“I miss you.” His familiar voice forces a smile onto my face and I know that im blushing in front of all my friends, but i don’t care.

“I know,” I respond, “Hey listen, I’ll call you back, I’m with a couple friends.”
“Okay seven, call me later.” I start to laugh, say bye and hang up.  Memories from this summer rush through my head and i'm forced to think about the camp I was at.

Its the second to last day of camp and i’m disappointed my summer has nearly come to an end.  There are only two more days of camp, three more days of me being in Maine, and 5 more days until school starts.  Today we have cabin wars, and excitement rushes through camp.  The teams are broken up into what cabin you’re in, each cabin has a different color.  On the first day of camp we were all given a color and a number, girls got assigned the number 1 and a color, and boys got assigned the number 2 and a color.  I was put into red cabin 1, so I’m on a team with the three girls i’ve been bunking with all summer along with the four guys in red cabin 2.  There are four colors, so eight cabins in all, and there are going to be 8 campers per team for the cabin wars. 
“Missy,” I turn to see Kailyn and Cassie approaching me with arms full of red shirts.  Each cabin made their own shirts, ours are red with black puff paint writing, on the front we simply put RED CABIN and on the back our last names and our favorite numbers.  We made them for the guys too so that all our shirts would look the same.  “Ready to win today?” Cassie bombards me with all the red shirts except for hers, and Kailyn has to dig through the pile to find hers. 

“You know I am,” I reply before leaving for the guys cabin. Cassie throws her long blondish pink hair into a ponytail that reaches down to the bottom of her back.  Kailyn has put her jet black hair into a tight fish- tail braid, like she does everyday, and scans the crowd of the other campers with her bright green eyes.  They take off back toward our cabin and I make my way across the field, always lively with the bright colored flowers flying through the wind, to get to the guys cabins.  When i get to their cabin i’m surprised they’re all awake, usually they wake up just in time for breakfast, and distribute their shirts.  Jonny made sure to be number one, Christopher number four, i was told a countless amount of times that was his number for basketball, James number eight, and Toby, after many arguments, number 10.  He requested number seven, but thats my favorite number.  He tried to convince me that since he was a more valuable player to our team that he should get seven instead of me, but I proved him wrong. 

Toby wanted to run the race in the wars, so i told him that we could race and whoever won got to run in the wars and got number seven.   We raced a 5k, and i finished four minutes before him.  Needless to say, i got what i wanted.  Thats when James started calling me seven-  after I raced Toby just to have the number on the back of my shirt.  The guys thanked me for their shirts ( even Toby) and James walked me out.  He and I were doing the running part of the competition together, I’ve never been a runner but when I met James in the beginning of the summer he got me into running, we would go on a run every morning together.  When i raced Toby, I beat him so bad because i had been running with James prior to that.  After he got me into running i got him into swimming, i swim for my schools team in the winter.  The swimming part of the wars is a relay, so four people participate in it.  We decided that the swimmers were going to be James, Sharon, Toby and I.  James holds my hand as we walk to the main cabin for breakfast.  Breakfast is served at eight every morning, if you’re late you get the cold leftover food.  The girls are waiting at our table for us, and we all go up and get food together.  As we get into line, the smell of the chocolate chip pancakes calls to me and i help myself to a heap of them, also scooping up some strawberries, blueberries, a banana, and glass of orange juice.  We return to our table, starving, and dig in.  Breakfast is delicious as always, I savor the warm pancakes, chocolate melting in my mouth.  The fruit is always fresh and I steal watermelon off of James’ plate whenever he’s not looking.  When he finally notices he gets up and goes to get me a plate of watermelon, but i continue to steal his just to annoy him.  As we wrap breakfast up the eight of us go outside to practice for our events later today.  Its around nine now and events start at 10.  I go to change into my swim suit and meet James back at the pool where we do a few warm up laps.  Other teams start to arrive, and we get into lane one, where we’ll be racing.  Toby and Sharon show up and we practice our relay a couple times.  Sharon will be going first swimming backstroke, then me swimming breaststroke, then Toby swimming butterfly, and James is finishing up doing freestyle. 

