The Ocean

Chapter 20

"So hey, Sydney, how exactly do we translate this sentence to German?" I asked her, struggling to not make any mistakes.

It was the translation session, where they gave us all a worksheet with random sentences in English which we had to translate to German. It was a pain in the ass, if you ask me. I sucked at translating stuff. This session was the one right after the lunch break, and this time we were divided into groups of 5. My group, as you might have guessed, was me, Snakey, Sydney, Sierra and Arya. The other kids from my class kinda chuckled at me cuz the number of girls exceeded the number of boys in my group, but I didn't care. At least these friends weren't as mean as the other kids.

"There you go." Sydney said as she scribbled something on my worksheet in German. I could actually understand German pretty well, but translating was not my thing. I made a mental note to revise translation that night, and carried onto my work.

I suddenly felt something tug at my chest and for no reason, the words, I think I like Peter played in my mind. I remembered how Serena and Peter would potentially date each other, and who knows, maybe they had actually confessed to each other by now. I tried to shrug off the sad feeling, and honestly, my friends helped, cuz Arya was totally fun to be with, and we talked all along about the characters in my novel, and Sydney wanted to know more cuz she didn't know a thing about my story. The teachers gave us a glare every once in a while, which meant, Don't talk and solve the damn worksheet, but heck, we didn't care.

At 3 PM, we had a break again, and this time it was gonna be an hour. I quickly went to the swing area with Snakey and we started swinging like little kids. Just then, Samantha and Ava came running there as well. They were smiling when they appeared, but didn't seem to like it much to see me and Snakey there.

"Ray, leave the swing and give it to us." Samantha almost seemed to be ordering me.

"The hell- why should I?" I exclaimed, swinging even higher.

"C'mon, you were here in the morning as well!" Samantha said.

"I could say the same thing. You were here too, so this thing doesn't make sense. We came first, we get the swings." I said, and looked at Snakey, who too was busy swinging.

"Look, Ray, I don't wanna fight," Ava began, and I slowed down the swing a bit, "so can we just share the swings? You and Sean use one swing in turns and Samantha and I will use the other in turns."

Sean. I had almost forgotten that Snakey wasn't his real name. I looked at him and he told me he was okay with anything, and I agreed to the truce proposed by Ava.

Snakey and I took turns on our swing and so did Samantha and Ava on theirs. We had quite a nice time, and we talked a lot. Especially me and Ava. We talked after such a long time, and she wasn't that bad afterall.

The break was over and we headed back to the open hall. Sierra asked me where we had been and told me that they had been searching for us all along, to which I told them what had happened. They were a bit upset that I didn't tell them about the swings, but anyway it was fine.

At around 6:30, the sessions were over and we were all free to do what we wanted. The 3 girls, Snakey and I decided to play hide and seek. The sun was almost setting down and it was dark, so we figured it would be fun. We started playing and a few other kids tagged along. I had a really nice time and I thought this camp was not gonna be all that bad afterall.

And yeah, life proved me wrong once again.

That night, after dinner, all the boys decided to hang out in Peter's room. It was really big and even though they already had 5 members, we all could hang out there with ease. I decided to tag along cuz I didn't want to hold any grudges, and anyway, I hadn't even told about my feelings for Serena to Peter, so it wasn't his fault that he liked her.

Most of the kids went back to their rooms at around 11:30 PM and finally the only ones left were Peter, his 4 other roommates, this guy called Damian who had been my rival since class 1, Snakey, and I.

Damian was one heck of a brainy dude. We always challenged each other and it was never predictable who would win. Sometimes it was him, sometimes me. But we were kinda on good terms even though we had a healthy competition.

I was just watching TV when Peter walked upto me and said, "Bro, I'm gonna confess to Serena."

It took me a while to process it, but I reached with, "Oh, go for it, man."

He technically dragged me to the corner of the room, near the window, and sat there. We could see the girl's building from this window of ours. He and Damian discussed something and then finally, Peter dialed a number. It was probably the number of Serena's roommate, and as much as I hated being there, I wanted to see what happened. Would Serena actually say yes to Peter?

"Hello?" Peter said as the call was picked up, "Um.. yeah.. give the phone to Serena... Oh?... No... Yeah, alright... Just give it to her..."

Then he suddenly looked at us, which meant Serena was on the line.

"Hello?... Yeah it's me... Did you eat?... No... I'm just chilling with my friends here... Hmm?" Just then he looked at me. "Yeah, he's here... Forget it... I want to talk about something important."

Did Serena just ask if I was around?

"You see... I'm not from here you know... My hometown is-" Peter was beginning to piss me off. I interrupted him and almost yelled, "Are you gonna do it or should I be the one to confess?"

Peter seemed startled at that sentence and quickly blurted out, "Serena... Ich liebe dich."

He fucking confessed to her in German. Big ass show-off. Well done, just what I would have expected from this guy.

A moment later, he cut the call and he seemed a bit engrossed in his own thoughts. He wasn't looking necessarily sad or necessarily happy.

I was dying to know what Serena had said. Did she say yes to him?

"Bruh.. what happened? Serena... Serena said no, right?"

How I wish what I heard next was what I wanted to hear. But it wasn't.

"She," Peter told us, "said she loves me too."