Madoka had spent the short taxi ride from the airport in silence, listening to Machiko chatter excitedly next to her, oddly happy to be going to a camp that was supposed to ‘fix’ them. Returning from last summer, Machiko and Madoka were both well versed in the camp. Both knew their places and cabins.
Madoka, quiet and polite, carried her boat paddle and her duffle bag of clothing into her assigned cabin from last year. She sat down on the bed, looked around the empty set of bunks. Breathed in the scent of bibles and of the tears spilt over pillows. The faintest cringe of cleaning supplies, and the suffocating, overwhelmingly dusty, omniscient smell of summer. Of a wasted summer, if she was honest. A summer better spent cooling off in backyard pools with a romance novel in hand. The cabin smelled like clean, fresh linens, and in some horrid, gruesome way, Madoka realised her cabin smelled like home.
She’d spent the entire summer here last year, cooped up inside. Hoping for nothing more than to be sent home and to be fixed. But her pillow, bed next to the door, top bunk, the one she picked now, it had been a friend’s shoulder to cry on. The place had become a holder for important memories and comforts. Something that, while she lacked support from all other sides, she gained it there. And it was almost a relief to lay down on that bed again, in Hope Cabin. Maybe this summer wouldn’t be as bad as last.
Jackson awkwardly tucked his hands into his pockets, jingling his keys. He was uncomfortable pretending to be all responsible and proper, but he figured it was probably the best course of action with these crazy Christian radicals. He watched his parents conversing with the counselor from his cabin; Faith.
“Oh yes. He’ll behave himself. He’s a good boy. Just don’t be too harsh on him,” his mother said, his father gave a stiff nod, though his eyes were out on the archery course. Scaling the targets and the space between them and the starting lines. Jackson hugged his mother goodbye as she left and headed to his cabin to put his bags on a random bunk and then wander back outside. Without much to do, he found himself sitting out on a bench in the main area, right outside the ring of benches around the bonfire area. He tried to imagine a fire there, but couldn’t. He’d never been particularly good with imagining things. He smiled a little, though, thinking of the famous trope of summer camp romance and how, inevitably, there would be so many rules broken here that the counselors wouldn’t be able to control the spots of camp romance that did pop out.
Caleb shifted uncomfortably in his compression shirt under the hot sun while he was led into Purity Correctional Camp by an irate father who had gotten lost at least thrice along the way there. Caleb kept his head down, eyes on the ground, arms shakingly holding his whiteboard close to his chest. A woman with the camp name on her shirt walked up and kindly asked if he could give his name. His father, too busy simmering in anger, did not reply. Caleb, in tiny, precise, handwriting wrote on the board, with a painful stab at his heart, ‘ReBBeCCA-KAYlA Rutherford.” He knew it was the name they’d have on record. It was true. He was beckoned toward the female side of the Faith cabin, his heart pounding too hard for him to remember if something was actually going terribly wrong or not. The anxiety was coming in heavy hitting waves. His heart ached slightly. It would be okay, though, the desperation would cease soon. He promised this to himself. Everything would pass.