After making my bed and organizing the things my mother packed in the tote, I felt restless. I didn’t have anything to do. While the other girls did their own things—Teeny now giggled and chitter-chattered with Britta on Britta’s bunk, Neeley snored softly napping on hers, and Baker grunted as she went through her trunk, pulling things out and organizing them neatly—I sat on my bunk waiting for something to happen. I looked down at my sundress, which was puffed up around my legs as I sat cross-legged, and thought maybe changing into some shorts might be a good idea now.
I slid off my bed and bent down in front of my trunk. Without making a sound, I pulled at the latches and carefully lifted them. Opening my trunk again, I rummaged through my neatly folded piles of clothes until I came upon a pair of jean shorts and a yellow tank top. I laid them on my bed and sought after another pair of shoes, hoping my mother had packed at least a pair of flip-flops in the mix. My feet were already sweating in the shoes I was wearing. Tucked in the corners of my trunk, and beneath piles of clothes, were a pair of sandals, slippers, and sneakers.
Mom thought of everything!
I pulled out the sandals and slowly closed my trunk. I didn’t bother re-latching it knowing I’d be in and out of it without a bureau to put anything away. Truthfully, there wasn’t anything in there worth stealing anyway. I scooped up my shorts and tank-top, and quietly slipped out of the cabin undetected. I don’t know why I slunk out the way I did. I guess I wanted a moment of peace to absorb my new surroundings.
As I stood outside the screen door clutching my clothes to chest I watched as the once empty campground now buzzed with life. Girls were everywhere. Some were in a circle on the grassy knoll reading, while some were playing tetherball over by the pavilion. There were girls carrying their bags to their cabins, and others darting in and out of them. There were even a couple of girls playing Frisbee in the clearing, and a group of counselors standing by the flagpole talking. I knew they were counselors from their matching camp T-shirts, clipboards, and silver whistles dangling around their necks… oh, and counselor Chelsea stood along with them.
I needed to find a bathroom to change in and I didn’t have any idea where to find it. There wasn’t a “You Are Here” map like at the department stores and I didn’t catch any signs pointing which direction to go. I decided to wing it. To walk around and acquaint myself with the campground as best I could in the lull of time that I had. I knew to the left of me was the water, and I was going to stay away from that area for as long as I possibly could. I decided to head toward the right, knowing that going straight ahead would lead me to the pavilion and beyond that the empty road. I passed the cabin next door just as a girl with short red hair and freckles came bursting out of it and slammed into me.
“Sorry!” she called back as she ran toward the clearing, but she didn’t stop.
I rubbed my now sore elbow and bit my tongue to stop from calling out something I knew I’d regret. No need to make enemies now.
Walking further I kept my sights ahead of me trying to gauge what everything was that I was passing. A short, stocky-looking building too small for someone to live in stood to the right of my neighboring cabin. I guessed it to be a sort of tool shed. Maybe it had equipment or something in there. A little further down the slightly worn path was a three-spout water bubbler, a little shack that reminded me of the ones you’d see on the beach where they’d sell French fries and fried dough, and a dirt path that led off into the woods, not to be confused with the path that was near the pavilion. I decided to follow this dirt path, hoping there’d be a restroom not too much further away. I mean, did they expect the girls to walk a mile to go pee?
I passed the food-shack looking building to my left and continued down the dirt trail. I could see another building that looked similar to the cabins but painted white about three-hundred yards further down and grew anxious as it appeared to have outdoor shower stalls. I could make out from this distance at least three or four showerheads that jutted from the outside wall and the ground surrounding the building wasn’t grass and dirt, it was concrete. I sure hope they don’t expect us to take showers outside!
I continued walking, now more so with curiosity than with the desire to change. As I approached I noticed a wooden sign swaying above the screen door that read “Commode” and knew it was definitely a bathroom. Whether the showers outside were the only ones, I was still unsure. Proceeding with caution, I pulled the handle of the screen door and opened it nearly expecting someone to barrage out of it or to call out it was occupied. But no such thing happened. The building was silent.
I poked my head in and peered around the corner. All I saw were a concrete wall and a metal garbage can at an opening further down the little hallway that directed folks coming in to go to the right. I stepped in and the screen door snapped back hitting my backside before I could turn around and grab it. With a sigh I turned down the little hallway and followed it until the opening where I was surprised to see a row of six sinks, three toilet stalls and three shower stalls with cloth curtains.
Yes!
