After a few days of nothingness, I decided to spend the day with Clarissa again. We met at breakfast, most people were out today because it was one of our days when you could be taken into town and spend the day shopping or doing whatever you wanted. Very few of us stayed behind. But at breakfast it was us and a few counselors. Clarissa for some reason continued to steal my eggs, so I would steal pieces of her waffles. "Hey!" She complained as I grabbed the last piece on her plate. She quickly leaned across and grabbed the last bit of egg I had. I sighed and smiled as I drank my coffee. She grinned and looked over at the table of the counselors. Brendon raised his cup in salute to me. I nodded and turned back to Clarissa who had taken my toast as well. I scoffed and threw my hands up in disbelief.

"Alright, you promised me something a few days ago, and today there's no one here. So I'm gonna see you in shorts!" Clarissa declared. I rolled my eyes and she grabbed my hand dragging me towards my cabin. "Come on!" She shoved me towards my bag and I grabbed my shorts. I chuckled at her enthusiasm, but then remembered why I didn't wear shorts and changed quickly. When I stepped back into the room she looked at me and grinned, then saw what I'd been trying to hide and I could see her trying to hide her shock. "Yeah, they're pretty bad." Scars, covering my entire upper legs. "What happened?" I sighed and sat down with Clarissa on my bed. "It's a long story." She checked her watch. "I've got time." I shrugged and thought back a few years.

"It was four families ago, so five years. I had a lot of fun in that house, they were nice. But they had a son who was just off. He was a few years older than me and always came home smelling of weird stuff. Now I know it was drugs, and his parents knew nothing about it. He looked after me sometimes, but more often it was his older sister. She would warn me to not get too close, but I didn't understand why she would tell me this. Eventually he tried to make a move on me. I was eleven, I didn't know what to do. I called out for his sister and she came running upstairs. She shoved him off me and took me into the hallway, I could hear her yelling at him but I was so confused that I just curled into a ball and calmed down. She came out of his room and helped me to my room. After that I tried to avoid him, but it was hard. One day he caught me as I was leaving school and took me to where he and his gang were waiting. They burned me and beat me. He left me with these so I would never forget. After that I was moved to another family who beat me as well, they account for these." I pulled off my heavy sweater to reveal the loose undershirt underneath, and the scars that covered my shoulder blades. "That's just the light side of it, I prefer to not go into detail."

Clarissa nodded and I started pulling my sweater over my head again when she touched my shoulder blade and I stopped. "What are you..." She shushed me and took away my sweater. "You're going outside like this today. And I've got plans, so we're going through with them." I nodded and followed her outside, feeling exposed without long items of clothing covering most of my skin. Clarissa pulled me along until we reached an empty space. She reached behind the one tree that gave shade to the area and pulled out a picnic basket. Laying out the blanket, she pulled out so much food I didn't understand how it all fit in the basket. On top of it all she added a small bluetooth speaker that was playing some of the best music ever. For a while we snacked and sang along to the music. Then Clarissa pulled out another surprise.

"I thought you might like something small like this." I looked it over, so sleek. "What is it even?" Clarissa giggled and turned it on. "It's my old one, it still works beautifully. You can read books on here, people call them ereaders, I dunno." I looked down in awe of the object which contained both classic reads and some more popular books. I saw Twilight and cringed. "I hate that series." She looked at the book cover I was pointing to and nodded. "Too sappy, and just a stupid plot line in general." She shrugged and paused her music. "This is some kind of distraction. What's going on?" She sighed and looked at the ground. "I don't know, it's just you. There's something about you that I can't put my finger on." I wanted to reply saying I felt the same way, but I didn't. She was still searching for herself, and I would wait until she made a decision. "Oh, okay. Well, thanks so much for this." I scrolled through and hit the jackpot. "Holy crap it has Harry Potter!" She smiled, and I glanced over at her. "You have read those books right?" She shook her head and I gasped dramatically. "Come up here, sit with me and I'm gonna read to you." She giggled like a five year old and sat next to me at the tree.

"Chapter One: The Boy Who Lived. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere..."

We continued for hours, and got all the way to chapter eight. I looked up and saw Jesse running towards us and turned off the e-reader. "Hey you! How was your day?" He asked with a huge grin on his face. "Pretty good, how was yours?" He held up three bags of stuff and I rolled my eyes. "Tell me you spent your money on something worth buying." He started pulling out stuff and describing it, meanwhile I packed up some stuff until he stopped me. "You're wearing shorts, and that top. Why?" Clarissa chuckled. "I made her, she told me about her past and I dragged her out here before she could change back." Jesse smiled, but it was a sad smile. I had told Clarissa the light side of things, but Jesse knew the dark side too. "It suits you, you should wear that more often." I shrugged and pulled out the speaker again, and blasted Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy. Jesse immediately started singing along with Patrick. Clarissa grinned and came in at the chorus, and I joined in on the next verse.

