Chapter Four - Looks like lurking
Late afternoon found that Camp Pawa now filled up to it’s full capacity. Every one of the one hundred and ninety seven campers that were expected, had arrived in the little wooded jewel beside the lake. The camp was now was clearly alive and hopping with excitement.. The camp was now officially and literally open for business
Mandy had spent quite a bit of the afternoon time just sitting outside of her cabin, bathed in the warmth of the early summertime sun. The girl’s face seemed not to be mirroring the other campers overall enthusiasm and delight as the first day was in full swing. With young Mandy, it seemed there was a type of sadness that was hanging in her eyes.
The cabin that she had been assigned into was now finally full, and she found herself not at all happy. Out of the twelve that were going to be bunking in the oddly built cabin, that was counting herself, only a handful of the girls that were with her this summer.. she actually knew and liked. The other, more popular girls that made up the bulk of her cabin mates, were a different story.
The only ones assigned with her she knew enough were Lori, Brandy, Allison and a girl named Chloe King. Chloe had been in her cabin off and on for many years, but they had never really gotten to be fast friends or anything. She liked both Brandy and the always smart Allison as well... but all of these girls were nothing more than acquittances to her, for she knew them very little..
All of the others assigned to her Cabin were all in the more popular group that went to Pawa, and never fooled around with the fact that they saw her as a bit of a freak. More than once on this first day of camp, she had heard them whispering about her being ‘the dyke’ in the cabin and how they ‘really did not like that’ and spoke about the attack that had been made on her the last year Mandy had been at camp.
Mandy did her best to simply ignore them, but the fact was that she was going to be in close proximity with this grouping of the ‘popular girls’... was making her feel just how much she was out of place at the moment. She knew that she was different, something that she still was struggling with.
Mandy found herself daydreaming that CC was still alive to be here, or if she could have Lacy back as her friend to help this all out. These daydreams were just making her feel more isolated, and more out of place... and she knew that these ‘ Popular girls’ would never stop. She snuffed, as she had deja vu going on with the memories of Tracy still fresh in her mind after so long.
To help herself feel a little more settled, Mandy decided to go for a little walk, as supper was still about an hour away. She wanted to see if she could find anyone else around camp she knew, and hoped meet5ing up with someone, would make her feel a little more like wanting to be here in the first place.
The girl hurried up a small graded hill on a dirt path, heading to what most campers had affectionately nicknamed ‘downtown’. The term was referring to the center of camp that had the administration building, dining hall and other smaller buildings central to the Camp’s daily operations. She knew that many of the campers would end up congregated there, and hopefully there would be more than a few familiar faces there.
There were more than a few handfuls of campers hanging around when she arrived at ‘downtown’. She scanned the crowd for familiar faces as she headed for the ‘snack shack’, a littler general store type if thing where you can buy pops treats while staying at Pawa. Most people would stand in front of this little vestige of urban life, and meet up.
After scanning the people for a few minutes, Mandy finally spotted someone she knew. Zachary Keegan, her only fairly long time male friend she had, was wandering around near the flagpole, talking to another boy. She smiled as she saw him, her mind noted that the lad was far different than the last time she saw him. An obvious growth spurt had taken full control over this lad entire body.
Zack was not the pencil thin, very short boy she had known only two years ago. The youth was now nearing six feet tall and his frame was muscled and filled out. If the lad had not have his all too distinctive smirk on his face, she would have missed the fact that it was actually him in this crowd. The lad had changed so much, but never that split ass grin he always wore. Spotting the lad like she had, made Mandy feel as if she had won a lottery or something.
Zachary spotted Mandy right off and his face beamed a even larger smile. He said something to the boy he was talking to, and then ran over to the girl.
" Hey, Mandy...!" He said, his speech showing that his high pitched-before-puberty voice had lowered into a deep booming baritone. " Your back...."
She nodded and looked at the lad, careening her neck to actually see the over foot taller youth’s face.
" Yeah... I am." She commented.
" Seems like your not at all sure of being here..." The lad said, showing he was observant in picking up some subtle clue from the girl’s demeanor.
" Shows that much?"
" Yeah, it does." He said " You never have been one to hide shit like that anyways."
" This year feels not at all like it should..." Admitted the girl.
Zachary shifted a little, as if his mind was mulling things over. He looked at the girl and smiled.
" I know it does not..." He said finally.
" You... do?"
" Yeah... I heard about CC passing away there..." He said bluntly. " Bummer."
Just the mention of CC’s name made Mandy’s mood sink a little. She looked at Zack and nodded. Then she wondered if the lad knew about her and CC.
" I know about you and CC..." He said finally, reading the small girl’s face as she stood there.
" Y...you do?" She said, feeling instantly nervous.
He looked into Mandy’s face, and chuckled.
