⌚ 6:45 AM

El finally knows what a hangover feels like. She really wishes she doesn't.

"Oh my god," that's a female voice, yet El isn't sure. Her head aches too much for her to decipher what's what anymore. "Will, I found them! Will!"

A few seconds later, Finn's cabin floods with light and El's head is hurting worse than ever. That plus Louise's bright turquoise hair spilling over in El's field of vision...just no.

"It reeks in here," that's Will and by this time El has regained enough of her consciousness to see that he's wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"Wake up," she hears Louise say. By the way her voice bounces off the walls. El's best guess is that she's waking Grace up in the bathroom.

"Hey, El." Will's gentle hand is shaking her shoulder slightly. "I think you should wake up now. Lionel's pretty pissed."

"I'm awake," El mumbles, shutting her eyes tight. Light. No.

"And your breath stinks," Will says. "Wait. Have you been drinking?"

El says nothing, choosing instead to pull herself up so she's sitting.

"Louise!" Will calls. "They're hungover."

"I kind of figured." Louise emerges from the bathroom, holding Grace up by the waist. "By the amount of her beer-scented vomit all over the floor."

⌚ 8:28 AM

Yesterday's victory over Cabin J is still ringing in El's ears and her crotch has somehow finally stopped itching (she checked when Will and Louise forced her to take a very hot shower and it doesn't look like she has herpes anymore!) and her hangover is practically cracking her skull open so it's understandable why El couldn't pay attention to Lionel's scolding a while ago.

But somehow Grace has gotten over her hangover just like that, as now she's the one who's taking charge of the Ashes for this week's Bonfire Music Jam. Meanwhile, El has her sunglasses perched upon her nose, her head on Louise's lap.

Grace explains the concept of the Bonfire Music Jam for the campers new to it in the standard Grace Upland sass method. "How many days have you been at this dump?"

"Seven days" is the reply of the seventy two girls seated on the grass.

"A week!" Grace says. "We've won and we've...lost," she narrows her eyes at El, "but now is the time we redeem ourselves. Right now, we're at the north end of the woods while the Woods are a the south. We're going to be practicing for the music jam. Basically shit's going to go down. That shit is each cabin is performing a song and Lionel's scoring each of them out of ten. And we know how fair Lionel is at scoring."

For the first time, El agrees with her.

"You understand?" Grace asks.

The Ashes nod in assent.

Grace reminds El scarily of Regina George right now. "Good. Now, if we could just decide on what songs to sing..."

"Taylor Swift!" El squeaks as her head leaves Louise's lap. She ignores the sharp pain at the back of her head. "Sorry. But yeah, Taylor Swift."

Cabin A cheers and El silently thanks them. Grace's expression is unchanged. "Why?" she asks but by the way her lip is twitching, El knows she's already onboard.

"Taylor's cool," El shrugs. "Plus, we might make Finn cry," she adds under her breath.

Sky sniggers from behind her.

"Fine," Grace narrows her eyes again. If she'd narrow them any more, they'd be as narrow as the dirt road leading to camp. "Taylor Swift it is."

"Mean!" Laura suggests immediately upon El's arrival to the group. "We should sing Mean."

El throws her arm around Laura's shoulders, grinning wickedly. "I totally agree."

⌚ 12:12 PM

As much as everyone would like to practice practice practice, their stomachs' demands for lunch are becoming very hard to ignore. Everyone obliges and head for the Campfeteria. (Since when is calling it a Campfeteria better than calling it a mess hall anyway?)

"I don't get why we have to do this crap," El hears that boy Peter tell that other boy.

"Right? Like dude, singing and dancing is...gay," the other one replies.

From the corner of her eye, El sees that Luke and Jason roll their eyes and end up smirking at each other. "You wish," Luke's mouth reads. Jason punches Luke on his side.

El makes sure that Cabin A are seated at their respective table with suspicious-but-delicious-looking tacos on their trays. She then gets her own tray of suspicious-but-delicious-looking tacos and sits beside Sky at the counselors' table.

