Chapter 1: 6 PM: Campfire Songs
Chapter Text
We’re drenched in sunscreen and bug spray and incense. We feel gross, look gross, smell gross. We’re sunburned and bug-bitten and behind us is the devil, every annoyance of summer is nipping at our heels.
Being in the Summer Scouts sucks incredibly. The cabins are stuffy, the beds are gross, the food is grosser, the counselors only sing about jesus, and they won’t let us have a transformation sequence.
We can’t wait until a week from now when the three of us are home in our beds, we won’t have to think about what we do or don’t deserve, and we can leave cleaning up the devil to someone else.
“...Ow.” Amy clutched her head from where it hit the ground. “Fucking ow.”
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Taylor picked her up from where she lay.
“Peachy,” Amy grumbled as she stood up. “It’s—ow—it’s fine, Taylor.”
“You sure about that? It looked pretty bad.”
Amy waved her off. “I’m fine, Taylor. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m kinda surprised you’re not unconscious,” piped Lisa from next to them. “Or dead.”
Amy sighed. “Look, I’m still standing, alright? Stop your fucking worrying.”
Taylor shrugged. “If you say so.”
Amy was good at brushing off concern, as well as people in general. The daughter of a family of scouts, folks expected the world of her, and she lived to disappoint. She always did the bare minimum of what she needed to get by. She’s nice or maybe a huge bitch who hates everything. But that’s okay. She’s pretty funny.
Amy clutches her head for a bit, before noticing something dribbling down her chin. A bit of lunch came back up, so she grabs a leaf and brushes it away, trying to ignore the rising heartburn. “Are we already late?”
Taylor frowns. “I thought we left pretty early, though…”
“But we’ve been walking for-fucking-ever.”
Lisa tunes the two out as she types into her phone.
BigbroBigjerk: U doing alright lis? Summer scouts ends soon right
AllSeeingEye: Just one more week. Couldn’t be much worse than the previous weeks, right?
BigbroBigjerk: Hey look at it this way the camp might burn down today and you can go home early
AllSeeingEye: You’re so meannnn! Stop giving me false hope.
“We should be pretty close, I think.” Amy’s voice drags Lisa from her phone for just a moment.
“As long as we’re not last, we’ll be just fine,” Taylor reassures them.
Lisa just sighs. “I’m not too sure about that. I mean, remember all the shit we just did? Everyone else is probably already there.” She looks back to her phone.
AllSeeingEye: Ughhhh I just want this to be over already.
BigbroBigjerk: U got this lis <3
AllSeeingEye: Ugggghhhhhhh
AllSeeingEye: <3
Lisa didn’t tell us because she was too busy talking with her brother, and she found this sort of thing funny. Or maybe she had some sort of plan to get us out of trouble, so she just let us relax for a bit. Lisa was always kinda quiet, kinda bled into the background when she needed to, but she also had that kinda smile that is really punchable. She can smile and laugh through anything, and as long as she’s in focus the rest of us are pretty much invisible.
Lisa looks like she’s about to say something, but she stops. “I think it might be over there.” She points in a direction, and we look and see nothing.
Amy frowns. “What’s over there?”
“There’s music, coming from that direction.” Lisa responds. She idly hums a tune, as if to prove herself.
Taylor shakes her head. “I don’t hear anything. Except you.” She scratches her arm.
Lisa frowns. “But I can hear it so well…”
Taylor sighs and picks a scab off her arm. “It’s over here.”
And there’s the bonfire.
“Are we on time?” Amy grouses as we walk into the clearing, ignoring the eyes of all the other campers. We stay silent.
The bonfire captain lets out a forced chuckle. “Group West’s finally here. Kinda early for you guys, huh?” He gives us a glare. “I didn’t hear ya’ll swearing, did I?”
“No sir,” Amy mutters.
“Nosir!” Taylor says.
“Nnnope,” Lisa pops the ‘P’ at the end.
The bonfire captain doesn’t look like he believes us. “Haha, sure you weren’t.”
Taylor puffs out her cheeks. “We weren’t sir, I promise!”
“Oh I believe you.” His gaze travels from Taylor to the rest of us. “I dunno about the rest, though.”
“Oh, uh…” Taylor gives an awkward smile. She’s always trying to please others as much as she can, and she’s good at it too. She gets good grades and is decently fit, so she slots into a lot of groups easily, even if she always stumbles at the last moment. She steps up to lead when nobody else will, which was basically always.
