⌚ 6:00 AM ON THE DOT

Grace, as promised, doesn't fall from the top bunk today.

Instead, she's caught herself halfway to the ground so she's doing this sort of hanging / clawing herself up thing and consequently kicks El on the face in the process. El was asleep, despite hearing the annoying blare of the horn, but she's awake now.

"Help me up, will you?" Grace shrieks, her legs flailing in every direction but up.

El turns to keep her face out of the range of Grace's soft feet (is that even possible? To have soft feet?) and mumbles, "it's two feet from the ground, Grace. I think you can handle that."

Grace growls, finally managing to pull herself up and mutter some nonsense about her gym membership being good for something. El thinks all those hours she spent in the gym really decreased her brain size, though, as Grace has spent five minutes trying to get back up to the top bunk, but soon realizes that she has to get back down to get ready. El doesn't hesitate to laugh maniacally when Grace crawls down the ladder and stomps to the bathroom.

Once El hears Grace turn the tap and the shower sputter out a steady current of water, she locks the cabin door and brings out Grace's calamine lotion which has been tucked beneath her pillow the whole night. Looking furtively at the bathroom, she pulls her underwear down to her calves and twists the bottle of calamine open. She applies a dollop of it onto the 'affected area' as the bottle states, sighing in relief when the itch numbs slightly.

The current of water coming from the bathroom stops abruptly.

"Shit!" El hisses as she twists the cap of the bottle back on and tucks the calamine under her pillow again. She's barely put her underwear back on when Grace emerges from the bathroom in a purple towel.

"What were you doing?" Grace raises a wet eyebrow. She smells like vanilla, El notes. Not like that matters.

"Nothing," El manages in a cold tone, but her neck is feeling awfully warm. She loathes Grace so much god can she just stop staring?

Grace's eyebrow only hikes further up her forehead. She shifts, adjusting her towel a bit. "Whatever," Grace gives her that cocky smirk that she's seen so much of back in high school. "Shower's ready, Elizabeth."

"Fuck off," El mutters, grabbing a Camp Ashwood tee shirt and her second pair of shorts (she'll have to do laundry soon) on her way to the bathroom. Her head is pounding as she shuts the door behind her and turns the tap back on.

Grace is cackling from the other side of the door like a hyena and El wouldn't mind strangling her. She'd actually really like to do that.

⌚ 7:15 AM

"What's this supposed to be again?" El pokes at the pile of meat that smells suspiciously of feet on the tray in front of her.

"It's supposed to be corned beef," Louise says in distaste.

"But?" El knows by her tone of voice, there's more to it.

"It's actually a mistake," Louise adds.

El glances around the Campfeteria, looking to see if anyone is somehow enjoying their breakfast. She can see the Woods thoroughly gorging their meals, while the Ashes are practically choking this corned beef down. And some boys (predictably) are catcalling girls, telling them to "get that meat down!" or that "it's hard but it's really good!" or even to "suck it up and swallow!" Absolutely disgusting.

"I've actually never tried this," El doesn't know whether the frown on her face is due to the poor excuse for corned beef in front of her or to the most sickening group pre-pubescent boys she's ever come across.

"It's not really that bad...at its best."

"That really makes me want to it eat it," El drops her fork onto the tray and pushes it away from her.

"You better eat it," Finn sets his tray down on the table before sitting beside El. He nudges her and nods towards the opposite end of the table, where Isaac and Luke are stuffing their faces full of the meat. "I mean, they look like they're enjoying it."

El can't be even more disgusted than she is already.

"Just eat a little, El," Louise manages through a mouthful she's forced herself to ingest. "You need it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you're thin as a fucking stick," Grace says, sitting herself on the other side of Finn.

El finds that Grace doesn't have a pile of corned beef on her tray but instead perfectly good looking pancakes and fruit. "Why aren't you eating it?" she asks, deciding to ignore Grace's remark completely.

"Daddy pulled a little strings here and there so I wouldn't have to eat that," Grace replies in distaste before piercing a strawberry with her fork and popping it into her mouth. She makes a show of humming and licking her lips and she's incredibly annoying she's really getting on El's goddamn nerves.

"That's -" but before El can finish, she receives a kick in the shin from Louise who's shooting her a look that says don't even try. El scowls.

"Just eat, Elizabeth," Finn is already done with his corned beef. How is he already done with his corned beef.