When it was over we all started laughing, that was until I heard a groan close by and I sat up to see Harriet and her clique, Sadie right up front. "What the hell are you wearing?" I stood up and found Clarissa on one side of me and Jesse on the other. "What I want to wear for today." She looked me over and groaned. "That outfit really doesn't suit you, you do know that right?" I looked down and shrugged. "It was hot today, I decided to wear something lighter. And I think this does suit me quite well." Sadie began to walk towards me, but Jesse stopped her. "Jesse..." He stopped me with a look. "No, it's my turn." Clarissa took my arm and pulled me away, but I shook her off. "No! This is my fight! You can't hold me back." She turned me around so I was facing her. "I'm pulling you away from a fight you can't win yet. You need more time to build up a good defence. If you just go charging in you'll lose."

She grabbed the picnic basket that I had finished packing up and we turned around to see Jesse storming away. Sadie walked back to the group of girls who just huffed and walked away. "See? If you had been there worse things could have happened. Come on!" She pulled me away and towards the cabins, but we went to one I hadn't been to before. We went in and Clarissa shut the door. "This is...." She locked the door and turned around. "My humble abode." I walked around in awe. The walls were covered with posters and relics that some people had been searching for their whole lives. "Wow, is that really Mikey's guitar pick?" She nodded proudly and I just gazed around in awe. "You're awesome." She giggled and jumped onto her bed. "You are going to stay here tonight because tonight you're gonna keep reading me that book. No one will notice I promise." I sighed and nodded, picking up the gift she had given me. "We have to go back to my cabin and get some stuff." Clarissa got up and walked over to a small chest. "I took the liberty of doing that myself earlier when we were in your cabin. I had Brendon drop them off here." She pulled out my black skinny jeans and held them up like something I should worship. A small piece of paper fell out and I picked it up.

"What is that?" I shrugged and unfolded it. It was the paper Brendon had given to me...was it yesterday or the day before that? I couldn't remember but I quickly scanned the message. "Beatrice, we just wanted you to know that we hope you have a great summer, you seem to enjoy your summers there and that makes us happy. We'll see you halfway through in August. Sincerely, Joanne and David." I sighed and crumpled up the paper. I threw it into the garbage bin that was near the door and turned back to Clarissa. "Nothing important. So, where were we?" She relaxed a bit and grabbed the e-reader from me. "We were at the part where we were learning about Hogwarts, in the beginning of chapter eight." I nodded and sat down on the bed facing opposite her. I sighed and read over where I was and chuckled, knowing what was coming soon. "Okay, so we pick up at 'Even worse than Peeves'?" She nodded and I started reading.

It was around eight when my stomach growled like a lion and both of us broke out laughing. "Here." Clarissa pulled out a bag and handed me a box of chicken wings with potato wedges and my favourite barbeque dipping sauce. "Wow, you clearly planned this." She shrugged and opened her own box with similar contents. "Oh, I almost forgot." She pulled out a bottle of sparkling water and two glasses. "Here." I took a sip and grinned. "It's delicious." She smiled and we ate as I continued to read in between bites. After a little while I put down the e-reader and looked over at Clarissa. "What was today about?" She looked down at the floor and I could swear she was hiding a blush. "Riss? Please just answer this question. Was this a kind of date? If not then just tell me so I'm not getting the wrong idea." She looked up at me. "I honestly don't know. I think of it as kind of date, but....I don't know how to explain it." I nodded and slowly exhaled. "You're still...never mind. I leave it up to you to tell me when you discover what you are. But, honestly I would be happy if this were to be considered a date."

She smiled and looked out her window. "Get down!" I dropped to the floor and waited. She paced around and picked up random things then put then back down. When she looked back out she sighed and motioned for me to get back up. "Counselors doing their rounds. Just as long as they didn't see you, you'll be fine." I nodded and got back up onto the bed. Clarissa closed the shades and then turned back to me. "So...what do we do now?" I looked her straight in the eyes and shrugged. "What do you want to do?" She looked away and walked over to her desk and picked up a pair of something. "Here," she threw me one and I caught it discovering it was a Nintendo 3DS, "multiplayer on a game?" I shrugged and opened it to Pokemon Ruby. "Okay, yes." She nodded and we got started.

An hour later we were in a heated debate. I'd been able to load up my old profile so I was already quite experienced. "Trade me your Rapidash for my Leafeon, please." She sighed and accepted the deal and I pumped my fist in the air. "You don't know how long I've waited to get my hands on a Rapidash." She shrugged and I watched as she walked off towards the mountains. "Oh don't be like that, what are you missing from your ideal hit team?" She looked up at me. "Honestly? Some kind of legendary Pokemon, one of those would be amazing." I chuckled. "You can't just summon up a....a...huge legendary Pokemon and capture it!" I watched her movements on my map and saw where she was heading. "No, Clarissa that's suicide!" She scoffed and I hurried the other way, I knew what I wanted, and I knew where to find it. "Have fun with that!" I said as I let out my Dragonite and flew off towards another location. "It's almost 11:00, we should get to bed." I sighed and saved my game, then put the 3DS on the nightstand.

"Just so you know, today gave me a whole new perspective of you." Clarissa said as she turned off her light. I chuckled and rolled over. "You do realize that's a song title? If it makes you feel any better I feel the same way." She sighed and rolled over. "Good night Beatrice." I smiled to myself. "Good night Clarissa." I muttered and with that I fell into a dreamless sleep.