⌚ 6:00 AM ON THE DOT

El is no longer surprised to find Grace Upland sprawled on the floor when she wakes up to that blasted horn.

"A little help here?"

"You wish."

⌚ 7:15 AM

It's kind of unsettling to see two decent sausages and fluffy scrambled eggs on El's tray after yesterday's corned beef incident.

Before El has the choice to tuck into her food, though, Grace sets her tray down across from her. And what more but a chocolate croissant with strawberry preserves and a yogurt cup is on it. The previously decent sausages and scrambled eggs seem like two logs of feces and curdled piss to El now.

"So, Elizabeth," Grace says nonchalantly, somehow managing to lick yogurt off her spoon and speak eloquently,"what are your plans for losing today?"

El has always had these moments when she's blinded by her fury so she isn't able to control what she does. This includes what her mouth spews out. Now is one of those moments. "I don't know, Grace. I should ask you."

She's pretty proud that she was able to retort something as clever as that within the time it happened. El just forgot the tiny detail that "I haven't lost yet," Grace scoffs.

"Y-yeah, right," El says but in the recesses of her mind, she knows Grace wouldn't pass up an oportunity to brag about something like not losing.

"You don't believe me?" Grace shrugs, slicing a bit-sized piece from her croissant. "Ask everyone."

Up to this point, the rest of the camp counselors seated around the breakfast table have been silently chewing their sausages and eggs. El raises an eyebrow at them, her eyes begging "please tell me she's lost at least one activity please please."

Luke and Jason smirk at each other (El swears they've been playing footsie under the table this whole time), then shake their heads at El. Will only deepens the wound when he says, "Grace won against them both, El. Sorry."

"Sorry," Grace repeats with a smirk.

"Grace," Louise mumbles through her coffee. "Lay off her."

"You're defending her now?" Grace demands, her eyes widening.

"She's my friend!"

"What am I then?"

It's only for a fleeting second, but the table goes completely quiet. Mari and Sky glance at each other and quickly return to their food. Finn has hints of a smile painted on his face. His gaze bounces between Louise and Grace.

"Well?" Grace clears her throat. (Her cheeks are pinker than their usual rosy complexion; is she blushing?)

Louise sighs. "You're my friend, too. But so is El. Don't you think this whole treat-El- like-a-piece-of-shit thing is going too far?"

El feels a little pitter patter of affection for Louise at her words. She makes sure to send Louise a look of gratitude.

"Oh no," Grace chuckles, all traces of the flush on her cheeks evaporated. "This whole  treat-El- like-a-piece-of-shit thing is just getting started."

Louise looks like she's about to say something again but El cuts her off, "you know, Grace, no matter how many times you win, but I lose, then we all lose. I'm sure you don't want the Woods to win again this year?" She practically spits the scrambled egg in her mouth at Grace's face.

"Well, if you'd win, then maybe I wouldn't have to insult you."

"But you love insulting me."

"Trust me, Elizabeth, I have a lot more things to insult you about than your ability to win. I mean, just look at that - "

"Oh," Isaac grins wickedly, clapping slowly. "This is so great. Ladies, keep doing that, will you? It makes it so much easier to beat your asses."

El doesn't like hating people, yet here are two people that make her blood boil to the point that it could actually make her bleed out of every orifice. She goes on to stab her other sausage as hard as she can, making deadly eye contact with Isaac. Her message is clear: "See this here sausage? Yeah, well it's a metaphor, bitch."

⌚ 9:26 AM

The fourteen girls are squealing like parrots (do parrots even - never mind) when El returns to their cabin, dragging a crate full of binoculars and birs encyclopedias for their (you guessed it) birdwatching later. Even birdwatching Camp Ashwood manages to make into a competition, which is why Cabin A will be trying to find more bird species than Cabin H. El recalls this to be extremely pointless, but she isn't telling Cabin A that. She wouldn't want to burst their bubble of excitement.

Oh, right, squealing like parrots.

"What's all the commotion about?" El asks, wiping at the sweat dripping from her brow.

More squealing ensues.

El notices thirteen girls are bunched together at the far right corner of the cabin, by Laura's bed, and Bianca (Bianca? BIanca. El knows names) isn't looking as eager as the  rest of them are.