"I really don't want to, Finnegan."

"Touché."

El starts to reply, but as she opens her mouth to say something, her tongue is met with a forkful of the corned beef that suspiciously smells like feet. She finds out it also tastes like feet. So she spits it out, causing the other counselors to gag because the beautiful substance that she just spit out is in their bodies.

"What the hell was that?" El demands after a gulp of water.

Grace snorts, shooting Louise a congratulatory look. Are they ganging up on her again?

"I told you to eat," Louise shrugs, finishing off her corned beef and El knows that Louise isn't being a bitch on purpose.

El growls because she really hates corned beef and Grace, too, so she reaches over Finn and grabs a pancake from Grace's tray, promptly tearing half of it with her teeth and chewing it up, her cheeks like a squirrel's. And El doesn't know whether it's the sheer terror, disgust and contempt on Grace's face or the fluffy sweetness of the pancake, but it's so much better than corned beef.

⌚ 1:00 PM

"Okay, so this morning, I let you slack off and sit around by the lake when you were supposed to practice for our basketball match against Cabin G today," El tells Cabin A when they're on their way to the basketball court a mile into the woods, which El remembers being a place where her old cabin triumphed against the Woods. "Don't tell Lionel I let you do that," she adds as an afterthought, holding a branch out of the way of the girls.

Brittany ducks under El's arm, simultaneously swooping her blonde hair into a ponytail. Her smug expression reminds El of Grace's, so she kind of wants to slap Brittany's pretty little face. "Don't worry," she smirks. "We don't need that shit."

"Don't swear," El warns the thirteen year old as the rest of Cabin A passes under El's arm (it helps that she's slightly taller than average). "Only I can fucking swear."

Brittany rolls her eyes, looping her arm through one of the members of her posse (that's Sophie, right?), trotting on towards the basketball court.

The basketball court, El snorts, that doesn't look like a basketball court. Sure, the hoops are still there and so are the (very faded) lines on the ground. But she can barely see them as they've been exposed to the elements and they're practically covered in moss and thin vines and dirt and mud. In between cracks of the cemented court, multiple clumps of grass have sprouted. It basically looks like Bigfoot and his bros made themselves at home and played here whenever camp was empty: Pretty but not really actually in a slightly unsettling way.

"Ready to lose again, Cabin A?" Will, the counselor of Cabin G, grins, holding the branch out of the way of the Cabin G boys, just as El did a few minutes ago.

If Will is another dick like Isaac, El will just -

"How's it goin', El?" he taunts after directing his boys to do a few more drills while Cabin A watches and drools over the male specimen they seem to have not seen before. (Note the oozing sarcasm.) But there's a teasing glint in Will's eye, unlike Isaac's; pure fire and wickedness. Maybe Will won't be as dickish.

"Well," El says, gesturing to the girls gawking at the boys passing the basketball between themselves, "not too well, I think."

"It's your first time," Will shrugs, then tells Cabin G to pass the ball amongst themselves.

El narrows her eyes, unsure of whether Will is genuine or not. "But not really. I've been here for like, three years."

"Okay," Will says. "Your first time as a counselor. Trust me, last year I lost half the shit my cabin was doing. You probably won't do too good until next week, tops."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," El replies, maybe a little bit cynically (fine, very cynically. El is just a cynical ray of sunshine).

Before Will has the chance to reply, Lionel bursts through the narrow pathway that both cabins passed through awhile ago, barely missing the low branch in his way. "Okay! Cabins," he glances at the clipboard in his hand, "A and G! Ready to play?"

⌚ 2:18 PM

El knows that Cabin A wasn't ready to play, not in the slightest, but she didn't think they would be this bad. (And that's putting it lightly.)

She expected that they'd know how to throw a ball. Or how to dribble one. Or maybe even just how to hold one. But no, they're flinching and complaining about breaking their nails and getting sweaty. This, if El recalls correctly, is the entire fucking point of basketball - or sports in general.

Before she knows it, the first game is over and Cabin G is winning with 169 points to 13. This looks like it's going to be absolutely phenomenal. El can already hear Grace ridiculing her while inspecting her perfect manicure and El is not going to have that. So when Lionel tells each cabin to switch teams, El gives the greatest pep talk she's ever given (up until right now, these pep talks have been a neat little zero): "Don't you fuck this up, okay. You're gonna win this shit. Got it?" But the six Cabin A girls who are about to play look like they're about to menstruate out their pants (that might as well happen for all El knows). She manages to shoot them these semi-reassuring grimaces and thumbs up.

