I stepped out of the car and into the uncomfortable scrutiny of the sun's rays. They tickled the exposed skin of my arms. My face was protected by large, red-rimmed sunglasses and a black hat lined with silver. I didn't think my outfit left a bad impression at all, after 15 minutes of hard matching. Such things were greatly important on such a day, and in such a location, as well.
It was most important to me to leave a good impression after the two weeks ended, especially after the year before, when all the other campers had left was a faint memory of a strange girl with bright green glasses and a knack for getting hyper who wanted a camp makima experience to remember. But I had improved. I knew I had.
First and best of all, the glasses were gone. The paint was falling already and they made my nose looked misformed, so I had simply stopped using them and had discovered that I was fine without them. The platinum blonde highlights had completely grown out, so that my hair was near black, and curled in soft ringlets down, an inch or two below my shoulders. The hideous braces were gone, as well, so that I looked fresh and new.
I walked up until I reached the dark blue canopy, where I laid my duffel bag and small backpack. Then I turned to my parents.
"We'll miss you, sweety," Remmy said. I had long since stopped calling my parents mom and dad. Their first names had grown on me. I hugged my mother gently around the waist, then turned to my dad.
He sucked in a huge breath, as if preparing for a long speech, but instead let it out reluctantly and hugged me. "See ya later, kiddo," he said roughly into my ear. My father was like me in many ways. One of them was the way he does not enjoy sad times. But I had learned over the course of one year that you have got to live through sad times. Nonetheless, I knew my father, and I knew that he did care, even with his strangely protective and shy attitude. My parents walked away from me, and I felt more alone than ever.
I learned, in the course of one hour, that I was in a group called Aztec, and that within this group were smaller groups that were centered around our rooming arrangements, so that we would be in the same group as our roommates. After putting all my belongings away in a room full of screeching foreign girls, I left the building and entered the Aztec's meeting zone. There were several little groups, all containing strangers, except a few people I recognized from the year before. Finally, without much of a choice, I sat down on a metal bench to the side next to a stranger. I couldn't see a lot of his face, since his head was turned away, but I could see that he had a very thin, tall body that seemed muscle-and-fatless and shaggy brown hair.
When I sat down, he turned his head to me. I turned my head away shyly, feeling a blush crawling against my skin as I felt his eyes burn into the back of my head. Finally, after all the confusion in my mind on what to do about his uncomfortable staring, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder.
I turned my head slowly. My hair fell annoyingly into my eyes, and I brushed it impatiently and tucked it behind my ear. "Yes?" I asked, rather rudely, of him, then immediately caught myself in the act and tried to make my expression apologetically calm.
He seemed not to notice my harsh tone, though, because he responded in a rough yet kind voice, "Hey, I'm Ron-Lee. Sorry for freakin' you out, I'm new and these people are creeping me out. What's your name?" I was relieved by his kindness, and smiled shyly at him. My smile seemed to boost his confidence, since he smiled radiantly back. He was certainly not handsome, but he seemed like a good friend.
"I'm Ella," I responded. "It is kinda freaky, isn't it?" I continued. "It's my second year here, and I still feel all weird." I looked into his lazy-looking eyes, and he looked back, only in a different way that I did not understand. "Hey," I said slowly. "You look familiar..."
He rolled his eyes and sighed, jokingly annoyed. "Why does everyone say that?" And then, when he made that face, I recognized him.
I gasped dramatically and started poking his face, which he seemed to think was funny, because he giggled. He giggled. There was already something strange about the boy.
"You look like John fucking Lennon!" I gasped again. He looked at me incredulously.
"That was probably the randomest thing I have ever heard!" He choked, and somehow, that made the joke even more funny, so I laughed harder. He joined in after a few seconds. There we were, two goofballs laughing on the bench, where I thought no one noticed us but, in fact, everyone who mattered did.
After a while of discussing our hometowns, Ron-Lee, who I had nicknamed Lennon, and I went looking for people I knew from last year. After a bit of searching, we found Benji, an old friend of mine. He was with Daniel, a conceited jerk whom you couldn't help but love. Beside him was his best friend, Jacob. I dreaded seeing him for the whole year, and there he sat, proud of his being and uncaring towards my secret sulking. Jacob had known of my adoration towards him the year before and had been rude and uncaring about it, and yet I had kept falling. But in the past year, I had learned from my terrible mistake. I was not so voluntary. I was not useless under the gaze of his large, brown eyes.
And so, I sat by him casually and greeted everyone with my usual silly smile, cheery voice, and light blush. I congratulated myself in my head for the success of a nearly-normal attitude. I could already see that the difference in my behavior had stirred approval in several peoples' faces.
We began talking of the activities we knew would come. The Aztec trip to the farmlands. The color war. The pool party and finally, the 'Prom'. By the time we had finished our conversation, it was time for the usual head counselor's speech. We went to sit down with the rest of the camp, and, in the process, accidentally scattered. When I looked around, I found myself beside a spazzy girl named Shane and a blonde, uncaring girl named Naomi, both from my group and both, coincidentally, my roommates. To my other side was Lennon. 100 pairs of curious Aztec eyes looked up at the two tribe leaders.