It's a first for El to see that the Wood counselors are sitting at one end of the table and the Ash counselors at the other. Across from her, there is a good foot between Grace and Finn. At least Will isn't treating El like she has cooties; he's sitting only five inches from her. Sometimes, he'd nudge El and give her a small smile. "I don't like singing. Or dancing. Or like, music," he's explained. Isaac, though, seems very passionate about rap. That explains a lot. (See also: his misogynistic dickish ways thank you and goodbye.)

"I like music," El says from the corner of her mouth. "I just suck at it."

"That's what she said."

"You sicken me."

"El!" Grace snarls through a mouthful of lettuce (her Caesar salad is putting everyone else's suspicious-but-delicious-looking tacos to shame). "Don't communicate with the enemy."

"So I shouldn't be talking to her?" El says to Will, louder this time.

"You know what I mean."

El looks like she's about to spew something back at Grace but unfortunately, Will anticipates it and does that thing where he rubs circles into her back discreetly. "Don't," he mutters and his hand is gone and he's laughing along with Isaac.

She rolls her eyes and shifts so she's looking at Grace, Mari, Sky and Louise now. "As I was saying," Grace says, "you should all be careful with that hook that Taylor Swift always does. It has to be on point or you'll be crossing the line from fabulous country star to boy going through puberty..."

"What's with her?" El murmurs, swallowing the last of her taco. (It tastes just like it did all those years ago and she loves it.)

"What do you mean?" Sky whispers, eyes still on Grace.

"Why she's...you know..."

Somehow Sky gets it. "You mean aside from Grace being fucking boss at anything that has to do with music and making sure everyone else is too but not enough to outshine her because she's competitive like that?"

"Or you know, just that."

⌚ 7:00 PM

"Good evening, campers!" Lionel's voice booms throughout the bonfire pit, and this leads El to wonder how Lionel has done this kind of thing for so long while she's already tired of it and it's only been seven seven days.

"With the first week of your stay at Camp Ashwood coming to a close, is there a better way to celebrate that than with the first of our Weekly Bonfire Music Jams?" El concludes that the word jam should never come out of the mouth of any person older than fifty.

El leans into the warmth of the warmth of the large crackling bonfire, where the entirety of Camp Ashwood is sat around. Along with Lionel's voice, there's the crickets chirping and the occasional illegal parrot crowing. The camp director (never without his clipboard) is on the low stage strewn with fairy lights that creaks whenever he shifts his weight.

"And that's it!" Lionel concludes. "Enjoy your s'mores and sing and dance like your life depends on it!"

By the way Grace is acting (plus all her threats), El might as well take that literally.

"First off, we've got Cabin A singing," Lionel says, glancing at his clipboard, "Mean by Taylor Swift!"

Once Lionel says that and Cabin A files onto the stage, El sees that Finn's eyes widen a fraction. He gulps, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

El is not good at music but no one can deny the nineteen year old has stage presence. "You!" she cries, pointing straight at Isaac, who's smirk disappears at once.

"With your words like knives / And swords and weapons that you use against me / You have knocked me off my feet again," Cabin A sings. Thanks to Maxine, they're able to pull off a veryPitch Perfect-esque a cappella performance. And they're owning. Owning the shit out of it.

With every lyric being belted out, El can Isaac sink lower and lower onto the ground, averting his eyes from the stage. El struts that stage, and she can't sing so she's humming and she doesn't feel out of place despite being a terribly tall on-the-brink-of-not-being-a-teenager-anymore teenager among these significantly younger girls.

"Someday, I'll be living in a big ol' city / And all you're ever gonna be is mean / Someday, I'll be big enough so you can't hit me / And all you're ever gonna be is mean..."

El is not good at music (that's been established numerous times). She is, however, very good at screaming words in what can almost be classified as a rhythm. "Why you gotta be so mean?"

