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“For what?”
“You’ll see.”
Darius folded his arms. “That sentence never ends well when you say it.”
I looked right through him. “Mason, twenty minutes.” Then I turned around.
“You know he can hear you, right?” Mason said from behind me.
“I’m aware,” I replied.
“What the hell happened to you guys?”
“Nothing,” Darius muttered.
Now that was fucking funny.
Twenty minutes later, I stood on top of a picnic table with a megaphone.
Nobody had given me permission to use the megaphone but nobody had technically given me permission to stand on the table either. Administration had failed to confiscate either object from my general vicinity, which meant whatever happened next was really their fault.
“Campers!”
Feedback screamed through the speaker and half the kids covered their ears.
I winced. “Holy donkey balls, good morning.” I lowered the damn volume. “Okay. We’re learning something.”
Somebody laughed.
I raised the megaphone to my mouth again. “As all of you know, Camp Dix is tragically nearing its end.”
Boos erupted from the crowd. A few kids cheered.
I pointed towards them. “Those cheering will be remembered. As for the boos, don’t let the door hit your ingrate asses too hard on the way out.”
More laughter. Across the lawn, Mason leaned against the porch railing. Darius stood beside him, his arms crossed. He was watching me.
I ignored him. “We have only a few precious weeks remaining together before you all return home to your families, your video games, your air conditioning, and whatever horrifying little internet personalities you pretend you don’t have.”
More laughter. One girl shouted, “What about TikTok?”
“Especially TikTok, you screen junkies.”
She cackled, and I hopped down from the table.
“So today, we’re making memories.”
A collective groan rolled through the crowd.
“Don’t groan at me unless you want me to add a fucking homework assignment on top of this.”
That quieted them but only briefly.
I smiled again. “We’re doing a camp family portrait.”
Everybody started talking all at once.
“What?”
