⌚ 3:32 AM

El is still very thoroughly exhausted when she gets woken up from her two hours of sleep by Grace Upland's piercing scream.

Doing so causes her to violently bump her head against the board above her head. Hard.

She's about to push the girl off the top bunk but she finds that the girl is mumbling nonsensically. "No," Grace whimpers. "No no no don't...don't please stop stop stop stop mine mine mine no please...don't do this don't don't no stop please please please no more no more no no no no no...STOP!"

If El wasn't awake already, Grace's last "stop!" might've made her head break through the board and hit Grace right in the face . (El knows for a fact that Grace sleeps facedown. How she is able to breathe, El might never know.)

"NO NO NO I SAID STOP! DON'T DON'T...please don't I'll do anything just don't  no no no no no no no no..."

⌚ 6:00 AM ON THE DOT

That godforsaken horn should be thrown into the lake.

When El's eyes flutter open, she is slightly surprised that Grace is not on the floor but is already curling her hair by the slightly cracked full body mirror in the corner of the cabin. El can't help but feel a little envious of Grace's long silky hair that looks like it came out of a shampoo commercial. She tries not to eye her own curly dark brown mop with distaste.

Grace's eyes, however, do so, as they flit to El while she's curling her long fringe.

"Sleep well?" she murmurs albeit slightly (very) sarcastically.

El knows that it's obvious that she hasn't with the dark circles around her eyes and the aforementioned dark brown hair which looks like a chicken spent its whole life in it, seeing as El has been tossing and turning the whole night. "Not really," she admits in a tired tone. "Thanks to you," she adds in an undertone.

"Pardon?" Grace lets another curl cascade down her back and no one's hair should look like that in these conditions.

"Nothing," El says as she pulls herself out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, feeling Grace's eyes critically follow her every movement. El unconsciously tugs her shirt lower again.

"Tell me how your poison ivy is once you get a peep at it," Grace sneers at her before she steps into the bathroom. "I can ask my maid to send more calamine or something, Elizabeth."

"Thank you so much, that's so considerate of you," El spits then slams the door behind her.

She can hear Grace's cackles through the thin walls and even after three days, she has to admit these still unsettle her at the very least. But these aren't nearly as unsettling as Grace's sleep- murmurs last night. What was that about anyway?

By now, Grace's cackling has died down and El has turned on the tap for the shower, the water still nice and warm from Grace's bath. Grace has now gone to humming some Taylor Swift song that El feels she should know.

Maybe her dad had donated one of her Chanel purses to charity or something, El thinks as she takes her shirt off and tosses it into her laundry bag, still about Grace's sleep-murmurs. Rob always does that kind of thing. Because he isn't a snob like Grace is.

El feels the steam perforating through the bathroom already so she pulls her underwear off next and she thinks it's better if Grace wouldn't like to know what's happening down there.

 ⌚ 9:20 AM

"Well, it says here on our schedule that you're supposed to be practicing for dodgeball later with Cabin I," El looks up from the piece of paper with the color-coded schedule to find the Cabin A girls barely listening to her, "but I'm guessing you lot want to ditch practices again, don't you?"

El tucks the piece of paper into the pocket if her two day-old jean shorts. Looking up, she meets the eyes of Brittany, which the girl narrows in a way that says "are you really still asking that?"

"I guess not," El mumbles in the bright tone that she learned from Grace's excessive use (and it sickens her but Grace's cabin is wrapped around her immaculately manicured finger so maybe it works) she continues, "come on, guys!'

When not only Brittany's eyes are narrowed at El now, she realizes her mistake.

"Girls!" El corrects herself quickly. "Come on, girls! Don't you want to win? Against the guys? Girls?"

Bianca chortles.

"We don't need to practice," someone pipes up from a bunk bed near the back of the messy cabin. "Dodgeball's hella easy."

"I'm sorry? What? Hella easy?" El's eyes are bulging out of their sockets now. "Didn't - didn't you say the exact same thing yesterday? Oh oh, and what happened?"

