#eoj

Harry was the perfect camp counselor. He was fun, energetic, played the guitar. Plus the kids loved him. Not only was he so completely charming that everyone wanted to be his friend, but he had the most beautiful British accent which made everyone stop and listen. Also, he was cute. 

Harry was cute. His deep green eyes which always looked at you like you were the most important thing in the world, his chocolate brown curls, often disheveled from a long day’s work. And then there were his muscles, his honey-golden skin which only tanned more as the summer went on, and his tattoos. Those damn tattoos which made Y/N dizzy if she thought about them too much.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind, Harry was the cute counselor. Not just the cutest male counselor assigned to this age group, but genuinely the cutest male counselor in the whole camp for the whole summer. Even before campers arrived he had other staff falling all over him. 

Y/N had known Harry for years, and it’s not like his effect had worn off per say, more that she exhausted all of her energy fawning over him quickly and decided to redirect her attention elsewhere - to their friendship. Harry’s aunt had gone to camp in the States back in the day, and so each summer she insisted that his parents ship him out and follow in her footsteps. So for the past decade or so Y/N and Harry had been in the same age group, growing up with each other for a few weeks at a time. 

So she was thrilled when she found out that even though she was stuck with one of the most difficult age groups, at the very least she would be working with Harry. It meant they could actually hang out and spend quality time together while working. Plus, when he talked, all the campers stopped to listen, no matter how slowly his words dripped out of his mouth. And his status as the cute counselor definitely made her cooler in the campers’ eyes for hanging out with him. So it was a winning situation all the way around. 

Eleven and twelve year olds were a handful. Y/N knew going into the summer that she might be assigned this age group, considering they were one of the most difficult to handle and she was one of the most experienced camp counselors. But still, she had silently hoped that after two years on staff she would be rewarded with the teens. Not that teens didn’t have their own issues - she knew from experience that the saying “big kids, big problems” held a lot of truth. But middle schoolers? They were a whole other ball game.

Those who had started puberty had the hormones of the teens, with the knowledge and expectations of a child. Those who hadn’t yet felt the pressure. They needed to be reminded to brush their teeth and their hair but also couldn't be left alone for too long or they might start kissing each other in broad daylight. They were obsessed with each other in the way that only eleven and twelve year olds can be. They were also obsessed with the counselors. 

One counselor, in particular. And honestly, Y/N couldn’t blame them. 

Y/N and Harry were sitting under the shade of the overhang during pool time one day, chatting at a reasonable distance away from the kids when Harry had the idea. When he first suggested it, Y/N almost spit out the sip of water she had just taken from her water bottle. But he looked at her completely seriously. 

“Really? Question time? With kids this young?” she challenged him.

Harry just shrugged, turning to look towards the campers. Half of them were still enjoying the pool, but the other half were already pretending to be too cool for it and instead sat around the edges gossiping with one another or playing cards.

“Why not? M’boys might not be ready for it, but the girls,” he nodded his head towards five or six of them sitting in the corner giggling about something. “I’m sure they’d love it.” 

Y/N mulled it over. She had ten campers in her cabin, half of them eleven and half of them twelve. They would definitely be excited about it. Especially if it was Harry coming in to do it. The best kind of “ask a counselor anything” was always “ask a boy counselor anything,” Y/N remembered from her own experience as a camper for all those years. 

“Alright,” she finally relented. “I mean, we didn’t have an activity planned for cabin time tonight, so might as well.” 

Harry smiled back at her. 

“Don’t want to do a switch night though,” she clarified. “Like, I’ll go do one with your boys but a different night. I know a couple of mine don't want to be left alone.” 

He shrugged. “That’s fair. Y’little one always struck me as quite shy.” 

“Oh no,” she laughed. “She’s the most rambunctious of the bunch. Did I tell you what we caught her planning the other day?” 

The conversation continued like that for a while longer, with each of them sharing their funniest stories of their campers from the past few days. All the while Y/N was working on a complicated friendship bracelet and Harry was decorating the back of his clipboard with Sharpies, and none of the kids seemed bothered to interrupt. 

Not long after, the lifeguard blew his whistle, driving the kids out of the pool and towards their next activity. It was the second week of camp now, so they knew the usual routine. They went back to their cabins after pool time to take showers, some of the girls changing clothes even if they didn’t swim just because trading t shirts with each other was fun. 

The whole camp ate dinner in the dining hall (tacos, for the sixth time that summer already). A few of Harry’s boys chose that night to be picky about their food, so he made a great show of enjoying his. Y/N saw him from a few tables away, his eyebrows high, smiling as he chewed his dinner and pointed towards it with fake glee. It seemed to work - she saw a few of the boys take a bite after him.

