Story: Camp Pawa: The other side of a coin (chapter 5)

Authors: Jdwheels

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Chapter 5

Title: Chapter 5 - A friend is a friend

[Author's notes: Olivia sees somthing... will she ask?  Pain is a motivator for expression.]

Chapter Five - A friend is a friend

 

 

Mandy opened her eyes and groaned. By the light that streamed into the bed from the window over her, morning had came. She instantly remembered what had happened the night before, and fought the explosion of crying that was already there. The hurt was still so raw, what Alison had done fueling the darkness that her heart held.

She layed there for a moment, noticing that Olivia was still snoring away in her bunk.... although a little louder than the night before. She made herself take a breath in purposely, wanting not to end up a complete blubbering basket case on her second day... but she wondered if she could pull that off. The thought of Alison in that man’s arms and rutting like a horny beast, was pounding away on her psyche... it was a image she did not want, but it was unrelentingly right there.

The night before played wildly in her mind, How could it not? Alison’s unemotional words still cut so deeply into her heart, touching her very soul with what it meant. She could still hear them,

"I’m pregnant" Alison’s voice kept replaying in her mind.

After breaking up with Alison, she had run away from the beach area and away from the heart of camp as well. She had found the quiet and solitude of the archer field in her blind flight from the girl. With that field being as far from the camp as it was, without going off of Pawa’s property, she sat herself right into the very center of it.

Sitting in the moonlight and crying her heart out to the stillness, Mandy ended up smoking almost a full half pack of cigarettes before she could get her emotions under control. She just could not stop trying to think of what she had done that was so bad to made her long time lover do what she had done. What was her part that ended up forcing her girlfriend into the arms of another...into the arms of a man...but after pondering it so intently, she could not find a single reason. After crying herself out, Mandy decided to make her way back to the cabin and to her bed.

When she had successfully snuck back into the quiet of the cabin, the clock on the wall in the main area said that it was almost two in the morning. She discarded what she had been wearing before going into the councilor sleeping quarters, not wanting all of the rustling to bother the still sleeping Olivia, and went to bed. All she wanted to do was to hid in the darkness of the night.

Mandy quickly put herself into her small bunk, purposely rolling herself to face the far wall. She layed there in the dark, her mind was spinning and her heart feeling shattered into millions of pieces. It would be about another full hour of softly sobbing into the pillow, while questioning herself over everything that her mind could come up with, before she finally had fallen to sleep out of exhaustion.

Now that she was unfortunately wide awake, she could hear the birds outside chirping up a storm, heralding the start of the day with the exuberance of nature itself. The bird’s morning songs usually made her feel happy and made the day brighter... this morning it did not make her feel that way. The singing of the songbirds actually had in effect deepened her mood to a lower level, almost to the point of aggravating her..

She sighed and layed there, trying not to let the silliness of being agitated with the birds get any farther than what it was. To redirect her thoughts from all of this crap, she wondered what time it was, then remembering that she had her wristwatch sitting on the stand next to her bed. Picking up the gold banded little thing and using the sunlight that had woken her up, she read twenty to six.

" That’s just great..." She muttered to herself, having even the time now bothering her.

She put the watch down and shook her head. She had twenty minutes left until she needed to actually be up, and she had only a few hours of sleep. That was not a good thing, when you had tons of things to get done before over a hundred and some kids were about to invade them the next day while you felt your world crash. Putting the pillow over her head, she wanted just to hide.

Making herself just lay there, she groaned and hoped that she could make herself fall back asleep at least for the last twenty minutes. It would be twenty minutes of total forgetting of the horrible day that had passed... and it would be twenty minutes that she could numb the pain in her heart.

Closing her eyes, she tried to force herself to get back to sleep, but already she was expecting that would not be happening. She could not stop herself from thinking about it, or settle the huge weight that had replaced where her heart had been. She was feeling like her entire world was crumbling around her, and she was totally powerless to stop it from doing so.

******

 

One hour later, Olivia and Mandy reached the dining hall for breakfast and the list of the things needed to ready Pawa for the next day from the Camp’s head person. It was now a little over twenty four hours or so until the children were to arrive, and there was still a whole lot of stuff to take care of..

