Camp Koradel

When the three other pairs came out, they all grinned at Sophie and Erin, and Charley gave them a fist bump while Anna followed with a simple “Congratulations.”

“Wow,” Sophie remarked, “everyone is taking this really well.”

Erin smiled. “Of course they are. No one’s mad; someone had to win, and it just happened to be the newbies. They might envy us, but no one will be angry at us just for winning.”

That not only surprised Sophie, but it excited her to see that no one was skulking in their loss. The pond water felt so good that she wanted to just stay in forever, but soon, it was getting dark, and the day was cooling down.

Galvin eventually asked for Sophie and Erin to come to him, and they did, anxious. “Your prize, girls, is that you don’t have to do the tests on Friday.” He turned, looking at Sophie. “Lucky you — you get two weeks of training before your first tests.” She smiled, and he continued, “You don’t have to participate that day at all. In fact, Rosette will be taking you to a spa.”

Sophie and Erin exchanged a glance. “A spa?” they said together, and then laughed.

“Well,” he said, chuckling, “If the boys would have won, we were going to take them racing and whatever other sport they wanted to play, and they’d get lessons in that sport for the day.”

“That sounds a lot better than a spa!” Sophie exclaimed, and Erin nodded in agreement.

Galvin shrugged. “Fine, we’ll do that instead.”

“Yes,” they shouted in unison and gave each other a high five.

As they began to walk away, he bent down to whisper in Sophie’s ear, “Or your prize could be me…”

She tensed, but kept walking as if she hadn’t heard him. Erin glanced over at her, though, with a big question mark on her face, obviously curious.

“Good job, girls.” Arms wrapped around both of their shoulders, and they laughed (after flinching) when they saw that it was Scott. “Did you already have the ticket when we passed by each other?”

“No,” Sophie said, “we found it just a couple minutes after we scared you and Brad.”

He glared at her for a moment, but then laughed, and soon, everyone was on the stone wall again, but this time, a huge fire was burning.

————————————

“So, it’s your first night in our room, girlie. Isn’t it exciting?”

Sophie smiled at Erin; she loved this girl. “Totally.”

Erin giggled, and when they were settled in their beds and comfortable, she asked, “What did Galvin say to you in here earlier?”

After hesitating a moment, she said, “Not too much. Mainly that he understands, but then I yelled at him and he just held me while I … cried.”

“Are you alright?”

Hearing her concern made Sophie smile again, though she thought the question was funny, considering when Galvin had asked the exact thing she had only gotten angry at him. “I’m fine; it was just some sort of mental breakdown or something.” When Erin didn’t question this, she felt compelled to speak again. “Madame Rosette had to—”

“I know,” she said, and for a while, that sentence hung in the darkness between them like a dark cloud. “I didn’t pass the test either, but for different reasons.”

“You didn’t cut yourself, then?”

“No, my mom abused me,” she admitted, and her voice cracked.

Sophie stood abruptly from her bed. “I know how you feel. My dad…he raped me at age 6 and never stopped.” As she sat on Erin’s bed, there was complete silence for a moment.

“He looked so nice…”

“They all do,” Sophie said stiffly. “All the guilty ones look innocent, and the ones who are actually innocent get blamed for their mistakes.”

“That’s very true. Sophie, I’ve only told my ex-boyfriend about that. Please—”

“Don’t worry. No one else will ever know. I’ve never told anyone about my dad, so I understand.” She paused, thinking, and then asked, “She left a lot of scars on you, then?”

The poor girl flinched and sniffed. “Belts were her favorite, and big buckles were a great plus.” She laughed once without humor. “She used to tell me that if I was on a TV channel, her favorite scene would be watching me fall down our wooden stairs.” They looked at each other in the dark. “Doctors are idiots, Sophie.”

She nodded sadly. “I wonder how in the world our parents were raised… Did any of the other girls or guys here come from bad homes?”

Erin shook her head, sitting up. “I have no clue. I know Charley did, but she’s rather…optimistic for where she came from.” She giggled then, but immediately returned to being serious. “She’s a great person; I don’t know why. Galvin actually kind of saved her before starting this camp. He saw her father hold a gun to her head.”

“Oh, my…”

“I don’t know how she manages to keep her mood up, with her background and everything, you know? It’s absolutely insane, but wonderful at the same time. I’m glad she met Charles; I think he may have assisted her some.”

“They’re cute.”

Erin nodded, grinning. “We should probably get to bed; we’ll need the rest.”

She smiled and nodded slightly, getting up and returning to her own bed.

————————

I don’t understand, Allison thought, searching intently through the small black notebook. There wasn’t any sign of moving until the very last page, and Sophie surely wouldn’t have left just the day after finding out she was leaving … would she?

“What have you got there?”

Throwing the notebook in shock, it landed on the floor, and she looked at her mother. “Nothing.” She smiled, but her mother didn’t.

“Dinner is ready.” She marched out of Allison’s room, leaving the door open. She didn’t want dinner; she wanted to find Sophie and apologize to her. Sophie thinks I’m a fake. When she had comprehended this, she also realized that she would have thought the same if she’d known a person like herself. John had made her seem self-centered, but Sophie had never acted like she thought that way; why had she pretended to care?

“Allison! Get out!”

Standing to her feet, she walked into the living room and said, “Ma’am?”

“Leave this house right now!” Confused, Allison obeyed; when she sat on the porch, her mom found her and said, “You don’t belong here.”

