Chapter 1
Florence
The senior year camping trip is legendary. Every year new stories are added to the compendium. Our's would be no different. In fact, ours might just become the number one best seller beating all the previous years in a landslide.
What started as a Shakespearean comedy morphed quickly into a Homeric epic. Complete with a convoluted odyssey to return home to our loved ones. well school at least. Although there were significantly fewer encounters with sea monsters appearing in our tale.
I went into senior year on a high. I had an amazing boyfriend - Kyle Nolan, captain of the football team, tall, super sexy long blond floppy hair and a smile that could charm even the dourest of DMV clerks. My best friend Sienna was by my side as co-captain of the cheerleading squad. And to top it all off the senior year camping trip was just two weeks away.
I had been dreaming about this field trip since I was a freshman and my brother Ant had come back from his raving about the pranks, the adventures and the romances that had manifested over the weekend. He had taught me the lore of all the best senior camps from the past twenty years.
The time in 2007 Richie Stuart went missing for eight hours and was found in a cave cuddled up to a black bear. The prank the class of 2015 pulled that resulted in every student that year being named in a lawsuit, that was eventually dropped, by Kanye West. Then last year the Romeo and Juliet love story that emerged when Shane Withers from the Mathletes was revealed to be secretly dating Madison Emery who was then head cheerleader.
I wanted; no, I craved to see history like this being made. I needed to play my part in it. Class of 2027 Senior Camp was my year. I was finally going to live the thing I had dreamt of for the last three years.
“Did you see the sign-up sheet for the Senior Camp got posted this morning?” Sienna nudged me from my place in front of my locker to check her lip-gloss using the mirror inside the door.
“I’ve already signed up!” I told her excitedly.
“I should have known you’d be the first name.” She sighed and rolled her eyes at me.
So, my best friend may not have been quite as enthusiastic about spending two days in a rickety wooden shed at Yellowstone National Park as I was. Don’t get me wrong she wanted to go but she didn’t gain anywhere near the same level of joy at the mere mention of it that I did. And she had even told me to shut up last week when I was talking about it.
Luckily I avoided another freezing out from her by the appearance of Kyle and the rest of the football team.
Kyle slunk up behind me and spun me around. He pressed his lips gently against mine in a short tender kiss.
“Morning beautiful.” He murmured before releasing me and greeting Sienna “Hey S. You good?”
“Sure Kyle. Hey Greg. Hey Frankie” she added nodding to Kyle’s teammates. “You boys excited for tomorrow’s game?” A chorus of ‘uhhuh’s’ and nods came in our direction. I swear these boys were the worst conversationists, they couldn’t maintain a sentence let alone a back and forth between two people.
Yet when it was just them they didn’t shut up. I’d seen them when they hadn’t realized I was there. Greg was there delivering a full blown soliloquy and receiving an oratory masterpiece in response from Frankie. It was surreal. To the point that I had started to wonder if it was just me they were like this in front of. Maybe they talked in more than grunts to other people? When I first saw them in real dialogue I set myself a challenge to find out the truth. It would involve a little sleuthing but who didn’t love getting their Sherlock Holmes on. Fine, it was probably more Nancy Drew level investigation but still it was a fun game to play with myself. I had yet to find an opportunity. Maybe at camp.
“Flo baby?” Kyle’s voice brought me out of my detective dreams.
“Yeah hun?” I cooed back to him.
“I am going to ride the bus to the camp with the guys. Plan some antics enroute. That kinda thing. You don’t mind do you?”
I did mind. I minded a lot. This Senior Camp was my moment. I had decided a long time ago that this was the moment I was going to give up my virginity to Kyle. I had a whole plan. One that started with us getting cute and cozy together on the 4 hour bus drive. But I slipped seamlessly into my perfectly curated girlfriend persona and responded.
“Of course not babe! This trip is going to be epic! You need to spend time with your friends too! I can sit with Sienna.”
So it began. The trip I had been planning for, dreaming about, for the last three years, was starting to fall apart. I had no idea, at that point, how much would go wrong in my carefully constructed plans. No idea that this camp would flip my life upside down in ways I could never imagine.
Nico
“Yo! Dude are you gunna sign up for the Senior Camp trip?” my best (and only real) friend Kris bounced excitedly beside me at my locker.
