Just the Five of Us

I jumped and whirled around. A guy, no, a hot guy stood behind me smiling sweetly. He was in a t-shirt and jeans and the most awesome pair of high tops I had ever seen.

“Are you lost, can I help?” he asked smiling even wider.

I gulped and tried to smile back before clearing my throat to respond, “I’m looking for cabin four.”

He frowned, “can I see your paper?”

I handed it to him; he looked at it for a long time before he grinned again. He had dark sparkling eyes which matched his dark sparkling hair. He looked back up at me before handing my paper back.

“Follow me,” he instructed.

I followed, my stomach twisting in anxious knots. I wondered nervously what the other girls would be like, what they would think of me, how they would react if they learned of my condition…

“Here we are,”

I looked up at cabin four and mentally slapped myself for not noticing the big sign in front. It was decorated with skulls and axes, freaky. I noticed that all the cabin signs had different designs on them.

“Welcome to cabin four, also known as Cabin Dark Blood.” The boy said grinning even bigger than ever. “I’m Darren. Your new cabin buddy.”

What? Was this some sort of cruel joke? Were all my cabin buddies guys? It would explain the serous lack of females around here. Then it clicked, oh crap. Play a prank on the new kid, hilarious. I wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Very funny,” I said giving him a level stare.

His smile went from big and welcoming to dark and suggestive in a millisecond. “Then why does it say cabin four on your paper?” he asked.

I knew it said cabin four, I had read it over five times while searching. But there was no way I was bunking with a guy. Besides that, the way he was looking at me made me nervous.

“I’m sure it was a type-o,” I muttered staring down in horror at my paper.

“Should we go ask?” Darren said cocking his head to one side, his hair fell over his left eye and he gave me a lazy look.

I felt a blush start. Maybe I should just play along, I decided. “No it’s fine.” I said stiffly before I opened the cabin door.

It was decent sized inside and extremely neat for a guy’s cabin. There were two bunk beds and one single bed. The bunk beds were up against the walls and the single bed was under the only window across the room. I went for the single bed. I placed my bulging shoulder bag on the bed and sat down.

Darren flipped across the room and plopped on the bottom bunk of the bed to left and stared at me as if I couldn’t see him. I felt extremely nervous and sweaty; his staring only worsened the situation. It seemed that now we weren’t surrounded by people he had dropped all nice host acts. I hated this camp already and I just wanted to hide.

Yup, that’s me, I hide when things get rough. At home when ever mom and dad fought I hid in my jumbo closet and when ever Crystal and her group of friends made me feel stupid and ugly I would hide in the girl’s bathroom and cry quietly to myself. Now I felt exposed. I wanted to look at ease and let this weird guy know that I wasn’t intimidated by him in any way, even though he scared me shitless.

I decided the best way to look laid back was pull out my iPod and listen to some music and maybe read a book. It was still three hours till the big welcome bon fire (according to my yellow paper); I couldn’t just sit here till then. And Darren would probably also get bored and leave.

That thought cheered me up quite a bit. I pulled my iPod out of its outside pocket and I put it on shuffle and turned the volume up high. I pulled out Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty. My eyes skimmed over the words barley reading as I listened to Keisha. I loved her loud music; it made me feel like there were no problems. Slow music made me feel like crying.

Suddenly I felt something bump up against my leg. I looked up from my book, I felt warm air on my ear, and I turned. Darren stared at me; I felt my face heat up as my noise nearly bumped his. He stared at me for a whole moment his eyes holding mine in place, his eyes were dark, dark brown, kinda like forest mud. I yanked my head phones out of my ears; if my music hadn’t been on so loud then I might have noticed him sneak up on me.

“What’re you reading?” he asked, his eyes stayed locked on my face and his voice was low as if he really didn’t care about what I was reading and just wanted to ask something.

“Ummm,” my face went even redder he was so close his breath tickled my cheeks, I felt like screaming bloody murder. I flipped the book closed so I could remind myself of the title, “A-A Great and Terrible Beauty.” I stuttered feeling even more embarrassed than ever. I leaned away from his smoldering gaze.

He smiled and suddenly jumped off my bed and he actually sniffed the air. I gave him my ‘you’re a psychopathic freak’ look, but he was looking past me out the window.

“They are coming; you think I’m bad, wait till you meet Adrian.” He said softly, an evil grin slowly slipped across his face as he stared out the window.

I felt my bones chill. I stood up and shoved my book back into my bag and stuffed my iPod back into my skinny jeans pocket. “I-I’m going outside,” I said pulling my bag back onto my shoulder, which was still sore from lugging it around before.

“Hey, what? Did I scare you,” he asked as I fled for the door.

I was already out. The sun was setting as I pushed my way through campers to the Reception.

“Sir I think there has been some kind of mistake,” I blurted when I got to the balding guys desk.

He looked up at me then grimaced, “uh well no, there hasn’t. I understand that the boys in cabin four are uh…odd, but um…when we talked to your mother she said that it was fine and that you were good at taking care of yourself…” he trailed off when he noticed I was about to cry.

“Look, Miss Kristin I am extremely sorry, here if it helps I’ll get Shean to look after you. He’s the only relatively normal one in cabin four he is quite kind to new comers and will keep any bullies off your back.” He looked frantic as a tear began dribbling down my cheek; “here!” he said suddenly, “I’ll see if I can move you to one of the counselors cabins, maybe with Ms. Rachel or Mrs. Morris and her daughter…”

I barely even cared that Mrs. Morris sounded a lot like my old school nemesis’ mom’s name. I might not have to sleep in a cabin full of guys for the next five weeks. I wiped my cheek and gave him a big hopeful look.

He smiled; glad to have lifted my spirits. “But you’ll have to sleep in cabin four tonight, oh and you use the ladies’ counselor’s bathroom for showering I forgot to tell you that.”

I nodded still feeling exceptionally better, one night wouldn’t kill me. Two might, but one should be okay.

“Um, here’s Shean now, he’ll take you back to cabin four. I’ll get you tomorrow with your new cabin.” He glanced past me before screaming at the top of his lungs, “SHEAN!!!”