No one else was in the bathroom and it appeared to be in pristine condition, something I wasn’t expecting for a summer camp. Didn’t camping require things to be dirty, or even a little bit messy?
I stalked over to one of the showers and pulled back the curtain. It was a two-part style stand-up shower. The first part had hooks along both sides of the stall walls, I assumed to hang towels and clothes. The second part was separated by a tiled lip to keep the water by the drain in the middle of the floor. The shower area itself had another curtain, only it was plastic, and looked fairly clean. It was free of debris and the silver showerhead sparkled in the sunlight that shone through the propped-open, screenless window that was set just high enough along the wall that it allowed for privacy.
I stepped into the changing area and closed the cloth curtain behind me. I hung up my clean clothes and dropped my sandals to the floor. As I pulled my arms from my cardigan I felt something whoosh past my bare skin, but chalked it up to a breeze from the window and continued undressing. I grabbed my shorts, pulled them on and was about to slip out of my sundress when another whooshing sensation blew against my neck. I slapped at whatever it was, thinking it might’ve been a mosquito, and continued to remove my sundress. I kicked off my sweaty shoes and peeled off my socks, revealing my pale, now-pruney, feet. As I slid on my sandals something once again whooshed past me a third time and only then did I catch the slight buzzing sound. I spun around hoping to catch sight of whatever it was, but it was too quick. It flew over the metal curtain rod and away before I could see what it was.
Probably just a stupid mosquito. I shuddered. I hate those darn things!
As I went to grab my cardigan from the hook in front of me, a black and yellow bee landed on my arm. My first instinct was to slap it away but then fear set into my gut. My throat immediately constricted as panic set in. I twitched my arm, hoping the slight movement would make it fly away but it stuck on and didn’t budge. I jerked my arm a little more, save from waving it, but again it didn’t move. Swallowing hard, I ripped open the cloth curtain and ran toward the bathroom exit. If the darn thing was going to hold on, I wanted to at least let it out outside. As I reached the bend, where the concrete wall separated the bathroom from the little hall, the little bastard did a figure 8 before suddenly lifting its black bumbled rear and sticking the sharp, needle-like stinger straight into my skin.
“Oh my god!” I breathed out in a fury, waving my arm like a person stranded on a desert island trying to get a boat’s attention. A flash of searing hot pain bubbled from the reddened, indented wound and my blood froze in my veins. “Oh my god! Oh my god!” I repeated over and over, stomping my heel against the ground as though hurting my foot would replace the pain that was now throbbing throughout my arm.
Suddenly I felt more whooshing surrounding me. I looked up and my eyes darted to the left and right as other black and yellow flying devils buzzed past me. Two…three…six… eight… Oh my god, there were, like, twenty of them!
A blood-curdling scream burbled past the lump that had settled in my throat and I tried to escape, but over and over they attacked. My legs, my arms, even my left ear got stung. With my arms reaching out to push open the screen door I ran… and I kept running, screaming at the top of my lungs. Down the dirt path past the three bubblers, past the little tiny shed, past even my cabin. I didn’t look back but I knew the bees were following me. I could hear them as though they were tangled in my hair or caught up in my shirt. My muscles convulsed and my breath quickened as I ran, trying to find shelter. Trying to find help, escape, whatever… something to make them stop stinging me. One made its way into my shorts and I could feel it wriggle around my backside.
“Help me!” I screeched as I whizzed towards the clearing where the counselors were still talking. “I’m being attacked!”
They must’ve thought I was a loony because they stood there gawking. Not one moved an inch.
“Go to the water,” the red-haired girl that had bumped me earlier yelled out from her perch on the hill by the pavilion. “They don’t like water!”
Water? Are you freaking kidding me? That’s the last place I’m going to go.
Counselor Chelsea must’ve suddenly realized what was going on and huffed towards me as I ran to her.
“No! Don’t come here!” the other counselors yelled. “Go to the water!” They all pointed in the direction of the dock, nearly a half-mile away. Some help they were.
“Come here, sweets! Follow me!” Chelsea ordered. She pulled a bottle from her back pocket and opened the screen door of one of the closest cabins. Waving for me to follow, she began spraying whatever it was that she had into the air around the door.
I ran into the cabin and she slammed the door shut behind me, still spraying that chemical-scented spray.
My whole body vibrated and I felt like I was covered in bees. “Get them off me!” I wailed. “Please, get them off me!”
I wiped at my arms, my legs and my face, even shook my hair out for good measure, but didn’t notice any bees falling or buzzing around me.