The bonfire captain laughs again. “Sit down, everyone.” The bonfire captain throws more incense in the fire. The sticky, sickly sweet smell is the worst thing about the camp. It’s a terrible blend; termite-eaten wood from abandoned churches, dried daylilies from the side of country roads, singed wire from burned out radios, broken promises, ashes of monsters of the week.
Gross.
Lisa sits with her legs crossed, idly looking around the campsite for anything interesting to catch her eye. Amy doesn’t care a bit, comfortably leaning against a stump with a bored look in her eyes. Taylor pulls her chin up and rests her head on her knees. She’s bad at posture. But she’s good at making herself seem smaller than she is, which is no small feat.
There’s a perfect balance of usefulness and liability to the young for which the summer scouts are the most perfect solution.
“Everyone having a good time?” The bonfire captain calls. Nobody is, or has much enthusiasm to fake it.
A hint of a frown crosses the bonfire captain’s face. “I said, is everyone having a Good Time?”
But the captain can be motivating.
“I SAID, is everyone HAVING A GOOD TIME?” And he doesn’t quit until everyone’s at least put effort into faking it.
“Yay!” Taylor cheered softly.
“Y-yes,” Lisa called.
Amy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”
This is bullshit.
The bonfire captain nods anyway. “That’s more like it. Still a little quiet in the West.”
“Fuuuuuck him,” Amy mutters, causing Taylor to snort and Lisa to stifle a laugh.
The bonfire captain picks up his guitar. Amy doesn’t even try to hide her look of offense. None of the counselors like to talk as much as he does. Small mercies. He probably feels like he has to give sermons since he’s in charge, but we know the counselors wish they were anywhere else as much as we do.
“You know,” he begins with a plastered-on grin, “I wasn’t the most popular when I was a kid. I got in my share of fights, but I had a couple of guys I was best friends with and we stuck up for each other.” Taylor flinched, but he didn’t notice. None of us did. He continued. “Whenever my parents asked if I wanted to bring my friends somewhere, I’d say, ‘I wanna bring both of them.’ I thought I was doing this great thing, not holding one of my friends over the other. But secretly, I thought one of them was kinda annoying. And he kinda was. He whined and wouldn’t go along with us sometimes.” There were chuckles coming from our right, and Taylor shrunk in on herself a bit more. “I felt pretty bad about that, so I tried to be an even better friend to make up for it. I thought if I could work even harder, I’d be able to make up for him.” He shook his head. “But actually, I wasn’t helping him at all. You wouldn’t have thought it, I wouldn’t have thought it, but in the end he was the one that got in deep, deep trouble. I probably could have stopped it if I’d told him to cut it out and man up instead of basically doing the opposite.” He takes a breath, and Taylor takes a breath. “Some friendships you can keep up. The rest you gotta leave up to god.”
Amy groans, snapping Taylor out of her daze. “Come on, how much longer is he gonna keep talking? There is no mercy in this world.”
Lisa pipes up as well, after quickly glancing to Taylor. “We’ll be going to the cabin tonight, I bet.”
Taylor frowned. “Maybe we won’t, though?”
Amy scoffs. “Appreciate the sentiment Taylor, but get real. We are so going to go in there. It’s the last week at camp and we’re the only ones who haven’t gone in there yet.” She glares at the bonfire captain briefly. “Not to mention that loser has it out for us so bad.”
Taylor scratches her neck. “Maybe we won’t, though? I’m feeling pretty optimistic, at least.”
We just stare at her. “Why?” Lisa snipes.
Amy nods. “Yeah, why?”
Taylor stops scratching to shrug her shoulders. “Well I mean…”
“No seriously, why.” Amy glares at her. “What makes you think that’s okay.”
“Hey there, GROUP WEST.” Taylor blanches as we turn to face the bonfire captain. “Feel like meeting the devil tonight?”
Taylor groans. “Darn it…”
“Oh no.” Lisa shakes her head slightly.
“Told you,” Amy smirks at the others. “Hey, look on the bright side. From what I hear, hardly anyone ever dies.”
Chapter 2: 7 PM: Make Friends!
Summary:
Group West is interrupted from their duties by a certain obnoxious trio, and two members of Group West chat a bit about friendship.
Notes:
Warning: This chapter includes a particular slur typically targeted at ND folks near the end. It is cut off, but even so, stay safe.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Amy kicks the ground, kicking up dust. “The captain was pretty pissed off at us, huh?”
“What’s new,” Lisa remarks. We’re both standing under the siren, watching Taylor mess with its innards. “He’ll get over it eventually. He always does.”
Amy rolls her eyes. “He’d get over it quicker, or god forbid not at all, if you looked up from your phone more than once every minute.”