Olivia took a seat beside her councilor partner at the breakfast table, coffee and a plate of overly burnt toast in hand. She looked at the long tressed young lady beside her and noticed that the normal bubbliness she knew in the girl, was very much absent. She was sitting, looking into her coffee with this so vacant of a stare.

" You alright, Mandy?" The woman inquired, seeing the younger woman’s face and how pale her complexion was. " You seem quiet today."

" Did not sleep well." Was the answer Mandy gave.

" Did you get any seep at all?" Said Olivia, snapping more awake.

" Couple hours I guess... I just need some coffee."

Through her still half sleep fogged mind, Olivia just could feel that something was not at all right with the girl next to her. She could feel emotions so dark emanating from the girl, telling her that it was not just the lack of sleep that was affecting the younger woman. She eyed the girl for a few moments, the drawn face and slumped posture told of something that was very wrong.

Olivia then took a visual scan of the Dining hall. She quickly picked out the two figures that were Alison and Debbie, who were sitting together about half way across the large expanse of the hall. Even from this distance, Olivia noted the drawn face and deep darken rings around the eyes of the girl in the glasses, Alison’s paleness also caught her attention. She watched the girl for a few moments, and quickly noticed that Alison was taking great care not to take a look over this way. She noted also that if Mandy had seen her girlfriend, she was not acknowledging the girl as well.

She put two and two together, and knew that this relationship was sinking faster than the Titanic. Olivia was going to speak to her young councilor pardner, but Miss Ashfield stood up to give the staff the speech of the day and lay out what had to be done before sundown tonight. She knew now was not the time to poke into what was going on. She planned to just play it cool while they were working, and just try and see what had happened between the two.

Cleaning the bathroom and shower cabins is one of the tasks that no one liked, but was necessity when you have children coming. That was the main task assigned to Mandy and Olivia, along with a team of others, to go out to the various bathroom cabins around camp to give them a real deep down cleaning..

Olivia watched the girl as she swung the mop at their first assigned bathroom. The girl was so deliberate in her strokes, almost as if she was trying to mop the tiles right off the floor with every swing she took. The woman would venture a glance at the girl’s face from time to time, and always saw that it had not changed since breakfast... there was not even a hint of a smile was on the smooth face.

 

******

 

Mandy found herself almost winded by the time the last bathroom and shower area was finished. She wiped the sweat from her face, and wished she could dirty the showers up by showering right then. She hrumfed a little at the thought, as it was a nice and refreshing thought. She picked up the bucket she was using and hurried out of the large tiled room to meet up with her partner in cleanliness.

She found Olivia was done the changing room and had nearly done the bathroom part as well. They had done four of the facilities cabins now, and it was just past ten thirty. It was a spirited cleaning job, and they had gotten all of them done much faster than they had been expecting to.

Olivia gave the young girl a smile, as she finished the last few feet of bathroom floor with a flair of the mop.

" We are done these cans it seems." She said, almost seemingly proud of it. " I am so impressed! Four bathroom cabins along with the showers in just a few hours... we were cleaning whirlwinds today!!"

" Seems so..." Said the girl, smiling a little as her friend’s grin was contagious and broke through her mood.

The older woman gave a little chuckle, as she noticed that the girl had finally cracked a smile of her own. Olivia leaned on the mop and regarded the shorter young lady, and nodded a little.

" That is the first smile I have seen on you all day." She commented. " That looks so much better than that sour face you had been sporting."

" Guess I am having a bad day..." Mandy replied, a little surprised that Olivia had noticed her mood dispite trying not to show it.

" Have one hell of a bad day or what?" The older woman asked, her words holding almost a knowing tone in it

Mandy looked at the woman, as she thought the woman could not have a clue to what had happened the night before... yet being so observant, Olivia had already pieced together that things were not all peaches and cream with her. The girl nodded and took a deep breath in, looking right into the face of her partner here at Pawa.

" Have a little on my mind I guess." She said softly, with a meek stare at her camp partner.

" Trouble between you and Alison?" She prodded, raising an eyebrow.

" Something like that..." Mandy said.

" Is it a big something or small something?" Olivia asked, watching the younger gal’s face.