Chelsea grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a quick shake. “They’re not on you. You need to calm down. You’re going to make yourself have a heart attack. Relax, shhhh… relax.” She gently took my hands away from my head and pulled me into a hug. With my head smooshed against her chest I could hear her slightly wheezing. She was out of breath from running.
When both of our hammering hearts and lungs settled, she lifted my chin to get a look at me. Her bow-shaped lips formed a sad pout and her hazel eyes looked as though they were about to cry. Her expression said everything a mirror would’ve shown me later… I was not a pretty sight to be seen.
“Oh, sweets,” she tsked in her English accent. “Your poor little face.” She glanced down at my shoulders, then my arms, and lifted one of my legs, all of which were covered in bright red, yellow-puckered blisters. “We need to get you to the nurse right away!”
I pointed toward the door where the bees had been forming a sort of buzzing cyclone. “But… but they’re still out there.”
She nodded. “They won’t be soon. We’ll give it another minute. I only pray you’re not allergic, I don’t have an epi pen right-handy.”
I looked down at my pulsating skin. The angry-red color grew angrier, almost purplish. But I didn’t feel like my throat was closing, and I didn’t feel feverish outside of the pain and heat from the stings. If I could recall back as a child, getting stung at a park and only feeling the pain, I didn’t think I was seriously allergic. Then again, I had to of been stung at least thirty or so times and who knows how much venom was now coursing through my blood.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t run into the water like they were all saying,” she said as she walked over to the door and peered out. “They would’ve waited for you to come up for air.”
“Who, the bees?” I asked.
She nodded. “Never run to the water during a bee attack.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, I don’t do water.”
She sort of laughed off my comment, but I was completely serious and suddenly feeling faint.
“I…I suddenly fee---” I don’t think I ever finished what I was going to say. In fact, the next thing I knew, I felt cold. I was so cold, actually, that I was visibly shivering. And… and my head hurt.
“I---I can’t open my eyes!” I murmured, trying to open my eyes to look around. But I couldn’t. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t open my eyes. I shook my head left and right and willed my eyes to open, but all I could see was black. “What’s going on? I can’t see! I—I’m blind!”
*PLEASE NOTE THIS IS UNEDITED AND IS LIKELY TO CHANGE*
**ALSO, PLEASE NOTE THE COPYRIGHT, AND SHOULD I FIND THIS CHAPTER ELSEWHERE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION I WILL GO ALL JIM CARREY "GRINCH" ON YOUR TOOKUS! SO DON'T MESS WITH ME!**
FOR LEXI ONLY
I slid off my bed and bent down in front of my trunk. Without making a sound, I pulled at the latches and carefully lifted them. Opening my trunk again, I rummaged through my neatly folded piles of clothes until I came upon a pair of jean shorts and a yellow tank top. I laid them on my bed and sought after another pair of shoes, hoping my mother had packed at least a pair of flip-flops in the mix. My feet were already sweating in the shoes I was wearing. Tucked in the corners of my trunk, and beneath piles of clothes, were a pair of sandals, slippers, and sneakers.
Mom thought of everything!
I pulled out the sandals and slowly closed my trunk. I didn’t bother re-latching it knowing I’d be in and out of it without a bureau to put anything away. Truthfully, there wasn’t anything in there worth stealing anyway. I scooped up my shorts and tank-top, and quietly slipped out of the cabin undetected. I don’t know why I slunk out the way I did. I guess I wanted a moment of peace to absorb my new surroundings.
As I stood outside the screen door clutching my clothes to chest I watched as the once empty campground now buzzed with life. Girls were everywhere. Some were in a circle on the grassy knoll reading, while some were playing tetherball over by the pavilion. There were girls carrying their bags to their cabins, and others darting in and out of them. There were even a couple of girls playing Frisbee in the clearing, and a group of counselors standing by the flagpole talking. I knew they were counselors from their matching camp T-shirts, clipboards, and silver whistles dangling around their necks… oh, and counselor Chelsea stood along with them.
I needed to find a bathroom to change in and I didn’t have any idea where to find it. There wasn’t a “You Are Here” map like at the department stores and I didn’t catch any signs pointing which direction to go. I decided to wing it. To walk around and acquaint myself with the campground as best I could in the lull of time that I had. I knew to the left of me was the water, and I was going to stay away from that area for as long as I possibly could. I decided to head toward the right, knowing that going straight ahead would lead me to the pavilion and beyond that the empty road. I passed the cabin next door just as a girl with short red hair and freckles came bursting out of it and slammed into me.