Something unbelievable happens.

Cabin A loses even harder than the last game with the score at 180 - 11. El doesn't even spare a glance at the last six girls who aren't holding the orange ball right when Lionel blows his whistle. Instead of watching her girls fail again (and yes, they are going to fail. There is no other way to go about it now), she sits beside Will who's propped up against an oak tree and is grinning at the game like an idiot.

"Shut up," El says immediately upon setting her butt down onto the damp ground, careful not to get her poison ivy irritated.

"What?" Will says smugly, keeping his eyes on the game. Will isn't smug like Isaac, though. El can see a playful little smile tugging at his lips. This makes her feel less like she wants to shove a paintbrush up his dick.

El mutters something about Will being kind of (as Mari put it last night, referring to Isaac) and A-class douchebag and the said A-class douchebag laughs as Cabin G scores again.

⌚ 4:30 PM

Lionel blows his whistle, signaling the end of the final game. The score stands at 174 - 16, and El is dismayed.

"Dismayed!" she screeches at the fourteen somber-looking girls.

"What does that even mean?" Tiffany (Tiffany? Tiffany.) sighs.

El wants to wring her pretty little thirteen year old neck, despite her being slightly fond of her and the others. Lionel doesn't give her that opportunity when he announces that Cabin G has won. As if that wasn't already obvious.

And Cabin G is howling like a bunch of dying chihuahuas and chancing and wagging their asses at Cabin A. El can see that the girls are caught in between punching them in the balls and crying. El probably looks the same.

Will sees it (he'll deny it later but he totally sees it) and he shushes his cabin, telling them to head back and "I'll meet you there in a few."

El mutters the same to Cabin A; they head back the other way, leaving Will, El and Lionel at the moss-covered outdoor basketball court.

Will chooses to busy himself with shooting some hoops at the opposite end of the court while El counts the leaves on the ground, avoiding Lionel's gaze.

"El," Lionel starts, tucking his clipboard under his arm, grey eyebrows drawn together.

"I'm sorry," El murmurs to no one in particular.

"El," Lionel says again and Will glances back at them.

She will not cry. "I'm such a stupid fucking counselor. You know, our cabin never lost when I was a camper and here I am, messing everything up." And El knows she shouldn't feel so hung up about this when she didn't even want to do this in the first place. She shouldn't even care but hey, here she is, caring a whole lot and on the verge of tears, acting like a baby.

"It's just been two days," Lionel gives her a small smile and El almost forgets how Lionel can be a misogynistic ass sometimes. "It's completely normal -"

"To lose?" El is not losing it. No. She can't be. "I've lost both of the activities, Lionel! Surely it wouldn't be too hard to lose all the rest?"

El barely feels Will's hand on her back and it catches her off guard, but he's rubbing slow circles into her back and saying "he's right, you know."

"That's easy for you to say," El retorts, yet she lets Will continue rubbing her back because she can actually breathe now.

"Wait it out," Lionel taps his clipboard, smile brighter. "You'll see. You'll get better, Elizabeth."

"El," Will says in unison with her. (This is when El decides he is no where near Isaac's level of dickishness.)

"El."

⌚ 9:00 PM

Before El got to Cabin A, Finn appeared out of nowhere and told her to meet him "by the place you got your poison ivy." She doesn't even remember what she told Cabin A when she got there; she as too flustered to know. (Wait, flustered? No way.) All she knows was that Cabin A looked less like they wanted to jump off Ashwood Point (yes, that's the sixty foot cliff) and more exhausted, which was a relief.

Now, it's dark and the crickets are chirping and the lake is glistening and El hasn't eaten anything as her stomach is full of metaphorical butterflies.

She sits down on the soft patch of grass - and it is grass, she made sure to check - with her legs apart because her poison ivy is just as persistent as Joey Martin in middle school. (If it helps, Joey Martin once covered her room in pictures of him captioned "girlfriend much?"). El glances around, expecting Finn to approach from behind her, big grin and blonde hair radiating warmth. Finding no one, she turns back to the lake, counting the stars being reflected onto its glassy surface.