Grace is caught between scowling and smirking - annoyed at El's attempt at a 2005-type burn and impressed about this. Will though, Will is smirking, elbowing Finn in the stomach, while the latter is red as Brittany's nails.

Now Cabin A has formed a half-circle spanning across the stage. Still humming, El claps along."All you are is mean / And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life..."

She takes this opportunity to leap off the two-foot stage, thankfully landing before Isaac. "And mean," she says through gritted teeth. "And mean, and mean, and mean..." Isaac flips her discreet bird.

"But someday, I'll be living in a big ol' city!" El circles the campers, urging them to clap along. The Ashes do so enthusiastically as the Woods give halfhearted one coupled with grumbles.

"And all you're ever gonna be is mean!" She hops back onto the stage and her grin may look completely stupid but that's okay since Cabin A is rocking it. Or - dare she say - Camp Rocking it.

"Why you gotta be so mean?"

Once El sits down between Sky and Louise, she gets two pats on the back.

"That was so great!" Sky says. "Like if you don't get a ten for that, I would do. We're gonna win, I just know it."

Louise shushes her. "Cabin F is next."

"Everybody get up!" Isaac says (to say he is singing is a disgrace to everyone who has sung ever), lifting his hands. Nobody gets up.

And then the dreaded "Hey hey hey hey" starts.

"If you can't hear what I'm gonna say..."

El's dinner is threatening to go back up like it did last night when Grace retched. She grabs Sky's wrist a bit too hard in order to keep herself calm. Grace is grabbing Mari's knee, the same disgusted look on her face.

"Baby I'm goin' deaf!" Yeah, especially with your singing, El thinks bitterly. And song choice.

"Baby I'm goin' blind!" Those dance moves have already blinded me.

"Baby I'm outta my mind!" Insane. This song is insane.

Fortunately, every female in the vicinity thinks so as well. With every "I know you want it," there is a collective shudder among the Ashes (although there is the rare swoon). El decides she can't take any more so she tunes out, effectively drowning out most of those disgusting lyrics. She hates that she's tapping her finger along to the rhythm, though. Because the music is actually pretty good. It's just...everything else that's bothering her.

Sky nudges El. "Finn's calling you."

El's head immediately snaps to Finn's direction so some of her hair ends up in her mouth. Very attractive.

"Blurred lines," he mouths, bobbing his head. "I know you want it."

"Don't," El mouths back, utter disgust gracing her features.

"Yeah, well, excuse me, Miss Let's-ruin-Finn-with-Taylor-Swift."

"Touché."

⌚ 8:21 PM

Unfortunately for Finn, there's more Taylor Swift where that came from. Sparks Fly, Love Story and Speak Now are performed (and performed really well, if El says so herself), giving Finn hypothetical eargasms (Louise's words, not hers). And then the Woods come in performing Macklemore and Kanye West and Justin Bieber. While those artists can be the bomb dot com, something about pre-pubescent boys performing their songs is slightly unsettling.

It also got boring very quickly, hence El roasting marshmallows and putting s'mores together. 

Now if there's one camping skill that Elizabeth is good at, it's making s'mores. She knows the right distance that a marshmallows should be from the fire, how long one should roast said marshmallow and how golden brown actually looks like. She knows that there should be two squares of chocolate and two marshmallows above that, sandwiched between two graham crackers. And she goddamn well knows that if there's a gooey string of marshmallow and chocolate from one's mouth after taking a bite of s'more, then it's a quality s'more.

The flaw in the s'more El is in the process of making now is the marshmallow.

"And our last performance from the Ashes tonight; Cabin E will be performing I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift!"

Even during the practices, El had already decided that was going to pay no attention to Grace's cabin's performance.

This plan, unfortunately, also stumbles upon a flaw and this is when Cabin E actually starts. El can see that Grace has appointed two guitarists to sit on either side of the stage and they're plucking and strumming and doing whatever it is that guitarists do. (El is not good at music.) The rest of them are singing in harmony with Grace, who is (obviously) center stage.

And then she starts singing. "Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago..."

