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“Can my thing be leaving?”

A few kids laughed.

“No,” Darius replied.

“Then I don’t have anything.”

I leaned towards my co-counselor. “Inspiring leadership there, DeeDee.”

“You want to do it, dickhead?” he grunted.

“I thought you’d never ask.” I stepped into the middle of the circle and looked around. “Change of plans. That exercise was boring as fuck.”

Darius folded his arms. The teenagers perked up slightly.

I pointed in front of me. “Everybody stand.”

Nobody moved.

I clapped once. “Come on. I didn’t survive a courtroom and two hours on a bus with Captain Repressed over there just to watch you fuse your asses to a buncha folding chairs.”

The girl with purple braids stood first, and then the others slowly followed suit.

Darius stared at me, and I smiled at him.

“Here’s how this works,” I explained. “We’re going to play a game called: Step Into the Circle. I say something. If it applies to you, you step forward.”

A younger boy near the door frowned. “That’s still an icebreaker.”

“Yes, but mine has the added possibility of embarrassment for some unlucky duckies.”

“What kind of embarrassment?” the tall boy asked, ever the fucking skeptic.

“Social vulnerability.”

“That sounds made up.”

“It’s unfortunately very real.” I stood inside the ring of chairs. “We’ll start easy. Step into the circle if you were forced to come to camp.”

Almost every teenager stepped forward and Darius joined them.

I pointed at him. “Fucking traitor.”

“You were court ordered too, dumbass.”

“I’m choosing to reframe it as involuntary evolution.”

The teens laughed again.

I shifted back. “Step forward if you’ve ever pretended to be sick to get out of school.”

Half the group shuffled closer.

“Step forward if you’ve ever blamed a sibling for something you did.”

More joined.

“Step forward if you’ve ever been blamed by a sibling for something they did.”