If Cabin A wasn't listening before, they certainly are now. All eyeliner-surrounded eyes are trained on El; same with slight guilt, others with fiery conviction.

"I know! You lost, didn't you?" El knows she's being way too harsh but she has to be so they can win. She really wants to win, if you haven't gathered yet. Besides, her old counselor was a whole lot worse.

A murmur of assent goes around the group of girls and El thinks she's done it, she's gotten to them. This ends at a twelve year old girls named Tiffany. If Brittany were to die of some freak nail polish accident, she'd be the head bitch in charge, just for reference on how delightful she is. "We still don't want to practice dodgeball," Tiffany says, crossing her skinny arms.

El sighs in defeat. "It was worth a try."

She ends up bringing Cabin A to the corner of the woods that was supposed to be the designated area for them to practice throwing a red rubber ball at each other and dodging it for a few hours. Instead, the tall trees surrounding the patch of wood are used to cover up the fact that they're doing, well...nothing. A few flies crawl up and down El's legs as soon as she's sat herself down by a tree so she'll be able to watch as Cabin A lollygags. Brittany and her just-as-annoying (but fine, also-slightly-endearing) posse are snickering at Cassie, the smallest girl in the cabin, who's too busy tripping over her tiny limbs, chasing a butterfly to care. Others are talking under the shade of a large mango tree, while two girls are attempting to climb it. El starts to feel her eyes drooping; she's barely had any sleep and it's just so freakishly humid today.

"El!" Maxine calls from the other side of the patch of the woods, consequently being shriller than she needs to be for El to jolt our of her half-sleep.

El drags her hiking boots across the tall grass and sits beside Cabin A's version of the Plastics (she means this in the fondest way possible), ignoring the shot of pain in her crotch as it hits the ground. "Yeah?" she asks.

"First of all," Sophie, the fourth and final member of Brittany's posse looks at her in distaste. "You're like, soaking wet. It's kinda gross."

Despite her Camp Ashwood shirt sticking to her entire torso in a mixture of sweat and sunscreen, El laughs. "I know. It only gets worse."

"Anyway," Brittany continues, holding one of those small battery-powered fans up to her face (how did she even get that?), "we're super bored."

"Well if you'd actually practice - "

"Yeah, but we don't wanna do that," Maxine says.

"Then what do you want to do?" El asks, her clear boredom seeping through her voice.

"I don't know!" Tiffany shrugs. "Make up a game or something, counselor!"

El has to roll her eyes but her brain is already whirring with a game because that actually isn't a very bad idea. "Okay," she says and gathers all of the girls at their spot. She explains the mechanics of it all off the top of her messy head.

⌚ 2:00 PM

Even after lunch, they were given another hour to hae even more practice. Which of course Cabin A used up playing El's admittedly entertaining game instead of doing something productive. Now, before they head to the dodgeball arena, El surveys the so-called "damage" they've done. Rocks and pebbles strewn everywhere, dents and scratches in the side of an oak tree. The game really got out of hand in the end; maybe it's best that El doesn't tell anyone what they've done.

Cabin A gets to the dodgeball arena before El does and when she does get there, she finds a sight very similar to the one yesterday, with the exception of the hot sun beating down on their backs instead of it being filtered through the leaves of tall trees and seven red balls instead of one orange one being tossed around. Aside from those, Cabin A sitting around and swooning at the sweaty pre-pubesent boys is pretty much the same.

"Hi, El!" the counselor with skin almost as dark as El's calls to her in a cheerful voice. Far less sarcastic than Isaac. (Isaac's basically become El's control group for male dickishness and it's working out splendidly.)

"Hi, Jason," she replies pleasantly, giving him a little wave.

"How's everything going?" he asks her as soon as Lionel's arrived and the game's started. Jason and El are standing by the crate full of dodgeballs as instructed by the camp director, ready to throw new balls in just in case the other were to roll off somehwere.

"Not good," El jerks her head in the direction of the ongoing game wherein here are still three boys aiming their balls (don't think like that, now) at little Cassie. Sophie is currently crying about her broken nail. A few other firls have took it upon themselves to throw spare dodgeballs at each other when they're supposed to be resting because they're playing next like please just sit down okay they were supposed to be doing that three hours ago.