El stabs a marshmallow way too ferociously. Now see, El is very aware of Grace's musical talent. Not only did she get every lead in every musical production in the four years they spent there, but she won three talent shows out of four. (In junior year, Pedro Ramirez blew her out of the water with his slam poetry while juggling and hula hooping. Long story short, Grace was dismayed and it's safe to say Pedro wasn't able to juggle for a few months.)

So it's no surprise that Grace is killing it.

"Oh!" Grace throws her head back in a way that every male in the vicinity finds incredibly sexy."Ohhh! Trouble, trouble, trouble!"

El's trying not to bob her head along, she really is. Still, she's bobbing her head, risking looking away from the marshmallow on the opposite end of the stick in her hand to watch what's happening on the stage.

"No apologies, she'll never see you cry / Pretends she doesn't know that she's the reason why..."More sexy hair whipping from Grace a la Taylor Swift. El finds that she's humming along and it's annoying how Grace's voice can do that to her.

"I knew you were trouble when you walked in!" It's no coincidence that Grace is glaring right at El while she sings this. "So shame on me now!" And it's no surprise that El glares right back.

Now when Grace sings (read: screeches musically in a way that is still pleasing to the ear holes) the next series of "Oh's!", no one expects El to scream her own "Ah!"

It turns out, while El was glaring at Grace, her marshmallow had gone past the point of golden brown and into the black and on fire point. Of course, this causes El to immediately drop the marshmallow, stomp on it repeatedly with her favorite and only pair of boots and to release the former scream from her mouth. Time seems to stop - that is, the guitarists stop playing, Grace stops singing, and everyone is staring at her.

Her neck heating up, El mutters a sheepish "sorry" to no one in particular before sitting back down and burying her face in Sky's shoulder.

El totally hears the amusement in Grace's voice when she starts singing again. "Trouble, trouble, trouble!"

So much for s'mores.

⌚ 9:33 PM

If there's one thing that El Thropp despises more than Grace Upland, it's suspense. And that's too bad for her because Lionel loves it. This means after Cabin F's rendition of One Direction's Story of My Life (Finn, no matter how hard he tried, would never be Harry Styles), Lionel waited a good hour before announcing the winner. While this meant more time for everyone to stuff their faces with enough s'mores to make them sick.

But finally - finally - at half past nine, Lionel gets onstage, clipboard and megaphone in each hand and strings of marshmallow and chocolate in his moustache. "Y'all ready to find out who won our very first Bonfire Music Jam?"

As everyone is busy with finishing off their s'mores, there is only a small "yeah" that escapes from the crowd.

"Drumroll, please!" Lionel says through the megaphone.

Isaac, who's closest to the foot of the stage, pounds his fist against it in an attempt of a drumroll.

Lionel's grin is bordering on crazy-hobo-on-the-street now. He starts rambling on and on about how he's so proud of everyone, how he's looking forward to the rest of the month, how he gets so delighted at everyone's smiles and voices, how he absolutely adores what he's doing. El rolls her eyes - she despised cheesiness nearly as much as she despises suspense.

"Anyway," Lionel chuckles. "I kind of lost myself there. But yes! The winners of tonight's Bonfire Music Jam are... the Ashes!"

During the three years that El was a camper, she heard that sentence for a total of three times. So it's obvious why El questions whether she heard it right or not. She's only assured when all females and a few males here and there erupt in deafening cheers.

She catches Lionel's eye and he gives her a small nod. Even Grace grins at her. But it doesn't last for long; Grace's lips twitch a bit and then it's suddenly a glare that El is on the opposite end of.

"Settle down, now," Lionel says. "Mm-hmm, congratulations again to the Ashes! Now, I'm sad to say it's time for bed."

A chorus of suppressed groans comes from the campers.

"Yes, I'm sorry...you already know that days here at Camp Ashwood start early! As the saying goes, 'the early bird catches the worm'.Time for bed!"