“I’m not that bad,” Lisa replies. Sure enough, her phone is in her pockets. “But there were more important matters to attend to at the time”
“Like?”
“Cute cat photos.”
Amy just stares. “You… really need to get your priorities straight.”
“Yeah, probably.” Lisa laughs. It’s that short laugh she makes right before changing the topic.
Amy doesn’t give her the chance. “Could you at least try to give a shit sometimes? We’re already stuck going to the cabin, we don’t need you making things worse.”
“Hey, after tonight we won’t need to worry about that.” She looks up at Taylor. “You doing okay up there?”
“Huh?” Taylor shakes her head, looking like she just woke up from a daydream. “Oh, uh, I’m good, it’s all good.”
Amy gapes. “Don’t fucking lie, you were totally zoned out up there! Jesus, what if you fell?”
Taylor rubs her cheek sheepishly, furiously. “Sorry, I… I thought I felt something crawling on me. I might have gotten bitten by a mosquito or something.”
“What’s new?”
Taylor giggles at Amy’s remark, before turning back to the siren. “Let’s see. I think the diode here shattered. Lisa, could you get me a new one?”
Technically speaking, Lisa is the best electrical engineer out of all of us, but she tends to split her work with Taylor when it comes to maintaining the sirens. At first she said it’s because Taylor’s taller so she has an easier time getting to and from the sirens. Later she told us that she didn’t want to do the counselors’ jobs for them.
Lisa grabs a crystal and clambers up the pole to hand it to Taylor. She takes it, but freezes. “Oh no.”
Lisa frowns. “What is it?”
Amy looks in the direction Taylor is looking and groans. “Oh god above, it’s them.”
“Hey Taylor.”
“Heeey Taylor.”
“Heeeeey Taylor.”
Group South saunters towards them. Group South doesn’t look the same, but they act so in sync and so well coordinated that most of us can’t remember their names. Even Taylor can only remember one of them. Honestly it’s pretty jerkish of us and it would explain why they hate us so much if it weren’t for the fact that they went after Taylor almost immediately after the Scouts started.
Taylor flinches and leans back slightly, still clinging to the pole. “Hey Emma.”
The redheaded one grins. It isn’t a nice grin. “Why are you here? We’ve got the forest sirens.”
“Why are you here?” The athletic one repeats. “You’ve got the lake sirens.”
The short one brings up the rear. “Why are you here? You should leave.”
Amy frowns. “The bonfire captain told us to handle this one, guys.”
Taylor nods. She keeps glancing around, looking for any form of escape and avoiding Group South’s eyes. She obviously wants to be anywhere but here right now.
Lisa just laughs. “Y’know if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re lying to us to get out of the mosquito zone.” Her face turns less mirthful. “Do you really think we’re that idiotic?”
Taylor smiles a bit, straightens up a bit. “Y-yeah! We’re not dumb!”
Group South just shrugs. “That’s what he said. Maybe Taylor heard wrong.”
“That’s what he said. Maybe he was afraid Taylor would screw it up.”
“That’s what he said. Maybe Taylor should go home before she embarrasses herself even more.”
Taylor shrinks back again. Group South always seems to have it out for Taylor specifically.
Group South like to think they’re in charge of the camp and it’s the worst. The kids in charge of a camp for bad kids are by requirement the absolute worst.
(☉ & ♅)
Amy glances at Lisa, then sighs when the latter nods her head. “I’m going to go work on the next siren. You two catch up once you’re done here, alright?”
She leaves, but group South doesn’t follow her.
We have trouble focusing while they’re standing there. Every time we try to pull our gazes away to relax, they keep catching our eye, silent and judging and waiting. Taylor keeps scratching at her crawling skin, and Lisa tries hard to ignore the earworm that’s bugging her. There is nothing ruder than denying us distraction.
Eventually Lisa sighs. “Don’t you have somewhere better to be? What’s your problem anyways?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing. You’re cool.”
“Nothing. You’re cool. Taylor’s the one in trouble.”
Taylor just shrinks in on herself even more at that, which is impressive but also concerning given her current position. Lisa eventually gets fed up with the silence. “You three are sad, you know?”
Group South blinks. “What do you mean? We’re not sad.”
“What do you mean? We’re happy.”
“What do you mean? We’re the best.”
“Very debatable,” Lisa mutters. “I mean, this whole time you’ve been trying so hard to suck up to the captain when that’s pretty much the best way to piss him off. Are you that desperate to convince yourselves that you’re more than a bunch of bitches that can’t stand to be anywhere but the top?”
