Top Bunk

DAY 14

⌚ 6:00 AM ON THE DOT

El didn't think she could hear that insert derogatory adjective here horn all the way at the camping grounds, almost a mile from where the horn is situated.

Which, naturally, means she hears it and wakes up in a pool of her saliva. And on a certain Finn Johnson' s arm. With a crowd of pre-teen to teen girls and boys staring down at her, snickering.

"Good morning," Laura teases.

El's face is white hot as she leaps from Finn, wiping the trail of dribble from her chin. How did she even get here, anyway? It takes quite a lot of glaring at each of the Cabin A girls until her sleep-filled brain recalls that very very late last night, she'd woken up thinking that she heard Grace sobbing. Being at the camping grounds and all, that seemed very impossible. But that didn't matter because she was awake and couldn't fall back asleep so she found herself wandering into that mass of trees again and finding Finn there, perched on a tree Troy Bolton-style, which had to be the most hilarious and heart-attack-inducing thing El has witnessed the entire summer.

And somehow, they'd fallen asleep on top of each other? (What?)

"Good morning!" Finn sings as he stretches, somehow still looking like a god after spending the night on the ground.

El probably looks like that one dirt goddess that probably doesn't even exist.

"Have a nice sleep?" a boy from Finn's cabin asks. He sounds just as amused as Laura does.

"Not really." Finn shrugs. "The lying in the dirt really isn't comfortable."

"Especially not with having a skinny girl suffocating you the entire time," El retorts.

"That part was fine."

A lump forms in El's throat. "Was it, now?"

"Yeah."

Before El lets herself smile, she clears her throat and puts a stern face on. "Now if my cabin would be so kind as to stop fuc - freaking giggling, about who knows freaking what - "

"Shut up, El, you know why," Brittany says.

"That's freaking Counselor El to you."

"Okay!" Finn stands up and runs a hand through his disheveled hair. "How about we call it a truce and head back to our campsites, eh?"

"That sounds like a great idea," El almost spits.

"Of course it does, since it's Finn's idea," she hears one Cabin A camper mumble, unable to distinguish which one she is.

El hopes she's imagining Finn snickering.

⌚ 9:12 AM

"So...Finn." Bianca pulls at El's backpack.

The counselor has almost no patience for this anymore - they're hiking the trail back to Cabin A to drop off their things and she's not heard the end of "oh, you and Finn are so adorable together! You're gonna have such nice children! Did you kiss? OMG, you should have kissed him!"

Surprisingly, she hasn't heard any of this from Bianca, who El considers as her closest camper-friend. Until now.

"What about him?" El's voice comes out a lot more bored and tired than she thought it would.

"I feel like I should be asking you that question." Bianca's, on the other hand, is sarcastic, unlike the others who teased El about Finn.

"Okay."