“Sorry!” she called back as she ran toward the clearing, but she didn’t stop.
I rubbed my now sore elbow and bit my tongue to stop from calling out something I knew I’d regret. No need to make enemies now.
Walking further I kept my sights ahead of me trying to gauge what everything was that I was passing. A short, stocky-looking building too small for someone to live in stood to the right of my neighboring cabin. I guessed it to be a sort of tool shed. Maybe it had equipment or something in there. A little further down the slightly worn path was a three-spout water bubbler, a little shack that reminded me of the ones you’d see on the beach where they’d sell French fries and fried dough, and a dirt path that led off into the woods, not to be confused with the path that was near the pavilion. I decided to follow this dirt path, hoping there’d be a restroom not too much further away. I mean, did they expect the girls to walk a mile to go pee?
I passed the food-shack looking building to my left and continued down the dirt trail. I could see another building that looked similar to the cabins but painted white about three-hundred yards further down and grew anxious as it appeared to have outdoor shower stalls. I could make out from this distance at least three or four showerheads that jutted from the outside wall and the ground surrounding the building wasn’t grass and dirt, it was concrete. I sure hope they don’t expect us to take showers outside!
I continued walking, now more so with curiosity than with the desire to change. As I approached I noticed a wooden sign swaying above the screen door that read “Commode” and knew it was definitely a bathroom. Whether the showers outside were the only ones, I was still unsure. Proceeding with caution, I pulled the handle of the screen door and opened it nearly expecting someone to barrage out of it or to call out it was occupied. But no such thing happened. The building was silent.
I poked my head in and peered around the corner. All I saw were a concrete wall and a metal garbage can at an opening further down the little hallway that directed folks coming in to go to the right. I stepped in and the screen door snapped back hitting my backside before I could turn around and grab it. With a sigh I turned down the little hallway and followed it until the opening where I was surprised to see a row of six sinks, three toilet stalls and three shower stalls with cloth curtains.
Yes!
No one else was in the bathroom and it appeared to be in pristine condition, something I wasn’t expecting for a summer camp. Didn’t camping require things to be dirty, or even a little bit messy?
I stalked over to one of the showers and pulled back the curtain. It was a two-part style stand-up shower. The first part had hooks along both sides of the stall walls, I assumed to hang towels and clothes. The second part was separated by a tiled lip to keep the water by the drain in the middle of the floor. The shower area itself had another curtain, only it was plastic, and looked fairly clean. It was free of debris and the silver showerhead sparkled in the sunlight that shone through the propped-open, screenless window that was set just high enough along the wall that it allowed for privacy.
I stepped into the changing area and closed the cloth curtain behind me. I hung up my clean clothes and dropped my sandals to the floor. As I pulled my arms from my cardigan I felt something whoosh past my bare skin, but chalked it up to a breeze from the window and continued undressing. I grabbed my shorts, pulled them on and was about to slip out of my sundress when another whooshing sensation blew against my neck. I slapped at whatever it was, thinking it might’ve been a mosquito, and continued to remove my sundress. I kicked off my sweaty shoes and peeled off my socks, revealing my pale, now-pruney, feet. As I slid on my sandals something once again whooshed past me a third time and only then did I catch the slight buzzing sound. I spun around hoping to catch sight of whatever it was, but it was too quick. It flew over the metal curtain rod and away before I could see what it was.
Probably just a stupid mosquito. I shuddered. I hate those darn things!
As I went to grab my cardigan from the hook in front of me, a black and yellow bee landed on my arm. My first instinct was to slap it away but then fear set into my gut. My throat immediately constricted as panic set in. I twitched my arm, hoping the slight movement would make it fly away but it stuck on and didn’t budge. I jerked my arm a little more, save from waving it, but again it didn’t move. Swallowing hard, I ripped open the cloth curtain and ran toward the bathroom exit. If the darn thing was going to hold on, I wanted to at least let it out outside. As I reached the bend, where the concrete wall separated the bathroom from the little hall, the little bastard did a figure 8 before suddenly lifting its black bumbled rear and sticking the sharp, needle-like stinger straight into my skin.
“Oh my god!” I breathed out in a fury, waving my arm like a person stranded on a desert island trying to get a boat’s attention. A flash of searing hot pain bubbled from the reddened, indented wound and my blood froze in my veins. “Oh my god! Oh my god!” I repeated over and over, stomping my heel against the ground as though hurting my foot would replace the pain that was now throbbing throughout my arm.