After dinner the younger half of camp went to the amphitheater for a song session. Y/N and Harry’s campers were the oldest of ‘junior camp’, and nearly all of them felt they were now far too cool to be singing and dancing with the eight year olds. The main part of the day wrapped up with their daily age-group fun program - tonight it was Capture The Flag.  Finished up with a closing circle and then off to cabins to change into pjs, do cabin time, and go to bed.

But as soon as Y/N and her campers got back to their cabin, she made an announcement. 

“Redwood cabin!” she called out to get their attention. “You can change into your pjs if you’d like, but if you are a person who wears a bra you should keep your bra on. Also please clean up the floor a bit, we’re going to have a guest tonight!” 

The girls immediately started giggling and chatting, trying to guess who was going to be joining them. Was it their favorite songleader to come and sing lullabies? Was it one of the upper staff who would give them some kind of a lecture? Was it older campers to teach them some kind of activity?”

“You’re all wrong!” one of them called out. “It’s obviously going to be a boy. I mean, why else would she say to keep our bras on?” 

“Ooh, is it that cute boy from Pine cabin?” one of them ran up and asked.

Y/N just chuckled. “I’m not telling, it’s a surprise. Now go clean up and get ready.” 

The campers followed her directions for the most part before sitting down in a circle on the floor at the center of their cabin. Y/N sat in front of them on her bed, checking her watch. Harry should be getting there any minute now. How long could it possibly take him to get his boys ready for bed and hand them off to a counselor-in-training? 

It was sweet, the way the girls were all jittery and excited without even knowing what was in store. Y/N remembered fondly nights exactly like this when she was their age. Sure camp taught her how to climb trees and tie-dye shirts and sing new songs, but the untold truth was that camp was the perfect place to learn about boys and kissing and dating and when she was just a year or two older than her current campers she fondly remembers a girl telling her about blow jobs. It seemed so grotesque at the time - boys don’t even wipe when they pee, why would she want to put that in her mouth? 

Finally a knock at the door.

“Hello? Yeh all decent?” Harry called from the other side of the cabin’s door. 

The girls all shrieked.

“Yeah, come on in,” Y/N called out. 

Harry walked in, ducking his head to make it through the barrier which had been originally built likely in the 1930s and hardly upgraded since. When he looked up and made eye contact with her, Y/N couldn’t help but notice how bright his deep green eyes looked, even after a long exhausting day of being a camp counselor. He had on a pair of worn out jeans and a t shirt which showed off his arms nicely. If she didn’t know any better, Y/N would’ve said it wasn’t just the campers with butterflies in their tummies.

He made his way over to the center of the cabin and sat down on Y/N’s bed next to her. The girls were all smiling and whispering to each other. 

“Alright ladies,” Harry started. All the campers quieted down, looking directly at him like whatever came out of his mouth was going to be the most important thing in the world. “I’m here tonight to do a question time. Ask m’anything you want. Can ask about me, or about boys, or about camp, or about school. Whatever’s on y’minds, alright?” 

He smirked, looking over to Y/N next to him. The area was small and their shoulders and legs were touching. It was almost surreal seeing him there - on her bed. A place that most of the staff and lots of the campers had probably dreamt of him being. 

A few girls raised their hands to start asking questions, and Harry called on them one at a time. They started rather innocent.

“What’s your middle name?”

“Edward.”

“How many years have you come to camp?”

“This would be m’tenth.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Pink.”

But it wasn’t long before they strayed... 

“What color is your underwear right now?”

“Blue.”

“Boxers or briefs?”

“Do y’even know what the difference is? Anyway boxer-briefs.” 

“How old were you when you had your first kiss?”

“Hmm...” he paused. “Think I was about thirteen. Happened here at camp actually, out behind the Oak cabin if m’not mistaken.”

“Ooh tell us the story!” 

Harry smiled, looking over towards Y/N. He opened his mouth to speak but one of the girls interrupted him.

“Oh was Y/N your first kiss?!?!?” 

Harry chuckled. “No, no. But she was kind of there, if I remember correctly.”

Y/N nodded at the memory.

“Was with this girl named Sarah. Thought she was quite cute so I gave her the pot I made in art elective. Sat next to her at every meal for three days, too. Finally she slipped a message to me to meet her outside behind her cabin at midnight, when she thought her counselors would be gone. So me and m’friend snuck out of our cabin and met her. When we got there she had a friend with her, so our two friends walked a little bit away. Was quite awkward, but she was sweet.”

“I was in the cabin,” Y/N clarified. “But we were all staring out the window.” 

“And your counselors were asleep?”

Harry laughed again. “No, we underestimated how late they would stay up. Got caught red handed, we did.” 

The campers laughed. 

“But I want yeh to know, it’s ok if you’re a lot older before you have your first kiss, or younger, or however old. The most important thing is that it’s a good experience, right Y/N?” 

He looked over at her for reassurance and she nodded. 

“How old were you?” 

“Hey now, that’s for another night. This is Harry’s question time, not mine,” she teased back at her camper. 