"What..." she breathes when she spots little ripples coming from the far left side of the lake. Upon squinting until her eyes are about to close, she finds it's a small boat coming in her direction. "Oh no," she groans quietly because it's Finn on the boat. Finn. She's going to be sick (that's in the best way possible).

"Hey!" he calls to her once he's within earshot.

She shushes him, glancing back at Cabin 5, from where she can hear Grace's and Sky's cackles.

He gives her that smile. That smile being the one that can melt the ice queen's heart. (Which has happened, hasn't it? Doesn't Grace have this huge crush on Finn?) Finn rows quickly over to her, his arms moving quickly.

"Oh no," El whimpers once more when Finn climbs out of the boat like he should not be sweaty like that.

"Hey," he repeats, in a much quieter voice this time. "I see your poison ivy is still going pretty strong."

He nods to her spread legs. El doesn't bother to put them together but instead beckons Finn to pull her up so she can stand next to him, almost half a foot shorter. "You're gross," she says and when Finn is looking away, tugs at her underwear to please make it stop itching please please.

"You think all boys are gross," Finn grins at her, leaning onto the oar.

El doesn't like that. No thank you. She looks at the boat instead, anything just to not look at him. "Generalizing your gender, Finnegan?"

Finn snorts. "Not even close, Elizabeth."

"Don't call me that."

"You called me that first."

"Elizabeth?"

"Ha ha ha, you're really funny."

"I try my best."

She chooses the wrong time to look back at Finn, her gaze being met with his, mid-laugh. Sirens are going off in her head; abort abort abort. It's been three days. Doesn't the cliche camp love story start at like day fifteen? Abort fucking mission.

"You okay?" Finn asks, a look of concern painted on his face.

"Hm? Yes," El snaps her eyes away and finds them trained onto Finn's little rowboat again. There are words painted onto the side of it, but it's too dark for El to read them. "Great. I'm great. Not really. But whatever."

Finn cocks his eyebrows, a smirk on his lips, like he knows.

El is thankful for the darkness (of the night, and yes, of her skin as well) because she can just imagine that her face is submerged in lava and it wouldn't feel much different from now. "So, this is your boat, huh?" she asks louder than she needs to be, just to change the topic.

Finn's eyebrows only rise farther up his forehead but he obliges. "Built her myself. I was actually thinking of taking you on a ride."

"I've been around the lake before, if that's what you're asking."

"You know what I mean."

She does, so she lets Finn help her onto the tiny boat. It smells like sweat and grass and rain. She takes a deep breath. Finn tosses the oar into the boat, narrowly missing El by a few inches, then pushes the boat into the water, hopping in.

"I hate boats," El says once Finn is rowing steadily.

The boy looks personally offended by this. "Not my boat. You won't hate S.S. Taylor."

"Taylor?" El hums. "Why Taylor?"

Finn simply says, "that name's special to me," and just as El did a few minutes ago, he changes the subject with about as much subtlety as a gun. "But hating boats? Boats, El?"

"Boats, Finn."

"Why?"

"I just...don't like them. They're unstable and unsafe and we aren't even wearing life jackets. Boats," she shudders.

"So you'd hate it if I..." and then Finn lets go of the oars, planting his feet firmly onto the damp floor of the boat.

"Don't even think about it," El warns, gripping the sides of the boat, her knuckles a stark white. He wouldn't -

Finn stands up.

⌚ 11:06 PM

"I fucking hate you," El's teeth are chattering so hard against each other, she can barely understand herself.

But Finn does. He chortles, screeching, "SIT DOWN, SIT DOWN, YOU'RE ROCKING THE BOAT! SIT DOWN, SIT DOWN, YOU'RE ROCKING THE BOAT!"

"Shut up," El coughs out (she says "shut up" way too often for her own liking). There's no point in trying to stay warm when she's soaking wet of cold lake water.

"It's your fault for flailing around so much," Finn says unapologetically, finally letting the boat slide onto the shore. El notices that Cabin 5 is dark and quiet.

"What time is it?" El asks reluctantly, slightly afraid of what Finn's answer will be.

"A little past eleven," Finn replies, looking up from his watch.

"Shit," El grumbles. "There goes my hope of getting sleep tonight. I'll wake up late and then Cabin A will be late then we'll be late to the activity then they won't be ready and then I'll be a failure, Christ.

El actually forgets that Finn is right behind her until he places a ginger hand on her shoulder. "That won't happen."

