. She was starting to catch up to me towards the end."
"Good, you need your ego to calm down." Artemis said, elbowing the boy. They laughed as the group began to slowly make their way to the starting line. The LITs took the lead, laughing together.
Artemis was a little jealous; she heard from the long time staff members that being a LIT was the best year of camp. She wished she had taken the chance when she was younger. She was how close Dick, Wally, and Kaldur were. She hoped she could get there with any one of the staff members.
After showers and an evening snack, the older two cabins found themselves sitting on the waterfront looking up at the stars. They swapped constellations stories, everything from Lyra the Lyre to Sagittarius and Scorpio. Artemis' favourite was Aquilla the Eagle (but mostly because she already knew the story about Prometheus). The group was out much later than they should have been, and it was Kaldur who suggested the return to their cabins before Roy had the opportunity to find them. They all groaned at the thought of the program supervisor arriving there.
The next day came and went, campfire went without a single bump. Artemis was even able to sing along to the majority of the songs, thanks to Wally the week before.
As she lay in bed the Friday night, the blonde couldn't help but be amazed with how quickly the week went by. Everything still felt too fast while it being the most relaxed and comfortable week of her life. She felt like she had been there for half her life. Camp was just unlike any environment she had ever known. She had trouble wrapping her head around the fact that she could teach her lesson flawlessly. She could give directions around the camp. Hell, she even already had a camp voice down pact. She had taken such a huge step into fitting in and she hadn't even noticed.
Turning in her bed, she smiled. She knew the next day was going to be long and tedious (she was to get up at 6 a.m. to drive the first group out with Dick, and then drive barges with him all day) but she knew that the rest of the summer was going to be a breeze.