And some slightly overweight boy throws a red rubber ball so that it hits Cassie straight in the face, dubbing the first game over. El doesn't even bother to try motivating her girls because at the rate this is going, it's a lost cause and she can't do nothin' 'bout it.

"Not like that, silly," Jason flicks his wrist at Cabin A and Cabin I as Lionel blows his whistle again. "I meant you. Like, your life. How's everything going?" he repeats, not sounding less intrigued than the first time, coming as a surprise to El as she's probably the least intriguing person. Ever.

"Nothing much," she decides to say while her head is buzzing with thoughts of last night with Finn and losing yesterday and the day before that and the poison ivy fiasco and Isaac and Will and Louise and Lionel. El thinks of her mother, just for a second, of how she's doing with her father and why she was acting strangely on the day El left for a camp. Grace also sneaks her way into El's thoughts; her soft features and her hard stare, the image of Grace staring at El like a predator eyes its prey. "Nothing much" may have been a slught understatement.

"Really?" Jason cocks his head to one side, a corner of his mouth rising.

"Actually, it's going...weird," El admits.

"Weird," Jason repeats.

"Weird," El confirms.

Lionel blows his whistle again, signalling the end of the second game. A defeaning amount of girlish screams erupts from El's end of the seventy foot arena. El jerks her eyes away from Jason, turning to the commotion. Through the amount of boys crowding around them, El can make out two figures; one on the ground in the fetal position clutching his nuts, the other standing over him, a look of pure horror on her face.

"What happened?" El can hear Lionel  demand. She glances at Jason for an explanation but he merely shrugs.

"It was her!" a boy points an accusing finger at who El has deduced is Brittany. "She hit him right in the balls! That was a foul, right?"

Lionel shakes his head, his eyebrows drawing together. He strokes his grey moustache. "It is. There shouldn't be any ball-to-ball contact."

Was that a joke? A very unfunny one if it was. Despite that, all the males (with the exception of Jason) howl with laughter. Lionel clicks his pen, about to record the foul onto his clipboard.

El feels her chest tightening. Her feet move before she knows it and so does her mouth. "What? Bullshit!" Eloquent, El. Real eloquent.

"El, don't," Brittany's face has gotten considerably redder than the nails digging into her cheeks.

"What the hell, Lionel?" El can barely control what her mouth is spewing out (that happens more often than she would like to admit). "It's dogeball. The whole point of it is to hit people with a ball. It's his own fault for not being able to dodge."

Cabin I are rolling their eyes like "here we go again why do we have to go through this El is literally full of bullshit." This only fuels El's fury even further.

"I completely agree with you," Lionel says gently (this means that he really doesn't). "But you can't ignore the fact that hitting a man's balls is going too far."

"Too far?" El's chest only burns only hotter. It's probably her huge desire to win which she was known for even back when she was a camper. Probably her feminine instincts kicking in; the urge to kill the patriarchy and all that. "Then how about the numerous times Cabin A have been hit in the breasts? Where are their fouls?"

"They barely have any to begin with," a gangly boy scoffs. "That doesn't count."

"Yeah?' Laura retorts. "As if you have huge dicks. Please."

Yes, El thinks. Yes yes yes yes. She doesn't let her triumph show, though, instead putting on a harder stare.

"El's right," Jason says, patting her on the shoulder. This makes her shirt stick to her sweaty skin. "It is kinda unfair."

Yes! El wants to scream. So very unfair!

"You're just saying that because you want to be a girl," the same gangly boy spits. El concludes that his dickishness is very much on an Isaac level.

Jason bites his lip, his grip on El's shoulder has gotten tighter. She glances at him. His eyes are about to spill over with tears. "E-excuse me," he says quietly. Jason sprints with surprising speed towards the closest bunch of trees, wiping at his eyes.

"Dude, not cool," another boy nudges the gangly one and El is at least reassured that not all boys are that bad. (Some girls are like that, anyway, so it all evens out.)

