“This is going to be stupid,” I muttered as I tugged my suitcase and sleeping bag onto the bus.

“Well, with that kind of ‘tude, you’re just setting yourself up,” retorted Callie, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun, Natasha.”

“Yeah,” I snorted. “Art Camp: Where the Future Jobless Moochers on Society Go.”

“But you’re a poet.”

I waved her away. “That’s completely different. We’re nothing like those goatee sporting snobs with their affected French accents and olive berets.” As I settled into a seat near the back, the rickety automobile shuddered into movement like an arthritic basset hound staggering forward after a long nap. “See? Even the bus doesn’t want to go.”

Crossing her arms, Callie frowned. “You’re being ridiculous.”

I arched an eyebrow. “True. The bus is obviously just feigning weakness so we lower our guard, and it can lure us into the malevolent clutches of its master.”

“Nat-”

“Helpless as it seems/” I said, ignoring her. “The deceptive yellow beast/ Harbors countless crimes.”

“Natasha, do you want me to leave?”

Stiffening, I froze. For a moment an image of what I must look like flashed in my mind: a slight girl sitting all alone, her body rigid like a corpse in the clutches of rigor mortis, her coppery curls plastered to her neck by the sudden sheen of sweat appearing there, her eyes fixed through thick glasses on a smudge of dirt on the window as the impressionistic blurs of brown and green flew by. “No,” I responded finally, my voice barely audible.

“We talked about this, Nat.” Callie sighed. “I would come with you if you agreed to at least try to keep an open mind.” Pausing slightly, she added, “And stop being so antisocial.”

“Antisocial?!” I protested, waving away a camp counselor who was coming around with a box of graham crackers. “How?”

“Well, to start,” said Callie, producing a bag of graham crackers from her own pocket and popping one in her mouth. “Alice invited you to her house last week, and you didn’t go.”

Burying my face in my hands, I groaned dramatically, attracting some looks from other camp-bound passengers, ranging from slightly confused to completely weirded out. Whatever. “The weak rodent leaps/ Into the skin of a lion/ And thinks itself strong.”

“Nat, can you just talk normal for once?” asked Callie, rubbing her temple theatrically.

Well, someone doesn’t have a literary mind, I thought, sniffing, but replied, “I mean that Alice thinks she’s popular, but she’s not.”

“And Julianne?”

“Is too wrapped up in schoolwork to be a good friend,” I finished.

“Well then, find new friends,” Callie said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed her empty plastic wrapper out the window, the rest of the bus oblivious.

“Oh yeah,” I said sarcastically. “I can just wander around like a friendless loser for a week while everyone whispers about me. It’s not that easy, Callie. My rung on the social ladder is already low enough!” Without realizing it, my voice had ascended in volume to practically a yell. Noting the concerned and alarmed looks the counselors were shooting me, I lowered my voice to a hiss. “I can just stay with Julianne and Alice during school and hang out with you if I want to talk to someone.”

Callie was silent for a while, and when she finally spoke again, her voice shocked me out of a stupor I hadn’t noticed falling into. “I can’t always be here for you, you know.”

I refused to dignify that with an answer, instead choosing to change the subject before Callie could say anything else. “Look. I think we’re here.” Sure enough, against all odds, the death trap we were riding in, surely belonging in a museum of transportation relics, had arrived at the camp parking lot and was currently employing what seemed like a forty-point turn to maneuver into the loading zone.

“Just try,” Callie whispered to me with a resigned sigh as we began filing out of the bus. “For me.”

While everyone else twisted and crumpled squares of paper into tortured shapes that they declared to be origami, I instead chose to put their discarded figures out of their misery by ripping them in half and scribbling poorly conceived, but time killing rhymes onto them.

Thy time is wasting, blooming bud/Reach to the sky ‘fore you are mud. Perhaps not my best work, but given that I was writing on a torn paper sunflower, a plant which blooms once, then dies, I found it quite appropriate. Although when I held the failed art project away from me, it started to look like a walrus with severe osteoporosis.

“Hey, that’s pretty good!” someone said in my left ear.