"Girls?" El tries again. Nope. Still squealing.

She decides to go with the more effective approach so she kicks the wooden crate with her heavy hiking boot, resulting in a louder than necessary BANG and Cabin A finally shuts up.

"What's going on?" El approaches Laura's bed, albeit a bit cautiously. Excited pre-teen girls are a lot more dangerous than they seem.

To ask this, El learns, was a mistake. Now instead of squealing, there is sheepish giggling. El tries not to roll her eyes.

"Okay, okay, I'll tell her!" Brittany says in between giggles, her face becoming visible amidst the group. "Laura got a love letter!" She holds up a piece of creased notebook paper up for good measure.

"Give it back!" Laura whines. (Laura is very pretty. It's obvious why she's the first girl to get a love letter, with her chocolate brown hair and soft blue eyes.)

This time, El does roll her eyes. She knows this had to come eventually. But not this soon. (When it happened five years ago, a girl who El thought wasn't very pretty got a love letter about halfway through the summer.)

"Can I read it?" El holds out her open hand. (She might be curious; she really hasn't gotten a love letter before, much less read one.)

Brittany starts to hand El the piece of paper and El sees a bit of the illegible handwriting. But before she gets ahold of it, Laura intercepts it and holds the love letter above her head. "Ha!"

"I'm guessing I can't read it?" El shrugs.

Laura shakes her head triumphantly.

"I didn't want to, whatever," El grunts like her thirteen year old self would've.

Blushing, Laura balls the piece of paper up in her fist. She shoves it into the pocket of her horts. "That Cabin G boy is disgusting, anyway."

El snorts, tapping the crate with her boot again. "Everyone okay now? Any more violent reactions before I get started?"

"Zac is totally hot, Laura!" Maxine squeaks. El can sense that more squealing and/or giggling will take place so she puts her foot down. Literally. She hits her foot so hard against the crate, she'd be surprised if the binoculars inside haven't been shattered yet.

"Done?" El asks. Cabin A nods, little smiles playing on their lips. "Good. Now, you two. Jenna - "

"Jana."

"Jana and Michelle - "

"Michaela."

"Michaela. Right. Fuck. Could you please help me out in distributing these stupid encyclopedias?" El says sheepishly.

Jana and Michaela comply, passing the old yellowed books around so that each girl is holding one. Next, El tells them all to line up so she can give them their binoculars (also very old and dusty). "Guess what we're doing today!" El says, her voice cheerier than she feels.

"Birdwatching?" Jana asks unenthusiastically.

"Birdwatching!" then El drops the cheery facade and replaces it with a very hard tone. "Now I want you to read up. I want you to know every bird specie in the Southern Californian region by its size, color, shape, beak, feathers and call. I want you to memorize that book cover to cover. I want you to - "

"We want you to shut up," Brittany says.

"And I want you to win, but we all can't have what we want, can we?"

The way Brittany's face goes pink reminds El strikingly of Grace. El can only imagine the time that she'd be able to make Grace Upland as flustered as this. She predicts it will be glorious.

Despite herself, El smirks. "Read up. We have a cabin to beat."

⌚ 1:00 AM

"Birdwatching starts now!"

Immediately, every Cabin A girl opens their encyclopedias and holds their binoculars up to their eyes.

"Luke, El, I'm going to head over to Cabin B and Cabin I's paintball game," Lionel tells the two counselors. "I'll be back in...two hours?"

"Two hours," Luke affirms. El nods.

Lionel smiles, his eyes crinkling at the edges. When he disappears into the woods (the paintball field is half a mile through the woods; it's amazing that Lionel can cover that distance in the amount of time he does), Luke turns to El with a solemn expression on his freckled face. "Look, whatever happens in two hours, I just want you to know tha I'm still good for being friends."

"What?" El asks. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Luke's thin mouth is stretched into a line. "Isaac and Will told me that you turn into a bitch once you lose."

El lets out an amused cackle (Luke is slightly terrified). "I appreciae that you don't think I'm a bitch straight off."

A less terrfied Luke, seeing that it's now safe to, cracks a smile as well. "So far so good," he says.

"I'll go easy on you if you go easy on me," El says in the same serious tone that Luke used.

The boy splutters, "w-what?"