"Look," El says to Lionel. "Cabin A won. Brittany hit pretty boy here -" she gestures to the boy on the ground who isn't wailing in pain anymore but has gone to whimper quietly "- and he couldn't dodge it. Cabin I won't even lose yet. We have another game, just give it to Cabin A."

Lionel glances at the ground, then at considerably-looking-calmer Brittany, then at El, then at the sky (it isn't as bright as it was two hours ago). He strokes his moustache even more. "Okay," he agrees. "Cabin A wins this game. We'll have a tie breaker in five minutes."

At the word 'tie-breaker', El whispers to the closest Cabin A girl that she'll be back in five minutes and runs as quick as she can in the direction that Jason went. It's like an instinct: she doesn't even think, her feet just do.

"Jason?" El murmurs once she's reached the trees. "Jason...?"

"Fuck, I'm sorry," Jason's voice comes from behind El. He sounds like he's still sniffing yet he's done crying.

"No, no," El turns around and tries to sound as gentle as her mom would in a situation like this. "I understand."

"Really?" Jason wails (minus the tears). "Any of your Cabin A girls make fun of you because you're gay? I don't even fucking want to be a girl, okay? Like what the hell is that about?"

El has learned from yesterday's encounter with Luke, she shouldn't make a joke out of this sort of thing. She won't.

From the tone of his voice, it's evident that he's come to terms with this a long time ago and said this so many times before. El sinks down beside him, leaving her hand on his knee. "I'm not gay," she says slowly. "But it isn't fun being the counselor with poison ivy. Or the only black girl in an all-white family. I mean, the last black person in my family was my great-grandfather so when I came out of my mom's white vagina, they thought I was probably a piece of shit or something. No one made fun of me for it  but you could just tell people thought I wasn't normal, you know? Like I was adopted and everyone just assumed and they just look disgusted at me. Just like Grace, you kno - "

"Yeah," Jason interrupts, his eyes not leaking anymore. "I know."

"Sorry," El says sheepishly. She's rambling again, isn't she? It's actually a relief to talk to someone about this, like this. She kind of gets carried away when this sort of thing happens.

"That's okay," Jason grins and El is so relieved that his entire face is lighting up.

"So you're gay, huh?" El nudges him, winking to make sure she doesn't mean anything by it.

"Yeah," Jason sighs. "Hella."

El snorts at his impression of every teenage girl ever. "Anyone special, then?"

"Oh my goodness, El."

"What?"

"You're embarrassing." the tips of Jason's ears turn pink.

"So there is someone!"

⌚ 5:00 PM

El thought Cabin A had a chance.

But the real chances were that Brittany hitting the boy's balls made them even more ruthless. This meant more hitting in the face and the breasts and sometimes crotch. It was ugly.

And Cabin I won and El was tired of the same old Woods' victory howls. Cabin I hadn't even bothered to let Jason lead them back to their cabin so Jason gets left behind with El and Cabin A.

"El," Lionel starts and no.

"Don't even try," El shrugs. "Don't try to encourage me or encourage them -" she refers to Cabin A "- okay? It's happened three times. We won yesterday, sure, but losing three out of four times? That's not normal, is it?"

"El," Lionel says again. It feels like a punch to the gut.

"Thanks, Lionel," she nods curtly. "But no thanks."

Lionel nods, understanding gleaming in his eyes. He walks away awkwardly after giving another apology to the fourteen sore girls and a congratulatory whisper to Jason, which the boy takes with pure disinterest.

"Girls," El tries to give them a small smile. "I think you should head back first. I'll meet you there in a few."

With each Cabin A girl that passes El, an apology passes through a pair of small lipglossed pair of lips. She feels her chest constrict with every one, but at the same time, she wants to burst and tell them off for not practicing why can't you just practice look what happens when you don't practice oh my god. 

"I'm not even gonna try," Jason winks at El once all the girls are gone.

"Try what, Mr. Hella Gay?" is El's reply because even if she's doom and gloom, she has an oveflowing amount of snark and sarcasm.

