Camp Canoa // Luke Hemmings

The One With The Fire Starter

[Day +31]

The new kids come in vans and buses, spilling out over the tarmac like small, over-excitable bees, clad in too-big cartoon t-shirts and smeared in so much sunscreen that they all vaguely resemble the crap you find at the bottom of milk cartons past their sell-by-date. Watching from the shade, we try to weed out the weaklings and the assholes, debating how douchey our groups will be this time, on a scale of one to ten. Me and Luke have ended up sharing the eleven's, Nora has ended up with the sevens, with none other than Garth, her puppy-love super-stalker.

"Aw, man, look at that guy!" Luke declares gleefully, pointing out a boy who is both overweight and sickly, and looks ready to take it out on anyone unfortunate enough to get in his path. "He looks like he'd kick your head in as soon as he looks at you."

"Or eat you," Nora laughs.

Ashton frowns. He disapproves of this game. "I'm sure he's a perfectly nice boy."

Calum splutters with laughter. "He's gonna kick your ass."

As Ashton scowls at him and begins to raise his voice in protest, authority calls over from the shuttle buses, telling us all to get moving, meet our new groups and take them to their cabins. The seven of us reluctantly drag ourselves from our position in the shade of a young apple tree, agreeing as we separate to divide and conquer or die trying.

[Day +29]

No matter how Luke tries to provoke the large, unhappy kid in their group into physical exercise, he ultimately failed. The kid, named Albert Oiseau, deliberately gave himself a nosebleed to get out of athletics earlier, and now is simply refusing to stand up for volleyball. From my position doing admin in the Water Sports hut, it's pretty funny, but poor Luke already looks pretty flushed and irritated. That kid really is a nightmare.

I turn my attention back to flicking through the old records of kayaks and boogie boards to see if any are reaching the safety check necessary at the end of five years' ownership. It's riveting stuff.

"-and I don't know – I mean, don't you think that Anna spends a lot of time texting her boyfriend?" Rose is saying as she pins up the new boat rental sheets. "It seems kind of clingy to me."

"Isn't he like twenty-eight too?" Emma is supposedly on lifeguard duty but since no-one is in the water, she climbed down from her chair and is perching on the Water Sports counter to make bitchy chitchat. "Gross. He's probably bald."

"That could be hot." Rose arches her eyebrow and then twists around, smirking. "What do you think, Grace?"

"Well, you might look a little weird with no hair, Rose, but whatever makes you happy," I reply absently. I scan the last page of the 2003 folder and set it back, ignoring Rose's tutting and laughing.

I look over at the volleyball court. Nora, presumably having a free session after being dismissed from staff admin or something, has now joined Luke's campaign on the sand to try and control the heavyweight asshole. Together they're pitching some idea to Albert which he seems to agree to, hauling himself up to play. Nora and Luke both look infinitely relieved. Luke, in particular, looks unusually frazzled and on the precipice of just plain smacking Albert, his hair was sweaty and curly, and his shirt was dark with sweat, sticking to his skin.

I tear my eyes away and pull out the ring-binder for 2004.

I think about Luke more now – a lot, and in varying degrees on eroticism. Sometimes I think about his ticklish aversion about having his feet touched. Sometimes I think about how often he thinks about when he pushed me against a wall and kissed me breathless. I think about that time sometimes too – and other times, whenever we can snatch moments alone to press in close to each other and kiss and desperately clutch onto every inch we can get our hands on like we're starving.