The girl did not know how to respond to the question. Her face dropped and she looked down at her feet.

" By that face I see your sporting, I am guessin’ pretty close that it to be a big one indeed..." Said Olivia.

" You could say it’s really big!" Admitted the girl.

" Let me guess... I’d bet the bank that she cheated on you?" Said the woman, very assured of her query

" Yeah... She did..." Mandy replied a little shakily, then added through trying not to burst out crying. " And a little more..."

Olivia blinked, as the last part of the girl’s comment struck her. She peered at the girl with a small squint as she stood up from leaning on the mop handle.

" A little.... more?" She asked with emphasis on the last word.

" Yeah..." Said the young woman.

" Did this girl, that Alison slept with, give her some sort of VD or threaten you?"

" I wish it was only that simple of a problem..." Said a now really shaky Mandy.

" Then... what?"

Mandy looked right into the woman’s eyes, her face still very void of any emotions... except the eyes showed pain.

" She’s pregnant." She flatly said, surprised that she had actually said it out loud to Olivia.

The woman seemed to nearly fall over, as soon as Mandy had spoken the words. She took a breath in, obviously trying to comprehend what had been told to her.

" Are you serious?" Olivia finally said.

" I wish I wasn’t." Said the short lady, as her face dropped more. " She told me that she was pregnant."

" She fucked a guy?" The woman crudely said, her disbelief apparent.

Olivia sat Mandy down on one of the benches used to change for showering. She looked right in to the girl’s eyes.

" I thought she so happy with you... and you were happy as well from what I could gather." She whispered. " What happened?"

" She found herself realizing that she might be Bi... and ran with it."

" You just sit there, and tell me the whole fucking story..." Said Olivia, seeing the tears that now were flowing down Mandy’s face.

" You don’t have to...it’s my problem to try and figure out..." Mandy said through her crying, but was cut off.

" If I did not want to hear, I would not have asked in the first place." Said the woman. " We have been friends for years here... even though in the past I was the councilor and you the camper, so get over that and just spill it, girl!"

For the next fifteen minutes, Mandy found herself pouring out her heart. She found herself unable to contain it any longer, the words flowed out of her like a torrent of a raging rapids... as did many tears. Olivia stood stone like and listened to all of the deception and lies surrounding what had happened. .

When Mandy was all done her explanation, Olivia just put her arm around her camp assistant and nodded.

" That is just beyond doing something shitty to someone... what Alison did... that is cruel." The woman spat. " And you had no idea?"

" I did..." She nodded. " I feel like a fool!"

" Your no fool..." Sternly calmed the woman. " What she did... was so hurtful.. I know that feeling... had a boyfriend years ago do that to me."

Mandy nodded, feeling better now that someone knew, and actually understood her mood. She broke a smile, it was just a small one, but it was a pure one.

" I have the remedy for cheating and lying ex’s bunch of bullshit.. no matter if the ex’s are guys or girls!" Olivia announced, hugging the girl tightly.

" What type of remedy are you suggesting?" Mandy asked.

" All of us councilors always go out for a few drinks on the night before the kids come..." She smiled, with a impish smirk a mile wide. " Here is my plan...We’ll go out to the town north of here... get you not falling down drunk, but we will get you sufficiently anesthetized for a couple of hours."

Mandy laughed at the suggestion.

" I don’t drink much..." She admitted, through her giggling. " It will take just a few to do that."

" Then because I’m buying you the drinks... It won’t end up costing me an arm and a leg.... thank god for cheap drunks like you..." She winked, adding. " Come on, we have a cabin now to mop, along with those other picky-assed tasks to get out of the way, before we can get you feeling no pain."

" Get me sobbing like someone having a break-down, then put me back to menial work?" Said Mandy, now laughing through the last few words. " That is cruel...It’s inhuman..."

" Ya gotta pay, to get drunk around here... you mopping will suffice for me." Olivia said.

The two began to laugh hard, as they headed out to return to their cabin, and the clean up that awaited them.

[End notes: AUTHOR'S NOTE:  Next chapter will be long, a little disturbing and a whole lot of fun.  Enjoy!!  Read and Review please.]

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