"Welcome to our brand new deluxe state-of-the-art outdoor amphitheater! Okay, this week's challenge is a summer camp favorite. A talent contest!" Chris introduced the next challenge. Is this another temporary thing like the dodgeball court, or do we get to keep it? This is going to take forever if we all have to perform. What's the time limit for a performance?

"Yes, awesome!" Owen cheered.

"Each team has eight hours to pick their three most talented campers. These three will represent them in the show tonight. Sing, dance, juggle. Anything goes, as long as it's legal," Chris elaborated. So most of us won't be doing anything today? Nice. "You'll be judged by our resident talent scout, former DJ, VJ, and rap legend, Grand Master Chef, who will show his approval via the Chef-o-Meter." Chris showcased the device, which had a 1-10 rating system. Also, what's a VJ? "The team that loses will send one camper home tonight." So, just like every other challenge? "Good luck!"

Katie and Sadie tried to do a dance together for their talent show audition, but I don't think that anyone else really liked it at all. It was more baltering than dancing, really. DJ volunteered to participate in the talent show, doing some kind of ribbon dance. I don't really get it, but I liked it more than the girls' dance.

"I can stand on my hands for twenty minutes," Bridgette boasted. "Watch!" Bridgette threw herself into a handstand. Next, Harold showed off his beatboxing ability, which, considering Chris said that Chef was a former DJ, will probably get us a decent amount of points. Geoff showed off a skateboarding trick next.

"Should we wait until everyone has shown off their talent or vote as we go?" Katie asked. The first one would probably make things easier.

"Does anyone else even want to participate?" Duncan asked the group. I raised my hand.

"Ok, show us what you got, Cyclops." I flipped to a fresh page of my notebook.

"What the fuck, Cyclops?" Duncan said as I rotated my wrist clockwise 720 and started quickly drawing a caricature of Chris, since he wasn't present.

"How do you find out that you can even do that?" Harold asked. The answer is boredom. It took about two minutes for me to finish drawing the portrait before showing it off. As they judged my work, I rotated my wrist back into the proper position.

"It's a little boring, but the portrait's decent. It might work if Chef could see it as you were drawing," Bridgette advised. We voted and ultimately chose Harold, Geoff, and DJ to be the three people participating in the talent show. Several team members dispersed as soon as we had decided, but I decided to stick around for at least a little bit.

"So, can you really stand on your hands for twenty minutes?" Geoff asked Bridgette as he fiddled with the wheels on his skateboard.

"Wanna bet that I can't?"

"Oh, you're on!"

"I'll take a piece of that action," Harold interrupted.

"Yeah, that's like virtually impossible," DJ added.

"Ante up!" Bridgette offered. I'm not going to bet on this. I left them to it, instead going back to the cabins. I saw Lindsay talking to Gwen outside the Gopher's cabin and decided to go say hi to Gwen. I started walking up to them.

"Are you gonna move? Or do I have to throw you out of my way?" Gwen asked Lindsay.

"Uh, um, oh, hi Honey!" That's not my name, but it's understandable. I don't think we've ever really talked before.

"His name is Sunny," Gwen corrected. "What are you doing here?" I shrugged. Boredom, wanted to see what was going on. Gwen waited for me to write this out, though Lindsay was quickly distracted by Heather exiting the cabin, wearing a ballerina outfit. Is the whole thing considered a tutu or just the skirt part? That'll probably get more attention than DJ's dance, unfortunately.

"Hey, Gwen, did you have a good swim?" Heather asked.

"What is going on here?" Gwen asked her.

"Nothing, just resting before the big show." Understandable. "Are you always so paranoid?"

"Never mind, whatever." Gwen pushed past Heather to get into the cabin, meaning her attention had now transferred to me.

"And what are you doing here?" I gestured to my notebook, where I had written, "Hi, I'm bored. Do you want to hang out?"

"What, Noah's company not enough for you?" Nope. I wish to make more tentative friends and collect all the emails and phone numbers so that I can create a group chat between the entire cast, which will inevitably fall apart within a week, and to do that I need at least three contacts with your team so that I can get all the numbers through osmosis. It will be glorious.