El snorts at her own (totally intentional) innuendo. "Do you guys really have to sexualize everything? Like, is all on your mind fucking women?"

"I think you're generalising too much," Luke raises an eyebrow. "I'd much rather fuck guys."

"Hm? Oh. Oh."

"Yeah."

"I messed that one up, didin't I?"

Luke shrugs, running a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. "Don't worry, it happens all the time."

El's eyebrows draw together. Great, now she sounds like an ignorant bitch. "Coming out indirectly? Luke - "

"Luke!" a boy from Cabin H calls from the top of a tree. "What the heck is this bird?"

"Peter, I swear to god if you're gonna flash me your dick, I'm chopping that tiny thing off!" Luke calls back.

El smirks and nudges him. (She figures Luke is a nice person. There's most likely been people who've been worse to him than El was.)

"Are you kidding me?" Luke whines. "I'm not into that sort of thing."

"Luke!" the boy cries again.

"I'm coming!" Luke says. "Get your head out of the gutter, Elizabeth. And you're saying guys sexualize everything."

El only grins at Luke, bids him bad luck and strolls to where Cabin A have situated themselves. While Cabin H has chosen to stick by the trees, El made sure to spread her fourteen girls out around the lake. Yes, they complained about the lack of shade and the lack of boys, but as Lionel declared that the activity would start, they brought their A-game (pun intended? Because they're Cabin A? Anyone?).

"Make sure you aren't sitting on poison ivy," El reminds them. It's pretty difficult to though, as the girls are peppered all around the large lake. El almost considers rowing around it if only she didn't despise boats.

In the span of four days, the grass surrounding the lake has gotten significantly longer; their blades are already grazing the middle of El's calves when only on her first day here, they'd reached her ankles (like, what kind of fertilizer does Camp Ashwood use?). Her hiking boots make suction cup-like sounds as she trudges on the muddy ground. By the rate she's sweating, she might as well be adding a few pints to the lake. A quack is heard from behind her.

"Did you write down the duck?" El asks Bianca, the girl closest to her.

"Am I stupid?" Bianca says. "Of course I did. Scientific name and everything."

El decides that her crotch doesn't itch that bad so she sits herself down next to Bianca. But it does. It itches and hurts and El wants to spring back up. Instead, she narrows her eyes at Bianca, so the twelve year old doesn't see her pulling at her shorts. "I'd much rather you write down that hummingbird than sass me, Bianca."

Bianca sticks her tongue out (and at least she's twelve so it's more socially acceptable), keeping it out at El while she scribbles "HUMMINGBIRD" down onto her scrap of paper.

Shutting her eyes, El leans onto her elbows, her shoulders touching her earlobes. If she thinks hard enough, she is the smae age as Bianca, sitting by the lake all alone. The sun would be beating down on her and she'd be squinting at her cabinmates who are a little way off, giggling and batting their eyelashes at the boys. El would merely scoff at them. Boys. She'd rather swim in the lake or make them lose than waste her breath on those creatures with penises. Swimming in the lake. God, El misses that.

"Hey," Bianca taps El's shoulder. "That's a quail, right?"

Any other person would easily identify that the small brown bird as a quail then go on to question what the hell a quail is doing in a summer camp. El, on the othr hand, simply nods along with a comment about it obviously being a quail and once Bianca scrawls the word onto her paper, she smirks to herself. It took El two years to finally realize that Lionel's been rigging the species of birds in Camp Ashwood (and she isn't sure it's exactly legal). Parrots aren't really that prominent in South Californian summer camps, are they? But look, one just landed on El's knee.

"Parrot," El says.

"Psittaciformes," Bianca nods. After she writes that down, she lets her piece of paper fall to the grass. She turns to El,expression suddenly solemn. "El, can I talk to you about something?"

"Yeah - yeah. Sure," El whispers, stroking the parrot's greenish feathers. It's kind of mandatory to drop your voice to a whisper when someone asks if they can talk about something.

"Promise not to tell anyone?" This is not the Bianca of a few minutes ago who sassed the hell out of El.

El gives her a lopsided grin, holding her right hand up and crossing her heart with her left. The parrot caws in her face before unfurling its feathers and flying away.

"Okay," Bianca exhales. Inhales. Exhales. "Okay."