With a shriek, I lurched forward and nearly toppled off my stool. “Callie,” I growled. “Don’t do that!”

“Who’s Callie?’ the voice asked cheerfully.

Oh, shoot. “Callie’s just a, uh, friend of mine,” I said, turning to face the towheaded girl behind me. “Sorry, I thought you were her.”

“That’s fine,” she said shrugging. “Your poem thing was good, though. A little dark for my taste, but good.” Out of habit, I immediately began to categorize her as she spoke. She had a certain tomboyish zeal about her, despite the blond hair. Then again, maybe I was thinking too much in stereotypes there, but whatever. Still, there was an undeniable energy about her, a charisma. Maybe it was the combination of wearing gray sweatpants with thermal underwear and still being confident about it, or maybe it was just the way she spoke. Either way, an interesting subject, reminiscent of a solar flare or a strong wind on a sunny day. She definitely didn’t fit into any of the carefully defined social roles that came to mind. “I do a bit of writing myself. Do you wanna come sit with us?”

Pausing for half a second, I considered her proposition. I needed someone to sit with at lunch or risk looking like a friendless loser, and this girl and her friends were the only candidates to come up so far. “Okay,” I said.

By the time lunch rolled around, I had become thoroughly acquainted with the girl, whose name was Jin, and her friends: Melody and Jonathan. Since Jonathan was unsuccessfully trying to attack Jin with his origami monster claws while she noogied him mercilessly, I made casual conversation with Melody, who had been silently and intently fashioning an extensive floral arrangement.

“Jin, Jonathan, and I all go to different schools,” she explained, her voice quiet and soothing. “But we know each other through Math for Future Leaders. Jonathan and I are cousins, too.” Her pale lips barely moved as she spoke, long black hair obscuring most of her face. “Even though Jon and I are related, he and Jin are maybe even closer than he and I. They’re both into Call of Duty and stuff, while I spent most of the summer solving mathematical proofs so I can skip Geometry next year. That, combined with debate prep, oboe, badminton, and my journalism class, I had almost no time to see them.” Her tone was wistful, but resigned, reminding me a bit too much of Julianne for my liking. Watching her work silently, I could see the similarities easily. Here one day, gone another, both in body and in thoughts, a little removed, on a slightly different plane from the rest of us, a friend at times, a mere presence at others.

“Hey, do you want to come to my room with the rest of us after lunch?” asked Jin, cocking her head sideways like an eager cocker spaniel.

“I don’t know…” I began, but in my peripheral vision, I spotted Callie glaring at me from the corner of the room. “Okay, fine, I’ll come.”

Not seeming to notice my change of tone, Jin simply beamed at me and poked Jonathan in the side. “She’s really good at poetry,” she began to gush. “And there was this one thing…”

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of Jin’s room, I peered over at Jonathan, who was playing a shooting game on his PSP. “If you don’t mind my asking,” I began, “don’t you have any guy friends?”

“Die, noob!” he shouted at the screen before pausing it and turning to me. “Sure I do. I just don’t have any problem hanging out with girls. Even at school, half of my friends are girls, and Jin’s my best friend.”

“Huh,” I said. “At my school, if guys and girls hang out together, people assume they’re dating.”

“My school’s the same,” he said. “But it doesn’t bother me.” With that, he returned to killing zombies, leaving me slightly confused.

The rest of the day was spent attempting to make origami rabbits, pulling a few pranks, some victims more receptive than others, and various other antics, culminating in a pillow fight that left me immobilized, laughing on the floor. It was in the midst of this that my mind flicked back to the poem scribbled on the paper in my pocket. Why do I even bother? Camp ends the day after tomorrow.

But your poem says enjoy it while you can or something. I could practically hear Callie’s voice in my head. Maybe we had been spending too much time together after all.

The next day, Jonathan and Jin covertly hurled pieces of wet clay at each other while Melody tried to teach me rudimentary ceramics. I found the cool, slimy surface of the mound of earth beneath my hands comforting, feeling the edges and borders of the pot change at the slightest movements of my hands. It was a powerful sensation, one of control.

As we waited for our works to come out of the kiln, Melody, Jonathan, and Jin described their class.