"Nope," I said aloud, daring her to argue. She stared at me for another moment before scoffing and walking away. I decided to wait for a bit longer to see if Gwen came back out before leaving a note asking her if she wanted to hang out later.

I went back to where most of the team was watching Bridgette do a handstand to discover that she had, somehow, managed to bring down one of the stage lights. Luckily it just crashed to the ground and no one was hurt.

"You're officially banned from doing handstands when it does not contribute to a challenge," Chris declared. "That light was expensive!"

"That's fair," Bridgette agreed. Chris left us, and it didn't take too long before he announced the start of the talent show on the intercom. We all gathered at the main stage, where Chef was nowhere to be seen. Chris was on stage, announcing the challenge for the audience.

"It's the TDI Talent Extravaganza! Welcome to the very first Camp Wawanakwa… Talent Contest. Where six campers will showcase their mad skills and desperately try not to humiliate themselves. First up for the Screaming Gophers… Owen!" Owen burped the entire alphabet and got a five from Chef. A decent performance, he did what he set out to do.

Our participants had played rock paper scissors to decide who would be going first, which resulted in Geoff being up first. He did some skateboarding things and ended up breaking his board at the end of the performance by jumping down onto it, but he played it off pretty well.

"Whoa!" He barely even stumbled, and Chef gave him a six.

Trent proceeded to do the natural television talent show thing and sing a song while playing guitar, which he apparently wrote himself. The tune was nice enough, music sort of fit the mood. Kind of short, lyrics could have been better, but not everyone has the time to spend multiple hours a day writing sad poems in their head only to forget most of them because they didn't have enough motivation to write them down.

"Nice work! I like your style, dude," Chris looked down at his phone. "And that's a five from Grand Master Chef!" I feel like this challenge could still go either way.

We sent up DJ next for his ribbon dance routine. It went well for the first half of the routine— he was performing the same routine that he had demonstrated to us before— but then he tangled his foot in the ribbon and faceplanted on the ground. Chef gave us two points for that, meaning that the Gophers were currently winning by three points going into the last two performances of the challenge. Impressive, considering that both of ours had mishaps somewhere in them, and I don't see many ways that Harold's performance could go wrong. I doubt that Chef will give him a score less than six or seven.

The Gophers sent up their last performer, Heather, who brought a stool up with her and sat down on it. Can you dance while sitting down? I regret this line of thought immediately.

"Originally, I was going to dance for you, but instead I want to celebrate team spirit with a collaboration." I don't think you can have the whole team come up on stage and perform with you. Heather pulled out a book with what looked like a lock on the front. "So with words by Gwen, performed by me, enjoy." I guess that is a collaboration? I looked over to Gwen, who looked shocked.

Heather cleared her throat and continued. "Ok, so I'm trying to ignore him, but he's just so cute." Is this a diary? Sure reads like a diary. "If they had custom-ordered a guy to be a distraction for me here it would've been McHottie." What even was that last word? I looked back to Gwen. She had her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. "We just totally connect, he and Sunny are pretty much the only people here that I can relate to…" That's nice. Shitty situation with Heather reading this for all the viewers to hear, but nice to know that she likes me and that I'm not the person she has a crush on. "...and I know it's a cliche, but I love guys who play guitar." Oh, Gwen has a crush on Trent. Probably. Gwen ran away after that part. I'll go ask if she's ok later.

"Thank you," Heather closed the book to signal the end of her "performance".

Harold walked up to the stage, carrying his keyboard with him, so I attempted to quietly abscond.

"Sunny, where are you going?" Geoff asked. He was messing around with his skateboard, using a tube of glue to try to put it back together. I chose not to respond and absconded faster, but not fast enough to entirely escape the sound of Harold's performance.

I briefly found myself on the beach before I came to my senses and turned around. Cameras were an inevitable possibility wherever I went. I eventually ended up underneath one of the cabins—not entirely outdoors, but not indoors, where I would be found super quickly.

I spent a few hours staring up at the floor above me, similar to how I would usually stare at my bedroom ceiling, though I was eventually interrupted by something brushing up against my right hand. It was fluffy, whatever it was. I didn't feel like rolling over to see what it was, instead choosing to let the creature maul me to death. Which it didn't do, but it did end up nibbling at my hand a bit. A rodent, probably, maybe a squirrel or rabbit. It eventually left me alone, and I heard the grass next to the cabin rustling as it ran away. It had distracted me well enough from my isolation that I could now hear people walking around above and around me, as well as some idle conversation.