"Okay?" El raises her hand, about to give Bianca a hopefully-reassuring pat on the shoulder.

Bianca immediately recoils, doing this thing that's halfway between shaking her head and nodding. "Never - never mind. It's nothing."

"Really? El lets a smirk tug at her lips despite the anxiety clawing at her chest. The way Bianca sounded...that wasn't coming from a twelve year old girl.That came from a girl El's age. (Take note that El isn' the most mature person.) She nudges Bianca, keeping her tone light but still whispering. "Seems like a big deal."

This time Bianca only shakes her head, her breaths short.

"You were this close to telling me," El leaves less than half an inch of space between her forefinger and thumb. "You know you want to."

Bianca snorts and at least that's familiar. She runs a hand through her pixie cut hair. "Promise not to tell anyone." It sounds more like a threat than a request, unlike the last time.

"I already did that like a minute ago."

"Swear then."

"Bianca."

"El."

"That's Counselor El to you."

"I guess you don't want to hear what I have to say then."

"Fine! I swaer on - on my life!"

To a twelve year old, it seems your own life is of great value. (Over the years, El's been more than happy to swear on her life; does it even matter so much if she loses it?) (That's kind of a downer, isn't it? Well that's El. A downer. Kind of.) Bianca bows her head somberly. El has to lean in extra close to catch onto her words. "Remember awhile ago, when Laura got her love letter from Zac?"

El hums in assent. She recalls that Bianca had distanced herself from the giggling group.

"I felt..." Bianca continues, "jealous."

Jealous? "I don't know, Bianca." El's now struggling to keep her tone light. "Zac isn't really cute. You know. For a twelve year old."

"No," Bianca groans. "I think I was jealous because Laura was blushing."

She said that so quietly, it's a wonder how El understood her. "So you have a crush on Laura?" she asks weakly.

"I don't know," Bianca mutters.

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"Really? Because my friends at school say that I'm a boy. Not like a boy. Metaphor, not simile."

"And there's nothing wrong with that," El repeats. The way Bianca's posture is more laid back than most girls her age and how her hair is jagged and uneven like she cut it herself and how her clothes don't fit her exactly right (her Camp Ashwood shirt is a size bigger than it needs to be) tells El where Bianca's "friends" are coming from. Even if where they're coming from is a sexist twelve year old point of view. (Unexcusable nonetheless.)

"I kinda do like hanging out with guys more than girls," Bianca admits. "I feel more comfortable."

"There's - "

"Nothing wrong with that. I got it."

"So you like girls and hanging out with guys. So you identify more as...?" (There you are again, El. Ignorant bitchiness is resurfacing. Subtle as a gun.)

"What?" Bianca's eyes nearly pop out of her head.

El shrugs as if saying "you brought this upon yourself, but you don't have to answer" with an undertone of "but I'd rather you do answer damn it."

Then Bianca's eyes flit to the small brown bird that's just landed by her feets and that's enough of an answer to El.

"Sparrow," El says.

"Passeridae."

⌚ 3:10 PM

El appreciates the way that Camp Ashwood tries to initiate a little bit of friendly competition between the sexes (not really) but really? Birdawtching? Competition? It doesn't really sound right. Or vaguely legal.

Nevertheless, here they are; the camp director, two counselors and two cabins chock full of tweens, one with the results, the rest impatient to hear them. Honestly, El's already set herself up for failure so expectations - at least hers - are low. (But it really wouldn't hurt to win. Not at all.)

"You all did very good," Lionel smiles pleasantly, glancing down at his clipboard.

"Very well," Luke corrects under his breath. El elbows him.

"But there can only be one winner," Lionel says and El rolls her eyes because how many times has she heard that sentence and been met with disappointment?

Too many, she thinks but the words coming out of Lionel's mouth are "Cabin A" not Cabin I. "Cabin A!"

The fourteen girls errupt in squeals and cheers and they're dancing and jumping and grabbing and holding each other. El can't seem to wipe the grin that's found its way onto her face. We won.

"Whatever," Peter, the boy who supposedly has a small dick says. "Birdwatching sucks."

"Yeah," another boy agrees. "That's the worst thing someone could win."

"But that's the thing," Brittany says. "We won."

