Breathe Me || Completed

16.1

16.1 - Cabin

We sneak into the Minotaur cabin without any trouble at all.

It's small and square, a single room with four bunk beds against the walls and a braided rug in the center between them. There's a tiny wooden table in the corner made by wooden walls on the wooden floor underneath the wooden ceiling. A window on the opposite side of the room showcases the back of the latrines, some loose plumbing and splintering wood. The sky outside is velvety blue.

"Get in, get in, get in," Mae is saying. She glances around outside at the other clumps of girls streaming into their new cabins, shooing us inside with an impatient hand. "Quick!"

We get in.

Inside are three other girls, all peeking around the posts of their bunk beds to look at us. We look back at them. Christina offers a short wave.

Mae shuts the door behind us, breathing out a sigh of relief. We all look at each other. "Hi," says Mae.

"Hi," chorus the other girls.

One of them stands up and comes over to us. She's tall and slender, a long tress of black hair flowing behind her. She looks Japanese to me, slanted amber eyes and small pink lips. She's wearing the camp t shirt, only hers is a soft bluish green. She gives us a perplexed grin and starts to shake all of our hands. "Hi," she says. "I'm Kayla. There's, uh, kind of a lot of you. They said, what was it?" she glances back at her other cabin mates.

"Three or four," says another girl. She has short brown hair in a pixie cut, but I can't really tell anything else about her because she's already wrapped up in a quilt on the bottom bunk, curled into fetal position under the covers.

Kayla nods. "Yeah. And there's . . . six? Of you?

"Well oops." Samantha shrugs, starting to walk past Kayla. "I call bottom bunk," she says when she reaches the set of bunks farthest from the door. She drops her backpack at the foot of the bed and plops herself down on the mattress, beginning to untie her shoes.

I redden. "Um, sorry," I say. "I'm Sally. That's Samantha. We're not actually supposed to be here." My own honesty astounds me.

It seems to astound Kayla as well. As the others begin to gravitate toward their beds of choice, she squints at me. "So . . . what are you doing here?" she asks.

"Well, me and Sam sort of ran away from home. And Mae offered for us to stay here for the night. So, we thought we'd take her up on it instead of sleeping in the woods. That's Mae." I point to her. Mae waves from the top bunk of the bed closest to the door. Underneath her is Patience, a small Indian girl with a wide smile and bushy eyebrows. In the bed to their left, Christina is lying down in the top bunk and the other Minotaur girl is on the bottom. She's blonde and skinny and looks very bored.

Then in the back is Samantha, massaging her red feet. Next to her, Krystal is looking up the ladder with doubtful eyes.

Kayla gives me a sympathetic frown. "Well," she says. "I guess we won't turn you in or anything. But. . . If you get caught, I take no responsibility for this. I know nothing about it." She puts her hands up in surrender.

"Got it," I say. "Thank you."

"No problem," says Kayla. "It actually sort of works out, since we're missing someone-- this girl Sheila? She got kicked out of camp because she almost drowned this girl in the lake." Kayla shudders. "It was disturbing."

"It was fucking awesome," mutters pixie-cut girl.

Kayla rolls her eyes and smiles at me. She has a very nice smile, very nice ale-colored eyes and very nice little dimples. She also has a very nice deep voice. She points at pixie-cut girl. "That's Syd," she says. "Resident bitch and best friend extraordinaire."

"I'm not your friend," grumbles Syd.

Kayla blows her a kiss.

"So are you two going to share a bed, then?" she asks. "Or I can share with Syd. We don't mind."

"Yes we mind," comes a voice from under the quilt.

I glance at Samantha who is guiding her septum piercing out of the hole between her nostrils. Krystal is staring with a hand over her mouth like she's witnessing a gruesome murder.

"That's okay," I tell Kayla. "Last night we shared a single-person sleeping bag, so a bed is definitely an upgrade."

The bored-looking girl purses her lips and says. "How do you do that?"

I feel myself blushing to remember climbing in on top of Samantha, the warmth of her stomach radiating between my thighs. "It's pretty uncomfortable," is all I tell her. "I don't recommend it."

The girl frowns and turns over in her bed, still bored, apparently.

Kayla pushes her lips together. "That's Doug," she says.

"Doug?" says Mae.

"Douglyn," corrects Douglyn.

Mae leans over the top of the bunk to look at the girl who is now sitting up with her arms over her chest, her face emoting a sort of perpetual eye roll. "That's an interesting name," says Mae. "Never heard it before."

"Well now you have," says Douglyn. She shoots her eyes over to Kayla. "And don't call me fucking Doug. It's Lyn. Get it right."

Samantha is watching with a smirk as she jimmies the bar out of her eyebrow. "At least you're not named Sally Field Jean Pierre."

This is the second time today. I internally curse my Grandmother for starting this stupid name tradition.

"Your name is Sally Field? Like, that's your first name?" says Douglyn.

I nod. "Yeah."

Well, my stupid fucking name is enough to break the ice. The awkward quiet dissipates as we all break into our own separate conversations and Samantha falls asleep yet again, half of her piercings in a pile on the mattress and the other half still in her face.