“It’s super fun!” exclaimed Jin. “You should totally join.”

“Math for Future Leaders?” I asked dubiously.

“It’s better than it sounds,” Melody reassured me.

“But it’s really just fun because we all get to see each other,” added Jonathan.

“It stinks because none of us goes to the same school,” complained Jin. “And I’m basically a loner during the week.”

“Wow,” I said. “I don’t think I’d be able to do that. I’d be too worried about what people thought about me.” The moment the words escaped my mouth, I regretted them. How could I have been so tactless?

Jin looked at the ground, her voice quavering ever so slightly. “Well, the popularity pyramid doesn’t matter to me.”

“I think our vases are done,” Melody said after an uncomfortable pause.

The rest of the day was a blur, passing far too quickly for my liking, and before I knew it, curfew was in 15 minutes, Jonathan leaving with a hurried excuse after Jin beat him in an arm-wrestling match in less than 10 seconds.

“I guess it’s time to go,” I said forlornly, standing to leave.

“Wait,” Melody said suddenly. “It’s our last night so… let’s have a secret sleepover.”

“What?!” Jin and I said in unison, mouths agape.

After several seconds of stunned silence, I was able to stammer, “Y-you want to do this?” Melody, the mild-mannered mathlete wanted to do something against the rules? She had more gumption than I thought.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” said Melody with an uncharacteristically smug wink.

So while we lay on the floor on our stomachs, whispering secrets by the light of Jin’s phone, giggling as we exchanged emails and prank called the counselors, I felt something I hadn’t in a while: belonging. But the moment I acknowledged the fact, I was swamped in sadness, for in a few weeks, these people would have forgotten my name.

I woke early the next morning, padding silently back to my room before anyone else was awake, not bothering to say goodbye. I didn’t want this to end on a low note. As I packed my belongings, my eyes settled on my crudely formed pot, which sat lonely on the desk, and I picked it up to throw away.

“Aren’t you going to keep that?” It was Callie, of course, standing behind me, watching pensively.

“It’s worthless,” I said flatly. “It feels sturdy, but when you put it to the test,” I dropped it into the trashcan, where it shattered, “it just falls apart.” With that, I grabbed my now bulging bag and yanked it out the door.


Callie found me sitting on my bed at home, absentmindedly playing with my phone. “You could just call, you know.”

I stared stubbornly at my hands, ignoring her.

“Or email them,” she continued as if oblivious to my mood. “Or Skype, or gchat, or-“

“That’s not how it works, Callie!” I screamed, suddenly livid, jumping up from the bed. “You think it’s so easy, that you can just make random contact with someone after knowing them for two days? That I will ever be anything more to them than some girl from camp? They have each other, and they probably won’t even remember me in a year! Even if I did make contact, I would be nothing but a hanger-oner, a wannabe desperate for friends!”

“Who decides this, Natasha?” With the clarity and musicality of a ringing bell, Callie’s voice echoed around the room.

“I-” I began weakly, all energy from my previous outburst dissipated.

“You do.” Callie tilted up my head and stared me in the eyes. “I have something to say, and you’re going to listen. You have a powerful imagination. It’s one of your best assets. But you are allowing it to create illusions in your life. The popularity pyramid? The social ladder? People looking you? These things are real because you make them real. Your world is what you make of it, and you’re building yourself a cage.” She sighed. “Natasha, this friendship will work if you make it work, and we both know that I, of all people, can’t force you to do anything. It’s your choice.” Turning on a heel, she walked out, leaving me alone.

Time passed. A minute or an hour, I will never be sure. I just sat there like a statue, eyes fixed on a spot of emptiness. Finally, I looked down and flicked open the phone.

Callie watched as Natasha dialed the number, listened to the phone ring, chewing her lip anxiously. She watched how her face lit up when someone answered, how her face grew more animated as the conversation progressed. Then, turning away, Callie jumped off the roof and landed, gracefully on the street, and began to walk, her destination unknown, bare feet ghosting soundlessly over the gravel, leaving no footprints or shadow. A slight smile curving across her face, she heard laughter float out of Natasha’s window for the first time in years.