"Jesus, of course it will!" El whisper-screams. "Everyone, except Grace, is like 'El, you're doing great! It's okay to make mistakes!' but it's not and I'm making so much mistakes and Cabin A is gonna hate me."

"You're such a drama queen," Finn says. "Just wait it out, okay?"

El might as well have been slapped clean across the face with what Finn said.

"Look," he sighs, and continues in a less harsh tone. "You don't have to be such a pessimist all the time."

"I'm not trying to be a pessimist, I'm just a - "

"Realist?" Finn scoffs. "I told you, wait it out. You might be wrong. Sure wouldn't be the first time, right?"

"How would you know?"

Finn, it looks like, has chosen to ignore anything that comes out of El's mouth. "And if you're worried about Cabin A hating you, that won't happen. I can see that, trust me."

"Why are you so nice?" El groans.

"Contrary to popular belief, Elizabeth, not all boys are dicks."

Doesn't seem like that with Isaac. And also fuck you for calling me that. But like, you're kind of gorgeous so it's okay. "Good night, Finnegan!" El rolls her eyes, turning to her cabin, having had enough of Finn's mediocre attempt at sass.

She can hear Finn's small snicker as she stalks off and she tries (read: fails) to keep her heart from beating like the bass in a dubstep track. (Did she say that right? Isn't that what all the "cool kids" are listening to? Is she hip yet?)

When she shuts the door quietly behind her, she's met with pitch black darkness and Grace's "sleep murmurs," as she's decided to call them. El heaves a sigh, going on to grab another extra large tee shirt and tiptoing to the bathroom. Inside, she pries her sweat-and-lake-water-soaked clothing from her body and tosses it into her laundry bag (that Grace deemed necessary). She slathers some calamine lotion onto the poison ivy area (she doesn't like to refer to it as her crotch after what happened yesterday), and wonders how she didn't itch as bad when she was in the boat with Finn when she should've been dying painfully. Next, she slips on a fresh pair of underwear, this time with little blue polka dots on it and puts on her tee shirt. She loosens her hair from its ponytail so it just sweeps across her shoulders as she steps out of the bathroom.

El is practically blinded by the huge contrast between the brightness now and the darkness she had come into awhile ago. And in the midst of that brightness, is Grace practically glowing with her still somehow perfect hair and skimpy nightgown. Her arms are on her hips and her pinkish lips are turned downwards into a small frown.

"Where have you been?" she demands.

El finds her chest tighten ever so slightly but she retorts in an equally hard tone, "why would you care?"

Grace's expression falters for a brief second, her neck turning a light shade of pink (from anger, El assumes). "I heard you and Finn outside."

El opens her mouth to say something, yet she closes it when she finds that Grace is gripping her nightgown to the point where it's about to rip off her body. So she says nothing.

"What were you doing?" Grace says in a cool tone and that's weird because everything else about her right now is far from cool.

"Finn took me for a ride on his boat," El replies. She has to try extra hard to bite back a smile at Grace's expression.

Grace gulps before letting out a glass-shattering laugh. "How sweet."

"Are you jealous?" El blurts out and she completely regrets it; Grace's neck turns almost as dark as her red nightgown.

"As if!" Grace snorts. "If it makes you feel special, then I'm all for it."

"That sarcasm of yours really grows on people, doesn't it?"

Grace narrows her eyes at El. "Whatever. At least I have taste in underwear. Did you buy that thing when you were six years old?"

Now El can feel her neck heating up. She tugs her tee shirt so the hem of it is near her knees. "Your insults are pathetic."

"You're pathetic."

"Exhibit A."

Grace rolls her eyes then grips onto the ladder, hoisting herself up onto the top bunk and it isn't difficult for El to see that Grace's underwear is almost as ridiculous as the thong she found in Cabin A yesterday when Grace's nightgown is that skimpy.

"Turn off the lights, will you?" Grace says through her pillow. "I hope you're up for that; I mean, you lost your activity today, right? At least be useful in that sense."

El is thoroughly exhausted. She doesn't care for Grace's less than tasteful insults so she does turn off the lights and she climbs into bed.

________________________

a/n: finn is literally like fiyero i love him 5ever i need him in my life but his scene with el sickens me #sorrynotsorry
(for mira bc she made the gorgeous cover and she got the hsm reference in chapter 1 and basically she's incredible)
tHE TENSIONS ARE HIGH AND MY WRITING IS UGLY