There are few people in this world I can stand and even fewer that I actually like, so it's no surprise that my new roommate fits into neither of these categories and is one of the many people that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because he's from Indiana— which has got to be the lamest state in the entire fucking country except for, I don't know, Nebraska or something; or maybe it's because he snuck a Walkman into camp (and hid it under the floorboards, so original), and I just know that the counselors are going to find it and blame me for breaking the rules— because, seriously, if you're comparing me to some freckled kid from Beauville, Indiana, who are you going to be more suspicious of? Whatever it is, I'm definitely not enjoying life with my new roommate. And I really wish that he would stop trying to talk to me.
I push myself off my bed and walk over to where my duffel bags are scattered across the floor. I unzip the larger one and carefully place Jesse's Superman comic inside. I read it on my red-eye over, and I've been trying to reread it at camp, but I'm having trouble focusing. The smaller duffel bag I don't touch, or even look at. The contents of that bag are reserved for emergency situations only.
Once I'm done, I push all of my bags under the cot and shrug on my jacket. Then I lace up my Buck's— they're already covered in grass stains, gross— and make my way over to the door.
This makes Finn perk up. "Where're you going?" he asks, way too eagerly, like he's half expecting for me to invite him to tag along.
"None of your fucking business," I snap, and slam the door shut on his stupid, wide, brown eyes.
I walk all the way to the horse pastures without seeing a single counselor. I thought there would be more security at a camp designed to rehabilitate teenage miscreants, but I'm not definitely not complaining. The last thing I want is a bunch of high-strung adults constantly breathing down my neck.
I guess I could get use to this, I think to myself, as I lean against the fence and stare out across the grassy meadow. I only think this for a brief moment, of course, because soon I remember that Sabrina sent me to this camp and that I'm obligated to hate it.
God, I need to stop thinking about Sabrina. All she's done for the last few days is make my life nothing but hell. For starters, she made me fly in economy class on the way here— as if going to this camp wasn't punishment enough. The flight was horrible, partially because I saw a man actually trimming his nails in his seat, and also because it's how I got my black-eye. I was lying when I told Finn that I was punched in a fight. In reality, I got my black-eye when some stupid woman's luggage slide out of the compartment and clipped me in the face. The flight attendants gave me some ice wrapped in a napkin and also an extra packet of peanuts, but I could tell that they didn't really care. They probably see shit like that all the time in the hellscape of economy class.
A roan horse roams past me, puffing white clouds of air out of its nostrils. For some reason, it reminds me of Margot, probably because she loves horses; her family used to live on a farm before they relocated to Manhattan. She shows pictures of the place to Jesse and I sometimes....
And suddenly I'm thinking about how I never really got to say goodbye to Margot, or Jesse, because Sabrina kindly intervened and told them both to fuck off before I got the chance. I never got to explain to Margot what really happened, and it's not like Jesse can tell the full story. He wasn't in the car. Or in the hotel lobby. My friends have no idea what's happening to me and I can't even call them to explain. This is so fucking unfair.
I scowl down at the splintering wood fence, a fiery feeling of anger surging in my chest. Then, just like clockwork, my eye starts twitching like I've had too much coffee to drink. I slap a hand across my face as if I can physically dispel the twitching, but of course this does nothing to help, and my eye just keeps blinking open and shut like a broken piece of factory equipment.
My anger swells inside me, turning red-hot, and I whirl around and kick the fence so hard the wooden beams rattle. The roan horse lifts it head to stare at me. I kick the fence again, and again, again. It's not exactly cathartic, but at least it feels like I'm doing something; like my anger is going somewhere, not just being stashed away to simmer behind my rib cage.
"Bullshit," I say, kicking the fence again. "Bullshit!"
The fence shudders, and memories flash before my eyes: I'm in the Cadillac again, and the keys are dangling from my fingers, one foot pressed against the gas pedal— crash. It must have been some miracle that I didn't break all the bones in my body on impact, but I guess the world decided that I deserved some luck for once in my life.... Another kick. That stupid car. It was so fucking beautiful, and I destroyed it without a second thought. For Sabrina. Who sent me to this camp in return. All of my actions for nothing; all of my sacrifices for nothing. I won't get to see my best friends for the rest of the summer, but at least I've got this fence to kick!
I draw my leg back, gathering the force for another kick— and then a hand clamps down, hard, on my arm.
"It would be a shame if you broke the fence, seeing as I'm the one who built it."
My eyes snap upwards. The hand is still on my arm. The hand, which is connected to a tall, sun-browned man leaning over me, clad in a blue shirt with the Lightlake logo— the symbol of a compass rose— printed over the heart. A shirt that can only mean one thing: the man is a fucking camp counselor.
"What the—" I begin, before cutting myself off. (Probably not the best move to swear at the counselors. Yet.) The counselor just stares at me, his deep-set blue eyes surprisingly mournful for a man who can't be any older than thirty. "Who are you?"
