Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
For a moment when I opened my eyes and saw the wooden boards of the top bunk I was confused about where I was, but then I turned and saw the messy array of ten girls' laundry scattered across the tiny cabin floor and smiled—I wasn't home.
I was in a place so much better than home.
The air was musty and cool and smelled a bit like—dirty socks? Not the dirty socks of these ten girls. We hadn't been there enough days yet. But I guessed enough sets of ten girls with a limited supply of clean socks packed in their duffel bags had cycled through the cabin over the years that it permanently smelt a little bit like locker room.
I pulled the cheap duvet over my chest and neck as the even cheaper mattress groaned underneath me. Above me Jamie's mattress—no, not Jamie's, because I saw Jamie asleep one bunk over—
Huh, who had ended up taking the bunk above me?—
Mystery girl's mattress grunted louder than mine as she shifted and rolled to the other side.
I couldn't say I had slept well, but I was too excited to go back to sleep now. There were a million things that should have made me hate Camp Guiding Light, like the plastic-y mattresses that had probably been there since the 70s, or the fact that I was one of the only people who looked like me for miles around and that definitely showed when in the evenings all the girls begged to brush and French braid my hair to match theirs, but I loved this place. I loved our church youth group retreats. I loved the lake and the pancakes drowned in butter and maple syrup and the long days in which we did absolutely everything in a group, just like Madeleine and her little French companions. I loved how far away camp felt from ordinary life, like we had slipped into the cozy pocket of another dimension. And when we would all pile on the bus home in a week's time after so many days of breaking our bread and brushing our teeth and going to bed in constant company it would be sad. Sadder still because by then we would have started to believe that maybe, just maybe, this tiny pocket was the true reality and home was the illusion.
We could sleep then, on the drive back, but now there were so many things to do. There was barely enough time to squeeze swimming and a match of capture the flag in between all the already scheduled bible studies and devotions and worship services and Jesus-related activities.
I got up and started to get ready in the bathroom, purposefully making a bit of noise so that the other girls would wake up. If I decided it was time for pancakes before morning worship service I knew the others would follow, particularly the younger girls whose FOMO almost made me cringe.
"Jamie, Court, I'm hungry. Do you wanna see if the boys are up and ready for breakfast?" I whispered loud enough for the middle schoolers to also hear. Madison popped up from the upper bunk above mine, and I felt silly for not having guessed that it was her above me. Madison was a seventh grader new to the youth group and desperate to make friends because I think she probably didn't fit in well at her school. She had kinda been following me around like a lost puppy, but it was cute.