The camp counselors announce that its time to start and the four swimming backstroke get into the pool and get ready to start.  Jean, the main camp counselor, blows the whistle filling the room with absolute chaos, cheering and clapping echos off the walls as the backstroke swimmers make their way down the lane in a sprint.  Sharon gets to the wall, does a flip turn which I’ve never seemed to master doing backstroke, and starts her stroke back up sprinting down the lane.

Absolute fear spreads through my body as I start to shake, its almost time for me to go.  I step up onto the block as Sharon approaches the halfway mark of the pool.  The rough block is familiar to me, and I get ready, putting both my feet at the edge of the block.  I pull my cap down around my ears and tighten my goggles so that they are almost too tight.  Eyes of all the other campers follow me, and I know they are all nervous for their teams, Sharon already has our team in first place by a noticeable amount.  Sharon is close and I follow her into the wall with my hands, swing my arms back and around me, snap my chin down to my neck, and energy exerts out of my legs against the block getting me into the water as quickly as possible, just as i was taught for my school team.  The chlorine infused water welcomes my arms and face, the water shapes itself around the rest of my body and I make sure to keep my muscles tight.  I glide for as long as I can, the water streaks around as I do a pull out before breaking the surface of the water.  When I finally do break the surface my lungs expand for the first time in what had seemed like forever.  I can faintly hear through the water, but when I take breaths the echoing voices of everyone watching me fills the room.  I start my stroke and I leave the other girls behind me, I am already more than half way across the pool.  As i approach the wall a sea of red excitement cheers for me, i grab the wall and push back under the water, gliding, do a pull out, then starting my stroke.  As I sprint toward the wall, i continue to move first my arms in a circular motion, then kicking my legs like a frog.  At school if you didn’t time it correctly you would get disqualified, you had the option to do a pull out, you had to start with a kick and when your legs touched then you could pull.  I can’t get disqualified now, but knowing the correct way to do the stroke is obviously helping me more than the other people swimming breaststroke.  I can see Toby on the block, and the second after i touch the wall i can hear him meeting the water.  I pull my tired body out of the pool, and am happy with my race, while exhausted.  We cheer for Toby as he swims down the lane, we are still in first place.  James is on the block now, a strong anchor for our team and i wish him luck seconds before he dives in.  By the time he surfaces he only has to take three strokes, and coming back he wins us our race, coming in at least 5 seconds before everyone else.  He jumps out of the pool and a wide grin spreads across his face, I try to escape but he grabs me, lifts me up and throws me into our lane.  I fly through the air and hit the water back first, getting a glimpse of him coming in after me.  I meet him at the surface and splash water at his face, now grinning back at him.  At this point  everyone is done with their race and doing the same as us, soon all the campers are in the pool splashing and laughing at each other.  Im surrounded by red shirts and bathing suits and couldn’t be happier, suddenly a long whistle sounds and echoes the pool area, everyone knows its time for the next event.  Campers lift themselves out of  the pool and make their way toward the shooting area, where two  campers from each cabin will be shooting three arrows each, getting points for accuracy. 
Cassie and Jonny will be shooting for us, they are the only ones in our cabin who actually know how to shoot.  We gather around the archery area, all dripping onto the nicely trimmed grass, now making a muddy mess.  The campers participating in this event dry themselves off and i excuse myself to change into my running clothes along with the other wet runners.  When i get back Jonny is shooting and he hits the target right in the middle getting our team three points.  I look over at the score-board and we are in second in this event so far.  Green is beating us by two points, but Cassie shoots, hits the target right where Jonny did when he shot, and puts us into first.  As this event wraps up, its time for the biggest event of the day.

James and I start to warm up by doing a couple loops through the woods.  For the race, each team has to have two people run it, and they must finish together.  As we run through the woods we see other cabins warming up, and we head back to the start line to stretch.  Our teammates go off to different parts of the course so that they can cheer us on as we run, and we do some strides.  Timothy, one of the camp counselors, has the eight campers running line up at the starting line and tells us that when we hear the whistle we will start.  We know the course well,it hasn’t changed at all since the beginning of the summer.