“Why the fuck would I want to go camping in the mountains with a bunch of fucktards?” I glared back at him.
Knowing my aggression wasn’t directed at him, or even completely serious, he ignored it and continued “Because I am going to go brother! And we can observe all the sexy ladies wearing those sweet short-shorts for the hike!”
He wanted to go in order to stare at girls' asses. Makes sense.
“That portion of the trip takes up approximately 5 hours. You are correct that might be tolerable. It is the other 43 hours that put me off.”
“C-mon dude. I know you hate everyone and everything in this town so maybe getting out of here for a couple of days will be a good thing. Change of scenery. The everlasting hope that Kyle Nolan gets eaten by a bear. Or better still permanently adopted into a pack of wolves to be raised like Mogli?!”
“Now that would be worth going for.” I replied whilst eying Kyle who was currently acting like he was completely loved up towards his girlfriend Florence, despite everyone but her knowing it was all completely fake.
“Do you know I heard him telling Greg that he is planning on fucking both Florence and Sienna at the camp?! Not as a threesome mind. In secret. Having his torta and eating it too.” Kris murmured to me as he saw I was watching the group.
“He is a complete fucking asswipe. The sooner he gets his comeuppance the better if you ask me. Maybe we can plan something to expose him for who he really is? I would love nothing more than to play a video of him saying all the shit he says in the locker room during graduation or something. And dude you gotta stop translating random words into Italian for me. My family has been in America longer than yours!”
“That might work but graduation is what like ten months away? If we are gunna fuck with him I say we do it sooner. How about hair removal cream in his shampoo?” he continued ignoring my snipe about his questionable Italian.
“He’d never fall for it. Dye might work though. I am thinking some kind of puke green?” I jokingly threw back at him.
“I vote we do it Friday during gym, right before the big football game.” Kris added.
We talked like this all the time. Making elaborate plans on how we would mess with the various assholes of the football team. But we never actually went through with anything. It was all just a game.
Well it was, right up until Kyle walked out of the showers after gym on Friday with his blond hair looking distinctly green.
I spun to Kris. “You actually did it?!” shock and awe evident in my voice because he wasn’t the bravest of kids.
Kris had been my friend since elementary school. I was the angry, sulky kid even then. But Kris was the kid who tried to be friends with everyone. He had gone striding up to a group of boys at recess on the first day of 3rd grade and attempted to introduce himself with his hand held out ready to shake. They had laughed at him, called him a doofus and pushed him into the mud. I don’t know why but I felt the need to defend him. No one, except the teachers, ever made an effort to speak to me before I defended Kris against those bullies. I was fine, had never actually cared about having friends, just as long as no one bothered me. But after I helped him Kris attached himself to me and I found a friend. He encouraged me to speak to a few more people over the years and I am not quite as closed off now as I was when I was a kid. But I am still angry and don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks of me.
Kris acts a bit like my link to other people. He talks to them and passes on information I might be interested in. But he still gets caught up by the bullies occasionally. That is when I stand up, beat the shit out of them and we go back to idly planning ways to expose what the assholes at school are really like.
Kris is outgoing and friendly but he doesn’t like to end up in trouble. So the fact that he had gone through with the hair dye stunt was a big deal.
But he just shrugged at me “Maybe he just picked up the wrong bottle.” A sly smile, that I'd never seen on his face before, appeared as he turned away and got dressed.
Now, I wouldn’t normally bother going to the school football games. I really didn’t give a shit if they won or lost and I had never bought into the whole ‘School Spirit’ mindset. But tonight I found myself leaning back against the top of the bleachers alongside Kris watching the jocks steaming out onto the field. It was tradition that they didn’t wear their helmets out onto the field so when number 18 ran out with his firmly planted on his head already there was a lull in the cheers and a round of confused muttering amongst the crowd.
It seemed Coach Hudson wasn’t too impressed either because he threw his clipboard down and stormed over to Kyle. We couldn’t hear the exchange but the result was that the helmet came off and a mop of blonde hair with a distinct green tinge was revealed to the entire school.
Kris and I contained our laughter just long enough to let someone else in the crowd break first. Once the wave of guffaws began though we joined in with utter jubilation.