Suddenly I felt more whooshing surrounding me. I looked up and my eyes darted to the left and right as other black and yellow flying devils buzzed past me. Two…three…six… eight… Oh my god, there were, like, twenty of them!
A blood-curdling scream burbled past the lump that had settled in my throat and I tried to escape, but over and over they attacked. My legs, my arms, even my left ear got stung. With my arms reaching out to push open the screen door I ran… and I kept running, screaming at the top of my lungs. Down the dirt path past the three bubblers, past the little tiny shed, past even my cabin. I didn’t look back but I knew the bees were following me. I could hear them as though they were tangled in my hair or caught up in my shirt. My muscles convulsed and my breath quickened as I ran, trying to find shelter. Trying to find help, escape, whatever… something to make them stop stinging me. One made its way into my shorts and I could feel it wriggle around my backside.
“Help me!” I screeched as I whizzed towards the clearing where the counselors were still talking. “I’m being attacked!”
They must’ve thought I was a loony because they stood there gawking. Not one moved an inch.
“Go to the water,” the red-haired girl that had bumped me earlier yelled out from her perch on the hill by the pavilion. “They don’t like water!”
Water? Are you freaking kidding me? That’s the last place I’m going to go.
Counselor Chelsea must’ve suddenly realized what was going on and huffed towards me as I ran to her.
“No! Don’t come here!” the other counselors yelled. “Go to the water!” They all pointed in the direction of the dock, nearly a half-mile away. Some help they were.
“Come here, sweets! Follow me!” Chelsea ordered. She pulled a bottle from her back pocket and opened the screen door of one of the closest cabins. Waving for me to follow, she began spraying whatever it was that she had into the air around the door.
I ran into the cabin and she slammed the door shut behind me, still spraying that chemical-scented spray.
My whole body vibrated and I felt like I was covered in bees. “Get them off me!” I wailed. “Please, get them off me!”
I wiped at my arms, my legs and my face, even shook my hair out for good measure, but didn’t notice any bees falling or buzzing around me.
Chelsea grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a quick shake. “They’re not on you. You need to calm down. You’re going to make yourself have a heart attack. Relax, shhhh… relax.” She gently took my hands away from my head and pulled me into a hug. With my head smooshed against her chest I could hear her slightly wheezing. She was out of breath from running.
When both of our hammering hearts and lungs settled, she lifted my chin to get a look at me. Her bow-shaped lips formed a sad pout and her hazel eyes looked as though they were about to cry. Her expression said everything a mirror would’ve shown me later… I was not a pretty sight to be seen.
“Oh, sweets,” she tsked in her English accent. “Your poor little face.” She glanced down at my shoulders, then my arms, and lifted one of my legs, all of which were covered in bright red, yellow-puckered blisters. “We need to get you to the nurse right away!”
I pointed toward the door where the bees had been forming a sort of buzzing cyclone. “But… but they’re still out there.”
She nodded. “They won’t be soon. We’ll give it another minute. I only pray you’re not allergic, I don’t have an epi pen right-handy.”
I looked down at my pulsating skin. The angry-red color grew angrier, almost purplish. But I didn’t feel like my throat was closing, and I didn’t feel feverish outside of the pain and heat from the stings. If I could recall back as a child, getting stung at a park and only feeling the pain, I didn’t think I was seriously allergic. Then again, I had to of been stung at least thirty or so times and who knows how much venom was now coursing through my blood.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t run into the water like they were all saying,” she said as she walked over to the door and peered out. “They would’ve waited for you to come up for air.”
“Who, the bees?” I asked.
She nodded. “Never run to the water during a bee attack.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, I don’t do water.”
She sort of laughed off my comment, but I was completely serious and suddenly feeling faint.
“I…I suddenly fee---” I don’t think I ever finished what I was going to say. In fact, the next thing I knew, I felt cold. I was so cold, actually, that I was visibly shivering. And… and my head hurt.
“I---I can’t open my eyes!” I murmured, trying to open my eyes to look around. But I couldn’t. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t open my eyes. I shook my head left and right and willed my eyes to open, but all I could see was black. “What’s going on? I can’t see! I—I’m blind!”
*PLEASE NOTE THIS IS UNEDITED AND IS LIKELY TO CHANGE*
**ALSO, PLEASE NOTE THE COPYRIGHT, AND SHOULD I FIND THIS CHAPTER ELSEWHERE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION I WILL GO ALL JIM CARREY "GRINCH" ON YOUR TOOKUS! SO DON'T MESS WITH ME!**
FOR LEXI ONLY
