Sprite hopped out of her mom’s car in the parking lot of the drop-off area for camp, opening the trunk and getting out her duffle bag (really just a beat-up old sports bag), sleeping bag, and pillow. Her little brother clung to her leg the whole time. Her mom got out a moment later, looking even more frazzled than usual. “Alright, Teo, get off your sister.”

Teo just clutched onto Sprite tighter. “No! I don’t want her to leave! It’s no fun without her!” He looked up at Sprite with his giant brown eyes, “Please don’t leave again!” 

Putting her bags down, Sprite picked him up under his arms and spun him around, before setting him back down on the ground and crouching down to his height. “Teo, it’s ok, I’m gonna come back! You’ll have a great time with Mom and Dad while I’m gone, and when I come back, we can hang out all you want. And I’ll make sure to write you a letter while I’m gone, okay?” 

Teo crossed his arms sulkily. “And you’re gonna have to do this…” He stopped to count on his fingers. “Six more times! This is stupid.” 

Sprite pulled him into a hug. “I know you’re gonna miss me, and I’m sorry, but I’ll be off having a great time with my friends! I promise I’ll come back.” 

Teo sniffled, clinging onto her shirt now. “You promise?”

Sprite was about to respond when a familiar, melodic voice called from behind her, “Sprite!” 

Turning around, she saw Lilypad standing behind her, wearing a flowy sundress with cat faces on it. Sprite smiled. “Heya, Lily!” She turned back to Teo and her mom. “This is my friend from camp, Lilypad. Lilypad, this is my mom and my brother, Teo.” 

Lilypad waved, smiling gently. “Hi!” 

Sprite’s mom waved quickly, already getting back in the car. Barely acknowledging Lilypad, she reached out to grab Teo’s arm. “Teo, we have to go, come on!”

“I don’t want to go! I wanna stay here with Reyna!” Teo grabbed her shirt so tight Sprite was kinda worried he’d rip it. She didn’t even bother correcting him for calling her by her real name.

Sprite gently pried Teo off her shirt. “Teo, you need to go home now. But I promise, I’ll come home and see you on Friday, and we can watch a movie or something, okay?” Before he could respond, he’d already been pulled into the car, which drove off a moment later. Sprite sighed, her shoulders slumping. After a moment, she shook it off, picking her stuff back up and walking over to put it next to the bus.

Lilypad walked next to her and asked, “Are you okay? You seem sad.”

Shrugging, Sprite responded, “Maybe a little, but I’ll be fine. It’s just hard, ‘cause I know my brother hates it when I’m not around.” She paused, debating how much she should share, but deciding to go for it. Lilypad seemed trustworthy enough. “We had an older sister, but she went no-contact out of nowhere a few years ago. Now, my brother gets really upset whenever he thinks somebody’s leaving him, and I feel bad about upsetting him.” 

After setting down their bags, Sprite and Lilypad walked over to go sit on a bench. Lilypad responded, “I think that’s completely fair, and I’m sorry to hear about your sister. Your brother clearly loves you a lot, huh?” 

Nodding, Sprite said, “Yeah. Yeah, he does. I mean-you saw how clingy he was. I try really hard to not let it get to me, but I was missing him so much all of last week.”

Lilypad laughed, but not at all in a mocking way-Sprite got the feeling that was just how she responded to everything. “I guess I can’t relate, considering how I’m stuck with Aurora for the first half of the summer. But also-I’ve never been super close to her. Sorry, I realize I’m making this about me.”

Sprite shrugged one shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, I like listening to you talk. It distracts me from being sad, anyway. And it must be weird having your sister work at camp.”

Running her fingers through her hair, Lilypad responded, “Not really, actually. I’ve never been close to Aurora-we’re only about a year apart in age, but she’s so different from me that I honestly forget she’s my sister.” 

As Sprite was about to respond, Dot ran up to the two of them. “SPRITE! LILYPAD! HI!” 

“Oh! Hi!” Lilypad was promptly (very aggressively) hugged by Dot. A second later, Dot grabbed Sprite and pulled her in too.

Pulling away to breathe (Dot seemed to treat her friends more like giant stuffed animals sometimes-not that Sprite was complaining, she honestly appreciated the affection), Sprite said, “Did you really miss us that much? It’s been like a day.”

“I absolutely missed you that much! It was a VERY lonely day!”

Lilypad giggled. “I missed you too. But we’re back together now!” For the next fifteen minutes or so, more of the CITs showed up, and re-united enthusiastically-okay, maybe not so enthusiastically. While Artemis said hi like a normal person, Flapjack and Avocado just shoved each other around and made fun of each other, Muffin practically hid behind a bench, Cricket had her face in her journal. 