My stomach drops and I get nervous for the race, whoever finishes first gets 5 points for their cabin, second place only gets 3 points, third gets 1 point and last gets none.  I shake my hands out and ignore the nervousness spreading through me as a high pitched whistle fills the air.  James and I take off together, and I can already tell that we are going to do well in this event.  We are already in front of the other cabins, yellow has two girls running, and green and blue both have two guys running it.  The green cabin team races in front of us, they’re starting too fast and we know that we’ll pass them after the first mile or so.  As the grass we are running on ends, we approach my favorite part of the course, the woods.  When we enter the woods an overhang of intertwined branches from a various trees gives us shade from the sun.  I breath heavily, gasping for air, the first mile is always hardest for me, getting my body used to the abruptness of the continuous movement.  To our left we can see the lake that we swam in all summer, what ill miss most.  The endless days of waking each other up to ensure we didn’t miss breakfast, then immediately heading down to the lake with the rest of my cabin and swimming until lunch.  The lake is shimmering and reflecting the sun directly into my eyes as i reflect on all the times we swam together, laughing in the lake.  Toby and Cassie interrupt my thoughts as we cross a small wooden bridge.  They cheer us on as we pass them, and i force a smile onto my sweating face.  At this point I have controlled my breathing, and we pick up the pace a bit. James has made me love racing, and its so much better when you have someone to run with, to pace yourself off. 

James and I blast past the green team, and i can tell that they’re surprised a girl has passed them.  We stay in first for the rest of the race, passing our teammates who are cheering us on and other campers who hope for their teams to hurry up.  We emerge out of the woods, sun hitting us hard and unnecessarily spiking my body temperature.  My hair has come out of the ponytail i put it into before the race, and is strewn across my sweaty face.  I tuck it behind my ears and we are almost done.  We start to sprint here, stretching out our legs far in front of us striding to the finish.  The finish line is just across the flower field we are in, and flowers of white, yellow, and pink jump into the air to fly besides us as we run through them.  We cross the finish line, and our teammates applaud us, ecstatic that we finished first.  My legs feel as though they are going to snap, and i’m exhausted from running so hard.  That was by far the best I’ve run all summer, and I know that we won by a landslide.  I look back at the course and the other teams haven't even made it out of the woods yet.  James immerses me into his sweaty arms, and I make him piggy- back me around until the rest of the other cabins finish.  Timothy announces that we will have an hour break before the last event, and we create a stampede to the main cabin, all starving for lunch.

After lunch Kaitlyn and Chris get harnesses on for the rock climbing portion of the competition.  There is a 40 ft. rock wall, and the team to have both its climbers to the top first wins.  Kailyn is really good at climbing, she’s almost as good as Chris at this point, which surprised all of us since Chris climbs year round for fun.  Once all the campers are harnessed and ready to go Timothy blows a whistle and they start.  I don’t know how they do it, but Kailyn scurries up the wall, knowing exactly where to put her feet and hands at all times.  Already half way up the wall, she starts to slip with the next rock up a good 3 inches longer than her arms, and even though i can’t see her face i share the fear that I know has erupted inside her, she’s scared to let her team down.  Chris rescues her, giving her a hand and lifting her up to the next oddly shaped rock, reassuring us that she is okay.  They help each other the rest of the way up, Chris is a soaring 6’1 so its easy for him to get from one rock to another, Kailyn only 5’4 so some of the rocks are too far apart for her to reach.  He helps her up a couple more times, grabbing her arm and gently but pulling her up to the next rock firmly to make sure she can get a good grip on the rocks, while still obtaining his own balance.  They have excellent teamwork, and reach the top in only 5 minutes.  I lost track of the other teams while watching my own team, and didn’t even notice the yellow team finishing, what James said to be almost a whole minute before our team.  Green and blue take third and fourth place, and the counselors have to tally up the points from all the days events, so we have a little bit of time to kill.  Kailyn and Chris come down the rock wall, pushing themselves out and gliding down as if gravity wasn’t effecting them.  They get down to the bottom and the other girls and I reassure Kailyn that she did a great job as tears fill her lime green eyes.  She wipes the tears away, and we rejoin the guys telling Chris what a great job he did saving Kailyn from slipping.  We all part, the guys going back to their cabin, girls going to theirs, and James and I breaking off into the woods. 