"Harold, that was a sick performance, dude!" I heard Geoff praise from the cabin steps.

"You don't have to keep saying it, but it was pretty cool," Bridgette added. "Who do you think the Gophers are gonna vote off tonight?" I tried to stop listening and get back to my irregularly scheduled dissociative episode.

"Hey, guys!" I heard Sadie, and probably Katie as well, run up to them. "Do you guys know where Sunny went? He kinda ran off and forgot his notebook."

"We'll just leave it on his bed; he'll come back when he gets hungry," Duncan dismissed her. Doubtful.

"But what if he got lost somewhere?" Bridgette asked the group. That's a good idea, just running off into the woods and avoiding everyone for an extended period of time. I'll have to remember that for later.

"Chris will probably send out Chef or one of his interns to go and find him, at least before the next challenge," Geoff reassured. I barely audibly sighed and started making my way over to them from underneath the cabin.

"Did you guys hear that?" Katie said. The whole underside of the cabin was lifted off the ground, so when Katie looked underneath, she could clearly see me crawling towards the steps.

"Sunny, what are you doing under there?" she asked, followed by Geoff, Duncan, Harold, Sadie, and Eva all looking at me as I made my way out from underneath the cabin. I blinked slowly at the group before looking at Sadie specifically. I sat up a bit, made a writing motion with one hand, and held out my other as though it was holding my notebook as I was writing in it. Sadie stood up for a moment before bending back down, notebook and pencil in hand, and setting them on the ground. I waited for a second before pouncing on my things and retreating to the middle of the space underneath the cabin, all while everyone was staring at me. Eva was the first to step away, eventually followed by everyone else, though Harold came back and set down the rest of my colored pencils for me to use. I waited until he had left before grabbing them and I started drawing.

I waited until a few minutes after dinner was announced to leave and, although I didn't really feel like eating anything, I did go to the main lodge so that I wouldn't get anyone trying to deliver food to me.

"See, I was right," Duncan bragged as I sat down. I hummed in the negative, earning some looks from the team.

"Why did you run off, anyways?" Geoff asked me. "You were there for my performance, but after Heather's, you just kinda ran off for no reason." I blinked at him. How do I explain that I was having a trauma response without responding verbally or explaining that I was having a trauma response to people that I have known for less than a month?

"He never sticks around when I practice my keyboard; that's probably it." Oh. I guess I don't have to. Thanks, Harold.

"Are you, like, scared of piano music or something?" Geoff pushed. I shrugged at first but took a second to think about it and nodded instead. Flight is considered a fear response.

"That's kinda lame, Cyclops," Duncan said, sounding disappointed.

"What, you don't have any weirdly specific fears?" Harold asked him. Duncan rolled his eyes and kept eating, dropping the issue.

"So you can't listen to, like, any music with pianos in it?" Eva asked me. I shook my head no. I can listen to music that has a bunch of other things going on and only has pianos or violins in the background, but never both.

"Is it just pianos?" Eva asked. I chose not to respond to that one, instead eating a bit of my food.

"That doesn't really work for avoiding conversations when you don't respond verbally," Harold pointed out. How dare you point out the flaws in my logic.

After we finished eating, I looked at the Gophers to see who was missing since the voting ceremony had been held almost immediately after the challenge and was disappointed to find that Noah was nowhere in sight and Heather was still around. Gwen was also missing, but it's understandable that she would be avoiding everyone after what happened earlier. Most of the team probably would've kept her around out of sympathy for having her diary read out loud on national television. Who will I hang out in silence with for hours on end now?

Hours later, as it was turning dark, there was a knock on our cabin door and I got up to answer it. I could see through the screen that it was Gwen, so I opened it for her.

"Is Harold awake?" she asked. I looked up to his bunk, which was above mine, turned back to Gwen and gave her a thumbs up. She stepped inside and walked up to where Harold was reading a comic in bed.

"Didn't you say that you brought a red ant farm with you?"