I was sure that they were sisters. The both had rat-like brown hair, the kind that is frizzy and mismatched and is not considered beautiful. They both wore completely yellow. They both wore oversized sunglasses, even on my scale, and I usually wore fairly large sunglasses. They both seemed to glare down at us in distaste, as if we did not live up to their expectations. The one to the left began, in a raspy voice, a declaration of how we are to be the Best Aztec tribe Camp Makima has ever seen, and how we will prove that in only two weeks and so on and so forth. I rolled my eyes, thoroughly annoyed. Now all we needed was a trombone playing funeral music, and my worst nightmare would be complete, I thought exasperatedly.
I looked around to see if I wasn't the only one who was bored out of their mind, and was not surprised at all to discover that I wasn't. I was surprised, though, to find that Lennon was staring at me with some kind of ferocity. I tried to raise one eyebrow, which, as usual, did not work. I had never been able to do that. Still, my meaning was clear, and he smiled slightly and turned his head back to the counselor leaders, whose names, I had discovered, were Ramit and Annie, but I couldn't let go of the feeling that he was thinking about me.
After another 5 minutes or so of the boring speech, I could feel it coming to a close and began to listen again. "And so," Annie concluded, "Let us feast on these delicious cold and yummy things!" And boxes were spread, each of them full of a different flavor of popsicles. I guessed she simply forgot the name, but her replacing word for it was, indeed, hilarious. Everyone immediately began making inappropriate gestures with their 'cold and yummy things'.
Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned to see that it was Lennon, offering me a strawberry popsicle. I took it, glad that I had not had to go through the hassle of reaching in one of the boxes, but I was perplexed at the way he was treating me. No guy was ever that kind to me. I put my mind to figuring out what it was.
Lennon and I unwrapped our popsicles, and Lennon went to throw away the wrappers. Again, a strange show of kindness. When he came back, I tapped him on the shoulder, grinned at him mischievously, and began licking and sucking on the popsicle, a bit too passionately. "Mmm," I moaned. "This cold and yummy thing is so GOOD!" He chuckled and eagerly (a bit too eagerly) began doing the same thing. I heard several chuckles from behind me and turned to see who it was.
It was Benji, Daniel, and Jacob. Ben was laughing while trying to bite off a large part of the popsicle. Daniel and Jacob, though, were smiling at me in a way that made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I glared at them for a second, annoyed, then turned back around to stare at the crowd of Aztecs around me.
A few minutes later, when I was looking into my phonebook to make sure that the page with my parents' numbers was still there, I looked up to see Benji two inches from my face, with a cheeky grin on his face. I laughed heartily. It was a private joke we had created years ago, when we went to religious school together. I slapped his face lightly and playfully, and he stepped back a bit. I took one last look around and was surprised to discover that everyone was heading away back to their rooms. I understood; it was time to unpack. I left my friends with a small wave and smile and went to my room. The last I saw of them before I rounded the corner was Benji walking away to his room, but Lennon staring at me with fervor.
1 hour later, I was completely unpacked and settled down in my part of the room. I went outside to see if anyone else was in the Aztec meeting place, done with their simple chore and bored out of their minds. Instead, I found a box of pears. I knew, from the year before, that halfway through morning activities and lunch, we had snack, and since it was the Aztec meeting place, I found it appropriate to take a pear, make sure it wasn't beaten, and took a big bite out of it.
The flavor was a bit off, but it was good enough, and so I took another bite. I walked around a bit. The meeting place for the Aztecs was a yard with a few trees bordering it and two tables in the center. It was situated right in front of the girls' rooms, and a bit down the road that trailed off to one side of the girls' rooms were the boys' rooms, so all the Aztecs were in the same general area.
I sat down, not on one of the tables' benches, but on the table itself. I daydreamed a bit, while looking around subconsciously. I thought about my secret plan to come back from camp happy and improved. But at that moment, when I was there, with only a few friends, each with their own flaws, I found the mere thought of that nearly impossible.
I sighed and tossed my half-eaten pear into the waste basket, and went to sit on the ground beneath a tree in the shade. The grass had a bit of dew left from the night before, but just enough to keep it green, but not wet and uncomfortable to lie on. I lowered my back slowly to the ground, stretched my arms up, feeling the muscles relax, and placed them beneath my head in a comfortable position. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, trying to clear my head, but instead dozing off...
I woke up about 15 minutes later. Everyone was sitting around, eating pears. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed that I was asleep, and if so that I had woken up. It didn't seem like anyone did. I sighed. It was the usual response. I looked around one last time, hopeful that someone would beckon me over to talk to them, and, with a final defeated sigh, went to my room to pointlessly reorganize my belongings.