The campers start filing out - the younger ones are yawning while the older more internet-exposed ones are still wide-eyed. With every Cabin A camper that passes by El, there is her respective triumphant high-five. All that are left in the bonfire pit are the counselors after Lionel bids them a good night.

"Good job, ladies," Isaac raises and eyebrow.

Louise, already sensing the way El's jaw stiffens as a sign of attack, grabs her elbow and murmurs, "Don't."

El can't help but smile. Amazing how Louise already knows her this well.

"I wouldn't say the same for you, honey." Grace's voice surprises El.

"You didn't like my moves?" Isaac asks innocently, not-so-subtly thrusting his hips. El tries not to vomit.

"No one likes 'your moves'!" Jason rolls his eyes, the jaunty grin on his lips showing that he isn't as serious about his statement as El is.

"Dude, you're totally gay for me." Not vomiting is hard.

"Gay, yes. For you, hell fucking no."

"Come on, guys!" Isaac whines. "Is no one gonna back me up?"

Will punches him on the arm, smirking slightly. "Nah, man." He spots El's probably green face and winks. The nerve of him.

"Sorry," Finn says.

Mari rolls her eyes, frowning slightly. "Boys," she mouths at Louise and El.

"Can't stand 'em," Louise mutters back. She lets her hand drop from El's arm after a precautionary squeeze.

Grace is staring daggers at all of them, with the exception of Finn (but that really isn't new). El seems to be the only one that notices and she raises her eyebrows, deciding to leave Grace on her own and see what else Isaac has to say. (Nothing worth listening to, she bets.)

"Really?" Isaac says. "You had to go there? I'll have you know my dick is a solid five inches!"

The way male conversations eventually get directed towards their penises is truly fascinating. How it happened in this case, she wouldn't really care to know.

⌚ 11:06 PM

"Here," El tosses the nearly empty tube of calamine lotion to Grace.

The latter catches it with (un)surprising agility. "Don't you need this?" she asks, looking like she's just eaten the Campfeteria's meatloaf.

El shakes her head no. She didn't even notice before then; sure, there was when she took a shower a while ago, but she only realized that her crotch hasn't been itching / hurting since the day before yesterday. When she changed into tonight's large tee shirt (freshly laundered), she checked...and in the span of less than a day, it's not even red anymore. So no, Grace, El no longer needs your calamine lotion.

Grace shrugs and tosses the tube carelessly into the trash. "Good. I was terrified of catching that."

Before El opens her mouth that it would be virtually impossible to catch poison ivy, Grace interrupts her. "I know it's not contagious, but it sure looked like something contagious."

"Wait - how -?" It's wise, El decides, not to comment on the fact that Grace is making a comparison between her crotch poison ivy to herpes which is contagious by, well... no thanks.

"I think you better invest on underwear that actually covers your crotch."

"Yeah, of course, Madame Thong."

"Ha-fucking-ha," Grace sneers. "Hilarious! That's so hilarious, Herpes-crotch."

"I literally just said it's gone now."

"Look, if you cross me, Elizabeth," Grace says as she climbs onto top bunk. She nearly kicks El's stomach (intentionally, obviously) on the way. "I'll make sure it comes back."

⌚ 11:58 PM

El tries to ignore Grace's whimpers (i.e. "no" and "stop" and "please" and "don't" and other words of the like) as she tries to sleep. She's having enough trouble with that (thanks, parents) as it is. She really doesn't need any more chaos / noise / sadness as it is.

Is it really that devastating to donate a purse to charity?

"No stop no no don't please don't no no no stop no!"

It probably is, if you're Grace Upland.

___________________________________________

a/n: wOOOO another short boring chapter im sorry (this is the last chapter i have written so far thanks superhero story im in too deep to stop planning updates may not be for a while) i pROMISE THE REST OF THIS AINT GONNA BE THIS BORING PREPARE FOR TENSIONS TO RISE ily all thanks for reading

(dedication to lyd bc shes rad and banners and credit but mostly bc shes rad and so are her stories) (this is also horribly unedited so feel free to point out my flaws)