Group South don’t like that. “This isn’t about you, it’s about Taylor.”
“This isn’t about you, you don’t need to get involved.”
“This isn’t about you, fuck off.”
“Wow, really love thy neighbor there, guys.” Lisa smirks at them. “Seriously, you really should stop trying to suck up to the captain. Maybe, I dunno, find self-worth on your own terms? Just spitballing here.”
Group South stands there for a bit, before Emma turns around. “Fuck it.”
“Fuck it?!” The athletic one is a bit surprised, before she follows after.
The short one shrugs before he too follows them. “...fuck it.”
Lisa grins victoriously as the three retreat. “Good riddance,” she sings under her breath before turning to Taylor. “You almost done up there?”
Taylor blinks before nodding. “Y-yeah, I’m good. I pretty much finished it a while ago.” She puts something back into place and the siren hums to life, giving a low drone of static. The sirens are a bit louder now, louder than normal. As if God is warning us.
Taylor scratches her head a bit before clambering back down the siren pole. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“Well someone had to be the bitch that gets them to shove off, it might as well be me.” Lisa stretched her hands behind her head as they walked to the next siren. “I just don’t know why you needed me to step in. I mean, I’ve seen you get mad at people, and I’d say they deserve it more than Group Northeast did, at least.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Taylor replied. “Emma and I used to be friends, you know? Like, we were friends for years. Then one day she just stopped talking to me out of nowhere.” She looked at her shoes and kicked the ground. “She didn’t even tell me why beyond just not wanting to see me anymore and then she just cut me off. And when I tried to get back in touch with her she just kept insulting me, calling me clingy or dumb or a harlot or ret—” She isn’t able to finish the sentence as she slaps her arm. “…I thought I felt a bug.” There wasn’t anything there, not even a welt, just a red outline of a hand. “A-anyway… yeah. I guess that’s why I don’t, uh, go off on Emma. I just really don't want to be mad at her.” She clenches her fist. “It isn’t worth getting mad over.”
Lisa hums disapprovingly, then turns to the trail leading further into the forest. “So I’m curious, do you actually want to repair that friendship or what?”
“It’s… not really that,” Taylor admits. “I guess I just want to know what changed, you know? Did I do something to hurt her? Was I just not a good enough friend? Or—” She sighs. “You know what, nevermind. It’s stupid.”
“If you say so.” We walk in silence for a bit, before Lisa spoke up again. “Okay, You explained why you aren’t friends with her anymore, makes sense. Or, it doesn’t, but it’s as much as we’re likely to get. What I don’t understand is why the whole group just treats you like shit.”
“I don’t know that either, the Emma I remember wasn’t a bully.” Taylor sighs. “I wonder if I ever really knew her, or if everything was a lie.”
“Well either way, that friendship has thoroughly ended,” Lisa said. “If you want my advice, just move on. She isn’t worth your time, so don’t waste any of it.”
Taylor frowned, but eventually nodded. “Yeah, you might be right.”
Notes:
Not the proudest about this chapter. I might add a bit to the end later, but I'm not sure what yet.
Things are starting to feel more unique here! The roles may be similar, but these three are still very different characters to the canon worst girls.
Also the Trio are here! And now they aren't anymore. Yay! :D
Remember, comments give the author life. Give enough and I will live forevermore!
Edit: I fleshed out this chapter a bit more in various places. Hopefully this will make it feel a bit less barebones.
Twei on Chapter 1 Thu 16 Mar 2023 03:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
AilingStar on Chapter 1 Fri 17 Mar 2023 01:45AM UTC
Comment Actions
YourAverageCasual (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sun 19 Mar 2023 03:17AM UTC
Comment Actions
AilingStar on Chapter 2 Sun 19 Mar 2023 03:57AM UTC
Last Edited Sun 19 Mar 2023 03:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
cauldron's graces (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sat 25 Mar 2023 03:02AM UTC
Comment Actions
AilingStar on Chapter 2 Sun 26 Mar 2023 12:22AM UTC
Comment Actions
Josiador on Chapter 2 Mon 27 Mar 2023 01:23PM UTC
Comment Actions
AilingStar on Chapter 2 Thu 06 Apr 2023 12:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
Twei on Chapter 2 Sat 01 Apr 2023 01:20PM UTC
Comment Actions
AilingStar on Chapter 2 Thu 06 Apr 2023 01:01AM UTC
Comment Actions
Cleophidian on Chapter 2 Wed 05 Apr 2023 05:50PM UTC
Comment Actions
AilingStar on Chapter 2 Thu 06 Apr 2023 01:02AM UTC
Comment Actions