" I know that you two were a item by the time you both left camp that year..." He said " Don’t worry... I understand all to well."
" You do?" She said again."
" Your stuck on using those two words aren’t you..." The lad said, laughing a little at the girl.
" I’ll try an’ change that...." She drawled, then looked at the lad. " How did you end up finding out that?"
" If we are playing truth or dare here, I would answer that... which I will..." He said with a wink. " ... My truth is... I’m gay, so I just knew!"
Mandy’s jaw dropped as she looked at the youth. She tried to say something, but they youth’s so open candor simply had robbed her of the ability to speak at the moment. He just broke out laughing harder still, nearly doubling over in the process.
" That really did surprise you, didn’t it..." He said.
" Just a little bit..." She meekly replied, giving a small shy grin to the tall youth.
" It shocked the hell out of my parents too..." He said with a roaring laugh. " That’s ok though... I like who I am now... and so do my parents as well "
She blinked, but understood what he had said. It was not easy for her to tell her parents either, and by the way Zack was saying his piece, she could tell that it was not an easy thing for him to have done. She thought back on her own moment, when she ‘came out’, and felt so glad that her parents had came to grips with her choice to be who she was. It was not easy for them, but she was glad that they had done it after a long while.
The two stood there and laughed for a little bit, getting reacquainted with one another. In this moment, Mandy felt better than she had been... for this lad had broken it open for her. They just stood and talked, each now seemingly so very relaxed.
As they stood there, Zack seemed to be looking past her. Curious, she looked at the youth questioning.
" What are you looking at?" She asked
" Over there... at that strange woman over there." He said, turning his attention back to Mandy.
" A woman?" She mimicked, looking at the tall lad. " You just told me you like boys?"
He looked down at the small girl and chuckled a little, but there was a seriousness in his eyes as well.
" Not like that..." He said with a subtle wave of his hand. " That woman seems to be staring this way, right at you..."
Mandy turned her head innocently, to see what Zack was talking about. She saw it was the tall and angular form of Miss. Ashfield, that was the woman that Zack had commented to her about. She eyed the woman, wondering just why she was there.
Miss. Ashfield was standing on the porch to the administration building, leaning up against one of the log-poles that held up the overhang above the entrance to the building. The woman did seem to be staring in her direction, and focused right on her. Even from the distance they were at, Mandy could clearly see those smokey blue eyes were not moving as they seemed to be wholly locked on to her.
Mandy felt a little cold shiver go up her spine, the woman’s unblinking stare was more disturbing than when she had been doing it when she first met the woman. She found her own mouth had gone dry all of a sudden, as the woman’s presence there reminded her too much of that old pervert from back home again...Comparing the stares of the old pervert and the woman..showed that was almost exact in it’s nature.
With her face almost blank, the girl turned and looked over at the youth. The question he had posed to her, now was the same one back at him.. the why.
" That is Miss Ashfield, the new Administrator of camp." She informed.
" Oh...I see..." Said Zack, who then paused for a second or two. " That don’t explain why she is looking over here at you." He eyed the woman for a moment, without lifting his head any. " It is... creepy though..."
Mandy nodded her head. She was feeling the same way.
" She was staring at me just like that earlier... when I had went to the office to help out my councilor with some attendance things." She confided.
" She was staring at you like that?" Zack asked, snuffing a little at the end of his shocked words.
" She was..." She nodded. " I did not know what to think of that..."
" Whoa, Nelly!" He gasped, giving a overstated head tilt in the process. " That is just too way beyond creepy for words...."
" Tell me about it..." Mandy said.
The young lad took another more cautious look over at the woman, then took a long breath in.
" I don’t know what she is doing... or if she is actually doing anything in the first place..." Zack said with a small shrug of his shoulders. " Still...I find it more that just a little bit weird that she is not even moving a inch from where she is.."
Someone called out to Zack from across the way, and the lad turned to see who was calling out. Upon seeing who had called out to him, he excused himself to go over while expressing that they would talk more later on. The girl nodded and watched the lad run off to where a tall dark skinned boy stood waiting.
Now alone among the large crowd of people in Pawa’s ‘downtown’, Mandy soon was feeling way more uncomfortable as the woman had not stopped watching her. As if that was bad enough, Mandy also had spotted Isis and her band of pretty people coming up from the cabins, flanked by some boys who seemed to be ‘just walking behind them’...but knew that was not the case. The group was headed straight to where she was.
Already feeling so uneasy because of the woman, and now having that grow as the group neared, she decided just not to be around. Mandy turned and left the area as quickly as she could, hoping to fit in a smoke before supper came around and also was hoping that she would bump into Lori for some company until they were called to eat.
She took one looked back as she left, and could still see the woman standing on the administration building’s porch. It seemed like she was still following her ever move even when she was heading away.