“Harry, do you have a girlfriend?” 

He took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling for a moment before answering. Y/N knew the question must be difficult for him. He’d been dating a girl back in London for about six months when he heard back that he had been hired to work at camp. She didn’t want to come with him. She didn’t want to do long distance. She didn’t want him to leave. 

Harry called Y/N out of the blue one day - well it was the middle of the night for him, that’s why he said he called her instead of a friend in London. He said he didn’t want to wake anyone up. And he wanted to know what she thought, since she was his best girl camp friend. And she was honest with him. 

Look H, I can’t tell you what to do. But I want you to be happy and I know I’ve never seen you happier than when you’re on a hike to the hidden campsite. And someone who really loves you should also want you to be happy. But I don’t know. Maybe you’re happier with her and I just haven’t seen it. Just... do what makes you happy H, yeah? 

He broke up with her the next day and called Y/N in a blubbering mess. 

“No, no I don’t,” he answered softly.

“You should date Y/N!” one of the younger ones called out without missing a beat. 

Y/N felt herself blushing, but she wasn’t sure why. Campers always wanted their counselors to date each other. And it wasn’t the first time someone had suggested it to the two of them. But he was sitting close to her, legs and arms touching, lounging on top of her favorite blanket. It had been a while since she had even thought about it, honestly. He was too good of a friend at this point, wasn’t he? 

Harry flashed her a toothy smile, and if she didn’t know any better, Y/N wouldn’t sworn she saw a glimmer of mischief in his eyes.

Since, like most, the events of my adolescent years have begun falling into the fog of memory, I often use the year to calculate just how long I’ve been working on these stories. Namely that I knew I wrote the first scene [a sequence that has remained by and large unchanged in the years hence, minus updates to the language I use and some character names] when I was in 7th grade. I graduated 2010, minus five to get us back to that school year brings us to 2005. 

The ideas of the world began percolating before then, I know that I first began drawing mage-marks on my hands in time for middle school orientation, but it wasn’t until a bit later that a mess of ideas became a scene and that scene was later handed to my 7th grade English teacher as I rode the mixed bag of elation and anxiety that came from feeling like I had done something important but not knowing what it was. I can say that the Empire of Jiaal has existed in some form in my head since the age of twelve, meaning sixteen years of work has gone into world-building and the Ehtmoph language, but the story itself began its shambling existence fourteen years ago, which neatly makes it exactly half of the years I’ve lived so far. 

For as long as I’ve been writing, this story has been part of my mental landscape in some shape or form. It’s always here, be it my main focus or floating on the edges. I’ve left it and come back again, it being the one thing I could never leave behind in the embarrassment of my teen years and my awkward growth as both a writer and a person. 

2018 saw a sea change as I began writing a new draft. After more than a decade of trying to find a delivery mechanism for the expansive world I created, my thinking had shifted and realized that the strength I’ve had as an author has always come from characters, not setting... and the characters I made were products of a child’s mind that, minus one favorite, had not grown since then. I’d put them into boxes, boxes I recognized as a child; the protagonist, the innocent, the love interest, the stoic, the warrior, the mature one-- and keeping those characters in those boxes limited who they could become as I grew up. Each one had remained hallow for years, more plot devices than persons. 

In 2018, that changed. 

So many things changed.

2018 might have seen some of the most stressful time of my life so far. I moved to an island in the middle of an ocean, I had to cope with a fresh long-term deployment while the US leadership seemed to make a game out of seeing how much sleep I could lose in a given week over their antics. I picked a home that was, admittedly, too big for one person despite knowing I would occupy it on my lonesome for an extended period of time while living here, expecting I’d make enough friends to put the space to use while entertaining... and forgetting that I’m kinda shite at meeting new people. There’s been more than a little financial hardship as hubby and I manage our debts along side the costs of traveling home to see the family once in a while. There’s the fact that both of our families are on the other side of the planet, so even the simple pleasure of calling home becomes stressful at times. 

2018 also saw certain joys, however. My marriage evolved this year, breaking down a major barrier of communication that had existed between myself and my husband for years as for the longest time we’d both struggled with something as simple as stating what we wanted out of our lives together. This has provoked growth in our partnership, and also led to a space where he’s been able to express just how much I do for him in the grand scheme of things, alleviating some of the anxiety I feel due to my monetary dependence on him. I’d begun to feel like I was using him, to an extent, but he’s helped me see the value in all the things I do... and reminded me that if there’s anyone else who is as invested as me in my creative work, it’s him. He’s never seen it as frivolous or a waste of time, and that is something so special to me it’s beyond words. 

Today is the first day of 2019, and I’ve taken it to reflect. I’ll still say this; 2018 was a shitty year, and I was happy to stay up till midnight last night as a symbolic gesture of watching it die... but in with the hardship were some truly special moments. 

Goodbye 2018. May I remember you as a painful transformation into something greater.