Then, a counselor who Sprite didn’t recognize told them to get on the bus, because it was time to go. Sprite sat down beside Lilypad, Dot across the aisle from the two of them. The other CITs sat more towards the back of the bus-probably not wanting to talk to anyone. Sprite thought that was kind of weird-it was camp! Literally the perfect time to make new friends and talk to people! And if they were just going to talk to each other-well, that was fair, but like…the only CIT outside of her friends Sprite didn’t find annoying was Artemis, and everyone else was just plain annoying. Well, Muffin wasn’t annoying, but she didn’t seem to have any personality whatsoever, which wasn’t much better. Whatever. It wasn’t her problem. 

At some point during the (far too long) bus ride, Lilypad had taken out a couple markers and started doodling little flowers and rainbows on Sprite’s leg-not that she minded, it was fun, and honestly, she was bored out of her mind. The bus ride had no business being a solid three hours.

At long last, the bus arrived at camp, and the CITs piled out of it and gathered up around Koala, who’d come to pick them up. On the way to Pines, she explained rather apologetically that Sharky and Rex were having some sort of meeting with leadership and would probably be out for most of the day, which was…weird. Well, Sprite certainly thought Sharky needed some sort of disciplinary meeting, but still, it was strange that leadership wanted Rex too. Ah, well, Sprite didn’t mind-she liked Koala just fine anyway. Once they got to Pines, Koala started handing out their schedules for this week-they’d gotten them at dinner last time, but honestly it was nice to get the schedule earlier, so she could discuss it with her tentmates instead of having to go straight to opening campfire. 

Heading off to Tent One, Sprite ended up carrying both Lilypad and Dot’s day bags-she was sure she’d have even more if it weren’t for the fact that everyone had wisely chosen to leave their sleeping bags at camp over the weekend, lightening the amount of stuff they had to carry. In Tent One, Sprite sat on her bed and pulled out her schedule. “Oh, looks like we’re gonna be doing challenge course tomorrow! Watch out for evil rope swings, Dot.” 

Dot gasped in fake outrage. “How dare you!” Sprite snickered, and Dot stuck her tongue out at her. “Anyway, what else are we doing?” Dot asked.

“We’re shadowing younger campers, doing some target sports, we have lessons of course, and we’re gonna go watch the sunrise on Tuesday!” Sprite counted off on her fingers.

“Watching the sunrise sounds cool…oh, but that means we’re going to have to wake up early.” Lilypad sounded mildly disappointed, but perked up quickly. “But it should be pretty!” 

Dot turned to Muffin, who sat silently on the floor in front of her bed. “How’s all that sound to you, Muffin?” Muffin’s head shot up, her big brown eyes widening.

“O-oh, it sounds fun, yes, watching the sunrise will be cool.” She seemed about to shrink back into herself when Koala called that it was time to go to dinner.

“Already? Huh, ok. Guess we got here later than I thought,” Dot said. 

“Yeah, time’s weird at camp.” Sprite grabbed her bag and headed out to the bridge. Time really was weird at camp; a whole day could go by in the span of what felt like an hour and at the same time, an hour could feel like a whole day. Strange.

Dinner was extra loud tonight; the amount of campers had almost doubled since last week and every single table seemed to be competing for who could be the loudest. Sprite could barely hear herself think, but Dot seemed insistent on trying to talk anyway, so she strained her ears the best she could to listen and spoke in her best loud voice-which really just sounded like the voice she used when she was telling off kids on any of the sports teams she’d coached. Whatever. That was a skill she could transfer over to being a CIT, anyway. Telling off kids, that was. Not straining her ears to listen; if anything, she would like to avoid doing that, which conveniently could be achieved by telling off kids!

She didn’t know why she got in her head about it; after all, that was not at all conducive to actually developing any sort of skills. Yet throughout all of dinner-and after dinner, all of opening campfire-she just kept fixating. She hadn’t learned anything throughout the entirety of last week, and really, she was quite disappointed in herself-she normally would be doing much better. The camp would never hire her if she remained this incompetent, and her parents and brother would be so disappointed when she got home having learned nothing. No, she couldn’t possibly do that. 

As the CITs walked back to Pines after opening campfire, Sprite jogged up to Koala, who was at the start of the line. “Hey, what are our lessons going to be on this week?”

Koala smiled gently at her. “Managing camper behavior on Monday and first aid on Tuesday. May I ask why?”

“Thanks!” Sprite shrugged. “I guess I’m just curious. I wanna make the most out of the summer and, like, prepare myself to learn as much as possible!”

“I’m glad to hear it! I appreciate how enthusiastic you’ve been about everything.”

Sprite thanked her, but disagreed inwardly. She’d been nowhere near her full potential of participation over the past week, and she really could be trying so much harder. Really, she’d been letting herself relax too much. Sprite made a mental note to start treating this like an actual job and not just like any camp session. 

In her bed at Pines, she fell asleep quickly on purpose-rest was an important part of achieving as much as she could, and while normally she was prone to staying up late trying to get as much done as possible, there really wasn’t much she could do before bed at camp, and she was really trying to develop a better sleep schedule anyway.