"Try to make you feel better," Jason rolls his eyes. "I've heard that it doesn't work. Hell, I had no intention to but look at you now."

"You'll get used to it," El gives Jason a sympathetic pat on his head.

"It'll take awhile," Jason returns the gesture. If anyone were to see them now, they'd probably think the two are performing some demon ritual or something. El drops her hand and  slaps Jason's off her head.

"Whatever."

⌚ 9:39 PM

"I knew it was a bad idea to bring you to camp," Grace says, not even looking at El anymore.

El opens her mouth to speak; from the corner of her eye, she sees Louise, Sky, and Mari, who are on the floor in the middle of Cabin 5 get looks on their faces that speak volumes about how they're sick of how this happens every single night. El feels the same.

"You're full of bad ideas," El decides to reply.

"Ooh," Grace stops from slathering her vanilla-scented lotion onto her person to clutch her chest in mock offense. "Oh, Elizabeth, ooh. That really hurts. I could never recover from this, oh woe!"

El flips her the fiercest bird she can muster before storming out of the cabin. She concentrates on the sound of her hiking boots thumping against the hardwood floor and on the ground and her heart beating in her ears to muffle Grace's maniacal laughter. It doesn't even help that she hasn't put any calamine lotion on today so she's waddling like a penguin with herpes, which only makes Grace laugh even harder.

"El!" someone calls from a distance away. "El? Is that you?"

She doesn't reply. El is just over human contact. Even if it's with boyish sweethearts like Finnegan.

"El!" she hears footsteps now. Her footsteps quicken.

"Hey! Are you deaf or something?"

El takes a deep breath. Fine. Human contact it is. "No," she replies, turning around, only to find the same semi-darkness filtering through the trees.

"Good," Finn's breath is on her neck. El would've fallen onto her face if his arms hadn't wrapped around her waist.

"Let go of me," El gasps.

"Alrighty," Finn obliges.

"You scared me," El says, running her hand through her tangled hair. That doesn't work out as she's hoped. "How the hell did you do that?"

"I'm full of secrets," Finn grins.

"Please keep those secrets to yourself, then."

"Will do, ma'am."

El finds that her feet have been doing that thing again where they move without her brain's consent. Finn is walking right beside her and now that they're in a clearer part of the woods in which the moon isn't being blocked by any leaves, El can see that Finn is covered in paint.

"Paintball?" she asks.

"Paintball."

"Who won?"

"Mari's cabin," Finn says. "They even chanted this Japanese thing that Mari taught them. She said it meant 'suck on this, bitches!'"

"Ah, Japanese, such a beautiful language."

"Not as beautiful as El-anese," Finn snorts.

"And how does that sound?" El narrows her eyes, stopping in her tracks.

"Ugh! Everyone is so sexist here! It's like, so unfair! How the hell have I lost three times in four days? Three times! Isaac is such a dick! Actually, scratch that, all men are dicks! Grace Upland is also a bitch, if I haven't told you ten million times already. Did I mention Camp Ashwood is sexist? Well, Camp Ashwood is sexist. Also this counselor named Finn is super hot. While I'm putting calamine on my crotch I think of him and - "

"Okay!" El says quickly. She stops Finn before he says anything worse. "I get it. You're so funny."

"You didn't deny any of it."

"I don't have to. I did say all of that. Just in a less annoying way."

"Less annoying? Ha ha ha ha..."

"Shut up. Camp Ashwood is sexist," and El tells Finn about the dodgeball game awhile ago (ball hitting nonwithstanding).

"I already heard of that from Jason," Finn's grin only widens. El wonders how his cheeks haven't torn yet. "He also told me that you were nice about his sexuality but a bitch about him being nice to you."

"Send him my regards," El says dryly.

"Will do, Elizabeth."

"I swear to god, Finnegan, don't call me that or I'll choke you."

_________________________________

a/n: for nicole bc she's a cutie also she made that atrocious thing on the side (not to mention she wrote gel smut like damn gurl u got me beat)