Earlier in the summer we had discovered a treehouse, and fixed it up a little so we could hang out there whenever we wished.  I took some paint I had found in the main cabin to repaint the interior while James made some minor repairs to the ladder and base of it so that it would stay standing for at least until the end of the summer.  We climb up the ladder, and when we get inside James can barely stand.  He’s nearly 6 feet tall, a good 6 inches taller than me.  He’s skinny and has long legs, his light blue eyes study me and a grin spreads across his lightly freckled face as he slides over the almost black, smoothly sanded wooden planks to sit only inches from me.  We know this is the last time we will sit here together, tomorrow camp ends and everyone goes home.  We will be hours away from each other come tomorrow night, I was visiting my cousins  here this summer and came to this camp with them, both Tom and Patrick were put into the blue cabin.  I live in Florida however, and go back three days from now, where James live right here in Maine.  We observe the work we put into the tree house, i painted the inside walls light blue and the window frames orange.  He nailed new boards around the tree house to make a deck like area where we would lay in the sun.  “Are you excited to go back home to see all your friends?” I lean into his shoulder and his body heat radiates off him.  Its 95 degrees today and we are all sweaty, especially after the wars.

“I guess,” I respond.  I hadn’t really thought about my friends back home, after all I had made new friends here.  We decide that it would be best to head back to the camp, but first he pulls out a bunch of different colored sharpies. 

“I thought we could write on the walls before we leave for the last time.” I can hear the pain in his voice when he says last time, and take the sharpies from him.  As i start to write he laughs, I write all the stupid things Toby said that we thought were hilarious, all the things Chris got yelled at for, which included trying to make pancakes stick to his cabins ceiling with syrup, and all the times Sharon had accidently left her cabin with two different shoes on, which was more often than not.  Laughter bursts from the tree house as we write all our favorite memories on the walls of the cabin.  Night swimming, starting a food fight- even though we had to clean it up, and todays cabin wars.  As we finish up we each sign our names, and climb down from the tree house.  We look up at it for the last time and the sun shines directly onto it, reflecting all the hard work we put into it.  I lead through the woods and we find everyone gathered around in the flower fields, and Jean has dozens of papers in her hands. 

“To conclude today’s cabin wars, I have the total points from the events,”  the campers erupt with cheers as we are silenced to listen.  “In fourth place, the yellow cabin.  In third place, the Green cabin.”  We got either first or second place, and i grip James hand in a mixture of excitement and fear for our cabin.  “In second place- the Blue cabin.”  Everyone with a red shirt on rushes to Jean and we all cheer, holler, and congratulate each other in a heap of total chaos.  “And in first,” Jean screams over us, “the Red cabin!”  We erupt again, and this time all the campers charge for the beach and jump into the lake fully clothed, splashing around and soaking each other.  I am submerged into the water and Sharon and I wrestle, ending with her and i rolling through the water and me breaking away to find my other friends.  We all swim until it gets dark, enjoying the freedom of the last day of camp.  Coming out of the lake is hard, i don’t want it to be my last night here.  As we do get out of the lake the cool end of summer air nips at my skin, the other girls and I go back to our cabin.

The sun blinds me as i step out of my cabin into the warm morning air.  I have my duffle bag heavy in my hand, i throw it over my shoulder and make my way to the main cabin where we will wait for our rides home.  I rush there to make sure i get to say goodbye to all my friends before they go, and immediately pick James out from the crowd.  I move through the maze of people until I get to him and when I do he reaches for my hand and we make our way out of the abundance of campers.  My aunts ugly red truck waits for us, parked in the dirt lot, and my cousins are saying bye to all their friends.  The girls from my cabins parents are here, they say goodbye and i hug them all, we promise that next summer we will have to find a way to see each other.  I say bye to the guys in red cabin too, and am left with James.  To our left is the crowd of campers ready to go home.  As his lips brush gently against mine for what i know will be the last time and he pulls me close to him, i bury my face into his shirt and we finally pull apart.  His icy blue eyes locked with me, and my cousin finally came and told me it was time to go. 

“Ill call you, I promise.” He walked me over to the red truck i hated so much for taking me away from this camp, away from James.

“Okay,” my voice cracked and my grip on his hand loosened, I heave my bag into the truck and climb in after it.  The trucks engine comes alive and my cousins get in.  Looking backward as we get increasingly farther away from James, he waves goodbye and I wave back.