Tears threatened to appear, but Allison pushed them away. She wasn’t going to give this woman what she wanted. “Yes, ma’am,” she said politely, calmly, and walked away from the house. Behind her, she could hear the front door squeak closed and that’s when she turned back. She banged on the front door, and her mom cracked it open, eyeing her furiously.

“I said to leave.”

“I forgot something. Please just let me get it.”

She pondered this for a moment but finally stepped aside, letting the door swing open for Allison to get through. Once inside, she sprinted to her bedroom and grabbed two things: Sophie’s journal and a pocketknife stolen from her father. After she had grabbed those, she ran back out into the night. Rain had started to fall, and the thunder made her flinch. This and the blinding lightning were to blame for her destiny.

She stopped on the sidewalk and pulled the pencil from the middle of Sophie’s journal out and began to write on the next blank page.

Dear Sophie,
If you ever do read this, I am so sorry for taking your journal. It was selfish, but I had no clue where you went, and this was the only way I could find out. If I’m still alive, can we still be friends? I hope you see this eventually. If someone besides Sophie Graham is reading this, please give it to her…
Goodbye,
Allison

Aimlessly running in the middle of the road, Allison shoved the pencil back inside and soon felt the worst impact of her life straight in her gut, and she fell to the concrete, blacked out.

——————————

¬“Wake up, girls,” Madame Rosette yelled into each room. Sophie groaned at the sound of her voice, pulling her pillow over her face to shield her eyes from the sun, but Erin soon shook her mattress and told her to quit being lazy.

She groaned again, but sat up in her bed only to get smacked in the face by an outfit. “Thanks,” she mumbled, her voice still coated with sleep. Once she was dressed, Sophie walked to the door and turned the doorknob.

Before it could open completely, Erin jumped against the door and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Flabbergasted momentarily, Sophie merely said, “Outside?”

“You think you can just leave? No, Galvin or Madame Rosette will dismiss us.”

“Oh,” Sophie muttered, removing her hand from the knob and returning to her bed. A whistle sounded a few minutes later, and Erin stood. Sophie followed her, clueless, out of their room and through the cabin to the back yard where their challenges the previous day had taken place. They didn’t stop there, though; instead, they kept walking until they reached another building that Sophie hadn’t seen before then. It was enormous, and when they entered, she recognized the most gym equipment she’d ever seen in her life.

“Wow,” she said aloud, and Erin giggled. “Wait, didn’t you say Galvin trains us?”

“Yes, he does, but I don’t see him.” She searched the building to no avail.

“Alright, girls, today, you’ll be doing your own thing, and if you don’t do anything, we will know, and Galvin will not be happy. Now, go.”

No one moved. Finally, Charley spoke softly, “Where’s Galvin?”

Madame Rosette frowned. “He had a rough night last night. Perhaps he’ll be here in a little bit. You shouldn’t worry, girls; go train, or I’ll make you.”

Though none of them were afraid of her, they each made their way to some piece of equipment. Sophie found herself on a treadmill, and after about half an hour, Madame Rosette instructed them to switch to another activity.

After at least three hours of plain physical exercise, the girls were allowed a break during which they lied on the grass outside of the little gym. A figure was beginning to appear beside the cabin in the distance, and Sophie squinted, trying to see…

“Galvin’s here!”

Charley’s head instantly shot up, and she smiled. She had obviously been worried about him, unlike the rest of the girls. Most of them groaned a little bit, but for the most part were glad he was okay.

“Good afternoon, girls,” he greeted when he was closer, and they each either smiled or at least waved and said “hey.” “I bet you’ve had a mighty easy time this morning…so far.”

“Ugh,” Kasie groaned, “can’t we keep it that way?”

He thought for a moment. “Next week is going to be hard. I hope you guys know that. You haven’t trained enough this week, and you will make up for that, I promise.”

“Where have you been?” Charley asked suddenly. “I was worried.”

He placed an arm around her shoulder and whispered something in her ear. “Girls, I had a car accident,” he said aloud. Sophie then realized he was carrying a very familiar black notebook. “We can get into the details in a little bit. Right now, you need to take this” —he threw the notebook to Sophie— “back to your room in the cabin, and then we need to do a little training.”

She hardly caught the thing, but when she did, she sprinted with it towards the log cabin, running through the lush field as if she were being chased in a horror film. There was blood on the outside edges of some of the pages, but that didn’t worry her; she guessed it was her own. The front door swung open without her even pushing, it seemed, though she knew she was just dazed and very confused. So dazed that she left the door wide open and continued into the hallway that led to her room.

When she set the journal down on her bed, she turned around and began to leave the room. But something stopped her. Slowly, she walked back to the bed, and she felt an inexplicable desire to open it. Deciding to trust her gut, she sat on the bed and flipped it ajar to a random page. A pencil dropped to the floor from the page she’d opened to, and there was writing there that wasn’t her own. Dear Sophie, it read, and as she read, she began to cry. Allison had read her journal, found out everything, including her “habits,” her father’s actions, and her own thoughts towards Allison, and yet the girl wanted to be friends!

Without Galvin having to tell her, she knew he had hit Allison. Coincidence or not, Allison had been killed by Sophie’s camp leader, and Sophie sobbed. Why couldn’t it have been me? She thought silently, even though she knew there was no point. Oh, Allison, I’m sorry and I forgive you!

“God, if you’re really there, please tell her this. Tell her I’d switch places with her so she could live her life here. There are great people here, and I’m so thankful for them. Thank you, God.” Not used to the idea of prayer, she tilted her head back uncomfortably and asked, “Am I totally screwing this up?”