"My name is Wolseley," the counselor says, releasing me from his grip. "You must be Ronan Lockwood."
"How do you know my name?"
Wolsey stares sadly down at the wooden fence. He looks like he's mourning the death of a dear friend. "I know all of the campers' names. I'm the groundskeeper here," he says. "That's my fence you've been kicking."
"Should I make my apology to you, or the fence?"
Wolsey turns his forlorn stare back towards me. "I could give you a mark for this," he says, as if I'm already supposed to know what a "mark" is. I hope it's not some sort of corporeal punishment the counselors use to keep us campers in line. "But I won't. You remind me of me, a little, when I was younger. I know what it's like to be angry like you."
I try not to roll my eyes. "Oh boy," I mutter. "Here comes the big inspirational speech."
"When I was your age, I was a camper at Lightlake, too," Wolsley continues.
"Wait, really?" This isn't the cliché nonsense that I was expecting. Not at all. My curiosity gets the best of me and I ask, "Why?"
"I'll spare you the story; you probably don't want to hear it. But there were lots of reasons. I was a bad kid." Wolsey's eyes turn, if possible, even droopier. I wonder what terrible things this guy could have done— sobbed too hard during Bambi, maybe. "I had a lot of anger inside of me, but back then, there weren't as many fences around for me to take it out on."
"Yes... I suppose it was," says Wolsey thoughtfully. "I guess I always knew that I belonged back here, at Lightlake; it was only a matter of time before I returned and asked the Director— you'll meet the Director soon— for a job. I'm pretty handy, so she made me groundskeeper. It was the proudest day of my life when I got this job."
"And what exactly does the job of groundskeeper entail, besides building fences for campers to kick?"
"Well, I keep the camp in good order, for the most part. I feed the horses, and clear the trails, and fix up the cabins when they start to fall apart. Sometimes I'm the electrician, sometimes the plumber. I used to be a lifeguard at the lake as well, but after what happened in '69, I—" Wolsey's soft voice staggers to a halt. "What was your question, again, Ronan?"
No wonder this place is such a dump— Wolsey is the only person around to repair it. "I think you already answered it," I say.
"Oh. Good. I can be so forgetful sometimes. You should probably head back to your cabin, Ronan. We have Initiation soon."
"Initiation?"
"Yes. Initiation. You'll see soon enough."
"Oh. Okay. That was some really helpful information."
Wolsey smiles sadly at me, and I feel my eye start to twitch frantically. "It was nice meeting you, Ronan. I hope that you find something other than my fence to kick in the future."
I storm back to the cabin in an ever worse mood than before, throwing open the door so ferociously that Finn actually filches. I give him a savage look— which makes him flinch again— and throw myself down on the bed so hard that the frame rattles. I hope it breaks. Then I could make Wolseley come fix it, purely out of spite. (And then I'd break it again.)
"Ronan?" Finn begins hesitantly. "The counselors brought us shirts while you were gone." He's eating a granola bar now, in tiny, nervous bites. (Makes me realize that I'm hungry— I haven't eaten anything since New York. I bet the food here is shit, though.) "We're supposed to wear them at all times."
"Why did I pack so many shirts, then, if they were just going to assign us ones?" I demand. "That's fucking bullshit."
"I don't know. But the counselors did sound pretty serious about the dress code." Finn points at a blue lump near the bottom of my bed. "Those are your shirts. They didn't know what size you wanted, so I just told them large."
"Large? Are you kidding me? I'm a medium!"
Finn just shrugs. "If you wanted the right size, maybe you shouldn't have walked out like that."
My temper crest likes a tsunami, and all of the anger that's been building up inside of me since that fateful cocktail party suddenly comes crashing down on top of me. "Maybe you should keep your mouth shut and not make stupid comments about things you don't understand," I snarl. "I didn't ask for your opinion and I certainly don't want it. So you can shut your mouth, Jimmy Chitwood, because I can assure you now that whatever you think you want to say to me, I will give zero shits about. Got it?"
Finn glares down at the floor, his cheeks a pale shade of pink. "It was just a mistake, Ronan. You don't have to go biting my head off."
"I'm not wearing those shirts," I tell him, except I'm not really telling it to him— it's more like I'm making a declaration to the entire camp that I'm not going to take their silly dress code or all of their other rules designed to control and restrain us seriously. "I'm not."
"You know, for somebody who said that this camp is their last chance, you're acting a lot like you want to get kicked out."
"Fuck it. I have my own back-up plan. If they want to kick me out of camp for not wearing their stupid matching shirts, then so be it. I'm not wearing a cotton-blend shirt that's a size too large and nobody is going to make me change my mind. All the counselors here can kiss my ass."
Finn gives me a look. "You do realize that you sound crazy, right?"
I throw my head back onto the pillows and fume up at the ceiling. "You don't even want to know how crazy I really am, Indiana. This is only the tip of the motherfucking iceberg. There's a whole ocean of crazy inside of me. Just you wait and see."