"Dude," Peter whistles.

"Hot," the other boy mouths, eyes lingering on Brittany's - well, Brittany. This was the wrong thing to do as when his eyes drift away, they land on El and her glare could do just as much as burn a  hole straight between his eyes. His eyes meet the ground.

"Come on, guys," Luke says, motioning the boys to him. "Let's head back to the cabin. We can swim, if you want. Can we do that, Lionel?"

Lionel nods, giving Luke a thumbs up. Luke takes that as his sign to leave so he does, not without winking at El and murmuring a congratulations to her. El's cheeks gave been burning for the past minute but her smile doesn't falter.

"Finally!" she exclaims once Cabin I have gone out of earshot. "Fina-fucking-ly!"

"El," Lionel warns. Right. No swearing. Children.

"Lionel," El is still grinning. "We won!"

"I know," and Lionel is smiling too.

"Excuse me, sir," Alicia says. "By how many species did we win by?"

"Twelve," Lionel says, gazing at his clipboard. "It says right here that Bianca Schneider got most of those species."

Bianca goes red and everyone is patting her on the back and Laura even gives her a hug. El tries not to laugh at the look of bewilderment on Bianca's face.

"Well then, I better go. Archery range," Lionel tells El, already striding away.

⌚ 9:05 PM

"Night, El," Luke gives her a small wave.

"Good night, Luke," El turns the knob on the door of Cabin 5, more than aware that under her clothes, her damp bathing suit - Cabin A went swimming along with Cabin I - is sticking to a very uncomfortable (read: itchy) place. But Luke doesn't have to know that.

El tries to enter the cabin as surreptitiously as she can. She's surprised-but-not-really to find all the lights on and even more surprised-but-not-really to find that Grace is in baby pink lingerie, about to slip into her nightdress (also baby pink and won't cover much up anyway).

"Hello," Grace scowls, twisting away slightly.

Wow, she actually addressed my existence. "Hi," El replies curtly, letting her gaze rove over Grace's body - she likes how Grace is practically squirming under it. How it makes El feel like she finally has something over Grace Upland.

"So you finally won something," Grace says harshly. "Congratulations."

"Your sarcasm is really endearing, you know that?"

"Grace rolls her eyes, slipping the nightgown over herself. Her face is the same angry pink as the thing. "Yours isn't."

"Well thanks for the congratulations anyway," El drawls. She pushes past Grace, who now is brushing that damned perfect hair and smells of sickeningly sweet vanilla to get to the bathroom. And under her breath, she says, "also a major fuck-you to you, Upland."

With every article of clothing pried from her sticky body, El mutters enough profanity to give Lionel a heart attack. (No, El. Morbid.) She even forgets that her crotch has poison ivy so when she pulls off her bathing suit, something snags on something else and it feels like she's birthing a colony of ants. Therefore, a major fuck-you to you, Grace Upland.

Blood almost boiling over from every orifice of her body, El lets warm water run over her body for a few minutes. She pats herself down with Grace's fluffy towel (she doesn't have to know) and pulls on yesterday's overly large tee shirt. El grits her teeth, takes a deep breath. She deeply considers just sleeping in the bathroom so she doesn't have to see Grace's porcelain features for at least eight hours but a bed is much softer than a toilet and that's enough incentive to make her step out of the bathroom as quietly as she can.

"No but really, how did you win?" Grace says from the top bunk. "Did you try to seduce Luke with your ravishing looks?"

At the rate this is going, El's face is going to look like a prune by the end of the month. "Luke's gay," she says, an edge in her voice.

"That's why it's a joke."

"That's not cool."

Grace's face emerges from her covers. "And why is that?"

"You just can't joke about someone's sexuality," El retorts, feeling a sudden urge to defend Luke to the death. Preferrably Grace's death.

"Don't worry, Elizabeth. I know."

El climbs into the bottom bunk and under her covers, the warmth mingling with that of her cheeks. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Whatever you want it to mean, El.Whatever you want it to mean."

"You called me El."

"I know."

___________________________________________

a/n: dedicated to diana bc shes a goddess (and re: girl is bae) (but i didn't say that ok bc ego) and also mariam(!!!!) demanded i post this like a week early so blame her if it sucks speaking of sucks aYE EXAMS